Athēnae
（
Ἀθῆναι). The chief city of Attica. The long southeastern
triangle of the northern peninsula of Greece, which terminates in the abrupt promontory
of Sunium (mod. Cávo Colónnais), has its most interesting and important
division, topographically as well as historically, on the western side, facing the Saronic
Gulf. Here, at a point midway between Sunium and the promontory that faces Salamis, the low
Cape Zoster terminates the Anhydros range, a lower continuation of Hymettus. The long
continuous ridge of Anhydros and Hymettus (1027 metres at its greatest height) extends, in a
slightly northeasterly direction, towards the range of Pentelé (
Πεντέλη), the ancient Brilessos (
Βριλησσός) or Pentelicon (
Πεντελικόν sc.
ὄρος, Lat. Mons Pentelicus), from which it is separated by
the pass through which the modern railway runs southeasterly towards the ancient mines of
Laurium, near Sunium. The Pentelicus range (1086.6 metres high) extends northwest and
southeast, and forms with Hymettus and Anhydros a well-nigh continuous dividing-wall between
the eastern plain of Attica, the Mesogaea (
Μεσόγαια), and
the middle plain; while the plain of Marathon in the northeast is approachable from the
Mesogaea only by a narrow way between Pentelicus and the sea towards Euboea, and from the
middle plain by two difficult mountain ways between Pentelicus and Parnes. This last range
(1412 metres high) lies to the northwest of Pentelicus and extends nearly east and west.
Passable only by way of Decelea (mod. Tatóï) in the east and
Phylé in the west, it effectually cuts off Attica from Boeotia. In its furthest
extent towards the west, where it continues in the Cithaeron range, it divides the western
Attic plain, the Eleusinian, from Boeotia. The middle Attic plain is separated from the
Eleusinian by a lower mountain mass, Aegaleos (
Αἰγάλεως) or
Corydallos (
Κορυδαλλός) (467 metres high), which, leaving
easy way between itself and Parnes, continues southwest, broken midway by the pass of
Daphné, till it terminates in “the rocky brow which looks o'er sea-born
Salamis.” Within these natural ramparts lies that which we may call
par excellence the Attic plain, a great V-shaped recess open towards the sea. Its more
important internal features, which, taken in connection with its enclosed character on the one
hand and its free access to the sea on the other, rendered it an ideal theatre for the
development of a Greek state, we must now examine in detail.
From the offshoots of Parnes and Pentelicus in the northeast rises the most considerable
waterway of the plain—the Cephissus, which afforded in ancient as in modern times a
perennial source of irrigation for the fields of the Attic farmer. As it approaches the sea,
below the heights of the city, it seems to have been met by another stream from the
east—the Ilissus, which, rising from Hymettus, is in modern times, owing to the
denudation of its parent mountain, a much more insignificant stream than in ancient times,
hardly more than a dry bed in summer. Hence the difficulty of determining its entire course.
The Eridanus mentioned by ancient authors seems to have been a stream from the delicious and
wholesome fountain of Kaisariané (
Καισαριανή,
anc.
Κυλλοῦ πήρα), southeast of the sources of the Ilissus,
into which the stream emptied east of the city.
Between the Cephissus and the Ilissus, about midway of the plain, a short range of hills,
formed like the other heights of the plain of bluish-gray limestone and bearing to-day the
name Tourkovoún
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Plan of Athens.
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(
Τουρκοβούνι, “Turk Mountain,”
anc. perh.
Ἀγχεσμός) (339 metres high), terminates at the
southwest in the bold separate peak of Lycabettus (277 metres high), from the pyramidal summit
of which, crowned by a chapel of St. George, one commands the most splendid view of the Attic
plain, the gulf with its islands, and the Peloponnesian mountains beyond. Some 1000 paces to
the southwest of this height, too sharp and steep for habitation, rises a double group of
hills of about half the height of Lycabettus. The first and highest of these is the famous
Acropolis, the citadel of Athens (156 metres high). Under its western brow
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View of the Acropolis in 1890. (From a photograph.)
