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ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW VORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
ATHENS
AND ITS MONUMENTS
BY
CHARLES HEALD WELLER
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
ifiol yivoiTo . . . A.9^vrj<n koI f^^at koI rhv piov axo\iireiv {May it be my lot . . . in Athens to live and there my life to end) — Alciphron, iii, 51, 4.
Neto gork
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1913, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November. 1913.
T a ^ , NortoooB i^wsa J. 8. Cashing Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TQ €[17] ywaxKi
PREFACE
This book is designed to provide a brief and untechnical account of the topography and monuments of ancient Athens for the general reader and the traveler, as well as an introduction to the subject for the student of archaeology and history ; a few ideas that are new and worthy may perhaps be found by the specialist. In view of the wealth of material available, the maintenance of a proper balance and perspective is not easy ; particularly strong is the temptation to allow recent discoveries to usurp more than their just share of attention. A straight course between doubt and dogmatism is also difficult to keep. Notwith- standing the effort to avoid confusion of fact and theory, and to present, so far as possible, the grounds for opinions expressed, the form of statement may now and then seem more positive than is justifiable. If, on the other hand, the use of " probably " and " perhaps " appears frequent, the point may be urged that many problems are still far from a solution; when evidence is scanty, doubt is more reasonable than dogmatism.
The topographical treatment adopted by Pausanias is so convenient and logical that it has seemed preferable to the historical order. Pausanias and other sources are quoted freely ; the references, save in the case of direct quota- tions, could not be given without encumbering the pages. If the exigencies of space have also made imperative the omission of the names of modern scholars, appreciation of the obligation imposed by their labors is no less keen. My constant indebtedness to the works mentioned in the bibliography at the end of the book, particularly to
viii PREFACE
Dr. Judeich's Topographie von Athen, will be manifest to all who are acquainted with the literature of the subject. The general plan of the book was suggested by Miss Harrison's Mythology and Monuments of Atwient Athens ; had she decided to revise her volume, this book would probably never have been written. In these days one can hardly write about Athens without an expression of gratitude to Dr. Wilhelm Dorpfeld, long the secretary of the German Institute there, whose genius has illumined many a dark corner of the ancient city, and whose personality has been an inspiration.
The list of those who gave me aid and encouragement in completing this task is long. I am under special obli- gation to the American editor of this series of Handbooks for reading the manuscript and offering suggestions ; to Professor David M. Robinson, of Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, for reading both manuscript and proof ; to Professor Frank B. Tarbell, of the University of Chicago, and Mr. Lacey D. Caskey, of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, for reading a large part of the manuscript and for giv- ing valuable suggestions. Deeply appreciating the kindly assistance of these scholars, I absolve them from respon- sibility for such errors and infelicities as still remain. The sources of the illustrations used in the book are indicated in the list at the beginning of the volume. I can here only express in general terms my thanks to those who have furnished photographs, especially to Mr. Ashton Sanborn and Mr. Carl W. Blegen for securing and sending photographs from Athens. Finally, I desire to express my thanks to my colleague, Mr. Robert B. Dale, who made many of the drawings.
CHARLES HEALD WELLER. Iowa City,
June I, 1913.
CONTENTS
PACK
Introduction i
CHAPTER
I. Situation and General Aspect; the Demes . . 13
II. Historical Sicetch 29
III. Walls and Gates 48
IV. The Hellentc Agora 75
V. The Hellenistic and Roman Agora and Other
Sites 130
VI. Southeast Athens 161
VII. The South Slope of the Acropolis . . . 180
VIII. The Acropolis . . . 224
IX. The Courts and the Suburbs 357
X. Peiraeus and the Ports 383
BIBLIOGRAPHY 403
INDEX 407
ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE
1. Southeast Athens, from the east end of the AcropoHs. (Photo-
graph of Simiriottis.) ... ... Frontispiece
PAGE
2. Cyclopean wall belonging to the Pelargicum, at the east end of
the Acropolis. (Photograph of the German Institute.) . 8
3. Polygonal wall in the west ascent to the Acropolis. (Photograph
of the German Institute.) 8
4. Olympieum and south wall of its precinct. (Photograph of
C. H. \V.) 9
5. Method of joining the drums of a column. (Drawing by R. B. D.) 10
6. Various styles of cramps used in uniting the blocks of a wall.
(Drawing by R. B. D.) 11
7. The " orders " of Greek architecture. (Statham, Architecture for
General Readers, Fig. 64.) 11
8. Panoramic view of Athens, from the Hill of the Nymphs. (Pho-
tograph of Rhomaides.) 12
9. Map of the Athenian plain. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Curtius,
StadtgeschichU von Athen, PI. 1.) 14
10. Mt Pentelicus in winter, from the American School. (Photo-
graph of the American School.) ...... 15
11. Mt Lycabettus, from the Acropolis. (Photograph of John
Lodge.) ........... 16
12. Monument of Philopappus, on the summit of the Hill of the
Muses. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) ..... 17
13. Geological formation of the hills of Athens. (Drawing by R. B.
D.. after Judeich, Topographie von Athen, Fig. 7.) . . 18
14. Reconstruction of a house at Priene, in Asia Minor. (After
Wiegand and Schrader, Priene, Fig. 299.) .... 22
15. Seats hewn in the rock on the side of the Hill of the Muses.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 23
16. The so-called Prison of Socrates, a part of an ancient dwell-
ing. (Photograph of Neue Photographische Gesellschaft.) 24 xi
xu ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PACK
17. Boundary stone of the deme of Cerameicus, near the Dipylum.
(Photograph of the German Institute.) 27
18. The situation of ancient sanctuaries, according to Thucydides.
(Drawing by R. B. D.) 31
19. Building of the wall of the Pelargicum; vase painting. (Hauser,
Stretia Helbigiana, p. 116.) ....... 48
20. Map of the Pelargicum and Enneapylum. (Drawing by R. B. D.) 49
21. Portion of the wall of the Pelargicum at the west end of the
Acropolis. (Photograph of C. H. W.) ..... 50
22. Map of the walls of Athens. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Judeich,
Topographic von AtAen, Fig. 9.) . . . . . .54
23. Arch of Hadrian, from the east. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 55
24. Drums of columns of the old Parthenon built into the north wall
of the Acropolis. (Photograph of C. H. W.) ... 57
25. Relief in the front of the Roman stage of the Dionysiac theater.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 58
26. Plan of the Dipylum and adjacent walls. (Drawing by R. B. D.,
after Noack, Athenische Mittheilungen, 32 [1907], PI. 10.) . 59
27. Fragment of the Themistoclean wall, near the Dipylum. (Photo-
graph of C. H. W.) 60
28. Grave stele from beneath the Themistoclean wall. (Photograph
of the German Institute.) . . . . . . ',61
29. Looking northwest from the Sacred Gate. (Photograph of John
Lodge.) 62
30. Front of the Dipylum, with quadriga base on the left. (Photo-
graph of C. H. W.) 64
31. Altar dedicated to Zeus, Hermes, and Acamas. (Photograph of
C. H. W.) 65
32. Section of the Peiraic wall about Acte and one of the towers,
from within. (Photograph of the American School.) . . 67
33. Exterior of one of the towers of the wall about Acte. (Photo-
graph of C. H. W.) 68
34. East tower of Asty Gate. (Photograph of C. H. W.) ... 69
35. West tower of Asty Gate. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . 69
36. Peiraic wall and gate near juncture of the North Long Wall.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 70
37. Towers and wall on Eetioneia. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 70
ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
FIGCSK PAGB
38. Map of the Long Walls. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Judeich,
Topographie von Athen, Fig. 16.) ...... 71
39. Reconstruction of gallery of the walls of Athens. (Caskey,
American JoumcU of Archaeology, \^\yi\Q\Y\.(i.) . 73
40. Head of lacchus, by Praxiteles. (Restored by Zumbusch,
Vienna ; Svoronos, Ephemeris Archaiologiki, 1911, PL 3.) . 78
41. Vase painting with the face of Akratos. (Murray, Journal of
Hellenic Studies, 7 [1886], PI. 62.) 81
42. Map of excavations south of Areopagus. (Harrison, Primitive
Athens, Fig. 35.) 84
43. View of excavations south of Areopagus. (Photograph of the
American School.) 85
44. Site of the Hellenic Agora, in its present State. (Photograph of
C. H. W.) 87
45. Foundations excavated along the west side of the Agora. (Photo-
graph of C. H. W.) 88
46. Map of the Hellenic Agora. (Drawing by R. B. D.) ... 90
47. Copy of Eirene and Plutus, by Cephisodotus. (Photograph of a
cast in the Metropolitan Museum, New Vork.) . . . 100
48. Eirene. (Photograph of the Metropolitan Museum, Xew York.) 101
49. Plutus; a copy found in Peiraeus. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) 101
50. Demosthenes ; from a cast after the Vatican copy, restored \*-ith
clasped hands instead of scroll. (Loevsy, Die Griechische Plastik, II, Fig. 265a; Photograph of Professor Loewy.) . 102
51. Borghese Ares. (Photograph.) 104
52. Theseus, commonly known as " Apollo of the Omphalos."
(Photograph ; identification of Professor Svoronos, 4»ws htl
roO nap^cfwivt, p. 232.) ........ 104
53. Tyrannicides, as blazon on Athena's shield on Panathenaic vase.
(Baumeister, Denkmiiler, Fig. 1347.) . . . . . 106
54. TjTannicides. (Photograph.) 107
55. Tyrannicides ; the Naples group restored and corrected. (Res-
toration by E. Kircheisen, after desigpn of P. J. Meier ; pho- tograph of Professor Meier.) ...... 108
56. CaUirrhoe and rock ridge in the bed of the Ilissus. (Photograph
of C. H. W.) 109
57. Plan of Enneacrunus and adjacent sites, restored. (Drawing by
R. B. D., after Graber, Athenische Mittheilungen, 30 [1905],
PL 2.) 110
xiv ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
58. Callirrhoe-Enneacrunus ; vase painting. (Antike Denkmdler, II,
PI. 19.) Ill
59. Pnyx, at the left, and Hill of the Nymphs, at the right, as seen
from the Areopagus. (Photograph of the American School.) 112
60. Plan of the Pnyx. (After Judeich, Topographic von Athen, Fig.
44, with additions from Praktika, 1910, p. 128, Fig. 1.) . 113
61. Orators' platform on the Pnyx ; in the rear the Acropohs. (Pho-
tograph of Simiriottis.) 114
62. Persephone, Triptolemus, and Demeter; vase painting. (Furt-
w'angler and Reichhold, Griechische Vasen?nalerei, PI. 106.) . 116
63. Hephaesteum, from the northeast. (Photograph.) . . . 118
64. Southeast corner of the Hephaesteum, showing four of the sculp-
tured metopes. (Photograph of the American School.) . 120
65. Copy of Athena Hephaestia, by Alcamenes. {Reisch, /ahreshe/te
des osterreichischen archdologischen Institutes, 1 [1898], PI. 3.) . 122
66. Plan of the Stoa of Attains. (Judeich, Topographie von Athen,
Fig. 39.) 132
67. South end of the Stoa of Attains. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 133
68. North end of the Stoa of Attains. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 133
69. Stoa of Attalus, looking south. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 134
70. Plan of the excavated portion of the Stoa of the Giants. (After
Judeich, Topographie von Athen, Fig. 36.) .... 135
71. Remains of the Stoa of the Giants, from the northwest. (Photo-
graph of C. H. W.) 135
72. East figure of the Stoa of the Giants. (Photograph of C. H. W.) 136
73. Plan of the Market of Caesar and Augustus ; at the right the
Tower of the Winds and the Agoranomium. (After Judeich, Topographie von Athen, Fig. 40.) 137
74. Gate of Athena Archegetis, or propylum of the Market of
Caesar and Augustus. (Photograph of Neue Photograph- ische Gesellschaft.) 138
75. East propylum of the Market of Caesar and Augustus, from the
west. (Photograph.) . 140
76. Steps and arches belonging to the Roman " Agoranomium."
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 141
77. Tower of the Winds, or Horologium, of Andronicus Cyrrhestes.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 142
ILLUSTRATIONS XV
FIGURB PACK
78. Reliefs representing the Winds Caecias, Boreas, Sciron, and
Zephyrus, on the Horologium. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) 143
79. Elevation and section of the Tower of the Winds, restored.
(Baumeister, Denkmdler, Figs. 2366, 2367.) .... 145
80. Plan of the library of Hadrian. (Judeich, Topographic von Athen,
Fig. 42.) 146
81. West end of the library of Hadrian. (Photograph of Xeue Pho-
tographische Gesellschaft.) . 147
82. East end of the library of Hadrian. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . 147
83. Interior of the library of Hadrian. (Photograph of John Lodge.) 148
84. Theseus, Athena, and Amphitrite, beneath the sea ; vase paint-
ing by Euphronius. (Furtwangler and Reichhold, Griech- ische Vasenmalerei, PI. 5.) . . . . . . . 154
85. Rape of the daughters of Leucippus, above ; the garden of the
Hesperides, below; vase painting by Meidias. (Furtwangler
and Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, PL 8.) . . 156
86. Map of Southeast Athens. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Judeich,
Topographic zon Athen, PI. 1.) . . . . . . 160
87. Temple of Olympian Zeus, or Olympieum, from the northeast.
(Photograph of Neue Photographische Gesellschaft.) . . 161
88. Plan of the Olympieum. (Judeich, Topographic von Athen,
Fig. 43.) 164
89. Upper part of a fallen column of the Olympieum. (Photograph
of a member of the American School.) .... 165
90. Statue of Olympian Zeus ; Athenian coin. (Imhoof-Blumer and
Gardner, y^wrwa/ of Hellenic Studies, 8 [1887], PI. 76, BB iv.) 166
91. Fortune of Antioch, by Eutychides. (Photograph of Alinari.) . 166
92. Arch of Hadrian, from the west. (Photograph of Neue Photo-
graphische Gesellschaft.) 167
93. Coping of the altar of the Pythium. (Photograph of the Ameri-
can School.) . 169
94 " Venus Genetrix," supposed to be a copy of the Aphrodite of
the Gardens, by Alcamenes. (Photograph.) . . 171
95. Stadium, reconstructed. (Photograph of Neue Photographische
Gesellschaft.) 176
%. View across the Stadium, showing herms and the tunnel.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 177
97. Ionic temple on the Ilissus. (Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of
Athens, I, PL 7.) 178
xvi ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PACK
98. Choregic Monument of Lysicrates. (Photograph of C. H. W.) 181
99. Section of the frieze of the Monument of Lysicrates. (Springer-
MichaeHs, Kunstgeschichte, I, Fig. 537a.) .... 182
100. Monument of Lysicrates, built into the " Hospitium of the
Capuchins." (Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, I,
PI. 23.) 183
101. Satyr of Praxiteles — the " Marble Faun." (Photograph.) . 184
102. Dionysus and the Satyr, by Praxiteles, restored. (Evelyn-
White, >«r;?a/ of Hellejiic Studies, 29 [1909], Fig. 2.) . 185
103. Plan of the precinct of Dionysus, and Dionysiac theater, re-
stored. (Carroll, The Attica pf Pausanias, Fig. 2, after Dorpfeld and Reisch, Das GHechische Theater, PI. 2.) . 186
104. Hephaestus conducted back to Olympus by Dionysus; vase
painting. (Furtwangler and Reichhold, Griechische Vasen- malerei, PI. 29.) 187
105A. Theseus deserting Ariadne ; Pompeian wall painting. (Pho- tograph of Sommer.) ........ 188
105B. Dionysus coming to the rescue of Ariadne ; Pompeian wall
painting. (Photograph of Sommer.) 189
106. Foundations of the temples of Dionysus. (Photograph of
C. H. W.) 190
107. Scene-buildings and orchestra of the Dionysiac theater. (Dorp-
feld and Reisch, Das Griechische Theater, PI. 3.) . . . 191
108. Theater and precinct of Dionysus, as seen from the Acropolis.
(Photograph of the American School.) .... 193
109. Section through canal, corridor, and staircase of the theater.
(Drawing by R. B. D., after Dorpfeld and Reisch, Das Griechische Theater, Figs. 12 and 13.) ..... 194
110. Dionysiac theater, from the east. (Photograph of Neue Photo-
graphische Gesellschaft.) 195
111. Seat of honor for the priest of Dionysus Eleuthereus. (Pho-
tograph of Simiriottis.) 196
112. Portion of the front of the stage of Phaedrus. (Photograph of
Neue Photographische Gesellschaft.) 199
113. Choregic columns and the cave of Thrasyllus; looking up from
the theater. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . . .202
114. Monument of Thrasyllus at the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury. (Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, II, PI. 37.) 203
ILLUSTR.\TIONS xvii
FIGUKK PACK
115. Plan of the Asclepieum. (Allen and Caskey, American Journal
of Archaeology, 15 [1911], PL 1.) 205
116. East end of the Asclepieum. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . 207
117. Plan of the east stoa of the Asclepieum, restored. (Allen and
Caskey, American Journal of Archaeology, 15 [1911], PI. 3.) 207
118. South elevation of the east stoa of the Asclepieum, restored.
(Allen and Caskey, American Journal of Archaeology,
15 [1911], PL 4.) 208
119. Pit in the east stoa. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . .208
120. East stoa of the Asclepieum, from the east. (Photograph of
C. H. W.) 209
121. Modem shrine in the cave of the spring of the Asclepieum.
(Flashlight photograph of C. H. W.) 210
122. Votive offerings dedicated in the precinct of Asclepius. (Svo-
ronos. Das Athener Nationalmuseum, Pis. 164 and 237.) . 212
123. Relief representing Asclepius, his daughter Hygieia, and sev-
eral adorants. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) . . . 213
124. Stoa of Eumenes and other buildings. (Photograph of Alinari.) 214
125. Foundation of the choregic Monument of Xicias. (Photograph
of the American School.) 215
126. Plan of the east end of the Stoa of Eumenes and of the cho-
regic Monument of Nicias. (Dinsmoor, American Journal
of Archaeology, 14 [1910], Fig. 11.) 216
127. Beule Gate, at the entrance to the Acropolis, including remains
of the Monimient of Nicias. (Photograph of the American SchooL) 217
128. Odeum, or Music Hall, of Herodes Atticus, from the southwest
(Photograph of Neue Photographische Gesellschaft.) . 218
129. Plan of the Odeum of Herodes Atticus. (Versakis, Archaiolo-
gike Ephemeris. 1912, PI. 4.) 218
130. Interior of the Odeum of Herodes Atticus. (Photograph of
John Lodge.) 219
131. Architrave of the temple of Aphrodite Pandemus. (Photograph
of C. H. W.) 222
132. Acropolis, from Museum Hill. (Photograph of Neue Photo-
graphische Gesellschaft.) 223
133. Plan of the Acropolis. (Drawing.by R. B. D.) . . . . 225
134. Plan of the west end of the Acropolis. (Cawadias and Kawe-
rau. Die Ausgrabung der Akropolis, PL 6.) . . . 226
xviii ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
135. Extant corner of the early Propylum of the Acropolis. (Photo-
graph of the German Institute.) 227
136. Plan of the early Propylum. (Weller, American Journal of
Archaeology, 8 [1904], PL 1.) '. 228
137. Elevation of the early Propylum, restored. (Weller, American
/ottmal of Archaeology, 8 [1904], Fig. A.) . . . .229
138. Propylaea and temple of Athena Victory, from the west. (Pho-
tograph of Neue Photographische Gesellschaft.) . . 230
139. Pinacotheca and front of the Propylaea, from the southwest.
(Photograph of John Lodge.) . . . . . . 231
140. Plan of the Propylaea. (Drawing by R. B. D.) . . . . 232
141. Propylaea, from the east. (Photograph of the American School.) 232
142. Propylaea, from the southwest, restored. (Drawing by \V.
Leonard, after Luckenbach; Baumgarten, Poland, and Wagner, Die Hellenische Kultur, Fig. 299.) . . .233
143. Basis of the Monument of Agrippa, from the temple of Athena
Victory. (Photograph of C. H. W.) 238
144. Temple of Athena Victory, from the top of the Pinacotheca.
(Photograph of Arthur S. Cooley.) 240
145. Inscriptions relating to the construction of the temple of Athena
Victory. (Photograph of the American School.) . . 243
146. Southeast corner of the frieze of the temple of Athena Victory.
(Photograph.) ' . . 245
147. Victory adjusting her sandal ; slab of the balustrade about the
temple of Athena Victory. (Photograph from a cast.) . 246
148. Victory adjusting her sandal, restored ; from a modern copy in
marble. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) . . . ... 246
149. Temple of Athena Victory and surroundings, restored. (Jahn-
MichaeHs, Arx Athenarum, XX.) 249
150. Replica of the Hermes Propylaeus by Alcamenes ; from Per-
gamum. (Photograph of the German Institute.) . . 250
151. Relief representing the Graces. (Photograph.) . . . 251
152. Plan of the precinct of Hygieia. (Drawing by R. B. D., after
Cawadias and Kawerau, Die Ausgrabung der Akropolis,
PL 6.) 253
153. Altar of Hygieia. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . . . 254
154. Base of a statue by Cresilas, perhaps that of the statue of Diei-
trephes. (Photograph of the American School.) . . 255
ILLUSTR.\TIONS xix
FIGUKE PAGE
155. Base of statue of Athena Hygieia, in front of the southeast
column of the Propylaea. (Photograph of the American School.) 256
156. Head supposed to be a copy of the Perseus of Myron. (Photo-
graph.) ........... 257
157. Plan of the precincts between the Propylaea and the Parthenon,
restored. (D'Ooge, The Acropolis of Athens, Fig. 124, after Dorpfeld, Athenische Mittheilungen, 14 [1889], p. 307.) . 258
158. " Diana of Gabii," supposed to be a copy of Brauronian Arte-
mis of Praxiteles. (Photograph.) 259
159. Base of the " Wooden Horse " of bronze, made by StrongyUon.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 261
160. Base of the statue of Epicharinus, by Critius and Nesiotes.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 262
161. Athena and Marsyas; Athenian coin. (Imhoof-Blumer and
Gardner, Journal of miUnic Studies, 8 [1887], PI. 75, Z xx.) 263
162. Athena and Marsyas ; vase painting. (Baumeister, Denkmdler,
Fig. 1209.) . 263
163. Athena and Marsyas, on the " Finlay vase." (Photograph of
the American School.) 264
164. Athena and Marsyas, by M)rron. (Restored by E. Kischeisen
after design of P. J. Meier ; photograph of Professor Meier.) 265
165. Theseus and Minotaur; Athenian coin. (Imhoof-Blumer and
Qzxdner,JoumalofHelUntc Studies, 8 [1887], PL 77, D Dm.) 265
166. Birth of Athena, from the head of Zeus ; vase painting. (Smith,
Parthenon Sculptures, Fig. 10, Text.) 266
167. Inscription and bedding for statue of Fruit-bearing Earth.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 267
168. G€ rising from the Ground — contest of Poseidon and Polybotes ;
vase of Erginus and Aristophanes. (Baumeister, Denk- mdler, Fig. 637.) 268
169. Lower part of base of statues of Conon and Timotheus. (Pho-
tograph of the American School) 269
170. Contest of Athena and Poseidon ; vase, painting. (Baumeister,
Denkmdler, Fig. 1542.) 270
171. Plan of Pre-Persian Parthenon. (After Hill, American Journal
of Archaeology, 16 [1912], PI. 9.) 271
172. Northwest comer of Parthenon. (Photograph of the German
Institute.) 272
XX . ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGB
173. Base of anta of earlier Parthenon. (Photograph of B. H. Hill.) 274
174. Complex of walls south of the Parthenon. (After Dorpfeld,
Athenische Mittheilungen, 27 [1902], Figs. 4, 5, 6.) . . 275
175. Parthenon, from the northeast. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) . 276
176. Plan of the Parthenon. (Jahn-Michaelis, Arx Athetiariitn, ix.) . 277
177. Interior of the Parthenon, from the east. (Photograph of John
Lodge.) . .278
178. South steps of the Parthenon, showing horizontal curvature.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 282
