finished during the most brilliant period of one man's administration.
In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was
built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for
they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to
make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth.

The overseer and manager of the whole was Phidias, although there were
other excellent architects and workmen, such as Callicrates and Ictinus,
who built the Parthenon on the site of the old Hecatompedon, which had
been destroyed by the Persians, and Coroebus, who began to build the
Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, but who only lived to see the columns
erected and the architraves placed upon them. On his death, Metagenes,
of Xypete, added the frieze and the upper row of columns, and Xenocles,
of Cholargos, crowned it with the domed roof over the shrine. As to the
long wall, about which Socrates says that he heard Pericles bring
forward a motion, Callicrates undertook to build it. The Odeum, which
internally consisted of many rows of seats and many columns, and
externally of a roof sloping on all sides from a central point, was said
to have been built in imitation of the king of Persia's tent, and was
built under Pericles' direction.

The Propylaea, before the Acropolis, were finished in five years by
Mnesicles the architect; and a miraculous incident during the work
seemed to show that the goddess did not disapprove, but rather
encouraged and assisted the building. The most energetic and active of
the workmen fell from a great height, and lay in a dangerous condition,
given over by his doctors. Pericles grieved much for him; but the
goddess appeared to him in a dream, and suggested a course of treatment
by which Pericles quickly healed the workman. In consequence of this, he
set up the brazen statue of Athene the Healer, near the old altar in the