The Areopagus
“It was the Greek who, transcending every diflScuUy of action and posture, liberated the figure from the stone, and impersonated strength and grace in those petrifactions of heroes and of gods, which are at once the glory and the despair of each successive generation.” — Holmden, “Art in
“It is impossible to conceive of anything more adapted to the circumstances of time and place, than is the whole of St. Paul’s masterly address; but the full force and energy and boldness of the Apostle’s language can be duly felt only when one has stood upon the spot.” — Dr. Robinson’s Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 8.
“It can hardly be deemed profane, if we trace to the same divine Providence, the preservation of the very imagery which surrounded the speaker, — not only the sea and the mountains and the sky, which change not with the decay of nations — but even the very Temples, which remain, after wars and revolutions, on their ancient pedestals, in astonishing perfection. “We are thus provided with a practical, yet truthful commentary on the words that were spoken once for all at Athens; and Art and Nature have been commissioned from above to enframe the portrait of that Apostle, who stands for ever on the Areopagus as the Teacher of the Gentiles.” — Howson and Conybeare, vol. i. p. 410.
“All these things have been, are, ought to be, and will be used, and perhaps increasingly, as handmaids of the Church’s ministry, and for the innocent delight of the intelligent. Only they do not make Heaven, or reveal God.” — Bishop ThoroJd.
“God... dwelleth not in Temples made with hands” (Acts xvii. 24).
The Areopagus, (Apeco JTayo?) — Mars’ Hill — was so called from the Temple dedicated to the God of War, which stood by itself close by: just as the “Cam2:)us Martins’’ had been dedicated to him in Rome. Others assert that it obtained its designation from being the spot where, according to tradition, the reputed gods were summoned to a solemn assembly, when Mars was arraigned for the murder of a son of Poseidon (or Neptune). It had been long appropriated for judicial purposes: and, as already noted, Athens, being constituted by Rome a free city, still had its recognised and independent courts of judicature. The Court of the Areopagus was the most venerable of these. It was instituted by Solon as a check to repress the disorders of the democracy, and was composed of the choicest and most conspicuous of the citizens, — those of noble birth and blameless reputation — the true “Leaders of the people.” Indeed, to secure it being select, none were advanced to the office who had not
D previously held that of Archon. During its best days it was distinguished for probity, justice, and unimpeachable rectitude. Possibly it may have now degenerated from the time when its decisions were deemed so reliable, that even the Roman did not scruple to make its members arbiters in difficult cases, or counsellors in important affairs, The Court took cognisance of capital offences, and had exclusive jurisdiction, too, in the settlement of religious matters (ra Upd). All innovators, those departing from the traditional and accepted religious rites and customs — what we would have called “Schismatics” — were sisted at its bar. It was therefore specially appropriate, on this occasion, for hearing an exposition of the Christian Apologist’s doctrines. Owing to these and other associations, there was, in the mind of the Athenians, a halo of sacredness thrown around the place; corresponding in some measure to that which invested The Shiloh of Israel’s Tabernacle. But as it was mingled too with a superstitious awe, shall we call it rather, and more truthfully, the prototype of the hierarchal council and conclave so formidable in Mediaeval times — the Romish Inquisition. Some conjecture that the Court was now in session. Be this as it may, it
1 Dr Kitto.
is evident that our Apostle was not summoned before it as a criminal, on a criminal charge. His appearance there was extra judicial. No formal indictment was presented. It had been very different with others before, who, in their way, were as illustrious as St. Paul himself. The noblest of all the noble citizens of Athens — the founder of her Ethical Schools, with whose name we are already familiar — the great and good Socrates — when he had reached the age of three score and ten — had been arraigned where the Apostle of a purer faith was about to stand. He had to answer to almost the identical accusation — viz., that he had been “the setter forth of strange gods.” These were the very words of the capital charge — “He did not acknowledge the gods whom the city acknowledged, and he introduced new gods.^ He concluded his famous appeal, or apology, almost in Apostolic words — “Ye men of Athens, I am obliged to you and thank you, but I must obey God rather than you.... And now the hour is come for us to depart. I go to death and you to life, but which of the twain is the better choice is known to God alone.” He was thirty days in prison previous to his death. These he spent in
B.C. 399.. 2 Xen. Apolog. Soc.
