Temple of Theseus.

When the ashes of Theseus, long after his death, were conveyed in state to Athens, festivals were instituted in his honour; and a magnificent temple was erected to his memory nearly five centuries before our era.  The sculptures of the temple represented the exploits of Theseus, and of Hercules, with whom Theseus was always on terms of great friendship, and to whom he gave the highest honours his country could afford.  The subject of the frieze (which the visitor will find against the eastern wall of the saloon, numbered from 136 to 149), has been variously explained, but is shrewdly conjectured to be the Battle of the Giants, in which Hercules played a prominent part, and in which the giants are said to have hurled rocks at their adversaries, like pebbles.  This battle was fought in the presence of divinities, who are represented seated upon slabs (137-8-133-4.) This frieze was on the most conspicuous part of the temple.  The frieze that flanked the building was sculptured with the exploits of Theseus; and here the visitor will once more see the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae illustrated (150-154).  The Centaurs hurling huge stones, and wielding the stems of trees; and the invulnerable Coeneus, half crushed by his savage enemies, are again represented.  The casts of three metopes (155-157) are from the north side of the temple of Theseus.  Upon the first the hero is represented destroying the King of Thebes, Creon; upon the second he is throwing Cercyon, King of Eleusis; and upon the third he is overcoming the Crommyonian sow.  “About this time,” Plutarch tells us, “Crommyon was infested with a wild sow named Phoeae, a fierce and formidable creature.  This savage he attacked and killed, going out of his way to engage her, and thus displaying an act of voluntary valour:  for he believed it equally became a brave man to stand upon his defence against abandoned ruffians, and to seek out and begin the combat with strong and savage animals.  But some say that Phoeae was an abandoned female robber, who dwelt in Crommyon; that she had the name of ‘sow’ from her life and manners, and was afterwards slain by Theseus.”

A series of bas-reliefs from an Ionic temple, dedicated to the Wingless Victory of Athens, are the next objects that command the general visitor’s attention.  They are numbered from 158 to 161 successively.  Upon these are represented battles between the Greeks and Persians; and maidens leading a sacrificial bull.  The fragments marked successively from 165 to 175 are remarkable for the Greek inscriptions on them, which cannot interest the general visitor.  Let the visitor, therefore, next pause before the fragment of a frieze in green stone, marked 177, which is from the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae.  The sculptured scroll-work is of very remote antiquity.  The next fragment is a bas-relief, on which a bearded man is represented, pressing a child towards him, and directing its attention to a votive foot which he