THE SPRING KALLIRRHOË-ENNEAKROUNOS ‘NEAR’ THE CITADEL.
καὶ τῇ κρήνῃ τῇ νῦν μὲν τῶν τυράννων οὕτω σκευασάντων
Ἐννεακρούνῳ καλουμένῃ, τὸ δὲ πάλαι φανερῶν τῶν πηγῶν οὐσῶν
Καλλιῤῥόῃ ὠνομασμένῃ—ἐκείνῃ τε ἐγγὺς οὔσῃ τὰ πλείστου ἄξια
ἐχρῶντο, καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀρχαίου πρό τε γαμικῶν καὶ ἐς ἄλλα
τῶν ἱερῶν νομίζεται τῷ ὕδατι χρῆσθαι.
The argument now stands as follows. As evidence that the old city was
_the present citadel with the addition of what is below it towards about
South_ Thucydides has adduced two facts: 1st, that _the sanctuaries
are in the citadel, those of other deities as well (as the Goddess)_;
2nd, that _those that are outside are placed towards this part of the
city more (than elsewhere)_. Instances of such outside shrines are _the
sanctuary of Zeus Olympios and the Pythion, and the sanctuary of Ge,
and that of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes_. This last is defined, to prevent
confusion with the later sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereus, as the scene
of the earlier Dionysia. Finally, _other ancient sanctuaries also_ (not
named) are placed here.
We next come to the third fact adduced as evidence, namely, a statement
as to the position of the ancient city spring, as follows: ‘_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 in consequence
of the ancient_ (habit) _to use the water before weddings and for
other sacred purposes_.’ Was ever argument stated in fashion more odd,
involved, and utterly Thucydidean?
A spring which was once called Kallirrhoë and now Enneakrounos is ‘near,’
_i.e._ is near the ancient city as above defined, and is now used for
weddings and the like. Why does Thucydides, who is ‘least of all
mortals a gossip,’ tell us about the water and the weddings? Why refer
to the history of the fountain at all? Because, as in the case of the
Anthesteria, the reference to things ancient is part of his argument.
The train of thought is this. The water of Nine-Spouts is now used for
weddings. Why? On the face of it there seems no particular reason. The
fountain ‘Nine-Spouts’ has water enough and to spare. But the fountain
‘Nine-Spouts’ was not always there, it replaced ‘Fair-Fount,’ and this
spring the ancient Athenians used only for ‘most important’ purposes.
Again, why? Well, clearly because there was not enough of it for general
use. It was ‘near,’ and yet they reserved it for special purposes. We
may gather, then, from the account of Thucydides, though he does not
expressly state it, the despots not only changed the name but increased
the ‘water supply[259].’
As to where the spring was, save that it is ‘near,’ Thucydides says
absolutely nothing. It might be North, East, South, or West. We who
have followed him step by step down the western slope, from the
Olympieion and Pythion to the sanctuary of Ge and to the sanctuary of
Dionysos-in-the-Marshes, expect to find ‘Nine-Spouts’ somewhere near
these sites, somewhere in the depression enclosed by Acropolis, Pnyx,
and Areopagos. But we must bear in mind that this expectation is based
on _our_ identification of the previous sanctuaries, not on any words of
Thucydides about the spring.
But when we ask, as we inevitably must, where did _Pausanias_ see the
famous fountain, we are in better case. Pausanias[260] saw ‘Nine-Spouts’
near to the Odeion, and the Odeion he saw immediately after the statues
of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, on the slope of the Areopagos. Immediately
after the Enneakrounos, ‘beyond the fountain,’ as he says, Pausanias[261]
saw the temples of Demeter and Kore, which can scarcely be separated
from the Thesmophorion on the Pnyx. Somewhere adjacent to both Pnyx and
Areopagos we should, from Pausanias, expect to find ‘Nine-Spouts,’ and
there find it we shall.
* * * * *
It is fortunate for us that Thucydides was so explicit about the
fountain. He gives us not merely a fountain called Fair-Fount but a
fountain called Fair-Fount that was turned into Nine-Spouts. This is
fortunate, because the word translated ‘Fair-Fount,’ _Kallirrhoë_, is
a term so general that it might be applied to almost any spring. If in
travelling through Greece to-day you stop to drink from a spring and
ask your guide its name, he will, three times out of four, tell you it
is _Mavromati_, _Black-Eye_, because that is a term so general as to be
safely applicable. So at Athens there was, certainly in later days and
possibly even in the time of Thucydides, another Kallirrhoë far away on
the Ilissus. As Socrates, in the _Axiochos_[262], was going out towards
Kynosarges and had reached the Ilissos he heard some one shouting to
him, and turning round he saw Kleinias running towards Kallirrhoë.
Clearly this was another Kallirrhoë, not the one near the Pnyx. How
this duplication of Kallirrhoës at Athens arose will later (p. 143) be
considered. The Kallirrhoë we are in search of is the Fair-Fount _which
became the Nine-Spouts_, that and no other.
It is worth noticing how quickly the spring lost its old name. People
were, no doubt, very proud of the new _Nine-Spouts_. Herodotus[263]
naively assumes that in the days of the Pelasgians _Fair-Fount_ was
called _Nine-Spouts_. The Athenians said that their expulsion of the
Pelasgians from Attica was justified, for ‘the Pelasgians who were
settled under Hymettus used to make excursions thence and do lawless
deeds. Their daughters used constantly to go to the Enneakrounos for
water, for at that time the Greeks had no household servants, and
whenever they came the Pelasgians used to offer them violence out of
insolence and contempt.’ There must have been people alive in the days of
Thucydides whose fathers remembered the change made by the despots, yet
the name _Fair-Fount_ was, when Thucydides wrote, evidently a matter of
antiquarian knowledge.
* * * * *
The question now before us is, Have we evidence that a spring, naturally
small but reinforced and rearranged at the time of the despots, existed
in the district enclosed by the Pnyx, Areopagos, and Acropolis? A
glance at the plan in Fig. 35 will show that such evidence does indeed
exist. In the Pnyx rock at the point marked Y is the spring Kallirrhoë,
Fair-Fount. It has been reinforced by water from the district of the
Ilissus, brought in the conduit of Peisistratos. In front of the ancient
Kallirrhoë once stood a Fountain-House, also of the date of the despots,
the Fountain-House called Nine-Spouts, Enneakrounos.
The evidence for this threefold statement must be examined in detail. But
first a word must be said as to the geological conditions of the site so
far as they bear on the water-supply of Athens.
* * * * *
For her water-supply, and especially for her drinking water, Athens
depends, has always depended, not on her rivers but her wells. In
describing the Enneakrounos Pausanias[264] says, ‘There are wells
throughout all the city, but this is the only spring.’ His statement
as regards the spring is not strictly correct. Besides Kallirrhoë the
ancient city possessed two natural springs, and these both on the
Acropolis itself, the Klepsydra at the North-West corner and the spring
in the precinct of Asklepios on the South slope. About the wells he is
right. The plain on which Athens stood was, owing to its geological
structure, amply supplied with wells. Its uppermost stratum is of
calcareous stone, the material of which the hills of Lykabettos, of the
Mouseion, and the Acropolis are all formed. Through this stratum rain can
freely filter. But beneath this calcareous layer is a second stratum of
slate and marl; this is practically impermeable, and here water collects
into wells.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.]
Wells, then, occur sporadically all over Athens and the Athenian plain,
but nowhere in such abundance as in the district under discussion[265].
The Pnyx and the Mouseion on the one side, the Areopagos and Acropolis
on the other form, as will readily be seen by reference to Fig. 46, a
sort of trough, in which both rain and subterranean water are caught and
must necessarily accumulate. As the ground slopes towards the North and
the West the water accumulated cannot make its way towards the Ilissos.
Its only outlet is the narrow and inadequate passage between the Pnyx
and the Areopagos to the Eridanos. It is not surprising that, though
the district lies high above the bed of the Eridanos, it was somewhat
marshy. That its watery character was early turned to account and led
to a dense population is shown by the fact that no less than 100 wells
have been sunk within its narrow limits. These wells will be seen dotted
about all over the plan in Fig. 35. These wells for subterranean water
are frequently reinforced by cisterns for collecting rain-water. The
cisterns are easily distinguished from the wells by the fact that they
are lined with cement. Sometimes an old well which has presumably run dry
has been turned by a coat of cement into a cistern. It is very remarkable
that, long before the days of Peisistratos, elaborate systems existed for
collecting water, in wells, cisterns, and conduits; one canal extended
as far as the Odeion of Herodes Atticus, and followed a course almost
coincident with that of Peisistratos, which it long preceded. Its complex
of wells is clearly seen at T in Fig. 35, a little to the North of the
‘Branch Conduit to Koile.’
It is beside our purpose to examine in detail the artificial
water-supply[266] of the district before the time of Peisistratos. That
such a system existed is worth noting, because it shows that the district
is a good site for the _Limnae_, and also that it was from early days
thickly populated.
* * * * *
Our immediate concern, however, is to fix, if possible, the site of
Kallirrhoë. Nor is this difficult. As the traveller goes by the modern
carriage road from the ‘Theseion’ to the Acropolis, and as he nears the
Pnyx he will see on his right a number of rock-chambers and channels cut
in the rock, originally buried out of sight but laid bare by the making
of the modern road. These are shown in Fig. 35 to the right and left
of the spot marked Kallirrhoë, and appear more plainly on the enlarged
plan in Fig. 38, where they are marked r¹-r¹⁰. They are a succession of
rock-hewn wells and cisterns and channels, dating from early Greek to
Roman times. Their number is additional evidence that the rock of the
Pnyx had a regular system for collecting water, but of the series two
only concern us, those marked r⁶ and r⁷.
An enlarged plan of the wells r⁶ and r⁷, with their connecting passages
and chambers, is given in Fig. 36. A detailed description of it is
important, because these chambers, recognized as forming the ancient
Kallirrhoë, are now closed to the public by a locked gate, behind which
few visitors to Athens penetrate.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
A narrow stairway, a-b, leads into a chamber (Y) hewn in the heart of
the rock. This chamber is about 4 metres square, and has an arched roof.
Immediately opposite the entrance to Y, in the Western wall, a niche 1·80
m. deep has been cut (C). In this niche the shaft of a well (r⁷) has
been sunk 2 metres deep. This is clearly shown in section in Fig. 43.
In front of the well was a barrier, so that water could be drawn without
fear of falling in. Over the well, about 0·80 metre above the pavement,
was a small niche, which may have held an image. From the entrance
of the chamber Y, about 1·30 metres high from the ground, there is a
channel, n-p, worked in the rock. It has a slight inclination towards the
niche C, and was obviously meant to collect the water that oozed from
the vaulted roof and the walls. Later it was used as a conduit for the
new water-supply brought by Peisistratos. Remains of a lead pipe and a
terra-cotta conduit were found at m.
For,—doubt is impossible,—we have here in the niche at C the ancient
Kallirrhoë. The large rock chamber Y marks it out from the other wells.
Its importance down to Roman times is shown by the fact that the chamber
Y is paved with a rich mosaic, the patterns of which are like those made
elsewhere in Athens in the time of Hadrian. The ancient well must have
kept its sanctity, otherwise it would not have been so adorned. After
the well had run dry, and when the water-supply was purely artificial,
the walls and ceiling were carefully cemented and the cement was later
renewed. Such a coating would of course have been impossible when the
roof and walls were dripping with natural water.
At the right hand of the entrance to Y was a passage, e-f, leading down
by steps into a large elliptical chamber, r⁶. This chamber, presumably a
cistern, was paved in Roman days with marble slabs, but below the marble
pavement is a stucco pavement of Greek date. From this cistern leads a
channel, i, which may have led to the well-house of Peisistratos, or, as
suggested in the restoration (Fig. 43), to a smaller subordinate fountain.
The supply of water at Kallirrhoë was slender. We have seen that efforts
were made to reinforce it by well-sinking, by conduits, by cisterns. But,
though the Athenians found the water of Kallirrhoë adequate for their
ritual baths, they had other needs, and, as the city grew and grew, the
effort to cope locally with the increasing demand proved futile. There
was a crying need for water from a distance, a great popular need such
as the despots loved to supply. Water was needed, and water was brought
in a supply practically inexhaustible, from the district of the upper
Ilissos.
