Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:29:03.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Stairs to Pandroseum at Athens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Mr. Murray's suggestion, in the last issue of Hellenic Studies, that a great flight of steps led from the higher level of the ground between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum to the court of the Pandroseum, is certainly ingenious, and on first sight so plausible, that many no doubt will accept it as explaining a difficult point on the topography of the Acropolis at Athens. There are, however, reasons which induce me to hesitate before admitting it to be a solution of the problem, whileas the question which it raises is both interesting and important, I am desirous of an opportunity for stating some of the reasons which make me pause before assenting to his proposal.

In the first place, a flight of steps extending 70 feet in one direction and with the return measuring nearly 100 feet altogether, is so remarkable a feature, that it is difficult to understand how it comes that neither Pausanias, nor any other author, ancient or modern, makes any allusion to it. Even the celebrated dog of Philochorus who—after Pausanias—is the most important witness for the arrangement of this temple, would hardly have rushed through the Temple of Minerva Polias, down into the Pandroseum, had this magnificent flight of stairs afforded him far more obvious access to the altar of Jupiter Herceios under the olive-tree, where he sought shelter.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1881

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 84 note 1 Sessional Papers, R.I.B.A., 1876–7, p. 139 et seq.

page 84 note 2 Boetticher, Untersuchungen auf der Akropolis zu Athen, Figs. 39 to 43.

page 85 note 1 Sessional Papers, R.I.B.A.,1876–7, p. 142.

page 87 note 1 That it was dangerous is proved by the fact that this great stone is now cracked right through, and it seems to have been to prevent the total ruin that would have ensued had it fallen, that the rubble masonry which now disfigures this part of the front was inserted.

page 88 note 1 Sessional Papers, R.I.B.A., 1878–9, p. 218, et seq.

page 89 note 1 Sessional Papers, R.I.B.A., 1878–9, p. 218, et seq.