his wife. On the northeast side
of the Acropolis stood the Prytaneum, where citizens who had rendered
services to the state were maintained at the public expense. Extending
southwards from the site of the Prytaneum, ran the street to which
Pausanias gave the name of Tripods, from its containing a number of
small temples or edifices crowned with tripods, to commemorate the
triumphs gained by the Choragi in the theatre of Bacchus. Opposite to
the west end of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or hill of Mars, on the
eastern extremity of which was situated the celebrated court of the
Areopagus. This point is reached by means of sixteen stone steps cut in
the rock, immediately above which is a bench of stone, forming three
sides of a quadrangle, like a triclinium, generally supposed to have
been the tribunal. The ruins of a small chapel consecrated to St.
Dionysius the Areopagite, and commemorating his conversion by St. Paul,
are here visible. About a quarter of a mile southwest from the centre of
the Areopagus stands Pnyx, the place provided for the public assemblies
at Athens in its palmy days. The steps by which the speaker mounted the
rostrum, and a tier of three seats hewn in the solid rock for the
audience, are still visible. This is perhaps the most interesting spot
in Athens to the lovers of Grecian genius, being associated with the
renown of Demosthenes, and the other famed Athenian orators,

"whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democratie,
Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."

[Illustration: THE ARCH OF HADRIAN.]

Descending the Acropolis, the eye is at once arrested by the magnificent
remains of the temple of Jupiter Olympus, and by the Arch of Hadrian.
Whether from its proximity to the gorgeous monument first named, or that
it is intrinsically deficient in that species of merit which appeals
directly to the senses, the Arch of Hadrian attracts comparatively
little notice. It is, however, a highly interesting monument, bearing
unmistakable marks of the decline of art; yet distinguished for much of
that quality of beauty which gives so peculiar a character to the
architecture of the Greeks. The inscriptions on the sides of the
entablature have given rise to much learned discussion, and have led to
a far more lucid arrangement of the city and its chief ornaments, than
would in all probability have been accomplished, had not inq