ourselves of the later traditions about Cecrops and the Pandionids, which
were transferred from the Atthids to the works of the Alexandrians, and
have been handed down by them to our time,—if, I say, we rid ourselves
of them so far as not to regard them altogether as history, and, on the
other hand, not to indulge in too artificial and subtle explanations,
but so as to take only certain facts which are clearly implied in the
stories, and to let these speak for themselves. One tradition about the
Acte, in which it extends as far as the Isthmus, is, that it was divided
by the Pandionids into four states; and why should not this have been the
case? Another division refers apparently to Attica, in the narrower sense
of the name. I allude to that ascribed to Cecrops; here, too, we have
a kind of tetrapolis, and thus far it agrees with the earlier division
though the detail is different, for according to it Attica consisted
of twelve (3 × 4) states. We accordingly find in Attica an historical
trace of a division into twelve, like that of the Ionian Aegialos; it
was also historically remembered, that these towns became united in
Athens. The boundaries of Attica, as an Athenian state, stand in relation
to those of Megaris, which, however, were changeable, and were moved
sometimes forward and sometimes backward. At the time when Megaris was
an extensive country, and Attica small, Salamis belonged to the former.
Other changes in the Athenian possessions occur on the Boeotian side. But
there certainly is some gap in our history of Attica, which we can hardly
wonder at, seeing that the political history of the Greeks in general
is very fragmentary. What I mean is this: in very ancient times all
Attica did not form one state, and the boundary must have been altered
in some sense, so that during the time after Cleisthenes, the country
districts, formerly occupied by perioeci, obtained the full franchise,
as was the case, for example, with Salamis. Herodotus attests, that, in
his topical division of Attica into ten phylae, Cleisthenes gave to every
phyle ten demi. But at a later time Attica contained 174 demi. Strabo is
not the man to write down such a statement thoughtlessly; and moreover
the correctness of the number may be calculated from inscriptions and
grammarians, especially from Harpocration. It is, therefore, probable
that, as at Rome, when its territory was extended, the towns which
received the full franchise, were constituted as new local tribes, so
also at Athens new demi were formed under similar circumstances, without
there being any change in the number of the phylae. We might also explain
the change by the supposition that at first Cleisthenes allowed the
ancient γένη to continue, so that the φυλαὶ τοπικαί originally did not
contain the Eupatrids and the demi together; but afterwards, and even
before the Persian wars, this constitution was so altered, as to change
the most distinguished among the ancient γένη, of which only very few
remained, into separate demi, and incorporate them with the phylae, in
order to prevent their sinking into utter insignificance, and especially
their losing the right of voting. Thus the Butadae are mentioned both as
a γένος and as a δῆμος. Within such a γένος, which had become a δῆμος,
the real descendants of the ancient race were distinguished, by the
addition ἐτεο, from those who had become members of the same demos by
accident. This is the sense in which we have probably to understand the
often-mentioned Eteobutadae.
MEGARIS.
I shall treat of Megaris very briefly. It is that part of the Cecropian
Acte which was taken possession of by the Dorians when they extended
their dominion beyond Peloponnesus, in the hope of subduing all Attica,
which was then very weak. If we look at it within the limits which it
had at the time of the Peloponnesian war, it was as thoroughly Doric
as any part of Peloponnesus, and even in its dialect, notwithstanding
the probably small number of immigrants who, perhaps, formed only a
military colony. The town of MEGARA was, according to all appearances,
built by the Dorians; previously there existed no Megara. The version of
the passage in Homer, with which the Megarians opposed the proof of the
Athenians, does not mention Megara, but only Polichna, Nisaea, Tripodes,
and Aegirussa.[40] It was not an important town, and its whole territory
was small; if, however, we credit Herodotus’ account of their contingent
in the battle of Plataeae, it must have been extremely populous.