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lies the lower rock of the Areopagus (
Ἄρειος πάγος,
“Mars' Hill”) (115 metres high). From northwest to south of this extends
the group of the Museum (
Μουσεῖον, “Muses'
Hill”), the Pnyx, and the “Nymphs' Hill” (so called from an
inscription), separated by depressions. The highest point is at the southeast extremity of the
group, in the summit of the Museum (147 metres high), crowned by the monument of the Syrian
Antiochus Philopappus. This triple group of hills seems to have been called collectively in
ancient times Pnyx (
Πνύξ,
“conglomeration”).
Lycabettus, the Acropolis, and the Pnyx were manifestly formed by the
action of water, which, forcing its way east and west, left the hard bluegray limestone
projecting in three great protuberances, “like bones of a wasted body,” as
Plato says.
Between four and five English miles southwest of the Acropolis we find as outpost on the sea
the rocky peninsula of Acté or Munichia, which, originally an island, like Salamis,
was gradually united to the plain by the soil washed from above. North of it lies the secure
landlocked harbour of Piraeus (
Πειραιεύς); east, the larger
open roadstead of Phalerum (
Φάληρον), the earlier port of
Athens, into which the Cephissus and Ilissus drain, and which is terminated on the southeast
by Cape Colias (
Κωλιὰς ἄκρα).
If we examine the soil of the plain from the sea inland, we find that the sandy coast is
succeeded by a swampy alluvial strip, the Halipedon (
Ἁλίπεδον, “salt-plain” or “sea-plain”).
This again gives place to the plain proper, which, though “light of soil”
and requiring diligent cultivation, is yet the natural home of the olive, and is not ill
adapted to the growth of wheat and vegetables. The stony foot-hills above the plain (
Φελλεύς) were terraced and utilized for the cultivation of the vine;
while the fragrant mountain-plants, particularly of purple Hymettus, furnished pasturage not
only for sheep, but for the bees that have made Attic honey proverbial. The fig-tree, too, was
made to flourish so well in the plain that Attic figs were as famous as the oil and honey from
the same region.
To these resources we must add the abundance of potter's-clay, and the wealth of material
for the architect and the sculptor afforded by the quarries of Pentelicus, Hymettus, and
Eleusis, as well as by those of the hills of the city and the heights of Piraeus.
In his efforts to wring from the soil its uttermost, the farmer was aided by a climate
exceptionally favourable. In the Attic year there are, on the average, not more than
thirty-five days on which the sun does not show itself; and though the north winds from snowy
Parnes render the winter cold most penetrating, their steady breath by day during the greater
part of the year, alternating with the equally steady sea-breeze by night, combined with a
wonderful purity and dryness of air, gave to Attica—and still gives to her, though
in a less degree—a climate at once physically and mentally exhilarating. Justly,
then, might “the children of Erechtheus” be called “blessed of
old, and children of the happy gods,” “lightly walking through brightest
and clearest air,” where the goddess of all fertility “irrigated the soil
from the streams of ever-flowing Cephissus, and breathed over them temperate
breezes.”
We turn now to the development of the little city which grew up in the midst of this
exceptional environment.
As in the case of other ancient Grecian settlements, so in that of Athens we find an
avoidance of immediate proximity to the sea, such as would have been obtained by a settlement
on the height of the Piraeus. The natural centre for the development of a town neither remote
from the sea nor yet immediately accessible from it—such, too, as to be commanded by
a natural asylum in the event of hostile inroads—is afforded, in the case of Athens,
by the group of hills below Lycabettus. Not only do we find here a central and isolated
position in a plain set apart from the rest of the world by nature, but also, within a
narrow compass, arable land with a water-supply, the material for the primitive artisan, and
an airy and wholesome position for habitation upon a foundation of native rock, thus leaving
the cultivable area unencumbered.
It is not of special moment to us, in tracing the material development of the little
community which has done more than any other towards the promotion of civilization, whether we
give to the earliest inhabitants any other name than Athenians. The term Pelasgian itself
needs interpretation; and, so far as any precise knowledge goes, we might as well regard these
early occupants of the “land unsacked” as quite as truly an outgrowth of
“the ground itself” as their symbolic cicada. It is evident from the mere
consideration of their environment that we must accept the view of Thucydides, that Attica was
exceptionally stable in population, and trace, so far as possible, the gradual accretions upon
the primitive nucleus, by whatever name we choose to designate it.