3 See Lewin’s Life of St. Paul, vol. i. p. 288.
philosophic converse with his friends, The cup of hemlock drank in the adjoining prison was the cruel and ignoble cause of the termination of a life which belongs to all ages.^
The Areopagus itself was remarkable. It consisted of an eminence, or rather protuberance — an insulated rock, more craggy towards the east, where it attained the height of fifty feet. Here was the reputed Cave of the Furies, the awful goddesses with their snaky tresses who dogged the footsteps of guilt. They are called, by Hesiod, Erinnyes (the Avengers), but, on being propitiated, became Eumenides (the Gentle Ones). Their abode was a natural hollow or grotto, in the north-eastern base of the rock confronting the Acropolis. To the
1 Dr. William Smith’s History of Greece in loc.
2 From “verbal photographs” left us by the most distinguished of his contemporaries, and specially by Plato, we can picture the figure and appearance of the living man, which hardly needs the aid of bust or statue to impress upon us his individuality, so unlike the symmetrical forms and features of those among whom he carried on his ceaseless mission: the rotund head and capacious forehead — the un-Grecian nose — the prominent eyes with their kindly glance when argument woke them up from their normal inexpressiveness; the restlessness of a true peripatetic; one so well adapted, in what are familiarly known as his “Methods,” to encourage dialectics and discussion among a capricious auditory. We can imagine him, all day long, strolling, but never alone: now along the public walks and gardens; now in the gymnasia for the training of athletes; now in the bazaars and booths of the Agora — specially his favourite Stoa Poecile: now expounding his thesis on the heights of the Areopagus; now sauntering with his more familiar intimates among the statues and Temples of the Acropolis — or amid the oleanders of the Academy.
Temple of the Semnse, or Subterranean Sanctuary, the accused before the Areopagite Court were conducted after acquittal, to offer sacrifice.^ Keligion was thus invoked to enforce the sanctions and penalties of Law; a foreshadow of the association of Church and State of after ages. The behests of the earthly Council were confirmed and sanctioned by the proximity of this haunt of the “Avenging Angels” of Greek mythology, and the supposed entrance to Hades.^ The “Hill” is approached by sixteen stone steps from The Agora — the same by which we ascended on the occasion of our visit, as they still survive in a dilapidated state. Mr. Bartlett well describes the spot: — “A long rugged slope culminating to a point. ... At the top of the steps and hewn in the rock is a level platform with a stone bench around it, steps, bench, and all, picturesquely corroded by the tooth of time.” The two English Princes in their “Walks about Athens” give this graphic touch in the reference to the Areopagus. *’ The
1 Pausanias mentions three statues there, as being seen in his day — those of Pluto, Mercury, and the Earth. — i. chap. 28.
- Not aware of the vicinity of the cave, we did not examine it. Dr. Wordsworth, who did so, says — “There is a wide long chasm formed by split rocks, through which we enter a gloomy recess. There is a fountain of very dark water, A female peasant whom we find here with her pitcher, in the very adytum of the Eumenides, says that the source flows during the summer, and that it is esteemed for its medicinal virtues” (p. 66).
wild thyme and dry odorous grasses now cover this hill, amongst which we came across the descendants of the grasshoppers of which the old Athenians were so fond.“^ The place had very old and less pleasing historic memories; for it was here that the Persians under Xerxes had, centuries before, taken up their position to assault the Acropolis, then the “citadel,” poorly fortified with wooden bulwarks. The assailants sent showers of arrows, furnished or “headed” wdth burning tow, which easily accomplished their mission on the timber barricades. The Athenians of that heroic age, however, surrendered their lives and forts only after prodigies of valour. When other resistance was hopeless, masses of stone were rolled down on the attacking soldiers. The disparity of numbers determined the fate of the day, and the defenders were put to the sword. But Salamis was at hand.^
The same, in their account of the remarkable ruins of Jerash or Geresa, note the similar juxtaposition of temple and law-court to which in the previous page we have referred. Speaking of the Great Temple of the Sun. “We enter first the Basilica, which stands immediately opposite to this, on the right hand side of the street. The tribune of Justice, where was placed the “gabbatha,” the piece of tesselated pavement brought from Rome, is well marked, and on this stood the chair of the judge.” It is added, as true of the Areopagus as of these Oriental ruins of their “Palace of Justice,” —” The swallows to-day are now chirping where lawyers once jileaded,’’ vol. ii. p. 652. One or two of these ancient stone benches of the Areopagus have been removed outside the modern museum of Athens — the Temple of Theseus.
