rock, though scarcely 200 feet high, and surrounded with walls, that on
one side being called the Κιμώνειον τεῖχος; and that on the other, the
Πελασγικὸν τεῖχος. Why Cimon should have made additional fortifications
to the Acropolis, especially in the days of the democracy, is to me a
mystery; and I am almost inclined to suspect that the accounts about it
must be explained in a different manner, and that some earlier Cimon is
meant. Pericles constructed a flight of steps leading up the Acropolis
under a portico, and at the entrance he built the Propylaea, of which
now scarcely the site is discernible. The present fortifications of the
Acropolis with double walls, were made in the middle ages, at the time
of the French dukes and of the Catalani in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and in their construction many of the ancient remains were
destroyed. The Propylaea were the triumph of Greek architecture. The
chief buildings on the Acropolis were three temples, two of Athena,
which must accordingly not be confounded with each other, namely, the
Parthenon, and the temple of Athena Polias, in which was preserved
the ancient image which had fallen from heaven (ξόανον, εἴδωλον), and
thirdly, the temple of Erechtheus, which during the last unfortunate
siege has been entirely destroyed; the same was probably the fate of
the Parthenon also.[44] All these temples were erected in the age of
Pericles, and were built in the Doric style, while the Propylaea were
Ionic. The Acropolis also contained the treasury of the republic: it was
the Capitol of Athens, and fully as strong as that of Rome.
A place, concerning the site of which there can be no doubt, is the
theatre, which can still be distinctly seen: it leans against the
Acropolis, the rock itself forming its back wall. This is the sacred
spot, where Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, produced their works;
there the Athenian people crowned its great men for their merit; and
there a golden wreath was given to Demosthenes for his faithful advice.
The site of the Agora, on the other hand, cannot be determined within a
hundred paces; and I do not know in what direction to place it. In it was
the _Bouleuterion_ of the Council of the Five Hundred, the _Prytaneion_
or Tholos, and the altars, which more than anything else show that the
Athenians were animated by a different spirit from that of the other
Greeks. I allude to the Βωμὸς Ἐλέους and the Βωμὸς Αἰδοῦς, that is, the
altar of Mercy and of Modesty. These altars are characteristic, and shew
the amiable nature of the Athenians: that people did not conceive mercy
and modesty as demonlike ghosts, nor did they view them abstractedly like
the Romans; they declared by those altars, that they had established
mercy and the dread of everything that is vulgar, as rules to guide
their own conduct. And it was not in vain that they had raised mercy
to the rank of a divinity: he who found mercy nowhere, experienced it
at Athens during the period of her power. With all their faults, and
notwithstanding many acts that make our hearts bleed, the Athenians were
the most amiable among the Greeks; and we cannot help asking: was there
ever a powerful republic, completely left to itself, which restrained
itself so much by its aversion against what is bad? They also had an
altar of Report and Impulse (ὁρμή) to preserve their good report, and to
prevent their being carried away by impulse.
The Pnyx was the hill where the popular assemblies were held, but it
cannot possibly have contained the whole body of the people.
The hill of the Museum was regarded as the strongest point of the city
next to the Acropolis, and after the Lamian war it was occupied by a
Macedonian garrison, though previously it had not been a place of any
importance. The account of the deliverance of Athens by Olympiodorus,
shows that the Museum was not a real fort, but only an inaccessible post
capable of containing a considerable body of troops. What was the real
nature of the place, and what made it so strong, are questions to which
no definite answers can be given.
The new town was the strange scheme of Hadrian, who planned buildings
the splendour of which was to eclipse that of the ancient ones; but the
Olympieum was not completed.[45] Soon after Hadrian, Herodes Atticus,
whose life has been written by Philostratus, constructed at Athens a
whole stadium of Pentelic marble; his wealth is said to have been immense
and almost fabulous, and his grandfather is reported to have found a
treasure of Athena. Although the Pentelic marble was obtained in the
vicinity of Athens, yet such a building erected by a private person was
an amazing undertaking. The buildings of Hadrian and this stadium are
still discernible in their ruins.
In the vicinity of Athens there were three gymnasia, the Academy, a park
with trees and buildings in which gymnastic exercises were carried on;
the Lyceum and the Cynosarges served similar purposes, but their sites
cannot be determined.
