Primitive Athens
as described by Thucydides
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER.
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
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Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
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Primitive Athens
as described by Thucydides
by
JANE ELLEN HARRISON,
HON. D.LITT. (DURHAM), HON. LL.D. (ABERDEEN),
STAFF LECTURER AND SOMETIME FELLOW OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Cambridge
at the University Press
1906
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
VILHELMO DOERPFELD
HUNC QUALEMCUNQUE LIBELLUM
ANIMO SALTEM NON INGRATO
DEDICAT
J. E. H.
Πηγὴν μὲν πολύκρουνον Ἀθηναίης ἀνέφηνας
πηγὴ δ’ αὐτὸς ἔφυς καλλιρόου σοφίης.
PREFACE.
My _Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_ has been for some time
out of print. I have decided to issue no second edition. A word of
explanation is therefore needed as to the purport of the present pages.
Since my book on Athens was published Dr Frazer’s great commentary on
Pausanias has appeared, and for scholars has made a second edition, so
far as my book was a commentary on Pausanias, superfluous. The need for
a popular handbook has been met by Professor Ernest Gardner’s _Ancient
Athens_. It happens however that, on a question cardinal for the
understanding of the early history of Athens, I hold views diametrically
opposed to both these writers. These views I have felt bound to state.
This cardinal question is the interpretation of an account given by
Thucydides of the character and limits of ancient Athens. Both Dr Frazer
and Professor Ernest Gardner hold by an interpretation which though
almost universally prevalent down to recent times has been, in my
opinion, disproved by the recent excavations of the German Archaeological
Institute at Athens and the explanation of their results by Professor
Dörpfeld. An adequate examination of the new theory could perhaps
hardly be expected in such a book as Professor Gardner’s, and it will
not be found there. Dr Frazer, it is needless to say, stated Professor
Dörpfeld’s view with fulness and fairness, so far as was then possible or
consistent with his main purpose. But the passage of Thucydides deserves
and requires a more full consideration than it could receive incidentally
in an edition of Pausanias. Moreover at the time when Dr Frazer visited
Athens the excavations were only in process, and the results had not been
fully developed when his book was published. It was therefore impossible
for Dr Frazer to give in one place such a connected account of the new
evidence and theory as in a question of this magnitude seems desirable.
The view I set forth is not my own but that of Professor Dörpfeld. In
the light of his examination of the passage of Thucydides what had been
a mere ‘Enneakrounos Episode’ interesting only to specialists, became at
once a vital question affecting the whole history of primitive Athens.
Professor Dörpfeld’s views convinced me even before they were confirmed
by excavation. I expressed my adhesion in my _Mythology and Monuments
of Ancient Athens_, but I did not then see their full significance. For
English readers these views have been so far stated as heresies to be
combated, or as rash speculations needing danger-signals. The danger
seems to me the other way. To my mind this is a case where adherence to
traditional views can only leave us in straits made desperate by the
advancing tide of knowledge. I have therefore set forth Prof. Dörpfeld’s
views, not apologetically, but in full confidence, as illuminating truths
essentially conciliatory and constructive.
Save in the Conclusion, on the question of the _metastasis_, I have added
to the topographical argument nothing of my own. If here and there I
have been unable to resist the temptation of wandering into bye-paths
of religion and mythology, I trust the reader will pardon one who is by
nature no topographer. For topography all that I have done is to set
forth as clearly and fully as I could a somewhat intricate argument.
* * * * *
This task—not very easy because alien to my own present work—has been
lightened by the help of many friends. Professor Dörpfeld has found time
while excavating at Pergamos to go over my proofs and to assure me that
his views are correctly represented. The German Archaeological Institute
has generously placed at my disposal the whole of their official
publications, from which my illustrations are mainly drawn. The like
facilities in the matter of the Acropolis excavations have been kindly
accorded me by Dr Kabbadias. Other sources are noted in their place. In
the matter of re-drawing, in restorations and the modification of plans
I have again to thank Mrs Hugh Stewart for much difficult and delicate
work, work which could only be done by one who is archaeologist as well
as artist.
My debt, by now habitual, to Dr Verrall will appear throughout the book.
Mr Gilbert Murray has written for me the Critical Note and has made many
fruitful suggestions. Mr F. M. Cornford has helped me throughout, and has
revised the whole of my proofs. And last, for any degree of accuracy that
may have been attained in the printing, I am indebted to the skill and
care of the University Press.
JANE ELLEN HARRISON.
NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. _18 January, 1906._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY. pp. 1-4
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT CITY, ITS CHARACTER AND LIMITS.
Account of Thucydides. Its incidental character and its object.
The scattered _burghs_. The _Synoikismos_. The definition of
the ancient city. The fourfold evidence of its small size.
The ancient city was the Acropolis of the times of Thucydides
with an _addendum_ ‘towards about South.’ Excavation of the
plateau of the Acropolis confirms the statement of Thucydides.
Natural features of the Acropolis. The ‘Pelasgic’ circuit wall.
Analogy with other ‘Mycenaean’ _burghs_ or fortified hills.
Evidence of excavations North of the Erechtheion and South of
the Parthenon. Mythical master-builders. Giants and Kyklopes.
Pela_s_goi and Pela_r_goi. The storks of the _poros_ pediment.
Pela_s_gikon and Pela_r_gikon. The _addendum_ to the South. The
Enneapylai and the approach to the citadel. pp. 5-36
CHAPTER II.
THE SANCTUARIES IN THE CITADEL.
The sanctuaries of the ‘other deities.’ The later Erechtheion
built to enclose a complex of cults. Prof. Dörpfeld’s
elucidation of its plan. The hero-tomb of Kekrops. Kekrops
and the Kekropidae. The hero-snake. The snakes of the _poros_
pediment of the Hecatompedon. The Pandroseion. Pandrosos. The
‘Maidens.’ The _semeia_. The sacred olive. The ‘sea.’ The
trident-mark. Its primitive significance and connection with
Poseidon. Poseidon and Erechtheus. Athena. Herakles. pp. 37-65
CHAPTER III.
THE SANCTUARIES OUTSIDE THE CITADEL.
Meaning of the words ‘towards this part.’ The four sanctuaries
(1) the Sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, (2) the Pythion. Their
position interdependent. The site of the Pythion certain.
Evidence from the Ion of Euripides. The Long Rocks. Evidence
of Pausanias. Evidence of recent excavations. The cave of
Apollo. Votive tablets dedicated by Thesmothetae. Apollo
Patroös and Pythios. The two sanctuaries of Zeus Olympios.
Deucalion and Zeus Meilichios. Zeus and Apollo. Ion and the
Ionians. The cave of Pan. The Sanctuary of Aglauros. (3) The
Sanctuary of Ge. (4) The Sanctuary of _Dionysos-in-the-Marshes_
to be distinguished from the Sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus.
The two festivals of Dionysos at Athens. The two theatres and
precincts. The orchestra in the agora. Evidence of excavations.
The Iobakcheion and the earlier Dionysion. The earlier
Dionysion a triangular precinct—containing wine-press, altar,
temple. The Lenaion and the Lenaia. The Chytroi. The ‘other
sanctuaries.’ The Amyneion. Amynos and Asklepios. Dexion. The
sanctuary of the Semnae Theai. The sanctuary of Aphrodite
Pandemos. Evidence of inscriptions. Oriental origin of the
worship. pp. 66-110
CHAPTER IV.
THE SPRING KALLIRRHOË-ENNEAKROUNOS ‘NEAR’ THE CITADEL.