2 The Student’s Greece, p. 205.
It was up these same stone steps, then, that the Apostle of Christ was now conducted by his curious interlocutors. The privileged judges, what were called “the Upper Council” would occupy, facing the south, their triangular stone benches; most probably Dionysius, spoken of at the close of the narrative, among them. The remaining crowd of philosophers would stand on the vacant space in the platform, or grouped on the rocks around.^ Doubtless St. Paul would be placed on what was familiarly known by the name “Stone of Impudence.” As indifferent would he be, as was the illustrious Athenian we have spoken of, to any implied contumely. He has no thought but an irresistible desire to unfold his great message.
The idea of danger or indeed insult is at once dismissed and negatived by the terms of the invita-
1 We may here once more refer to the Initial Woodcut in our Preface, where, in conjunction with an ideal picture of the surroundings, we have, though in inadequate size, a reproduction of what the authoress of “Sacred .ind Legendary Art” pronounces, “the sublimest ideal of embodied eloquence that ever was expressed in art” (p. 226). Mr, Bartlett has an effective engraving, though an altogether different treatment of the same scene, in his “Footsteps of the Apostles” (p. 106). “There is no spot,” he adds, “about the identity of which there can be less doubt than this, and in none, perhaps, is so little effort required, to figure the minutest details of the incident connected with it” (p. 105).
2 AVatSet’as, “Two stones upon which the accusers and defenders stood. They call one of these the Stone of Reproach (or contumely) and the other of Impudence” {Pausanias, chap. i. 28). What in modern phrase would be the places for Plaintiff and Defendant, the accuser and accused.
tion addressed to the stranger by these masters in the art of courtesy. Though they deemed him and had ah’eady denounced him as a ‘’ seed-pecking babbler,” a frivolous innocent, they at all events veiled the cynicism which may have mingled with their assumed politeness. “May we know, if you please,” said these inquisitive interrogators, ‘’ what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? for thou bringest strange things to our ears. Wewouldknow therefore, what these things mean?” (v. 19, 20).
One salient reference at least, in the sermon, justifies our pausing here for a little to describe the view from the summit of this rocky knoll, the same prospect which must have met the eye of the Apostle. What the author of ‘’Athens and Attica” has said of the Pynx, might, so far at least, with appropriateness be transferred to Mars’ Hill. “From its position and its openness, it supplied the Athenian orator with sources of eloquence influencing himself, and with objects of appeal acting on his audience which no other place of a similar import, not even the Roman Forum, has ever paralleled in number and influence” (p. 55). It would matter not in which direction he first gazed, for the entire panorama, striking now, must have been doubly impressive, teeming with varied interest, in that first century of our era, before the havoc of time and the ravages of conquering hordes had invaded its sanctity. He might begin with glimpses of the somewhat unpicturesque heights and sombre dells of “flowery Hymettus” on his left. Turning towards the right was the Piraeus, partially screened by the Pynx, but probably not sufficient to hide out one of the spurs of Mount ^galios rising from the Attic shore, the spot where Xerxes (who had so recently, as already noted, converted the Areopagus into a place of assault) sat on, a canopied throne upon the rocks, still memorialised by “a larger heap of stones,” to watch the armaments at the great naval fight, and from which he sprang in a paroxysm of fury at the unparalleled disaster.^ The gulph of Salamis, with its Island, and Straits, and “white wings of commerce,” was backed by the coast of Peloponnesus. The distant mountain-range, tinted with what a traveller calls “their forget-me-not blue,” indicated the direction of the city of Corinth. Continuing the circuit, the plain of the Cephisus
1 Memoir of Lieutenant De Lisle, p. 86. - The vivid description of Lord Byron may here be recalled:” A King sat on the rocky brow
Which looks o’er sea-born Salamis;
And ships by thousands lay below;
And men in nations; — all were his!
He counted them at break of day;
And when the sun st, where were they?”
would stretch in “middle distance:” not as now bared, blighted, treeless, and comparatively bereft of busy life, but studded with gardens and olive groves, Conspicuous among these would be the old Academic haunts of Plato. Still to the right would be seen the barrier hills of Attica — the mountain line of Parnes. But boldly conspicuous beyond all others as an outlier — a great watch-tower over the city of Pericles of a singular cone shape — was the remarkable hill of Lycabettus. It occupies the same relation to Athens, that the Mount of Olives does to Jerusalem. Bishop Wordsworth is reminded by it of what Monte
1 It must be borne in mind that the soil of Attica was by no means exuberant — not included among the world’s favoured regions for fertility. But in its brightest era it showed the powers of cultivation : — what art and human labour could achieve in subjugating the adverse forces of nature. The serenity of its atmosphere and the beauty of its skies were always the same. “Preller regards Athene” {alOrip the clear height of air) “as originally a personification of the wonderful beauty and brilliance of the stainless sky in Hellas.’” — Nineteenth Century, January 18SG, p. 53. The first two of the well-known lines are at all events true to this day —
“Still are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild, Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields.”