The earliest and most permanent traces of human habitation to be found at Athens are the
foundations of houses cut in the rock of the group of hills designated by the general name of
Pnyx. These are extensive enough to warrant the belief that this region, which in historical
times lay waste for the most part, was the seat of a thriving town, according to the
conditions of that primitive period. Whether the remarkable rock-cuttings and the semicircular
Pelasgic wall upon the hill called
par excellence Pnyx be the monuments
of a prehistoric worship of the primeval god of the sunny sky of Greece as well as of its
stormier phenomena, Zeus Hypsistos, or whether we are to see here, as has been the prevailing
fashion, the place of the Athenian popular assembly (that which under the former supposition
is the altar becoming under the latter the famous bema, from which the orators
“shook th' arsenal and fulmin'd over Greece”), to any one who has been
upon the ground the extreme antiquity of these imposing works is at once obvious. To the early
period under discussion seem to belong also the rock-hewn chambers, one of which is
traditionally known as the “Prison of Socrates”—an impossible
designation.
We cannot suppose that the inhabitants of this first rock-city, or Cranaa (
Κρανάα), concerned themselves with the sea, if at all, beyond the
demands of their daily existence, which would hardly lead them beyond fishery. It was only
enterprising accretions from without that could utilize and develop the entire resources of
nature.
Further traces of the early city are to be found in the ancient names, which, attached to
the several districts in and about the later city, maintained themselves, not only in the
mouth of the people, but in public records, through the entire history of Athens. Among the
most certainly distinguishable of these primitive divisions (
δῆμοι) is that known, as far back as we can trace, as Ceramicus (
Κεραμεικός), so called from the potter's-clay which here furnished
abundant material for one of the earliest of human industries. This region stretches northward
from the rocky brow of the Areopagus. Melité (
Μελίτη) seems to have lain to the south of Ceramicus, and to have embraced the
Hill of the Nymphs as well as the Areopagus. Collytus (
Κολ-
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The Theseum.
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λυτός) stretched to the northeast of the Acropolis,
bordering on the west not only upon Ceramicus, but also upon Melité, as seems
proved by a mention of a boundary-stone in Strabo. Diomea (
Διόμεια) may be placed next to Collytus, and between the Acropolis and
Lycabettus. Ceriadae (
Κειριάδαι), within the border of
which, just below the precipice of the Nymphs' Hill, lay the depression, formed partly by
nature, partly by quarrying, called the Barathrum (
Βάραθρον), adjoined Melité on the west; while Coelé
(
Κοίλη), consonant with its name, occupied the gully
between the Hill of the Nymphs and the bed of the Ilissus. The core of these ancient districts
is the rock-city in Melité. To the north of Ceramicus, and, apparently, at all
times outside the city limits, lay Colonos Hippios, called from its hill (
κολωνός).
While the ancient city thus maintained itself in the little inland district just described,
those influences were beginning to make themselves felt from the coast which were to govern
the destiny of the future state. The Phœnician traders appear to have established
their customary trading-posts at an early date not merely on Salamis (which has preserved its
Phœnician name), but also on the coast opposite and on the heights of the Piraeus
and Phalerum. Ancient rock-cuttings in the citadel of Piraeus seem to attest early settlement
there. It was, indeed, such a position as we know, not only from Thucydides, but also from
various material remains, to have been most likely to be chosen by these early navigators of
the Mediterranean, and mediators between Orient and Occident. To this source, a mixed Oriental
coast-settlement in which Phœnicians played the leading part, appears to be due the
addition of Aphrodité and Heracles (Astarté and Melkart) to the
primitive native worship of Zeus and the Nymphs, “daughters of ægisholding
Zeus,” whose cult attached to springs and water-courses. The ritual of these two
foreign deities, as carried on in the historical period, certainly points to a very
early introduction of their worship. As to the primitive worship of Zeus, reference has
already been made to what may, not improbably, be deemed his primeval sanctuary on the Pnyx;
concerning a second early seat of his worship, not far removed, we are better informed.
Southeast of the Acropolis, above the fountain Callirrhoë and the bed of the Ilissus,
was shown in ancient times an opening in the rock into which, according to the legend, the
last vestiges of Deucalion's flood had sunk. Here Deucalion was said to have “built
the ancient sanctuary of Olympian Zeus,” whose worship remained fixed at this spot
through all the subsequent history of the city. Cleft rock and spring are fit emblems of the
worship of Zeus and his daughters at this spot by the primeval Cranai.