The spring Kallirrhoë. The water-supply of Athens. Geological
structure of the _Limnae_. Site of Kallirrhoë fixed in Pnyx
rock. Efforts to reinforce water-supply before time of
tyrants. Water-works of the tyrants. Polycrates at Samos. The
conduit of Peisistratos from the upper Ilissos to the Pnyx.
Comparison with conduit of Polycrates. The great reservoir. The
Fountain-House. Water-works of Theagenes at Megara. Analogy
between his Fountain-House and Enneakrounos. Evidence of
vase-paintings. The central square in front of Enneakrounos.
The Panathenaic way. The agora and its development. Argument
resumed. pp. 111-136
CONCLUSION. pp. 137-158
CRITICAL NOTE p. 159
BIBLIOGRAPHY pp. 160-163
INDEXES
1. GENERAL pp. 164-167
2. OF CLASSICAL AUTHORS pp. 167-168
STATUE OF ‘MAIDEN’ FROM THE ACROPOLIS _Frontispiece_
MAP (Fig. 46) _between_ pp. 136 _and_ 137
INTRODUCTORY.
The traveller who visits Athens for the first time will naturally,
if he be a classical scholar, devote himself at the outset to the
realization of the city of Perikles. His task will here be beset by no
serious difficulties. The Acropolis, as Perikles left it, is, both from
literary and monumental evidence, adequately known to us. Archaeological
investigation has now but little to add to the familiar picture, and
that little in matters of quite subordinate detail. The Parthenon,
the Propylaea, the temple of Nike Apteros, the Erechtheion (this last
probably planned, though certainly not executed by Perikles) still remain
to us; their ground-plans and their restorations are for the most part
architectural certainties. Moreover, even outside the Acropolis, the
situation and limits of the city of Perikles are fairly well ascertained.
The Acropolis itself was, we know, a fortified sanctuary within a
larger walled city. This city lay, as the oracle in Herodotus[1] said,
‘wheel-shaped’ about the axle of the sacred hill. Portions of this
outside wall have come to light here and there, and the foundations of
the great Dipylon Gate are clearly made out, and are marked in every
guide-book. Inside the circuit of these walls, in the inner Kerameikos,
whose boundary-stone still remains, lay the agora. Outside is still to be
seen, with its street of tombs, the ancient cemetery.
Should the sympathies of the scholar extend to Roman times, he has
still, for the making of his mental picture, all the help imagination
needs. Through the twisted streets of modern Athens the beautiful Tower
of the Winds is his constant land-mark; Hadrian, with his Olympieion,
with his triumphal Arch, with his Library, confronts him at every turn;
when he goes to the great Stadion to see ‘Olympian’ games or a revived
‘Antigone,’ when he looks down from the Acropolis into the vast Odeion,
Herodes Atticus cannot well be forgotten. Moreover, if he really cares to
know what Athens was in Roman days, the scholar can leave behind him his
Murray and his Baedeker and take for his only guide the contemporary of
Hadrian, Pausanias.
But returning, as he inevitably will, again and again to the Acropolis,
the scholar will gradually become conscious, if dimly, of another and an
earlier Athens. On his plan of the Acropolis he will find marked certain
fragments of very early masonry, which, he is told, are ‘Pelasgian.’ As
he passes to the south of the Parthenon he comes upon deep-sunk pits
railed in, and within them he can see traces of these ‘Pelasgian’ walls
and other masonry about which his guide-book is not over-explicit. To the
south of the Propylaea, to his considerable satisfaction, he comes on a
solid piece of this ‘Pelasgian’ wall, still above ground. East of the
Erechtheion he will see a rock-hewn stairway which once, he learns, led
down from the palace of the ancient prehistoric kings, the ‘strong house
of Erechtheus.’ South of the Erechtheion he can make out with some effort
the ground plan of an early temple; he is told that there exist bases of
columns belonging to a yet earlier structure, and these he probably fails
to find.
With all his efforts he can frame but a hazy picture of this earlier
Acropolis, this citadel before the Persian wars. Probably he might drop
the whole question as of merely antiquarian interest—a matter to be
noted rather than realized—but that his next experience brings sudden
revelation. Skilfully sunk out of sight—to avoid interfering with his
realization of Periklean Athens—is the small Acropolis Museum. Entering
it, he finds himself in a moment actually within that other and earlier
Athens dimly discerned, and instantly he knows it, not as a world of
ground-plans and fragmentary Pelasgic fortifications, but as a kingdom of
art and of humanity vivid with colour and beauty.
As he passes in eager excitement through the ante-rooms he will glance,
as he goes, at the great blue lion and the bull, at the tangle of
rampant many-coloured snakes, at the long-winged birds with their prey
still in beak and talon; he will pause to smile back at the three
kindly ‘Blue-beards,’ he will be glad when he sees that the familiar
Calf-Carrier has found his feet and his name, he will note the long
rows of solemn votive terra-cottas, and, at last, he will stand in
the presence of those Maiden-images, who, amid all that coloured
architectural splendour, were consecrate to the worship of the Maiden.
The Persian harried them, Perikles left them to lie beneath his feet, yet
their antique loveliness is untouched and still sovran. They are alive,
waiting still, in hushed, intent expectancy—but not for us. We go out
from their presence as from a sanctuary, and henceforth every stone of
the Pelasgian fortress where they dwelt is, for us, sacred.
But if he leave that museum aglow with a new enthusiasm, determined
to know what is to be known of that antique world, the scholar will
assuredly be met on the threshold of his enquiry by difficulties and
disillusionment. By difficulties, because the information he seeks is
scattered through a mass of foreign periodical literature, German and
Greek; by disillusionment, because to the simple questions he wants to
ask he can get no clear, straightforward answer. He wants to know what
was the nature and extent of the ancient city, did it spread beyond the
Acropolis, if so in what direction and how far? what were the primitive
sanctuaries inside the Pelasgic walls, what, if any, lay outside and
where? Where was the ancient city well (Kallirrhoë), where the agora,
where that primitive orchestra on which, before the great theatre was
built, dramatic contests took place? Straightway he finds himself plunged
into a very cauldron of controversy. The ancient agora is placed by
some to the north, by others to the south, by others again to the west.
The question of its position is inextricably bound up, he finds to his
surprise, with the question as to where lay the Enneakrounos, a fountain
with which hitherto he has had no excessive familiarity; the mere mention
of the Enneakrounos brings either a heated discussion or, worse, a
chilling silence.
This atmosphere of controversy, electric with personal prejudice,
exhilarating as it is to the professed archaeologist, plunges the
scholar in a profound dejection. His concern is not _jurare in verba
magistri_—he wants to know not _who_ but _what_ is right. Two questions
only he asks. First, and perhaps to him unduly foremost, What, as to the
primitive city, is the literary testimony of the ancients themselves,
and preferably the testimony not of scholiasts and second-hand
lexicographers, but of classical writers who knew and lived in Athens,
of Thucydides, of Pausanias? Second, To that literary testimony, what of
monumental evidence has been added by excavation?
* * * * *
It is to answer these two questions that the following pages are written.
It is the present writer’s conviction that controversy as to the main
outlines of the picture, though perhaps at the outset inevitable, is,
with the material now accessible, an anachronism; that the facts stand
out plain and clear and that between the literary and monumental evidence
there is no discrepancy. The plan adopted will therefore be to state as
simply as may be what seems the ascertained truth about the ancient city,
and to state that truth unencumbered by controversy. Then, and not till
then, it may be profitable to mention other current opinions, and to
examine briefly what seem to be the errors in method which have led to
their acceptance.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANCIENT CITY, ITS CHARACTER AND LIMITS.