NISAEA, the port of Megara, was older than the city, and is connected in
the traditions of the poets with Nisus and his daughter Scylla or Ciris;
and when the poets in this fable mention Megara, it must be regarded as
mere prolepsis. The Megarians were a maritime people, but not of great
importance; they had a small fleet at Nisaea, which was rather more
than a mile from the city, and was connected with it by two long walls
(σκέλη); the city itself was situated on a hill. The long walls were
built by the Athenians after the Persian wars, when they were masters of
Megaris. _Pagae_ or _Pegae_ was another town of Megaris on the Corinthian
Gulf, and contained a ship-wharf; it likewise had some ships, and was
strongly fortified.
The history of Megaris is not uninteresting; it is, in fact, that of
all the Greek peoples. In the earliest times it was governed by an
aristocracy, or rather oligarchy; then the demos rose, and the old
inhabitants, oppressed by the conquerors, were led by a man of the
highest rank, who set himself up as tyrant. This man was Theagenes. The
period of the overthrow of the aristocracy in all the states of Greece
and the rising of tyrants falls between Olymp. 30 and 70, a period which
may be likened to the 15th century in the middle ages. These τυραννίδες
were of a very different character from those of later times; they always
belonged to the first families, and were mere usurpations, without the
odiousness which generally attaches to the name. Their rule accordingly
was by no means hated, as it is when the tyrannis is the result of
general anarchy, or of the degeneracy of liberty. The ancient tyrannides
arose from a natural want, and from the consciousness that the state
could no longer be governed in the way in which it had been done before;
they were not cruel, because the sovereignty was not claimed by more than
one, so that there was no cause for making him bloodthirsty. If we bear
in mind this ancient meaning of the name, we cannot view the tyrannis in
an odious light. The tyrannis of later times is very different, for it no
longer helps to develop, but rules with cruelty over a mass which cannot
control itself. The later these tyrants are the worse they are; and the
worst of all are those after the time of Alexander, such as Aristodemus
of Elis, Agathocles and Apollonius of Cassandrea. After the fall of
Theagenes, the democracy ceased, and Megara, notwithstanding its Doric
character, was governed by an oligarchy, just as Corinth after the fall
of the Cypselids. During the Persian wars it was a flourishing state, but
afterwards it became involved in disputes with its powerful neighbours,
the Athenians; and by all kinds of insults offered to them, it drew
upon itself their anger; this was senseless, as it always is when the
weaker provokes the stronger. The Spartans undertook the Peloponnesian
war ostensibly to protect the Megarians, but Megara fared ill in that
war. Previously, the Athenians had left them alone, but they now made
frequent inroads into their country, and cruelly ravaged it; and the
marches of the Peloponnesians through it seem to have completely ruined
it. Afterwards it was a place of no importance. Its situation, which,
if Peloponnesus had formed one state, might have made it an excellent
bulwark, appears to have always exposed it to ravages. It was taken
and destroyed by Demetrius Poliorcetes; Antigonus Gonatas carried on a
severe war against the country, to obtain in it a place for a Macedonian
garrison. Such a garrison was at that time the most fearful scourge
for a Greek town; it generally consisted of barbarians, such as Gauls,
Thracians, or Getae, who conducted themselves entirely according to their
own discretion, and against whom it was impossible for any individual
to protect his property, unless the governor took pity upon him, as was
the case at Athens, which had the good fortune of having in Antigonus
Gonatas a humane commander. Hence Megara, like the other places, was in
a wretched condition. During the first great period of the Achaeans,
Megara, together with Corinth, became free again; but afterwards it was
so insignificant, that it is not even mentioned as to whether, when
Corinth became Macedonian, Megara experienced the same fate or not: it
had probably joined Boeotia. Before the battle on the Isthmus, the Romans
again destroyed everything that was still standing. Ser. Sulpicius, in
his consolatory letter to Cicero, mentions Megara, too, as one of the
“corpses of towns” which he saw on the Saronic gulf; according to Strabo,
however, it still existed in his time ἀμῶς γέ πως, though it had sunk
very low: it still contained some ancient buildings and temples, and
among them, within the ring-walls, a small Population. The devastation of
Greece under the Romans can scarcely be conceived too fearful: Pausanias
misleads us on this point; the true description is furnished by Dion
Chrysostomus, who states, that a person might travel about in Arcadia
and Thessaly for a whole day without seeing a human being, except a few
shepherds. My belief is, that in the time of Pausanias, Peloponnesus,
with the exception of a few districts, had no more inhabitants than
previously to the Venetian conquest in the year 1650.