The gradual influences of the influx into Attica, both overland from the north and oversea
from the west, may be traced in the gods added to the Athenian pantheon. The Minyan Artemis,
the Pelasgic Hermes, the Thracian Ares who gave his name to the Areopagus, Hephaestus the
handicraftsman's god, gradually encroached upon the domain of the older cults; while Poseidon
gained a seat at Phalerum, and later disputed, according to the legend, the possession of the
land with Athené, the intellectual development of the old Oriental mother-goddess,
who retained her guardianship of the olive-tree even after she had resigned her care of the
fields to Eleusinian Demeter.
The incursions from the north and from the sea, which gradually brought in these new
divinities, forced the growing state of the Cranai to take up a securer position on the rock
of the Acropolis, which, falling off precipitously on all sides except the west, readily lent
itself to the fortifications which the early inhabitants of Greece knew so
well how to build, and which we can understand now that the ruins of Tiryns and Mycenae, as
well as the Acropolis itself, have been submitted to careful excavation and study. Here, on
the top of the rock, which was levelled and provided with retaining-walls, as well as with a
surrounding fortification, was established the ancient Polis (
Πόλις, a term long retained as the official designation of the Acropolis), the
seat of the worship of Zeus Polieus. Here, on the north side, where we now see the ruins of
the later Erechtheum, were the old sanctuary of the local daemon Erechtheus and the palace of
the royal race of the Cecropid and Erechtheid kings, the foundations of which, as well as of
private dwellings of the same epoch, have been traced. Up to this palace led from the north a
stairway, unearthed in the recent excavations, and in the enclosure west of the present
Erechtheum was the sacred olive-tree, the gift of Athené, and
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Ruins of the Olympeium.
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hard by it the tomb of Cecrops, both under the protection of the old local nymph
Pandrosos (Cecropium and Pandroseum). Under the northwest brow of the Acropolis, below the
“long rocks” (
μακραὶ πέτραι), was the
grotto of Pan; and still farther to the west, within the modern bastion of Odysseus, a spring
called Clepsydra (
Κλεψύδρα, “she that hides her
water”), popularly supposed to pass underground to Phalerum. This spring was and
still is approached from above by a remarkable fortified winding stairway cut in the rock.
Under the south face of the Acropolis were a cave and spring, with which the worship of the
healer Asclepius came to be associated; and in the southwest spur of the sacred rock, whence
Aegeus was said to have flung himself down, Athené was established as goddess of
victory (
Νίκη), worshipped in an uncouth primitive idol with
the sacrifice of a perfect cow, as so beautifully represented on the marble balustrade
about the later Ionic temple.
Thus by the sacred olive and the hollow in the rock with its mysterious
trident-mark—where the waves could be heard when the south-wind blew—
flourished the old priestly and kingly race, hemmed in not only by the wall of the Polis
proper, but also, as it seems, by a lower wall enclosing the skirts of the Acropolis, and
called from its nine gates Enneapylon (
Ἐννεάπυλον), the
area within which and below the ramparts of the citadel was known as the Pelargicon (
τὸ Πελαργικόν). The main entrance was then, as it has always been
perforce, at the west end of the citadel, a fortified way winding up towards the right, the
ancient warrior's exposed side, below the bastion of Athené Niké.
The Ionians who immigrated from across the Aegean brought in the Delian Apollo, the god of
Ionic colonization and civilization. This new and important factor in the Athenian state
established itself south of the Acropolis in what Thucydides regarded as old Athens, in the
region called Cydathenaeum (
Κυδαθήναιον), extending some
2000 metres around the southeast flank of the Acropolis and up towards Lycabettus. Under the
south face of the Acropolis, close to the later Dionysiac Theatre, the northern Dionysus of
Eleutherae was established in the Lenaeum, near the sanctuary of the
“public” Aphrodité (
Ἀφροδίτη
πάνδημος). To the south of this seems to have lain the old marketplace, the
ἀγορά of the Ionic
ἄστυ.
