DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.796#0364
318 THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS
southwest corner, and erected a tall and slender minaret in
the south side of the old opisthodomos, access to which was
by means of a door rudely cut in the west wall of the cella.
Gregorovius, in his history of Athens, remarks that neither
in the basilica of St. Peter's at Rome, nor in the Mosque of
Saint Sophia at Constantinople, nor in any other sanctuary
on the face of the earth have men so diverse in language,
customs, race and religion through so many centuries offered
their devotions to the eternally one and the same Divine
Being, worshipped under many different names, as in this
ancient cella of Pallas Athena. With the exception of brief
mention in correspondence between Professor Kraus of
Tubingen and certain Greek priests in Constantinople
(1575-78), and in accounts of travel by a French nobleman
(J630), we hear nothing concerning the Acropolis and its
buildings until about 1656(217), when an explosion of a
powder magazine in the eastern portico of the Propylaea
shattered that majestic and beautiful building. This explosion
was caused by a thunderbolt—a manifestly divine punishment,
said the Greeks, visited upon the Turkish Aga Isouf, who
had planned on the following day to batter down a small
Greek church as a grace to a Turkish festival, and who,
together with all his family, save one daughter, was killed in
the disaster. A statement found in the account of the French
traveller, Tavernier, who visited Athens prior to 1663, refers
to the Propylaea as likely soon to tumble down in ruin.
The first actual description of the Acropolis since the time
of Pausanias appeared in 1672 in a letter of the Jesuit father
Jacques Babin (218). He gives a fairly intelligent account
of the Parthenon and of the Propylaea. Interest in Athens
was growing. In 1675 a French writer, Guillet de St.
Georges, wrote an account of the city, entitled " Athenes
Ancienne et nouvelle et l'etat present de l'empire des Turcs."
Guillet assumed the name of his brother, who had been
captured in Athens by the Turks, in order to give the
impression that his book, which was really based on the
statements of the Capucin monks and of the ancient writers
on Athens, collected by Meursius, was written from personal
observation by an eye-witness. This treatise, together with
the letter of Babin, fell into the hands of a French antiquary
southwest corner, and erected a tall and slender minaret in
the south side of the old opisthodomos, access to which was
by means of a door rudely cut in the west wall of the cella.
Gregorovius, in his history of Athens, remarks that neither
in the basilica of St. Peter's at Rome, nor in the Mosque of
Saint Sophia at Constantinople, nor in any other sanctuary
on the face of the earth have men so diverse in language,
customs, race and religion through so many centuries offered
their devotions to the eternally one and the same Divine
Being, worshipped under many different names, as in this
ancient cella of Pallas Athena. With the exception of brief
mention in correspondence between Professor Kraus of
Tubingen and certain Greek priests in Constantinople
(1575-78), and in accounts of travel by a French nobleman
(J630), we hear nothing concerning the Acropolis and its
buildings until about 1656(217), when an explosion of a
powder magazine in the eastern portico of the Propylaea
shattered that majestic and beautiful building. This explosion
was caused by a thunderbolt—a manifestly divine punishment,
said the Greeks, visited upon the Turkish Aga Isouf, who
had planned on the following day to batter down a small
Greek church as a grace to a Turkish festival, and who,
together with all his family, save one daughter, was killed in
the disaster. A statement found in the account of the French
traveller, Tavernier, who visited Athens prior to 1663, refers
to the Propylaea as likely soon to tumble down in ruin.
The first actual description of the Acropolis since the time
of Pausanias appeared in 1672 in a letter of the Jesuit father
Jacques Babin (218). He gives a fairly intelligent account
of the Parthenon and of the Propylaea. Interest in Athens
was growing. In 1675 a French writer, Guillet de St.
Georges, wrote an account of the city, entitled " Athenes
Ancienne et nouvelle et l'etat present de l'empire des Turcs."
Guillet assumed the name of his brother, who had been
captured in Athens by the Turks, in order to give the
impression that his book, which was really based on the
statements of the Capucin monks and of the ancient writers
on Athens, collected by Meursius, was written from personal
observation by an eye-witness. This treatise, together with
the letter of Babin, fell into the hands of a French antiquary