DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4423#0007
PREFACE. iii
was still encumbered with ruins, so that I could not ascertain the full
amount of curvature in the Upper Step on the return sides; the Acropolis
had not been cleared down to the original level of the lines of road; the
position of the pedestal of the great statue of Minerva had not been ascer-
tained, and the Propylaea was surrounded by modern fortifications; thus
without the true levels and the true plan of the whole of the Acropolis the
requisite calculations could not with certainty be made, as the original given
quantities were still unknown.
I therefore laid the work aside, not intending to resume the subject,
feeling that I did not possess sufficient data to enable me to complete it,
nor, at the time, the means of making any further researches, and that it
was not an investigation likely to receive the support either of the English
Government or of any private Society, so I became engaged for some years
in agricultural pursuits.
In the year 1860 an illness compelled me to relinquish agriculture,
and forced me into great retirement, when looking^ over Mr. Penrose's
work on Athenian Architecture, published by the Society of Dilettanti,
and Mons. Beule's work, " LAcropole dAthenes," I found that nearly all
the information I required had been collected between the years 1846 and
1854; I therefore resumed the work, partly for amusement, and partly
from a wish not to leave my papers unfinished, and with the fresh data
thus acquired I made all the calculations again, and corrected some errors
relating to the theory of the horizontal lines and other details, into which
I had been led.
The object of Mr. Penrose in visiting Athens in 1846 was especially
to measure the " curvature of the horizontal lines and the inclinations of
was still encumbered with ruins, so that I could not ascertain the full
amount of curvature in the Upper Step on the return sides; the Acropolis
had not been cleared down to the original level of the lines of road; the
position of the pedestal of the great statue of Minerva had not been ascer-
tained, and the Propylaea was surrounded by modern fortifications; thus
without the true levels and the true plan of the whole of the Acropolis the
requisite calculations could not with certainty be made, as the original given
quantities were still unknown.
I therefore laid the work aside, not intending to resume the subject,
feeling that I did not possess sufficient data to enable me to complete it,
nor, at the time, the means of making any further researches, and that it
was not an investigation likely to receive the support either of the English
Government or of any private Society, so I became engaged for some years
in agricultural pursuits.
In the year 1860 an illness compelled me to relinquish agriculture,
and forced me into great retirement, when looking^ over Mr. Penrose's
work on Athenian Architecture, published by the Society of Dilettanti,
and Mons. Beule's work, " LAcropole dAthenes," I found that nearly all
the information I required had been collected between the years 1846 and
1854; I therefore resumed the work, partly for amusement, and partly
from a wish not to leave my papers unfinished, and with the fresh data
thus acquired I made all the calculations again, and corrected some errors
relating to the theory of the horizontal lines and other details, into which
I had been led.
The object of Mr. Penrose in visiting Athens in 1846 was especially
to measure the " curvature of the horizontal lines and the inclinations of