* * * * *
By a happy chance in the history of excavations, long before the search
for the aqueduct of the despots began, another aqueduct, the work of
another despot, had been brought to light—the aqueduct that Polycrates
made for the Samians. At the close of his account of Polycrates,
Herodotus[267] tells us he had lingered long over the affairs of the
Samians ‘because they possessed three of the most wonderful works ever
accomplished by the Greeks.’ The first and the only one of these wonders
that concerns us was a great aqueduct bored through a mountain 150
fathoms high. The length of the tunnel, he goes on to say, was seven
stadia, the height and the breadth eight feet each way. Through this
tunnel there went a second passage, 20 cubits deep by three feet wide,
through which the water is carried along in tiled pipes from a great
spring to the city of Samos. The architect of this tunnel was a Megarean,
Eupalinos, son of Naustrophos.
Possibly, _pace_ Herodotus, even if the Samians had had no aqueduct he
would anyhow have told us the story of the ring; be that as it may,
his account of the first wonder, the aqueduct, is invaluable, and has
been fully substantiated. Never was a town by nature worse off for its
water-supply than Samos, and rarely has one been supplied by a more
astonishing piece of engineering. The ‘great spring’ Hagniades has been
found[268], the tunnel with its double channel, even the very earthenware
pipes laid down by Eupalinos. We know perfectly well what to expect in an
aqueduct made by the despots.
The excavators naturally sought for the conduit of Peisistratos in the
immediate neighbourhood of Kallirrhoë, and there, close up to the Pnyx
rock, they found it, at a distance of about 40 metres from the rock
chamber Y. From that point up to the South of the Odeion of Herodes
Atticus its course has been completely excavated. It is best seen in
Professor Dörpfeld’s official plan (Fig. 46). Just South of the Odeion
the conduit could not be cleared out, because of its damaged condition
and the mass of _débris_ that had fallen over it. Between the Odeion and
the Dionysiac theatre it runs beneath an ancient road, and passes within
the precinct of Dionysos, between the earlier and later temples. Beyond
that point its course has not been excavated in detail, but beneath the
modern Russian church a conduit passes which must be its continuation,
and this leads on to the water-course[269] discovered long ago, now
utilized for watering the Royal Gardens. This water is known to come from
the upper valley of the Ilissus (Fig. 49).
The main conduit ran, then, from the upper valley of the Ilissus to the
great reservoir basin marked on the plan in Fig. 35, but from this main
conduit several branches can be traced; the most important are the branch
tunnel that leads to the district of Koile and a smaller branch that goes
off to water the Amyneion. Other ramifications can be traced, the object
of which is not always clear; they probably occur at points where in
piercing the tunnel veins of water were reached, and some served to bring
to the main conduit subsidiary supplies from the Hill of the Muses and
from the Acropolis.
Only those, as Professor Dörpfeld[270] himself remarks, who have taken
the trouble to get right down into the tunnellings and cross tunnellings
and explore them thoroughly so far as they can be explored, can form any
idea of the magnitude of the work. Sometimes it is possible to stand
upright in the conduit, some portions can only be reached on the hands
and knees. The fact is borne in upon any one and every one who has made
even a brief exploration, he feels himself unquestionably exploring what
must have been the main artificial water-supply of ancient Athens, and
here, if such a supply were needed, must have been the centre of the
ancient city life.
The aqueduct is dated securely by comparison with the work of Eupalinos
at Samos as of the time of the despots. Two striking analogies are
observable between the aqueduct of Peisistratos at Athens and that of
Polycrates at Samos. These are the character of the pipes, and the system
of shafts. The separate pieces of the pipes at Athens are from 0·60 m.
to 0·61 in length, not counting the junction points. They are made of
fine yellowish clay; inside they are protected by a red glaze, outside
they are left rough, except that at each end they are glazed and have a
double stripe of glaze round the middle and round each end. In length and
diameter they correspond with the Samos pipes, which Professor Dörpfeld
carefully inspected for comparison[271]. The Samos pipes also are
actually decorated with stripes, only the stripes at Samos are incised,
those at Athens painted.
The same correspondence is notable in the way the pipes are joined
together: both at Athens and Samos the pipes are soldered together
with lead, and provision is made at both places for cleaning them. An
elliptical shaped hole large enough to admit the hand is left, and is
provided with a cover. A specimen of the Athenian pipes is shown in Fig.
37, and side by side with it a section of the conduit with the pipe in
position.
[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
The pipes bear abundant traces of long use and frequent repair. In quite
early days they seem to have got crusted with lime deposit from the
water, and in some cases quite choked up, the water then flowed over
the pipes and flooded the main channel to two-thirds of its height. In
some places, where the rock was soft, it seems to have got worn away and
fallen in, and portions of the tunnel became useless. New borings were
made for about 30 metres and new pipes put in; these were quadrangular
instead of round, but in the disused portion of the tunnel the old round
pipes still lie about.
Secondly, as at Samos, at intervals of from 30 to 40 metres, both tunnels
alike are provided with shafts, which served when the tunnels were first
made for the clearing away of the rock fragments, and which were made use
of for the like purpose when the conduit was excavated. These shafts are
sunk perpendicularly; one of them reached down to a depth of 12 metres,
so low does the conduit in places lie.
* * * * *
Of cardinal importance to us is the point at which the conduit debouches,
because near to that point we may hope to find the fountain-house
‘Nine-Spouts.’ The conduit ends in an arrangement which is somewhat
surprising, and which will be best understood by reference to Fig. 38.
To the extreme left, at a point near letter B, the conduit emerges. It
here consists of a massive channel built of blocks of _poros_ stone,
indicated by the thick black lines on the plan. At point a⁴ it ends in
the Pnyx rock. But, and this is the odd thing, at a³, about eight metres
before the channel ends, a pipe issues from the stone channel and running
parallel to the Pnyx rock conducts the water to the main reservoir
(Haupt-Bassin). A similar arrangement has been observed in the aqueduct
at Samos. There, too, the conduit pipe leaves the rock channel before it
ends. It is conjectured[272] that this was a plan intended to mislead an
enemy who might desire to cut off the water-supply.
The conduit actually debouches at a⁵ into the great reservoir from which
the new fountain-house Nine-Spouts must have been fed. Here, at the
reservoir, we find indications of three successive structures. First
a structure of very early date, possibly of the time of Solon. Second
that of Peisistratos. Third a late Roman structure. Of the two earlier
structures no masonry remains, but the position and dimensions can
roughly be made out by markings on the Pnyx rock, out of which the West
side of the basin was hewn. The exact size of the original basin, which
was smaller than the later one, cannot now be determined. In the time of
Peisistratos it was enlarged and deepened; the floor of the basin was
sunk nearly 1·50 metres deeper. The great basin of Peisistratos was lined
with masonry, the blocks of which have now disappeared. In Roman days
the place of the great basin of Peisistratos was taken by a quite small
structure. This change must have taken place before the building of the
late Roman villa which occupied the place where once the ‘Nine-Founts’
stood. When the villa was built the great reservoir had for some time
been disused, and the water from the aqueduct, not being needed on the
spot in any large quantity, was carried by pipes to the lower city to the
North for the supply of the new Roman market-place. These alterations
as to water-supply, it should be noted, are of the first importance in
questions of topography, and change in the direction or the extension of
an aqueduct is naturally the index of a shifting of population.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
The restoration by Professor Dörpfeld (Fig. 38) is, it must clearly be
understood, to a large extent conjectural. It must be consulted strictly
in conjunction with the plan in Fig. 35, where the actual remains of
Greek date are clearly marked in solid black lines. So used it can be of
great service in helping us mentally to reconstruct scattered fragments
of masonry that would otherwise be unintelligible.
* * * * *
Some of the details of the restoration have been suggested by the
water-works discovered at Megara, which are in some respects better
preserved than those at Athens. At Megara are extant not only a great
conduit to bring water from a distance but an elaborate arrangement for
utilizing it consisting of a reservoir and a pillared draw-well besides
a fountain house. It is very probable that the works of Theagenes served
as a model to Peisistratos, and therefore before the draw-well and
fountain house of Peisistratos are discussed a word must be said of the
excavations at Megara.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
Pausanias[273] begins his account of the city of Megara somewhat abruptly
thus. ‘In the city there is a fountain. And Theagenes built it for them.
About him I have already mentioned that he gave his daughter in marriage
to Kylon the Athenian. This Theagenes, having possessed himself of the
tyranny, built the fountain, and from its size, its decorations, and
the number of its columns, it is worth looking at. Water flows into it
called the water of the Sithnidian nymphs.’ After the excavations at
Athens, the fountain or, as perhaps it is best called, the well-house
of Theagenes at Megara was sought and found[274] at the bottom of the
Eastern Acropolis of Megara, called Karia. The aqueduct leading to the
reservoir was excavated for a considerable distance, and proved to be a
structure closely resembling those found at Athens and Samos. Eupalinos
it will be remembered was a native of Megara. The draw-well, the
supporting walls of which are well preserved, was about 15 by 20 metres
in size and built of Kara limestone, a material much used in the 6th
century B.C. for the foundations and stylobates of buildings. All round
the side whence water was drawn was a low parapet wall. This wall shows
signs in many places of being worn away by the friction of ropes and
dripping of water. The block shown in Fig. 39 is closely paralleled by
the block found in Athens and placed beneath it for comparison.
Not only, then, at Athens did a despot build a well-house and
artificially increase a supply of holy water. The original spring at
Megara was sacred to the Sithnidian nymphs; we do not know what nymphs
guarded Kallirrhoë at Athens; there were plenty about, for to this day
close at hand is the Hill of the Nymphs. Dionysos who dwelt so near was
called Limnaios, He-of-the-Marshes, Phanodemos[275] says, because he
invented the blending of must with water; hence, he adds, ‘the springs
are called Nymphs and nurses of Dionysos, because water mixed with wine
increases it.’
* * * * *
We return to the water-worn stone, the details of which are shown in
Fig. 40. This stone is of great architectural importance. From it can be
deduced not only the date of the building to which it belonged, but also
something of its dimensions and general appearance. The date is fixed by
the clamp mark at C. The clamp itself has disappeared, but its shape is
proved by the mark of its insertion. Clamps of the [Illustration] shape
only appear at Athens in buildings of about the date of Peisistratos,
e.g. on the earlier temple of Dionysos Eleuthereus. Our stone belonged to
a building of the date of Peisistratos. As regards the character of the
building, it is clear from the curve at e which is a segment of a circle,
that the stone was at this point cut away to receive a pillar. The
unworn condition of the stucco at b leads Professor Dörpfeld to conclude
that the stone was a corner stone, the angle protecting the stucco
from friction. The distance between these two points, e and b, gives
the measurement of the intercolumniations. From this one stone it is
_certain_ that a draw-well of the date of Peisistratos existed and that
it was surmounted by a colonnade. Its appearance must have been somewhat
that of the draw-well (Schoepf-brunnen) restored in Fig. 38. We pass to
the consideration of the fountain house Nine-Spouts.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
* * * * *
The great open square marked ‘place of the Enneakrounos’ (Fig. 38) is
really the site of Nine-Spouts. This is clear from many considerations.
1. Nine-Spouts must have stood over or in front of Fair-Fount which it
superseded. Over it would be an impossible situation, because of the
Pnyx rock, so we may securely place it in front. 2. Nine-Founts must
have stood about two metres below the level of the basin, from which it
was fed, in order that the water might flow easily in. 3. At K 2 and K
3 are the beginnings of two ancient subterranean canals which must have
been intended to carry off the superfluous water from Nine-Spouts. 4.
Straight down to this open place comes the footway from the Acropolis
and thither also all the rest of the roads ultimately converge. 5. The
place must have been in Greek times an open place, as no foundations of
Greek buildings have been found, only the remains of a great Roman house,
and under it countless wells.
This Roman house consisted of a large atrium with a peristyle of twelve
columns and several small chambers surrounding it. The walls are a
patchwork of materials of all kinds, and even the bases of the columns
are made up of fragments from other buildings. One of these fragments
belonging to the draw-well we have already discussed, another, we shall
immediately see, belongs to Nine-Spouts itself.
