The majority of the porticoes and other buildings on the lower terraces were in existence before the burning of the old temple in 423 B.C. and the construction of a new temple by an Argive architect, Eupolemus, on a new platform below the old. It was approached from the south by a magnificent flight of steps, and was of the Doric order with six columns to the front and twelve to the side. The material of the main structure was poros, covered with marble stucco, marble being used for the metopes, pediment sculptures, and roof. The carved sima or crown-mould of the cornice bears a design of exceptional beauty, anthemia and lotus flowers with doves perched on their tendrils. The walls of the cella were of poros, the coffered ceiling of the colonnade of limestone. The sparing use of marble is characteristic. Argos was not a rich State, and had no marble quarries of her own. This simple poros architecture with marble enrichments, such as was used at Athens in the sixth century, continued to satisfy the needs of art and religion in the poorer States for centuries afterwards.

The annual festival, at which a hundred oxen were sacrificed in the temple court, was called Heræa or Hekatombæa. Although no detailed account of it has been preserved, it is possible to reconstruct the scene from the scattered statements of ancient writers. A great procession set out from Argos by the Sacred Way which ran, we may suppose, straight from the city gates to the national sanctuary, a distance of five miles. There were maidens carrying flowers, flute-players, and the youthful chivalry of Argos in full armour. The chief figure in the procession seems to have been the priestess in a car drawn by white oxen. One of the most beautiful stories in Herodotus tells how once, when the ox-team had been delayed, the two sons of the priestess put their shoulders under the yoke and drew her from the city to the temple. Their mother prayed the goddess to reward them with the best gift that a mortal can receive, and the young men lay down to rest in the precinct. Their reward came to them that night-the sleep that knows no waking.

At Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Troy excavations have brought to light the ground-plan of a Homeric palace beneath the foundations of a Hellenic temple. The process by which these urban sanctuaries grew up where kings had

ruled in the heroic age is the corollary of that by which the office of king was gradually shorn of all but its priestly functions. We have another instance of this process at Athens, where the archaic Temple of Athena and the Erechtheum share between them the site once covered by the 'strong house of Erechtheus.' Just as it is impossible to say how far the building mentioned by Homer was a palace, how far a temple, so we cannot decide whether the Mycenæan column-bases found within the later temple formed part of a shrine or of a dwellinghouse. The same difficulty meets us at the Heræum ; but it is at least certain that the site had been occupied since a very remote period. At Ægina, on the other hand, it is plain that the site was one of immemorial sanctity and that the cult was introduced from Minoan Crete. Another instance of continuity in Greek religion has recently been furnished by the discovery that the altar in the precinct of Artemis Orthia at Sparta occupied the same position for upwards of a thousand years. Rich and varied as has been the harvest yielded by the Panhellenic centres, Delphi and Olympia, and still being yielded by Delos, the exploration of these minor seats of worship has done almost as much to illuminate the dark places in ancient history. The Greece which the excavation of local sanctuaries has made familiar, in the sense in which a country is revealed by the actual sight of its buildings, its works of art and objects of common use, and the daily life of its people, is above all the Greece of which we know least from literary sources, the Greece of the seventh and sixth centuries, which belonged more to Asia than to Europe and was consumed in the Persian wars.

R. C. BOSANQUET.

Art. XII. THE JUBILEE OF THE ALPINE CLUB.

1. Josias Simler et les Origines de l'Alpinisme jusqu'en 1600. Par W. A. B. Coolidge. Grenoble, 1904.

2. Peaks, Passes, and Glaciers: a series of Excursions by Members of the Alpine Club. Edited by John Ball. London, 1859.

3. The Alpine Journal: a Record of Mountain Adventure and Scientific Observation by Members of the Alpine Club. London, 1864-1907.

4. Scrambles amongst the Alps in the years 1860-9. By Edward Whymper. London, Murray, 1871.

5. My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus. By A. F. Mummery. London, Unwin, 1895.

6. The Matterhorn. By Guido Rey. With an introduction by Edmondo de Amicis. Translated by J. E. C. Eaton. London: Unwin, 1907.