179. Carrey drawing of the east pediment of the Parthenon.
(Svoronos, *ws iirl tov HapdevQvos, PI. 19.) .... 284
180. Birth of Athena ; rehef about a marble puteal at Madrid. (Smith,
Parthenon Sculptures, P'ig. 11, Text.) 285
181. Central group of the east pediment, restored. (Svoronos, <l>cDj
iirX TOV UapdevQvos, Fig. 19.) ...... 285
182. Figures from the south side of the east pediment of the Parthe-
non. (Photograph.) 286
183. The " Fates," from the east pediment of the Parthenon. (Pho-
tograph of Donald Macbeth, London.) .... 287
184. Carrey drawing of the west pediment of the Parthenon. (Svo-
ronos, 4>ws iirl TOV Ilapdeviovos, PI. 18.) .... 288
185. Parthenon, from the northwest. (Photograph of Neue Photo-
graphische Gesellschaft.) ....... 289
186. " Ilissus," from the west pediment of the Parthenon. (Photo-
graph of Donald Macbeth, London.) 289
187. Lapith and Centaur ; metope from the Parthenon. (Photo-
graph of Donald Macbeth, London.) ..... 290
188. Lapith and Centaur ; metope from the Parthenon. (Photograph
of Donald Macbeth, London.) 290
189. West pediment of the Parthenon, «■« «/z^. (D'Ooge, The Acropo-
lis of Athens, Fig. 74.) 292
190. Section of the north frieze of the Parthenon. (Photograph of
Donald Macbeth, London.) 293
191. Athena, Hephaestus, Poseidon, Apollo, and Artemis, from the
east frieze of the Parthenon. (Photograph of Donald Mac- beth, London.) 294
192. Central episode of the procession, from the east frieze of the
Parthenon. (Photograph of Donald Macbeth, London.) . 295
ILLUSTR-\TIONS Xn
FIGURE PACK
193. Varvakeion statuette of Athena Parthenos. (Photograph of
Neue Photographische GesellschafL) 296
194. Lenormant statuette of Athena Parthenos. (Photograph of
Simiriottis.) . . 298
195. Colossal figure adapted after the Parthenos of Pheidias ; from
Pergamum. (Photograph of A. Koster.) .... 299
196. Gold pendant with a representation of the head of the Parthe-
nos. ( Kieseritzky, Athenische Mitthetlungen, 8 [1883], PI. 15.) 300
197. Gem signed by Aspasius, with representation of head of Athena.
(Furtwangler, Die Antike Gemmen.) . ... . . 300
198. Strangford shield. (Gardner, Six Greek Sculptors, PL 19.) . 301
199. Plan of the Parthenon as it was in early Christian times.
(D'Ooge, ne Acropolis of Athens, Fig. 128, after Michaelis, Der Parthenon, p. 46.) 303
200. Parthenon, with Turkish mosque and houses, from the east.
(Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, II, PI. 4.) . . 305
201. Copies in marble of Giant and Amazon, from the offering of
Attalus. (Photograph.) 309
202. Seated Athena, ascribed to Endoeus. (Photograph of AlinarL) 310
203. Remains of the temple of Rome and Augustus. (Photograph
of C. H. W.) 311
204. Foundation of the " Old Temple." (Photograph of Arthur S.
Cooley.) 312
205. Plan of the " Old Temple." (Judeich, Topographie von Athen,
Fig. 30.) 313
206. Heracles and Triton, from pediment of the Hecatompedum.
(Photograph of Simiriottis.) 314
207. Typhon, from pediment of the Hecatompedum. (Photograph
of Simiriottis.) ......... 315
208. Athena and the giant Enceladus, from the pediment of the " Old
Temple." (Photograph of Neue Photographische Gesell- schaft.) 315
209. Erechtheum, from the southwest. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) 318
210. Erechtheum, from the southeast. (Photograph.) . . . 320
211. Erechtheum, from the east, restored. (Stevens, American Jour-
nal of Archaeology, 10 [\906\,V\. 9.) 321
212. Erechtheum, from the west. (Photograph.) .... 322
213. North door of Erechtheum. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) . 323
xxii ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
214. Caryatid Porch, or Hall of the Maidens. (Photograph of Simi-
riottis.) 324
215. Carved border crowning wall and anta of the Erechtheum.
(Photograph.) . 326
216. Interior of the Erechtheum, from the east porch. (Photograph
of the American School.) 326
217. Plan of the Erechtheum, actual state. (Stevens, Afnericmt Jour-
nal of Archaeology, \0 [190^], ¥\g. \.) 327
218. Plan of the Erechtheum, restored. (Stevens, American Journal
oj Archaeology, 10 [1906], PI. 6.) . 328
219. Interior of the southwest corner of the Erechtheum, restored.
{HiW, American Jotimal of Archaeology, 14 [1910], Fig. 3.) . 330
220. Possible original plan of the Erechtheum. (Elderkin, Problems
in Athenian Buildings, Fig. 12.) ...... 333
221. Erechtheum, at the middle of the eighteenth century. (Stuart
and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, II, PL 19.) . . . 336
222. Relief from an archaic pediment, probably representing the old
Erechtheum. (Photograph of the American School.) . 337
223. Archaic statue, by Antenor. (Photograph of the German In-
stitute.) 340
224. Archaic female figure. (Photograph of Neue Photographische
Gesellschaft.) . .340
225. Archaic statue, dedicated by Euthydicus. (Photograph of Simi-
riottis.) 341
226. Theseus discovering the sandals of his father, Aegeus ; Athe-
nian coin. (Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner, Journal of Hel- lenic Studies, 8 [1887], PI. 77, DD ii.) 342
227. Acropolis, with Parthenon, Propylaea and its approach, Athena
Promachus, and the cave of Pan ; Athenian coin. (Imhoof- Blumer and QzxAntx, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 8 [1887], PI. 75, Z IV.) 344
228. Bust of Pericles, probably after the statue by Cresilas. (Photo-
graph.) . 346
229. Lemnian Athena, restored. (Photograph of Strassburg Mu-
seum ; furnished by Fr. Winter.) 349
230. Archaic group from pediment of a building on the Acropolis.
(Photograph of the American School.) .... 350
231. Acropolis in 1687, from a drawing made for Count D'Ortieres.
(Omont, Athhies au xvil Sihle, PI. 31.) .... 351
ILLUSTIL\TIONS xxiii
FIGUSK PACK
232. Northwest slope of the Acropolis, with caves of Pan and Apollo.
(Photograph of C. H. W.) 352
233. Plan of northwest slope of the Acropolis. (Harrison, Primitive
Athens, Fig. 22, after Cawadias, Ephemeris Arckaiologiki, 1897.) 353
234. Entrance to the cave of Pan. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . 354
235. Statue of Pan, from Peiraeus. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) . 355
236. Areopagus, from the north. (Photograph of the American
School.) 358
237. East end of the Areopagus, from the southeast (Photograph
of Xeue Photographische Gesellschaft) .... 359
238. Site sometimes given as that of the sermon of St. Paul. (Pho-
tograph of the American School) 360
239. Areopagus, from the entrance to the Acropolis; at the right,
the chasm of the Furies. (Photograph of C. H. W.) . . 361
240. Panathenaic ship ; relief from the " Little Metropolis " church.
(Harrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. 153, Fig. 31.) 363
241. Site of the Academy, from Colonus Hippius. (Svoronos, Das
Athener Nationalmuseum, PL 123.) 368
242. Inscription on a grave stele. {IG i. Suppl. 446a.) . . . 371
243. Plan of the cemetery on the Eridanus — the Dipylum Ceme-
tery. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Briickner, Friedhof am Eridanos, Figs. 1 and 16, and Praktika, 1910, PL 1.) . . 372
244. Part of the cemetery on the Eridanus. (Briickner, Praktika,
1910, Fig. 1 ; photograph of Professor Briickner.) . . 373
245. Monument of the knight Dexileos, son of Lysanias of Thoricus.
(Photograph of John Lodge.) 375
246. Gravestones of the family of Coroebus of Melite. (Photograph
of AUnari.) 377
247. Gravestone of Hagnostrate. (Photograph of Alinari.) . . 378
248. Colonus Hippius, from the east (Svoronos, Das Athener JVa-
tionalmuseum, PL 123.) . 379
249. Map of Colonus Hippius and its environs. (Drawing by R. B.
D., after Svoronos, Das Athener Xationalmuseiim, PL 125.) 380
250. Hill of Demeter Euchloiis, from the chapel of Hagia Eleousa.
(Svoronos, Das Athener Nationaimuseum, PL 124.) . . 381
xxiv ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
251. Map of Peiraeus. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Judeich, Topo-
graphic von Athen, Plan 3.) 384
252. Hill of Munychia, seen from across the great harbor of Peiraeus.
(Photograph of the American School.) .... 385
253. View northeast from the Hill of Munychia. (Photograph of
C. H. W.) 386
254. Munychia Harbor, from the Hill of Munychia. (Photograph
of C. H. W.) 388
255. Zea Harbor, from the Hill of Munychia. (Photograph of Simi-
riottis.) 388
256. Peiraeus and the harbor of Cantharus, from the Hill of
Munychia. (Photograph of Simiriottis.) .... 390
257. Remains of shipsheds. (Struck, Griechenland, I, Fig. 196.) . 391
258. Plan and section of shipsheds. (Drawing by R. B. D., after
Judeich, Topographic von Athcn, Figs. 48a and 48b.) . . 392
259. Facade of the Arsenal of Philo, restored. (After Dbrpfeld,
Athenische Mitthcihmgcn, 8 [1883], PI. 9.) . . . . 394
260. Plan of the Arsenal of Philo, restored. (After Dbrpfeld,
Athenische Mittheilungen, 9, [l%'&i],V\. 9.) . . . .394
261. Plan of the small theater of Peiraeus. (Dbrpfeld and Reisch,
Bas Griechischc Theater, Fig. 34.) 401
262. Map of Athens. (Drawing by R. B. D., after Judeich, Topo-
graphic von Athen, Plan 1.) 405
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
INTRODUCTION
SoimcES OF Information
The most important sources for our knowledge of the topography and antiquities of ancient Athens are, of course, the monuments themselves; and imder monuments we include not only buildings and sculpture, but also such remains as coins and inscriptions, though the latter may also be classed as a part of our most valuable Kterary evi- dence. Happily the monumental remains are abundant, and additions are constantly being made by means of ex- cavation and various investigations.
Time, however, has dealt so harshly with most of the ruins, defacing some, destropng others, that we should be quite helpless in our effort to visualize the ancient city without the aid of the Uterary sources. Casual references in the writers of tragedy and comedy, in the historians, the orators, the philosophers, and many other authors, and their commentators, are of inestimable value. But we are still more indebted to special accounts of the city itself. Unfortunately the majority of these have come down to us in a very fragmentary condition. The most regrettable loss is that of the work of Polemo of Ilium (second century B.C.), who in antiquity was highly esteemed. His four books On the Votive Offerings on the Acropolis, his book On the Sacred Way, and his Record of the Namesake
2 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Heroes (Eponymi) of the Tribes and Demes, would be invaluable to us, but we have of them only scanty fragments. The few pages of a book On the Cities of Greece, which has survived under the name of Dicaearchus (published by Heracleides the Critic about 205 B.C.), contain some notes on Athens. Only disconnected excerpts have been pre- served, mostly by Byzantine lexicographers, of similar works by Diodorus the Periegete (fourth century B.C.), Heliodorus of Athens (second century b.c), and several others.
But the greatest treasure of the student of Athenian topography is the extant treatise of Pausanias, in ten books. This author was a native of Asia Minor, his home probably being at or near Lydian Magnesia, in the vicinity of Mt. Sipylus; the journey on which his description seems to have been based was probably made in the period of the Antonines (138-180 a.d.). The first thirty chapters of his first book deal with the city of Athens and the demes of Phalerum and Peiraeus. Since in this book he describes the Stadium as it stood after it was completed by Herodes Atticus, in 143 a.d., and later remarks that the Odeum built by the same man in honor of his wife, who died about 161 A.D., was not built when the book was written, it must have been published between the dates mentioned, or very near the middle of the second century after Christ. Not only in respect to Athens, but also for Olympia, Delphi, and other places, the reliability of Pausanias has repeatedly been tested and not found wanting. His purpose seems to have been to compose an interesting narrative for distant readers and to provide a handbook for the traveler. Com- ing from Phalerum and Peiraeus and entering the city by the principal gate, he guides the reader systematically about the sites which seem to him "worth seeing." Of
INTRODUCTION 3
course we should not assume, as some have done, that Pau- sanias necessarily followed the same route himself, any- more than this would be assumed for a modem guide-book- Second only in importance to the ancient literature are records made by late mediaeval and early modem visitors to Athens. These comprise so numerous a group that only a few can be mentioned in our survey. For about twelve centuries after the period of Pausanias the study of the antiquities of the city received slight attention. In 1395 Xiccolo da Martoni tarried a day there upon his return from a crusade to the Holy Land, and left in his journal a brief account of what he saw. A generation later, in 1436 and in 1447, Cyriac of Ancona spent some time in Athens, but of his commentaries and drawings only portions have survived. Much valuable material is given in the extant records of three anonymous ^^sitors, two Greeks and an ItaHan, who were in the city just after the middle of the fifteenth century. The work of Martin Kraus, a professor of Tubingen, is also valuable.
References to Athens in the literature of the next two hundred years are few and unsatisfactory. About the middle of the seventeenth century, M. Giraud, consul of France and later of England, furnished material which was soon afterwards pubHshed by the scholar Guillet in his Athenes ancienne et nouvelle (1675), the first systematic account of the city to appear in modem times. To the sev- enteenth century belong also several plans of Athens, and especially of the Acropolis, the best being that made for the French Capuchins about 1660. The long letter from Athens of the Jesuit Babin to the Abbe Pecoil of Lyons is interest- ing, but not altogether trustworthy. Of greater moment are the descriptions and drawings made for the Marquis de Nointel, French ambassador to the SubHme Porte, who, with
4 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
his retinue, spent some weeks in Athens in 1674. The most valuable part of the material consists of sketches, made by a Flemish painter in the company (probably not, as for- merly supposed, by Jacques Carrey, the French artist) of various antiquities, notably the pedimental sculptures of the Parthenon (p. 284). Many of the originals were des- tined to perish a few years later ; these sketches therefore are of prime importance. In the very year of De Nointel's visit, George Transfeldt, a runaway slave of a Turkish merchant, was in the city and has left a brief description. Two years later the French artist Jacob Spon and the Eng- lishman Sir George Wheler visited Athens together, and the results of their observations form the first scientific publication of the ruins.
With the end of the seventeenth century came disasters ; the capture of the city by the Venetians, in 1687, was ac- companied by the explosion of powder stored in the Par- thenon, and followed by the demolition or removal of works of art (p. 304) ; yet the attention of the western world was attracted to Athens and its monuments as never before. To the Venetian expedition were due several plans and descriptions; a panorama was also made, based on the Capuchin plans.
As the investigations of the seventeenth century had been mainly French, so those of the eighteenth were preemi- nently EngHsh. Of greatest importance is the work of the painter James Stuart and the architect Nicolas Revett. Supported by wealthy patrons, these men spent three years in Athens (i 751-1754), making careful plans and measurements of the ruins and preparing sketches of ruins and of scenes in and about the city. The four sumptuous volumes of their Antiquities of Athens are epochal, and form an indispensable addition to the literature. Chandler,
INTRODUCTION 5
who was sent out by the Society of Dilettanti, Pococke, Dalton, Wilkins, and Dodwell also visited the city and made useful contributions. Finally Colonel William M. Leake, at the moment when the Greek revolution broke out (182 1), closed the period with his illuminating study of the topog- raphy of Athens, a part of his larger study of Greece.
After the Revolution came the estabhshment of the king- dom of Greece, and an era of tranquillity. The appoint- ment of a German prince, Otho of Bavaria, as king inten- sified the awakened interest of German scholars in the art and history of the country, and their efforts have been ably seconded by scholars of other lands. In Athens at the present time are the headquarters of a well-supported Greek National Archaeological Society, and foreign scholarship is represented by French, German, English, Austrian, and ItaUan, as well as American Schools.^ The twentieth century has opened with a cordial cooperation among these various agencies established for the advancement of research in the field of Greek archaeology and antiquities.
Building Materl4ls and Methods of Construction
Architecture in any land is conditioned largely upon the building materials available ; in this respect Athens was particularly favored. Not only limestones of excellent quality, but true marbles also, are quarried in unlimited quantities not far from the city. The earher inhabitants
^ The National Archaeological Society of Greece was organized in 1837. In 1846 the Ecole Franqaise d'Atkenes was founded; in 1874 the Athenian section of the Kaiserlich Dentsches Archdologisches Instil tU, with headquarters in Berlin; the American School of Classical Studies was established in 1881, the British School at Athens in 1883. The most recent accessions are the Athenian branch of the Oesterreichisches Archdologisches Institut and the R. Scuola Archeologica Italiana, founded, respectively, in 1908 and 1909 ; though Austrian and Italian archaelogfcal stations were maintained some years previously.
6 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
naturally turned to the material nearest at hand, the hard, dark-gray limestone of the Acropolis and the neighboring hills. Of this stone, with its crystalline veins and nodules, the old wall of the Acropolis was built, as well as the foundations and even the superstructures of early build- ings. During a part of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., considerable use was made of Kara limestone. This was of dense texture, lighter in color than the rock of the Acropolis, and of a reddish gray tint. It was quarried near the modern village of Kara, on the side of Mt. Hymettus, about three miles southeast of Athens. But the favorite building stone from the sixth century, or earlier, down into Roman times was a softer yellowish gray Umestone from Peiraeus, the Peiraic hmestone or poros. This is easily worked and was much used for walls and even for sculp- tures. During the Periclean age it was chiefly utilized for foundations, but in all periods after its introduction it was used for entire buildings. Visible surfaces of poros were often covered with stucco and painted, or, in Roman times, veneered with slabs of marble. A hard, coarse breccia was also employed, particularly from the fourth century B.C., but only for foundations and concealed back- ing or supporting walls.
But the Athenians were not slow to appreciate the ad- vantages of marble. After the time of the Peisistratids, marble came more and more into use for the better buildings. The coarse-grained Parian and other island marbles seem to have been used at first in both architecture and sculpture, but they were soon left for the sculptor alone. From the end of the sixth century B.C., the fine-grained, milk-white marble from quarries still visible on the side of Mt. Penteli- cus, was most employed for architecture and often for sculp- ture; especially noteworthy is its use in the splendid
INTRODUCTION 7
structures of the age of Pericles. The oxidization of the iron which Pentelic marble contains has produced a golden- brown patina, the rich tints of which add to the charm of Athenian ruins to-day. In later times the bluish and usually streaked marble of Mt. Hymettus ^ was greatly admired. From the fourth century B.C., and particularly in Hellen- istic buildings, Hymettian marble was even preferred to PenteUc. Mention must also be made of a dark-gray Eleu- sinian stone, which is used as a decorative material in the Propylaea and the Erechtheum, but otherwise very rarely.
Kiln-dried bricks did not come into use at Athens imtil Roman times, and then only to a Umited extent; better materials w^ere too abundant. Sun-dried bricks, on the other hand, were numerous in all periods. Of them were built the walls of private houses and even the sup)erstruc- ture of the Themistoclean walls of the city and of Peiraeus. Roof tiles and ornaments, and water conduits, were usu- ally made of terra cotta, but the pubhc buildings of the best periods were constructed mostly of marble. In Roman days opus incertum, and other forms of concrete construc- tion were introduced as elsewhere in the Roman world.
The earliest walls of Athens, such as the old wall of the Acropolis and the first house walls, were Cyclopean, that is, were built of stones of irregular shape and often of huge dimensions, sUghtly hewn, or quite unhewn; the inter- stices were filled %\'ith smaller stones and clay (Fig. 2). As the stones began to be more carefully cut and fitted, this style developed into the polygonal wall (Figs. 3 and 119). Polygonal masonry was most common in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., but it is found also both earher and later, so that its presence is not always a safe criterion of age.
The later and more regular polygonal wall, with its * Some of the quarries of Pentelicus yield the same kind of marble.
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Fig. 2. — Cyclopean wall belonging to the Pelargicum, at the east end of the Acropolis.
joints approximately horizontal and vertical, perhaps developed into ashlar masonry. The latter appeared at Athens as early as the seventh century B.C., and is the ordi-
FiG. 3. — Polygonal wall in the west ascent to the Acropolis.
