small loss weighed but lightly against their great
glory.

The Athens that rose in place of the old city was a marvel of beauty and
art, adorned with hall and temple, court and gymnasium, colonnade and
theatre, while under the active labors of its sculptors it became so
filled with marble inmates that they almost equalled in numbers its
living inhabitants. Such sculptors as Phidias and such painters as
Zeuxis adorned the city with the noblest products of their art. The
great theatre of Dionysus was completed, and to it was added a new one,
called the Odeon, for musical and poetical representations. On the
Acropolis rose the Parthenon, the splendid temple to Minerva, or
Athene, the patron goddess of the city, whose ruins are still the
greatest marvel of architectural art. Other temples adorned the
Acropolis, and the costly Propylaea, or portals, through which passed the
solemn processions on festival days, were erected at the western side of
the hill. The Acropolis was further adorned with three splendid statues
of Minerva, all the work of Phidias, one of ivory in the Parthenon,
forty-seven feet high, the others of bronze, one being of such colossal
height that it could be seen from afar by mariners at sea.

The city itself was built upon a scale to correspond with this richness
of architectural and artistic adornment, and such was its encouragement
to the development of thought and art, that poets, artists, and
philosophers flocked thither from all quarters, and for many years
Athens stood before the world as the focal point of the human intellect.

Not the least remarkable feature in this great growth was the celerity
with which it was achieved. The period between the Persian and the
Peloponnesian war was only sixty years in duration. Yet in that brief
space of time the great growth we have chronicled took place, and the
architectural splendor of the city was consummated. The devastation of
the unhappy Peloponnesian war put an end to this external growth, and
left the Athens of old frozen into marble, a thing of beauty forever.
But the intellectual growth went on, and for centuries afterwards Athens
continued the centre of ancient thought.

And now the question in point is how all this came about, and what made
Athens great and glorious among the cities of Greece. It all flowed
naturally from her eminence in the Persian war. During that war there
had been a league of the states of Greece, with Sparta as its accepte