Megara was important in a military point of view; two roads led thence
to Corinth: the one, running along the sea-coast, and by the Scironian
rocks, was very dangerous, for it passed between the precipitous rock and
the shore, and formed a pass which no one would ever attempt to storm;
the other led across the Oneian mountain, right through the middle of the
country, towards the Isthmus.
ATTICA.
We shall consider Attica according to the extent it had at the time of
the Peloponnesian war. Salamis, and many places on the Boeotian frontier,
were evidently added to it at an earlier period, but its boundaries were
reduced again during the Macedonian times: under Cassander, Salamis and
Eleusis were separated from Attica, they received Macedonian garrisons,
and formed small communities under Macedonian supremacy. To this period
belong the coins with the inscriptions ΣΑΛΑΜΙΝΙΩΝ, ΣΑΛΑ; ΕΛΕΥΣΙΝΙΩΝ,
ΕΛΕΥ, or ΕΛ; but the particulars cannot be clearly ascertained.
The people of Attica are called Ἀθηναῖοι in their relation to the state,
and Ἀττικοί in relation to their manners, customs, and dialect; but the
name for an Athenian woman is Ἀττική, and Ἀθηναία in this sense, is
either affectation or said in joke.
The whole territory of Attica is a thoroughly mountainous country,
like Megaris, with one considerable plain on one side and another on
the opposite side. The length of the Acte from the Isthmus to Sunion,
including Megaris, measured 680 stadia, or about 90 English miles,
of which less than one-third belonged to Megaris. Some of the hills
are off-shoots of those of Megaris, but, in reality, they are only
continuations of the Boeotian chain of Cithaeron. All form, in truth,
only one mountain range, which proceeds from the Boeotian and Megarian
frontiers in the form of a semicircle behind Athens, and extends as far
as Sunion. All these hills consist of a kind of limestone, which in
Hymettus and Pentelicus becomes the most excellent marble. This marble
is white with greenish veins, of smaller grain and less white than the
Parian, and resembles the Carystian. At the extreme end of these hills,
above Sunion, are the silver mines of _Laurion_. These mines, which are
a great physical curiosity, were very productive, and were worked in
very ancient times; but they became exhausted during the period from the
time of the Gracchi, when they were still vigorously worked, to that of
Strabo, when the produce was not worth the labour, and when only the
ancient offal, which had been thrown away in better times, was smelted.
At present they have entirely disappeared, just like the gold mines near
Philippi. All names in Attica are classical. The most remarkable among
the hills are those already mentioned, _Hymettus_ and _Pentelicus_, on
account of their marble quarries: they seem to have been the first of
which the marble was wrought into statues, perhaps about Olymp. 50 or
60. The use of bronze for such purposes is easier and more natural, and
hence more ancient. The other hills are _Parnes_ and _Brilessus_, the
former of which was a wooded mountain. Hymettus and Pentelicus may
still be clearly identified, in consequence of the marble quarries, and
Hymettus in consequence of its honey, which is still excellent. Such
means of identification do not occur in the case of Parnes and Brilessus;
and although these, too, are unhesitatingly named by modern travellers,
yet all is arbitrary. All the Attic hills are at present barren; but in
ancient times some were well wooded, as we may infer from the charcoal
manufactures near Acharnae, mentioned by Aristophanes; but the greater
part of them were not, like our hills, clad with heather, but with thyme,
marjoram, and other aromatic herbs. The fact that Hymettus, even in
antiquity, had no trees, may be inferred from the circumstance, that it
was the habitation of bees, and the place in which their breeding was
attended to.
Attica was well known to the ancients themselves as a country that was
not fertile, and where the rocky ground was covered only with a very
thin crust of soil (λεπτόγεων in Thucydides); it had two plains of a
very different character, the one that of Eleusis and Thria (τὸ Θριάσιον
πεδίον), which was fertile, whence Eleusis was justly the seat of the
worship of Demeter; the other was the plain of Marathon, which was not
fertile, and is at present deserted; it was covered only with wild fennel
and such like herbs, nor was it as flat as the Thriasian plain.