By a rare good fortune we have from Thucydides himself an account of the
nature and extent of the city of Athens in the time of the kingship. This
account is not indeed as explicit in detail as we could wish, but in
general outline it is clear and vivid. To the scholar the remembrance of
this account comes as a ray of light in his darkness. If he cannot find
his way in the mazes of archaeological controversy, it is at least his
business to read Thucydides and his hope to understand him.
The account of primitive Athens is incidental. Thucydides is telling how,
during the Peloponnesian War, when the enemy was mustering on the Isthmus
and attack on Attica seemed imminent, Perikles advised the Athenians to
desert their country homes and take refuge in the city. The Athenians
were convinced by his arguments. They sent their sheep and cattle to
Euboea and the islands; they pulled down even the wood-work of their
houses, and themselves, with their wives, their children, and all their
moveable property, migrated to Athens. But, says Thucydides[2], this
‘flitting’ went hard with them; and why? Because ‘they had always, most
of them, been used to a country life.’
This habit of ‘living in the fields,’ this country life was,
Thucydides goes on to explain, no affair of yesterday; it had been so
from the earliest times. All through the days of the kingship from
Kekrops to Theseus the people had lived scattered about in small
communities—‘village communities’ we expect to hear him say, for he is
insisting on the habit of country life; but, though he knows the word
‘village’ (κώμη) and employs it in discussing Laconia elsewhere[3], he
does not use it here. He says the inhabitants of Athens lived ‘in towns’
(κατὰ πόλεις), or, as it would be safer to translate it, ‘in burghs.’
It is necessary at the outset to understand clearly what the word _polis_
here means. We use the word ‘town’ in contradistinction to country, but
from the account of Thucydides it is clear that people could live in
a _polis_ and yet lead a country life. Our word _city_ is still less
appropriate; ‘city’ to us means a very large town, a place where people
live crowded together. A _polis_, as Thucydides here uses the word, was
a community of people living on and immediately about a fortified hill
or citadel—a citadel-community. The life lived in such a community was
essentially a country life. A _polis_ was a citadel, only that our word
‘citadel’ is over-weighted with military association.
Athens then, in the days of Kekrops and the other kings down to Theseus,
was one among many other citadel-communities or burghs. Like the other
scattered burghs, like Aphidna, like Thoricus, like Eleusis, it had its
own local government, its own council-house, its own magistrates. So
independent were these citadel-communities that, Thucydides tells us, on
one occasion Eleusis under Eumolpos actually made war on Athens under
Erechtheus.
So things went on till the reign of Theseus and his famous Synoikismos,
the Dwelling-together or Unification. Theseus, Thucydides says, was a
man of ideas and of the force of character necessary to carry them out.
He substituted the one for the many; he put an end to the little local
councils and council-houses and centralized the government of Attica
in Athens. Where the government is, thither naturally population will
flock. People began to gather into Athens, and for a certain percentage
of the population town-life became fashionable. Then, and not till then,
did the city become ‘great,’ and that ‘great’ city Theseus handed down
to posterity. ‘And from that time down to the present day the Athenians
celebrate to the Goddess at the public expense a festival called the
Dwelling-together[4].’
One unified city and one goddess, _the goddess_ who needs no name.
Their unity and their greatness the Athenians are not likely to forget,
but will they remember the time before the union, when Athens was but
Kekropia, but one among the many scattered citadel-communities? Will they
remember how small was their own beginning, how limited their burgh, how
impossible—for that is the immediate point—that it should have contained
in its narrow circuit a large town population? Thucydides clearly is
afraid they will _not_. There was much to prevent accurate realization.
The walls of Themistocles, when Thucydides wrote, enclosed a _polis_ that
was not very much smaller than the modern town; the walls of the earlier
community, the old small burgh, were in part ruined. It was necessary
therefore, if the historian would make clear his point, namely, the
smallness of the ancient burgh and its inadequacy for town-life, that he
should define its limits. This straightway he proceeds to do. Our whole
discussion will centre round his definition and description, and at the
outset the passage must be given in full. Immediately after his notice
of the festival of the ‘Dwelling-together,’ celebrated to ‘the Goddess,’
Thucydides[5] writes as follows:
‘_Before this, what is now the citadel was the city, together
with what is below it towards about south. The evidence is
this. The sanctuaries are in the citadel itself, those of other
deities as well[6] (as the Goddess). And those that are outside
are placed towards this part of the city more (than elsewhere).
Such are the sanctuary of Zeus Olympios, and the Pythion, and
the sanctuary of Ge, and that of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes (to
whom is celebrated the more ancient Dionysiac Festival on the
12th day in the month Anthesterion, as is also the custom
down to the present day with the Ionian descendants of the
Athenians); and other ancient sanctuaries also are placed here.
And the spring which is now called ~Nine-Spouts~, from the
form given it by the despots, but which formerly, when the
sources were open, was named ~Fair-Fount~—this spring (I say),
being near, they used for the most important purposes, and even
now it is still the custom derived from the ancient (habit) to
use the water before weddings and for other sacred purposes.
Because of the ancient settlement here, the citadel (as well as
the present city) is still to this day called by the Athenians
the City._’
In spite of certain obscurities, which are mainly due to a
characteristically Thucydidean over-condensation of style, the main
purport of the argument is clear. Thucydides, it will be remembered,
wants to prove that the city before Theseus was, because of its small
size, incapable of holding a large town population. This small size not
being evident to the contemporaries of Thucydides, he proceeds to define
the limits of the ancient city. He makes a statement and supports it by
fourfold evidence.
The statement that he makes is that _the ancient city comprised the
present citadel together with what is below it towards about south_. The
fourfold evidence is as follows:
1. The sanctuaries are in the citadel itself, those of other deities as
well as the Goddess.
2. Those ancient sanctuaries that are outside are placed towards this
part of the present city more than elsewhere. Four instances of such
outside shrines are adduced.
3. There is a spring near at hand used from of old for the most important
purposes, and still so used on sacred occasions.
4. The citadel, as well as the present city, was still in the time of
Thucydides called the ‘city.’
We begin with the statement as to the limits of the city. Not till we
clearly understand exactly what Thucydides states, how much and how
little, can we properly weigh the fourfold evidence he offers in support
of his statement.
‘_Before this what is now the citadel was the city, together with what is
below it towards about south._’ The city before Theseus was the citadel or
acropolis of the days of Thucydides, _plus_ something else. The citadel
or acropolis needed then, and needs now, no further definition. By it
is clearly meant not the whole hill to the base, but the plateau on the
summit enclosed by the walls of Themistocles and Kimon together with the
fortification out-works on the west slope still extant in the days of
Thucydides. But the second and secondary part of the statement is less
clearly defined. The words neither give nor suggest, to us at least, any
circumscribing line; only a direction, and that vague enough, ‘towards
about south.’ It is a point at which the scholar naturally asks, whether
archaeology has anything to say?
But before that question is asked and answered, it should be noted that
from the shape of the sentence alone something may be inferred. That the
present citadel is coextensive with the old city is the main contention.
We feel that Thucydides might have stopped there and yet made his point,
namely, the smallness of that ancient city. But Thucydides is a careful
man, he remembers that the two were not quite coextensive. To the old
city must be reckoned an additional portion below the citadel (τὸ ὑπ’
αὐτήν), a portion that, as will later be seen, his readers might be
peculiarly apt to forget; so he adds it to his statement. But, by the
way it is hung on, we should naturally figure that portion as ‘not only
subordinate to the acropolis, but in some way closely incorporated with
it. In relation to the acropolis, this additional area, to justify the
arrangement of the words of Thucydides, should be a part neither large
nor independent[7].’
Thus much can be gathered from the text; it is time to see what
additional evidence is brought by archaeology.
