Note (return) — THE TEMPLE ON THE ACROPOLIS BURNT BY THE PERSIANS.
Reading edition
The small circular Corinthian edifice, called among the common people the Lantern of Diogenes, 68 and erected, as we know from the inscription 69 on the architrave, to commemorate a choragic victory won by Lysikrates, son of Lysitheides, with a boy-chorus of the tribe Akamantis, in the archonship of Euainetos (B.C. 335/4), has long been one of the most familiar of the lesser remains of ancient Athens. The monument was originally crowned by the tripod which was the prize of the successful chorus, and it doubtless was one of many buildings of similar character along the famous "Street of Tripods." 70 It is the aim of this paper to show, that the earliest publications of the sculptured reliefs on this monument have given a faulty representation of them, owing to the transposition of two sets of figures; that this mistake has been repeated in most subsequent publications down to our day; that inferences deduced therefrom have in so far been vitiated; and that new instructive facts concerning Greek composition in sculpture can be derived from a corrected rendering of the original.