INTRODUCTION 9
nary style found in Athenian buildings. In the architec- ture of the best period the blocks were cut and joined with the utmost precision, so that the insertion even of the blade of a penknife between the stones is impossible. The hea\'ier waUs were ordinarily constructed of headers and stretchers, the former at right angles, the latter parallel, to the course of the wall. The surfaces of finished walls were carefully smoothed, but the blocks in many unfinished walls, as those of the Propylaea (p. 236), retain the depressed border to which the remainder of the surface was to be dressed, and often the "bosses" to which the lifting ropes had been attached; with reference to the process of moxdng the stones, however, we should add that most blocks were lifted with derricks by means of grappling hooks and lew- ises, as they are to-day. In later times the raised surface left within the border (the rustica, Figs. 4 and 82) was
Fig. 4. — Ohonpiiun and south wall of its precinct. The upper portion of the wall is a modem restoration.
purposely kept as an ornament. In walls of the majority of buildings the course (orthostatae) above that which (euthynteria) lay on the foimdation or floor was usually of double the height of the other courses of the wall.
lO
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Fig. s- — Method of joining the drums of a column.
Mortar made with lime was not used in walls until Roman times. The Greeks tied blocks of stone or marble together with various sorts of dowels and cramps, usually of bronze, fastened in their sockets with lead. The drums of columns, at least of the principal Athenian buildings, are held in place by round dowels of wood set in squared wooden blocks
which fill the sockets in the stone (Fig. 5). Courses in a wall are kept from shifting by metal dowels ; the blocks in the same course are held together by cramps. The forms of the cramps varied with the differ- ent periods, and furnish a con- venient criterion for the deter- mination of approximate dates. Z-shaped cramps (' — 1) seem to have been used mostly before the end of the sixth century B.C. Double- T-shaped cramps (i — l) are characteristic of the best period, the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C. U-shaped cramps (1 — 1), with the extremities sinking ver- tically into the stones, are used from the fourth century B.C. Swallow-tailed cramps (c==3) are found in walls of various epochs (Fig. 6), and other kinds are occasionally used.
Cramps are of different sizes. The double- T cramps of the Parthenon are about 12 inches long. The largest cramp known, in the Propylaea, is 31.5 inches long.
The three "orders" of architecture (Fig. 7), Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, will be familiar to most readers. Their use in Athenian buildings, and the architectural forms most often employed, will be indicated in connection with the buildings studied in the following pages.
Fig. 6. — Various styles of cramps used in uniting the blocks of a wall.
Number i is the Z-shaped cramp, 2 the double-T-shaped, 3 the U-shaped, with extremities descending vertically into the stones, and 4 the swallow-tailed cramp.
Fig. 7. — The
I Greek architecture.
CHAPTER I
Situation and Natural Environment
The city (Fig. 8) of Athens ^ lies in the midst of an irregular and undulating plain (Fig. 9), which extends from the northeast southwestwards to the Saronic Gulf and is, roughly speaking, about fifteen miles long by ten miles wide. On three sides the plain is hemmed in by momitains, whose foothills extend far out into the central area. The range of Parties is the highest (4631 feet) and longest, extending westward into Mt. Cithaeron and eastward nearly to Mt. PenteUcus. High up in Parnes is the fort of Phyle, where Thrasybulus assembled the little band that was to terminate the Thirty's t>Tanny. The naked ridge of Harma was clearly \isible to the Pythian priests at Athens, watching for the hghtnings over its summit to tell them of the time to send sacrifices to Delphi (p. 61). Far- ther east is Decelea, whence at the end of the Pelopon- nesian War the Spartans spied upon the city; the king's summer palace is now in the \-icinity, at Tatoi.
Northeast of Athens is the pjTamidal peak (3637 feet) of Mt. Pentehcus (Fig. 10), or Brilessus; white scars in its side mark the site of the modem marble quarries, which are not far from the ancient. The summit of the mountain is about eleven and a half miles, in a direct line, from the
1 The city lies in 37° 58' north latitude and 23° 42' east longitude (from Greenwich). The latitude is nearly the same as that of Palermo, Cordova, and San Francisco.
13
14
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Acropolis. Hymettus (3369 feet) is the elongated moun- tain on the eastern borders of the plain. Its sides are
Miles
Kilometers
Fig. 9. — Map of the Athenian plain.
scored with deep and rugged ravines; the southern and lower third, cut off by a high pass, is the Anhydros or Waterless Hymettus. Even more than for its marble was
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT 15
the mountain famous for its bees, which gathered honey, as they do to-day, from the wild th>Tne and savory and other fragrant herbs growing on its rugged slopes. But its most wonderful feature is the glow cast over it by the setting Sim; purpureas colles florentis Hymetti the poet Ov-id called the deep-tinted heights. JMarking the western
Fig. 10. — Mt. Pentelicus in winter, as seen from the American School.
border of the plain are the lower summits (1535 feet) of Mt, Aegaleus, or Corydallus, which divides the Athenian from the Eleusinian plain. Aegaleus is really a spur of Fames and is joined to it by the low ridge (564 feet), over which the railroad to the Peloponnesus now passes. In Aegaleus, almost directly west of Athens, is a low pass (416 feet) where now is the mediaeval monastery of Daphni; here in antiquity ran the Sacred Way which led to the mystic close at Eleusis. In the middle of the plain is another low range, the ancient Anchesmus, which terminates abruptly at the south end in the conical hill of Lycabettus (912 feet, Fig. 11), at the northern edge of modem as of ancient Athens ; it is now crowned by the Uttle chapel of St. George.
i6
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
In shape Athens formed an irregular ellipse (Fig. 22), about a mile and a half long from east to west and a mile wide from north to south. The northern half is fairly level, the southern, hilly. Near the middle of the ellipse is the lofty rock of the AcropoHs, whose west slopes blend with those of the Areopagus and the Pnyx.
Fig. II. — Mt. Lycabettus, from the Acropolis. The palace lies at the right of Lycabettus ; in the background is Mt. Pentelicus.
The hills of Athens were once connected geologically with Mt. Lycabettus, and so the ancients surmised, as we see from a passage in Plato's Critias (p. 112 a). The Acropolis, by nature the most important hill, was the seat of earliest settlement. It is an abrupt and rocky plateau, nearly 1000 feet long by 445 feet wide ; it reaches its great- est elevation (512 feet) northeast of the Parthenon. The
SITUATION .\XD NATUIL\L ENMRONMENT 17
west end descends gradually and provides the only natural approach; the other sides are precipitous, though the fall on the south side was less pronounced before the height was increased by filling, on the inside of the wall. Northwest of the AcropoHs is the Areopagus (pp. 357 ff.), a triangular rock, precipitous about its east end, where it is highest (377 feet), and sloping away gently toward the west. Bounding the city on the southwest is the Pnyx Hill, which is di\'ided by depres- sions into three parts. Of these the southernmost, the Museum Hill (Fig. 144), is the highest (485 feet) ; on its summit stands the con- spicuous monument of Philo- pappus (Fig. 12), which has now lent its name to the hill. The central elevation, the Pn}-x proper, held the ancient meeting place of the ecclesia (pp. iioff.). The northernmost hill is now called the Hill of the Nymphs, from an inscription hewn in its side ; the ancient name is unknown. Here the national observatory^ now stands ; behind it is the pit known as the Barathnun, into which were thrown the bodies of ex- ecuted criminals. A low, flat ridge running north from between the Hill of the Nymphs and the Areopagus is the ancient Colonus Agoraeus (p. 88), the western boundary of the Agora, or market-place. Some hills of minor im- portance will be mentioned later in special connections.
Fig. 12. — Monument of Philopap- pus, on the summit of the Hill of the Muses.
1 8 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
The geological formation of the hills is shown in the ac- companying diagram (Fig. 13).
The Athenian plain has always been scantily watered. The largest river, the Cephissus, has its sources in Fames and Fentelicus, and flows through the middle of the plain, passing about two miles from the city ; it empties into the Fhaleric Bay. Except in time of freshets, however, its
Areopagus
, , (512 fl)
Sea Level
Fig. 13. — Geological formation of the hills of Athens.
water is either exhausted by irrigating ditches or sinks into the gravelly soil before its mouth is reached. Its moisture is not all wasted, for on either side of the stream are miles of luxuriant olive groves. The Ilissus River rises in Hymet- tus and flows westward past the southern borders of the city toward the Cephissus. Its bed (Fig. 56) is usually dry, save for a slender thread or an occasional pool, but a heavy rain sometimes turns the rivulet into a rushing tor- rent. A third river, the Eridanus, had its rise in springs on the side of Lycabettus, and flowed westward through the city, issuing at the Sacred Gate ; but it has gradually been filled or arched over, and its very course until recently was lost. Even in antiquity it was turbid except near its sources. Of two other streams, the Sciron and the Cyclo- borus, we know little more than the names and the fact that they were north of the city.
The city contained a few natural springs; we have in- formation concerning Callirrhoe, south of the Areopagus (pp. 108 ff.), the Clepsydra (pp. 351 f.), and the spring of the Ascle-
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVTRON^IENT 19
pieum (p. 209), on the slopyes of the Acropolis. Another Callirrhoe, in the bed of the IKssus, is apparently supplied by subterranean streams of the river. Of cisterns the num- ber was legion. Peisistratus, in the sixth centur>^ B.C., was probably the first to bring water into the city by a conduit to supplement Callirrhoe ; near the other end of the city's life Hadrian began to build an aqueduct from Pentehcus, which Antoninus Pius completed. This aqueduct and its terminal reserv'oir on the side of Lycabettus have been re- stored and are in use to-day to supply the modern city.
The arid, calcareous soil of the Athenian plain produces Uttle vegetation save olive and fig trees, though by irriga- tion considerable tracts are being redeemed for ^-ineyards and gardens. Thucydides and other ancient writers men- tion the thinness of the soil, which, except along the Cephis- sus, in many places barely hides the rock beneath. The upper slopes of the mountains support the holm oak and a variety of shrubs, but the lower declivities and the strip of plain adjoining have forests, which are subject to destruc- tive fires. Athens itseK contains few trees, except those planted in the parks ; apparently in antiquity it was not much better off in this respect, though we read of planes and other trees in the Agora and the parks and along the Ilissus.
Accurate meteorological observations have been taken at the national observatory for more than half a century, and comparisons have been made between the recent records and all available CA-idence regarding ancient conditions. Continued denudation of both mountains and plain has no doubt increased the aridity of the region, but the records show that forest fires and the destruction of timber by human agencies, such as charcoal burners, were familiar in antiquity; on the whole the climatic conditions seem not to have undergone material change.
20 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
«
The bright and clear Athenian air has ever been a subject of comment. Euripides remarked upon it, and the photog- rapher of to-day can test it empirically. Only a ninth of the days in the year are sunless, and on not more than a dozen days is the sky completely overcast. Rain falls on not more than a hundred days, mostly during the months from October to January. The precipitation in summer is scanty or altogether lacking, as is also the dew, and the total yearly rainfall is only about sixteen inches.^ Morning fogs are frequent, especially in summer, when the distant mountains are often shrouded in a Hght haze even through- out the day. Showers are sometimes accompanied by terrific lightnings, the thunderbolts of Zeus, and heat lightning is often incessant. During the night of August 30, 1862, some 56,000 flashes were counted inside of four hours. Snowfall in the city is rare and Hght, but the mountains are often snow-capped throughout the winter.
The average temperature of January, usually the coldest month, is about 46° F. ; of July, the hottest month, about 81° F. The mean annual temperature is about 68° F., but the heat of July and August is often intense. The highest recorded temperature for the period of observation is 105.26° F., the lowest, 19.58° F. The heat of the soil has once been known to rise as high as 160° F. Dryness of the air is very marked, the percentage of saturation in July and August averaging only 47, from November to January about 75.
The winds keep the air of Athens in almost constant motion and frequently carry with them clouds of dust, which whiten the vegetation, and penetrate the houses; these, and the lack of water, are the bane of the city. Boreas, the stormy north wind from Thrace, which, says
^ The average annual rainfall of Washington, D.C. is about 43 inches.
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT 21
Alciphron's poor man (3, 42, 2), "goes through my sides like an arrow," is really not so frequent (average, 53.6 days in the year) as Caesias, the northeast wind (92.6 days), or Lips, the southwest wind (65 days), or Notus, the south wind (58.7 days). Zephyrus, the west wind (15 days), and ApeHotes, the east wind (10.5 days), are comparatively infrequent.^
GENERAL ASPECT OF THE CITY
The extent and appearance of Athens naturally varied greatly with the diflferent epochs of its history. The time, however, which we should choose, in order to see the city at the zenith of its glory, is the period of the Antonines, ending about 180 a.d., after all its public buildings had been completed and before the era of ruin and decay had set in. Fortunately this is just the period that we best know, thanks to the description of Pausanias.
How large a population Athens had cannot be accurately determined. It was never large. Modem estimates vary greatly, but we may well believe that the entire population, including Peiraeus, at no time exceeded 200,000.
Some years after the Persian Wars, Peiraeus was laid out by the Milesian architect Hippodamus in rectangular blocks, but Athens itself, like most ancient and, indeed, most modem cities until recent times, grew up after no comprehensive plan.
A few wade avenues led from the principal gates in the city wall. The broadest was the street leading from the Dipylum to the Agora (p. 79) , which was lined with colon- nades on both sides. At the eastern end of the Acropolis was the impressive street of the Tripods (p. 180). a favorite
^ For the personifications of the winds in the reliefs of the Horologium, see pages 143 f.
22 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
promenade. South of the Areopagus a considerable stretch of the famous road along which the Panathenaic procession passed, has been uncovered, but this is found to be only thirteen to eighteen feet wide, and shut in closely on either side by blank walls of precincts and dwellings. The streets debouching on these main arteries were narrow, in great part like alleys. Few of the streets were paved, and side- walks were unknown.
We have little information about the private houses of the city and must depend chiefly for our knowledge upon
Fig. 14. — Reconstruction of a house at Priene, in Asia Minor.
those excavated at such places as Priene and Delos (Fig. 14). The houses were built about central courts, which afforded light and air, and most of them were but one story in height. The front wall, built on the edge of the street, was pierced only by an occasional window and by the door, the latter sometimes set back in a vestibule. A traveler of the Hellenistic period remarks (Ps.-Dicaearchus 1,1): "The majority of the houses are cheap, but there are a few good ones ; strangers who come upon them unexpectedly could hardly be made to believe that this is the celebrated city
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT 23
of the Athenians." This statement, however, has a bear- ing only upon the general appearance of the exterior, for the interiors of many houses must have been fairly ornate. Alcibiades is said to have had his walls . decorated by a painter, and after his time some houses must have been still more sumptuous. In the fourth century B.C. we find Demosthenes complaining (3, 29) that "some have built private houses more magnificent than the pubUc buildings."
Along the more frequented streets the lower front rooms seem often to have been used as shops, either by owners or tenants, as at Pompeii. The erection, in a niche or a ves- tibule before the house, of a pillar altar of Apollo of the Streets, or a herm, or a hecateum, or all three, was a gen- eral custom. Herms were also set up at street crossings. The location of a house was rarely or never designated by streets, the names of which, in fact, were usually without marked significance, but by some well-known building or site near which it stood.
The traces of dwellings in Coele, between the extremities of the Long Walls on the western slopes of the Pnyx hills, deserve mention. The exposed rock of this district is scarred by hundreds of cut- tings where once stood the simple habitations of a con- siderable population. At one point, possibly an open meeting place, seven rude seats are hewn in the native rock (Fig. 1 5) . Another deep cutting, with three adjacent rock-hewn chambers (now closed by iron gratings) , has long been called the Prison of Socrates (Fig. 16), with whom it has nothing to do;
Fig. 15. — Seats hewn in the rock, on the side of the Hill of the Muses.
24 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
it was doubtless the site of an unusually pretentious dwelling.
The patriotic Athenian spent most of his time in the open, and the glory of his city was the public buildings. The center of Athenian life was the Agora, situated on the lower ground north of the Areopagus. It was entered
Fig. i6. — The so-called Prison of SociaLc?, a paii oi iin ancient dwelling.
from the northwest by the brilliant avenue leading from the Dipylum gate, and was flanked on all sides by works of architecture, sculpture, and painting. To mention only the objects of chiefest note, the entering visitor, if he turned to the right, saw the Royal Stoa, or Colonnade, the Stoa of Zeus Savior, and the temple of Paternal Apollo. The ridge behind these bore the temple of Hephaestus and the shrine of the hero Eurysaces. Against the slope of the Areopagus stood the sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods, where were the pubUc archives; in her precinct, too, were the senate house and the circular Tholus. Not far away
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT 25
were the Orchestra, with the revered images of the Tyran- nicides, the temple of Ares, and the statues of the Namesake Heroes of the tribes. On the left stood the Painted Porch and the Theseum (pp. 152 ff.). Back of these rose the im- posing Stoa of Attains, and near it the Ptolemaeum. Still farther on stood the spacious Stoa of Hadrian and the great Market of Caesar and Augustus ; in the rear of these the octagonal Tower of the Winds. Then, among and within all the buildings and precincts we must imagine almost countless images of gods and heroes and distinguished men ; while everj'where graceful and brightly appareled men and women, not a few of whom are known and dear to us, round out the briUiant picture with warmth and life.
Following the road from the Prytaneum about the east end of the Acropolis, our traveler came upon another famous quarter in southeast Athens. Here the huge temple of Olympian Zeus and, across the river, the Stadium, stood out conspicuously; while not far away were the famous Gardens and the shaded parks of the Lyceum and Cyno- sarges. Or, foUo%Wng the street of Tripods at the east foot of the Acropolis, he passed the Music Hall of Pericles to the great theater of Dionysus and the two temples hard by; then continuing westward he came to the shrine of Asclepius and Health, or walked through the long colon- nade of Eumenes to the lofty Music Hall of Herodes, with its spreading roof of cedar.
To crown ail, the \-isitor ascended the Acropolis, past the deHcate temple of Wingless Victory, between the exquisite columns and through the open doors of the Propylaea, into the middle of the sacred area. All about him were scores of statues, masterpieces in marble and bronze ; on every side great works of architecture; the whole a marv-elous harmony of brightness and color. Foremost among the
26 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
buildings, the graceful Erechtheum and the stately Par- thenon; and in the Parthenon, towering on its pedestal the awe-compelling statue, in gold and ivory, of Athena, the city's guardian.
THE DEMES
Certain districts of Athens came to be known by special names. Limnae, the Marshes, was the region south of the Areopagus, in which lay the oldest precinct of Dionysus; this area has been laid bare by excavation (p. 83). Agrae, or Agra, sacred to Artemis Agrotera (Huntress), who had a temple there, embraced the district about the Stadium. Hiera Syke, or Sacred Fig Tree, lay just outside the city on the way to Eleusis. Near by was Sciron, a region not al- together reputable. Colonus included the hill west of the Agora. Hunger Plain (Limoupedion) was behind the Pry- taneum, probably on the north slope of the Acropolis. The situation of the precinct Eretria is unknown. The eastern extension of the city founded by Hadrian was called New Athens, or the Athens of Hadrian.
More important than these districts were the divisions of the city into demes (Fig. 262), corresponding in a measure with American wards. The problems involved in deter- mining the limits of the demes are complicated and do not demand attention here. Coele, as we have seen (p. 23), was the Hollow in the rear of the Pnyx hills. North of Coele was Melite, which embraced the hilly region west of the Agora. Besides numerous public buildings, Melite contained the residences of many prominent citizens, among them Themistocles, Phocion, Epicurus, and Callias. Cera- meicus, the Potters' Quarter, included the Agora and the territory northwest, even beyond the city wall, which ac- cordingly divided the deme into two parts, Outer* and Inner Cerameicus. A shaft of Hymettian marble set up against
SITUATION AND NATURAL ENMRONMENT 27
the wall outside of the Dipylum (Fig. 17) bears the inscrip- tion in letters of the second century B.C., "boundary of Cerameicus," the only such ter- minal known. Outer Ceramei- cus is mentioned by Thucydides (2, 34, 5) as "the most beautiful suburb of the city." In both sections of the deme, public and private buildings were numer- ous. Since the Agora was in- cluded in the deme, the terms " Cerameicus " and " Agora " were used by late writers with- out distinction of meaning (p. 82).
Beyond those which have been mentioned, there is Uttle certainty in the location of the demes. Colly tus was one of the favorite quarters of the city ; it bordered on Mehte and prob- ably extended south of the Areopagus and the Acropolis. Aeschines and Diogeiton are said to have Hved in Collytus, and the street of the same name that ran through the deme is reported to have been a veritable bazaar. Tertullian {De anima 20) gravely asserts that boys learned to talk a month earher in Collytus than elsewhere, but the statement doubtless came from the witti- cism of some comic poet, who, as has been suggested, may have attributed such precocity to the deme because of the proximity of the orators' bema on the Pnyx. If Collytus was south, then Cydathenaeum perhaps extended north
Fig. 17. — Boundary stone of the deme of Cerameicus, near the Dipylum.
The stone bears the inscription: opof Kepa/ictKov.
28 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
of the Acropolis to the Eridanus, on whose bank may have been the tannery of Cleon, a Cydathenaean. Scambonidae may have been north of the Eridanus.
Of the demes outside the wall, Laciadae was at the north- west along the Sacred Way, and contained a precinct of the Hero Lacius. Ceiriadae lay to the west of Melite and included the Barathrum (p. 17). Diomeia was probably southeast of the city (p. 65), and embraced the Cynosarges. Ancyle included the district of Agrae and the Stadium. Agryle lay to the east of the city. Peiraeus and Phalerum were south ; they will be discussed at greater length later on (pp. 383 ff.). Only one other deme need be mentioned, that of Colonus, which included the famous hill of Colonus Hippius (pp. 379 ff.), a mile north of the city, and probably the Academy. Whether or not the Colonus in the city was a separate deme, is a moot point.
The various demes in the city, like those scattered as villages throughout Attica, were political subdivisions of the ten tribes as organized by Cleisthenes.
CHAPTER II Historical Sketch
Along with the proud claim that they were autochthonous, the Athenians preserved a distinct tradition of an original race of Pelasgians driven out by later lonians. The excava- tions of the last generation have shown that this tradition contains more than a kernel of truth. The Pelasgians are perhaps to be identified with the Mycenaean race, which, as we now know, reached a high stage of civiUzation in Greece, as well as the islands and coasts of the eastern Mediterra- nean, and was displaced before the beginning of the first millennium before Christ by an Achaean people, coming we know not whence. From the Achaeans the Athenians of history were sprung. A considerable admixture of Oriental influence may indicate that the tradition of an Egyptian Cecrops as the city's founder is something besides a myth.
