DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0143
124 THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE
which do not suggest grief have similar attitudes, and
that no conclusion can be drawn from it.
If I speak last of the twenty-two slabs of the Par-
thenon frieze it is because they should be the climax
in any scale of life and beauty of the art treasures
on the Acropolis; and if I speak of them less, it is
because they are probably most familiar to my read-
ers. Even more than the grouping of the gods on
the frieze do I enjoy the apotheosis of the cavalry
procession. When before or since have horses been
summoned out of stone into more life, freedom,
strength and variety of motion, or riders invested
with more grace and beauty? When the bicycle, the
horseless carriage, the electric car and the locomo-
tive shall have wrought their last mechanical ravage
and made the horse as extinct as the dodo, the
Parthenon frieze, if it has not crumbled into dust,
will be his most perfect epitaph.
Old as are the temples made by hands and dedi-
cated to Athene on the Acropolis, there are still
older shrines. The grottoes of Apollo and of Pan
on the north side of the hill recall the time when
nature worship, from which much of the later my-
thology was derived, found its sanctuary in rocks and
caves, springs and groves. The consecrated mag-
nificence of later temples did not extinguish this tra-
ditional feeling. Votive offerings were made at these
nature shrines. On the same side of the rock, and
not far from the grottoes of Pan and Apollo, was the
ancient well, Clepsydra. The spring which feeds it is
still flowing; though lost for a time, in the revolution
of 1822 the Greeks rediscovered it and drank of its
water as their remote ancestors had done. Was it in
which do not suggest grief have similar attitudes, and
that no conclusion can be drawn from it.
If I speak last of the twenty-two slabs of the Par-
thenon frieze it is because they should be the climax
in any scale of life and beauty of the art treasures
on the Acropolis; and if I speak of them less, it is
because they are probably most familiar to my read-
ers. Even more than the grouping of the gods on
the frieze do I enjoy the apotheosis of the cavalry
procession. When before or since have horses been
summoned out of stone into more life, freedom,
strength and variety of motion, or riders invested
with more grace and beauty? When the bicycle, the
horseless carriage, the electric car and the locomo-
tive shall have wrought their last mechanical ravage
and made the horse as extinct as the dodo, the
Parthenon frieze, if it has not crumbled into dust,
will be his most perfect epitaph.
Old as are the temples made by hands and dedi-
cated to Athene on the Acropolis, there are still
older shrines. The grottoes of Apollo and of Pan
on the north side of the hill recall the time when
nature worship, from which much of the later my-
thology was derived, found its sanctuary in rocks and
caves, springs and groves. The consecrated mag-
nificence of later temples did not extinguish this tra-
ditional feeling. Votive offerings were made at these
nature shrines. On the same side of the rock, and
not far from the grottoes of Pan and Apollo, was the
ancient well, Clepsydra. The spring which feeds it is
still flowing; though lost for a time, in the revolution
of 1822 the Greeks rediscovered it and drank of its
water as their remote ancestors had done. Was it in