OLYMPIC FLAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 174, 24 July 1936, Page 5

OLYMPIC FLAME.

ATHENS OF TO-DAY.

CEREMONY ON ACROPOLIS

GLORY THAT WAS GREECE,

(By CECIL W. LUSTY.)

Something of the spirit of the golden age in Greek culture was recaptured at the ceremonies in connection with the torch to be borne from Athens aross Europe to Berlin, signalising the opening of the Olympic Games.—News item.

Storied ruins of temples and pillars and modern graceful buildings, all gleaming white against a sombre background of mountains —that is Atliens to-day. Does not Euripides tell of "lonians stepping delicately in the clearest liglft? Sentinel over the city is the brooding Acropolis, mute yet moving story of humanity through the ages. » ' e In the shadow of the Acropolis, on whose summit the torch bearer kindled the 1936 Olympic fire, was the home of the first legislation makers, and men of science and the arts. In the womb of the twilight past were conceived the basic principles of civics and art to which New Zealand owes appreciably her Constitution and Auckland her statue at the Domain gates. There is fitting majesty in the- three great mountain peaks —Hymethus, on whose thyme-clad slopes, mythology has it, bees were created; Pentelicus, whose old and recent scars and gashes denote the source of the Acropolis marble and of the Athens marble stadium, holding 75,000 people; and Parnes, tunnelled to bring water to the city in lieu of the ancient Hadrian aqueduct.

Majesty of Acropolis. There is fitting majesty in the monumental structures on the Acropolis—the Pii-Hieiion, temple of the Virgin Goddess, to which the pillared facade of Auckland's War Museum, viewed from afar, bears some resemblance; the

Erechthum, with its Porch of the Caryatides (female figures) that honours an Athenian hero and proclaims the disgrace of Arcadian-Persian women made captives by the Greeks; and the Propylaea or gateway at the entrance to the Acropolis. From Piraeus, the romantic port where swing at anchor craft modern and ancient, a grand boulevard leads to Athens, and near the arch that, as its inscription states, divides the city of Hadrian from that of Theseus, another boulevard intersects and affords access to the Acropolis.

Before climbing the Acropolis I bought an ice cream from one of the many stands near the base—now what would Pericles say to that? —for Athens, of course, is modern, capricious and frivolous. Thus you can speed in luxurious motor cars' to the walls from which the swords and spears of Agamemnon advanced on Troy, or travel by air to Cnossus and carve "N|Z." in the grottos where Theseus slew the Minotaur. Reconstructing History. In the shade of the Parthenon, as seen in the illustration on this page, you can escape the glare of the Aegean sun and reconstruct the past. From the Acropolis a mevssenger, as his blood ebbed, gasped to the Elders the tidings of the Persian rout at Marathon; eyes watched the crippled sails of Xerxes limp into Phaleron Bay after disastrous Salainis; and the pilgrim to-day can see the hill where St. Paul preached to "Men of Athens," and the groves where Plato discoursed philosophy.

And from the Acropolis the torch bearers carry the Olympic Flame to Delphi and on across war-wearied Europe to Berlin. With the runners travel the shades of Greek and Persian, Crusader and barbarian, and infidel and Christian, whose secrets the Acropolis still preserves. Is this not something of the glory that was Greece»