2 These may be about three Roman miles distant from the Areopagus. They are gardens surrounded and interspersed partially still with groves, among which the Cephisus winds its way to the S;ironic gulph. Other travellers tell us that Llilton’s tuneful nightingale — “the Attic Bird” still survives with the warblings which of old gladdened this school and home of Plato, “the plane tree whispering to the elm as Aristophanes has it.” Our impressions of the place, it must be confessed, were more prosaic. But besides the visit being necessarily a hurried and superficial one — allowance must be made for the depressing influences of a hot sun and dusty roads — the latter telling with fatal effect on the environing trees, especially the oleanders.
Mario is to Rome (p. 46). A nearer parallel is one with which we are more familiar. Not so picturesque as the Lion couchant which, in Arthur’s Seat, guards the city of Edinburgh — (for this and other reasons so appropriately called the ‘Modern Athens ‘), but it is loftier and more precipitous, and has, what is an impossibility in our sterner north, olives, myrtles and cypresses clothing its sides. The more distant mountain sweep is completed by the hills in the direction of Marathon: a wonderful “interlacing,” as it has been well described, “of land and sea.” Possibly the same writer’s words, conveying his own impression of the scene, may be appropriate to the Apostle spectator: — “The exquisite softness and beauty of the colouring, especially when the evening sun, glinting over the conical tops of Cithseron... encircles as with a halo of fire the brow of Lycabettus, and bathes the sides of Hymettus in a flood of rosy light. The more distant mountains then assume that deep rich purple hue peculiar to the Levant, making them stand out from the glowing background of the evening sky.” All travellers must be struck with this brilliancy of light and colour. “The epithet * violet-crowned ’ refers to the hills which shut in like a crown the whole plain....
Professor Porter.
The glow over these hills of Attica is more delicate than the equally clear but warmer tinge we have lately been used to in Syria and in the Valley of the Nile; and in addition, there is this indescribable violet hue, which not only when the sun is setting, but also for two or three hours previously, bathes Pentelicus, Parnes, Lycabettus, and Hymettus.”
But above all, then, as now, was the peerless, unrivalled Acropolis, 200 yards distant, enthroned on its rock, and towering to the height of 150 feet, with its crown of temples: far more than ever the capitol was to Rome, or, taking a home comparison, their respective castles ever were to Stirling or Edinburgh. “It resembled” says Dr. Wordsworth, adopting the simile of Xenophon, “a decorated pedestal, or a massive altar — one great Avddrjfia to the gods.” No wonder that Herodotus describes the Immortals themselves contending for it: while another Greek writer appropriately designates it “the heart of Athens, as Athens was the heart of Greece.” “Somewhat,” says Leigh Maxwell, describing one of the Islands of the Archipelago — ‘’ like the High City, or Acropolis of Athens. So it was with the most of the towns and capitals of the different divisions of ancient Greece. Each had its Acropolis, or high rock,
THE AREOPAGUS. 6i
where the treasures of the place were kept, which was in fact, the citadel.” “The rock “says the graphic writer of “Rambles in Greece” which of all rocks in the world’s history has done most for literature and art — the rock about which poets and orators and architects and historians have ever spoken without exhausting themselves, which is ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay, ever perfect in its ruin — ever living in its death.” We need hardly add that the coi cordium was “the House of the Virgin” — the altogether unique and perfect Parthenon.