Thucydides was, according to his lights, scrupulously exact. It happens,
however, that in the nature of things he could not, as regards the limits
of the ancient city, be strictly precise. The necessary monuments were
by his time hidden deep below the ground. His first and main statement,
that one portion of the old city was coextensive with the citadel of his
day, is not quite true. This upper portion of the old burgh was a good
deal smaller; all the better for his argument, had he known it! Thanks
to systematic excavation we know more about the limits of the old city
than Thucydides himself, and it happens curiously enough that this more
exact and very recent knowledge, while it leads us to convict Thucydides
of a real and unavoidable inexactness, gives us also the reason for his
caution. It explains to us why, appended to his statement about the city
and the citadel, he is careful to put in the somewhat vague _addendum_,
‘_together with what is below it towards about south_.’
To us to-day the top of the Acropolis appears as a smooth plateau
sloping gently westwards towards the Propylaea, and this plateau is
surrounded by fortification walls, whose clean, straight lines show them
to be artificial. Very similar in all essentials was the appearance
presented by the hill to the contemporaries of Thucydides, but such was
not the ancient Acropolis. What manner of thing the primitive hill was
has been shown by the excavations carried on by the Greek Government
from 1885-1889. The excavators, save when they were prevented by the
foundations of buildings, have everywhere dug down to the living rock,
every handful of the _débris_ exposed has been carefully examined, and
nothing more now remains for discovery.
When the traveller first reaches Athens he is so impressed by the
unexpected height and dominant situation of Lycabettus, that he wonders
why it plays so small a part in classical record. Plato[8] seems to have
felt that it was hard for Lycabettus to be left out. In his description
of primitive Athens he says, ‘in old days the hill of the Acropolis
extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side
and Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side of the hill,’ and
there is a certain rough geological justice about Plato’s description.
All these hills are spurs of that last offshoot of Pentelicus, known in
modern times as Turkovouni. Yet to the wise Athena, Lycabettus was but
building material; she was carrying the hill through the air to fortify
her Acropolis, when she met the crow[9] who told her that the disobedient
sisters had opened the chest, and then and there she dropped Lycabettus
and left it ... to the crows.
A moment’s reflection will show why the Acropolis was chosen and
Lycabettus left. Lycabettus is a good hill to climb and see a sunset
from. It has not level space enough for a settlement. The Acropolis has
the two _desiderata_ of an ancient burgh, space on which to settle, and
easy defensibility.
The Acropolis, as in neolithic days the first settlers found it, was,
it will be seen in Fig. 1, a long, rocky ridge, broken at intervals[10].
It could only be climbed with ease on the west and south-west sides,
the remaining sides being everywhere precipitous, though in places not
absolutely inaccessible. For a primitive settlement it was an ideal
situation. Two things remained for the settlers to do: first, they
had to level the surface by hewing away jagged rocks and filling up
cracks with earth and stones to make sites for their houses and their
sanctuaries; and second, they had to supplement what nature had already
done in the way of fortification; here and there to make the steep
rocks steeper, build a wall round their settlement, and, above all,
fortify that accessible west and south-west end and build an impregnable
gateway. Kleidemos[11], writing in the fifth century B.C., says, ‘they
levelled the Acropolis and made the Pelasgicon, which they built round it
nine-gated.’ They levelled the surface, they built a wall round it, they
furnished the fortification wall with gates. We begin for convenience
sake with the wall. In tracing its course the process of levelling is
most plainly seen. The question of the gates will be taken last.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
In the plan in Fig. 2 is shown what excavations have laid bare of the
ancient Pelasgic fortress. We see instantly the inexactness of the main
statement of Thucydides. It is not ‘_what is now the Citadel_’ that was
the main part of the old burgh, but something substantially smaller,
smaller by about one-fifth of the total area. We see also that this
Thucydides could not know. The Pelasgic wall following the broken outline
of the natural rock was in his days covered over by the artificial
platform reaching everywhere to the wall of Kimon. At one place, and one
only, in the days of Thucydides, did the Pelasgic wall come into sight,
and there it still remains above ground, as it has always been, save
when temporarily covered by Turkish out-works. This visible piece is the
large fragment (A), 6 metres broad, to the south of the present Propylaea
and close to the earlier gateway (G). In the days of Thucydides it stood
several metres high. Of this we have definite monumental evidence. The
south-east corner of the wall of the south-west wing of the present
Propylaea is bevelled away[12] so as to fit against this Pelasgic wall,
and the bevelling can be seen to-day. This portion of the Pelasgic wall
is of exceptional strength and thickness, doubtless because it was part
of the gateway fortifications, the natural point of attack.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
Save for this one exception, the Pelasgic walls lie now, as they did
in the day of Thucydides, below the level of the present hill, and
their existence was, until the excavations began, only dimly suspected.
Literary tradition said there was a circuit wall, but where this circuit
wall ran was matter of conjecture; bygone scholars even placed it _below_
the Acropolis. Now the outline, though far from complete, is clear
enough. To the south and south-west of the Parthenon there are, as seen
on the plan, substantial remains and what is gone can be easily supplied.
On the north side the remains are scanty. The reason is obvious; the line
of the Pelasgic fortification on the south lies well within the line of
Kimon’s wall; the Pelasgic wall was covered in, but not intentionally
broken down. To the north it coincided with Themistocles’ wall, and was
therefore, for the most part, pulled down or used as foundation.
But none the less is it clear that the centre of gravity of the ancient
settlement lay to the north of the plateau. Although the north wall
was broken away, it is on this north side that the remains which _may_
belong to a royal palace have come to light. The plan of these remains
cannot in detail be made out, but the general analogy of the masonry to
that of Tiryns and Mycenae leave no doubt that here we have remains of
‘Mycenaean’ date. North-east of the Erechtheion is a rock-cut stairway
(B) leading down through a natural cleft in the rock to the plain below.
As at Tiryns and Mycenae, the settlement on the Acropolis had not only
its great entrance-gates, but a second smaller approach, accessible only
to passengers on foot, and possibly reserved for the rulers only.
Incomplete though the remains of this settlement are, the certain fact
of its existence, and its close analogy to the palaces of Tiryns and
Mycenae are of priceless value. Ancient Athens is now no longer a thing
by itself; it falls into line with all the other ancient ‘Mycenaean’
fortified hills, with Thoricus, Acharnae, Aphidna, Eleusis. The citadel
of Kekrops is henceforth as the citadel of Agamemnon and as the citadel
of Priam. The ‘strong house’ of Erechtheus is not a temple, but what the
words plainly mean, the dwelling of a king. Moreover we are dealing not
with a city, in the modern sense, of vague dimensions, but with a compact
fortified burgh.