* * * * *
[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
Can we form any mental picture of Nine-Spouts? Fortunately vase-paintings
come to our aid. It is not a little remarkable that in the decoration
of black-figured water-vases (hydriae) of the 6th century B.C., there
appears a sudden fashion in fountain-houses. Of hydriae so decorated the
British Museum contains no less than ten. One of these[276] is reproduced
in Fig. 41. The Fountain-House depicted is of the usual shape, a
tetrastyle Doric portico. The architectural details are very clear, the
triglyphs and guttae standing out in white. In actual architecture they
would both be painted blue. Four maidens are water-drawing. Two of them
are hanging up wreaths. Over three of them their names are inscribed
Iope, Rhodopis, Kleo. But what at once arrests our attention is the
arrangement of the water-spouts. Facing us are three, a lion’s head and
two horsemen, to either side of these is a lion’s head spout; that makes
not a Nine-Spouts but a Five-Spouts. But, drawn in perspective as they
must be, do not the side spouts each represent three? It is at least
probable that we have an arrangement like that restored in Fig. 38, three
spouts facing, and three at each side. Lion-spouts are of course frequent
in Fountain-Houses. The horsemen of our vase are unique; they give the
Fountain-House a dashing despotic air.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
We know then just what sort of architectural fragments, we might expect
to find; we can imagine a fragment that would be conclusive. A ‘Doric’
portico might belong to more than one kind of building, a lion’s head
spout could belong only to a Fountain-House. No lion’s head has been
found, but instead, what is as good for our purpose, _a stone hollowed
out for the reception of a lions head_. This stone is shown in Fig. 42.
Not only is the space for the lion’s head evident, but behind is clearly
visible the hole for the pipe. The block is of blue calcareous stone
such as is found both on the Acropolis and the Pnyx. Of exactly the same
limestone is a small remnant of a polygonal wall from the South boundary
of the precinct of the Fountain-House.
The plan in Fig. 38 makes the general disposition of the place of
the Enneakrounos clear, the large reservoir behind (Haupt-Bassin),
immediately in front of it the draw-well (Schoepf-brunnen), and to the
right of the reservoir, and of course equally fed by it, Nine-Spouts
(Lauf-brunnen). In front a great open space. What is matter for
conjecture is the exact site and size of Nine-Spouts. A clear view of
the relation of Nine-Spouts to Fair-Fount is given in the sectional
restoration[277] in Fig. 43. There we see the vaulted rock chamber Y, the
actual well, Kallirrhoë, to which it led, and in front of it, the modern
road intervening, Nine-Spouts or Enneakrounos itself. In front of that
again the open space, possibly once enclosed, was the heart and centre of
the agora.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.]
* * * * *
Before we pass to the question of the agora it may be worth while to
notice that the well-house, Enneakrounos, Nine-Spouts, was known as
late as the seventeenth century to have been on the West slope of
the Acropolis. In the curious old plan, then drawn by Guillet and
Coronelli[278], a portion of which is reproduced in Fig. 44, we have on
the West slope not only a well against which in the key to the plan is
marked ‘Enneakrounos,’ but also close to it the ruins of a small theatre,
which may well stand for the Odeion as seen by Pausanias. In another plan
of the seventeenth century, usually known as the plan of the Capucins,
both theatre and Enneakrounos are missing, and in their place stands the
so-called ‘Theseion.’ On close examination it may be seen that on the
Capucin plan, the theatre, the Enneakrounos, and some other buildings
have been obliterated and other monuments drawn in over them. It may be
taken therefore as certain[279] that, in the seventeenth century, remains
of an ‘Enneakrounos,’ and of a theatre-like building near it, existed.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
* * * * *
We have had to reconstruct the _Nine-Spouts_ as best we might from
the analogy of well-houses on vase-paintings, from the remains of the
well-house at Megara, and from a few scattered, though significant
stones. We have also _inferred_ its importance from the vast system of
water-works of which it was the manifest goal. But there is another
witness to its past greatness. It is the place where all ways meet. The
irregular square in front of the well-house Nine-Spouts and in part
occupied by it was manifestly a great centre of the city life. The
complex of ancient roads is best seen in Fig. 46. The great Panathenaic
way passes along its Eastern side, but that is not all. The branch
roads from the Areopagos converge thither. Most important of all for
us, straight down from the Acropolis gate, skirting the Amyneion, there
descends a narrow footway. By this we may be sure the King’s daughters
descended to fetch water from Kallirrhoë.
* * * * *
A word must be said as to the nature and surroundings of the main ancient
road, which topographically is of capital importance. Somewhere along
its course must have lain the ancient Agora. Our first impression is,
unexpectedly, of narrowness, just as it is when we stand on the other
Sacred Way, at Delphi. On the Panathenaic way five persons can only just
stand abreast; the chariots must have gone in single file. It is in fact
a narrow Oriental street. It is bounded on either side by walls of good
polygonal masonry and is hemmed in, as is seen on the map, by houses and
precincts. Beneath the road is an elaborate system of drainage pipes with
shafts by which they could be entered for cleaning purposes. There are of
course many cross-roads, two to the left leading to the Areopagos, one to
the Pnyx, another to Koile. The footway leading straight to the Acropolis
has already been noted.
One of the best preserved portions of the road is that which runs along
by the Western side of the precinct of _Dionysos-in-the-Marshes_. Here
the polygonal walls on both sides are well preserved. Almost opposite the
wine-press we come on buildings which, from inscriptions, can be dated as
of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. These consist of an open exedra,
quadrangular in shape and of polygonal masonry. Inside this precinct is a
small shrine with no columns, in front of it an altar of _poros_ stone.
Both material and technique point to the sixth century B.C. To whom the
shrine is dedicated is not known. Thucydides could perhaps have told
us. In the course of the century next following the shrine must have
fallen into disuse. As the level of the road rose it would, once disused,
speedily get covered up. That this was actually the case is clearly shown
by the fact that a building of the fourth century B.C. was superimposed.
It extended right back to the Pnyx rock. Two boundary stones of this
later building are still[280] _in situ_ in the wall bordering on the
main road; on each is inscribed ‘Boundary of the Lesche’ (ὅρος λέσχης).
Immediately next to the South comes a building of polygonal limestone
masonry. Two inscriptions show that this building was mortgaged, so it
must have been a private house. Beyond this there is nothing of special
interest till we come to the great open place in which stood the fountain
Nine-Spouts.
The careful engineering of the road, its elaborate drainage, the way
it is close packed on either side with houses and sanctuaries leave
us no doubt but that in it we have the one and, it appears, the only
chariot-way from the agora to the Acropolis. The shrines that line this
regular approach lie essentially and emphatically _towards that part of
the city_.
* * * * *
So far we have considered the road as an approach, but it must always be
remembered that historically we have to reverse our procedure. The city
grows _from_ the central hill, not _towards_ it, and that outward growth
is clear. It may be traced on the map in Fig. 46. The ancient agora lay
in the hollow between the hills directly overlooked by the assembly place
on the Pnyx; then as it outgrew these narrow limits it was forced bit by
bit round the West shoulder of the Areopagus, and there turned Eastward
by the hill Kolonos Agoraios, on which stands the ‘Theseion’; below
that hill was the Stoa Basileios, which in the fifth century B.C. was
assuredly part of the agora. The agora could not spread Westward; the
hill prevented that; it was forced always Eastward, first in Hellenistic
days as far as the Stoa of Attalos, then in Roman days to the Gate of
the Roman Agora and the Tower of the Winds. Such is its long but simple
story. If we follow the water-course of Peisistratos and its later Roman
extension we shall not go wrong.
The houses that covered the square in front of Nine-Spouts, and into
which fragments of the well-house were built, are all of Roman date.
Clear them away, and we have, as has been seen, a great quadrangular
space in front of the city well, a place to which all ways converge (Fig.
46). Surely here, if anywhere, is the ancient agora, close to the city
gates.
* * * * *
It is remarkable that, visiting Athens half a century before the
excavations began, an English scholar, Christopher Wordsworth[281],
by sheer light of common sense, saw that here, and here only, could
the ancient agora be, and here he marked it on his quaint, rudimentary
map (Fig. 45). His words are, as contrasted with later confusions,
memorable. ‘In order,’ he says, ‘to obtain a distinct notion of the
natural characteristics of the spot to which we refer, let us consider
it in the _first place_ as abstracted from all artificial modifications;
let us imagine ourselves as existing in the days of Kekrops, and
looking upon the site of Athens. In a wide plain, which is enclosed by
mountains except on the South, where it is bounded by the sea, rises
a flat, oblong rock lying from East to West about fifty yards high,
rather more than one hundred and sixty broad, and about three hundred
in length. It is inaccessible on all sides but the West, on which it is
approached by a steep slope. This is the future Acropolis or Citadel of
Athens. We place ourselves upon this eminence and cast our eyes about
us. Immediately on the West is a second hill, of irregular form, lower
than that on which we stand and opposite to us. This is the Areopagus.
Beneath it on the South-West is a valley neither deep nor narrow, open
both at the North-West and South-East. Here was the Agora or public
place of Athens. Above it to the South-West rises another hill, formed
like the two others already mentioned of hard and rugged limestone,
clothed here and there with a scanty covering of herbage. On this hill
the popular assemblies of the future citizens of Athens will be held. It
will be called the Pnyx. To the South of it is a fourth hill, of similar
kind, known in after-ages as the Museum. Thus a group of four hills
is presented to our view, which nearly enclose the space wherein the
Athenian Agora existed, as the Forum of Rome lay between the hills of the
Capitol and the Palatine.’
[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
The secret of Dr Wordsworth’s insight lies in the words, ‘we place
ourselves upon the eminence and cast our eyes about us.’ He stood on the
actual hill, realized, as Thucydides did, that that was the beginning of
things, noted the shape of the hill and its only possible approach, and
saw that the developments of the city must lie that way, _towards that
part_, as Thucydides would say. Half a century later Prof. Dörpfeld,
coming with the trained eye of the engineer and architect, made, quite
independently of Dr Wordsworth, the same observation. The valley enclosed
by the Acropolis, Areopagus, Pnyx, and Mouseion, was then utterly barren
of visible remains; other archaeologists had placed their agora where
ancient remains were visible, North or South of the Acropolis; Prof.
Dörpfeld, in defiance of orthodox tradition, placed it West, and there
his excavations, as we have seen, brought to light the sanctuary of
Dionysos-in-the-Marshes, the ‘Nine-Spouts,’ the Panathenaic Way, and the
host of sanctuaries, houses, wine-presses, wells, and water-courses that
encompassed the ancient agora.
* * * * *
Later we shall have to examine what it was that led other scholars and
archaeologists astray; for the present we must return to Thucydides. He
never mentions the agora, his thoughts never for a moment stray from his
city before Theseus. He has shown its meagre extent and the immediate
proximity of its most ancient sanctuaries, and to clinch his argument he
returns to the citadel itself and its ancient name; he resumes the whole
argument (see p. 8) in its last and most emphatic clause.
_Because of the ancient settlement here, the citadel as well_ (as the
present city) _is still to this day called the city_.
Thucydides is strictly correct both as regards official and literary
usage. An examination of official inscriptions shows that down to the
Peace of Antalcidas (387-6 B.C.) the Acropolis was officially known as
_polis_[282]. The new form ‘in the Acropolis’ first appears in the year
of the peace[283], and from then on is in regular use. In literature,
both in prose and verse, _polis_ is still uniformly used after a local
preposition, _e.g._ towards the _polis_, in the _polis_; but when there
is no local preposition the word acropolis is employed. Thus, in the
_Knights_ of Aristophanes[284], when the Sausage-Seller sees the Goddess
herself coming from the _polis_ with her owl perched on her, and there
is no shadow of doubt that Athena is coming from the Acropolis; but
Lysistrata[285] says, ‘to-day we shall seize the Acropolis,’ where
there is no local preposition, though the sense would have been clear
with _polis_. As Dr Wyse[286] has pointed out, it was easy for the word
_polis_ to go on being used for the Acropolis, because the Athenians had
another word (ἄστυ), which they used in such phrases as ‘in town,’ ‘to
town.’
* * * * *
We have learnt from Thucydides all he has to tell us, and in the light of
recent excavations he seems to have spoken clearly enough. The limits of
his ancient city have been confirmed by the discovery of the old Pelasgic
fortifications. We have seen with our own eyes two of the ancient
sanctuaries which lay _towards_ his city, the Pythion and the sanctuary
of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes; and from literary evidence inferred the two
others, the Olympieion and the sanctuary of Ge. We have noted that,
in the order in which Thucydides names them, they occur in succession
from East to West; and, most convincing of all, near to the last-named
sanctuary we have found Nine-Spouts, and not only Nine-Spouts, but the
old Fair-Fount that was before it. Thus all seems clear and simple;
Thucydides, Pausanias, and modern excavations tell the same harmonious
tale.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.
From _Antike Denkmäler_ II. 37.]