Of the early Mycenaean settlement we have material evidence in the ruins of the strong wall, the Pelasgicum, or Pelargicum, that encompassed the Acropohs (pp. 48 ff.), and the numerous remains of houses of Cyclopean masonry that once cro\\Tied the hill. We can even locate the palace of the old Mycenaean lord — be he Cecrops or Pandion or Erechtheus — near the middle of the north side of the Acropohs (p. 312) ; his retainers had their houses at its foot.
The historj' of this early period was soon veiled in myth, and the facts were forgotten by the Athenians of the classi- cal age. Writing centuries later, when Athens is at the
29
3© ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
zenith of her power, Thucydides (2, 15) tries on archaeo- logical grounds to determine the outlines of the city which succeeded the first settlement, or, as he calls it, "The city before Theseus." "Before his time," says the historian, " the city consisted of what is now the Acropolis and the land which lies at its foot and faces, in a general way, toward the south. The evidence is as follows : The sanctuaries in the AcropoHs belong also to other gods," — that is, be- sides Athena, the presiding deity of the AcropoHs, — "and those outside are situated more towards this part of the city, as, the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, the Pythium, the sanctuary of Earth, and that of Dionysus in the Marshes, in whose honor the older Dionysia are celebrated on the twelfth of the month Anthesterion, as the lonians descended from the Athenians still keep up the custom; and other sanctuaries are also situated here. And the fountain which now, since the tyrants so reconstructed it, is called Nine-spouts (Enneacrunus) , but long ago, when the natural springs were visible, was named Fair-flowing (Callirrhoe), this, because it was near at hand, they used for the most important purposes, and even to-day the custom is kept up of using its water before weddings and for other holy rites. On account of the old settlement there, the Athe- nians up to the present time call the Acropolis Polls," or City.
This passage has been much discussed, and the situation of every one of the sanctuaries that Thucydides mentions has been brought into question. But assuming, as seems warranted, that our author has in mind the sanctuaries best known, we observe that he names them in their proper order from east to west (Fig. 18), — Olympieum, Pythium, sanc- tuary of Earth, Dionysium, and Nine-spouts (pp. 161 ff. and 108 ff .) . The hoary antiquity Of each of these is beyond
fflSTORIC.\L SKETCH 31
a doubt. Not one of them, strictly speaking, is south of the Acropolis, nor does Thucydides claim that they are ; but the argument suffices to show that the pre-Thesean city lay in this general direction.
r
ACROPOLIS ^
////i/ifi 1 \\\\\
OLVMPiajM
7 ^
Fig. 18. — The situation of ancient sanctuaries, according to Thucydides.
Cecrops is said to have di\aded Attica into twelve inde- pendent states ; Theseus, to have united it into one king- dom, with Athens as its capital. This "synoecism" of Theseus, or whoever accompUshed it, may be put somewhere near a thousand years before Christ — tradition gives 1259 B.C. as the date — and marks the beginning of Athens's greatness. We need not Hnger further in the misty period of the kings, or trace the gradual evolution of the democ- racy ; our present purpose is to sketch the material growth of the city rather than to rev-iew her constitutional develop- ment. The building of new shrines for the new divinities introduced from the newly alUed demes is the most that we can definitely ascribe to those remote times; of this the antiquity of their worship is sufficient evidence. But
32 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
the construction of other buildings must have gone on apace, and to an early epoch must be attributed the Ancient Agora, which was near the entrance to the Acropolis, and surrounded by public and private edifices.
The city rapidly outgrew the narrow district south of the Acropolis and the Areopagus, and the newer shrines were built on their northern slopes. Soon the center of the city's life was transferred to the valley north of the Areopagus, and here the public buildings began to be con- structed.
The old Pelargicum about the Acropolis no longer sufficed to protect the city, and a new wall was built (pp. 52 fl.), following on the west the summits of the hills and extending on the south and north to the Ilissus and Eridanus rivers. Precisely when this wall was built we do not know, but it seems to have existed before the unsuccessful attempt of Cylon, about 630 B.C., to express the popular dislike of Draco's laws and make himself tyrant of the city.
What contributions the lawgiver Solon may have made to the material development of the city, we cannot tell. The successors of Solon, however, the tyrant Peisistratus and his family, set their stamp on Athenian architecture. To Peisistratus is to be credited the beginning of the great temple of Olympian Zeus (pp. 162 f.), which was destined to wait seven centuries for its completion. He, too, was probably responsible for the system of aqueducts that brought water from Hymettus to the ancient spring of CaUirrhoe and transformed it into the elaborate fountain of Enneacrunus (pp. 108 flf.). His son Hippias began the fortification of the hill Munychia at Peiraeus ; his other son Hipparchus founded the gymnasium in the Academy (p. 367) ; and his grandson Peisistratus dedicated an altar of the Twelve Gods at the new center of the city, where all roads
fflSTORIC-\L SKETCH 33
met (p. 99), as well as an altar of Pythian Apollo (p. 168) near the OhTnpieum.
The AcropoUs the Peisistratids especially adorned. They strengthened and added to its old wall, and built an orna- mental Propylum (p. 226) at the western entrance. The old ''hundred-foot " temple they surrounded with a peristyle and adorned with new sculpture (p. 314) ; the origin of various other buildings and sculptures of the sacred hill was due to them or to their inspiration.
The artists whom the fame, or the largesses, of the Peisis- tratids drew to the city beautified it ^vith statues and other works of art, as the poets and philosophers whom they attracted glorified it intellectually and spiritually. The final blow which made Peisistratus master of the state was struck in 540 B.C. ; Hippias was banished in 510 B.C.. his brother ha\'ing been assassinated four years earUer. The half-century of the rule of the ''t>Tants" was the first of the briUiant periods in the history- of Athens.
The legislation of Cleisthenes followed close on the banish- ment of Hippias, and the arrested democracy began to develop anew. The t\Tannicides, Harmodius and Aristo- geiton, who had killed Hipparchus, were honored with stat- ues, by the sculptor Antenor (p. 105) ; and Leaena (Lioness), the mistress of Aristogeiton, who under torture had refused to betray the other conspirators, was commemorated in a statue of a tongueless lioness (p. 253). The enthusiastic Demus obhterated the inscription on the altar of the Twelve Gods, and stopped work on the Olympieum, but the up- building of the city by no means ceased. Statues of the Namesake Heroes of the ten new tribes were set up (p. 98) ; a bronze chariot was dedicated on the Acropohs in honor of a \ictory over the Boeotians and Chalcidians in 506 B.C. (p. 229) ; the Tholus, or Rotunda, was built for the pry-
34 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
tanists of the senate (p. 98) ; and probably a beginning was made of the first temple on the site of the Parthenon (p. 272). The accidental collapse of the wooden bleachers during a dramatic contest (about 500 B.C., p. 192) led to the construc- tion of the first stone seats in the theater. During his archonship (493/2 B.C.) the astute Themistocles began the fortification of Peiraeus. Perhaps on his upright rival, Aristeides, rested the responsibihty of the decision to use marble instead of poros for the Parthenon, introducing a second period in the history of that structure (p. 273).
Thus by the time of the Persian Wars Athens had begun to be a city of beauty, — even if it was still so little known abroad that Darius, the Persian king, after the burning of Sard is could ask (Herodotus, 5, 105): "The Athenians! Who are they?" The first Persian invasion, which ended disastrously for the invader at Marathon, in 490 B.C., brought only glory to Athens ; but ten years later Xerxes, after his costly victory at Thermopylae, moved with all his host on the devoted city. A handful of Athenians, not persuaded by the plea of Themistocles that the Delphic advice to protect themselves behind a wooden wall referred to ships, barricaded the Acropolis, but the Persians soon found an ascent, and both Acropolis and city were at their savage mercy (p. 157). Walls, temples, houses, were almost completely destroyed. What Xerxes spared, his general, Mardonius, the following year, razed to the ground. The old temple of Athena was laid low, the partly finished Parthenon was burnt in scaffold, statues were demolished or, as in the case of the Tyrannicides, carried off to Susa. Athens was in ruins.
As soon, however, as the invaders had been driven from the land, the Athenians returned and began, with what we are wont to think occidental vigor, to rebuild their desolated
HISTORICAL SKETCH 35
city. Themistocles, who had been responsible for the success at Salamis, took the lead. To meet the rising jealousy of Sparta, the first necessity was the reconstruc- tion of the wall. While Themistocles, by clever diplomacy, held off the Spartans, the Athenians, men, women, and children, labored feverishly at the wall, using whatever material came to hand. This task accomplished, Themis- tocles could turn to his cherished scheme of fortifying Peiraeus and her excellent harbors, which were to accommo- date the new Athenian navy. That project and the con- struction of the Long Walls, which should bind the city to its port, progressed rapidly.
Time did not suffice to lay out a new plan for the city, nor had a Hippodamus (p. 21) yet arisen ; so the new Athens followed the Unes of the old, but with far greater magnificence. On the Acropolis the Hecatompedum, or "hundred-foot" temple, was partially rebuilt, without the peristyle, for a treasury; the Propylum was restored; the broken statues were cleared away and were used with other material as rubbish to level the surface of the hill; the wall was rebuilt outside of the old Pelargicum, and in its sides were inserted architectural remnants of the Heca- tompedum and the Parthenon ; and to commemorate the victory a colossal bronze image of Athena was erected from Persian spoils. In the Agora and other parts of the lower city similar work went forward. Old buildings, the Royal Stoa, the temple of Paternal Apollo, the theater, and others were repaired ; new buildings, such as the Stoa of the Zeus of Freedom, were erected. To replace the group by Antenor, new statues of the Tyrannicides were set up beside the ancient Orchestra.
Under Cimon, who succeeded to the primacy about 472 B.C., the work of building continued. Cimon carried for-
36 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
ward vigorously the construction of the Long Walls and rebuilt or reenforced the south wall of the Acropolis. He planted plane trees about the Agora and laid out the Academy as a shaded park ; his own magnificent gardens he threw open for public use. The supposed bones of Theseus, which Cimon brought back from Scyros, were laid with ceremony in the Theseum near the east side of the Agora (p. 151). At the north edge of the Agora rows of herms, probably also a Hall of Herms, were set up by Cimon near the spot where his brother-in-law Peisianax built his own stoa, which later was adorned with paintings and came to be known as the Painted Porch.
Athens reached the zenith of her majesty under the ad- ministration of Pericles, during approximately the third quarter of the fifth century b.c. The administrative center of the Delian Confederacy, which was formed after the war, in order to resist Persia, was, in 454 B.C., trans- ferred from Delos to Athens, and Pericles found a way to make its funds available for beautifying the new capital.
The defensive policy of Themistocles and Cimon was approved and continued. The harbor of Peiraeus was supplied with an elaborate and costly system of shipsheds (pp. 391 ff), and the seaport town itself was laid out regularly by Hippodamus of Miletus. The Long Walls connecting Peiraeus with Athens were finally completed, a new South Wall, parallel with the North Wall being erected in place of the less direct Phaleric Wall.
The earliest of the splendid buildings of this period seems to have been the Odeum, or Music Hall, of Pericles, on the southeast slope of the Acropolis. Its conical roof is said to have been made of masts from the ruined ships of Xerxes (p. 201). The gymnasium of the Lyceum was also
fflSTORIC\L SKETCH 37
constructed, and numerous other buildings in the lower city, to say nothing of scores of statues and paintings, of which we have only scanty knowledge, or have even lost the names. But the buildings of the Acropohs are the glory of the age. Whether or not at the outset Pericles had conceived a systematic plan for adorning the sacred hill, is stUl a moot question.
At about the middle of the century, perhaps after the battle of Oenophyta, in 457 B.C., when Athens first triumphed over her old rival, Sparta, a decree was passed pro\-iding for the construction of the little temple of Athena Victor)- on the high bastion beside the entrance to the sacred inclosure. Some doubt has been entertained as to its immediate erection (pp. 242 ff.), but this seems mosth'kely. The Parthenon, as a worthy home of the city's protectress Athena, was probably begun in 447 b.c. on the site of the building destroyed by the Persians. In 438 B.C. the temple was ready for the great gold and ivory statue of Athena, by Pheidias, and five or six years later it was completed. Built entirely of white Pentelic marble, like the majority of the buildings of this age, it was executed throughout with extraordinar}' painstaking, and was richly decorated with sculptures, as it would seem by several of the leading artists of the day. On the south the wall of the Acropolis was increased in height to support the terrace, which was thus brought to a level with the rock on the north side and afforded a wide promenade about the temple.
The Propylaea, designed to extend quite across the west end of the hill, were begun in 437 B.C., and were brought al- most to completion at a cost, so it is said, of 2012 talents, or about 82,400.000, in only five years ; the opposition of the priests of Athena Victory and of Artemis Brauronia, and perhaps the troublous times preceding the Peloponnesian
38 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
War, effected a curtailment of the plan, so that the Propylaea were never wholly finished (p. 236).
Still, serious as was the effect of the war, building opera- tions were by no means wholly suspended. Some work continued, and the peace of Nicias, commencing in 421 B.C., seems to have been accompanied by a special revival of building interest. The Erechtheum, not improbably also a conception of Pericles, was apparently begun on the cessation of hostilities. Work proceeded somewhat slowly, and the building was still unfinished,- though near comple- tion, in 409 B.C. On Colonus Agoraeus the Hephaesteum, or "Theseum," as for several centuries it has wrongly been called, seems to have been ready in 421 B.C. for the statues of Hephaestus and Athena, by Alcamenes. In 420 B.C. a private citizen, Telemachus, founded on the south slope of the AcropoHs a sanctuary of Asclepius and Hygieia. At about the same time a new temple of Dionysus was built, perhaps by the famous general Nicias, near the theater, and provided with a gold and ivory statue, by Alcamenes. Numerous minor buildings and statues belong to the same period.
Eventually, however, the war sapped the strength of the city. The plague which followed the overcrowding of the first years of the contest so reduced the population that Cleon secured the contraction of the wall on the southwest. Meanwhile came the erection of new fortifications at Peiraeus and on Museum Hill, soon followed by their over- throw. The mutilation of the herms before the Sicilian Expedition was an augury of the later destruction, by Athenians themselves, of many votive offerings of metal, and the transformation of them into bullion. Finally, the Peloponnesian War and the fifth century closed with the demolition, by the Spartans, of the wall of Peiraeus and a
mSTORICAL SKETCH 39
large part of the Long Walls, and with the ruin of the ship- sheds, the remains of which were later sold by the Thirty for three talents.
The restoration of the democracy, as the fourth century was about to begin, was again accompanied by the impulse to rebuild and improve. As early as 395 B.C. work began on the walls, and it was carried forward with fresh vigor after the return of Conon with spoils from his xdctory at Cnidus, Rebuilt of soUd stone, these are in the main the walls which survive to-day. At Peiraeus Conon reared a temple of Cnidian Aphrodite in honor of his \'ictory, and in the upper city his serN-ices, and those of his son, were rewarded with statues in the Agora and on the AcropoHs. Presently the fleet was strengthened and the shipsheds reconstructed in much their former condition. Xo ex- tensive building operations were undertaken in the first half of the century, but sculptors and painters. Cephisodotus, Praxiteles, Scopas, Euphranor, Parrhasius. and others, vied with one another in the beautifjing of former build- ings. Statues and other memorials were set up of divini- ties, of distinguished Athenians, and of foreign patrons of the city.
During the brilliant regime of the orator Lycurgus, from 338 to about 325 B.C., a new revival of building commenced. The walls were again repaired, the shipsheds were increased in number, and the magnificent Arsenal of Philo (p. 393) was erected in Peiraeus. In Athens the Dionysiac Theater (pp. 192 ff.) was completely rebuilt in stone ; the Stadium was laid out and excavated (p. 175) south of the Ilissus; a new double gate, the Dipylum, took the place of the oldThriasian Gate, at the end of the thoroughfare from Peiraeus (pp. 63 f .) ; the Lyceum was furnished with a palaestra and planted anew with trees. Besides larger works, Lycurgus is said
40 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
to have "embellished the whole city with many other structures."
After the battle of Granicus, in 334 B.C., Alexander the Great sent to Athens three hundred sets of Persian armor, in which were included the shields afterwards used to adorn the architrave of the Parthenon ; and he and his wife and mother made other gifts to the city.
Meanwhile, though the population was depleted, increas- ing commerce had augmented individual fortunes and encouraged luxury. Private houses became more magnifi- cent (p. 23), and display more common. The entire street of Tripods, about the east end of the Acropolis, was lined with private monuments for the exhibition of tripods set up by men who had won choragic victories (p. 180), Cemeteries, too, were adorned with elaborate gravestones. Indeed, this species of luxury was carried so far that in 317 B.C. Demetrius of Phalerum issued an order to limit such display (p. 23). On the whole the period of Lycurgus must have surpassed in splendor, if not in dignity, even the Age of Pericles.
In 322 B.C. Athens was forced to bow her neck to the yoke of Macedon, and received the garrison of Antipater into the fort on Munychia. The long period which follows is in the main one of reminiscent glory. The alternate repair and decay of the walls bear witness to the vacillating and declining spirit of the Athenians, now fast approaching serviHty; the fact that room could be found within the walls for extensive gymnasia and spacious gardens, like those of Epicurus, indicates a decline in population. Now subject, now nominally free, the city was politically insignificant, though increasingly renowned as a center of culture.
Athens was soon involved in the struggle between Cas- sander and Polyperchon ; and in honor of the victory of
HISTORICAL SKETCH 41
Pleistarchus, Cassander's brother and proxy, a trophy was erected upon a gateway in the Agora (p. 125). Cassander put the city into the hands of Demetrius of Phalerum, who maintained a status of peace, but contributed little to the city's material growth. The obsequious people set up no fewer than three hundred and sixty statues of Demetrius in Athens and Attica, but after his withdrawal all save one of these were destroyed. In 307 B.C. Demetrius PoUorcetes (Sacker of Cities) was set over the city by his father Antig- onus. Both father and son were promptly enrolled as Namesake Heroes of new tribes and their statues erected beside those of the other Eponymi (p. 98). Gilded statues of the two men were also set up near the Tyrannicides, a place long held almost sacred. Five years later the city's despot was the impecunious Lachares, who robbed the Parthenon of all available gold and silver, even trying, apparently without success, to carry off the gold sheathing of the great statue of Pheidias.
Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.) was the first of the so-called foreign benefactors of the city. The Ptole- maeum which he built near the Agora was the earliest extensive gymnasium erected within the walls. Under Egyptian influence a temple of the divinity Serapis was built north of the AcropoHs. In return for his favors Ptolemy also was made the eponymous hero of another new tribe, and his statue was set up with the other Eponymi. In 229 B.C. the Diogeneum, in honor of Diogenes, another Macedonian lord, was built east of the Agora. The interest of other Eg}T)tian and Macedonian benefactors followed.
During the same period the Pergamene monarchs also began to do homage to the ancient city. Attalus I (241- 197 B.C.) dedicated several groups of statues on the Acropolis (pp. 308 f .) and was made a Namesake Hero. Eumenes,
42 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
his brother (197-159 B.C.), erected the long and elaborate stoa west of the theater. Attains II (159-138 B.C.) reared a magnificent stoa in the form of a bazaar on the east edge of the Agora. As thank offerings the Athenians raised for Eumenes and Attains two colossal statues.
In 200 B.C. Philip V of Macedon attempted to force his way into the city, but was resisted successfully (p. 64). In revenge he devastated Cynosarges, the Lyceum, the Academy, and other places outside the walls; and the Athenians fatuously retaliated by destroying all the statues of Philip and his ancestors which were in the city.
The Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 B.C.) undertook to complete the temple of Olympian Zeus, which had stood unfinished for several centuries, but he died before his task was done (p. 163). He also presented the city with a gilded head of Medusa, which was affixed to the south wall of the Acropolis as an "averter of evil."
Athens had come under the pervading influence of Rome long before the crushing blow dealt by Mummius, in 146 B.C., brought Greece finally under Roman sway. The city's ready submission gave her half a century of peace. Of this period we know little. A bema for Roman orators in front of the Stoa of Attalus is mentioned ; and to this time may perhaps be ascribed the removal of the Prytaneum to its new site north of the Acropolis.
Unfortunately, however, the city was soon inveigled into taking part in the war waged by Mithridates, king of Pon- tus, against the Romans. Sulla, ruthless avenger, appeared before the gates. The siege, during which the Academy and Lyceum were again laid waste, ended on March i, 86 B.C., when Sulla succeeded in making a breach in the wall between the Sacred and Peiraic gates. The devasta- tion which followed was surpassed only by that of Xerxes
mSTORICAL SKETCH 43
four centuries earlier. For a time the Acropolis held out under the leadership of the demagogue Aristion, but it was taken and plundered. Either Sulla or Aristion burned the Odeum of Pericles ; several columns of the unfinished Olympieum and numerous works of art were taken away for shipment to Rome ; many pubhc buildings were looted and demolished. Peiraeus, which soon }delded, suffered a fate even worse. Much of the city, including the Arsenal of Philo, the docks, and the shipsheds, was burned. The walls of Peiraeus and the Long Walls were laid in ruins.
Henceforward Athens became more and more Roman in character. She did not lack later benefactors, but most of them were Romans. Pompey gave the city fifty talents for the restoration of public buildings. The Cappadocian king Ariobarzanes rebuilt the Odeum of Pericles. Cicero's wealthy friend Atticus made the city his home and enriched it with gifts, but seems to have made no additions to its buildings. Cicero himself planned to build a festal gateway to the Academy, but did not execute his design. When Brutus visited the city after the assassination of Caesar, the people enthusiastically dedicated statues of Brutus and Cassius beside those of the old TjTannicides ; but these cannot have stood long, for Antony's arrival a little later was the signal for a transfer of obsequious homage. The colossi of Eumenes and Attains were reinscribed as statues of Antony, and even cult statues of Antony and Cleopatra were erected on the Acropolis. The colossi were blown do%\Ti by a tempest just before the battle of Actium — an evil omen !
Augustus was very friendly to Athens, and his reign brought many new buildings to the city. The most impor- tant of these was the large and ornate market built to the east of the Agora and adorned with statues of the Juhan
44 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
family (pp. 136 ff.)- The emperor's general, Agrippa, was honored with a lofty equestrian monument at the entrance to the Acropolis (p. 238), and east of the Parthenon a small round temple was reared to Rome and Augustus (pp. 310 f.). A plan was formed by various eastern kings to finish the Olympieum in honor of Augustus, but it came to naught.