Thucydides, though certainly convicted of some inexactness as to detail,
is in his main contention seen to be strictly true—‘_what is now the
citadel was the city_.’ Grasping this firmly in our minds we may return
to note his inexactness as to detail. By examining certain portions of
the Pelasgic wall more closely, we shall realize how much smaller was the
space it enclosed than the Acropolis as known to Thucydides.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
The general shape of the hill, and its subsequent alteration, are best
realized by Dr Dörpfeld’s simple illustration[13]. A vertical section
of the natural rock, it is roughly of the shape of a house (Fig. 3)
with an ordinary gable roof. The sides of the house represent the steep
inaccessible cliffs to north and south and east; the lines of the roof
slope like the lines of the upper part of the hill converging at the
middle. Suppose the sides of the house produced upwards to the height of
the roof-ridge, and the triangular space so formed filled in, we have the
state of the Acropolis when Kimon’s walls were completed. The filling in
of those spaces is the history of the gradual ‘levelling of the surface
of the hill, the work of many successive generations.’ The section in
Fig. 4 will show that this levelling up had to be done chiefly on the
north and south sides; to the east and west the living rock is near the
surface.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
It has already been noted that on the north side of the Acropolis the
actual remains of the Pelasgian wall are few and slight; but as the wall
of Themistocles which superseded it follows the contours of the rock,
we may be sure that here the two were nearly coincident. The wall of
Themistocles remains to this day a perpetual monument of the disaster
wrought by the Persians. Built into it opposite the Erechtheum, not by
accident, but for express memorial, are fragments of the architrave,
triglyphs and cornice of poros stone, and the marble metopes, from the
old temple of Athena which the Persians had burnt. Other memorials lay
buried out of sight, and were brought to light by the excavations of
1886. The excavators[14] were clearing the ground to the north-east of
the Propylaea. On the 6th of February, at a depth of from 3-4½ metres
below the surface, they came upon fourteen of the ‘Maidens[15].’ The
section[16] in Fig. 5 shows the place where they had slept their long
sleep. We should like to think they were laid there in all reverence
for their beauty, but hard facts compel us to own that, though their
burial may have been prompted in part by awe of their sanctity, yet the
practical Athenian did not shrink from utilizing them as material to
level up with.
The deposit, it is here clearly seen, was in three strata. Each stratum
consisted of statues and fragments of statues, inscribed bases,
potsherds, charred wood, stones, and earth. Each stratum, and this is
the significant fact, is separated from the one above it by a thin layer
of rubble, the refuse of material used in the wall of Themistocles. The
conclusion to the architect is manifest. In building the wall, perhaps
to save expense, no scaffolding was used; but, after a few courses were
laid, the ground inside was levelled up, and for this purpose what could
be better than the statues knocked down by the Persians? Headless,
armless, their sanctity was gone, their beauty uncared for. In the
topmost of the three strata—the stratum which yielded the first find of
‘Maidens’—a hoard of coins was found: thirty-five Attic tetradrachms, two
drachmas, and twenty-three obols. All are of Solon’s time except eight of
the obols, which date somewhat earlier. Besides the ‘Maidens,’ on this
north side of the Acropolis other monuments came to light, many bronzes,
and among them the lovely flat Athena[17], the beautiful terra-cotta
plaque[18] painted with the figure of a hoplite, and countless votive
terra-cottas.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
The excavations on the south side of the Acropolis have yielded much
that is of great value for art and for science, for our knowledge of the
extent of the Pelasgian fortification, results of the first importance.
The section in Fig. 7, taken at the south-east corner of the Parthenon,
shows the state of things revealed. The section should be compared with
the view in Fig. 6.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
The masonry marked 2 is the foundation, deep and massive beyond all
expectation, laid, not for the Parthenon as we know it, but for that
earlier Parthenon begun before the Persian War, and fated never to be
completed. At 4 we see the great Kimonian wall as it exists to-day,
though obscured by its mediaeval casing. All this, if we want to realize
primitive Athens, we must think away. The date of Kimon’s wall is of
course roughly fixed as shortly after 469 B.C., the foundations of the
early Parthenon are certainly before the Persian War, probably after
the date of Peisistratos. We may probably, though not quite certainly,
attribute them to the time of the first democracy, the activity of
Kleisthenes[19], a period that saw the building of the theatre-shaped
Pnyx, the establishment of the new agora in the Kerameikos, and the
Stoa of the Athenians at Delphi. Laurium had just begun to yield silver
from her mines. Themistocles, before and after the war, was all for
fortification; the Alkmaeonid Kleisthenes may well have indulged an
hereditary tendency to temple building.
Save for the clearing of our minds, the date of the early
temple-foundations does not immediately concern us. Their importance is
that, but for the building of the Parthenon, early and late, we should
never apparently have had the great alteration and addition to the south
side of the hill and the ancient Pelasgian wall would never have been
covered in. Let us see how this happened[20].
We start with nothing but the natural rock, and on it the Pelasgian
wall (1). Over the natural rock is a layer of earth, marked I. Whatever
objects have been found in that layer date before the laying of the great
foundations; these objects are chiefly fragments of pottery, many of them
of ‘Mycenean’ character, and some ordinary black-figured vases.
It is decided to build a great temple, and the foundations are to be
laid. The ground slopes away somewhat rapidly, so the southern side of
the temple is to be founded on an artificial platform. The trench (_b_)
is dug in the layer of earth; then, just as on the north side of the
hill, no scaffolding is used, but as the foundations are laid course by
course, the _débris_ is used as a platform for the workmen. A supporting
wall (2) is required and built of polygonal masonry; it rises course by
course, corresponding with the platform of _débris_. And then, what
might have been expected but was apparently not foreseen, happens. The
slender wall can be raised no higher and at about the second course the
_débris_ unsupported pours over it, as seen at III.
The _débris_, unchecked, fell over as far as the old Pelasgian wall.
How high this originally stood it is not possible now to say; but, from
the fact that outside the supporting wall the layers of _débris_ again
lie horizontally, and from the analogy of another section taken further
west, which need not be discussed here, it is probable that the old wall
was raised by several new courses, and that the higher ones were of
quadrangular blocks, as restored in Fig. 7.
So far all that has been accomplished is the raising of the old Pelasgian
wall and a levelling up of the terrace to its new height. That these
terraces were raised step by step with the foundations of the Parthenon
is clear. Between each layer of earth and poros fragments—just as we have
seen in the similar circumstances of the north wall (p. 15)—is interposed
a layer of splinters and fragments of the stones used in the building of
the foundations. This can clearly be seen at II. in the section in Fig. 7.
It may seem strange that Kleisthenes, or whoever built the earlier
Parthenon, did not at once utilize the Pelasgian wall and boldly pile
up his terrace against its support. But it must be remembered that the
space between the Parthenon and the Pelasgian wall was very great; an
immense amount of _débris_ would be required for the filling up of such
a space, and it was probably more economical to build the polygonal
supporting-wall nearer to the Parthenon. Anyhow it is quite clear that
the polygonal wall was no provisional structure. Its façade shows it
was meant to be seen, and that the terrace was meant for permanent use
is clear from the fact that it is connected by a flight of steps with
the lower terrace under the Pelasgian wall (Fig. 8). It is clear that
whoever planned these steps never thought that the lower terrace would be
levelled up.
Doubtless whoever filled in the terrace to the height of the raised
Pelasgian wall believed in like manner that his work was complete. But
Kimon thought otherwise. We know for certain that it was he who built
the great final wall, the structure that remains to-day, though partly
concealed by mediaeval casing Fig. 7 (4). Plutarch[21] tells us that
after the battle of Eurymedon (469 B.C.) so much money was raised by the
sale of the spoils of the Persians that the people were able to afford to
build the south wall. We know also that this wall of Kimon was at least
as much a retaining wall to the great terrace as a fortification. For
the filling up of the space between the Pelasgian fortification and his
own wall Kimon had material sadly ample. He had the _débris_ left by the
Persians after the sacking of the Acropolis. The fragments of sculpture
and architecture that bear traces of fire are found in the strata marked
IV, and there only, for it is these strata only that were laid down after
the Persian War[22]. The last courses of ‘Kimon’s wall’ (5) were laid by
Perikles, and he it was who finally filled in the terrace to its present
level (V).
