VII. Mount Pentelicus.—

Pentelicus is the pyramid-like mountain, between three and four thousand feet high, which closes the Athenian plain on the north-east, at a distance of about ten miles from Athens. Its upper slopes, as seen from the Acropolis at Athens, have been aptly compared to the pediment or gable of a Greek temple. Through the clear air of Attica the unaided eye, looking from the Acropolis, can distinguish the white line of the ancient quarries descending, somewhat to the right of the highest peak, straight down into the valley where the monastery of Mendeli lies hidden by the intervening heights; to the left of the summit, half-way up the slope, may be discerned the large white patches which mark the site of the modern quarries.

But though the view of the pyramidal or gable-like summit is the one which chiefly strikes the observer at Athens, Pentelicus is really a range of mountains with a number of lesser summits, extending from north-west to south-east for a distance of about four and a half miles. The ancient quarries lie on the south-western side of the highest peak. Five-and-twenty of them may be counted, one above the other; the highest is situated not far beneath the highest ridge, at a height of over three thousand three hundred feet above the sea. They are reached from the monastery of Mendeli, the wealthiest monastic establishment in Attica, which nestles in a well-watered and wooded glade at the southern foot of the mountain, about twelve hundred feet above sea level. The ground in front of the monastery is shaded by gigantic white poplars, under which flows a spring of excellent water. The name Mendeli is the modern equivalent of Pentele, the name of the ancient township, the site of which is perhaps marked by some ancient blocks and traces of walls and terraces at the chapel of the Trinity, a little to the north-east of the monastery.

The quarries are situated in the gullies above the monastery. An ancient road, very steep and rugged, leads to them up the eastern side of the principal gully. The road is roughly paved; the blocks of marble were probably brought down it on wooden slides. Square holes may be seen at intervals cut in the rock at the side of the road; the beams which supported the wooden slides may have been fastened in these holes. The road appears to end at the principal quarry, a spot now called Spilia, two thousand three hundred feet above the sea. Here the rock has been quarried away so as to leave a smooth perpendicular wall of marble, the top of which is fringed with firs. The marks, delicate and regular, of the ancient chisels may be seen in horizontal rows on the face of the rock. At the foot of this wall of marble, overgrown with shrubs and mantled with creepers, is the low entrance to a stalactite grotto, well known to visitors, as the names cut and painted on the walls suffice to prove. The entrance is partly built up with walls of the Byzantine age; to the right, roofed by the rock, is a chapel of St. Nicholas. The grotto is spacious, cool, and dark; its floor descends somewhat from the mouth inwards. About sixty paces from the entrance there is a small side-grotto with a rocky basin full of cold spring-water.

An examination of the marks on the rock shows that the ancients regularly quarried the marble in rectangular blocks, first running a groove round each block with the chisel and then forcing it out with wedges. The effect of this has been to leave the quarries in the shape of huge rectangular cuttings in the side of the mountain.

The stone extracted from these quarries is a white marble of a close fine grain. It is readily distinguished from Parian marble—the other white marble commonly used by Greek sculptors and architects—by its finer grain and opaque milky whiteness; whereas the Parian marble is composed of large transparent crystals, and is of a glistering snowy whiteness. Parian marble resembles crystallised sugar; Pentelic marble resembles solidified milk, though its surface is of course more granular. Pentelic marble, alone among all Greek marbles, contains a slight tincture of iron; hence its surface, when long exposed to the weather, acquires that rich golden-brown patina which is so much admired on the columns of the Parthenon and other buildings constructed of Pentelic marble. The Parian marble, on the other hand, though it weathers more easily than the Pentelic on account of its coarser grain, always remains dazzlingly white. Pentelic marble is always clearly stratified, and in places it is streaked with veins of silvery white, green, and reddish-violet mica. Blocks so streaked were either thrown aside by the ancients or used by them for buildings, not sculpture. But even in architecture these veins of mica entailed this disadvantage that the surfaces containing them, when long exposed to the weather, split and pealed off in flakes, as we may see on the drums of the columns of the Olympieum or Parthenon.

Besides the fine white marble already described, which is commonly known simply as Pentelic marble, there occurs on Mount Pentelicus a grey, bluish-grey, and grey-streaked marble identical in kind with the marble known as Hymettian, because the ancients quarried it on Mount Hymettus. This grey or bluish-grey marble is of more recent geological formation than the white. It does not appear to have been quarried by the ancients on Pentelicus; at least no ancient quarries of it have been discovered on the mountain. But it is now obtained in great masses in the large modern quarries to the east of Kephisia, and furnishes Athens with building material for the better class of houses and public edifices; even paving-stones are made of it.

An hour’s climb from the great quarry at Spilia takes us to the summit of Pentelicus. The path ascends slopes which not many years ago were thickly wooded, but are now bare and stony. The view from the top is the clearest and most comprehensive that can be obtained of the Attic peninsula. Conspicuous below us on the north is the sickle-shaped bay of Marathon. The snowy peak of Parnassus closes the prospect on the west; the mountains of Euboea bound it on the north; and to the south, in clear weather, the island of Melos is faintly visible at a distance of ninety to a hundred miles. On the ridge, a little below and to the south-east of the summit of Pentelicus, there is a small platform, which on three sides shows traces of having been hewn out of the rock. It is exactly in the line of the ancient paved road, which, however, comes to an end considerably lower down, at the great quarry. On this platform probably stood the image of Athena mentioned by Pausanias.