Previous to the time of Themistocles, Piraeeus was a scarcely inhabited
coast district; its natural advantages were neglected, because this
port was farther off than that of Phalerus, the latter being two or
three miles nearer the city; the few galleys which Athens possessed, and
most of which had no decks, were in Phalerus. Themistocles, with the
keen eye of a great man, selected Piraeeus as the site of a new town,
and his intention was to induce the Athenians to abandon their city
altogether and to settle in Piraeeus, which he intended to surround with
walls of immense height and to fortify in such a manner as to render it
impregnable by the arts of war as they were at the time. The wall, which
was actually built, had only half the height to which he intended to
raise it, and yet, until the time of Sulla, it defied every attack upon
it. The thought of abandoning the place in which the citizens had lived
honourably for centuries, was too painful to their feelings to be carried
into effect. After the battle on the Hellespont, in the Peloponnesian
war, such fortifications of Piraeeus could, after all, not have saved
Athens, though at other times they would have been of great advantage,
and might, perhaps, have exercised an influence upon the course of the
Peloponnesian war. The second great plan, the building of the μακρὰ
σκέλη, partly supplied this advantage, which they might have enjoyed at
less expense.
The circumference of Piraeeus was nearly seven English miles: its nature
and topography are the great problem for archaeologists. We can indeed
conceive that, as we read in the ancients, it had three large harbours,
but two of them are now choked up. Such deposits of sand are frequent in
those parts of the coasts of the Mediterranean, where the current is not
very strong.
The most difficult, nay, almost impossible, problem, is that of
determining the site of _Munychia_. It is described as a peninsula almost
surrounded by the sea, near Piraeeus, and as connected with the main land
only by a narrow isthmus; it is further said to have been a very strong
post; but as yet we have no correct drawing of it, and no description or
statement leads us to the discovery of the site of Munychia; though we
might fancy that such an eminence could not be mistaken. Strabo describes
the place in the above manner, and beyond that we know nothing of it. If
a person, intimately acquainted with the ancients, were to examine the
localities, he might perhaps make some discoveries. Piraeeus was built
along the shore, and surrounded on the landside by the great wall of
Themistocles; but whether Munychia was situated within that wall, or was
built against it like a citadel, no one can say: our topographers always
regard it as a part of Piraeeus, but there can be no doubt, that the
historians always distinguish the two places.
Piraeeus was a considerable town attracting all the wealth and commerce
of Athens; it was a new place, having arisen after the Persian war;
it had previously been a mere village, a δῆμος. This new town was
constructed according to a regular plan, while Athens, with the
exception of its public places, was an ugly city, with narrow, crooked,
and angular streets; the private dwellings were insignificant, almost
like our peasant houses, with walls of clay, or wicker-work covered
with clay; the house of Pulytion alone, which appeared like a palace,
formed an exception.[46] Hence the Greek term for a thief, τοιχώρυχος,
signifies one that breaks through a wall. Hence also we find no such
ruins at Athens as at Rome, where the houses were built of bricks and
puzzolano, at Syracuse, or any other Greek town. Piraeeus was planned
by the Milesian architect Hippodamus in the time of Pericles, and it is
possible that it may have had far more beautiful houses than Athens; the
foundation of that town forms an era in the building of cities, which
henceforth were always laid out according to definite plans. In Italy
the streets of all towns were, from the earliest times, built according
to certain schemes; Rome alone formed an exception in consequence of
the haste with which it was restored after the Gallic conflagration.
The arsenal (νεώσοικοι) was a curious edifice: each galley had its
separate place, in which everything necessary for its outfit was kept
in readiness. In modern times, the arsenal of Venice was similarly
constructed, probably on the model of that of Constantinople. Piraeeus
had two ἀγοραί, a theatre, and everything that was required of an
independent town. It was the residence of merchants, mostly metoeci, and
of the lower classes of the free citizens who gained their living by all
kinds of trades connected with maritime affairs. The nobles who, without
privileges, yet exercised a sort of power, and the ancient families,
preserving their character, lived in the city, and not in the country.
