# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Athens (1.)

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ATHENS
ATHENS (Ἀθῆαι, Athenæ) was the name of as many as nine towns in various parts of the Grecian world, among which Athenæ Diades, in the N.W. of Eubcea, a town belonging to the Athenian confederation, is worthy of mention. But it was the capital of Attica "which invested the name of Athens with an undying charm for the poet, the artist, the philosopher, the historian, for all time. It is situated in long. 23° 44′ E., lat. 37° 58′ N., towards the south of the central plain (πεδίν) of Attica, about 41/2 miles from the harbour of Piraeus, and nearly 4 from the Bay of Phalerum. The survey of Pausanias (i. 2–30), when compared with existing remains, and supplemented by the numerous incidental notices of ancient authors, enables us to form a more perfect conception of the topography of ancient Athens than of any other Greek city. Recent excavations have added greatly to our knowledge of it, and the literature of the subject is very extensive (see p. 11, infra). Our object in this article will be to treat of the topography of Athena from an historical point of view, and to show how the rise, the greatness, the decline of the city may be read in the history of its buildings.
There seems little reason to doubt that the earliest settlement on Athenian soil was upon the cliff afterwards famous as the Acropolis. Such is the express statement of Thucydides (ii. 15), who observes that the Acropolis was commonly termed at Athens ἡ πόλις, much as the oldest part of London is styled "The City." The earliest inhabitants appear to have been Pelasgians ; and though it was the boast of the Athenians that they alone of all Greek states were indigenous (auro x^Wes), yet their town -would from the first have received accessions from various parts of the continent, the peaceful poverty of Attica affording a welcome refuge in those early and unsettled times (Thucyd., i. 2). The most accessible portion of the Acropolis is the western side, where it is joined by a neck of hill to the Areopagus. On this side there existed down to later times the remains of fortifications built by the earliest inhabitants, with nine doorways, one within the other, called TO IleAao-yiKoV, or TO EwedirvXoi . This fort protected the only entrance to the citadel, which was surrounded by a wall, and artificially levelled for the reception of buildings. Within this fortified enclosure stood the shrine of Athena Polias (Homer, Iliad, ii. 449 ; Odyssey, vii. 81), afterwards known as the Erechtheium, and an altar of Zeus Polieus, where the strange sacrifices of the Dipolia were celebrated. A Prytaneium, containing the hearth-fire of the state, and serving as the residence of the king, would be another indispensable feature in the primitive town. But while the king and some of the most sacred families probably had dwellings within the fortress itself, Thucydides (ii. 15) points out that a great part oi the early population dwelt outside its walls, under the south side of the cliff, probably without fortification, but retiring to the citadel in times of peril. In this quarter, towards the Ilissus, stood the oldest Athenian sanctuary of Dionysus, in a region called At/xvat, from having been literally a marsh in early times. Not far off, and nearer the stream, stood the temple of Zeus Olympius, said to be founded by Deucalion (Pausan., i. 18), of which more will be said presently, the precinct of Gsea Olympia, and other sacred places. Here also W 7 as the fountain of Callirrhoe, afterwards ornamented by the Pisistratids, and called Enneacrunus, the water of which was sought for sacred purposes long after the city had outgrown these early limits (Thucyd., ii. 15). The region we have been describing formed the nucleus of the later city, and therefore, at the subdivision of all Attica into denies, this quarter was distinguished by the name KvSa^raiov.
To the west of the Acropolis there extends from N. to S. a range of hills, the three most prominent heights of which are commonly known respectively as the Hill of the Nymphs, the Pnyx, and the Museium, the Nymphs Hill being separated from the Acropolis by the Areopagus, which intervenes between. Everywhere upon the slopes Early rock of the hills just mentioned traces have lately been dis- dwellings. covered of ancient dwellings hewn out of the solid rock. But while all these rock-dwellings are extremely ancient, yet some appear less primitive than others ; it is remarked that those which exist on the Areopagus and on the hill sides nearest to the Acropolis are of a smaller and ruder type, those more distant from the citadel being somewhat more convenient in plan and extent. Legend declares the Athenians to have originally dwelt in rock-hewn caves (Dyer’s Athens, ch. i.), and it would seem that primitive Athens gradually extended itself from the Acropolis in this W. and S.W. direction. This quarter was afterwards ​known as the intramural deme of Melite, a name derived, perhaps, from the balm which then grew there (the eiwS^s /xeAtVeia of Theocr., iv. 25). 1 The historian E. Curtius (Attische St udien, pt. i.) has, indeed, gone so far as to regard these rock-dwellings as earlier than the occupa tion of the Acropolis itself. But the contrary opinion of Thucydides is worth something, and the natural strength of the Acropolis would make it the most obvious spot for primitive occupation. Accordingly, we shall nob be giving too free a licence to our imagination if we conceive of primitive Athens as a twofold settlement, partly on the Acropolis and the low ground at its southern foot, and partly upon the eastern slopes of the hills on the west. It may even have been the consolidation of these two villages into one township that gave rise to the legend ascribing to Theseus the &lt;rwoiKioyx.os or consolidation of Attica. It would be natural for legend to assign to one definite time, and connect with one great mythical name, that process of unification which probably was as gradual as it was spontaneous. As the population of the early town con tinued to increase, two more districts seem to have been in corporated Collytus, extending from the east of Melite, between the Acropolis and Areopagus, and Cerameicus, or the " Potters quarter " ("Tuileries"), which extended from the same two hills towards the north and north-west. The regions we have now described appear to have made up the Athens of