THE love of mountains is an emotion which had a long period of incubation before it became part of the general equipment of civilised man. Students have found traces of it in Dante and even in Virgil, amongst Europeans, whilst a case might be made out for its first origin in the bosoms of various very early and far-sundered Buddhist saints. It was not, however, till the approach of the Renaissance that the feeling attained any definite pronouncement in Europe. Petrarch first, after him Leonardo da Vinci, and in the succeeding century many others, made mountain regions the subject of accurate observation. It was, of course, the mysterious snowy regions of the Alps that attracted most attention, and the first great work on any mountain region was Josias Simler's Commentarius de Alpibus,' first published a Zurich in 1574. Of this work two editions lie before me, one almost the smallest, the other one of the largest important works in Alpine literature. The former is the charming little Elzevir edition of 1633, which will go comfortably into a waistcoat pocket; the other is the great reprint, edited by Mr Coolidge with a translation and all the apparatus criticus of the most modern research --prefaces, introductions, elaborate notes, pièces annexes, notes on them, and an elaborate index-the whole sumptuously printed and as full of accurate and scholarly

information as Fraser's 'Pausanias.' From this work we learn that before the year 1600 no less than forty-seven Alpine peaks are found mentioned by name in literature, whilst twenty Alpine passes are also recorded. By that date the foundations of Alpine knowledge were securely laid, whilst traces have even been found of the sporadic existence of Alpine guides, two men, who can only be so described, having assisted the Seigneur de Villamont to ascend the Rochemelon in 1588. Pursuing his researches into the smallest details, Mr Coolidge finds that, still before 1600, the main implements of the mountaineering craft had at least been invented. Alpenstocks were no doubt prehistoric, but nailed boots, crampons, ladders, dark glasses for the eyes, mittens for the hands, and snowshoes are all mentioned, and there is even a record in Simler of the use of the rope as a protection against hidden crevasses.

The study of nature which began so brilliantly in the sixteenth century did not, however, advance as rapidly as might have been expected. Many generations had to pass before the enthusiasm and even the knowledge of Simler were united again in a scientific student. The romantic outburst at the end of the eighteenth century and the return to nature which it preached were needed to call attention once more to the attraction of mountain regions. Rousseau, Sir Walter Scott, and a multitude of their followers gave literary expression to this emotion. Horace Bénédict de Saussure called the attention of men of science to mountain phenomena. It was not long before the mere adventurous traveller made his appearance in mountain regions and published the record of his doings. The ascent of Mont Blanc became relatively popular and was described in a series of publications. Thus, by the middle of the nineteenth century, mountains were in a fair way of being advertised whilst the adventurous spirit was rife and there were people enough in civilised countries with the necessary leisure and means to form a mountain-loving and mountain-climbing public when the new spirit had had time to work amongst them.

De Saussure's ascent of Mont Blanc in 1787 was neither the first ascent of a high mountain, nor even the first ascent of Mont Blanc itself, but the eminence of the Vol. 208.-No. 414.

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climber and the literary and scientific conspicuousness of this exploit made it an epoch in mountain climbing. From that date ascents may be said to have become more numerous as the years advanced. There still, however, hung about mountain climbing a taint of science. Climbers were supposed, or imagined themselves, to be searchers after truth, and more than half a century had to go by before it was boldly acknowledged that mountain climbing was worth while for the mere pleasure of it and stood in need of no scientific ends as its justification. In fact the sport of climbing was a long time in coming into existence and still longer in gaining recognition. It is usual to date the birth of the sport, as far as Englishmen are concerned at any rate, by the ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 by Sir Alfred (then Mr) Wills. As Mr William Longman stated, the published account of this expedition probably did more than any other single narrative to excite and spread among our countrymen the taste for mountain adventure.'

During the last half of the nineteenth century the activity of Englishmen as mountain climbers was so preeminent that it will come as a surprise to many to learn that they were relatively late in coming into the field. It was not till climbing proved itself to be an excellent sport that it commended itself to the English taste. The early climbers, as has been said, were not so much sportsmen as men of science or geographical explorers. In Mr Coolidge's forthcoming learned work on Alpine history (the proof-sheets of which I have been privileged to read) this will be abundantly shown. Leaving out the very early ascents made before 1760, Mr Coolidge shows that the ascents of the Buet, Velan, Dent du Midi, Mont Blanc, Tödi, Gross Glockner, Jungfrau, Finsteraarhorn, various peaks of Monte Rosa, the Ortler, the Gross Venediger, and others, were all made before an Englishman set his foot on Alpine snows. He has even discovered a Tyrolese ecclesiastic, born before the French Revolution, who climbed peaks for the sake of climbing, and was perhaps the first mountain sportsman. He had climbed seventy peaks before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first systematic climbers were not Englishmen. The eminent Gottlieb Studer made about 650 ascents between 1808 and 1883. Then there were a group of Zurich