Hence the decided political colour of the city; οἱ ἐν ἄστει signifying
the oligarchical faction, whose rallying point at the time of the Thirty
Tyrants was in the city, while the democrats lived in the country and in
the port town.
Piraeeus was connected with the city by the μακρά σκέλη, which must not
be regarded by any means as a work of Themistocles, for they were built
during the administration of Cimon and Pericles; of the fortifications of
Piraeeus, too, only the smallest part was executed by Themistocles. One
of these walls was forty and the other thirty-five stadia in length, but
neither was as high as those of Piraeeus; the space between them cannot
be regarded as a suburb, nor did it form a road, but consisted rather of
open fields protected by the walls, so that in times of war as well as
in those of most profound peace, Athens could receive all its supplies
from the sea; but it was necessary in time of war to guard the walls.
The space on both sides was principally occupied as burying grounds.
After the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians were compelled to demolish
on each side a portion of the wall of from ten to twelve stadia; but
the Lacedaemonians were still more bent upon pulling down the walls of
Piraeeus; it is true that not the whole of these latter were demolished,
but still so large a portion of them, that on the return of Thrasybulus
and his comrades from Phyle, Piraeeus appears as an open place. Athens
itself retained its walls. The works which were executed by Conon,
after the battle of Cnidus, with Persian money, contributed, among
other things, to restore the fortifications of Piraeeus: he succeeded
in accomplishing this with the treasures of the Persian king, and with
the supply of workmen and money furnished by the maritime Greeks, such
as the Corinthians and Boeotians, the same who, ten years before, had
madly demanded the destruction of Athens. It is uncertain, however,
whether the walls of Piraeeus restored by Conon were as enormous as
those of Themistocles described by Thucydides. The rebuilding of the
long walls occupied a longer time, for Athens did not possess the means
of completing them speedily; in the time of king Philip, however, they
were evidently restored. During the regency of Antipater, a Macedonian
garrison was quartered in Piraeeus and Munychia, and if I am not
mistaken, in the Museum also, just as under Demetrius Poliorcetes. At
a time which it is impossible to determine, the long walls were again
destroyed, and were not restored before the war of Antigonus Gonatas
(Olymp. 127)[47], so that they must have been destroyed either by
Antigonus himself[48], or even by Demetrius Poliorcetes, when he entered
the city a second time and placed a garrison in the Museum. For the fact
that at that time there was no communication between Piraeeus and the
city, is clear from the circumstance, that during the siege of Antigonus,
when famine was raging most fearfully, it was not he that commanded the
sea, but the fleet of Alexandria. This fleet, however, did not venture
to land, so that no provisions could be conveyed into the city, and the
Macedonians must have been encamped between Athens and Piraeeus, though
the latter place was not in their hands. In the last war against Philip
III., Olymp. 145 (U.C. 551), the long walls, according to Livy, lay in
ruins. So also during the unfortunate siege of Athens by Sulla, U.C.
666; he besieged the κύκλος of the city, and Piraeeus: the city was in
the hands of the tyrant Aristion, Piraeeus in those of the troops of
Mithridates, and Sulla was encamped between the two. It was a time of
the most fearful misery, and those in Piraeeus scarcely ever succeeded
in introducing provisions into the city, whence it is clear, that the
walls could not then have been restored, which, considering the decay and
wretchedness of the city, was in fact impossible. The numerous drachmae
and tetradrachmae, consisting of copper with a thin coat of silver,
belong to this period of decay; they are ancient, and of a peculiar
coinage; the Athenians probably employed copper for the same reason for
which paper has been used in modern times. Charles XII. of Sweden, too,
once ordered copper coins to be issued. This is a proof of the great
decay of Athens; even Xenophon says, that the city was full of unoccupied
building grounds: it was not worth while to rebuild the houses; they
were abandoned and allowed to crumble to pieces; the places were left as
waste-land, and grass grew upon them. The state of the city resembled
that of many towns in the East, as for example, Ispahan. Its whole
outline, however, still remained the same during the siege of Sulla, and
the splendid buildings were still uninjured, while the people lived in
the greatest misery, and were very much reduced in numbers. The vessels
dedicated in the temples, though they were still exhibited as the ancient
originals, were probably counterfeited, the real gold and silver having
been exchanged for other metals, just as the French at Loretto took away
the precious stones, and filled their places with glass. We still possess
the inventories of the precious treasures, which the Athenian curators
handed over to their successors in office, and which belong to the
Macedonian period; but during the subsequent times, there certainly was
no longer any trace of them. As Aristion refused to surrender, Sulla took
the city by storm and raged like Mummius against Corinth and the unhappy
Achaeans: the Romans murdered every one that came in their way; a great
number who had taken refuge in the Ceramicus, had their lives spared, but
every tenth man among them was put to death. On that occasion a part of
the city was consumed by fire.