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
The relation of the successive walls and terraces is shown by the
ground-plan in Fig. 9[23]. The double shaded lines from A to E and D show
the irregular course of the old Pelasgic wall. The dotted lines from B to
F show the polygonal supporting wall of the first terrace. It ran, as is
seen, nearly parallel to the Parthenon. Its course is lost to sight after
it passes under the new museum, but originally it certainly joined the
Pelasgic wall at C. At B was the stairway joining the two terraces. Next
came the time when, as the rubble fell over the wall, larger space was
needed, and a portion of the Pelasgic wall was utilized and raised. This
is shown by the thick black line from B to E coincident with the Pelasgic
wall; the masonry here was of quadrangular poros blocks. The coincidence
with the Pelasgic wall was only partial. At GH there jutted out an
independent angular outpost, and again at EF the new wall is separate
from the old; at FD it coincided with the earlier polygonal terrace wall.
Kimon’s wall is indicated by the outside double lines, and in the space
between these lines and the wall HEK lay the _débris_ of the Persian
War. Above that _débris_ lay a still later stratum, deposited during the
building operations of Perikles.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
The various terraces and walls have been examined somewhat in detail,
because their examination helps us to realize as nothing else could
how artificial a structure is the south side of the Acropolis, and
also—a point, to us, of paramount importance—how different was the early
condition of the hill from its later appearance.
Before we pass to the consideration of the second clause in the
historian’s statement, ‘_together with what is below it towards about
south_,’ it is necessary to say a word as to when the old fortress walls
were built and by whom. Kimon and Themistocles we know, but who were
these earlier master-builders?
A red-figured vase painter of the fifth century B.C. gives us what
would have seemed to a contemporary Athenian a safe and satisfactory
answer—‘There were giants in those days.’ The design in Fig. 10 is from a
skyphos[24] in the Louvre Museum. Athena is about to fortify her chosen
hill. She wears no aegis, for her work is peaceful; she has planted her
spear in the ground perhaps as a measuring rod, and she has chosen her
workman. A great giant, his name _Gigas_, inscribed over him, toils after
her, bearing a huge ‘Cyclopean’ rock. She points with her hand where he
is to lay it.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
On the obverse of the same vase (Fig. 11) we have a scene of similar
significance. To either side of a small tree, which marks the background
as woodland, stands a man of rather wild and uncouth appearance. The
man to the left is bearded and his name is inscribed, _Phlegyas_. The
right-hand man is younger, and obviously resembles the giant of the
obverse. He is showing to Phlegyas an object, which they both inspect
with an intent, puzzled air. And well they may. It is a builder’s
_staphyle_[25], or measuring line, weighted with knobs of lead like a
cluster of grapes; hence its name. Phlegyas[26] and his giant Thessalian
folk were the typical lawless bandits of antiquity; they plundered
Delphi, they attacked Thebes after it had been fortified by Amphion and
Zethus. But Athena has them at her hest for master-builders. All glory to
Athena!
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
It is not only at Athens that legends of giant, fabulous workmen cluster
about ‘Mycenean’ remains. Phlegyas and his giants toil for Athena,
and at Tiryns too, according to tradition, the Kyklopes work for King
Proetus[27], and they too built the walls and Lion-Gate of Mycenae[28].
At Thebes the Kadmeia[29] is the work of Amphion and Zethus, sons of the
gods, and the fashion in which art represents Zethus as toiling is just
that of our giant on the vase. The mantle that Jason wore was embroidered,
Apollonius of Rhodes[30] tells us, with the building of Thebes,
Of river-born Antiope therein
The sons were woven, Zethus and his twin
Amphion, and all Thebes unlifted yet
Around them lay. They sought but now to set
The stones of her first building. Like one sore
In labour, Zethus on great shoulders bore
A stone-clad mountain’s crest; and there hard by
Amphion went his way with minstrelsy
Clanging a golden lyre, and twice as vast
The dumb rock rose and sought him as he passed.
Sisyphos, ancient king of Corinth, built on the acropolis of Corinth
his great palace, the Sisypheion. He is the Corinthian double of
Erechtheus with his Erechtheion. Strabo[31] was in doubt whether to
call the Sisypheion palace or temple. Like the old Erechtheion, it was
both fortress and sanctuary. In Hades for eternal remembrance, not,
as men later thought, of his sin, but of his craft as master-builder,
Sisyphos[32], like Zethus, like our giant, still rolls a huge stone
up the slope. Everywhere it is the same tale. All definite record or
remembrance of the building of ‘Cyclopean’ walls is lost; some hero-king
built them, some god, some demi-god, some giant. Just so did the devil in
ancient days build his Bridges all over England.
Tradition loves to embroider a story with names and definite details.
The prudent Attic vase-painter gives us only a nameless ‘Giant.’ Others
knew more. Pausanias[33] had heard the builders’ actual names and tried
to fix their race. He tells us—just as he leaves the Acropolis—‘Save for
the portion built by Kimon, son of Miltiades, the whole circuit of the
Acropolis fortification was, they say, built by the Pelasgians, who once
dwelt below the Acropolis. It is said that Agrolas and Hyperbios ... and
on asking who they were, I could only learn that in origin they were
Sikelians and that they migrated to Acarnania.’
Spite of the lacuna, it is clear that Agrolas and Hyperbios are the
reputed builders. The reference to Sicily dates probably from a time
when the Kyklopes had taken up their abode in the island. The two
builder-brothers remind us of Amphion and Zethus, and of their prototypes
the Dioscuri[34]. Pliny[35] tells of a similar pair, though he gives to
one of them another name. ‘The brothers Euryalos and Hyperbios were the
first to make brick-kilns and houses at Athens; before this they used
caves in the ground for houses.’
The names of the two ‘Pelasgian’ brothers are, as we know from the
evidence of vase-paintings[36], ‘giant’ names, and _Hyperbios_ is
obviously appropriate. The names leave us in the region of myth, but the
tradition that the brothers were ‘Pelasgian’ deserves closer attention.
In describing the old wall we have spoken of it as ‘Pelasgian,’ and
in this we follow classical tradition. Quoting from Hecataeus (circ.
500 B.C.), Herodotus[37] speaks of land under Hymettus as given to the
Pelasgians ‘in payment for the fortification wall which they had formerly
built round the Acropolis.’ Again, Herodotus[38] tells how when Kleomenes
King of Sparta reached Athens, he, together with those of the citizens
who desired to be free, besieged the despots who were shut up in the
Pelasgian fortification.
A Pelasgian fortification, a constant tradition that Athens was inhabited
by Pelasgians—we seem to be on solid ground. Yet on a closer examination
the evidence for connecting the name of the fortification with the name
‘Pelasgian’ crumbles. In the one official[39] inscription that we possess
the word is written, not Pelasgikon, but Pelargikon. In like manner, in
Thucydides[40], where the word occurs twice, it is written with an _r_.
Pelargikon is ‘stork-fort,’ not Pelasgian fort. The confusion probably
began with Herodotus, who was specially interested in the Pelasgians.
Why the old citadel was called ‘stork-fort’ we cannot say—there are no
storks there now—but we have one delightful piece of evidence that, to
the Athenian of the sixth century B.C., ‘_stork-fort_’ was a reality.
Immediately to the south of the present Erechtheion lie the foundations
of the ancient Doric temple[41], currently known by a pardonable
Germanism as the ‘old Athena-temple.’ For its date we have a certain
_terminus ante quem_. The colonnade was of the time of Peisistratos;
it was a later addition; the cella of the temple existed before—how
much before we do not know. The zeal and skill of Prof. Dörpfeld for
architecture, of Dʳˢ Wiegand and Schrader for sculpture, have restored to
us a picture of that ancient Doric temple all aglow with life and colour
and in essentials complete[42].
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
Of all the marvellous fragments of early sculpture recently discovered,
none is more widely known nor more justly popular than the smiling,
three-headed monster known throughout Europe as the ‘Blue-beard.’