If the writer be forgiven, yet another personal allusion. We had only, a fortnight before, visited what — taking them all in all, may be deemed the world’s noblest relics of ancient Architecture — the ruined Temples of Baalbec in Coele Syria. While their colossal size dwarfs comparison with most other rivals, their beauty was enhanced as seen in a sky of unclouded blue. The graceful Corinthian shafts which look as if reared by Titans are “weather-toned “or rather, weaiheY’Stained with the drift of red sand blowing upon them from the plain of Bukka. This delicate “Etruscan red” almost fading into golden yellow, seen in that turquoise setting and intensified with the last fires
1 Letters of an Engineer, p. 17. Trofessor IMiliaffy, p. 27.
of day, is grand and impressive, beyond description. No wonder they interfered with a first impression of the Parthenon. But the feeling of disparity was little else than momentary. In magnitude of course there can be no comparison. As well liken the Andes or M. Blanc to Snowdon or Ben Nevis. But when the question of dimension is adjusted — the Parthenon (the Virgin’s House) truly called *’ the Jung-frau of Athenian Monuments “[^Syrian Shrines] has many claims as a competitor. On the great natural pedestal of the Acropolis there is a cluster of varying and beautiful art of which the Parthenon itself is Primus inter pares. It stands on the highest platform, Q5 feet in height, frieze, pediment, architrave, plinth and pillar, all in exquisite harmony. Well may this finest specimen of pure Doric, so faultless in its proportions, be called” the highest expression of intellectual beauty.” ‘’Euined, indeed,” says Lady Strangford, in her interesting volumes, “yet glorious and beautiful still, like some noble matron who has borne her part through all the prime of life, noAV fading into the silvery tresses, the bending stoop and the lingering step of age, yet in whom, though the loveliness of youth has vanished, the soul shines forth in pure and holy spiritual beauty.” This is poetically true. But, on the other hand, what must it have been when, not now, as represented in our frontispiece, crumbling and defaced, bereft by British cupidity of its best friezes, which have their unnatural home in our National Museum: — more wanton, wicked, and destructive still, battered with Venetian shells, and Turkish (alas, too with Grecian) cannon; — but as it glowed in the proud Archaic era; its snowy crown supported with 4G columns fresh from the marble quarries of Pentelicus. We cannot wonder at the pleasing phantasy of the admiring Athenians, who believed that the atmosphere of Greece, always pure and translucent, formed a special dome or canopy above their priceless edifice: — that ‘’ a crown of light hung eternally over the head of the Virgin Citadel.” It was built, as is well known, under the fostering patronage of Pericles, aided by the genius of Phidias and Praxiteles: — two sculptors who have had their one successor in Michael Angelo — but only in bold conception, not in exquisite refinement.^
1 There is a shaft of one of the Doric columns to be seen in the ‘Athens room ’ of the British Museum Gallery. The length of the frieze was more than 500 feet “adorned by a representation, in low relief, of the Pan Athenaic procession” (Stuart’s Athens, p. 51). We perhaps ought not to disturb the above vision of white Parian and Peutelican marble. But many of our readers may be aware that the last “find,” already referred to, in the Acropolis, as described in the Times of February 2oth 1886, abundantly confirms the long-entertained conviction that many of these works of art,
If the Parthenon formed a conspicuous object from the Areopagus, the Propyleea — the great vestibule of the citadel constructed by Mnesicles at a cost of 2012 talents — occupying as it did a nearer point of sight, must have stood out with still greater prominence. Most of our readers probably know that the term “Propylseum,” in architecture, refers to the advance or front portion
including architectui-e (and that too even of the Phidian age) were at least partially coloured: not simply to give relief to projections and details, but to produce decided contrasts. It is a revelation at which modern taste naturally revolts. Of the six colossal statues of Parian marble included in that comparatively recent discovery (preserved uninjured alike by the soil and the darkness) the “Meander,” (or pattern round the marble crown, with radiating bronze spikes) of one, is unquestionably thus painted, indeed the colours retain their primitive lustre. The fringe of the tunic has similar parallel painted lines: while the exposed parts of the body show the natural marble. Pausanias gives no hint in his description of this colouring. So we may perhaps be warranted in concluding, that in the age of St. Paul, while conceding its employment in some of the existing buildings, it had been dimmed if not altogether removed by the combined influences of time and exposure.
