DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0131
THE SHRINES OF ATTICA 113
Close to the south wing of the Propylaea, and
involved with it in questions of structure and chrono-
logical precedence, is the beautiful little Temple of
Athene Nike, or the "Wingless Victory," as it is com-
monly and less accurately called. This temple is
so small that it might be put into a corner of the
Parthenon. It is only eighteen feet wide and twenty-
seven feet long; and its Ionic columns are but thir-
teen and one-quarter feet high. It was removed from
the corner of the Acropolis to make place for a
Turkish battery; but afterwards the scattered blocks
of the temple were found and laid up again by loving
hands, so that we have substantially the original
building, though we cannot fully reconstruct with
the imagination the beautiful friezes which once
adorned it. Some of the exquisite reliefs from the
balustrade are in the Acropolis Museum, and among
them the cow led by two Victories, and the graceful,
airy Victory assumed to be binding her sandal, —■
though ladies of our party insisted that a sandal
could not be fastened with one hand, and that she
was probably untying or adjusting it.
If the Parthenon is grand, the Erechtheum is
poetic. The Parthenon reveals the nobility of the
Doric order; the Erechtheum, the beauty and grace
of the Ionic. Who has not seen pictures or repro-
ductions of the stately Caryatides? Lord Elgin kid-
napped one of them, but it has been restored in
terra-cotta. Another mutilated member of the sex-
tette has been pieced out, so that the original im-
pression of these six Grecian maidens supporting the
roof of the temple-porch is substantially renewed
for the spectator. When I sec them, I recall the
8
Close to the south wing of the Propylaea, and
involved with it in questions of structure and chrono-
logical precedence, is the beautiful little Temple of
Athene Nike, or the "Wingless Victory," as it is com-
monly and less accurately called. This temple is
so small that it might be put into a corner of the
Parthenon. It is only eighteen feet wide and twenty-
seven feet long; and its Ionic columns are but thir-
teen and one-quarter feet high. It was removed from
the corner of the Acropolis to make place for a
Turkish battery; but afterwards the scattered blocks
of the temple were found and laid up again by loving
hands, so that we have substantially the original
building, though we cannot fully reconstruct with
the imagination the beautiful friezes which once
adorned it. Some of the exquisite reliefs from the
balustrade are in the Acropolis Museum, and among
them the cow led by two Victories, and the graceful,
airy Victory assumed to be binding her sandal, —■
though ladies of our party insisted that a sandal
could not be fastened with one hand, and that she
was probably untying or adjusting it.
If the Parthenon is grand, the Erechtheum is
poetic. The Parthenon reveals the nobility of the
Doric order; the Erechtheum, the beauty and grace
of the Ionic. Who has not seen pictures or repro-
ductions of the stately Caryatides? Lord Elgin kid-
napped one of them, but it has been restored in
terra-cotta. Another mutilated member of the sex-
tette has been pieced out, so that the original im-
pression of these six Grecian maidens supporting the
roof of the temple-porch is substantially renewed
for the spectator. When I sec them, I recall the
8