CONCLUSION.
Having now stated what we believe to be the truth respecting the ancient
burgh of Athens, its nature and limits and the position of its early
Sanctuaries, we have still, in accordance with the plan proposed at the
outset (p. 4), to examine other and, as we believe, erroneous views.
These views are widely current in manuals and guide-books and are
supported by names[287] that command respect. A study of the genesis of
errors so wide-spread and deep-rooted may not be unprofitable.
The sources of error seem to us fourfold, as follows:
1. _The lie of the modern town._
2. _A misunderstanding of the text of Thucydides._
3. _The duplication of certain sanctuaries and, closely connected with
this_,
4. _Confusion as to Kallirrhoë and Enneakrounos._
1. _The lie of the modern town._
A glance at the map of modern Athens will show that its centre of gravity
lies not West but North of the Acropolis—the modern market lies there
with its throng of narrow streets and the whole modern town, with its
shops, hotels, stations, spreads out in that direction. Moreover, it is
obvious that the business part of Roman Athens also lay North. To the
North lies the Gate of the Roman agora[288], besides such buildings as
the Tower of the Winds and Hadrian’s Library (Fig. 49). More than this,
the agora of Hellenistic days (Fig. 46) lay there also, and was almost
certainly bounded on its Eastern side by the Stoa of Attalos, of which
there are still substantial remains[289]. Quite recently the foundations
of two other colonnades have come to light[290], just below and to the
East of the hill on which stands the so-called ‘Theseion.’ These two
colonnades stand just at the entrance of the Greek agora; the Northern
one is probably either the Basileion or the Stoa Basileios, the first
building described by Pausanias on his entry into the Kerameikos. The
two last colonnades played no part in attempted reconstructions of the
agora, for the simple reason that they were below ground; but the Stoa of
Attalos, that of the Giants, and the Gateway of the Roman agora have been
regularly regarded as _data_ with which any theorist was bound to start;
they had to be fitted in somehow.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
The next question was, where was the road that led from the agora to
the Acropolis, the Panathenaic way? Given an agora to the North and
North-East of the Areopagus, and, given that you were working at home in
your study with a flat plan before you, the answer seemed obvious; the
road must have passed straight from the agora round the Eastern end of
the Areopagus, and so straight up to the entrance at the Propylaea. The
result is a reconstruction of agora and road, like that seen in Fig. 47,
a restoration made by Prof. Curtius. So utterly is the West slope of the
Acropolis ignored, that it is simply cut off as irrelevant.
Professor Dörpfeld was the first to point out that at the Eastern end
of the Areopagus, though there is a footway up to the Acropolis, there
is not now a carriage-road, there never was, and, unless the whole
natural features of the place are altered, there never will be. The hill
at that point, though short, is impracticably steep. What looks easy
and obvious on paper is in actuality impossible. Long before he began
his excavations, Prof. Dörpfeld, with the trained eye of the practical
engineer, saw the ancient carriage-way must have followed the modern
road, that is, round the West end of the Areopagus between that hill and
the Pnyx. From that point by successive windings, then and now, it could
climb the hill. The old road we have seen has now been found; it lies in
places actually under the new and follows the same course, as natural in
500 B.C. as in 1900 A.D.
One school of topographers, headed by the great name of Curtius, placed
the agora at the North side of the Acropolis. We have seen that, though
wrong for the beginning of things, this is right for the end. Another
school, though they knew that the Roman market lay Northwards, yet had
compunctions about the earlier agora. This earlier agora they placed
due South of the Acropolis, completely separated from the Roman one.
The separation was in idea as well as in place. The early agora was
supposed to be in some obscure way a religious, the later a political
and commercial centre. Such an arrangement is shown in the plan in Fig.
48[291]. It is purely theoretical and impossible. The Panathenaic way
is made to run North of the Areopagus up the impracticable hill, and the
ancient agora lies as a sort of desert island by itself, away from the
Council House, the Tholos, the Stoa Basileios, and the rest. The West
slope is left void. When and how the mysterious leap from old to new,
from South to North, was taken no one explained. This brings us to our
second source of error.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
2. _A misunderstanding of the text of Thucydides._
What has led topographers to make this singular and unmeaning division of
old and new? why have they placed the old agora South of the Acropolis?
Simply because, misunderstanding the words of Thucydides, they think _he_
placed it South. Thucydides says, it will be remembered (p. 7), that, in
the days before Theseus, ‘_what is now the citadel was the city, together
with what is below it towards about South_.’ We have seen that the simple
and satisfactory explanation of the words is that the reference is to
the bit of ground known as the Pelargikon, extending mainly West and
South-West of the Acropolis and included in the ancient city. We have
also seen—and this is of paramount importance—that the sole gist and
point of Thucydides’ argument is to show the smallness of the ancient
city, to prove that it was practically the same as the citadel, only
there was this bit over ‘_towards about South_.’ It is the fatal accuracy
of Thucydides that has led to his being misunderstood. It is actually
thought that he desires to prove _two_ points: first, that the ancient
city was the citadel; second, that the portion of the city not contained
in the citadel was to the South[292]; whereas, as already seen, the
_direction_ of the city has nothing, could have nothing, to do with the
case.
Once embarked on the wrong hypothesis that Thucydides lays two
propositions before us, and that one of them is that the city lay to the
South, the downward road is easy. The four sanctuaries of Thucydides are
selected, it is supposed, to prove the second proposition, i.e. that the
city is to the South. Four sanctuaries lie ready, only too ready, to
hand. We have, South-East of the Acropolis (Fig. 49), a great Olympieion;
we know from Pausanias[293] that close by it was a great Pythion, within
the Olympieion was a precinct of Ge; and last and most convincing of all,
on the South-East slope of the Acropolis is the great Dionysiac theatre,
with its precinct and two temples. Truly a little archaeology is a
dangerous thing. So obvious, so striking are these identifications, that
at the first glance they seem to compel adhesion.
But a moment’s thought obliges us to see that, if tempting, these
identifications are impossible. From its _position_ the sanctuary
of Dionysos Eleuthereus might well have been one of those named by
Thucydides, because, as already noted (p. 67), while from his words
it would be impossible definitely to say whether the sanctuaries are
North, South, East, or West, assuredly the theatre and precinct of
Dionysos Eleuthereus _are_ ‘towards’ (πρὸς) the ancient city. But, as
we have already (p. 83) seen, it is from this familiar precinct, the
sanctuary of the later Dionysos Eleuthereus, that Thucydides is expressly
differentiating his more ancient precinct; the same is the case with the
Olympieion. Thucydides and everyone at Athens knew that this vast temple
was begun in the time of Peisistratos; was it likely to be chosen as
a sanctuary to show the limits (or even the direction) of the city of
Kekrops?
[Illustration: FIG. 49.]
As regards the Pythion, special stress has been laid on the fact
that it—not the sanctuary on the Long Rocks—is called by Pausanias
the Pythion; but the explanation is easy and manifest; Pausanias is
distinguishing it from the other sanctuary of Apollo near at hand, the
Delphinion[294].
Sanctuaries so late as these could not fairly be used to prove even
the _direction_ of the city of Kekrops; but, as already shown, it is
not direction, but _size_ with which Thucydides is concerned. To give
sanctuaries like the Olympieion and Pythion, which lay outside even
the city of Themistocles, as evidence of the smallness of an ancient
‘Mycenaean’ city, a Pelasgic fortress, is an absurdity so manifest that
statement is refutation. We are brought face to face with the third
source of error.
3. _The duplication of certain sanctuaries._
The misinterpretation of Thucydides has been helped and indeed in a large
measure caused by a most curious historical fact, calculated until it was
properly understood to mislead anyone. _There was a duplication in two
different districts of certain of the most notable Athenian sanctuaries._
To the North and West of the Acropolis, as we have seen in detail, there
were sanctuaries of Zeus Olympios, of Apollo Pythios, of Ge and of
Dionysos, and near to them was a spring Kallirrhoë, and it is of these,
if our view be correct, that Thucydides makes mention, but none the less
the fact is patent to everyone who reads Pausanias and visits modern
Athens, that to the South-East of the Acropolis there are sanctuaries
of the same divinities, of Zeus Olympios, of Apollo Pythios, of Ge and
of Dionysos, and that near these also is a spring called to this day
Kallirrhoë. How did this come to be? What does it signify? The answer
once stated is simple and convincing. The duplication of sanctuaries is
due to a shift of population from North-West to South-East, from the
district of the Pnyx to the district of the Ilissus. This shift of
population is a fact historically attested.
* * * * *
Plutarch[295] in his treatise ‘On Banishment’ is trying to persuade us
that exile is in itself no hardship. He asks, ‘Are then those Athenians
to be accounted strangers and outlaws who moved from Melite to Diomeia,
whence they called the month Metageitnion, and the sacrifice they offered
took its name _Metageitnia_ from this removal, since they accepted
pleasantly and cheerfully their neighbourhood to new people? Surely
they are not.’ Plutarch’s argument does not come to much, but we are
grateful to him for recording the fact that there was this shift of
population, when or why, alas! we do not certainly know, from Melite in
the North-West to Diomeia in the South-East (Fig. 49). Did not the people
when they moved take with them their old place-names, their old local
legends, their Kallirrhoë? We have curious incidental evidence that they
did.
Let us look for a moment at the position of the two demes. As to the
position of Melite there has never been any doubt, though its exact
boundaries are not clearly defined. Melite was the deme-name given to
the hill district West and North-West of the Acropolis. It extended on
the West to the barathron, near which cheerful site Themistocles had his
home. There, Plutarch[296] tells us, _in Melite_, he built the sanctuary
of Artemis Aristoboule which gave such umbrage to the Athenians. Melite
was, we know, near the agora and on higher ground. In the opening of the
_Parmenides_[297] Kephalos meets Adeimantos in the agora. They want to
see Antiphon, and Adeimantos says it will be easy enough for Antiphon has
just gone home and ‘he lives close by in Melite.’ Demosthenes[298] in
the speech against Konon says that he was walking in the agora near the
Leokorion when he met Ktesias, and Ktesias ‘passed on to Melite up hill.’
Finally, and for our purpose most important of all, Melite certainly
included the Pnyx hill. When Meton appears in the _Birds_[299] and is
asked who he is, and where he comes from, he answers
‘Meton am I, Greece knows me and Kolonos.’
The scholiast is concerned as to whether it could correctly be stated
that Meton was of the deme Kolonos, and _apropos_ of this, as to where a
certain astronomical monument to Meton had been erected. According to one
authority there was a sun-dial in the Pnyx in his memory. The scholiast
then adds, ‘Is not, some say, _the whole of the district in which the
Pnyx is included, the Kolonos called_ μίσθιος? So customary has it become
to call the part behind the Long Stoa, Kolonos, though it is not. _For
all that part is Melite_, and it is so described in the boundaries of the
city.’ The scholiast is, of course, primarily concerned with the name of
the hill dominating the later agora, and on which stands the so-called
Theseion (Fig. 46), but incidentally he tells that the deme Melite which
included that hill included also the Pnyx. Both points, it will later be
seen, are for us important.
Melite then is to the North-West and West of the Acropolis. Where is
Diomeia? Its dimensions again are not exactly known, but happily its
_direction_ is certain (Fig. 49)[300].
* * * * *
In the deme of Diomeia was a gymnasium and a sanctuary of Herakles, both
known as _Kynosarges_, and from Herodotus[301] we know in what direction
this Kynosarges lay. After Marathon the Persian fleet rounded Sunium with
a view to landing at Phalerum, then the port of Athens. Phalerum, of
course, lies almost due South of Athens. The Athenians hurry back from
Marathon with all speed to protect the city. They leave the Herakleion at
Marathon where they had encamped, and ‘take up their station in another
Herakleion, that in Kynosarges’—Kynosarges, and with it Diomeia, must
therefore lie in or command the direct road between Phalerum and Athens.
Pausanias[302] visited Kynosarges and referred to the story of ‘the white
dog’ immediately after the low-lying district of the ‘Gardens’ on the
Ilissus before he visited the stadium.
The Herakleion of Kynosarges has shown us the direction in which Diomeia
lay. Diomeia, we have seen, was colonized from Melite. We naturally ask,
Was the Herakleion one of the duplicate sanctuaries? In other words, Was
there a worship of Herakles in Melite?