He belongs to the sculptures of the west pediment of the inner
pre-Peisistratean cella of the ‘old Athena-temple,’ a portion of which is
shown in Fig. 12. It is tempting to turn aside and discuss in detail the
whole pediment composition to which he belongs. It will, however, shortly
be seen (p. 37) that our argument forbids all detailed discussion of
the sanctuaries of Athena, and the pediments of her earliest temple have
therefore, for us at the moment, an interest merely incidental.
Thus much, however, for clearness sake may and must be said. The
design of the western pediment fell into two parts. In one angle, that
to the left of the spectator, Herakles is wrestling with Triton; the
right-hand portion, not figured here, is occupied by the triple figure of
‘Blue-beard,’ whose correct mythological name is probably Typhon[43]. He
is no protagonist, only a splendid smiling spectator. The centre of the
pediment, where, in the art of Pheidias, we should expect the interest
to culminate, was occupied by accessories, the stem of a tree on which
hung, as in vase-paintings, the bow and arrows and superfluous raiment of
Herakles.
It is a point of no small mythological interest that in this and two
other primitive pediments the protagonist is not, as we should expect,
the indigenous hero Theseus, but the semi-Oriental Herakles; but this
question also we must set aside; our immediate interest is not in the
sculptured figures of the pediment, but in the richly painted decoration
on the pediment roof above their heads.
The recent excavations on the Acropolis yielded a large number of painted
architectural fragments, the place and significance of which was at
first far from clear. Of these fragments forty were adorned with two
forms of lotus-flower; twenty had upon them figures of birds of two
sorts. Fragmentary though the birds mostly are, the two kinds (storks
and sea-eagles) are, by realism as to feathers, beak, legs, and claws,
carefully distinguished. The stork (πελαργός) in the Pelargikon is a
surprise and a delight. Was Aristophanes[44] thinking of this Pelargikon
when to the building of his Nephelokokkygia he brought
For brickmakers a myriad flight of storks.
One of the storks is given in Fig. 13. The birds in the original
fragments are brilliantly and delicately coloured. Their vivid red legs
take us to Delphi. We remember Ion[45] with his laurel crown, his bow and
arrows, his warning song to swan and eagle.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
There see! the birds are up: they fly
Their nests upon Parnassus high
And hither tend. I warn you all
To golden house and marble wall
Approach not. Once again my bow
Zeus’ herald-bird, will lay thee low;
Of all that fly the mightiest thou
In talon! Lo another now
Sails hitherward—a swan! Away
Away, thou red-foot!
In days when on open-air altars sacrifice smoked, and there was abundance
of sacred cakes, birds were real and very frequent presences. To the
heads of numbers of statues found on the Acropolis is fixed a sharp spike
to prevent the birds perching[46]. They were sacred yet profane.
The lotus-flowers carry us back to Egypt. The rich blending of motives
from the animal and vegetable kingdom is altogether ‘Mycenaean.’ Man in
art, as in life, is still at home with his brothers the fish, the bird,
and the flower. After this ancient fulness and warmth of life a pediment
by Pheidias strikes a chill. Its sheer humanity is cold and lonely. Man
has forgotten that
Earth is a covering to hide thee, the garment of thee.
There are two sorts of birds, two sorts of lotus-flowers, and there
are two pediments. It is natural to suppose, with Dr Wiegand, that the
eagles belonged to the east, the principal pediment. There, it will later
be seen (p. 47), were seated the divinities of the place. Our pediment
decorated the west end, the humbler seat of heroes rather than gods.
There Herakles wrestled with the Triton; there old Blue-beard—surely
a monster of the earlier slime—kept his watch; and over that ancient
struggle of hero and monster brooded the stork.
The storks themselves are there to remind us that the old name of the
citadel was Pela_r_gikon, and that Pelargikon meant ‘stork fort’;
by an easy shift it became Pela_s_gikon[47], and had henceforth an
etymologically false association with the Pelasgoi. Etymologically false,
but perhaps in fact true, for happily the analogy between the Pelargic
walls and those of Mycenae is beyond dispute, and if the ‘Mycenaeans’
were Pelasgian, the walls are, after all, Pelasgic.
We have seen that both Thucydides and the official inscription write
Pelargikon; their statements will repay examination.
* * * * *
Thucydides, after his account of the narrow limits of the city before
Theseus, returns to the main burden of his narrative, the crowding of the
inhabitants of Attica within the city walls. ‘Some few,’ he says[48],
‘indeed had dwelling places, and took refuge with some of their friends
or relations, but the most part of them took up their abode on the waste
places of the city and in the sanctuaries and hero-shrines, with the
exception of the Acropolis and the Eleusinion, and any other that might
be definitely closed. And what is called the Pelargikon beneath the
Acropolis, to dwell in which was accursed, and was forbidden in the fag
end of an actual Pythian oracle on this wise,
The Pelargikon better unused,
was, notwithstanding, in consequence of the immediate pressure thickly
populated.’
The passage comes for a moment as something of a shock. We have been
thinking of the Pelargikon as the Acropolis, we have traced its circuit
of walls _on_ the Acropolis, and now suddenly we find the two sharply
distinguished. The Acropolis, though closed, is surely not cursed. The
Acropolis is one of the definitely closed places, to which the refugees
cannot get access; the Pelargikon, though accursed, is open to them, and
they take possession of it; the two manifestly cannot be coincident. But
happily the words ‘below the Acropolis’ bring recollection, and with it
illumination. What is called the Pelargikon _below the Acropolis_ is
surely that appanage of the citadel which Thucydides in his second clause
mentions so vaguely. The ancient _polis_ comprised not only ‘_what is
now the citadel_,’ but also together with it, ‘_what is below it towards
about south_[49].’ Thucydides would have saved a world of trouble if he
had stated that ‘what is below towards the south’ _was_ the Pelargikon;
but he does not, probably because he is concerned with dimensions, not
with nomenclature.
The Pelasgikon meant originally the whole citadel, the ancient city as
defined by Thucydides. This was its meaning in the days of Herodotus.
In the Pelasgikon the tyrants were besieged (p. 25). But by the time of
Thucydides the Acropolis proper, i.e. much the larger and more important
part of the old city, had ceased to be ‘Pelasgic’; the old fortifications
were concealed by the new retaining walls of Themistocles and Kimon. It
was only at the west and south-west that the Pelasgic fortifications were
still visible, hence this portion below the Acropolis took to itself the
name that had belonged to the whole; but this limited use of the word was
at first tentative. Thucydides says, ‘which is _called_ the Pelargikon.’
This is quite different from the definite ‘the Pelasgian citadel’ used by
Herodotus. The neuter adjectival form is, so far as I know, never used of
the whole complex of the Acropolis _plus_ what is below.
From Thucydides we learn only that what was called the Pelargikon was
_below_ the Acropolis. ‘Below’ means immediately, vertically below,
for when, in Lucian’s _Fisherman_[50], Parrhesiades, after baiting
his hook with figs and gold, casts down his line to fish for the
false philosophers, Philosophy, seeing him hanging over, asks, ‘What
are you fishing for, Parrhesiades? Stones from the Pelasgikon?’ An
inscription[51] of the latter end of the fifth century confirms the
curse mentioned by Thucydides, and shows us that the Pelargikon was a
well-defined area, as it was the subject of special legislation. ‘The
king (i.e. the magistrate of that name) is to fix the boundaries of the
sanctuaries in the Pelargikon, and henceforth altars are not to be set up
in the Pelargikon without the consent of the Council and the people, nor
may stones be quarried from the Pelargikon, nor earth or stones had out
of it. And if any man break these enactments he shall pay 500 drachmas
and the king shall report him to the Council.’ Pollux[52] further tells
us that there was a penalty of 3 drachmas and costs for even mowing
grass within the Pelargikon, and three officers called paredroi guarded
against the offence. Evidently the fortifications of the Pelargikon,
partially dismantled by the Persians, had become a popular stone quarry;
as evidently the state had no intention that these fortifications should
fall into complete disuse. The question naturally arises, what was the
purport of this surviving Pelargikon, why did it not perish with the rest
of the Pelasgic fortifications?
