ATHENS. 201 
walls, we beheld the vast CECROPIAN CITADEL, 
crowned with temples which have originated in 
the veneration once paid to the memory of the 
illustrious dead 1 , surrounded by objects telling 
the same theme of sepulchral grandeur, and 
now monuments of departed greatness, mould- 
ering in all the solemnity of ruin. So para- Funereal 
mount is this funereal character in the approach thick)" 
to Athens from the Pir&eus, that as we passed 
the hill of the Museum, which was, in fact, an 
antient coemetery of the Athenians, we might 
have imagined ourselves to be among the tombs 
of Telmcssus, from the number of the sepulchres 
hewn in the rock, and from the antiquity of the 
Mons. Fauvel, mentioning Dionysius, \vxitou \<xi/t.i\r l t"itt. The removal 
of the earth from part of the Pnyx has given us a more exact notion 
of the form of that celebrated place of assembly. A number of votive 
offerings were found at the time of the excavation by Lord Aberdeen ; 
but to what Deity or what temple they belonged, it is difficult to say. 
On one of them, having an eye sculptured on the stone, were the 
words ES? v-^irru iuij: on another I saw, 'Zutrftxfos l^lavet Aw 
XapitrTxptn." Walpole*s MS. Journal. 
(l) The first place of worship in the Acropolis of Athens was the 
Sepulchre of Cecrops. The Parthenon was erected upon the spot. 
(See the Observations in Vol. II. of these Travels, Chap. II. p. 76. 
Octavo edition.} The Athenians preserved his tomb in the Acrn- 
polis, and that of Ericthonius in the Temple of MINERVA POLIA<S. 
(Vid. Antioch. apud Clemen. Alexund. torn. I. p. 39. Oxon. 1715.) 
Hence Clemens is of opinion that tombs were the origin of all their 
temples : Ni; <tti tufriftui eifiu.^o/tiiw;, <ra$ovs Ss yiitftinvs, TtuTtrri rw; 
riiQevs HMI \-rixtH\nfi.i*ou;. dementis Alexandrini Cohortatio ad Gentes, 
p. 3. torn. I. p. 39. Oxon. 1715. 
