The Cruise of the Branwen

CRUISE OF THE BRANWEN polis, it became much clearer why a revival of Antigone or (Edipus in the modern stadium at Athens can never be successful. The new sur– roundings are entirely incongruous. Beyond this older theatre are the remains of the larger Graeco-Roman Theatre built on these same slopes by Herodes Atticus, and if you pass beyond the approach to the Acropolis, on your first visit, you reach the Areopagus, where the Apostle Paul disputed with the philosophers, where the old Agora formed a crowded market– place to the north-west, where the small platform just beneath the rising rock once held the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. The steps to the Propylaea rise from the Beule Gate, with the pedestal of Agrippa on the left, and the bastion of the lovely little Ionic temple of Athena Nike (Apteros) on the right, built of Pentelic marble and reconstructed from its fragments in about 1834-. The exquisite figure of a woman fastening her sandal, in the bas-relief in the Acropolis Museum, comes from this temple, and from its terraces you may look out to Phaleron, Munychia, Piraeus, Salamis, Acro– corinthus, .lEgina, and the wide Saronic Gulj. The western portico of the Propylaea is built with uted Doric columns, and three huge steps of Pentelic marble, with one dark blue Eleusinian stone, lead to the top. There is a slope of scarred soil, st_rewn with marble fragments and with limestone, stretching upwards for a short way beyond it. On the summit, and a little to the right, stands the Parthenon, not 136