Attica has little water, and is poor in rivers and springs; Athens
itself had only one good spring. The rivers are so insignificant that
in any other country they would not be mentioned at all; but in Attica
everything has a general interest and cannot be forgotten, so that the
Cephisus and Ilisus, though only small rivulets, are better known than
the Oxus and Jaxartes. The Cephisus does not even reach the sea; it flows
in a western and the Ilisus in an eastern direction. I spell both names
with a single _s_, which is the ancient Greek orthography found in the
good MSS. of Aristophanes and Plato, and in inscriptions. The spelling
Κηφισσός and Ἰλισσός, however, likewise became common in antiquity, and
was that generally received by the Romans; and when a Roman uses a single
_s_, it must be regarded as his special choice.
The circumference of ATHENS was much changed in the course of time.
According to the traditions, it was at first small like all the towns
in Attica, when the lower hills all around were thinly peopled. The arx
of Athens, we are told by Thucydides, was called the πόλις, though more
probably ἄστυ;[41] for everywhere πόλις and ἄστυ seem to stand in the
same relation to each other as _civitas_ stands to _urbs_ or _oppidum_.
As _civitas_, in good Latinity, is never used of the buildings, so πόλις
in Greece, even at an early time signified the body of citizens, and ἄστυ
the place they inhabited. In the most ancient times the ἄκραι alone were
fortified in all parts of Greece, the places below them were inhabited
κωμηδόν; such was the case in the Pelasgian times at Athens, and also at
Sparta. When the town was surrounded with walls cannot be ascertained,
but it was probably as early as the time of the Pisistratidae; that
κύκλος, however, must have been feeble and unimportant, for if the town
had been strong, we cannot conceive why the citizens, on the approach
of the Persians, abandoned it without any thought of being able to
defend it. After the evacuation of Attica, Themistocles restored the
walls, and gave them a much greater circumference. This is, properly
speaking, not mentioned anywhere expressly by the ancients[42], but has
long ago been assumed by the moderns from the context of the narrative
and from the circumstances of the case, and that too with full justice:
matters happened in a similar way at Cologne, Nürnberg, Frankfort and
Florence. In building walls the ancients sometimes followed the lines
of the suburbs, which were surrounded by palisades; but sometimes the
circumference was made larger than was really needed, and such may have
been the case at Athens. But what was the circumference of Athens? The
walls of Themistocles cannot be traced with the same accuracy as the
agger of Serv. Tullius at Rome. In the time of Pausanias they were
still standing; they had been built by Themistocles in a very hurried
manner, but still of such strength that their complete disappearance is
a mystery. I have no doubt that the foundations might be discovered if
it were possible to make excavations. All we know about the subject is
the statement of Thucydides, that the city was forty-three stadia in
circumference, exclusive of the empty space between the two long walls.
This empty space is estimated in different ways, but there can be no
doubt that it occupied only a few stadia, for there was no necessity
for keeping those walls far asunder. Fauvel, who resided several years
in Athens, declares that he cannot make out that the circumference of
Athens was so large, and therefore assumes the passage of Thucydides to
be corrupt. But his supposition cannot be admitted, for Dionysius of
Halicarnassus states that the Rome of Serv. Tullius was about equal to
the ancient ἄστυ: now the circumference of the agger of Serv. Tullius,
with a small exception, is perfectly ascertained, and extends about five
English miles, which perfectly agrees with the statement of Thucydides.