In the _Frogs_—a play be it remembered performed at the Lenaia, a
festival held originally (p. 88) in the Limnae just below the hill
district of Melite—Xanthias is dressing up as Herakles; he says to
Dionysos, as he is putting on the lion-skin,
‘Now watch if Xanthias-Herakles turns faint,
Or shows the same presence of mind as you’;
and Dionysos answers
‘The real old jail-bird, him from Melite.’
The careful scholiast[303] notes it was not usual to speak of a god as
‘from’ a place. The Melitean Herakles would normally be described as
Herakles ‘in’ or ‘at Melite’; it was treating Herakles as a mere mortal
to say Herakles from Melite. But does not the ‘from’ possibly mark an
added joke? Are not the baggage and the donkey and the ‘from’ all put
in to parody the real ‘flitting’ of Herakles from Melite to Diomeia?
That flitting was already accomplished in the time of Aristophanes, for,
later on in the play[304], when Aeacus is beating Xanthias-Herakles, and
Xanthias utters an involuntary ‘whe-ew,’ Aeacus asks if he is hurt, and
Xanthias recovering himself says,
‘No; I was just thinking,
When my Diomean Feast would next be due.’
The same curious duplication of sanctuaries meets us in the accounts
of the initiation of Herakles. The scholiast on the _Frogs_[305] says,
‘Herakles was initiated in the Lesser Mysteries in Melite, a deme of
Attica,’ but by common consent[306] these Lesser Mysteries are held to
have taken place at Agrae on the Ilissos, and it is there, according
to Stephen[307] of Byzantium, that Herakles obtained initiation. In
Melite on or close to the Pnyx hill Pausanias[308] saw beyond the spring
‘temples, one built for Demeter and Kore, the other containing an image
of Triptolemos.’ Did the emigrants from Melite carry their cult down with
them to the mystic banks of the Ilissos[309], to Agrae ‘where,’ according
to Eustathius[310], they say ‘the Lesser Mysteries of Demeter which they
call “those in Agrae” are celebrated’?
* * * * *
Tradition, then, as to the initiation of Herakles was two-fold; he was
initiated in Melite, he was initiated on the banks of the Ilissos at
Agrae in Diomeia. We naturally ask, ‘Why was he initiated at all, and why
did his initiation attract so much attention?’ If he was a god it was
superfluous, if a pious mortal merely normal. The answer to this question
may give a clue to the cause of the shift of population from Melite to
Diomeia.
Herakles was initiated because he was an immigrant stranger. We have
seen (pp. 27 and 65) that in the 6th century B.C. he was at home on
the Acropolis itself; he appears on archaic pediments contending with
Triton and the Hydra and on vase-paintings his popularity precedes
that of his rival Theseus. Yet, none the less, he is a stranger, and
his formal reception as a guest was at various places in Attica matter
of old world tradition. In the _Lysis_ Ktesippos complains that the
boys’ lovers make for him the weary old boast, that to an ancestor of
his belonged the honour of the ‘reception of Herakles[311].’ Lysis
belonged to Aixone, a deme near Phalerum; and by way of the sea in all
probability Herakles had come to Athens. Orators, specially religious
orators, are less contemptuous. The initiation of Herakles was a telling
argument in the mouth of the cosmopolitan peace-loving politician. The
Torch-bearer, Kallias[312], in his speech to the Lacedaemonian allies
urges the familiar precedent. ‘It was right,’ he says, ‘for us not to
bear arms against each other since tradition says, your leader Herakles,
and your citizens, the Dioscuri, were the first strangers to whom our
ancestor Triptolemos showed the unutterable rites of Demeter and Kore.’
Plutarch[313], again, in his _Life of Theseus_ tells how the Tyndaridae
supported their claim to initiation by citing the analogous case of
Herakles. In order to be initiated, Herakles, as a stranger, had to be
adopted by a citizen called Pylios; the Tyndaridae, whose exploits were
supposed to have taken place at Aphidna, were adopted by Aphidnus. The
scene of the initiation of Herakles and the Dioscuri occurs on more than
one late red-figured vase[314].
The emphasis laid on the initiation of Herakles and the tradition that
he was admitted at the Lesser Mysteries mark the fact that he was a
stranger. It is possible to go a step further. Herakles was not merely
no true-born Athenian citizen, but an actual foreigner, an Oriental. It
is therefore no surprise to us to learn from the best of authorities
on Athenian ritual, Apollodorus[315], that ‘sacrifice was offered to
Herakles Alexikakos at Athens after a special and peculiar manner.’ It
would be out of place here to enter upon any detailed examination of the
Oriental elements in the worship of Herakles generally, but as regards
his worship at Athens, and especially in Melite[316], some points must be
noted.
Melite, all authorities seem to agree, is _Malta_[317], the place of
refuge. Diodorus[318] gives us a full description of the original
Melite-Malta and emphasizes, if emphasis were needed, its harbourage
and generally its maritime convenience, its wealth in arts and crafts
and manufactures. ‘This island is a colony of the Phenicians, it lay in
mid-ocean and had good harbour, hence when they extended their trade
to the western Ocean it served them as a refuge.’ Of another island of
refuge called Melite Strabo[319] tells us ‘the Korybantes removed to
Samothrace which was formerly called Melite.’ This Samothrace, according
to Diodorus[320], was called in ancient days _Saonnesos_, Safe-island,
which of course is merely a translation of its Semitic name. In this
_Saonnesos-Melite_ the inhabitants down to the time of Diodorus still in
_their sacrificial ceremonies_ used many words of a dialect peculiar to
them and, according to tradition, the island got its name in connection
with the story—always a Semitic note—of the Flood. The inhabitants set up
all round the island boundary stones ‘of salvation.’
In the light of _Melite_, ‘Refuge,’ we begin to understand why Herakles
was worshipped there under the special cultus title of _Alexikakos_,
‘Preserver-from-Evil[321].’ He is Alexikakos, not merely as the hero
of the Labours but by divine right; _as a god_ even if an immigrant.
Diodorus[322] records that while the Thebans and others did honour to
Herakles as a hero ‘the Athenians were the first to offer sacrifices to
him as a god’; their pious example influenced, he says, first the rest
of Greece and afterwards the whole habitable world. Strabo[323] hits the
mark when he says ‘as in other matters the Athenians were hospitable in
what concerned the gods.’
Herakles in Melite was then in all probability a stranger; as to Herakles
in Diomeia there is no shadow of doubt. Plutarch[324] begins his life
of Themistocles with a story that shows in striking fashion the limits
of the hospitality extended to Herakles as the typical stranger. ‘The
origin of Themistokles was too obscure to be a source of distinction.’
On his father’s side he was an Athenian, but on his mother’s some said
a Thracian, but Phanias stated that she was a Karian, and Neanthes that
she belonged to Halikarnassos. Anyhow he was what the Athenians accounted
base-born (νόθος). ‘The base-born youths subscribed to the “Kynosarges,”
the gymnasium of Herakles, outside the city gates, for Herakles, too,
was not a true-born god but was introduced by adoption inasmuch as his
mother was a mortal. Accordingly, Themistocles persuaded certain of
the true-born youths to go to Kynosarges and exercise there with him.’
Kynosarges, haunt of the base-born, outside the gates; there could be no
better evidence that its patron, Herakles, was a foreigner[325].
Themistocles has yet more evidence to yield us, and that of a curious
character. Themistocles, it will be remembered (p. 144), had a home in
Melite close to the barathron. Near to his home he founded a sanctuary
of Artemis ‘to whom he gave the title of Aristoboule[326].’ This was
among the many ways in which he annoyed the Athenians. The cause of the
annoyance, Plutarch thinks, was that he gave the title to commemorate
his good advice before the battle of Salamis. But was this the real
reason? Surely the dedication gave all glory to the goddess, not to
himself? It is a curious and, I think, significant fact that we know of
another Aristoboule, and she is a manifestly Semitic goddess. Porphyry,
in enumerating instances of human sacrifice, says[327] that in Rhodes
_on the 6th day of the month Metageitnion_, a man used to be sacrificed
to Kronos. The custom, which had obtained for a long time, had been
modified. A condemned criminal was kept alive till the feast of Kronos,
and at the time of the feast they led the man outside the city gates
opposite the image of Aristoboule, gave him wine to drink and slew
him. If Themistocles was trying ‘craftily,’ as Plutarch[328] says, to
affiliate a base-born to a true-born divinity, an Aristoboule to an
Artemis, small wonder if the Athenians were annoyed. Perhaps the ‘Karian’
mother counted for something in the attempt.
* * * * *
The festival of Aristoboule in Rhodes, the grim Semitic Kronia, fell—and
the fact is surely significant—in the month Metageitnion. Certain
Herakleia, probably, though not quite certainly[329], the Herakleia in
Kynosarges, fell in the same month; and of course the actual ceremonial
of the Metageitnia mentioned by Plutarch. To this Metageitnia we now
return. We have seen that the population of Melite, the worshippers of
Herakles[330], were probably foreigners, and that at one time there was
a shift of these Herakles worshippers from Melite to Diomeia. Is it not
possible that the two facts are connected? Plutarch leaves us in mid-air
as to the time and cause of the _metastasis_, but be it observed the
shift is from Melite, a district outside the old burgh, to Diomeia, a
district, at least in part, outside the new. May it not have been felt
when the new circuit-wall of Themistocles was complete that it comprised
too many foreigners? If the shift took place soon after the building
of the new fortifications the event would still be remembered at the
performance (406 B.C.) of the _Frogs_.
* * * * *
At whatever date the _metastasis_ took place thus much is clear. It
was no chance incidental flitting of a few scattered families, but a
substantial shift of population, and it adequately accounts for the
curious duplication of sanctuaries. The foreign character of one element
in that population and of the cult they carried with them has been
emphasized because it provides at least a possible explanation of the
shift, but it must not for a moment be supposed that all the sanctuaries
and sanctities were necessarily foreign. We may conclude this portion of
the evidence by noting an instance of mythological duplication specially
convincing because wholly incidental and undesigned, the legend of Boreas
and Oreithyia.
Pausanias[331] tells us that ‘the Ilissus is the river where Oreithyia is
said to have been playing when she was carried off by Boreas the North
wind.’ We are a little surprised; what was the king’s daughter doing
playing down by the Ilissus far from her father’s citadel, and was not
the Ilissus rather a sheltered spot for the North wind? Plato[332] in the
_Phaedrus_, as Sokrates and Phaedrus are lying under the ‘tallest plane
tree’ on the bank of the Ilissus, makes Phaedrus say ‘I should like to
know whether the place is not somewhere here where Boreas is said to have
carried off Oreithyia;’ Sokrates says it is not far, about a quarter of a
mile off, and that there is some sort of an altar there—and adds ‘there
is a discrepancy however about the spot; according to another version of
the story she was taken from the Areopagos and not from this place.’
We pass to our fourth source of error.
4. _Confusion as to Kallirrhoë and Enneakrounos._
Misunderstanding as regards the duplicated sanctuaries was explicable,
even natural, but the downward road once embarked on leads to a deeper
depth. Those who believe that Thucydides is concerned to prove that
the ancient city lay Southwards have to find for the Fair-Fount and
Nine-Spouts of Thucydides a home other than the rock of the Pnyx; they
place the ancient city well, whence the king’s daughters drew their
water, outside, not only of the walls of Themistocles, but even of the
later and wider enclosure of Hadrian; they place it on the Ilissus, at a
distance of over half-a-mile as the crow flies from the citadel gate. If
the king’s daughters really ventured out there we must not, considering
the convention of the times, too severely blame the attacks of the rude
Pelasgians. And assuredly, if any one will try the experiment of carrying
a bucket of water from Kallirrhoë on the Ilissus to the top of the
Acropolis on a hot summer’s day, he will imagine those king’s daughters
as cast in more than mortal mould.
In the days when the Kallirrhoë of Thucydides could be placed on the
Ilissus the conception of Athens formed by scholars was of an Athens in
the days of Pericles. To speak of ancient Athens as a ‘Mycenaean’ city
would then have been unmeaning, if not positively insulting. As soon as
we realise the conditions of a Pelasgian burgh, with its king and his
immediate dependents massed upon and close up to the citadel, we know
that the citadel-well _must_ be close at hand—the Fair-Fount of the Pnyx
is already full far.