Solonian times. The earliest historical event which illustrates Athenian topography is the rising of Cylon (Herod., v. 71 ; Thucyd., i. 126 ; Pausan., i. 28). The narratives of that event imply that the Acropolis was already fortified by the Enneapylurn, that the Areopagus was already the seat of the court which bore its name (see AREOPAGUS), and that near the entrance of the citadel stood an altar of the Semnse, or Furies, at which Cylon and his partisans were slain. This altar has been immor talised by Jilschylus in the splendid conclusion of the Leocoriuiu. Eumenides. Another sacred spot in early Athens must have been the Leocorium, where Hipparchus was assassin ated (Thucyd., i. 20 ; vi. 57). This was a shrine erected in honour of the daughters of Leo, who were sacrificed by their father to Athena, in order to avert a pestilence. The nature of the legend testifies to the antiquity of the site. The words of Thucydides respecting Cylon imply that the early city was already surrounded by a ring-wall, and this probably remained intact until the invasion of the Persians, although the buildings within the walls under went great alteration and improvements under the govern ment of Pisistratus and his sons. The reign of the Pisistratids was recognised by the ancients as marking an important era in Athenian topo- graphy. We have already mentioned the fountain of Enneacrunus as being built by them. It was Pisistratus Olympiuni. who laid the foundations of the great temple of Zeus Olympius upon the ancient site above mentioned. His magnificent design had an eventful history : left unfinished by its author, the Athenians, perhaps from dislike to the " tyrant," made no effort to complete it. At length, after receiving additions from various foreign princes, it was completed by Hadrian (c. 130 A.D.), and formed the grandest edifice in the region of the city which, in acknow ledgment of the imperial munificence, was called Hadrian- opolis. The Olympiuni was one of the- largest temples in the world ; but of its 124 Corinthian columns only 15 are Pythium. now standing. The Pythium, or sanctuary of the Pythian 1 Many of the names of the Attic demes, and indeed of Greek local names everywhere, were derived from plants and flowers ; see Tozer s Lectures on the Geography of Greece, p. 338: "The most plausible derivation that has been suggested for the name Afloat is from a.6-, the root of &v6os, a flower ; and Lobeck proposed to translate it by Florentia. "(Hid., p. 161). Early city wall. The Pisis tratids. Apollo near the Olympium, was also ascribed to Pisis tratus, whose grandson and namesake dedicated an altar within it (Thucyd., vi. 54). To Pisistratus was ascribed the founding of the Lyceium, or temple of Apollo Lyceius, Lyceiiu which stood on the right bank of the Ilissus, a short distance from the city. The names both of Pericles and Lycurgus the orator are also associated with this building ; yet it is not known who added the gymnasium close by, which afterwards became famous as the favourite haunt of Aristotle, and the birthplace of the Peripatetic philosophy. The yet more famous seat of the rival philosophy seems also to have owed something to the Pisistratids, for Hipparchus was said to have enclosed the Academy with a Ac.iden wall. This was a gymnasium surrounded by pleasant gardens lying to the N. of the city, about a mile from the Dipylum gate. It owes all its fame, of course, to its connection with Plato, who lived, taught, and was buried there. This site, so full of glorious memories, cannot now be identified with certainty. Its trees, like those of the Lyceium, were despoiled by Sulla to make implements of war. The name of Pisistratus is connected with another The A&lt;: important site. Professor E. Curtius (Attische Studien, pt. 2), supposes that the most ancient Athenian market lay on the S. of the Acropolis, and that the Pisistratids superseded it by a new market at the northern foot of the Areopagus. Be this as it may, we are sure that, as early as their times, this site formed the centre of Athenian commercial and civic life. The narrow valley between the Pnyx Hill and the Areopagus, where older topographers placed the Agora, is not a spacious enough site for the purpose. The obvious locality for an Agora would be the rectangular space enclosed by the Areopagus on the S.. by the Acropolis on the E., and on the W. by the eminence occupied by the Theseium. To the N. and N.E. no barrier existed ; accordingly, the entrance was from the Dipylum gate on the N.W., and on the N.E. the market received extension in Roman times. The Agora thus stood in the region known as Cerameicus. But as the Cerameicus extended for some miles in a N.W. direction, it became divided by the city wall into the outer and the inner Outer a Cerameicus. The outer Cerameicus was an agreeable inner C suburb, lying on the road to the Academy and Colonus, meicus&gt; the home of Sophocles ; and it was here that citizens who died in their country s wars received a public burial. Through gate Dipylum one passed into the inner Ceramei cus, the most important quarter of which was naturally the Agora itself ; and so it was common to speak of the Agora as " The Cerameicus." How much this market-place may have owed to the designs of the Pisistratids we cannot now determine. The statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton formed a conspicuous ornament of the south portion, and Thucydides (vi. 54) informs us that the grandson and namesake of Pisistratus adorned the Agora by building the altar of the twelve gods. If the Agora belongs to the age of Pisistratus, some of the civic build ings within it would also be coeval with him. Such were the Stoa Basileius, or Portico, where the archon basileius presided ; the Bouleuterium, where the senate of 500 held its sittings ; the Tholus close by it, where the Prytanes of the senate sacrificed a circular building with a dome of stone, from whence it gained its name ; and the Prytan- eiurn, said to be founded by Theseus (Thucyd., ii. 15), which contained the hearth-fire of the state, and where the Prytanes and public benefactors had the privilege of dining at the public expense. The statues of the ten heroes (eponymi), who gave their names to the Athenian tribes, decorated the Agora probably from the first ; against these statues were affixed public notices and proclamations. Other buildings in the Agora of later and ascertained dates will be enumerated in their proper place.