But Piraeeus suffered still more severely; it was destroyed by Sulla
quite intentionally, for he set fire to the arsenal (ὁπλοθήκη) and the
νεώσοικοι, in which there were spaces for 400 galleys. Athens was in a
state of the deepest distress: the survivors received, what the Romans
in their official language called freedom, that is, they were allowed to
choose their own magistrates, and had jurisdiction in criminal cases. But
the city was like a wilderness, though it always retained the remembrance
of earlier times. The people did not indeed forget the fearful calamities
they had experienced, but in that happy climate man enjoys the present;
the scenes of terror gradually ceased to be thought of, men soon
assembled again, and Athens became one of the most delightful places to
live in, to which Romans of education and rank, such as Atticus, withdrew
from the political turmoils of the time, and cheered their life in a
world of ideas and in dreams of the olden times. Under the emperors,
Athens recovered several islands which it had formerly possessed, as
Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros, which to some extent enabled it to exist.
In the reign of Hadrian the Ilisus flowed with gold; Herodes Atticus
was indeed an acquisition for which the city had to pay dearly, for his
vanity made him an unbearable and arrogant man, though he was withal
empty-headed; but still it was a period of relative prosperity. The
philosophical school of Athens acquired more consistency under Hadrian;
it was a kind of university, where especially dialectics and speculative
philosophy were pursued; but the exact sciences and grammar were less
attended to. A residence there was still very beneficial to young men,
for the ancient serene spirit of its inhabitants still survived in
certain beautiful traits; men loved to dwell there; it was still the soil
and the atmosphere of Athens, the vicinity of the monuments of classical
antiquity, and with all its degeneracy Athens still preserved a shadow of
its ancient urbanity.
This prosperity received a fearful shock under Decius after the middle
of the third century, when the Goths, like a devastating torrent, spread
over the coast of Asia and Greece from the Black Sea. Athens was now
ransacked for plunder and partly burnt, and many took refuge in Piraeeus.
After this calamity was over, the people returned. We do not know
what was the condition of domestic life at this period, but Libanius,
Himerius, and S. Basilius[49] give us an interesting picture of another
aspect of life at the time: from the mode of life of the young men who
then studied at Athens, we see how insignificant the city was, how the
people derived their means of subsistence solely from the university
and a little traffic in the produce of the country, such as honey and
olives. Justinian abolished the schools, and Athens thereby lost its
last resources. Henceforth nothing can be said of Athens for a period of
seven hundred years; this only may be gathered from all the circumstances
of the times, that the transition to Christianity took place gradually,
without any shock or violent dissensions, and in a very different way
from that which we witness at Rome, where the collision between what was
established and that which was struggling into existence was of a very
violent character. At Rome the tombs of Christians and Pagans are always
separate in the catacombs, and afterwards the bodies of Christians alone
were deposited in them; but at Athens, where the tombs are in layers one
above another, the Pagan ones are below, and above them those of the
Christians, while on some of them we find a mixture of Christian and
non-Christian emblems. Previous to the 13th century, not the slightest
mention of Athens occurs. When the Franks had destroyed the eastern
empire (1204), a Frenchman of the name of Otto de la Roche, as a vassal
of the Emperor of Constantinople, founded a principality under the title
of Grand-Duke (μέγας Δούξ), the seat of which was Attica and Boeotia. His
family, however, became extinct, and by marriage the possession passed
into the hands of the Briennes; this family possessed a considerable
principality there, and governed unhappy Greece with the extreme severity
of feudalism. The great company of the Catalani appeared in the 14th
century, conquered the country, expelled the French dukes, and, like
their predecessors, fortified the Acropolis of Athens. The many remains
of buildings which do not bear the impress of antiquity, seem to belong
to this period; it is surprising, however, that in Greece there are no
buildings of the time after Justinian. There now followed the period
when the Italians, the Neris and Acciajuolis, were in possession of the
duchy; a descendant of the latter lived even recently as a common peasant
in Attica. The Franks had completely become Greeks, but still remained
Roman Catholics, and in possession of Athens, until it was conquered
by Mahmood II. The feudal character which the city sometimes bears in
modern authors, as for example the fact that in Boccaccio and Shakespere,
Theseus is called Duke of Athens, arises from its being governed by dukes
at that time. Subsequently Athens was alternately Venetian and Turkish
until 1687, when unfortunately it was conquered by the Venetians, who
on that occasion destroyed the temple of Theseus. The Turks in 1690
re-conquered it, and destroyed the Christian population. After this it
was uninhabited for a period of thirty years, till about 1720. Its most
recent fate is but too well known to us all.