The first century and a half of the Christian era were marked by the continued good-will of Rome and the erection of countless statues in the honor of distinguished Romans, but only a few buildings were constructed. Nero's stay at Athens was accompanied by a rebuilding of the stage of the theater (p. 198), by the placing of a long inscrip- tion on the front of the Parthenon (p. 303), and by various dedicatory offerings. A certain Diodes repaired the temple and precinct of Asclepius. A conspicuous monument was erected (114-116 a.d.) on Museum Hill to Gaius Julius Antiochus Philopappus of Commagene in Syria. And at some time during the period a broad flight of marble steps was constructed leading up to the entrance of the Acropolis.
Of all the kingly or imperial patrons of Athens, however, Hadrian was the most beneficent and the most lavish. He showed his favor by repeated and protracted residence in the city. His reign was "a last bright gleam from the west after a murky afternoon and before the descent of the long twilight and the still longer hopeless night." ^ An entire new quarter, New Athens or the Athens of Hadrian, was laid out on the east side of the city and filled with villas, baths, and dwellings. The wall was extended to surround this area, and a triumphal gateway erected on the line between the old city and the new. At last the great temple begun by Peisistratus seven centuries before was completed
1 Wachsmuth, Die Stadt Alhcn, I, 686.
fflSTORICAL SKETCH 45
and dedicated by the emperor himself, in 130 a.d., to Olympian Zeus ; while the large area about the temple was leveled, walled, and tilled with altars and statues. North of the Acropolis were built the spacious Stoa and Library of Hadrian (pp. 145 fif.) ; elsewhere were erected a temple of Hera and Panhellenian Zeus, a Pantheon, and a gymnasium ; but of these we know Uttle more than the names. In the theater (p. 199) an imperial box was made, and statues were set up in each of the wedge-shaped divisions of seats.
The work of restoration and improvement continued un- der Antoninus Pius and Marcus AureHus ; the former com- pleted the aqueduct begun by Hadrian to supply the city with water from Pentelicus. Under the Antonines the most generous benefactor was Tiberius Claudius Herodes Atticus of Marathon. In addition to various minor structures he rebuilt the Stadium and seated it with white marble (p. 175) ; and. in honor of his wife Regilla, who died about 161 a.d., he erected the magnificent Odeum at the southwest comer of the Acropolis. On the hill at one side of the Stadium Herodes dedicated a temple of Fortune. His tomb is said to have been ''in the Stadium."
The buildings of Herodes Atticus were the last of impor- tance erected in the ancient city. We read of a fort and of a new statue of PaUas in the Palladium on the AcropoUs, of two new pylons, and of some last repairs to the stage of the theater by a man named Phaedrus. but of no conspicu- ous buildings. The city became still more popular, how- ever, as a university town, a gymnasium Musarum, as Symmachus calls it, to which came throngs of youths from all parts of the world. The professors are said to have lectured in small theaters, some of which were adorned with marble, but whether or not these were new buildings, we do not know. Of the schools, such men as Julian were
46 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
enthusiastic supporters. Sentiment and ratiocination, rather than progress, marked the age.
After the period of stagnation came decay. A horde of Costobocs, which invaded Greece, seems not to have reached the city, but in 267 a.d. the barbarian Heruli captured Athens and Peiraeus; apparently they withdrew without doing serious damage. Near the end of the fourth century of our era a proconsul removed the pictures of the Painted Porch, and in 396 a.d. Alaric and the Goths occupied the city, though again without great harm. But to Constantinople, the new capital of the eastern empire, Athens began to yield up her works of art in increasing numbers. About the time of Theodosius II (408-450 a.d.) even the chryselephantine statue of the Parthenon was among the spoils. The great bronze statue of Athena Promachus (pp. 343 ff .) must have been carried off about the time of Justinian (527-565 a.d.), who took much other booty for his new church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom). The attitude of the world to- ward heathendom was changing, and the edict of Theo- dosius I forbidding sacrifices to heathen gods had been only the expression of a general revolt against the old religion and its votaries. In 529 a.d. Justinian finally closed the schools of philosophy. The temples had previously begun to be changed into Christian churches; the Parthenon, for example, into the shrine of Holy Wisdom (p. 303), the Hephaesteum into that of Saint George (p. 119). Athens itself became a provincial bishopric, and from the sixth to the twelfth centuries almost disappears from history. The decay of the ancient buildings continued unchecked, and letters of the twelfth century written by Archbishop Michael Akominatos speak of the city as being in a sad state of ruin.
In 1 204 the Crusaders captured Constantinople ; Athens was at once turned over to Otho de la Roche, and it re-
HISTORICAL SKETCH 47
mained under the Dukes for the next centur>^ In 13 11 the duchy fell into the hands of the Catalan mercenaries. The Florentine Nerio Acciajuoli became duke in 1387, and he and his successors ruled until 1456, when Athens was cap- tured, after a desperate struggle, by Omar and the Turks. Turkish rule continued with slight interruptions for nearly four hundred years, or until the revolution, which began in 1 82 1. By the end of the sixteenth century the popula- tion was reduced to 12,000, and at the close of the Turkish regime to a few hundreds.
Under the Turks the devastation grew ever worse. In 1656, according to Spon, the Propylaea were struck by lightning and blown up by powder stored there. The Erechtheum had been turned into a harem, and was par- tially built over with rough walls. The temple of Wingless Victory was torn down, that its blocks might be used to strengthen the fortification of the Acropolis. In 1687 the Venetian bombardment laid in ruins the Parthenon. The angry Turks, returning the following year, burned the city around the Acropolis. At the opening of the nineteenth century Lord Elgin carried away many of the remaining sculptures of the Parthenon and some other marbles. And during all these centuries the buildings of the ancient city had served as stone quarries, while the statues, of bronze or marble, save the few that the friendly earth concealed, were thrown into the melting furnace or the Hmekiln.
In 1833 the Turks finally withdrew, and the next year Athens became the capital of the new kingdom of Greece. The mournful era of destruction was at an end ; the period of conservation of ancient monuments soon began.
Fig. 19. — Building of the wall of the Pelargicum ; vase painting.
CHAPTER III Walls and Gates
THE pelargicum
The earliest settlement of Athens on the summit of the Acropolis was surmounted by a defensive wall, the Pelas- gicum, or Pelargicum. The name Pelasgicum probably has reference to the "Pelasgian" settlers. Indeed, we are informed by Herodotus (6, 137) and others that this people constructed the wall (Fig. 19), while Pausanias (i, 28, 3) adds the names of the builders, Agrolas and Hyperbius (and Euryalus?). But we cannot place much credence in the story; the resemblance of names may have inspired the tradition. At any rate, the form Pelargicum is pre- ferred in inscriptions of the fifth century and is found in the best manuscripts of Thucydides and Aristophanes. Its derivation is uncertain. In his Birds (v. 832) Aristophanes plays upon the likeness of the name to pelargos, or "crane," and it may be that "Crane's Nest" was the original name of the citadel.
Portions of this primitive wall are still extant in various parts of the Acropolis, and from these and the literary
48
W.\LLS AND GATES
49
references we are enabled to learn its structure and to trace much of its course (Fig. 20). The most conspicuous sec- tion now remaining is just south of the Propylaea (Fig. 21). This is nearly 60 feet long and 20 feet thick. It is of Cyclo- pean style, having an outer and an inner face of Acropolis limestone, the space between being filled with rubble and earth. The stones vary greatly in size; some of them
^<^
h^^^ill/'
t^
/// /.
Fig. 20. — Map of the Pelargicum and Enneapylum.
The restoration of the Enneapylum, or out-work at the west of the Acropolis, is almost wholly conjectural.
are enormous. They are rough-hewn, with the smoother face outside, the interstices being filled with the smaller stones. The greatest height at present is about 10 feet, on the west face ; the east face has almost disappeared. Where it abuts on this wall, the comer of the Propylaea has been cut off diagonally, to the top of the building; this suggests the inference that the wall here was more than 30 feet high {cf. pp. 57 f.).
Turning abruptly toward the east (Fig, 20), the wall
50
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
followed the contour of the rock, but considerably inside the later wall, so as to avoid certain clefts. The short stretch before the turn may be of later construction, and the next portion is near the southwest corner of the Parthe- non. This latter piece was discovered by the excavators of the hill and is still visible in a pit left open for the purpose. From this point fragments of the wall are found up to the front of the Acropolis Museum, where begins a great loop that extends under the museum and then about the south-
FiG. 21. — Portion of the wall of the Pelargicum at the west end of the
Acropolis. In the rear is the Parthenon.
east corner (Fig. 2) of the Acropolis. From this point the course is conjectural. The north side of the Acropolis is precipitous, however, and we may assume that the wall followed approximately the course of the later wall to the west end of the hill.
Later constructions have obhterated almost every trace of the wall at the west. A small piece is buried in the bastion on which stands the temple of Wingless Victory, but further than this we are reduced to inferences from the character of the site, from the study of similar walls at Mycenae, Tiryns, and other places, and from the hterary evidence.
WALLS AND GATES 51
We are told that this end of the Acropolis, which was most open to assault, was defended by a great fortress, the Enneapylum, or "Nine-gates;" this may be restored con- jecturally from analogy with Mycenaean fortifications, but with no certainty of correctness (Fig. 20).
Whether or not the highest opening in the fortress had thus early an ornamental gateway cannot be determined ; judging from contemporary cities, we may guess that it had. Though the view is questioned, the probability is that the principal approach was always here. Other entrances were few. A postern gate stood at the northeast comer, where rude rock-hewn steps descend from the ancient palace. Possibly an entrance may have existed near the middle of the north wall, where steps ascending from without meet a flight of steps built in the later wall. A passage may have led from the northwest comer to the spring Clepsydra, but, from the dearth of water suffered by Cylon when he was besieged in the AcropoHs, this seems doubtful. The pre- tender Aristion, in Sulla's time, experienced the same difli- culty; and a passage in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes implies that the Clepsydra was outside the inclosure.
How far the wall extended eastward along the southern slope of the hill is uncertain ; fragments here which some have assigned to the Pelargicum seem hardly substantial enough, but the question is still open.
When the Pelargicum is mentioned in later times, the lower wall is meant. The portion which survived the Persian Wars had fallen into decay, and various laws were passed to prevent the removal of stones from the inclosure and the mowing of grass there. The lower wall is doubt- less meant also in the oracle mentioned by Thucydides (2, 17) in connection with the crowding at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War.. The ad\dce of the oracle was,
52 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
"the Pelargicum would better lie idle ; " the historian adds, however, "Nevertheless, under stress of the sudden neces- sity it was settled." But the questions connected with the Pelargicum are complicated, and cannot be examined at greater length here.
THE CIRCULAR WALL
How long the Pelargicum was the sole fortification of Athens we have no means of knowing. The view has been held by some that the city which spread out about the Acropolis had no defensive wall before the Persian Wars. No remains are extant of a city wall before that of Themis- tocles, and we have no direct information as to its building ; that none existed, however, seems inherently improbable. Fortunately some scattered hints are found in the his- torians which afford circumstantial evidence as to its existence.
Thucydides's statement (i, 126, 6) that a feast of Zeus in Cylon's time was held "outside of the city" perhaps is not to be pressed, though it is suggestive of definite city limits ; but this historian gives us clearer information (6, 57, 1-3) in connection with the conspiracy against the tyrants, Hippias and Hipparchus. The plot was to be executed at the great Panathenaic festival, and Hippias was "outside in the Cerameicus," arranging the details of the procession. Harmodius and Aristogeiton, seeing one of the conspirators conversing with Hippias, supposed their plot betrayed ; they "rushed inside the gates" and slew Hipparchus near the Leocorium. The gates can scarcely be other than those of the city, and were probably near the north end of the later Agora.
We next hear of the wall at the time of the Persian Wars. The Delphic oracle delivered to the city's envoys before
WALLS AND GATES 53
the battle of Salamis speaks (Hdt. 7, 140) of the "wheel- shaped city," an appropriate epithet of a walled town with the Acropolis at its hub. We are not told directly that a city waU was destroyed by Xerxes, but such a calamity is implied in the statement of Herodotus (9, 13) that Mardo- nius, the general of Xerxes, returned to Athens the following year and razed to the ground ''whatever was left standing anywhere of the walls or the houses or the sanctuaries." Furthermore, several remarks of Thucydides indicate that the wall of Themis tocles was regarded as a reconstruction. When the Athenians returned to their city, "they pre- pared," he says (i, 89, 3), " to rebuild the city and the walls ; for small portions of the inclosure were standing and the majority of the houses had fallen ; " and elsewhere (i, 93, 2) he informs us that the new "inclosure of the city was ex- tended larger on all sides." These statements would be meaningless, if the only preceding inclosure were the waU of the Acropolis. Again, a remark of Pausanias (i, 25, 6) that the Museum Hill lay "inside the ancient inclosure" can with difficulty be explained of the wall that existed in his own day, though the statement, to be sure, would also have been true of that. And lastly, the law forbidding burial in the city, a law that without much doubt goes back to the days of Cylon, seems to imply that the city was waUed.
No sure remains of the Circular Wall are left, and for its course the last remark quoted from Thucydides and the oracle chronicled by Herodotus constitute our principal data; it was wheel-shaped and of less extent than the Themistoclean Wall, the course of which can be traced. On the west and southwest the summits of the hills were probably followed nearly in the course of the later wall. The term "wheel-shaped" and the view of Plato (Critias
54
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
WALLS AND GATES
55
112 a) that the old dty lay between the Ilissus and Eridaniis rivers help us to outline the remainder of the circuit (Fig. 22).
In the southeast comer of the city one point of the wall may perhaps be fixed. Here the Roman emperor Hadrian built an elaborate gateway (Fig. 23). Over the arch on the west face is the in- scription: ''This is the Athens of The- seus, the former city;" on the other face a corresponding inscription reads: '*This is the cit}' of Hadrian, not of The- seus." The hypoth- esis is reasonable that Hadrian built the gateway on the line of the old wall, parts of which may
Fig. 23. — Arch of Hadrian, from the east. A view of the arch from Uie west is given in Figure 92.
have been left in his day, although some think that the gate was in line with the Themistoclean Wall. A gate at the north end of the Agora has been mentioned (p. 41). The suggestion that this still existed in the time of Pausanias and was identical with a triumphal arch which he names is plausible, but cannot be proved.
Nothing is known of the construction of the Circular Wall. Very likely it was made of sun-dried bricks with a stone foundation, as was the wall of Themistocles. As we hav^ already seen, it must have been utterly destroyed by the Persians.
56 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
WALLS OF THE ACROPOLIS
The massive walls of the Acropolis have been so often reconstructed and repaired that at present only a tentative history of them can be written. Large portions of the walls as they stand to-day, including the buttresses along the south side, are mediaeval ; when these additions shall have been removed, many puzzling questions will doubtless be brought nearer solution.
A large part of the Pelargicum fell at the hands of the Persians. On the south side of the hill the filling in the rear partially preserved it, but along the north side, where the Persians had found it possible to clamber up, the wall almost completely disappeared. Under the leadership, no doubt, of Themistocles, the north wall was rebuilt and probably the south wall repaired. The new north wall was of ashlar masonry for the most part, but into it and facing the homes of the city, as a perpetual reminder of Persian impiety, were inserted drums of columns (Fig. 24) from the early Parthenon, which was burnt in scaffold, blocks and drums from the old temple of Athena, and in one place a section, in its normal relations, of the triglyph frieze and cornice from the same structure.
No general reconstruction was attempted until the return of Cimon from the battle of Eurymedon (465 B.C.) with ample spoils, the sale of which afforded funds for the under- taking. To Cimon, Plutarch and others attribute the south wall, also known as the Cimonium. This, as we now know, was increased in height and strengthened by Pericles, so as to support the terrace along the side of the Parthenon.
UnUke the Pelargicum, the wall of Cimon did not follow the variations of contour, but struck boldly across the edge of the hill from the southwest to the southeast corner in two
WALLS AND GATES
57
straight lines which meet in an obtuse angle south of the west end of the Parthenon (Fig. 133). From the south- east corner the same construction continued northward to the modern "belvedere."
The Cimonium was built of squared blocks of poros laid as headers and stretchers (p. 9), but not clamped together.
Fig. 24. — Drums of columns of the old Parthenon built into the north wall of the Acropolis.
The rubble wall at the top is mediaeval and modem.
The exterior was plain, without buttresses. On the south- east side are still as many as twenty-nine courses, arising to a height of nearly 50 feet ; here the thickness at the bottom is about 21 feet, at the top about 8 feet. Above the first few courses it batters, inclim'ng inward some two feet be- fore reaching the summit.
In describing the temple of Wingless Victory, Pausanias makes the remark (i, 22, 5), "From this point the sea is visible." Hence it has been inferred that the sea was not visible from within the wall ; in other words, that the wall
58
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
was so high that one could not look over it. Such is still the case with part of the north wall, upon which Lucian makes one of the characters in his Fisherman climb, in
|
"""■' '" - |
|
|
^■^^WN^'^ "X |
Fig. 25. — Relief in the front of the Roman stage of the Dionysiac theater.
Over the head of the seated Dionysus at the right the columns of the Parthenon appear above the clifiF.
order to look down into the city. A relief under the later stage of the theater seems to show the Parthenon partly visible above the wall (at the right-hand upper corner in Fig. 25). In a sense the Acropolis was a secret precinct.
THE THEMISTOCLEAN WALL
The cleverness of Themistocles in outwitting the Spartans and in rebuilding the wall against their opposition has been mentioned (p. 35). The haste with which the construction was carried forward, even the women and children assisting in the work, had an effect on the nature of the structure ; its foundations were made, as Thucydides says (i, 93, 2), "of all sorts of stones," even of tombstones and stones wrought for other buildings. But the wall built under such stress fixed the outline of the city throughout most of
WALLS AND GATES
59
its later history. The circuit extended on all sides beyond the former wall (p. 53) ; and from portions still to be seen or else attested by earlier investigators, with the help of literary references, its course can be traced with tolerable certainty over most of its extent.
The most important piece of the wall which remains is at the northwest side of the city (Figs. 26 and 27). Here is an
LEGEND Themistocleon Period Second BuUdiujT Pa-lod Dipylum Later Additions
MaTers FecT
Fig. 26. — Plan of the Dipylum and adjacent walls.
angle measuring about 100 feet on one side, and more than 100 on the other, with a great tower at the apex. It has been repeatedly repaired, and only the lowest courses (be- low the arrows in Fig. 27) are Themistoclean ; at the very bottom of these, recent investigators have discovered stuccoed blocks from other buildings, fragments of carv-ed tombstones (Fig. 28), and other sculptures, — an interesting
6o
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
verification of Thucydides's statement. Only the founda- tion of the original wall was of stone ; the outer and inner faces were of polygonal masonry, the middle of rubble and earth. Above this rose sun-dried brick to a height that cannot now be determined.
Outside of the old wall and running ofif toward the north- east, another wall, entirely of masonry, was built in the
Fig. 27. — Fragment of the Themistoclean wall, near the Dipylum.
The portion below the arrows is the foundation of the wall of Themistocles; the wall above it was originally of sun-dried brick. The course of large stones above the Themistoclean foundation belongs to the second building period. The upper courses are later repairs.
fourth century B.C., to strengthen the defenses (Fig. 29). During the Middle Ages all these walls were covered deeply with earth, and so were not carried off for building stones, as was most of the circuit.
The southerly course of the wall (Fig. 262) can be traced by extant or known remnants over the high ground from the Dipylum to the Hill of the Nymphs and along the
\V.\LLS AND GATES
6i
brink of the Barathrum, whence it made an abrupt detour
to the southwest, thus affording protection to the populous
Hollow (Coele, p. 23), and connecting
with the Long Walls which ran to
Peiraeus. Skirting the precipitous edge
of the Museum Hill, above the modern
stone quarries, to the summit, it then
descended the steep eastern side and
stretched across the level ground to
the vicinity of the Olympieum.
Thus far the evidence is in the main secure, abundant fragments of the wall being known, although nearly all of them have now perished. For the east side of the city the evidence is scanty, particularly for the section beyond the Olympieum. Some are incHned to believe that the wall ran straight north, leaving the Ohinpieum outside the city and connecting with the Arch of Hadrian (p. 55). But the Olympieum seems to have been in the city ; the house of Morychus in Plato's Phaednis (p. 227) was ''in the city near the 01>Tnpieum," whence Phaedrus comes for a walk "outside the wall." Furthermore we learn from the geographer Strabo (p. 404) that certain priests had the duty of watching for the lightnings over Mt. Parnes from the altar of Lightning Zeus, which was "on the wall between the Olympieum and the Pythium." The Pythium (p. 168) was just south of the Olympievmi, and the wall in question
Fig. 28. — Grave stele from beneath the Theraistoclean wall (Athens Museum).
62 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
was apparently that of the city, which must, accordingly, have made a slight detour so as to inclose the temple.
For the remainder of the wall, as for all parts of the cir- cuit, we have another sort of evidence, of a safe though negative character. Speaking of the death of Marcus Marcellus, Cicero says {Ad Jam. 4, 12, 3): "I could not secure from the Athenians the grant of a place of burial
Fig. 29. — Looking northwest from the Sacred Gate. On either side are walls of different periods, and in the distance is the Dipylum cemetery.
within the city, which they said was forbidden by their reHgious scruples, and which, moreover, they had hitherto granted to no one." This prohibition of burial within the city may have had its origin in the purification of Athens by Epimenides, about 600 B.C., after the murder of Cylon ; it continued in force, with only a few exceptions, into the second century of our era. Classical Greek or early Roman graves, therefore, we should not expect to find inside the walls. A large series of tombs has been found in and near the present Constitution Square ; the wall must have lain west of these. Bending northwestward, the general course is established by graves, and by some remains, to the most
WALLS ANT) GATES 63
northerly point, where are the foundations of the towers of a gate. Again, west of this point, the line is fixed in the same manner around to the Dipylum, whence we started.
Thucydides says (2, 13, 7), according to our manuscripts, that the circumference of the wail, exclusive of the un- guarded section between the ends of the Long Walls, was forty-three stades, approximately 4.7 miles. As traced above, however, the circuit, including the section which Thucydides excepts, is a mile short of his figure. While some smaU errors in our study are possible, the total can in no way be reconciled with the historian's statement. His figures must be wrong, or else wrongly handed down in our manuscripts ; the latter alternative is the more prob- able. Comparisons made by other writers with the Ser- vian Wall of Rome and with the wall of Syracuse are of no value.