Here was established the first town-hall—the Prytaneum or Basileum—by
which, under the auspices of Themis, the “sceptre-bearing” kings
administered justice. The solemn court of murder, so soon as the taking of human life came to
be recognized as a state offence, was established on the Areopagus, in a
cleft beneath which the Eumenides (“the gracious”）—as the
avengers of blood, the Erinyes, were here called—were solemnly worshipped. The
bodies of the executed, as well as purificatory offerings and offscourings, were thrown into
the deep recess of the Barathrum. Thus the highest priesthood was associated with the
Acropolis, while the king came down to preside in his political function over the Ionic
nobility of Cydathenaeum. The Thesean nobles, true to their Ionic instinct, encouraged closer
intercourse with the sea, and Cydathenaeum was linked by a high-road to Phalerum, whence they
trafficked abroad; whereas the influence of the Tyrian traders seems to have made itself felt
upon the Cranaan city of Melité by a way leading up from the Salaminian Strait.
In the meantime the germ of the later city was rapidly maturing in the industrial settlement
northwest of the Acropolis in Ceramicus, which seems to have kept pace in its development with
the growing opposition of the lower classes to the encroachments and extortions of the Ionic
nobility. After the period of ferment followed by the Solonian legislation, at the opening of
the sixth century, came the first great period of the Athenian state—the democratic
despotism of the Pisistratidae.
The centre of gravity of the city now shifted to the point at which it remained ever
afterwards— to the centre of the settlement of the Ceramicus, which rapidly outgrew
in importance the effete Cydathenaeum. Here was established the altar of the Twelve Gods, from
which, as from the golden milestone of Rome, distances were reckoned; and here, too, was the
focus of Athenian
πολυπραγμοσύνη. On the Acropolis,
Pisistratus probably built the temple of Athené Polias, “the old
temple,” on the site between the later Parthenon and Erechtheum, where its plan has
lately been made out. From this period, too, we date the institution of the great Panathenaea
and the carrying of the sacred ship from the outer Ceramicus around and into the citadel. Thus
did Pisistratus add new glory to the cult of his patron goddess. Upon the terrace above
Callirrhoë, Pisistratus began a great temple to Olympian Zeus, but did not carry out
his ambitious design. He also built in, or led an aqueduct from, Callirrhoë, which
thus became Enneacrunos (
Ἐννεάκρουνος, “the
fountain with nine pipes”), and long continued to be, as it had been, the main water
supply of the town. The encouragement, if not the introduction, of the Dionysiac worship,
which bore such abundant fruit in the succeeding century, seems also to have been an object of
especial care to Pisistratus.
Close upon the downfall of the Pisistratidean tyrannis and the struggles of the Clisthenean
reform came the Persian wars and the sack of the Acropolis by the barbarians. The remains of
the ruined shrines of the pre-Persian period, with curious painted pediments of soft stone,
and the statues of Parian marble, executed by artists under the patronage of the
Pisistratidae, are among the most precious treasures brought to light by the excavation of the
Acropolis.
The wide-reaching schemes of naval empire which sprang from the fertile brain of
Themistocles, who fostered the growth of the Athenian navy and first saw the strategic
importance of the Piraeus, were destined never to be fully realized. Before the Persian
wars, Themistocles had caused the Piraeus to be fully fortified and made a strong naval
station, invested with heavy fortress-walls about the citadel of Munichia, and with its
harbours (Cantharos, the largest, Munichia, and Zea) narrowed and easily closed. After the
devastation of the city, he whose merit it was that he “fastened the city to the
Piraeus, the land to the sea,” would fain have made the Piraeus the centre of the
new city-development—impregnable by land and sea. But the machinations of the
Peloponnesians necessitated the hurried fortification of the old site with an effective wall,
and thus enabled the conservative party of Aristides and Cimon to carry out their design of
maintaining the “wheel-shaped” city about the Acropolis, with a separate
porttown and naval station at the Piraeus.