The answer is simple: the Pelargikon remained because it was the great
fortification of the citadel gates. According to Kleidemos, it will be
remembered (p. 11), the work of the early settlers was threefold; they
levelled the surface of the citadel, they built a wall round it, and
they furnished the fortifications with gates. Where will those gates be?
A glance at the section in Fig. 1 shows that they _must be_ where they
_are_, i.e. at the only point where the rock has an approachable slope,
the west or south-west. We say advisedly _south_-west. The great gate of
Mnesicles, the Propylaea which remain to-day, face due west; but within
that great gate still remain the foundations[53] of a smaller, older
gate (Fig. 2, G), built in direct connection with the great Pelasgic
fortification wall, and that older gate, there before the Persian
War[54], faces _south_-west.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
This gate facing south-west stands on the summit of the hill, and is but
one. Kleidemos (p. 11) tells us that the Pelargikon had nine gates. That
there should be nine gates _round_ the Acropolis is unthinkable, such
an arrangement would weaken the fortification, not strengthen it. The
successive gates must somehow have been arranged one inside the other,
and the fortifications would probably be in terrace form. The west slope
of the Acropolis lends itself to such an arrangement, and in Turkish
days this slope was occupied by a succession of redoubts (Fig. 14).
Fortified Turkish Athens is in some ways nearer to the old Pelasgian
fortress than the Acropolis as we see it to-day. We shall probably not be
far wrong if we think of the approach to the ancient citadel as a winding
way (Fig. 15), leading gradually up by successive terraces, passing
through successive fortified gates[55], and reaching at last the topmost
_propylon_ which faced south-west. These terraces, gates, fortifications,
covering a large space, the limits of which will presently be defined,
formed a whole known from the time of Thucydides to that of Lucian as the
Pelargikon or Pelasgikon.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
* * * * *
Lucian indeed not only affords our best evidence that, down to Roman
days, a place called the Pelasgikon existed below the Acropolis, but is
also our chief literary source for defining its limits. We expect those
limits to be wide, otherwise the refugees would not have crowded in.
The passages about the Pelasgikon in Lucian are two. First in the ‘Double
Indictment[56],’ Dike, standing on the Acropolis, sees Pan approaching,
and asks who the god is with the horns and the pipe and the hairy legs.
Hermes answers that Pan, who used to dwell on Mt Parthenion, had for
his services been honoured with a cave below the Acropolis ‘a little
beyond the Pelasgikon.’ There he lives and pays his taxes as a resident
alien. The site of Pan’s cave is certainly known; close below it was
the Pelasgikon. This marks the extreme limit of the Pelasgikon to the
north, for the sanctuary of Aglauros (p. 81) by which the Persians
climbed up was unquestionably outside the fortifications. Herodotus[57]
distinctly says, ‘In front then of the Acropolis, but behind the gates
and the ascent, where neither did anyone keep guard, nor could it be
expected that anyone could climb up there, some of them ascended near
the sanctuary of Aglauros, daughter of Kekrops, though the place was
precipitous.’
A second passage[58] in Lucian gives us a further clue. Parrhesiades
and Philosophy, from their station on the Acropolis, are watching the
philosophers as they crowd up. Parrhesiades says, ‘Goodness, why, at the
mere sound of the words, “a ten-pound note,” the whole way up is a mass
of them shouldering each other; some are coming along the Pelasgikon,
others and more of them by the Areopagos, some are at the tomb of Talos,
and others have got ladders and put them against the Anakeion; and, by
Jove, there’s a whole hive of them swarming up like bees.’ A description
like this cannot be regarded as definite proof; but, taking the shrines
in their natural order, it certainly looks as though in Lucian’s days
the Pelasgikon extended from the Areopagos to the Asklepieion. The
philosophers crowd up by the regular approach (ἄνοδος) to the Propylaea;
there is not room for them all, so they spread to right and left, on the
right to the Asklepieion, on the left to the Areopagos; some are crowded
out still further on the right to the tomb of Talos[59], near the theatre
of Dionysos; on the left to the Anakeion[60] on the north side of the
Acropolis.
Yet one more topographical hint is left us. In a fragment of Polemon[61]
(circ. 180 B.C.), preserved to us by the scholiast on the _Oedipus
Coloneus_ of Sophocles, we hear that Hesychos, the eponymous hero of
the Hesychidae, hereditary priests of the Semnae, had a sanctuary. Its
position is thus described: ‘it is alongside of the Kyloneion outside
the Nine-Gates.’ It is clear that in the days of Polemon either the
Nine-Gates were still standing, or their position was exactly known.
It is also clear that, whatever was called the Nine-Gates was near
the precinct of the Semnae. The eponymous hero of their priests must
have had his shrine in or close to the sanctuary of the goddesses.
Moreover the Kyloneion or hero shrine ties us to the same spot. When
the fellow-conspirators of Kylon were driven from the Acropolis, where
Megacles dared not kill them, they fastened themselves by a thread to the
image of the goddess to keep themselves in touch; when they reached the
altars of the Semnae the thread broke and they were all murdered[62]. The
Kyloneion must have been erected as an expiatory shrine on the spot.
When we turn to examine actual remains of the Pelasgikon on the south
slope of the Acropolis (Fig. 2), we are met by disappointment. Of
all the various terraces and supporting walls, only one fragment (P)
can definitely be pronounced Pelasgian. The remaining walls seen in
Fig. 16 date between the seventh and the fifth centuries. The walls
marked G in the plan in Fig. 16, but purposely omitted in Fig. 2, are
of good polygonal masonry, and must have been supporting walls to the
successive terraces of the Pelasgikon; they are probably of the time
of Peisistratos[63], but may even be earlier. It is important to note
that though not ‘Pelasgic’ themselves they doubtless supplanted previous
‘Pelasgic’ structures. The line followed by the ancient road must have
skirted the outermost wall of the Pelargikon; later it was diverted in
order to allow of the building of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus. The
Pelasgikon of Lucian’s day only extended as far as the Asklepieion;
the earlier fortification must have included what was later the
Asklepieion[64], as it would need to protect the important well within
that precinct.
* * * * *
Thucydides has stated the limits of the ancient city, ‘_what is now
the citadel was the city together with what is below it towards about
south_.’ We now-a-days should not question his statement. The remains of
the Pelasgian fortifications disclosed by excavation amply support his
main contention, namely, that _what is now the citadel was the city_,
the conformation of the hill and literary evidence justify his careful
‘addendum’ _together with what is below it towards about south_.
But, as noted before, the readers of Thucydides were not in our position,
they knew less about the boundaries of the ancient city, and though they
probably knew fairly well the limits of the Pelasgikon, even that was
becoming rather a matter of antiquarian interest. Above all, they were
citizens of the larger city of Themistocles, the Dipylon was more to them
than the Enneapylon. Thucydides therefore feels that the truth about the
ancient city needs driving home. He proceeds to give evidence for what
was, he felt, scarcely self-evident. If we feel that the evidence is
somewhat superfluous, we yet welcome it because incidentally he thereby
gives us much and interesting information as to the sanctuaries of
ancient Athens.
The evidence is, as above stated (p. 8), fourfold.