The question as to the population of Athens, which so naturally presents
itself to us, cannot be answered at all. The statements we have
respecting the number of citizens are not limited to the inhabitants
of the city, but comprise the whole territory of Attica, there being
no perioeci. We have several statements. Herodotus mentions 30,000
Athenian citizens, which seems to be the number of the ἔφηβοι, about
the time of the Peloponnesian war: if, according to this, we calculate
the population in the usual proportion, it consisted of about 120,000
souls. But the numbers fluctuate very much. Afterwards, in the time
of Philip, the mean average is 20,000; but besides them there were
the metoeci and the slaves, the former amounting, in the Peloponnesian
war, to about 10,000: of the slaves we know nothing at all. Athenaeus
has preserved the extraordinary statement—Ctesicles is mentioned as
the authority for it—that in the census of Demetrius Phalereus it was
found that Athens contained 21,000 citizens, 10,000 metoeci, and 400,000
slaves. This last number is something quite incredible, however strange
it may seem to doubt a statement apparently so official. As regards the
number of citizens and metoeci, who included strangers, country people
standing under a patronus, and emancipated slaves, we have no reason to
doubt its correctness, for they agree with all the earlier accounts;
but it is impossible to see how there could have been such a large
number of slaves: how could they have found employment? It is impossible
to conceive it, if we assume the commerce and industry of Attica to
have been ever so great, especially at that period. The proportion is
not, indeed, as enormous as that between the blacks and the whites in
the West Indies; but this is altogether a different state of things.
Wherever domestic slavery exists, as in Italy, Greece, and the East,
the number of slaves is always smaller than that of free men. It must
further be observed, that all the numbers of slaves in Athenaeus seem
to be exaggerated. I have already drawn your attention to the case of
Aegina; at Corinth, where the number is said to have amounted to nearly
half a million, it is almost ridiculous. If the number were correct,
very different and more brilliant results would have been achieved; for
at a time like that succeeding the Peloponnesian war, when in quite
desperate circumstances it was resolved to raise the metoeci to the rank
of citizens, and to set the slaves free, a formidable host of soldiers
would have come forward at once, and the Athenian army would have been
increased by at least 100,000 men. Such a population, in a country like
Attica, would have perished of hunger, for the country certainly never
produced as much as 150,000 inhabitants required in six months in the
shape of bread alone, not to mention times of war. It is possible that
a combination may be found, by which this strange statement obtained
credence among the Greeks; but I am convinced, that moderns who have
based their conclusions upon it are altogether in error.
But even if we were able to ascertain the whole population of Attica,
that of the city cannot be discovered, for there is nothing which might
guide us as a standard. We do not know whether the houses were built
close together, whether they were surrounded by large courts, etc.,
though I believe that the former was the case. The houses were not six or
seven stories high, as was the case at Rome in the time of Augustus, and
in the three principal streets of Carthage; they generally had only one,
or at the utmost two stories, and a house of the latter kind was a very
respectable one in Greece. But in consequence of this, the houses must
have occupied a larger space than those of Rome. The probability is, that
the population of Athens was far below 100,000 souls.