The strip of cross-wall, of which small portions remain, between the Hill of the Nymphs and the Hill of the Muses was built by the demagogue Cleon, notwithstanding the gibes of Aristophanes in the Knights, about 420 B.C., in order to contract the space which must be guarded.
The Themistoclean Wall was pierced by a dozen principal gates. The most ornate and important of these was the Dipylum, of which the remains are found in the northwest part of the city, a few hundred feet from the best preserv^ed piece of the wall. As the name indicates, this was a double gate, closed at either end of a court by two pairs of doors with interv-ening piers (Fig. 26). In front of the north- west pier a large base, perhaps of a quadriga, is still in situ (Fig. 30) ; while before the southeast pier is an altar dedi- cated to Zeus, Hermes, and Acamas (Fig. 31). The court of the Dipylum measures about 127 by 70 feet, making a spacious "pocket" through which an enemy must fight his
64
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
way while attacked from above, as Philip of Macedon dis- covered to his sorrow (p. 42). The Dipylum is constructed of squared blocks of poros, breccia, and Hymettian marble ; it was probably built toward the end of the fourth century B.C. (though some fix its date even later), under the administration of Lycurgus, and so was contempora- neous with the outer line of walls mentioned above
Fig. 30. — Front of the Dipylum, with quadriga base on the left.
(p. 60). It took the place of an earlier gate named the Thriasian.
A short distance southwest of the Dipylum is a smaller gate, beside which the stream of the Eridanus issued. This is probably the Sacred Gate, from which the Sacred Way led to Eleusis. In front of it lies the famous Dipylum cemetery (pp. 372 ff.).
Three or four hundred yards south of the Sacred Gate lay the Peiraic Gate, which, before the building of the Dipylum, was the chief exit in the direction of Peiraeus. Portions
WALLS AND GATES
65
of wall and towers have been found at either side of the gate, as well as wheel-tracks worn in the rock.
Near the edge of the Hill of the N>Tnphs lay another gate, and in the southwest detour of the wall two more, one of them the MeHtan Gate. Outside of this gate are said to have been the Cimonian tombs, and close at hand was the grave of Thucydides. An elaborate rock-hewn tomb still extant in the end of a hill south of this point may belong to this group of burial places.
In the level ground east of Museum Hill was the Itonian Gate ; the precise spot is not known (p. 76) . Some scholars look for the Diomean Gate close by the Itonian. That another gate was near is al- most certain, but the e\-idence points to the situation of the Diomean farther on, perhaps a httle north or south of the OhTupieum (p. 172).
The site of the Gate of Diochares is reasonably sure. Strabo says (9. 397) that the river Eridanus had its sources "outside the so-called Gate of Diochares near the Lyceum" (p. 173). We know that the Eridanus rose on the side of Mt. Lycabettus (pp. 18. 173). and that the Lyceum was east of the city between Lycabettus and the Ilissus ; so the Gate of Diochares must have been in this region, probably in the vicinity of the present Hermes Street, a little to the west of the extensive cemetery found here.
The next important opening was the Achamian Gate, from which a road led to Acharnae, the largest deme, or village, in Attica, seven miles north of Athens. Between
Fig. 31. — Altar dedicated to Zeus, Hermes, and Acamas, at the east end of the Dipylum.
66 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
this gate and the Dipylum was one other gate, of which ruins have been found.
Besides these, one or two more gates may have existed. We have the name of a Cavalry Gate, but this may be one of those mentioned. Small doorways pierced the wall at various points.
THE PEIRAIC WALL
The tyrant Hippias is said to have begun a stronghold on the hill of Munychia at Peiraeus, but of his work we have no certain remains. The first to appreciate the advantage to Athens of fortifying Peiraeus was Themistocles, in whose first archonship (493/2 B.C.) the circuit wall was planned a,nd partially constructed. The fortification was not com- pleted until a decade or so after the Persian Wars. This wall was built more deliberately and more strongly than that about Athens itself; its foundation was of massive masonry, so wide, if we correctly interpret Thucydides (i, 93, 4), that two wagons could meet and pass on it.
At the end of the Peloponnesian War a large part of the wall was torn down, but it was not to remain long in ruins. In 395 B.C., the rebuilding began, and in the nick of time Conon arrived with spoils from the battle of Cnidus to give the undertaking impetus. In general the present remains are of the wall of Conon.
Ruins of the wall almost surround the city (Fig. 251). From the land side the chief entrance was the Asty Gate at the north, whence ran the main road to Athens. From this point the wall runs eastward, past the juncture with the Long Walls and two other gates, nearly to the summit of Munychia. Thence it turns to the coast, which it fol- lows throughout the rest of its course, to the west side of the city.
WALLS AND GATES
67
The harbor of Munychia is almost closed by spurs of the hill and a small island. Over these the wall pushes out from either side with moles and towers, until it leaves a passage of only 120 feet, which in times of emergency could be completely closed by a chain or rope boom. On the hill at the south end of the harbor the wall was reenforced by a fort. At Zea Harbor the wall bends in to protect the throat and ends in moles and towers, the open space being about 200 feet.
Around the peninsula of Acte (Fig. 32) the wall follows the high bank, 60 to 130 feet from the water. At the
Fig. 32.
Section of the Peiraic wall about Acte and one of the towers, from within.
northwest corner of the peninsula. Cape Alcimus, is a massive round tower ; lower down, at the water's edge, is a square tower. No remains are extant of a wall from this point to the southern mole, which projects across the mouth of the harbor, but one must be assumed, to dominate the entrance of the harbor, as at Zea. The open space between moles was about 180 feet.
68
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
From the northern mole the wall leads back to the great northwest ga^te ; it then probably passed across the mouth of Dumb Harbor and northeastward to the Asty Gate. But from the mouth of the harbor the course is conjectural.
West of the peninsula of Eetioneia a great loop surrounded the bay of Krommydaru, which is now filled and occupied by dry-docks. The suggestion has been made that this was the original wall of Themistocles, and that it went around rather than across Dumb Harbor. This is doubtful, however ; it may be even of a later date than that of Conon. The conjecture has also been made that a piece of wall which starts from the east side of Acte and continues across the peninsula was the wall of Themistocles. The suggestion is tempting, for the wall as traced above exceeds the sixty stades given by Thucydides (2, 13, 7) as the length of the Peiraic circuit.
The early wall was probably like that of the upper city, of sun-baked brick with a foundation of stone. The existing wall is constructed of inner and outer faces of ashlar masonry, the space between being filled with rubble
and earth. It varies in thickness from about 26 feet along its exposed north side to 10 and 12 feet about Acte and 6.5 to 8 feet on Eetioneia. For much of its course it was reenforced at in- tervals on the outside by towers which jut out 12 to 20 feet from the intervening curtain; nearly sixty of these protected the wall about Acte (Fig. 33).
Fig. S3- — Exterior of one of the towers of the wall about Acte.
WALLS AND GATES
69
Fig. 34. — East tower of Asty Gate.
Asty Gate was the principal gate at the north of Peiraeus coaununicating with Athens outside the Long Walls.
Near the Asty Gate was a small shrine of Hermes, erected by the archons when the construction of the wall was begin- ning. The gate itself was flanked by two strong towers (Figs. 34 and 35). Whether or not it had a court like the Dipylum is uncertain. Such, at any rate, was the construc- tion of the gate five hundred feet to the east ; here, how- ever, were no towers, the gate being flanked by the North
West tower ui .Vi'v'v G-it.
70
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Fig. 36. — Peiraic wall and gate near juncture of the North Long Wall.
Long Wall (Fig. 36). Two other gates have been traced to the east of this, and one must be assumed west of Asty Gate. The two imposing round towers of the northwest gate, on Eetioneia, are still admirably preserved (Fig. 37). Several smaller portals require no mention here.
I'lG. 37. — Towers and wall on Eetioneia, from the southwest.
WALLS AND GATES
71
72 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
THE LONG WALLS
After the construction of the Peiraic Wall the Athenians had two fortified towns to defend ; the link between the city and its port was the Long Walls (Fig. 38). Plutarch tells us of Cimon's connection with the construction of these walls and of the difficulties overcome in building across the marshy land near the sea. The contemporary authority, Thucydides, ascribes the beginning of the walls to the year 460 B.C., when Cimon was already in banishment. The North Wall appears to have been the first erected, but the Phaleric Wall followed immediately. Then under the advice of Pericles the Phaleric Wall was abandoned, and "the wall through the middle" was constructed. At the end of the Peloponnesian War the Spartans and the restored exiles "tore down the walls with much enthusiasm, to the accompaniment of flute-players," as Xenophon tells us (Hellenica 2, 2, 23). Conon rebuilt the two "legs;" the Phaleric Wall is not again mentioned.
Considerable portions of the Long Walls were in existence a century ago, but now they have nearly disappeared. The two "legs" were parallel, except at their ends, where they flared to meet the walls of the cities. Their length was about four and a half miles, and they were about 550 feet apart. The South Wall was slightly the longer.
No remains of the Phaleric Wall have been identified with certainty, and some scholars go so far as to deny that it ever existed. The question as to its course is further com- phcated by our ignorance of the situation of the deme of Phalerum, which gave to it its name ; Phalerum has usually been placed near Old Phaleron, as it is now called, at the east end of the Phaleric Bay. To the theory that the wall ran to this point, the objection is made that Phalerum was but
WALLS AND GATES
73
twenty stades from Athens, whereas Old Phaleron is nearly thirty-five ; and that a wall from the Asty to Old Phaleron would leave the long stretch of coast between Old Phaleron and Peiraeus open to an attack of a hostile fleet. Hence Phalerum may more reasonably be sought nearer to Peiraeus, possibly by the chapel of St. Sa\dor (Fig. 38), and the wall (variously said to have been thirty and thirty-five stades in length) connected through Phalerum to Peiraeus; the matter is still imcertain. The coast line has undoubtedly changed since ancient times, and the present distance of St. Savior from the sea is not necessarily an objection to the theory indicated. The Long Walls had a stone foundation surmounted by
Fig. 39. — Reconstruction of the gallery of the walls of Athens.
sun-dried bricks, and at the top a covered passage, with crenelations and a roof of tiles. From an extant inscription the details of construction can be accurately determined (Fig. 39). Probably the walls were penetrated by several
74 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
small gates ; they had openings also for the Cephissus, whose stream they crossed.
LATER WALLS OF ATHENS
The emperor Hadrian surrounded his new quarter of the city at the east with a new wall. The foundation of a tower south of the Olympieum, fragments in the present palace gardens, and other remains near the royal stables and else- where, make the course of this addition reasonably sure (Fig. 262). The foundations are of large blocks of poros; regarding the superstructure we have no information.
A wall north of the Acropolis formerly called the Valerian Wall is now known to be mediaeval. Other late walls and repairs it is not necessary to mention.
CIL\PTER IV The Hellenic Agora
Since the extant ruins represent only small and dis- connected portions of the ancient city of the Athenians, we are fortunate in having so many details preserved in the account of Pausanias (p. 2) to supplement our knowledge derived from the monuments. In our survey of the city henceforth his narrative wiU be followed as a logical and convenient guide. ^
At the present day the visitor to Athens will usually choose one or the other of two routes leading from Peiraeus up to the city : the electric tramway passing New Phaleron and entering the city at the south near the 01>Tnpieum ; or the ''third-rail" road entering at the northwest. Pausa- nias describes almost identically the same routes.
"On the road from Phalerum to Athens is a temple of Hera wdthout doors or roof. They say that Mardonius, son of Gobryas, set it on fire. The existing statue, so they say, is by Alcamenes ; this the Mede cannot have defiled," because the period of Alcamenes was after the Persian Wars ; but which of the two traditions cited by Pausanias is cor-
* That is, for Chapters TV to EX. Pausanias's historical and mythological digressions, which are irrelevant for our present piuposes, \vill in most cases be omitted, often without special indication of the place of omission. His description of Athens is comprised in the first thirty chapters of his first book ; in general, passages from this portion of his work will be quoted with- out references being given. In some instances, where no doubt as to author- ship can arise, the quotations will be introduced without specific mention of Pausanias's name.
75
76 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
rect, we can determine no better than he. "When one has entered the city there is a monument of the Amazon Antiope." Since this monument, as is known from other sources, was just inside the Itonian Gate (p. 167), the road from Phalerum must have ended at this point.
"On the way up from Peiraeus are ruins of the walls which Conon erected after the sea-fight off Cnidus ; for those built by Themistocles after the withdrawal of the Medes were demolished at the time of the rule of the Thirty, as they are called. Along the road are graves, the most famous being that of Menander son of Diopeithes and a cenotaph of Euripides ; but Euripides is buried in Macedonia, having gone thither to the court of King Archelaus." The epi- taphs on the monuments mentioned by Pausanias are pre- served in the Palatine Anthology. "Not far from the gate is a grave surmounted by a warrior standing by a horse. I do not know who he is, but Praxiteles made both the horse and the warrior."
FROM THE DIPYLUM TO THE AGORA
Unfortunately Pausanias neglected to state at which one of the gates he entered the city, an omission which has been productive of long discussion, with vehement advocates for the Peiraic Gate (p. 65) and for the Dipylum (pp. 63 f.), respectively. Certainty is not yet attainable, but the weight of evidence and of opinion inclines decidedly toward the Dipylum, the usual entrance from Peiraeus.
"When one has entered the city, there is a building for the preparation of the processions which they conduct, some every year, some at intervals of time," those at inter- vals doubtless being the great Panathenaic processions, which were organized every four years. The building which Pausanias mentions is known in literature and inscriptions
THE HELLENIC AGORA 77
as the Pompeum; it probably stood on the large three- aisled foundation which has been uncovered north of the Dipylum (pp. 63 f. and Fig. 26). The foundation is of large blocks of poros, and is about 77 feet wide ; its length cannot be determined until the excavation is carried farther to- ward the east. When the Pompeum was constructed, is not known ; our first reference to it is in an oration of Demos- thenes in connection with its use for the distribution of grain. The building appears to have been decorated with paintings and statues ; we hear of a bronze statue of Socra- tes by Lysippus, painted poi'traits of writers of comedy by Craterus, and a painted portrait of Isocrates. Diogenes the Cynic is said to have declared that the Pompeum and the Stoa of Zeus were built for him to hve in, which implies nothing more than that these were frequented as public lounging places.
''Near by," continues Pausanias, "is a temple of Demeter, with statues of herself and her daughter, and lacchus holding a torch ; and on the wall is written in Attic letters the fact that they are the works of Praxiteles." "Near by" gives Httle help in locating the temple. It must have been on one side or the other of the Dipylum, where it may have had an important connection with the sacred embassies to Demeter's greater shrine at Eleusis. Clement of Alexan- dria {Protrept. 4,18) also speaks of " the Demeter of Praxite- les and Cora and lacchus the mystic," but the lacchus had the greatest fame. Cicero asks {In Verrem 4, 60) : "What would the Athenians take for their marble lacchus ?" Plutarch tells us of an laccheum, at which the grandson of Aristeides the Just made a living by interpreting dreams, probably at the sanctuary under consideration.
Here our discussion of the sanctuary might end but for the statement of Pausanias that the inscription was "in
78
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Attic letters." The old Attic alphabet was officially superseded by the Ionic, which had long been coming into private use, in the archonship of Eucleides, 403/2 B.C., while Praxiteles began his work thirty or forty years later. The discrepancy presents a serious difficulty, which some scholars have tried to solve by supposing an elder Praxiteles, the grandfather of the famous artist. But no ancient author tells us of an elder sculptor of this name, and an easier explanation is that the inscription was an archaizing supplement of Roman times. Such imitations are known, and the fact that the inscription was "on the wall," rather than on the base of the statue, favors this view. None of the statues of the group has been preserved, but a superb
head from Eleusis, heretofore called Eubuleus, has recently been identified, with much plausibility, as a copy of the famous lacchus (Fig. 40).
"Not far from the temple is Poseidon, on horseback, hurling a spear at the giant Polybotes (Fig. 168), respecting whom the Coans have the myth about Cape Chelone ; but the inscrip- tion in my time assigns the statue to another, and not to Poseidon." The Coan myth, however, had it that Poseidon tore off a fragment of the island of Cos as a missile, and this is the version more often represented in existing works of art. An attempt has been made to show that the rededication was to the Roman emperor Caligula, but this is doubtful.
Fig. 40. — Head of lacchus, by Praxiteles, restored.
The restoration is from the head usually known as Eubuleus, in the National Museum at Athens.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 79
Apparently the monuments thus far mentioned were clustered near the Dipylum, for Pausanias now remarks for the first time that ''There are stoae from the gate to the Cerameicus, and bronze images before them of men and women who have risen to fame." These stoae, or colon- nades, are mentioned also by Himerius, a sophist of the time of Jiilian, in his description of the Panathenaic pro- cession. According to him {Or. 3, 12) the avenue which ran between them was "straight and smooth and sloping down from above ; " that is, from the Agora. Traces of the higher end of this road have been found near the Hephaesteum, and with httle doubt the road descended thence in a direct line to the gate. When Athens was sacked by Sulla, the blood shed in the Agora is said to have flowed down to the Dipylum and through it. The Long Stoa, or AlphitopoUs, where grain and flour were sold, was probably along the south side of the street near the present railroad station, but the ground on the north side is more level and better suited for the buildings next mentioned by Pausanias.
"One of the stoae contains sanctuaries of the gods and a g>Tnnasium called the Gymnasium of Hermes." Of these we know nothing more. Pausanias continues : "In it is also Pulytion's house, where, they say, not the least distinguished of the Athenians travestied the mysteries of Eleusis ; in my time it was dedicated to Dionysus, whom they here call the Minstrel (Melpomenus) , in the same way as they call Apollo the Leader of the Muses (Musegetes)." Pausanias refers, of course, to the famous profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries, before the Sicihan Expedition, by Alcibiades, Pulytion, and others. The house, which Plato tells us was distinguished for its magnificence, was appar- ently confiscated by the state and dedicated to Dionysus.
8o ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
''Here is a statue of Athena the Healer (Paeonia) and Zeus and Mnemosyne and the Muses, Apollo too, the offering and work of Eubulides, and Acratus, one of Dionysus's attend- ant divinities ; this last is merely a face built into the wall."
At length we have a site that can be identified with much probability. In 1837 in excavating for the foundation of a dwelling north of the railroad station (Fig. 262), abase was found about 26 feet long, with two steps, surmounted by two blocks of the pedestal of a statue, or statues. A large block of Hymettian marble was also found bearing an in- scription which has been restored to read : ' ' Eubuhdes son of Eucheir of Cronia made it." Eubulides lived in the second century B.C. The inscribed block, several marble heads, and a torso, found at the same time, are in the Athens Museum, but the base was covered up and the house built over it. The connection of the base with the statues named by Pausanias could scarcely be doubted but for two things : his declaration that Eubuhdes offered as well as made them ; and the further fact that the text of Pau- sanias may be understood as saying that Eubulides made not the group but only the Apollo, while the base discovered is too large for a single figure. To reconcile these apparent discrepancies is not easy, but the balance of evidence leans toward the identification of the base with that of the monu- ment which Pausanias mentions. A blank space at the right of the existing inscription forbids our thinking that the words "and dedicated it" can have been broken off, but the dedicatory notice may have been on another block, while the uncertainty in the interpretation of the text of Pausanias is not without parallel; similar ambiguities have been pointed out in other parts of his work. A colossal head found in the same locality in 1874 may be that of Athena the Healer.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 8i
The "face built into the wall" was probably a mask of Acratus (drinker of unmixed wine). Such a mask is repre- sented on an ancient crater, now in Glasgow, with the name Akratos painted beside it (Fig. 41).
"After the precinct of Dionysus is a building with statues of clay, Am- ^y '^
phictyon, king of the Athenians, feast- ing Dionysus and other gods. Here too is Pegasus of Eleutherae, who yio. 41. — Vase paint- introduced the god among the Athe- ing with the face of nians." The stoa containing the house of Pulytion, the statues of EubuHdes, and the mask of Acratus must have been of considerable extent. Perhaps it had connected with it an inclosure, which Pausanias here calls a precinct. But, while we are not outside the precinct, we are still in a region sacred to Dionysus. Amphictyon and Pegasus are connected in Uterature with the introduction of the worship of Dionysus into Athens, but how the scene was represented in the "statues of clay" we do not know. We have similar groups portrayed as reliefs, but the figures here mentioned seem to have been in the round.
A small precinct which Pausanias fails to mention has been uncovered in the railroad-cutting at the north end of Colonus Agoraeus, the precinct of Demus and the Graces, together with an altar of Leader Aphrodite (Hegemone). Here, too, Roma was at one time worshiped. The base of a statue by the sculptor Bryaxis was found near by, and we know from literary references that various bronze statues stood here, notably one of the Jewish priest and prince Hyrcanus, mentioned by Josephus as being in this precinct. The road probably turned here to enter the Agora.
82 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
THE AGORA
We now come to the Agora. Pausanias begins his de- scription of it by saying : "Now this place, the Cerameicus, has its name from the hero Ceramus, who is also said to be the son of Dionysus and Ariadne." This derivation is merely an example of popular etymologizing, for the deme Cerameicus (pp. 26 f.) undoubtedly owed its name to the fact that it was the quarter of the potters (kerameis). To Pausanias and other writers of his time the Cerameicus was not a deme, but a place; the name was used as a synonym of Agora, and in consequence many of the sites that these writers speak of as being in the Cerameicus are mentioned by others as in the Agora.
The name Agora, with its double meaning of "market" and " meeting-place," is a more accurate designation for the quarter that we are about to enter than Market-place or Market; while originally the space set apart sufl5ced for commercial purposes as well as for the transaction of public business, the two uses naturally came in time to be more or less clearly differentiated. The two parts of the Agora, however, were probably not distinctly divided, though that opinion is held by some scholars. In shape, apparently it was not a perfect rectangle, but a somewhat irregular area, which was extended as the city grew ; and while trade was gradually exiled from the space devoted to civic and re- ligious affairs, it hovered closely about and sometimes intruded on this area (p. 149).
