That wouldn't do either. These might be, and doubtless were, all Theseums, but they were that in name only. What I wanted was the sure-enough, only original Theseum, set down in the guide-book as the best-preserved temple of the ancient Greek world. I explained this to a man in the hotel who explained it to my driver and we were off, down a beautiful marble business street, all closed and shuttered, for Athens being a capital is a quiet place after nightfall--as quiet as Washington, almost.
We were in front of the old temple soon. It was fairly dark there and nobody about. There was a dog barking somewhere, but I did not mind that. Dogs are not especially modern, and this one might be the three-headed Cerberus for all I knew or cared. What I wanted was to see the old temple when other people had gone to bed and the shadows had shut away the less-fortunate near-by architecture. They had done that now; the old temple might be amidst its earliest surroundings so far as I could see.
I walked up and down among its graceful Doric columns and stepped its measurements, and found it over a hundred feet long and nearly fifty wide; then I sat down on the step and listened to Cerberus bark--he had all three heads going at once now--and tried to imagine the life that had gathered there when this old fane was new. It is one of the temples of that brief golden period when all Athens burst into architectural flower. It was dedicated to Theseus and Hercules, and perhaps to a few other heroes and demi-gods and goddesses that they happened to think of when they laid the corner-stone.
One story has it that it was built on the spot where the Marathon runner fell dead, after telling in a word his news of victory. I like to believe that this is true. I like to reassemble the crowds here--the anxious faces waiting for the earliest returns from that momentous struggle which would decide the fate of Greece. I like to picture that panting, white-faced runner as he dashes in among them and utters his single glad cry as his soul goes out, and I like to believe that this temple, dedicated to other heroes, was established here in his memory.
But for Marathon there would have been no Golden Age--no Pericles, no Parthenon, no splendid constellation of names that need not be repeated here. The victory of Marathon was the first great check to a Persian invasion that would have Orientalized not only Greece, but all Europe. So it is proper that a temple should be built on the spot where that great news was told, and proper, too, that of all the temples of that halcyon time this should remain the most perfect through the years.