We crossed a large court, entered a great door, and stood upon a pavement

of purest white marble, deeply worn by footprints. Before us, in the

flooding moonlight, rose the noblest ruins we had ever looked upon--the

Propylae; a small Temple of Minerva; the Temple of Hercules, and the

grand Parthenon. [We got these names from the Greek guide, who didn't

seem to know more than seven men ought to know.] These edifices were all

built of the whitest Pentelic marble, but have a pinkish stain upon them

now. Where any part is broken, however, the fracture looks like fine

loaf sugar. Six caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes,

support the portico of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and

colonnades of the other structures are formed of massive Doric and Ionic

pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still measurably perfect,

notwithstanding the centuries that have gone over them and the sieges

they have suffered. The Parthenon, originally, was two hundred and

twenty-six feet long, one hundred wide, and seventy high, and had two

rows of great columns, eight in each, at either end, and single rows of

seventeen each down the sides, and was one of the most graceful and

beautiful edifices ever erected.

Most of the Parthenon's imposing columns are still standing, but the roof

is gone. It was a perfect building two hundred and fifty years ago, when

a shell dropped into the Venetian magazine stored here, and the explosion

which followed wrecked and unroofed it. I remember but little about the

Parthenon, and I have put in one or two facts and figures for the use of

other people with short memories. Got them from the guide-book.

393

The Innocents Abroad