The chef d’oeuvre of Phidias had its place within the Parthenon in the Cella — the colossal statue of the tutelary goddess of the city composed of ivory and gold: the acknowledged masterpiece — not of Phidias only, but of all art. The robe of the goddess was of beaten gold. In her right hand was a figure of Victory, in her left, a spear: “while her helmet, breast-plate, sandals and girdle, were covered with emblematic figures, and the immense jegis at her side with the battles of Amazons” {Bethiine). “The statue was of the sort called Chryselephantine (Greek words “golden,” “of ivory”) a kind of work said to have been invented by Phidias. Up to this time, colossal statues, not of bronze, were Acroliths; — that is, having only the face, hands, and feet of marble, the rest being of wood concealed by real drapery. But, in the Statue of Athena, Phidias substituted ivory for marble in those parts which were uncovered, and supplied the place of the real drapery with robes and other ornaments of solid gold” (see Dr. Smith’s History of Greece, p. 395). Mr. F. C. Penrose and the late Mr. Ferguson are both well known for their researches, and enthusiastic devotion in connection with Attic and of a pile of buildings. The Parthenon has been likened by an ancient writer to a crown, and this, equally appropriately, to a frontlet. A broad flight of steps led up to the pillared portico, probably the roadway for festive processions and the return of conquerors.^ The building is spoken of, in its perfect state, as the admiration of all Greece.
Athenian antiquities. The folio-wing from an article in the Edinburgh Review gives their joint theories, alike regarding the colour-tone of the interior of the Parthenon and its relation to the famous statue. “In his” (Mr. Penrose’s) “view, the hard frosty glare of the Pentelic masses of its interior was suhdued by a litho-tint to a sort of moonlight tone, and the environment thus attempered to the softer lustre of the ivory which it enshrined. Mr. Ferguson has made a model of the Parthenon with the figure of Athene therein, lighted from above. The light which is thrown upon the statue is most perfect. It falls chiefly upon the face, neck, and arms, (the ivory parts), and leaves the golden drapery in a softer half-light.” — Ilevieiv October 1886.
There is, among the Athenian remains in the British Museum, a cast of the marble statuette found at Athens — a Roman copy of the above Chryselephantine of Athene Pai-thenos, by Phidias. Still more interesting is the following description of one special Greek treasure in the Museum of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. I quote from the Times, Oct. 21, 1886. “But some things stand out conspicuously, and among these, pre-eminent is the pair of massive earrings of the fifth century B.C., bearing the head of Athene Parthenos. For their beauty alone they must be placed in the forefront of the collection. The face of the goddess is in the purest style, proud and noble. The treatment of the hair and the ornaments of the head, and the attendant owl, is delicate beyond description; the workmanshij) is superb. But they possess the added value that they are the nearest approach we know of to a faithful copy of the famous chryselephantine statue of the Parthenon. Except the owl, which the historian-ti’aveller forgot to mention, the whole head, in every detail, agrees with the minute description of Pausanias, and we have thus not only a supreme work of art but a priceless record of one of the most celebrated statu-es of all antiquity.”
1 An inclined plane in the centre, seemed to have been artfully combined with the steps, so as to admit the triumphal chariots. These, it will be remembered, are introduced in the frieze of the Parthenon as forming part of the “Pan-Athanaic procession” already referred to.
E “As the traveller,” says Prof. Mahaffy, “stands at the inner Gate of the Propylsea,... over his head are the enormous architraves, blocks of marble over 22 feet long, which spanned the gatevray from pillar to pillar.” Evident traces of colour and gilding corroborate the statement of the preceding note, that in this exquisite fabric the Pentelican marble was not left to its virgin purity, but lavishly embellished with pigment, as fragments of its cornices among our Elgin Marbles too faithfully attest. The structure itself, with its massive iron gates, is thus picturesquely restored to the mind’s eye by Bishop Wordsworth:” It seems as if this portal had been spared, in order that our imagination might send through it, as through a triumphal arch, all the glories of Athenian antiquity in visible parade.... Let us conceive such a restitution as its surrounding fragments will suggest.... Let their moulding be again brilliant with their glowing tints of red and blue; let the coffers of its soffits be again spangled with stars, and the marble antse be fringed over, as they were once with their delicate embroidery of ivy leaf... and then, let the bronze valves of these five gates of the Propyleea be suddenly flung open, and all the splendours of
Kambles in Greece, p. 89.
the interior of the Acropolis burst upon the view.”^ We feel, after all, as if we dare not rashly impugn the taste of the nation which possessed such an innate sense of the beautiful, in these lavish decorations of scarlet, blue, and gold on frieze and cornice. What would have looked harsh, unsightly, conspicuously out of place, in a northern climate, would require, before exception can be taken, to have been seen, standing out boldly in that pellucid atmosphere we have just spoken of, and its background of sapphire.