In order to understand the growth and appearance of the Agora, we shall do well at the outset to go to the south of the Areopagus where was the Ancient Agora ; for, as we have seen (pp. 30 f.), when the early settlement outgrew the con- fines of the Acropolis, it extended at first toward the south,
THE HELLENIC AGORA 83
though the particular space with which we are now con- cerned is nearly west of the citadel. That the Ancient Agora lay in this region we conclude from a quotation from Apollodorus by Harpocration to the effect that the worship of Aphrodite Pandemus was "established near the Ancient Agora." Now from another passage of Pausanias we infer (p. 221) that this sanctuary of Aphrodite was south- west of the Acropolis ; the inference is borne out by the discovery, in excavations in this vicinity, of some forty statuettes of Aphrodite, and several inscriptions bearing her name with the title Pandemus. Within narrow limits, therefore, this sanctuary can be located, and near it the Ancient Agora must have been, where we should expect to find it, close to the entrance to the Acropohs. The precise situation cannot yet be determined.
A large portion of the area adjacent to the Ancient Agora, however, has been uncovered through excavations begun in 1887, and with extraordinarily interesting results. The excavations were made on both sides of the modern carriage road as it passes between the Areopagus and the Pnyx Hill (Figs. 42 and 43), but chiefly to the east. Here was found an ancient street with a system of drainage pipes beneath it and walls of sanctuaries and other buildings on either side (p. 22). The street seems to us narrow and crooked, but without much doubt it was the regular ascent from the city to the Acropolis and the course of the great Pan- athenaic procession.
On the east side of the carriage road, under the slope of the Pnyx Hill, is the fountain Enneacrunus, with an elabo- rate system of reservoirs and conduits ; as the site is men- tioned later by Pausanias, the description may be deferred (pp. 108 ff.).
Directly across from the fountain is a trapezoidal inclosure,
84
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
e <9 AREOPAGOS
IZi L:! E U S le^N < p H.-W "'
Fig. 42. — Map of excavations south of Areopagus.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 85
about 60 by 55 feet in greatest length and breadth, which has been identified by inscriptions found within it as the Amyneum. The character of the walls shows that the pre- cinct is at least as early as the era of Peisistratus. The entrance is at the northwest corner, and on the east side is a small room containing a marble sacrificial table. At one corner of this room is a deep well partially fed by a branch
Fig. 43. — View of excavations south of Areopagus. In the background, at the right, is the Acropolis.
from the conduit which supplies the fountain. Amynus is not known in literature, but the inscriptions and votive offerings found in the shrine indicate that he was a healing divinity allied with Asclepius, by whose worship in later times that of Amynus was displaced.
On the same side of the street, some forty paces farther north, is a larger inclosure, triangular in shape, about 148 feet in extreme length and 82 feet in width (Fig. 43). The walls are made of AcropoUs limestone and vary in con- struction from Cyclopean to almost quadrangular polyg- onal masonry. The precinct is divided by a cross- wall into two sections, and in the smaller southern division is the
86 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
foundation of a small temple, about 17 by 13 feet in size, facing the southeast. The polygonal walls of the temple, which has no steps, are earlier than the period of Peisistratus, and underneath them are the remains of a temple yet older. Beside the temple is the only entrance into the larger division of the precinct. Near the center of this section is a large base with holes, supposed to have been for the legs of a sacrificial table, and grooves for the reception of inscribed slabs; while in the northwest corner of the pre- cinct is a fairly well preserved winepress, with a paved floor sloping toward one corner where the grape-juice could be received in a jar.
By a somewhat extended course of reasoning, which cannot be outlined here, the precinct has been identified as the celebrated Dionysium in the Marshes (Limnae). This sanctuary was opened only once a year, during the Anthest^ria, when at the "feast of pitchers" the people presented their garlands in the sanctuary and offered sacri- fices to the god.
The suggestion has recently been made that the precinct is that of Heracles in Melite, or the Heracleum. This identi- fication rests largely upon the theory that the base which has been taken for that of a sacrificial altar is really for a sort of aedicula of Heracles. The hypothesis carries too much else with it to be acceptable at present.
That the spot was sacred to Dionysus in later times is evident from the large rectangular Roman building, with two rows of columns, which was built on a higher level over the old precinct. Here were found an altar bearing em- blems of Dionysus, or Bacchus, and several inscriptions, one of considerable length, indicating that this was the Bac- cheum, the clubhouse of the lobacchi.
Another large precinct with a winepress lies north of the
THE HELLENIC AGOR.\
87
Dionysium ; while opposite and partly under the carriage road is a shrine with a Lesche, or Clubhouse, of the fourth century B.C. Numerous other bmldings of different dates surround those mentioned, but none of them can be identi- fied.
We cannot now determine just when the Ancient Agora was abandoned for the area north of the Areopagus, which
FiG. '44. — Site of the Hellenic Agora, in its present state. At the left b the east end of the " Theseum," on Maiket HilL
for convenience may be called the Hellenic Agora, although, of course, the Ancient Agora was also Hellenic. Certainly the transfer had been completed long before the end of the sixth century B.C. Unfortunately the groimd above the Hellenic Agora is now covered with houses (Fig. 44), and the excavations which have been possible in scattered places have thus far yielded no definite returns.^ In fact, the only
* The Greek Archaeological Society has undertaken the enonnons task of clearing this area, and in a few years the spade may furnish the key to many baffling problems.
88 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
building that can positively be identified both by literary evidence and by the extant remains is the Stoa of Attalus (pp. 130 ff.). As this is a late structure of Hellenistic times, it yields no satisfactory data for the Hellenic Agora, which can scarcely have been so wide as to reach to it, though most scholars have considered the Stoa as situated on the Agora's east boundary. While the Stoa of the Giants (pp. 134 fT.) is a late structure, built of earher architectural members, it may be conjectured to be nearer the east Hne.
The south boundary was the Areopagus, some of the buildings of the Agora being well up its slope. Excavations made in 1897 a hundred yards north of the hill, in the in- closure of the chapel of St. Elias, revealed the corner of a large foundation of poros facing the east. This must have been on the Agora, but it has not been identified.
On the west the Agora was limited by the low Colonus Agoraeus, or Market Hill. On its slopes desultory excava- tions (Fig. 45) begun in 1896, have uncovered a series of
Fig. 45. — Foundations excavated along the west side of the Agora.
foundations of buildings which faced the east and had their fronts on the same north and south line (p. 131). These were small structures; unfortunately none of them can
THE HELLENIC AGORA 89
be identified, but without doubt they were either on the west edge of the Agora or along the road of approach from the north; future excavations will probably remove the imcertainty.
The north boundary is still more in doubt. Here the commercial district crowded closest, and, unhappily, Pau- sanias passes this section without a word.
Probably the Agora was not paved. In it in several places grew trees, chiefly plane trees, many of them planted by Cimon ; several small springs furnished water to the throngs of citizens who frequented it. We must regret keenly that the remains of this center of Athenian civic hfe are so few, while we congratulate ourselves that the literary evidence, together with the general lay of the land, enables us to outline a fairly satisfactory picture.
We now return to the place where we left our guide. Having entered the Cerameicus from the north (Fig. 46), Pausanias says: "First upon the right is the stoa called the Royal Stoa, where the king sits while holding his year of office called the kingship. On the tiled roof of this Stoa are images of terra cotta, Theseus casting Sciron into the sea and Hemera (Day) carr^dng Cephalus."
Later Pausanias tells us that the temple of Hephaestus, which is probably to be identified with the ''Theseum" (p. 116), was "above the Cerameicus and the Royal Stoa." The Royal Stoa, then, must have been on the west side of the Agora and not far from the Hephaesteum. This situa- tion would be met by any of the foundations uncovered on the side of the hill, but none of them has the usual shape of a stoa, a long narrow building with a colonnade in front, and the precise situation cannot yet be determined. The images on the roof would seem to have been acroteria, or ornaments crowning the gables; if so, the Stoa may not
90
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Fig. 46. — Map of the Hellenic Agora.
The boundaries of the Agora and the situation of the majority of the buildings are conjectural.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 91
have been of the customary form. Terra cottas of the type mentioned are archaic, and this is consistent with the probable early date of the Stoa, possibly as early as Solon ; either it was one of the few buildings that the Persians spared, or else it was rebuilt after their departure. As late as the fifth century B.C. it was known simply as The Stoa.
In the Royal Stoa were deposited the stone wedges en- graved with Solon's laws. In or before it were copies of the lease of the Lelantine Plain, the reenacted laws of Draco, the laws of the restored democracy, and various others. Here the court of the Areopagus is said to have met upon occasion, in a space especially roped off for the pur- pose ; and here the king archon, whose oflBice was a connect- ing link with the regal period, sat to judge in special cases, particularly cases of impiety. Here, therefore, Euth>-phro (in Plato's Euthyphro), summoned to meet a charge of unfilial conduct toward his father, meets Socrates, who is present to answer the accusation of infidelity to the rehgion of the state. In front of the Stoa stood the altar stone on which the archons took their oath, vowing, if faithless, to dedicate a golden statue at Delphi. Here also once stood a statue of Pindar, probably later removed to the vicinity of the temple of Ares (pp. 104 f.).
''Near the stoa," continues Pausanias, "stand Conon and Timotheus son of Conon and Evagoras, king of Cyprus. . . . Here stand Zeus called the Zeus of Freedom (Eleuthe- rius) and King Hadrian, who was the benefactor of many, and especially of the city of the Athenians. And behind these has been built a stoa. ..." Conon, Timotheus, and Evagoras are naturally brought together because of their illustrious services to Athens after her subjection to Sparta. The statues in their honor were erected while
92 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
they still lived. That of Conon, at least, was of bronze, as presumably were the others. The statue of Zeus was given the name of Savior as well as Zeus of Freedom ; the reason for neither epithet is clear, but probably the tradi- tion that the dedication was in memory of the defeat of the Persians is correct. Near the statue of Hadrian, as we learn from an inscription, stood one of some other Roman emperor ; of what emperor we do not know.
The statement of Pausanias, repeated by Eustathius, that the statues were "near the stoa" is indefinite, but from his later statement and the words of other writers we under- stand that they stood in front of the Stoa of Zeus of Freedom. This and the Royal Stoa are said by Harpocration and others to have been "beside each other," or, as some would translate the phrase, "parallel to each other." Since Pausanias has warned us that he is describing first the buildings on the right, as he proceeds southward, we must look for the site of this stoa south of the Royal Stoa and near it, but the foundation has not yet been discovered, or at any rate identified. The Stoa of Zeus of Freedom, known also as the Stoa of Zeus the Savior, or simply as the Stoa of Zeus, was, hke the Royal Stoa, the repository of important law tablets, as well as of the shields of citizens who had distinguished themselves in battle; later the shields were carried off by Sulla. Seats were set about the walls of the building, and loiterers made it their rendezvous. Here Socrates found Ischomachus waiting by appointment for some strangers, and held the conversation related in Xeno- phon's Economicus.
Pausanias's account continues: "And behind these has been built a stoa having paintings of the Twelve Gods, as they are called; on the wall opposite them Theseus is depicted, and Democracy and the People (Demus). The
THE HELLENIC AGORA 93
painting makes it clear that Theseus was the one who established equal political rights for the Athenians. . . . Here is portrayed also the action near Mantineia of the Athenians who were sent to aid the Lacedaemonians. , . . And in the painting is a battle of the cavalry, in which the most conspicuous participants are Grylussonof Xenophonon the Athenian side and Epameinondas the Theban amid the Boeotian horse. Euphranor painted these pictures for the Athenians." The paintings of Euphranor were among the most famous in Athens. From the order in which Pausa- nias names them, the picture of the Twelve Gods would seem to have been on the shorter north end of the Stoa, and the Theseus, Democracy, and Demus on the opposite or south end, while the battle of Mantineia occupied the long rear wall fronting the colonnade. Eustathius tells us that the figure of Zeus was inspired by the famous lines in the first book of the Iliad (w. 528-530) : —
" Thus spake the dread son of Cronus and nodded his dark brows, assenting ; Then the ambrosial locks flowed down from the head of the father, From his immortal head, and he made great 01>Tnpus to tremble."
But this is probably an echo of the story told of the statue of Zeus, by Pheidias, at Olympia. Valerius Maxi- mus says that the figure of Poseidon was more majestic than that of Zeus, while Lucian speaks with particular admiration of the coloring of the hair of Hera. Euphranor himself is reported by Pliny and Plutarch to have declared that his Theseus was fed on meat, while the Theseus of Parrhasius was fed on roses. The cavalry battle Pausanias mentions again elsewhere and says that a copy of the paint- ing was at Mantineia ; but he was misinformed as to the history, for Epameinondas had no part in the engagement.
94 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Continuing the last sentence, Pausanias adds : "And near by he [Euphranor] made in the temple the Apollo surnamed Paternal (Patroiis). One Apollo in front of the temple was made by Leochares, while Calamis made the other, which they call the Averter of Evil (Alexicacus) . They say that the god got this name because by an oracle from Delphi he ended the pestilential malady which oppressed them at the time of the Peloponnesian War." We have no other topographical reference to the temple of Paternal Apollo, save that it was in the Agora, but ap- parently it was just south of the Stoa of Zeus, where, like most Greek temples, it could face the east. The sanctuary of Paternal Apollo is singled out by Demosthenes among the shrines to which a certain lad was led upon being intro- duced into his father's phratry. A representation of Paternal Apollo holding a lyre is found on an altar at Athens; whether or not this is copied from the statue of Euphranor cannot be told. Pausanias's association of the Apollo Averter of Evil with the famous plague of 430 B.C. is questionable, if the statue was made by the elder Calamis, who belonged to the previous generation; the artist may have been the younger Calamis, whose identity is now fairly well established. With the statues in front of the temple was an altar which in the time of Lycurgus was gilded by a certain Neoptolemus.
Without designation of locality Pausanias now speaks of three buildings which were grouped together, the Metroum, or sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods, the Buleuterium, or Senate House, and the Tholus, or Rotunda. "A sanctuary has also been built of the Mother of the Gods, whose statue was made by Pheidias ; and near it the Buleuterium of the Five Hundred, as they are called, who are the annual sena- tors of the Athenians. In the Buleuterium are a wooden
THE HELLENIC AGORA 9$
image of Zeus the Councilor, an Apollo by Peisias, and a Demus by Lyson. The Thesmothetae [the six minor archons] were painted by Protogenes the Caum'an; 01- biades painted the portrait of CalHpus, who led the Athe- nians to Thermopylae to beat back the invasion of the Gala- tians into Greece. . . . Near the Buleuterium of the Five Hundred is the Tholus, as it is called. Here the presidents of the senate sacrifice, and here are certain images made of silver, not of large size." Though Pausanias's words are not explicit, we have no reason to think that he has changed his order of description, and we may look for these buildings at the south end of the Agora.
Some inscriptions mentioning the Metroum have re- cently been found, but no foundations have been discovered. Other ex-idence leads to the same conclusion regarding the site. A story is related by Aeschines {Timarchus 60 ff.) of a certain man who flees for refuge to the Agora and takes his seat on the altar of the Mother of the Gods just as the people are hurr^-ing to an assembly on the Pnyx; where- upon his pursuers, fearing that their misdeeds will be found out, run to the altar and beg him to retire. From this we infer that the altar, which was doubtless before the shrine, was plainly visible to persons passing along the road which rounds the west end of the Areopagus and leads directly to the Pnyx. Furthermore. Arrian, the biographer of Alexander the Great, in speaking of the Tyrannicides, says (Anab. 3, 16, 8) that they "stood in the Cerameicus where we go up to the Acropolis, just about opposite the Metroum and not far from the altar of the Eudanemi." Again, Pausanias in a later passage (p. 98) speaks of the statues of the Namesake Heroes as "higher up" than the group of buildings under consideration, and we know from other sources that these statues were "in a conspicuous place,"
96 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
and that public notices were posted near them ; while Aristotle mentions a certain pillar as at once "near the Namesake Heroes" and "in front of the Buleuterium." Arrian's contemporaries doubtless knew what he meant when he said, "where we go up to the Acropolis;" unfor- tunately we cannot tell whether he means the Panathenaic Road or the shorter path ascending to the east of the Are- opagus. Nor do we know the precise situation of the Ty- rannicides (p. 105) or of the altar of the Eudanemi. The Namesake Heroes (p. 98) were evidently well up the slope of the Areopagus, where they could easily be seen. So the network of evidence is frail, but we cannot go far astray in looking for the site of the group, as has been stated, at the south end of the Agora, possibly to the west of the road. This situation is consistent with Pausanias's order of treat- ment, and here the altar would be in view of persons passing from the Agora to the Pnyx. Then "just about opposite the Metroum" we should find the Tyrannicides, near the branching of the path to the Acropolis, while the Namesake Heroes will be higher up, so that the pillar near them will be in front of the Buleuterium.
The Metroum seems to have included in its precinct the Buleuterium, and possibly also the Tholus, thus bringing the entire group under divine protection, though a scholiast (on Aeschines, Ctesiph. 187) declares that "the Athenians made the Metroum a part of the Buleuterium." Knowing that he was near death, Lycurgus {Vit. X or. 842 f) "or- dered that he be brought into the Metroum and the Buleu- terium," that he might render account of his transactions with the state. Somewhere in the precinct was the famous "tub" of Diogenes; and here stood a statue of a certain magician with whom a Byzantine writer, oddly enough, connects the founding of the precinct.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 97
A temple of the Mother of the Gods is not directly at- tested, but the statue made by Pheidias, or his pupil Agora- critus, probably was a cult statue and implies a temple. The goddess was represented as seated and holding a tympanum in her hand, with a lion beneath her chair. Numerous reliefs of this type have been found, which may have been inspired directly or indirectly by the statue of the Metroum. Apparently the Mother worshiped here was originally Demeter, but later she was identified with the Asiatic Rhea Cybele.
Somewhere in the sanctuary were preserved the important documents of the-state. Here were the original papyri of de- crees of both senate and assembly, financial and other records, as well as valuable papers concerning indi\-iduals, such as Meletus's charge and the court's finding against Socrates, the will of Epicurus, and official copies of the tragedies of Aeschy- lus, Sophocles, and Euripides. All these were under the charge of successive chairmen selected from the presidents of the senate, each of them holding the key for a single day.
The Buleuterium must have been a large building. Prob- ably near the entrance was the xoanon, or wooden image, of Zeus Bulaeus (Councilor), and another of Athena Bulaea, together with the public hearth and altar. On this altar Theramenes took refuge, and from it he was dragged, at the command of Critias, by the Eleven under Satyrus. The main hall was provided with a bema for speakers and with seats, numbered either individually or by tribes, for the Five Hundred, and special seats for the presidents ; the spectators were barred out by a wooden railing. Pau- sanias mentions some of the decorations of the building, the statues and paintings. Numerous important law tablets were set up outside, notably the edict against traitors, and copies of Solon's laws.
98 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
The official name for the Tholus was Ski as (Umbrella). The building was circular and bore a conical roof of stone ; in general appearance it may have resembled the Tholus of Epidaurus. In the Tholus the fifty presidents of the senate dined each day at the state's expense during their term of office ; they even spent the night there in times of pubhc stress. Here were kept the standards of weights and meas- ures under the care of a slave of the state, who was guarded by the chairman of the presidents. In the Tholus Socrates and four others were ordered by the Thirty to arrest Leon the Salaminian, that he might be put to death — and dared to disobey.
We pass on from this group of buildings, "and higher up stand statues of Heroes from whom the tribes of the Athe- nians later got their names." These Heroes, who gave their names to the ten tribes established by Cleisthenes, were Erechtheus, Aegeus, Pandion, Leos, Acamas, Oeneus, Ce- crops, Hippothoon, Ajax, and Antiochus. In addition to these, Pausanias names the statues of Attains, Ptolemy, and Hadrian, Namesake Heroes of the tribes afterward formed (p. 41). The tribes named in honor of Demetrius and Antigonus had been abolished before Pausanias's time, and beyond doubt their statues had been destroyed. Other statues were not allowed near the Namesake Heroes, and the site was one of great honor. The "conspicuous place" where the Eponymi stood served, as has been stated, for the publication of bulletins, such as the list of men drafted for military service and copies of proposed laws. The names of benefactors of the state, of ephebi, and of traitors were posted here on stone tablets.
Beyond the Namesake Heroes stood several important statues. Of these Pausanias says: "After the figures of the Eponymi are statues of gods, Amphiaraus and Peace
THE HELLENIC AGORA 99
carrying the child Wealth. Here too is a bronze statue of Lycurgus son of Lycophron and a statue of Callias, who, as most of the Athenians say, brought about the peace between the Greeks and Artaxerxes son of Xerxes. There is also a statue of Demosthenes." Our evidence for the location of these statues is very slight. The statue of Demosthenes is said by the author of the Lives of the Ten Orators to have been "near the Roped-in-space (Peri- schoenisma) and the altar of the Twelve Gods" (p. 32); that is, near the southwest comer of the Agora. Since Amphiaraus, like the Semnae, was a subterraneous deity, the plausible suggestion has been made that his statue and cult may have been situated near the sanctuary of the Semnae at the northeast corner of the Areopagus (p. 361). These data, together with Pausanias's statement that they were "after the figures of the Eponymi," may suffice to locate the group along the north slope of the Areopagus.
Amphiaraus was really a Theban rather than an Attic divinity. The Amphiareum at Oropus came into Athenian control at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and the statue at Athens may have been set up at that time ; but this is only a conjecture.
The statue of Peace carrying Wealth is happily better known. An Athenian coin of the time of Hadrian repre- sents a female figure with long robes and staff in her right hand, while on her left arm she bears a child holding a cornucopia. The same motive has been identified in a marble statue now in the Glyptothek at Munich, without doubt a repUca of the statue of the Agora (Fig. 47). Other copies of both figures have since been found, notably a fine torso of Peace in the Metropolitan Museum at New York (Fig. 48) and a copy of the child discovered at Peiraeus (Fig. 49). The stately figure of Peace rests on the left
lOO
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
foot and is clothed in a full chiton girded high and folded over to the waist ; her flowing hair falls upon her shoulders. Her right hand, as the coin bears witness, held a scepter,
while the left arm supported a cornucopia, not a vase, as has been restored in the Munich copy.
The original statue may have been discovered and destroyed in 1672. The let- ter of that year written by Babin (p. 3) narrates the finding, in the ruins of an old church, of "a statue of marble, which represents the Holy Virgin holding her son in her arms." With icono- clastic ardor the ''idol" was at once broken in pieces. If, however, as some think, the original was of bronze, the one destroyed must have been a copy.
Pausanias mentions the statue of Peace and Wealth again in a later book (9, 16, 2), and there says that it was the work of Cephisodotus, a successor of Pheidias and probably, the father of Praxiteles. The style of the extant copies is consistent with its attri- bution to a sculptor of this period, and the statue is ac- cordingly a valuable document in the study of the history of art. Cephisodotus flourished at the end of the fifth century B.C.