​The revolution which expelled the Pisistratids (510 B.C.), and gave Athens a free government, left its mark upon the topography of the city. The old Pelasgic fortress (TO EvveaTTuAov), in which " the tyrants " had for a time held out, was now broken down, and the site occupied by its ruins was devoted by the Delphic oracle to eternal desolation. Only in the Peloponnesian war, when the country population was crowded within the city walls, do we read of this spot being occupied by dwellings (Thucyd., ii. 17). Another work which may probably be assigned to the age of Clisthenes is the first arrangement of the Pnyx, or place of public assembly. The hill that is commonly known as the Pnyx Hill contains one of the most remarkable ruins in Athens ; the silence, however, of Pausanius respecting what was probably in his day already a mere ruin has occasioned some doubt concerning its proper identification. The spot in question consists of two terraces sloping down the hill towards the Areopagus, from S.W. to N.E. The upper terrace, indeed, does not slope, but is levelled out of the solid rock near the summit of the hill, being about 65 yards in length (E. to "W.), and about 43 in breadth at its broadest part (N. to S.) It is bounded at the back (S.) by a rock-wall, and at the W. end there stands a cubical block, allowed to rise out of the solid rock when this upper terrace was levelled. There is good reason for considering this as the altar for the sacrifices (TO. Trepurrta) with which every assembly of the ecclesia was opened (Bursian, Philologus, 1854, p. 369, foil.; Dyer, Athens, p. 462). The lower and considerably larger terrace is separated from the upper terrace by another wall cut out of the solid rock. This wall, which is nearly 126 yards long, is not quite straight, but encroaches slightly upon the upper terrace, and forms at the centre a very obtuse angle. At this point there rises, projecting from the wall, a large cubical mass, cut out of the solid rock, resembling somewhat, though on a larger scale, the altar described above. It is itself 11 feet square and 5 feet high, and stands on a plat form consisting of three very massive steps. This remarkable monument has been recognised by tradition as the a-KaXa TOV A^/Aoo-fleveos, and almost every traveller since Chandler s time has regarded it as no other than the famous bema of the ancient Athenian assembly. The rock-wall from which it projects forms the chord of a vast semicircular space, the enclosure of its arc being a wall of " Cyclopean " masonry. The radius of the semicircle measures between 76 and 77 yards from this outer wall to the bema. Here, then, was the auditorium of the Pnyx. But several difficulties beset the identification. Towards the bottom of the lower bema Prof. E. Curtius (Attische Studien, pt. i.) has discovered another similar though smaller bema. Again, Plutarch asserts that the bema which had originally faced towards the sea was by the Thirty Tyrants turned round the other way, in their hatred of the maritime democracy. More over, if the block of marble above mentioned be rightly identified as the bema, then it would have the auditorium sloping downwards from it, an arrangement ill suited for addressing a tumultuous popular assembly. Dr Curtius accordingly pronounces the entire identification to be a mistake, and would regard this spot as a primitive precinct and rock-altar of the Most High Zeus. It would not be difficult, if space allowed, to disprove Dr Curtius s theory. Far more reasonable is the view of Dr Dyer ( A thens, App. iil) He thinks that the lower and smaller bema dis covered by Dr Curtius was the bema of Clisthenes, which did (however much Plutarch s statement is discredited by his own absurd explanation) face in the direction of the sea. The orator would thus speak from the arc of the semicircle, having the audience above him. The Thirty may well have defaced the Pnyx, and it would have been natural for Thrasybulus after the anarchy to restore it on a large scale, hewing out what is still known as the bema. giving the semicircular wall a wider sweep, and raising the tiers of seats at least to a level with the new bema, if not above it. For there is no reason to suppose that the surface of the lower terrace has undergone no change in the lapse of centuries, or that the " Cyclopean" wall surrounding it never exceeded its present height. A building of greater architectural importance and of The Diony- equal interest belongs to this same period. Dramatic siactheatre. performances at Athens originally took place in wooden theatres extemporised for the occasion ; but the fall of one of these led, in the year 500 B.C., to the erection of the marble theatre on a site already consecrated to Dionysus as the Lenasum, upon the S.E. slope of the Acropolis. (Suidas, s. v. Upo/rims.) We may be sure that the first stone theatre was comparatively simple in construction, consisting of a KotXov or auditorium, with tiers of rock-hewn seats, and an opxqo-Tpd, or space for the chorus, while the stage itself and its furniture were of wood. The excavation of the Dionysiac theatre in 1862 has made every one familiar with the row of marble thrones for the various priests and officers of state, the elaborate masonry of the stage, the orchestra floor, and other features. But these and other interesting decora tions of the theatre belong to a later age. It was under the administration of Lycurgus the orator (337 B.C.) that the building was first really completed ; and many of the sculptures which have been lately brought to light belong to a restoration of the theatre in the 2d, or perhaps even in the 3d, century A.D. 1 Enough has now been said of the condition of Athens before the Persian War. It was surrounded by a ring-wall Thesean of narrow circuit, some doubtful traces of which are sup- wa ^- posed to remain. At its centre stood the Acropolis, already crowded with temples and sanctuaries, some upon tho summit, some built at its foot, and others like the famous grotto of Pan, on the N.W. slope mere caves in its rocky Grotto of sides. Pan. The Persian invasion, which forced the Athenians to take After the refuge in their " wooden walls," and to leave their city at Persian the mercy