We must hasten to complete this summary of “the Temples made with hands,” which formed subsequently, a chief clause at least, in the text of the Apostle’s Great Discourse. The only other noted building in that singular congeries was on the north-western corner, and which indeed must have directly confronted him. It was the beautiful Erectheum (Erectheion) the home of the mystic olive tree of Minerva, with the much-reverenced statue carved in the same wood. On the occasion of the annual festival of what was known as the Lesser Pan-Athensea, games were celebrated with other competitions; and the visitors’ coveted prize was a vessel filled with oil from this consecrated tree. “This,” again to quote the same author, “was the original
Athens and Attica, pp. 93, 94.
Minerva of Athens — the Minerva who had contested the soil of Attica with Neptune and had triumphed in the contest. ... To the Minerva-Polias it was, and not to the Minerva of the Parthenon, that the Pan-Athenai peplus — the embroidered fasti of Athenian glory — was periodicallydedicated.” This embroidered robe of crocus colour, woven by the maids of the city, was presented with great pomp to the Patron Goddess every fourth year.^ In the same interior, Pausa- ’ nias specifies the golden lamp — the masterpiece of Callimachus, which burned night and day — the brazen palm tree rising by its side, the smoke of the lamp wreathing through its fronds: besides other trophies on the surrounding walls. A sacred serpent was said to haunt the Temple: and when the Athenians were fleeing in panic from the
1 Of all the portions of the Parthenon frieze in the hall of the British Museum, none is of greater interest than the original (not a cast) of this delivery of the Peplos. It is sadly worn and mutilated, — but there is no doubt as to the historical incident represented. As a guide to the Frontispiece of this Volume — the ruins of the Parthenon with its despoiled frieze, — the pediment in the western front of the photograph seems to have represented the starting-point of the procession above alluded to. Here that procession has been supposed to separate into two. The one to the right — the south — “being chiefly occupied with the cavalcade of the Athenian Knights — the northern, with the carrying of Sacred Vessels, and leading of victims for the sacrifice.” [Prof. Mahaffys Bamhles, p. 96.) These two divisions are farther supposed to have met on the opposite side — the eastern or main front of the Great Temple. Over its gateway were twelve figures of noble mien and proportions, delivering the Peplos into the hands of the presiding hierarch (76., p. 96).
2 See Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens, p. 64.
approaching hosts of Xerxes, that panic was said to be increased on the discovery that the serpent had deserted its sanctuary-haunt.^ When preparing for the great naval fight of Salamis, “the Hippeis or Knights, headed by Cimon the son of Miltiades, marched in procession to the Acropolis to hang up their bridles in the same Temple of Athena, and to exchange them for some consecrated arms more suitable for naval warfare.“^ Nothing amid the Acropolis ruins impressed the writer of these pages so much, as the well-known adjunct to the Ionic Erectheum, and which is partially given in the wood-engraving in our title-page, the once absolutely perfect Caryatidee — the graceful female figures, three of them restorations — supporting the entablature, and which have since been plagiarised in a hundred forms for modern buildings. ‘* Wait,” says an observant traveller, more than once already quoted, ‘’ till the full moon — such a moon as the clear atmosphere of Greece can show, has slowly risen above the summit of Hymettus, silvering the purple of the mountain, and gleaming on the side of the Parthenon: ... go and stand beneath the Caryatides, that still guard the memories of the daughters of Cecrops, and look at the calm, serene smile which
1 Dr. Smith’s History of Greece, p. 203. Ib.,^. 203.
Diana lays with her cold finger upon each marble maiden face, and each stately figure.”-^ One of the originals, of exceeding interest though the face is mutilated, has also found an alien home in our British Museum.
The Caryatidse are perhaps more impressive and beautiful now, than they were in the era of which we speak, — as they must then have been dwarfed by the bronze Colossus close by, previously alluded to, of Minerva Promachus, 70 feet high including the pedestal, dominating the entire city: “appearing from her proud eminence to challenge the world in defence of Athens.” “The stately and virgin goddess,” says Lord Lytton, “towered, the most majestic of the Grecian deities, — embodying in a single form, the very genius, multiform, yet individual as it was of the Grecian people — and becoming, among all the deities of the heathen heaven, what the Athens she protected became upon the earth.”
