MOUNT HELICON. 123 
little more than so many rude heaps of stone, chap. 
which were afterwards enlarged, and more regu- ■ 
larly constructed, as the number of their followers 
increased. Contiguous buildings were then 
added to those altars, and thus monasteries were 
erected. In this manner many of the most va- 
luable antiquities were either buried, broken, and 
destroyed, or they were accidentally preserved ; 
accordingly as they were required for the pur- 
poses either of laying foundations, or for making 
lime ; or as they were casually suited, by their 
shape and size, to facilitate the barbarous 
masonry now conspicuous in all the walls and 
pavements of those ecclesiastical structures. Yet, 
if we attribute such a style of building entirely 
to the Modern Greeks and to the Turks, we may 
perhaps be liable to error. The works of the 
Antients themselves were sometimes charac- 
terized by similar disorder. Evidence may be 
adduced to prove that even the vv^alls of Athens, 
in the time of the Peloponnesian warS exhibited 
the style of building which is now generally 
(l) This evidence occurs in the First Book oi Thttcijdides ; and, 
considering the curious fact it contains, it has been unaccountably 
overlooked by those wh'> have written upon the antiquities oi /Jlhens. 
TlaXXai Tt 'SrnXai ocro Suf/.tirut zxi Xitai iipyar/itt)! iyxartXiyiKrar. ftii^an ykf 
i TlipifieXts •xa.iTo.'^ri \%r,x^^ ''^^ -xoXxui. Thitrydid. lib. i. C.93. p. 52. edit. 
Hudsoni. Oxon. 1696. 