As to the Fair-Fount (Kallirrhoë) on the Ilissus, there has been and
still prevails much confusion. A Kallirrhoë there certainly is on the
Ilissus; the women of Athens wash their clothes there to-day[333], and
the existence of this Kallirrhoë Prof. Dörpfeld has never denied. Nay, he
expressly points out that even in the days of Thucydides the Kallirrhoë
of the Pnyx had already lost its name, and needs to be recalled to his
readers. If, as has been seen, many sanctuaries were transferred and
names duplicated there is nothing (1) impossible nor (2) injurious to
our theory, if the new Kallirrhoë was sometimes, like its old archetype,
called Enneakrounos. Though as a matter of fact this seems not to have
been the case.
* * * * *
Two ancient authorities, and two only, appear at first sight definitely
to place the Enneakrounos on the Ilissus. These must be examined in
detail. First, the _Etymologicum Magnum_[334], under the heading
_Enneakrounos_, says, ‘a fountain at Athens by the Ilissus, which was
formerly Kallirrhoë, to which they go to fetch the water for baths for
brides.’ Unquestionably, whoever wrote this thought the Enneakrounos
was on the Ilissus. But then by the time the _Etymologicum Magnum_ was
compiled the old Kallirrhoë at the Pnyx was long forgotten. The statement
looks as if it had come originally from Thucydides[335], and as if the
topographical ‘by the Ilissus’ had been added by some ambitious but
ignorant compiler.
Against this statement of the _Etymologicum Magnum_, for what it is
worth, we may set the statement of another lexicographer[336]. Explaining
the expression ‘Wedding Baths,’ he says, ‘the baths brought from a
fountain from the agora.’ The wildest topographer has never placed the
agora by the Ilissus, though it might go there with quite as good reason
as the ancient city well.
* * * * *
A second ancient literary authority seems at first sight indisputably to
place the Enneakrounos near to the temple of Zeus Olympios and, if there,
then, as a necessary consequence, on the Ilissus. In the preface to a
treatise by Hierocles[337] on _Veterinary Medicine_ there occurs, apropos
of the age to which horses and mules live, the following statement:
‘Tarantinos narrates that the Athenians _when they were building the
temple of Zeus near Enneakrounos_ passed a decree that all the beasts of
burden should be driven in from Attica to the town.’ This seems perfectly
definite and circumstantial, and the passage has been eagerly seized
on by all those who wished to prove that the Enneakrounos was on the
Ilissus. Quite naturally, but wait a moment. It is essential that the
passage be read to the end. Tarantinos goes on, ‘and a certain husbandman
through fear of this decree drove in an aged mule in its eightieth year.
But the people out of respect for its age enacted that the mule was to
be leader of all the beasts of burden employed in the building of the
temple, it was to walk in front unyoked and unspurred, and that none of
the wheat-merchants or barley-merchants were to drive it away from their
houses or prevent it from browsing.’
The aged mule story is charming; we can scarcely hear it too often, but
somehow it _is_ oddly familiar; have we not heard it before in slightly
different form? Yes; surely it is the story Plutarch[338] tells when he
is recounting the kindness of Cato to his beasts. ‘A good man will take
care of his horses and dogs, not only while they are young, but when
they are old and past service. Thus the people of Athens, _when they
were building the Hecatompedon_ set at liberty those mules which they
thought had worked hardest and let them go free, and one of them, it is
said, afterwards came of her own accord back to the works and trotted
by the side of the beasts who were drawing the waggons and led them on
and seemed to be exhorting and encouraging them. And the people passed a
vote that she should be entertained at the public expense to the day of
her death.’ The same story is told by Aelian[339] of the time ‘_when the
Athenians were building the Parthenon_,’ and he quotes as his authority
Aristotle. It is Aristotle[340] who has set the whole uncertainty going.
He tells the story of the time ‘when at Athens _they were building the
temple_.’
By the ‘temple’ Aelian and Plutarch are almost certainly right in
understanding the Parthenon. If they are right, we can infer that
Tarantinos, an author whose date is unknown, and whom we have no ground
for regarding as an authority on Athenian topography, has made at any
rate one mistake, when he identifies ‘the temple’ with the great temple
of his own day, the temple ‘of Zeus.’ Tarantinos is, presumably, taking
the story from Aristotle. If so, it is clear that, besides wrongly
identifying ‘the temple,’ he supposed that the Enneakrounos, which
on this hypothesis he for the first time imports into the story, was
identical with the Kallirrhoë of the Ilissos[341]. But what is the value
of his evidence? His supporters may fairly be challenged to produce the
credentials of a witness whose only title to be regarded as an authority
is an identification almost certainly wrong. There is nothing to rebut
the simple supposition that, like the author of the _Etymologicum
Magnum_, he is merely confusing the two Kallirrhoës[342].
Finally, supposing for a moment that the passage of Thucydides leaves
us in doubt as to the site of the Enneakrounos, naturally our next step
would be to ask what does our next best authority, Pausanias, say?
Pausanias is a topographer by profession, surely we shall learn from him
where he saw the well-house. Pausanias[343] after seeing the statues of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton ‘not far from’ the temple of Ares, passes
straight on to a small group of monuments which he links together more
or less clearly; they are the Odeion; near to it the Enneakrounos;
above or beyond this the temples of Demeter and Kore; a little further
on the temple of Eukleia. It is quite true that he links the Odeion by
no connecting particle, but that is his frequent practice when passing
straight from one monument to another.
The uninstructed reader in his simplicity would naturally think that,
as Pausanias passes straight from the statues of the Tyrant Slayers
to the Odeion, the two lay somewhere not far apart, and so they did.
The Odeion in the days of Pausanias would almost certainly be near
the site of the ancient orchestra, where still are faint remains of
a semi-circular building (Fig. 46). Anyhow it stood close to the
Areopagos. But this is too simple and natural. Pausanias we are told,
here and nowhere else, abruptly breaks his narrative of the buildings
in the Kerameikos, and with no apparent reason and no hint in the text,
flies off for nearly half-a-mile and plants his reader on the banks
of the Ilissus,—a district, be it noted, that he later describes in
detail,—whence he shortly returns again without warning and finishes
his account of the Kerameikos. In a word we are presented with what is
known as the ‘Enneakrounos Episode.’ Various causes are suggested for the
‘Episode’; the leaves of the MS. got mixed, or Pausanias was staying with
friends near the Ilissus, and went home to lunch. The real cause of the
‘Episode’ is that Thucydides has been misunderstood, and that the late
compiler of the _Etymologicum Magnum_ has blundered. Pausanias[344] saw
the Odeion in the neighbourhood of the old orchestra at the south-west
of the Areopagos, the Enneakrounos near to it by the Pnyx rock, the
temples of Demeter and Kore ‘above it’ _on_ the Pnyx rock where were the
Thesmophorion[345] and the temple of Eukleia ‘not far off’; his course of
sight-seeing was here as elsewhere orderly and undisturbed.
* * * * *
Pausanias is seen to be at one with Thucydides and, thanks to Prof.
Dörpfeld, the evidence of both has been confirmed by excavation; the
sources of error and confusion in late authors, lexicographers and modern
archaeologists have come to light. Surely now at last the ‘Enneakrounos
Episode’ may be laid to sleep in peace.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Herod. VII. 140.
[2] Thucyd. II. 14 χαλεπῶς δὲ αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ εἰωθέναι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐν
τοῖς ἀγροῖς διαιτᾶσθαι, ἡ ἀνάστασις ἐγίγνετο.
[3] Thucyd. I. 5, 10.
[4] Thucyd. II. 15 καὶ ξυνοίκια ἐξ ἐκείνου Ἀθηναῖοι ἔτι καὶ νῦν τῇ θεῷ
ἑορτὴν δημοτελῆ ποιοῦσι.
[5] Thucyd. II. 15 τὸ δὲ πρὸ τούτου ἡ ἀκρόπολις ἡ νῦν οὖσα πόλις ἦν καὶ
τὸ ὑπ’ αὐτὴν πρὸς νότον μάλιστα τετραμμένον· τεκμήριον δέ. τὰ γὰρ ἱερὰ ἐν
αὐτῇ τῇ ἀκροπόλει καὶ ἄλλων θεῶν ἐστί, καὶ τὰ ἔξω πρὸς τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τῆς
πόλεως μᾶλλον ἵδρυται, τό τε τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου καὶ τὸ Πύθιον καὶ τὸ
τῆς Γῆς καὶ τὸ ἐν Λίμναις Διονύσου (ᾧ τὰ ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια τῇ δωδεκάτῃ
ποιεῖται ἐν μηνὶ Ἀνθεστηριῶνι) ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ ἀπ’ Ἀθηναίων Ἴωνες ἔτι καὶ
νῦν νομίζουσιν, ἵδρυται δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἱερὰ ταύτῃ ἀρχαῖα. καὶ τῇ κρήνῃ τῇ
νῦν μὲν τῶν τυράννων οὕτω σκευασάντων Ἐννεακρούνῳ καλουμένῃ, τὸ δὲ πάλαι
φανερῶν τῶν πηγῶν οὐσῶν Καλλιῤῥόῃ ὠνομασμένῃ—ἐκείνῃ τε ἐγγὺς οὔσῃ τὰ
πλείστου ἄξια ἐχρῶντο, καὶ νῦν ἔτι ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀρχαίου πρό τε γαμικῶν καὶ ἐς
ἄλλα τῶν ἱερῶν νομίζεται τῷ ὕδατι χρῆσθαι. καλεῖται δὲ διὰ τὴν παλαιὰν
ταύτῃ κατοίκησιν καὶ ἡ ἀκρόπολις μέχρι τοῦδε ἔτι ὑπ’ Ἀθηναίων πόλις.
[6] I keep the MS. reading; see Critical Note.
[7] See Dr A. W. Verrall, _The Site of Primitive Athens. Thucydides
II. 15 and recent explorations_, _Class. Rev._ June 1900, p. 274. In the
discussion of the actual text, I have throughout followed Dr Verrall.
[8] Plat. _Kritias_ 112.
[9] Antigonos, _Hist. Mirab._ 12.
[10] W. Dörpfeld, “Ueber die Ausgrabungen auf der Akropolis,” _Athen.
Mitt._ XI. 1886, p. 162.
[11] ap. Suidam, _s.v._ Ἄπεδα el. Ἠπέδιζον: ἄπεδα, τὰ ἰσόπεδα. Κλείδημος
‘καὶ ἠπέδιζον τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, περιέβαλλον δὲ ἐννεάπυλον τὸ Πελασγικόν.’
[12] Dörpfeld, “Die Propylaeen,” _A. Mitt._ X. 1885, p. 139 and see the
plan of the Propylaea in my _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, p. 352.
[13] Dörpfeld, ‘Ausgrabungen auf der Akropolis,’ _A. Mitt._ XI. 1896, p.
167.
[14] Dr Kabbadias, _Fouilles de l’Acropole_, 1886, Pl. I. and descriptive
text.
[15] The discussion and interpretation of these figures is reserved for
p. 51.
[16] Ἐφήμερις Ἀρχαιολογική, 1866, p. 78.
[17] _Eph. Arch._ 1887, pl. 4.
[18] _Eph. Arch._ 1887, pl. 8.
[19] Dörpfeld, ‘Die Zeit des älteren Parthenon,’ _A. Mitt._ 1902, p. 410.
[20] _A. Mitt._ 3892, p. 158, pl. VIII. and IX.
[21] Plut. _Vit. Cim._ 13.
[22] Unfortunately at the actual time of the excavations the chronology
of the various retaining walls was not clearly evident and the precise
place where many of the fragments excavated were found was not noted with
adequate precision.
[23] _A. Mitt._ XXVII. 1902, p. 398, Fig. 5.
[24] F. Hauser, _Strena Helbigiana_, p. 115. The reverse was first
correctly explained thro’ the identification of the σταφύλη by Dr O.
Rossbach, ‘Verschollene Sagen und Kulten,’ _Neue Jahrbücher f. Kl.
Altertumswissenschaft_, 1901, p. 390.
[25] _Il._ II. 765 ... ἵπποι σταφύλῃ ἐπὶ νῶτον ἔϊσαι.
[26] See Roscher, _Lex._ _s.v._
[27] Paus. II. 25. 7.
[28] Paus. II. 16. 5.
[29] Paus. IX. 5. 6.
[30] Apoll. Rhod. I. 736.
[31] Strabo, VIII. 21 § 379. See my _Prolegomena_, p. 609.
[32] _Od._ XI. 594. Mr Salomon Reinach in his “Sisyphe aux enfers et
quelques autres damnés,” _Rev. Arch._ 1903, has established beyond doubt
the true interpretation of the stone of Sisyphos.
[33] Paus. I. 28. 3.
