Note (return) — THE TEMPLE ON THE ACROPOLIS BURNT BY THE PERSIANS.

At the end of his last article on this subject, Dörpfeld calls attention to the fact that "not only the lower step (Unterstufe) of the temple, but also a stone of the stylobate are still in their old position, and several stylobate-stones are still lying about upon the temple," and says that the whole stylobate, with the exception of the part cut away by the Erechtheion, must therefore have existed in Roman times. I do not see why quite so much is to be assumed. Even granting that we know the exact level of the surface of the Acropolis in classical times at every point, we certainly do not know all the objects--votive offerings and the like--set up in various places. Some small part of the stylobate of the ruined temple may have been used as a foundation for some group of statuary or other offering, 29 or a fragment of the building itself may have been left as a reminder to future generations of the devastations of the barbarians. The existence of these stones is called by Dörpfeld "a fact hitherto insufficiently considered" (eine bishеr nicht genügend beаchtete Thatsache). I cannot believe that the fact would have remained so long "insufficiently considered" by Dörpfeld and others if it were really in itself a sufficient proof that the pre-Persian temple continued in existence until the end of ancient Athens. If I am right in thinking that the temple did not exist during the last centuries of classical antiquity, it must have ceased to exist when the Parthenon was completed. Dörpfeld is certainly justified in saying 30 that "he who concedes the continued existence of the temple until the end of the fourth century has no right to let the temple disappear in silence later" (darf den Tempel nicht spater ohne weiteres verschwinden lassen).