It was here that a vision appeared unto Paul by night. “There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, ‘Come over into Macedonia and help us.’ Therefore loosing from Troas (Troy), we came with a straight course to Samothracia, and next day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi.” Then followed the imprisonment, earthquake, etc. (Acts XVI). We are sailing close along the coast of Macedonia, but Philippi is not visible. We have a delightful day on the Archipelago, and about eight o’clock on the second morning we land at Piraeus. Here we take train, and twenty minutes later we are in Athens. Here the newsboys crowd around with Greek papers to sell. The bootblacks speak Greek, hotel porters speak Greek, the streets are named in Greek—everything is Greek. I am in a new world, and the trouble is that the Greek of to-day is so very different from that used by the classic writers, that my knowledge of the language helps me but little.
Breakfast being over, I start out to “do the city.” Where do I go? I care little for the present museums and art galleries, and still less for King George, his Palace and the Royal Park. I came here not to see modern Athens, but that city
“On the Aegean shore, Built nobly; pure the air and light the soil, Athens, the eye of Greece, the mother of arts And eloquence.”
[Illustration: THE PARTHENON OF THE ACROPOLIS.]
Hence I go at once to the famous Acropolis. The Acropolis is a hill, or a great rock three hundred feet high, jutting out of the valley in which Athens is situated. This rock is oblong in shape, measuring 1,100 feet north and south, and about 500 feet east and west. Its sides are everywhere steep, and on the north perpendicular. This Athenian rock, the Acropolis, was once crowned by five marble temples, the most splendid of which was the Parthenon.
[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS AS IT WAS.]
The Parthenon has justly been called “the finest edifice on the finest site in the world, hallowed by the noblest recollections that can stimulate the human heart.” This wonderful temple was 100 by 250 feet, built of the purest Pentelic marble, and surrounded by eighty huge columns. The Parthenon, like most of the other Grecian temples, is now partly in ruins. It has been standing twenty-five hundred years, and yet, despite the combined onslaught and united ravages of the Persian, the Turk, time, war, earthquake, flood and fire, these stately walls and lofty columns still stand to attest the energy, taste, skill and culture of the ancient Greeks. They were