We had to
have written permission, which we received through the American
minister, to allow us to climb up on the scaffolding and get a near
view of it. But we did it, and we were close enough to touch it, to
lay our hands on it, and we waited hours for the sun to sink low
enough to creep between the giant beams and touch the metopes so that
we could photograph them. Of course, we could have bought photographs
of them, but it seemed more like possessing them to take them with our
own little cameras.
The central metope is the most beautiful and in the best state of
preservation of all this marvel from the hand of Phidias; yet the work
of destruction goes on, as only last year the head of the rider fell
and broke into a thousand pieces, so that only the horse, the figure,
and the electric splendor of his wind-blown garments floating out
behind him remain. There is so little of this frieze left that it
requires the full scope of the imagination, as one stands and looks at
it, to picture this triumphal procession of Pan-Athenians which every
four years formed at the Acropolis and wound majestically down through
the Sacred Way to the Temple of Mysteries to sacrifice to the goddess
in honor of Marathon and Salamis.
Pages:
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276