The Themistoclean wall, the successor of older fortifications, passed, as well as can be
made out, over the Pnyx hill from the Barathrum to the peak of the Museum, skirted the
Ilissus, which lay like a moat without it to the south, curved southeast of the Acropolis,
coming around towards the northeast, so as to avoid the foot of Lycabettus, and finally passed
from east to west across the plain, taking in the little water-courses from Lycabettus, and
finally bending about to the point from which we started. It included Collytus and Diomea, cut
Melité in twain, formed an “inner” and an
“outer” Ceramicus, and excluded Coelé. The dimensions of the
space thus enclosed were about 2000 metres east and west by 1500 metres north and south, the
Acropolis lying some 500 metres nearer the south side. Of the gates, we note two in
Melité—the Melitid Gate (
Μελιτίδες
πύλαι) and the “Gate of the Horsemen” (
Ἱππάδες πύλαι); then the gate on the south leading to Phalerum (
Ἰτωνίαι πύλαι); the Gate of Diochares (
Διοχάρους πύλαι) and the Diomean Gate (
Διομῂς
πύλη) in the east; the Acharnian Gate (
Ἀχαρνικὴ
πύλη) in the north; and the Dipylon (
Δίπυλον),
the most important, between the inner and outer Ceramici, where considerable remains of the
ancient foundations are still to be seen. South of the last was the Piraic Gate (
Πειραϊκὴ πύλη).
To unite the city thus fortified with the Piraeus, the Long Walls were begun, about B.C.
460—a northern, run from the Hill of the Nymphs to Munichia, and a southern,
connecting the city with Phalerum. Between these, under Pericles, a second Piraic Wall was
built, parallel to the northern, completing the system and linking city and port by a long
double fortification—the
σκέλη, or
“legs.”
Without and near the gates, particularly the Dipylon, the dead were interred; and public
funerals were solemnized over the ashes of military heroes in the outer Ceramicus. Beautiful
remains of the tombs of the period succeeding the Periclean, but bearing abundant traces of
the Phidian art, have been fortunately preserved to us near the Dipylon, and form one of the
most striking monuments of the ancient city.
To the Cimonian period seems to belong the imposing temple, the best preserved of all Greek
buildings of classical times, on the hill overlooking the Ceramicus from the
west—the so-called Theseum, not improbably to be named the Heracleum.
On the Acropolis, in connection with a new and extensive plan of walling, levelling, and
enlargement of area, preparations seem to have been made by Cimon for an
imposing new temple on the site now occupied by the Parthenon. Here not only was the irregular
edge of the precipice raised and reinforced by a high wall outside the Pelasgian rampart
supporting a deep inner grading, but a heavy foundation was built up from the bed-rock as
support for a great temple structure, destined not to be completed according to the original
design. On the north side, also, the plateau of the Acropolis was built up and walled, drums
of columns and portions of architraves being freely used in the construction of the wall, and
architectural fragments, inscribed marble tablets, and even statues employed as grading
material. The bastion of Niké was also newly fortified. Though the nature of
Cimon's whole undertaking was decorative rather than strategic, it might yet be truly said
that the Acropolis was walled by the Pelasgians and Cimon.
Pericles, having at his disposal the treasures of the Attic League, which were transferred
to Athens (B.C. 454) and apparently kept in the Opisthodomos—as the
“ancient” Pisistratidean temple of the Polias, commonly called from its
length the Hecatompedon (
Ἑκατόμπεδον), and apparently
rebuilt, at least in part, on its original site, was henceforth termed—reared upon
Cimon's foundation the new and magnificent Doric Parthenon (dedicated B.C. 438). The
architecture was intrusted to Ictinus and the sculpture to Phidias, whose chryselephantine
statue of the Parthenos adorned the room to which alone the term Parthenon (“the
virgin's chamber”) strictly applied. The Propylaea (q. v.), a massive ornamental
entrance to the Acropolis, in which the Doric and Ionic styles were happily blended, rose
under the guidance of the brilliant architect Mnesicles; and,
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The Acropolis and the Wall of Themistocles.
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although never completed according to the architect's design, it remained among the
greatest wonders of the city.
Of the host of statues of all kinds which fast thronged the Acropolis, particularly during
the fifth century—among them the great bronze statue of Athené as
champion (
πρόμαχος), the bronze figure of the Wooden Horse,
the heifer of Myron, and many others mentioned by ancient writers—we can take but
passing notice. Their number was constantly increasing down to the times of the Roman Empire.
Some time in the period covered by the first Athenian empire the stately little Ionic temple
of Athené Niké seems to have been reared upon the southwest bastion of
the Acropolis, and surrounded on three sides with the exquisite marble balustrade, fragments
of which are still preserved on the Acropolis.