[34] Dr Rendel Harris, _The Dioscuri_, p. 8.
[35] Plin. _Nat. Hist._ VII. 57.
[36] For _Euryalos_ see _Eph. Arch._ 1885, Taf. v. 2 and 3. For
_Hyperbios_, _Mon. d. Inst._ VI. and VII.
[37] Herod. VI. 137 μισθὸν τοῦ τείχεος τοῦ περὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολίν ποτε
ἐληλαμένου.
[38] Herod. V. 64 ἐπολιόρκεε τοὺς τυράννους ἀπεργμένους ἐν τῷ Πελασγικῷ
τείχει. All the MSS. except Z have Πελασγικῷ: Z has been corrected to
Πελα_ρ_γικῷ.
[39] _C.I.A._ IV. 2. 27. 6 ... ἐν τῷ Πελαργικῷ ... ἐκ τοῦ Πελαργικοῦ.
[40] In the best MS. (Laur. C).
[41] For details of this temple, see my _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, p.
496. For its ground-plan, see below p. 40, Fig. 18.
[42] Wiegand-Schrader-Dörpfeld, _Poros-Architektur der Akropolis_. For
any realization of pre-Periclean architecture a study of the coloured
plates of this work is essential.
[43] Typhon and Tritons appear together on the throne of Apollo at
Amyclae. The artistic motives of this Ionian work are largely Oriental.
The conjunction of Typhon and the Tritons is not, I think, a mere
decorative chance. Attention has not, I think, been called, in connection
with this pediment, to the fact that in Plutarch’s _Isis and Osiris_
(XXXII.) Typhon _is_ the sea into which the Nile flows (Τυφῶνα δὲ τὴν
θάλασσαν, εἰς ἣν ὁ Νεῖλος ἐμπίπτων ἀφανίζεται). The Egyptian inspiration
of the _Isis and Osiris_ no one will deny, and on this Egyptianized
pediment with its lotus-flowers the Egyptian sea-god Typhon is well in
place. His name is doubtless, as Muss Arnolt _Semitic Words in Greek and
Latin_, p. 59 points out, connected with Heb. צָפוֹן hidden, dark,
northern. The sea was north of Egypt.
[44] Ar. _Av._ 1139
ἕτεροι δ’ ἐπλινθοποίουν πελαργοὶ μύριοι.
[45] Eur. _Ion_ 154, trans. by Dr Verrall.
[46] See Lechat, _Au Musée de l’Acropole d’Athènes_, p. 215.
[47] Any learned blunderer might write Πελα_σ_γικόν for Πελα_ρ_γικόν, but
if Πελα_σ_γικόν were the original form it would be little likely to be
changed to Πελα_ρ_γικόν.
[48] Thucyd. II. 17 τό τε Πελαργικὸν καλούμενον τὸ ὑπὸ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, ὃ
καὶ ἐπάρατόν τε ἦν μὴ οἰκεῖν καί τι καὶ Πυθικοῦ μαντείου ἀκροτελεύτιον
τοιόνδε διεκώλυε, λέγον ὡς τὸ Πελαργικὸν ἀργὸν ἄμεινον, ὅμως ὑπὸ τῆς
παραχρῆμα ἀνάγκης ἐξῳκήθη. Thucydides calls ‘τὸ Πελαργικὸν ἀργὸν ἀμείνον’
a final hemistich. Mr A. B. Cook kindly points out to me that it is in
fact a complete line of the ancient metrical form preceding the hexameter
and known as _paroimiac_.
[49] καὶ τὸ ὑπ’ αὐτὴν μάλιστα πρὸς νότον τετραμμένον.
[50] Lucian, _Piscator_, 46.
[51] _C.I.A._ IV. 2. 27. 6.
[52] Poll. _On._ VIII. 101.
[53] Dörpfeld, ‘Die Propyläen 1 und 2,’ _A. Mitt._ X. 1885, pp. 38 and
131 and see my _Mon. and Myth. Ancient Athens_, p. 353.
[54] Dörpfeld, _A. Mitt._ XXVII. 1902, p. 405.
[55] The number of these gates is of course purely conjectural. The
sketch in Fig. 15 which I owe to the kindness of Prof. Dörpfeld gives
five only on the western slope. The line of the walls HJK is suggested by
remains of the 6th century B.C. which probably occupy the site of still
earlier Pelasgic fortifications (see p. 35 note 2). Of the remaining
gates one would probably be near where the Asklepieion was later built
and one or more on the north slope.
[56] Lucian, _Bis Accus._ 9 μικρὸν ὑπὲρ τοῦ Πελασγικοῦ.
[57] Herod. VIII. 52.
[58] Lucian, _Piscator_ 42.
[59] See _Mon. and Myth. Ancient Athens_, p. 299.
[60] _Op. cit._ p. 152.
[61] Polem. ap. Schol. _Oed. Col._ 489 καθάπερ Πολέμων ἐν τοῖς πρὸς
Ἐρατοσθένην φησίν, οὕτω ... κριὸν Ἡσύχῳ ἱερὸν ἥρω ... οὗ τὸ ἱερόν ἐστι
παρὰ τὸ Κυλώνειον, ἐκτὸς τῶν ἐννέα πυλῶν. The MS. has Κυδώνιον, the
emendation, which seems certain, is due to C. O. Mueller.
[62] Plut. _Vit. Solon._ XII. and Thucyd. I. 126.
[63] For these details about the date of the various walls I am indebted
to Professor Dörpfeld. Dr F. Noack holds that the nine-gated Pelargikon
was not of Mycenaean date but was built by Peisistratos, the earlier
Pelargikon being a much simpler structure. Prof. Dörpfeld also holds
that there was no nine-gated Pelargikon in Mycenaean days, but he
believes that the Peisistratids only strengthened an already existing
fortification, building perhaps some additional gates. The Enneapylon
would then have its contemporary analogy in the Enneakrounos. See F.
Noack, _Arne_, _A. Mitt._ 1894, p. 418.
[64] A protest was raised against the building of the Asklepieion after
it was begun; possibly this was because of its encroachment on the
Pelargikon. See A. Koerte, _A. Mitt._ 1896, pp. 318-331.
[65] See Critical Note.
[66] See throughout Prof. Dörpfeld, ‘Der ursprüngliche Plan des
Erechtheion,’ _A. Mitt._ 1904, p. 101, Taf. VI.
[67] See Dörpfeld, _A. Mitt._ XXVIII. 1903, p. 468.
[68] ο]ντος Αθηνων Κεκροπος, ἐτη ΧΗΗΔ.
[69] Thucyd. II. 15.
[70] Apollod. III. 14.
[71] Herod. VIII. 44.
[72] Harp. _in voc._; Poll. _On._ IX. 109.
[73] Paus. I. 3. 6.
[74] Hom. _Il._ II. 547 δῆμον Ἐρεχθῆος μεγαλητόρος.
[75] Aristoph. _Vesp._ 438 ὧ Κέκροψ ἥρως ἄναξ τὰ πρὸς ποδῶν δρακοντίδη.
[76] Tzetzes, _Chil._ V. 19.
[77] Only once so far as I know is Kekrops definitely called a snake, in
the _Hekale_ of Callimachus; speaking of the decision in favour of Athene
as against Poseidon he says (V. 9)
τήν ῥα νέον ψήφῳ (τ)ε Διὸς δύο καὶ δέκα τ’ ἄλλων
ἀθανάτων ὄφιός τε κατέλλαβε μαρτυρίῃσιν.
See Gomperz, _Rainer Papyrus_ VI. 1897, p. 9.
[78] Prof. Dörpfeld kindly suggests to me that the type of the Cretan
Snake-Goddess recently brought to light by Dr Evans and Miss Boyd
may have had its influence on the goddess of Athens. I agree (see my
_Prolegomena_, p. 307 note 3) and hope to return to this question on
another occasion.
[79] Herod. VIII. 41. The snake was of course at first imaginary and
Herodotus seems to doubt its existence.
[80] Paus. I. 24. 7.
[81] Hesiod, ap. Strab. IX. 9. § 393.
[82] Soph. _Philoct._ 1327.
[83] Paus. VI. 20. 2-4.
[84] Clem. Al. _Protr._ III. 45, p. 39.
[85] Theod. _Graec. affect. cur._ VIII. 30, p. 908 καὶ γὰρ Ἀθήνησιν, ὡς
Ἀντίοχος ἐν τῇ ἐνάτῃ γέγραφεν ἱστορίᾳ ἄνω γε ἐν τῇ ἀκροπόλει Κέκροπός
ἐστι τάφος παρὰ τὴν Πολιοῦχον αὐτήν.
[86] Δελτ. Αρχ. 1889, p. 10, fig. No. 3 ἐν τῷ τοῦ Κέκροπος ἱε[ρῷ.
[87] _C.I.A._ III. 1276 ἱε[ρ]εὺς Κέκρο[π]ος Ἀρίστων Σωσιστράτου Ἀθμονεύς.
[88] Brit. Mus. I. xxxv.; _C.I.A._ I. 322. The inscription is engraved on
two slabs of Pentelic marble.
[89] _loc. cit._ line 83
ἐπὶ τε͂ι προστάσει τε͂ι πρὸς το͂[ι]
Κεκροπίοι ἔδει
τὸς λίθος τὸς ὀροφιαίος τὸς
ἐπὶ το͂ν κορο͂ν ...
[90] For the name Caryatid as explained by Vitruvius see my _Mon. and
Myth. Anc. Athens_, p. 489.
[91] Dörpfeld, ‘Der ursprüngliche Plan des Erechtheion,’ _A. Mitt._ XXIX.
p. 104, 1904.
[92] Wiegand, _Die archäische Poros-Architektur der Akropolis zu Athen_
(1904), p. 106; and see also M. H. Lechat, _La sculpture Attique avant
Pheidias_, p. 53.
[93] Herod. VII. 41 λέγουσι Ἀθηναῖοι ὄφιν μέγαν φύλακα τῆς ἀκροπόλιος
ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι ἐν τῷ ἱρῷ.
[94] Eur. _Ion_ 21-26, trans. Dr Verrall.
[95] Brit. Mus. Cat. E 418. See my _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, p.
xxxi. Two snakes also appear as Dr Wiegand _op. cit._ points out in the
Atthis attributed to Amelesagoras; see Westermann _Paradoxogr._ XII.
63 Ἀμελησαγόρας δὲ ὁ Ἀθηναῖος ὁ τὴν Ἀτθίδα συγγράφων ... φησὶ τὰς δὲ
Κέκροπος θυγατέρας τὰς δύω Ἄγραυλον καὶ Πάνδροσον τὴν κίστην ἀνοῖξαι καὶ
ἰδεῖν δράκοντας δύω περὶ τὸν Ἐριχθόνιον. Hesychius _s.v._ οἰκουρὸς ὄφις
says ... οἱ μὲν ἕνα φασὶν οἳ δὲ δύο ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ τοῦ Ἐρεχθέως.
[96] _C.I.A._ I. 322, line 44
το͂ν κιόνον το͂ν ἐπὶ τὸ τοίχο
τὸ πρὸς τὸ Πανδροσείο,
and in _C.I.A._ IV. 321, III. line 32
τὰ μετακιόνια τέτταρα ὄντα τὰ πρὸς τοῦ Πανδροσείου.
[97] Δελτ. Αρχ. 1888, p. 87, fig. 1 B, lines 27 and 41
ὁ πρὸς τοῦ Πανδροσείου.
[98] P. I. 27. 2 τῷ ναῷ δὲ τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς Πανδρόσου ναὸς συνεχής ἐστι.
[99] Paus. I. 18. 2. For the vase-paintings that illustrate the story see
my _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, p. xxiii.
[100] Paus. I. 21. 4 see _Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens_, p. 299.
[101] P. I. 22. 5.
[102] P. I. 18. 2.
[103] See my ‘Mythological Studies—the three daughters of Kekrops,’
_Journ. Hell. Soc._ XII. p. 351, 1891.
[104] For a fuller discussion of the Arrephoria in relation to the
Thesmophoria, see my _Prolegomena_, p. 131; and for the child in the
mystery liknon, p. 525.
[105] _C.I.A._ II. 481, 58.
[106] _s.v._ ἐπίβοιον.
[107] _C.I.A._ I. 322 (Brit. Mus. I. 35. 571), l. 83 ἐπὶ τε͂ι προστάσει
τε͂ι πρὸς το͂[ι] Κεκροπίοι ἔδει τὸς λίθος τὸς ὀροφιαίος τὸς ἐπὶ το͂ν
κορο͂ν ἐπεργάσασθαι ἄνοθεν, see p. 46.