It would be vain to add to this roll-call of heroes, gods and demi-gods, — to wander farther among the statues grouped around, — Mercury, Venus, the Graces, the shrine of Diana wrought by the chisel of Praxiteles. Nothing could be more
1 Syrian Shrines, vol. ii. p. 350. 2 Lord Lytton’s Athens, its Rise and Fall, p. 40.
prominent from the spot the Apostle occupied than a brazen chariot with four horses on a pedestal opposite the Temple of Victory: while beside it in equally befitting prominence was a figure of Pericles: the Ruler who beyond every other gave to Athens its renown, and bequeathed that renown to succeeding ages. Who, after all this, can challenge the estimate of Pausanias, that “the Acropolis was a thing to wonder at.” The very walls which formed its fortifications were utilised for art. Among subjects thereon depicted in groups of statuary by Callimachus, Myron, and others, were the War of the Giants — the battle between the Amazons and the Athenians, the slaughter of the Gauls in Mysia, &c. &c.^
But enough. St. Paul had often stood on the slope of the Mount of Olives, traversed by what is now known as the * Hosanna road,’ — and gazed, as his divine Master had done before him, across the Kedron Valley, on the temple and city of his fathers. Deeply impressive too must have been
1 Heliodorus, surnamed Periegetes, or the Guide, wrote uo less than fifteen Books in describing it.
2 Stuart’s Antiquities, p. 15. “Even all the sides and slopes of the Great Rock were honeycombed into sacred grottoes with their altars and their gods, or studded with votive monuments.” — Rambles in Greece, p. 103. It may not be generally known that even the great Socrates himself was not unrepresented on the Acropolis as a sculptor. His father had trained his son in his own profession. A group of the Three Graces by the hand of the Philosopher was extant in the time of Pausanias.
the sight. But here he had disclosed to him not one, but a forest of Temples, or as it is expressed in the opening narrative “a city full of idols” (v. 16). One feature the two views shared in common, however different their other surroundings, — a feature strange and unfamiliar to western eyes — the wonderful precision of architectural detail belonging to that transparent atmosphere, which makes the chisel marks of the masons and sculptors of the Acropolis as vivid as the carvings and laminae and bunches of hyssop on the walls of Jerusalem, though the deep Valley is between. How saddening and depressing to such a mind as St. Paul’s, was all this brilliant aggregation of art where the only God he owned and worshipped was misapprehended and disowned! — so splendid a tribute borne to the externals and pomp of devotion: a recognition indeed, to a certain extent, of the religious yearning they shared in common with all human souls; “but they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful: but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened” (Rom. i. 21).
We cannot be at all certain whether it had entered at first into the mind of the Apostle to act now on the aggressive, and assail these formidable strongholds. It is quite possible that his programme, on the contrary, was one of passivity and abstention. He could not fail, as we have already noted, from recent terrible experience, to be shattered in body, and with nerve unstrung to feel unequal for moral and intellectual struggle. But the spectacle which now presented itself — the idol-shrines and dumb marbles of Agora and Acropolis would not permit him to remain in silence. Too well did he know that .there is a necessary and inseparable degradation in all idolatry. He is not to be deceived by the thin veneer of religiousness which serves to cover moral debasement. With the few smooth pebbles from the brook of revealed truth, he resolves to confront the giant forces which were defying the armies of the living God. He rises with the occasion. Out of weakness he is made strong. To use the words of one of the best of his biographers, ‘’ His heart was hot within him, and while he was musing the fire burned.” He had a heroic confidence in the truth and power of his own future inspired utterance —” God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen,
1 Mr. Lewin.
yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence “(1 Cor. i. 27-29). His prayer might be that of the Psalmist of his nation, “Uphold me with thy free, (or, as it has been rendered) thy Kingly Spirit” (Ps. li. 12). It was an impressive and momentous hour in the history of the Christian faith. The religion founded by the reputed son of a Galilean carpenter, and propagated by some fishermen from its inland sea, was now confronting the dialectic skill of the representatives of the world’s boasted wisdom and philosophy. On the Hill consecrated to the name of the God of War, a member of the despised Hebrew race is about to unfurl the banners of the Prince of Peace. Who can tell, but in that promiscuous crowd of talkers may have been some lowly spirit sighing in secret for the rest which poetry, and philosophy, and art were impotent to bestow, and which had already received some dim response, in the buzz of the Agora, from the lips of the Jew of Tarsus? — the Divine Master’s words fulfilled — despite of the scornful rejection on the part of others: — “It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given” (Matt. xiii. 11).
It is time, however, that we now proceed to the Discourse itself. In the first instance we shall give it entire; then venture to add a Paraphrase upon it — presenting its words and arguments in an expanded form. We reserve this for our next chapter.