But the topography of Athens is everywhere full of perplexities.[43]
PIRAEEUS was a second city. Its site is certain, but the detail of its
topography cannot be determined. I do, indeed, believe that a person
living on the spot with the privilege of making excavations, might
discover some things, but never as much as at Rome, where we have the
numerous documents, and where so many remains still exist. From the
drawings of Piraeeus, which I have seen, the statements of the ancients
cannot be explained; the line of coast has become very much altered,
the harbour is filled with sand, and one or two of the ports seem to
have completely disappeared; the ancient bays are at present marshes and
morasses, which have no connection with the sea, and the outline of the
coast is evidently changed. Piraeeus had separate fortifications, and
was connected with the city by the μακρὰ σκέλη, which were constructed,
not by Themistocles, but by Pericles. These fortifications are drawn
in Barthélemy’s _Voyages du Jeune Anacharsis_, by Barbié du Bocage,
with apparent accuracy, but they must be used with caution, and not as
exact topographical drawings: they are not intended to give accurate and
definite local views, but only to furnish the readers with a picture
which is not essentially wrong, and which they may retain in their minds
to form a living conception of ancient history. But the picture is not
free from faults; one of them, e.g., is that Phalerus is drawn within the
walls, which is not supported by a single ancient testimony; Phalerus was
on the side of one of the walls, which was hence called the Phalerean.
Many circumstances have conspired to render the topography of Athens
difficult. In the first place, we have no description of the city like
that furnished by the Regionarii in regard to Rome; in the second place,
the historians mention, indeed, particular buildings at Athens, but
without stating their relative position to one another; the buildings,
with few exceptions, were situated on a plain surface, the several
eminences in the ἄστυ having for the most part no buildings. Hence the
descriptions cannot be as exact as at Rome, where the hills afforded an
easy means of stating the site of buildings and the direction of streets.
The many buildings, moreover, some of which existed even in the middle
ages, and most of which can even now be recognised in their ruins, are
a great assistance in determining the topography of Rome; the study of
these combined with that of the ancient topographical documents enables
us to ascertain a great many points, and thus to trace the history of
the city with great accuracy. If a person makes himself acquainted with
modern Rome, tracing it back to its origin, and if, in addition to this,
he endeavours to understand the ritual and the roads taken by certain
processions, along which the ancient buildings are mentioned, he has
already gained a considerable step in advance. The Itineraries of the
seventh century are likewise a source of information on topography. In
this way a person first comes to the Rome of the middle ages, and thence
to ancient Rome. But the city of Athens has completely disappeared;
some isolated ancient buildings do indeed exist, to which certain names
are given, which are in some cases correct, but in others doubtful.
From the middle ages, too, scarcely any thing but walls remain; Athens
was several times destroyed and completely deserted; even the churches
were demolished, and where anything of them remains, it does not lead
us back to ancient buildings. Pausanias, who is our only authority, is
an extremely confused writer, and the most different hypotheses may be
based upon his statements. He proceeds from Piraeeus to the Ceramicus,
thence to the Agora, and further on to the Acropolis; but what road he
took it is impossible to make out. The accounts of the moderns of the
sites of the ancient buildings are likewise extremely contradictory, and
can scarcely be otherwise, considering their short stay on the spot.
Stuart was there longest, but his whole object was to make architectural
drawings. Fauvel’s and Stuart’s statements, for example, respecting
the Areopagus, are in direct contradiction with each other. As matters
now stand, a person may find his way on the Acropolis, and perhaps
also determine the hill of the Museum; but otherwise nothing can be
identified, neither the Areopagus nor the Pnyx. The city of Hadrian can
be recognised by its gate. That emperor was a strange, wrong-headed man:
though a Spaniard by birth, he was enamoured with everything Greek, but
his whole tendency was not ancient Greek; he was in fact a Greek sophist
of his own age: he dressed himself in the Greek fashion, and allowed
his beard to grow in the Greek fashion, although the Romans had adopted
the custom of shaving themselves even before the time of Hannibal. He
was ambitious to shine among the Greeks as a Greek, and built several
gigantic temples, as for example, the Olympieum, of which many ruins
still exist. In like manner, he built an entirely new city by the side of
ancient Athens, although the space occupied by the latter was no doubt
deserted. The gate of this new city with two inscriptions still exists:
ΑΙΔ ΕΙΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΙ ΘΗΣΕΩΣ, Η ΠΡΙΝ ΠΟΛΙΣ, and ΑΙΔ ΕΙΣ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΟΥΧΙ ΘΗΣΕΩΣ
ΠΟΛΙΣ. All the other points in our plans, for example the site of the
Ceramicus in that of Barbié du Bocage and others, are mere attempts to
give something tangible.