Fig. 47. — Copy of the statue of Eirene and Plutus, by Cephiso- dotus (Glyptothek, Munich).
THE HELLENIC AGORA
lOI
Fig. 48. — Eirene (Metro- politan Museum, New York).
The beneficent works of Lycurgus
entitled him to the grateful memory
of Athens (pp. 39 f .). This statue in
the Agora was set up in 307/6 B.C.
in accordance with a decree proposed
by a certain Stratocles. A piece of
Hymettian marble which probably
is a part of the base has been
found. It bears an inscription which,
as restored, reads : *' Lycurgus son
of Lycophron, a Butad." Fragments
of the base of another statue of
Lycurgus have also been found. Whether any such peace between
Athens and Persia as is attributed
to Callias was ever made, is doubt- ful, but the tradition dates from the fourth century B.C.
Callias's statue is not otherwise known; not accidental,
perhaps, was its erection near the statue of Peace, or, since he was the earlier, the statue of Peace near his.
We have a little more information about the statue of the great orator. The sculptor was Polyeuctus, and the statue was set up in 280/279 B.C. according to a decree proposed by Demochares, Demosthenes's nephew. In his hfe of the orator Plutarch tells us that he was repre- sented with clasped hands, and that
Fig. 49. — Plutus ; a copy a plane tree stood near by. A sol-
found in Peiraeus ^j^ ^^ j^^^^ ^^^ ^j^ ^^ j^j^ (National Museum, ^ ■'
Athens). money in the hands of the statue.
102
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
and the leaves from the tree helped to conceal the treas- ure. This statue was probably the original of extant statues and heads of Demosthenes, which have some differences, but agree in the general features, particularly
the expression of the stammer- ing lips (Fig. 50). Very sug- gestive is Lord Macaulay's characterization of the Vatican copy.^ *'The Demosthenes is very noble. There jcan be no doubt about the face of Demo- sthenes. There are two busts of him in the Vatican, besides this statue. They are all ex- actly alike, being distinguished by the strong projection of the upper lip. The face is lean, wrinkled, and haggard ; the ex- pression singularly stern and intense. You see that he was no trifler, no jester, no voluptu- ary ; but a man whose soul was devoured by ambition, and con- stantly on the stretch." The restored hands of the Vatican copy hold a scroll ; the correct restoration has recently been made, on a cast, from hands found in the garden of the Barberini palace at Rome. Another copy, almost like that of the Vatican, is in England.
1 Quoted by Frazer, Pausanias, II, 90, from Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.
Fig. 50. — Demosthenes; from a cast after the Vatican copy, restored with clasped hands instead of scroll.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 103
"Near the image of Demosthenes is a sanctuary of Ares. Here are set up two statues of Aphrodite. The statue of Ares is by Alcamenes; the Athena, by a Parian named Locrus. Here is also a statue of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles. About the temple stand Heracles and Theseus and Apollo binding his hair with a fillet. Other statues are Calades, who is said to have written laws [nomes?] for the Athenians, and Pindar, who received the statue and other honors at the hands of the Athenians for his praise of their city in his poetry." Only one other Uterary reference to the temple of Ares exists, a passage of a Byzantine writer (Georgios Kodinos, De orig. Constant. 47, 14), who mentions "the columns of the elephants of the Golden Gate brought from Athens, from the temple of Ares, by Theodosius the Little." This has no topo- graphical value, and in addition we have only Pausanias's statements that the sanctuar}- was ''near the statue of Demosthenes," and that the Tyrannicides were ''not far" from it; we are perhaps justified in assuming that the precinct was near the Areopagus, which was often, rightly or wrongly, called the Hill of Ares (pp. 357 f.). Possibly it stood on or near the site of the church of St. Athanasius.
The suggestion has been made that the Borghese Ares (Fig. 51) is a copy of the statue of Alcamenes. Various other replicas are kno\\Ti of this type, the original of which must have been famous, but the e\'idence to sup- port the identification with the statue of the temple is not strong.
Of the other statues in and about the temple of Ares little can be said. Aphrodite is often associated with Ares, as with Hephaestus. Neither the Athena of Locrus the Parian nor the sculptor himself is otherwise known.
I04
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Enyo, the personification of the horror of war, is named with Ares and Zeus Geleon on a base found on the Acro- polis. The sculptors of the statue of Enyo, the "sons of Praxiteles," were Cephisodotus and Timarchus, who made
|
i. !»" v''\ ■ , |
Fig. 51. — Borghese Ares (Louvre Museum, Paris).
Fig. 52. — Theseus, commonly known as " Apollo of the Omphalos " (National Mu- seum, Athens).
statues also in other parts of Greece. Calades is otherwise
quite unknown. A valuable suggestion as to the identifi- cation of the Theseus has lately been made (Fig. 52).
Of the statue of Pindar the Pseudo-Aeschines says {Ep. 4, 3) that the poet was represented as a "draped and seated figure with a lyre and diadem and a book unrolled
THE HELLENIC AGOIL\ 105
on his knees." He further tells us that this famous statue was "in front of the Royal Stoa" (p. 91). At present no consistent arrangement of the buildings can be found that will admit of the placing of the statue near both the Royal Stoa and the temple of Ares. Either the statue must have been moved to the new site before Pausanias's time, or else one or the other of the statements must be wrong. By the "other honors" which Pindar enjoyed, Pausanias doubtless means the double payment by the Athenians of the fine imposed on Pindar by the jealous Thebans for his praise of Athens as, "O, resplendent, vdolet-crowned, glorious Athens, famous in song and story, pillar of Greece, city divine."
"Not far away," Pausanias goes on, "stand Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew Hipparchus ; the reason for their deed and the manner of the doing of it have been told by others. The one pair is by Critius ; the archaic pair is by Antenor. When the Athenians deserted Athens and Xerxes took the city, he carried off the latter as spoils, and Antiochus sent them back afterwards to the Athenians." The assassination of Hipparchus took place in 514 B.C. (p. 33), and the first group of the Tyrannicides, by Antenor, must have been set up soon after that date, or certainly before 480 B.C., when it was carried off by Xerxes. The lost statues were at once replaced by Critius and Xesiotes — not Critius alone, as Pausanias says — and stood through- out the classic period. The original group was restored by Alexander, or Seleucus, or Antiochus ; ancient authorities differ. The situation of the statues has already been dis- cussed. The Orchestra near which they stood was prob- ably the place where, according to Plato's Apology, the activities of the booksellers were centered ; perhaps it was the scene of musical and dramatic contests before the construction of the great theater (p. 192).
io6
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Fig. 53. — Tyrannicides, as blazon on Athena's shield on a Panathenaic vase.
Several representations of the Tyrannicides have been preserved. They appear, for example, as the blazon of Athena's shield on a Panathenaic vase (Fig. 53), on the
arm of a marble throne, on coins, and on vase-fragments from the tomb of Dexileos (p. 374). Usu- ally they are represented as advancing, side by side, with outstretched arms and brand- ished swords to the attack. From these minor copies have been identified two statues of the Naples Museum, which had been posed as duelists (Fig. 54). These represent, fairly accu- rately, the ancient statues, which, however, being of bronze, dispensed with the supporting tree-trunks, necessary in the more fragile marble, and were on one base. The present head of Aristogeiton on the copy at Naples has been added from a statue of a much later period, and is obviously inconsistent both with the dry rendering of the body and with the archaic head of Harmodius ; the arms, too, are wrongly restored. When these errors have been corrected, we gain a very clear notion of the ancient statues (Fig. 55). Whether the extant reproductions are from the group of Antenor or from that of Critius and Nesiotes has been much discussed ; in all probability they portray the later group. From the fourth century B.C., the two groups stood side by side.
After leaving the Tyrannicides, Pausanias names the next point of interest with no clew as to its situation. "In front of the entrance to the theater which they call the
THE HELLENIC AGORA
107
Odeum are statues of Egj^Dtian kings." These he mentions,
in what is for us a long digression, as Ptolemy Philometor
and his daughter Berenice, Ptolemy Philadelphus and his
sister Arsinoe, Ptolemy Lagus and his son Ptolemy Soter.
He adds, "Beyond the
Eg>T)tians are Philip
and Alexander the son
of Philip," and beside
these the statues of Lysi-
machus and Pyrrhus.
Finally he says, ''As you
enter the Odeum at
Athens, among other
things is a Dionysus
worth seeing ; and near
by is a fountain. ..."
This Odeum, or Music
Hall, is thought by some
to be identical with the
Agrippeum spoken of by
Philostratus {Vit. soph.
2, 5, 3) as "in the Cera-
meicus," but we do not
know its history' or its
situation, save that it
was near the fountain
Fig. 54. — Tyrannicides (Naples Museum).
whose site we are soon to visit. To the identification suggested the objections may be raised that a building near the fountain, that is, at the southwest comer of the Areopagus, would not be "in the Cerameicus," and that the statues at its entrance are of an earlier date than Agrippa {cf. p. 238) ; but Philostratus may be using the name Cera- meicus as a general term synonymous with Agora, and this
io8
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
may not be the original site of the statues. Agrippa may- have built over an earlier structure and have given it his own name.
To continue with Pausanias : "And near by is a fountain ; they call it Eimeacrunus, since it was adorned with nine
spouts by Peisistratus. Wells exist throughout all the city, but this is the only fountain." No point in Athenian topog- raphy has been more discussed than the "En- neacrunus episode." We have already seen (p. 30) that Thucydides men- tions the fountain as having been recon- structed " by the ty- rants " and renamed Enneacrunus, or Nine- spouts, instead of Cal- lirrhoe, or Fair-flowing. In the bed of the Ilissus just south of the Olym- pieum is a Callirrhoe (Fig. 56) whose name is well attested, and many have thought that this is the spring in question, the alleged break in Pausanias's narrative being explained in various ways. But the supposition is far easier that the spring which the excavations uncovered (p. 83) between the Areopagus and the Pnyx is the Enneacrunus of Pau- sanias and Thucydides.
Fig. 55. — Tyrannicides; the Naples group restored and corrected (Brunswick Museum).
THE HELLENIC AGORA 109
At this spot are the remains of an extensive system of waterworks. The original spring, Callirrhoe, comprised a large rock-hewn chamber, to which steps descended through a corridor (now closed to the pubhc by an iron gate), a well at the rear of this chamber with a parapet in
Fig. 56. — Callirrhoe and rock ridge in the bed of the Ilissus.
The Ilissus in summer when the stream has shrunk to a mere thread; in freshets the flow passes over the ridge of rock.
front, and a large cistern connecting with the chamber and with the outside by corridors and steps (Fig. 57). The additions of Peisistratus lay in front of Callirrhoe and con- sisted of a series of reservoirs, a main storage basin, whence water was drawn in jars by a rope, and another basin, whose water flowed through nine lions' heads into the jars set beneath, quite as portrayed in ancient vase paintings (Fig. 58). The last is the Nine-spouts. The foimtain was adorned with columns ; in front was a large square which opened on the road. To reenforce the natural supply of water a large conduit with various branches was constructed, leading from the valley of IHssus in the foothills of Mt.
no
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
Hymettus. In the city this conduit passes through the present palace gardens and along the southern slope of the Acropolis to the valley of the Ancient Agora. The tunnel is sometimes high enough to allow a man to stand upright in it, and through it run the clay pipes, joined with lead, to
ir?5:-»i,j----.0r(
ELEUSINIUMP I
FAMYNEUM
HOUSE
10 15 M
0 K) 20304050
Meters
Feet
Fig. 57. — Plan of Enneacrunus and adjacent sites, restored.
carry the water to Enneacrunus. In Roman times the conduit was extended to supply other sites in this region.
The system is undoubtedly of the time of Peisistratus, and rivals the similar aqueducts made in this period by other tyrants, Periander of Corinth, Polycrates of Samos, and Theagenes of Megara.
Before leaving this region we must visit a site probably identified correctly as the Pnyx, which Pausanias fails to
THE HELLENIC AGOR.\
III
mention. It lies on the side of the hill (Fig. 59) of the same name and commands a wide view over this section of the city. Here seems to have been a meeting place of the
Fig. 58. — Callirrhoe-Enneacrunus ; vase painting.
Athenian assembly, although the \dew that this was the Pnyx has met, and still meets, \'igorous opposition. The present construction dates from the fourth century B.C., but the existence of an earlier wall and of rock-hewn steps beneath the area point to its use for the same or some other purpose prior to that period.
The Pnyx, as we now have it, consists of an irregularly semicircular space nearly 400 feet in its longitudinal diam- eter and about 230 feet wide (Fig. 60). The ground here by nature slopes toward the north, and the area was raised on its curved side by a supporting wall of carefully joined stones, some of them of enormous size. By means of this wall the slope in ancient times was probably turned toward the south, or rather southwest. In the obtuse angle at the middle of the south side lies the bema, or orators'
THE HELLENIC AGORA
"3
platform (Fig. 6i). The rock has been hewn down verti- cally along this side of the area, a portion at the east comer never having been removed, and the bema with its steps is cut from a projection of the solid rock. Niches for
WALL
Fig. 6o. — Plan of the Pnyx.
votive oflferings are cut in the scarped rock at one side of the bema, and inscriptions referring to Most High Zeus indi- cate that a sanctuary of Zeus was at some time located here. Above and behind the bema are seats, probably seats of honor, cut from the rock and facing the assembly, while back of these are remains of an altar and various bases belonging to some shrine. Returning again to Pausanias, we read: "Temples are
114 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
built beyond [above?] the fountain; one of Demeter and Cora, while in that of Triptolemus is a statue. ... As I was about to continue this narrative and state the explana- tion for the sanctuary at Athens called the Eleusinium, a vision prevented me. So I will turn to what is holy to write to all. In front of this temple in which is the statue of Triptolemus is a bronze bull being led to sacrifice ; and here is a seated statue of Epimenides the Cnossian." The
Fig. 6i. — Orators' platform on the Pnyx; in the rear the AcropoUs.
temples of Demeter and Triptolemus were probably in the Eleusinium, though Pausanias does not expressly say that this was the case. The Eleusinium is named by Plutarch as one of three most sacred spots in the city, the other two being the AcropoHs and the Theseum; his view seems to be in part an inference from the statement of Thucydides that these were the most notable inclosures not occupied by the crowds of Attic countrymen who thronged the city during the second year of the Peloponnesian War. Clement of Alexandria, whose word is supported by inscriptions, says {Protrept. 13) that the Eleusinium lay "at the foot of the Acropolis." The order of mention by Pausanias seems to limit this vague statement to the western foot, and this is amply proved by other evidence. Xenophon, for example,
THE HELLENIC AGORA 115
advises {Hipparch. 3, 2) his ideal cavalry leader to display his squadron by making the round of the shrines in the Agora and then ''to ride up at full speed by tribes to the Eleusinium ; " and Philostratus, in describing the course of the ship used in the great Panathenaic procession, says {Vit. soph. 2, I, 5) that it started from the Cerameicus — meaning the Outer Cerameicus, beyond the Dipylum — and advanced *'to the Eleusinium, and, rounding that, passed by the Pelargicum" (p. 363). The situation sug- gested, south of the Areopagus (c/. Fig. 42), manifestly satisfies the requirements of these passages ; a recent in- vestigator would put it on the south slope of the Acropolis, which is doubtful.
Pausanias's "vision" has deprived us of much that we should Hke to know about the Eleusinium ; ancient writers rarely sHp in the matter of the Eleusinian secrets. The great Eleusinium was, of course, at Eleusis. Triptolemus is often associated with the Eleusinian Demeter and Per- sephone ; he is usually represented by the vase painters as riding on a winged car drawn by serpents (Fig. 62). Pau- sanias identifies the Epimenides whose statue he saw with the Cnossian, "the Greek Rip Van Winkle," who purified Athens from the guilt of the Alcmaeonids, but more prob- ably this was the statue of the Attic Epimenides, who was said to have been the first ox-driver and who was allied with Triptolemus, a divinity of agriculture.
"And still farther on is a temple of Fair Fame (Eucleia) ; this too is a votive offering from the Medes who landed at Marathon." Eucleia is probably an epithet of Artemis. In inscriptions Eucleia is usually associated with Fair Order (Eunomia). If Pausanias is correct, the temple must have been erected soon after the Persian Wars, but its history and location are httle known. In various other Greek
ii6 ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
cities a temple of Artemis Eucleia was in the Agora ; per- haps the temple was on Pausanias's way as he now returned to the Agora at Athens.
From the temple of Fair Fame, then, Pausanias comes back toward the north end of the Agora. "Above the
Fig. 62. — Persephone, Triptolemus, and Demeter; vase painting.
Cerameicus,"he says, ''and the so-called Royal Stoa is a tem- ple of Hephaestus. I was not surprised that the statue of Athena stands near him, as I knew the story of Erichtho- nius. Observing that the statue of Athena had gray eyes, ..." We have already seen that the Royal Stoa was on the west side of the Agora and on the slope of Colonus Agoraeus, or Market Hill (p. 89), the only elevation of importance in the region north of the Areopagus. That the temple of Hephaestus stood on this hill can scarcely be doubted. Harpocration speaks of hired slaves who were
THE HELLENIC AGORA 117
called Colonetae, "because they stood by Colonus near the Agora where are the Hephaesteum and the Eurysaceum." Andocides mentions (i, 40) a certain Euphemus, who was seen in the braziers' quarter and "led up to the Hephae- steum;" Hephaestus, the god of the forge, would appro- priately have his temple near the smithies, a supposition which is confirmed by the remark of another writer (Bekker, Anec. gr. i, 316, 23) that "bronze is sold where the He- phaesteum is." At the present time Colonus Agoraeus is for the most part singularly bare of ancient remains ; but at its northern end, "above the Royal Stoa/' stands the best preserved of Greek temples (Fig. 63).
The name "Theseum" was first appUed to this building in the Middle Ages, probably because on some of its me- topes and a part of its frieze deeds of Theseus are depicted. But inference from the sculptural decoration of a temple has been shown to be hazardous. On such grounds, for example, the temple of Zeus at Oh-mpia might be attributed to Heracles and the Parthenon at Athens to Theseus. The true Theseum was certainly on the east side of the Agora near the foot of the AcropoHs (p. 152) ; it may not have contained a temple at all, and it was built at a much earUer date than the structure before us. The Theseum, then, this building cannot be. In recent years it has been ascribed variously to Ares, Apollo, Heracles, Aphrodite, the Amazons, and Hephaestus; but on the topographical grounds outlined above, as well as certain interpretations of the sculptural remains, the claim of Hephaestus seems most conclusive, though complete agreement of scholars has not been reached.
The temple measures 104 by 45 feet on the stylobate, or upper step. It is built of Pentehc and Parian marble, save the lowest of the three steps, which is of poros. The build-
6 -o
o —
THE HELLENIC AGORA 119
ing is hexastyle peripteral; in front are six, on the sides thirteen, Doric columns, 19.3 feet high, 3.3 feet in diameter at the base, and tapering to 2.6 feet at the top of the shaft. The intercolumniations are 5.3 feet, except at the comers, where the space between columns is nearly a foot less, the usual de\-ice to adjust the triglj-phs over the comer columns. Above the colonnade is the customary entablature, consist- ing of architrave, triglyph frieze, and cornice.
The cella is 40 feet long by 20 feet wide, the side walls terminating in square antae, between which at either end were two smaller Doric columns; of these the east pair was removed to make an apse in later 4ays when the temple was transformed into a Christian church. At the same time the east cross-wall was torn down and a large door cut in the west cross-wall; but this was later closed, to prevent the Turks from riding in on horseback, and the two small doors, by one of which the temple is now entered, were cut in the sides. On the interior the walls have been covered with a coat of stucco, probably for Christian paint- ings. The original wooden roof has perished, and the pres- ent vaulted roof over the cella, of stone and concrete, dates from Christian times; over the aisles many panels of the ceiling are still in place.
The temple was richly decorated with sculptures. Of the pedimental groups only the traces remain, unfortu- nately not enough to indicate clearly their motive. A plausible argument has been offered to show that the east pediment represented the birth of Erich thonius, the west, Hephaestus with Thetis and Eurynome.
The ten metopes on the front or east end and the adja- cent four on each side of the temple are sculptured. The reUefs of these, of Parian marble, are much battered. Those across the front represent the labors of Heracles: (i)
I20
ATHENS AND ITS MONUMENTS
the Nemean lion, (2) the Lernaean hydra, (3) the Cery- naean stag, (4) the Erymanthian boar, (5) the mare of Diomede, (6) Cerberus, (7) the Amazon queen, (8, 9) Geryon, and (10) the apples of the Hesperides. The me- topes on the sides represent the deeds of Theseus: those
Fig. 64. — Southeast corner of the Hephaesteum, showing four of the sculptured metopes.
on the south side (Fig. 64), from east to west, portray the hero with (i) the Minotaur, (2) the Marathonian bull,
(3) Sinis, and (4) Periphetes; those on the north side, Theseus with (i) Procrustes, (2) Cercyon, (3) Sciron, and
(4) the Crommyonian sow.
THE HELLENIC AGORA 121
Above the columns at either end of the cella is an Ionic frieze; the eastern section extends across the side-aisles and is about 37 feet long ; the western terminates above the antae and is about 25 feet long. The former depicts six seated gods, three grouped over each anta, watching a battle, perhaps Erichthonius and Amphictyon and their followers fighting for the kingship of Attica ; the latter represents the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs. The friezes are also of Parian marble.
On styHstic grounds the Hephaesteum seems to be some- what later than the Parthenon; it may have been com- pleted, or nearly so, before the Peloponnesian War. An in- scription tells us of a festival held every four years in honor of Hephaestus and Athena which was inaugurated during the peace of Nicias (421/20 B.C.), when bronze statues of the di\'inities on a common base were begun. The statues were completed at the next celebration of the festival, four years later, and probably were those seen by Pausanias in the temple. The sculptor seems to have been Alcamenes, and the Hephaestus may be identical with a statue of that artist praised by Cicero and Valerius Maximus for the skill with which the god's lameness was treated as an attri- bute rather than as a defect. The type of the Athena has recently been identified (Fig. 65).
The temple has a romantic later history which we cannot now follow. We owe its comparatively excellent preserva- tion to its early dedication to St. George and its long use as a Christian church. In the last centur>' it was used as a general museum; at present it contains a Byzantine collection.
The Eurysaceum, or sanctuary of Eur\^saces, <