of the barbarian, marked an important epoch in war - the annals of Athenian building. Upon the retreat of Mar- donius, the Athenians returned to Attica to find their city virtually in ruins. Its fortifications and public buildings had been destroyed or burnt, and the private dwellings had been wantonly defaced or ruined by neglect. Amid the enthusiasm of hope which followed upon the great deliverance of Greece, a natural impulse led the Athenians to rear their city more glorious from its ruins. Themis tocles fanned their patriotism with the foresight of a statesman, and Athens rose again with marvellous rapidity. This haste, however, though creditable to their patriotism, and, indeed, necessary in order to forestall the jealous op position of Sparta, was not without its evils. The houses were rebuilt on their old sites, and the lines of the old streets, narrow and irregular as they had been, were too readily followed. A similar haste marked the rebuilding of the city walls, a work in which men and women, old and young, took zealous part, not scrupling to dismantle any building or monument, private or public, which could sup ply materials for the building. But in rebuilding the walls Rebuilding Themistocles gave them a wider circuit, especially towards of | he the N. and N.E. (Thucyd., i. 90, 93). At the same time w he determined to construct new harbours, and to fortify the Piraeeus, regarding the navy of Athens as her principal source of strength. It is doubtful whether the " Long Walls " formed a distinct portion of his designs ; but he may certainly be regarded as the founder of the greatness 1 The best account yet given of the Dionysiac theatre is to be found in Dr Dyer s recent work on Athens.
​of Athens, the works and embellishments carried cut by Pericles being only a fulfilment of the far-sighted aims of Themistocles. Thucydides (ii. 13) makes the circuit of the city wall to be 43 stades (about 5 miles), exclusive of the unguarded space between walls ; this is found to correspond accurately enough with the existing remains. In tracing the circuit of the ancient walls, we may take our start from the N.W. side of the city, at the one gate whose site is absolutely certain, the Thriasian gate (called also the Sacred gate, as opening upon the sacred way to Eleusis, and also TO AtTnAoj/, as consisting of two gates, perhaps one within the other), which is marked by the modern church of the Holy Trinity, a little N. of the bottom of Hermes Street a spot attractive to the modern tourist through the beautiful " street of tombs " here laid bare by recent excavations. From the Thriasian gate the wall of Themistocles ran due E. for some distance ; thence, skirting the modern theatre, it ran N.E., parallel to the modern Pirseeus Street as far as the Bank, when it returned in a S.E. direction across the site of the present Mint, as far as the Chamber of Deputies. Thence towards the S.E. it included nearly all the modern Royal Gardens, and then ran S.W., following the zig-zag of the hills above the north bank of the Ilissus, until westwards by a straight course parallel with the Acropolis it reached the Museium Hill. Thence it may be traced in a direction N.W. and N., following more or less the contour of the hills, until we return to our starting-point at the Dipylum gate. Eight other gates (exclusive of wickets, TTuAiSc?, which must have existed) are mentioned by an cient authors the Pircean, Hippades, Melitides, Itonian, Diomeian, Diocharis, Panopis, and Acharnian. Their exact sites cannot be certainly fixed, but some of them may be determined within narrow limits, such as the Pirsean gate, which led out of the Agora, and opened upon the long walls. Having completed the defences of the city proper, among which must be included the building of the north wall of the Acropolis (Dyer, p. 121), Themistocles pro ceeded to fortify the Pirseeus. Athens, like most of the old Greek towns, was built, for greater security, at a distance from the coast, and only buildings w ^ en morfc set ^ e( l times brought her greater prosperity was a harbour formed at the nearest bay of Phaleruin, near the modern church of St George. It is said that Themistocles would gladly have transported the Athenian population bodily from the upper city to the coast, there to form a great maritime state. Though this was impos sible, yet he could strengthen Athens on the seaward side. The isthmus of Pirseeus, though somewhat more distant thau Phalerum, presented obvious advantages as a sea port. It formed on its north side the spacious and secure basin of Piraeus (now Port Drako), the north and south shores of which towards the entrance fall back into two smaller bays harbours within the harbour known respectively as the KCO^OS Ai/x^v and KavOapos. The neck of the isthmus on the south is formed by Port Zea (now Phanari), the entrance of which was secured by Phreattys, the headland of Munychia. Ptound to the east of the district of Munychia, again, and facing Phalerum, was the harbour known anciently as Munychia, and now as Port Stratiotiki. Themistocles thus, in giving up Port Phalerum, gave Athens three harbours instead of one. The fortifications of Pineeus were conceived on a grand scale, and carried out with no sign of hurry. The whole circuit of Piraeeus and of the town of Munychia was enclosed alike on the sea and land sides by walls of immense thickness and strength, which were carried up to a height of more than 60 feet this being only half the height intended by Themistocles! (see Grote, Hist. Greece, c. xliv.) The laying out of the new seaport belonged rather to the regime of Pericles (Grote, c. xlvii.) It was then that Hippodamus, the eccentric architect, planned the Agora which bore his name ; and the various public buildings which adorned Pirseeus doubtless arose with growth of Athenian commerce. The harbour-basin was lined with porticoes, which served as warehouses and bazaars. Two theatres existed in the town, and numerous temples. The local deity was Artemis Munychia; but the large number of foreigners (/AC TOIKOI) who became naturalised at this port led to the introduction of many foreign forms of worship. Artemis herself came to be identified with the Thracian Bendis, and