The new Erechtheum, with its famous porch of the Maidens or Caryatides, was in course of
construction at the close of the fifth century. See p. 112.
The agora of the inner Ceramicus, bounded on the south by the abrupt brow of the Areopagus,
under which stood the statues of the Eponymi, the namesake-heroes of the ten Clisthenean
tribes, seems to have been divided by a line of stone Hermae into a northern and a southern
half. About the southern half stood various public buildings, the Council-hall (
Βουλευτήριον), the Royal Stoa (
Στοὰ
Βασίλειος), the Painted Stoa (
Στοὰ ποικίλη),
the Metroön, the temple of Apollo Patroös, as well as the altar of the
Twelve Gods and the statues of the democratic heroes Harmodius and Aristogiton. In its wider
extent the agora of Ceramicus is bounded on the west by the hill of the so-called Theseum, and
on the east
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View of the Athenian Propylaea. Restoration. (Reber.)
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by the gate of Athené Archegetis. Its chief existing monument is the
later Stoa of Attalus, king of Pergamos. The mention of these public works needs to be
complemented by a word in regard to private structures. The dwelling-houses of the city during
the period of Athenian greatness stood in striking contrast with the public structures. Built
along narrow, irregular, and ill-kept streets, they gave but little indication of the social
position
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The Acropolis. View Taken from the Olympieum.—Evening Effect.
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or wealth of their occupants. In this respect the old city seems to have been inferior
to the Piraeus, which was better laid out and contained more sumptuous private buildings. At
all times, however, in both towns, houses and house-furniture were, for the most part,
extremely simple, and the bustling open-air life of the male population was not conducive to
private luxury. See
Domus.
The Long Walls, destroyed at the close of the Peloponnesian War, were re-erected at the
birth of the new Athenian empire, under which, and during the subsequent period of the
Hellenistic successors of Alexander, the state received further adornment. Lycurgus completed
the great stone theatre within the Lenaeum, overlapping the ancient Orchestra or
“dancing-ring,” traces of which are still discernible. The Street of the
Tripods, winding about the southeastern foot of the
Acropolis, is still marked by the delicate choragic monument (q.v.) of Lysicrates
(B.C. 334). The Stoa of Eumenes lies to the west of the great theatre. The
eastern side of the market of Ceramicus is marked by the great stone bazaar of Attalus,
previously noticed. Building was carried on by Antiochus Epiphanes till his death (in B.C.
164) upon the site of the old sanctuary of Zeus on the Ilissus, where Hadrian finally reared
his colossal Corinthian temple, the few remaining columns of which (the
στῦλοι) are one of the most prominent Athenian landmarks. Near it, towards the
Acropolis, Hadrian set the gate, still standing, which should separate, according to its
inscription, “the Athens of Theseus” from “the Athens of
Hadrian.” An octagonal tower with waterclock within and weather-vane on the summit,
and bearing on its several faces reliefs representing the winds (Horologium or
“Tower of the Winds”), was erected by Andronicus Cyrrhestes (q. v.)
southeast of the agora, where it still stands. The famous Herodes Atticus built, in honour of
his dead wife Regilla, the great Odeum, adjoining the Stoa of Eumenes, under the southwestern
slope of the Acropolis. These are among the most prominent monuments of the later Greek and
the GraecoRoman period that still attract the visitor to the ancient site.
The subsequent history of the monuments is one of rapine, defacement, and destruction. The
traces of the Valerian wall, forming a great loop north of the Acropolis, and the
mediæval and modern fortifications, that have been removed from the approach to the
Acropolis, are melancholy witnesses to barbarian invasion, mediæval slavery, and the
struggle of reawakening liberty. The archives of the story of the material growth and
development of the Athens that has influenced the world had been laid up for a curious
posterity long before these structures arose.
Bibliography.—E. Curtius,
Stadtgeschichte
von Athen (Berlin, 1891) (a most valuable work, containing a full collection
of ancient authorities, citations of modern publications, excellent drawings, plans, and
maps); art. “Athen” in Baumeister's
Denkmäler des
klassischen Alterthums; “Athen” in Bädeker's
Griechenland (Eng. trans. 1889). Other works are cited by
Curtius. See
Hellas.