[108] _Anth. Pal._ VI. 280
τάς τε κόρας Λιμνᾶτι Κόρα κόρα, ὡς ἐπιεικὲς
ἄνθετο·
see my _Prolegomena_, p. 301.
[109] _C.I.A._ I. 141 κορὴ χρυσῆ ἐπὶ στήλης, _v._ Lolling, _Cat. des
inscr. de l’Acropole_, No. 267 τήνδε κόρην ἀνέθηκεν ἀπαρχήν.
[110] _Jahrbuch d. Inst._ II. 1887, p. 219.
[111] _C.I.A._ IV. suppl. 373 and _Eph. Arch._ 1886, p. 81, l. 6.
[112] Paus. II. 5. 1, III. 15. 10.
[113] Paus. III. 21. 10.
[114] Paus. I. 26. 5.
[115] Paus. VIII. 2. 3.
[116] Athen. XIII. 2. § 555 and Tzetzes, _Chil._ V. 19. v. 650.
[117] S. Aug. _de civitat. Dei_, 18. 9 ut nullus nascentium maternum
nomen acciperet.
[118] Apollod. III. 14. 2 μετὰ δὲ τοῦτον ἧκεν Ἀθηνᾶ, καὶ ποιησαμένη
τῆς καταλήψεως Κέκροπα μάρτυρα ἐφύτευσεν ἐλαίαν ἣ νῦν ἐν τῷ Πανδροσείῳ
δείκνυται.
[119] Herod. VIII. 55.
[120] Hesych. Fig. 146 ἀστὴ ἐλαία, ἡ ἐν ἀκροπόλει ἡ καλουμένη παγκύφος
διὰ χθαμαλότητα.
[121] For full discussion of the fragments see Dr Th. Wiegand, _Die
archäische Poros-Architektur der Akropolis zu Athen_, p. 97; _Das älteste
Erechtheion und der heilige Oelbaum_, Taf. XIV. on which the restoration
in Fig. 20 is based. The door really at the _end_ of the building is,
perhaps by a not uncommon convention, brought into view at the _side_.
Cf. the temple of Janus on a coin of Nero.
[122] Unfortunately the site of the ‘sea’ has never been systematically
excavated and examined. Professor Dörpfeld tells me that the cistern now
visible is of mediaeval date. Until the mediaeval masonry is removed the
precise character of the ‘sea’ cannot be determined. There was certainly
no _spring_, the geological character of the Acropolis plateau forbids
that, but a _well_ may exist.
[123] Paus. I. 26. 5 ταῦτα δὲ λέγεται Ποσειδῶνι μαρτύρια ἐς τὴν
ἀμφισβήτησιν τῆς χώρας φανῆναι.
[124] Apollod. III. 14. 1.
[125] Paus. I. 26. 5. The sea well at Caria was sacred to a foreign god
called Osogoa, see Paus. VIII. 10. 4. It is worth noting that Semitic
gods have ‘seas’ in their sanctuaries; Solomon’s temple had a brazen
‘sea’ and Marduk at Babylon had a _tamtu_ or sea, and curiously enough it
was associated with the great serpent. See King, _Babylonian Religion_,
p. 105.
[126] Ovid _Fasti_, II. 667
Nunc quoque, se supra ne quid nisi sidera cernat
Exiguum templi tecta foramen habent.
[127] Serv. _ad Aen._ IX. 448.
[128] Varro _L. L._ V. 66.
[129] Vitr. I. 2. 5.
[130] Paus. V. 14. 10.
[131] _Od._ VII. 80-81, trans. Butcher and Lang.
[132] _Il._ II. 546.
[133] Herod. V. 82.
[134] For Poseidon as the Tory-god I am indebted to Mr R. A. Neil’s
edition of the _Knights_; see lines 144 and 551.
[135] Paus. I. 26. 5.
[136] _s.v._ Ἐρέχθευς, but the scholiast in Lycophron, _Al._ 431, says
Ἐρέχθευς ὁ Ζεὺς ἐν Ἀθήναις καὶ ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ τιμᾶται; see Mr A. B. Cook,
_Classical Review_, 1904, p. 85.
[137] Apollod. III. 15. 1.
[138] _Vit. X. Orat._ p. 843ᵉ.
[139] Thucyd. II. 2.
[140] Paus. II. 17. 3. For the whole subject of the importance of these
priestly genealogies, see Professor Ridgeway, _Early Age of Greece_, p.
102.
[141] Aristoph. _Eq._ 551. See Mr R. A. Neil, _ad loc._
[142] Apollod. III. 15. 1. See _supra_, p. 62.
[143] Herod. II. 50. See R. Brown, _Poseidon_, 1872, p. 66.
[144] Herod. IV. 188-189.
[145] See Prof. Ridgeway, _The Early Age of Greece_, p. 226.
[146] Herod. I. 59. To the question of the origin and development of the
cult of Athena and to the examination of certain Oriental factors in it I
hope to return on another occasion.
[147] _Class. Rev._ 1900, XIV. p. 279.
[148] Prof. Dörpfeld draws attention (_Rhein. Mus._ LI. p. 134) to the
analogous case of Torone, which Thucydides (IV. 110) describes thus:
οὔσης τῆς πόλεως πρὸς λόφον—‘was nach dem Zusammenhang nicht _nach dem
Hügel hin_ sondern nur _an dem Hügel hinauf_ bedeutet.’ But it must
carefully be noted that as Dr Verrall (_Class. Rev._ 1900, p. 278)
observes, the notion of _ascent_ is given not by πρός but by λόφον. The
analogy is one of fact, not of the verbal description of that fact.
[149] Paus. I. 3. 4.
[150] For details of this Olympieion, see my _Myth. and Mon. Anc.
Athens_, p. 189.
[151] Eur. _Ion_, 283.
[152] Eur. _Ion_, 7 ff.
[153] Strabo IX. 2 § 404 ἐτήρουν δ’ ἐπὶ τρεῖς μῆνας, καθ’ ἕκαστον μῆνα
ἐπὶ τρεῖς ἡμέρας καὶ νύκτας ἀπὸ τῆς ἐσχάρας τοῦ Ἀστραπαίου Διός· ἔστι δ’
αὕτη ἐν τῷ τείχει μεταξὺ τοῦ Πυθίου καὶ τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου.
[154] Paus. I. 28. 4.
[155] Philostr. _Vit. Soph._ II. 5, p. 550 ἐκ Κεραμεικοῦ δὲ ἄρασαν χιλίᾳ
κώπῃ ἀφεῖναι ἐπὶ τὸ Ἐλευσίνιον καὶ περιβαλοῦσαν αὐτὸ παραμεῖψαι τὸ
Πελασγικὸν, κομιζομένην τε παρὰ τὸ Πύθιον ἐλθεῖν οἷ νῦν ὥρμισται.
[156] Paus. I. 29. 1.
[157] _loc. cit. supra._ Between the words νομίζουσι and ὡς πεμφθείη we
must mentally supply ἐνταῦθα καὶ τοῦ Πανὸς ἱερόν, φασὶ δὲ, or words to
that effect.
[158] The ‘Valerian’ wall was probably the work of Antonio Acciajoli. See
Dr Judeich, _Topographie von Athen_, p. 103, note 6.
[159] For a full account of Dr Kabbadias’s excavations from which the
above particulars are taken see _Ephemeris Archäologike_, 1897, 1-32 and
87-92, pl. I.-IV. and for _résumé_ in French _Bull. de Corr. Hell._ XX.
382 ff., also _American Journal of Arch._ 1897, p. 348 and 1898, p. 311.
[160] Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1897, p. 8, pl. 4 Ἀγαθὴ τύχη, Γ(άϊος) Ἰούλιος Μητρόδωρος
Μαραθ(ώνιος) θεσμοθετήσας Ἀπόλλωνι ὑπὸ Μακραῖς ἀνέθηκεν.
[161] Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1897, p. 9, pl. 4 Τιβ(έριος) Ἀντίστιος Κίνεας ἐκ Κοίλης
Ἀπόλλωνι ὑπ’ Ἄκραις βασιλεύς.
[162] Ar. Ἀθ. Πολ. LV. 15 and Harpocrat. _s.v._ Ἀπόλλων Πατρῷος.
[163] Ar. Ἀθ. Πολ. LVII. 4. There is no mention of Delphi, and the word
ἰσομέτρητον does not occur, but in Plato’s reference (_Phaedr._ 235 D)
it is distinctly stated both occur, καί σοι ἐγὼ ὥσπερ οἱ ἐννέα ἄρχοντες,
ὑπισχνοῦμαι χρυσὴν εἰκόνα ἰσομέτρητον εἰς Δελφοὺς ἀναθήσειν.
[164] Ar. Ἀθ. Πολ. LV. 5 ἐντεῦθεν δ’ ὀμόσαντες εἰς ἀκρόπολιν βαδίζουσιν
καὶ πάλιν ἐκεῖ ταῦτα ὀμνύουσι.
[165] Dem. _de Cor._ 275 καλῶ ... καὶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω τὸν Πύθιον ὃς πατρῷός
ἐστι τῇ πόλει.
[166] _C.I.A._ III. 198.
[167] Prof. Dörpfeld kindly tells me that he thinks it quite possible
that the poros structure below and north of the Klepsydra may be remains
of the Olympion. The situation would of course admirably suit the words
of Thucydides. The remains are marked in solid black in Fig. 46.
[168] For full particulars of this temple see my _Myth. and Mon. Anc.
Athens_, p. 190.
[169] I see to my great regret that Prof. Ernest Gardner in translating
Thucydides II. 15 renders ἱερόν throughout by ‘_temple_’, ‘the temple of
Olympian Zeus, the Pythium, the temple of Earth.’ Though _templum_ in
Latin is used to denote any sanctified space of earth or air, surely such
a use of _temple_ is misleading in English.
[170] Paus. I. 18. 9 τοῦ δὲ Ὀλυμπίου Διὸς Δευκαλίωνα οἰκοδομῆσαι λέγουσι
τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἱερὸν σημεῖον ἀποφαίνοντες ὡς Δευκαλίων Ἀθήνῃσιν ᾤκησε τάφον
τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ νῦν οὐ πολὺ ἀφεστηκότα.
[171] _A. Mitt._ 1895, p. 56. The word οἰκοδομέω does not necessarily
imply house or temple building. It is used of building a wall, a
labyrinth.
[172] Plat. _Phaedr._ 227 Σω. ἀτὰρ Λυσίας ἦν ὡς ἔοικεν ἐν ἄστει; Φαι. Ναὶ
παρ’ Ἐπικράτει ἐν τῇδε τῇ πλησίον τοῦ Ὀλυμπίου οἰκίᾳ τῇ Μορυχίᾳ. Nothing
can be inferred from ἐν ἄστει. It means simply ‘in town’ as opposed to
the Peiraeus or the country.
[173] Thucyd. I. 126 ἔστι γὰρ καὶ Ἀθηναίοις Διάσια ἃ καλεῖται Διὸς ἑορτὴ
Μειλιχίου μεγίστη, ἔξω τῆς πόλεως.
[174] For a discussion of the worship of Meilichios see my _Prolegomena_,
pp. 12-29. What I there say as to the chthonic character of Meilichios
still I hope holds good, but I offer my apologies to M. Foucart for my
attempted refutation of his theory as to the Semitic origin of the god.
I now see that he was right. Meilichios is none other than מֶלֶךְ
misunderstood. See also Lagrange, _Études sur les Religions Sémitiques_,
1905, pp. 99-109.
[175] _Par. Chron._ (Jacobi) 6 Βασιλεύοντος Ἀθηνῶν Κρ[ανα]οῦ ἀφ’ οὗ
κατακλυσμὸς ἐπὶ Δευκαλίωνος ἐγένετο καὶ Δευκαλίων τοὺς ὄμβρους ἔφυγεν ἐγ
Λυκωρείας εἰς Ἀθήνας πρὸ[ς Κρανα]ὸν καὶ τοῦ Διὸ[ς το]ῦ Ὀ[λυ]μ[πί]ου τὸ
ἱ[ε]ρὸν ἱδ[ρύσατ]ο [καὶ] τὰ σωτήρια ἔθυσεν. I would suggest that behind
Kranaos hides another Semitic figure, Kronos.