her festival (TO. Bev& Seta) is referred to in the immortal opening of Plato s Republic. If not a part of the original designs of Themistocles, it was at least a natural development of them, to carry " Long Walls " from the newly-fortified Pirseeus to the upper city, and thus combine them both into one grand system of fortification. The experiment of connecting a town by long walls with its port had been already tried between Megara and Nissea (Grote, Hist. Greece, c. xlv.), and it was now repeated on a grander scale under Cimon. From the portion of the city wall between the Museium and the Nymphs Hill a sort of bastion was thrown out to S.W. so as to form an irregular triangle, from the apex of which a " long wall," about 4 miles long, was carried down to the N. portion of the Piraeean fortifications ; this was termed TO /Sopetov Tet^os- Another "long wall" of somewhat shorter length ran down to the wall of Phaleruro, which had hitherto served as the port of Athens ; this was TO QaXypiKov Ti^o?. A third wall, between the two, parallel to the first, and but a few yards from it (TO VOTIOV ret^o?, TO 8ia fj.ea-ov TCI^OS), was afterwards added by Pericles, and the maritime fortifications of Athens became complete. But the city owed still more to the munificence of Cimon. Out of the spoils of his Persian campaign he fortified the S. side of the Acropolis with a remarkably solid wall, which terminated in a sort of bastion at the W. end. Here he reared a little temple of Athena Nike (otherwise called the Wingless Victory), although the existing sculptures of the frieze are pronounced on account of their style to belong to a somewhat later date (Pausan., i. 28, 3 ; Corn. Nep., Cimon, ii; Plutarch, Cimon, xiii.) It was Cimon who first set the example of providing the citizens with agreeable places for promenade (Plutarch, ibid.), by plant ing the Agora with plane trees, and laying out the Aca demy with trees and walks. It is probable that some of the porticoes in the Agora were built by Cimon ; at all events, the most beautiful one amongst them was reared by Pisianax, his brother-in-law, and the paintings with which Polygnotus, his sister s lover, adorned it (representing scenes from the military history of Athens, legendary and historical) made it ever famous as the 2roa TroiKiA??. One more building, the most perfect existing relic of ancient Athens, was also built by Cimon. The Theseium (as we still may venture to call it, in spite of the doubts lately cast upon its identification) 1 is a hexastyle Doric temple standing on an eminence due N. of the Areopagus, and is the first object which meets the eye of the tourist who approaches the city from the Piraeeus. Having served in Byzantine times for a Christian church, it is now a museum of antiquities, and contains some of the choicest treasures discovered by recent excavations. We have now brought this sketch of Athenian topography down to the most distinguished period of Athenian history and Athenian architecture the era of Pericles. As the champion of Hellenic freedom against the Persians, as the head of the Ionic confederation, Athens had suddenly grown to be the foremost city in Greece. But when one by one the confederate states sank into the position of subject- 1 See Dyer, Athens, p. 230, foil., who thinks it is really the temple of the Amazons. Long v Wingles Victory. Stoa Pcecile. Thesciui Periclea era.
​allies; when the ^ye/xovta of Athens passed insensibly into a Tvpawk (Thucyd., ii. 63); when the contribution of ships and men was commuted in most cases for a money payment, and the funds of the confederation were transferred from the Apollonium at Delos to the Athenian Acropolis, an enormous revenue became at the disposal of the Athenian Government. It is to their credit that so little of it found its way into private pockets. It was natural for the thoughts of a Greek, especially of an Athenian, to turn to the decoration of his city ; it was politic that the central city of the Ionian confederacy should be adorned with a beauty equal to her prestige. The buildings connected with the name of Cimon had been chiefly for utility or defence ; those of Pericles were mainly ornamental. The first edifice completed by him seems to have been the n. Odeium, on the E. of the Dionysiac theatre, to serve as a place for recitations by rhapsodists, and for musical per formances. It was burnt by Aristion during Sulla s siege of Athens, but afterwards rebuilt. Mention has already been made of the building of the Long Walls and the laying out of the Pirseeus by Pericles ; but it was the Acropolis itself which witnessed the greatest splendours of his administration. Within its limited area arose buildings and statues, on which the genius of Phidias the sculptor, of Ictinus and Mnesicles the architects, were employed for years; while multitudes of artists and craftsmen of all kinds were busied in carrying out their grand designs. 1 The spoils of the Persian War had already been consecrated under Cimon to the honour of the national goddess, in the tue of erection of a colossal statue of Athena by Phidias between iena the entrance of the Acropolis and the Erechtheium ; her ma- warlike attitude gained her the title of ITpo/Aa^o?, and the gleam of her helmet s plume and uplifted spear was hailed by the homeward seaman as he doubled Cape Sunium (Pausan., i. 28). But the national deity was to receive yet greater honours at the hand of Pericles. That an old temple stood on the site afterwards occupied by the Par thenon is proved, less by the doubtful expressions of Hero dotus (viii. 51, 55), and the testimony of later compilers like Hesychius, than by recent excavations, which reveal that a large temple must have been at least begun upon this spot when the Persian invaders destroyed the old buildings of the Acropolis by fire. Here, then, Pericles proceeded to rear what has ever since been known as the Parthenon. The designer of this masterpiece of architecture thenon. was i c tinus ; the foundations of the old temple were at his suggestion extended in length and breadth, and thus arose upon the S. side of the Acropolis a magnificent temple of the virgin goddess. It was completed in the year 438 B.C. It stood upon the highest platform of the Acropolis, so that the pavement of the peristyle of the Parthenon was on a level with the capitals of the columns of the east portico of the Propylsea. The temple was built entirely of white marble from the quarries of Mount Pentelicus. Ascending a flight of three steps, you passed through the great east entrance into the Pronaos, wherein was stored a large collection of sacred objects, chiefly of silver. From the Pronaos a massive door led into the cella, called Hecatompedos (ve ws 6 EKaro /xTreSo?), because it measured in length 100 Attic feet. The ( treasure here bestowed consisted chiefly of chaplets and other objects of gold. The west portion of the cella was railed off (by Kty^X/ Ses), and formed the Parthenon proper, i.e., the adytum occupied by the chryselephantine statue by Phidias of Athena Parthenos, a work which yielded the pre-eminence only to one other statue by the same artist, viz., the Zeus at Olympia. In this adytum were stored a number of silver bowls and other articles employed at the Panathenaic festi- 1 See the animated description in Plutarch, Pericles, 12, foil. vals. The westernmost compartment at the rear of the cella was the Opisthodomus, which served as the national treasury; hither poured in the tribute of the Athenian allies. It is important to remember that the Parthenon was never intended as a temple of worship ; for this pur pose there already existed another temple, presently to be described as the Erechtheium, standing upon the primeval site of that contest between Athena and Poseidon which established the claim of the goddess to the Attic citadel and soil. The Parthenon was simply designed to be the central point of the Panathenaic festival, and the storehouse for the sacred treasure. The entire temple should be regarded as one vast dvaOrjfjM to the national deity, not as a place for her worship. Thus directly in front of her statue in the cella there stood an erection, which has been mistaken for an altar, but which is more probably to be regarded as the platform which the victorious competitors in the Panathenaic contests ascended to receive, as it were from the hand of the goddess, the golden chaplets and vases of olive oil that formed the prizes (see Michaelis s Parthenon, p. 31). This consideration lends significance to the decorations of the building, which were the work of Phidias. Within the outer portico, along the outside of the top of the wall of the building, ran a frieze 3 feet 4 inches in height, and 520 feet in total length, on which were sculptured figures in low relief 2 , representing the Panathenaic procession. Nearly all of these sculptures are in the British Museum, and the entire series has been recently made complete by- casts from the other fragments, and arranged in the order of the original design. The marvellous beauty of these reliefs, which was heightened originally by colour, has been long familiar to all the world from numerous illustrated descrip tions. The procession of youths and maidens, of priests and magistrates, of oxen for sacrifice, of flute-players and singers, followed by the youthful chivalry of Athens on. prancing steeds is represented as wending its way from the west towards the eastern entrance. 3 Outside of the building, on the N. and S. sides, the metopes between the Doric triglyphs were filled with sculptures representing scenes from the mythical history of Athens. But the glory of the Parthenon were the sculptures of the E. and W. pediments. Unhappily but a few figures remain, and none are wholly perfect, of the statues which formed these groups ; and Pausanias appears to have thought it super fluous to give a minute description of objects so familiar to every connoisseur and traveller. The sculptures on the eastern pediment related to the birth of Athena ; the cen tral group was early destroyed by the Byzantine Christians in converting the Parthenon into a church, with the Pronaos for its apse. But nearly all the subordinate figures are preserved in a more or less injured condition in the British Museum. The noble head of the horse of the car of Night, the seated female figures of " The Fates," and the grand torso commonly known as the " Theseus," are familiar to us all. It would be out of place here even to enumerate the many attempts that have been made to reconstruct the groups of either pediment. The sculptures on the W. represented the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica; and although scarcely any por tions of these figures are now existing, yet they are better known to us than the E. pediment by means of the faithful (if clumsy) sketches made by the Frenchman Carrey in 1674, when they were in a comparatively perfect state. Those who desire to know all that is to be known concern ing the sculptures of the Parthenon should consult the beautiful work of Michaelis, Der Parthenon, v.iiile the 2 See the remarks of Mr Ruskin, Aratra Pentelica, p. 174. 3 Ho who desires to enjoy these sculptures, should co;r,e from a perusal of Michaelis s eloquent work Dcr Parthenon, and spend a day in the British Museum with the guide-book in his band. ​measurements and architectural details of the edifice have never been so splendidly given as by our countryman Penrose, in his Principles of Athenian Architecture. We will turn now to the other buildings of the Acropolis, none of which, however, are so full of significance as the Parthenon itself. For, indeed, standing as it does on the higHst point of Athenian soil, its erection marked the culminating point of Athenian history, literature, politics, and art. The " Birth of Athena," over the eastern entrance, may symbolise to us the sudden growth of Athenian great ness, while in the contest between the armed goddess of peaceful wisdom and the violent god of sea, which adorned the western front, we may see an allegory of the long struggle between the agricultural and the maritime interests which forms the central thread of Athenian history. Erech- Opposite to the Parthenon, on the northern edge of the theium. Acropolis, stands another remarkable temple, far smaller in size, and built in the most graceful forms of the Ionic order. The Erechtheium appears to be designed expressly to contrast with the severe sublimity of the Parthenon ; and on the side which confronts those mighty Doric shafts, the columns of the smaller building are allowed to trans form themselves into Canephori. The temple of Athena Polias, which contained the ancient wooden image of the goddess, and formed the centre of her worship, suffered from fire in the Persian War (479 B.C.) A building so sacred would hardly have been allowed to remain for long in ruins ; but it was reserved for Pericles to set about a complete restoration of it. However, the Peloponnesian War seems to have interrupted his designs, and in the year 409 B.C. the edifice was still unfinished, 1 and soon after this it was totally destroyed by fire. But soon afterwards it must have been rebuilt, without doubt retaining all its original features. The temple in its present state consists of an oblong cella extending fom E. to W. From each side of the W. end of the cella projects a portico, forming a sort of transept. The eastern portico formed the temple of Athena Polias, upon the site of her ancient contest with Poseidon. The west portion was the Pandroseium, dedicated to Athena Pandrosus. The building thus formed two temples in one, and is styled by Pausanias a SnrXovv ouc^/m. It seems at a later time to have been commonly called the Erechtheium, because of a tradition that Erechtheus was buried on this site. Propytea. Among the many glories of the Acropolis, the Propylaea are described by Pausanias as being exceptionally magni ficent (i. 22). They rivalled even the Parthenon, and were the most splendid of all the buildings of Pericles. The western end of the Acropolis, which furnished, and still furnishes, the only access to the summit of the hill, was about 160 feet in breadth, a frontage so narrow, that to the artists of Pericles it appeared practicable to fill up the space with a single building, which, in serving the main purpose of a gateway, should contribute to adorn as well as to guard the citadel. This work, which rivalled the Parthenon in felicity of execution, and surpassed it in boldness and originality of design, was begun in the archonship of Euthymenes, in the year 437 B.C., and com pleted in five years, under the directions of the architect Mnesicles. Of the space which formed the natural entrance to the Acropolis, 58 feet near the centre were left for the grand entrance, and the remainder on either side was occupied by wings projecting 32 feet in front of the central colonnade. The entire building received the name of Propylsea from its forming the vestibule to the five door- 1 An important inscription in the British Museum gives a survey of the works as they stood in that year, drawn up by a commission ap pointed for the purpose. See Greek Insertions in the British Mu- teum, vol. i. No. 35. ways, still in existence, by which the citadel was entered. The wall in which these doors were pierced was thrown back about 50 feet from the front of the artificial opening of the hill, and the whole may therefore be said to have resembled a modern fortification, although, in fact, the Propylcea was designed, not for defence, but for decoration. The whole building was of Pentelic marble. The Megaron or great vestibule in the centre consisted of a front of six fluted Doric columns, mounted upon four steps, which supported a pediment, and measured 5 feet in diameter and nearly 29 in height, with an intercolumniation of 7 feet, except between the two central columns, which were 13 feet apart, in order to furnish space for a carriage-way. Behind this Doric colonnade was a vestibule 43 feet in depth, the roof of which was sustained by six inner columns in a double row, so as to divide the vestibule into three aisles or compartments ; and these columns, although only three feet and a half in diameter at the base, were, includ ing the capitals, nearly 34 feet in height, their architraves being on the same level with the frieze of the Doric colonnade. The ceiling was laid upon marble beams, resting upon the lateral walls and the architraves of the two rows of Ionic columns, those covering the side aisles being 22 feet in length, and those covering the central aisles 17 feet, with a proportional breadth and thickness. Enormous masses like these, raised to the roof of a building, standing upon a steep hill, and covered with a ceiling which all the resources of art had been employed to beautify, might well overcome the reserve of a matter-of- fact topographer like Pausanias, and at once account for and justify the unusual warmth of his language when he is speaking of the roof of the Propylaea (i. 22). Of the five doors at the extremity of the vestibule, the width of the central and largest was equal to the space between the two central columns of the Doric portico in front, and the same also as that between the two rows of Ionic columns in the vestibule ; but the doors on either side of the principal one were of diminished height and breadth, and the two beyond these again were still smaller in both dimensions. These five gates or doors led from the vestibule into a back portico 1 8 feet in depth, which was fronted with a Doric colonnade and pediment of the same dimensions as those of the western or outer portico, but placed on a higher level, there being five steps of ascent from the western to the level of the eastern portico. From the latter or inner portico there was a descent of one step into the adjacent part of the platform of the Acropolis. The wings of the Propylooa were nearly symmetrical in front, each presenting on this side a wall adorned only with a frieze of triglyphs, and with antse at the extremities. The inner or southernmost column of each wing stood in a line with the great Doric columns of the Megaron ; and as both these columns and those of the wings were upon the same level, the three porticoes were all connected together, and the four steps which ascended to the Megaron were continued also along the porticoes of the two wings. But here the symmetry of the building ended ; for, in regard to interior size and distribution of parts, the wings were exceedingly dissimilar. In the northern or left wing, a porch of 12 feet in depth conducted by three doors into a chamber of 34 feet by 26, the porch and chamber thus occupying the entire space behind the western wall of that wing ; whereas the southern or right wing consisted only of a porch or gallery of 26 feet by 16, which, on the S. and E. sides, was formed by a wall connected with and of the same thickness as the lateral wall of the Megaron, and, on the W. side, had its roof supported by a narrow pilaster, standing between the N.W. column of the wing and an anta, which terminated its southern wall. In front of the southern or ri?ht wing of the ​Propylsea there stood, so late as the year 1676, the small Ionic temple dedicated to Athena Nike, and commonly known by the ancients as the temple of the Wingless Victory (Nt/oy a-m-epos), which has already been mentioned as probably one of the buildings of Cimon. Perhaps before the 18th century this building was pulled down by the Turks, and the only remains of it parts of the frieze built into a wall which were known in his day were carried off by Lord Elgin, and are now in the British Museum. In 1835 careful excavations were made under the directions of Professor Ross, when not only were the remains of the Propylsea opened up far more clearly than before, but also nearly all the fragments of this little temple of Victory were discovered; they had been used for building a Turkish battery, and so preserved. Thus the temple was at once restored by a reconstruction of the original fragments. Few quarters of ancient Athens have received more advan tage from judicious excavation in recent years than this western end of the Acropolis. From the disastrous termination of the Peloponnesian war to the yet more fatal defeat at Chseroneia, the architec tural history of Athens is a blank, only interrupted by the restoration of the Long Walls and the rebuilding of the fortifications of Pirseeus by Conon, both of which had been destroyed by Lysander. The financial genius of the orator Lycurgus, whose administration lasted from 338 to 325 B.C., replenished to some extent the exhausted resources of his country. He reorganised her finance, he catalogued and rearranged the sacred and national treasuries, and brought order and efficiency into every department of state. This new impulse made itself felt in building activity. The Dionysiac theatre was now first completed ; and though, as we have already seen, many of the sculptures and other marbles recently uncovered on its site are the restorations of a very much later age, yet we may confidently assume that in all material points the theatre as we are now able to view it represents the condition of the building as it idium. stood in the time of Lycurgus. Another remarkable work which signalised his administration was the Panathenaic Stadium. On the southern side of the Ilissus, at right angles to the stream, a hollow space was scooped out of the soil, some 680 feet in length and 130 in breadth. It is possible that the site had been used for gymnastic contests before the orator s time ; it was he, however, who first undertook to level it properly and lay it out. But it was reserved for the munificence of Herodes Atticus finally to complete it. He furnished the place with magnificent seats of Pentelic marble, tier upon tier, capable of accommodat ing, at the very least, 40,000 spectators. An attempt was recently made to excavate the Stadium, but it was found that every trace of antiquity had been destroyed, the marble having been used as a quarry for building pur poses. The administration of Lycurgus is an important era in Athenian architecture ; for after his time we never seem to hear of any more buildings having been reared by the Athenian Government. The best-known extant edifices of the period immediately following were the work of wealthy reet of private persons. Round the eastern end of the Acropolis, ipods, starting from the eastern entrance of the Dionysiac theatre, then leaving the Odeium of Pericles to the left, and thence sweeping westward to the Agora, there ran a street which formed a favourite promenade in ancient Athens, commonly known as the "Street of Tripods." It gained this name from the small votive shrines which adorned it, supporting upon their summit the bronze tripods which had been obtained as prizes in the choragic contests. The tripods thus mounted often themselves served as a frame to some masterpiece of sculpture, such, for example, as the famous satyr of Praxiteles. It had early become the custom to dedicate the prize tripods within the sacred precincts of the theatre : but when this space was filled, they gradually extended all along this street, and their erection was made more and more a matter of private display. One of these shrines still stands, and is well known as the monument of Monument Lysicrates. It bears the following inscription upon its of L J rsi architrave: "Lysicrates, son of Lysitheides, of the deme cr Cicynna, was choragus ; the tribe Acarnantis gained the prize with a chorus of boys ; Theon accompanied them upon the flute; Lysiades of Athens taught them; Euaenetus was archon." In other words, the date of this monument was 335 B.C. Fifteen years after that a somewhat similar shrine was reared at the topmost summit of the back of the great theatre, where an ancient grotto was by Thrasyllus Monument converted into a choragic monument. The Byzantine of Thra- Christians transformed the building into a chapel of the s i llus - Virgin, under the title of Panaghia Spiliotissa, or Our Lady of the Grotto. Early travellers describe this little shrine as consisting of three pilasters engaged in a plain wall, surmounted by an inscribed architrave ; above was supported a figure of Dionysus, now preserved, but in a much injured state, in the British Museum. On the top of the statue originally rested the tripod that formed the prize of Thrasyllus. The Macedonian period again marks a new epoch in the Mace- history of Athenian topography. Henceforward almost (Ionian every embellishment Athens received was at the hands of period, the various foreign princes, whose tastes inclined them to patronise a city so rich in historical associations, and so ready to reward each new admirer with an equal tribute of servile adulation. But whatever decoration the city might owe to royal vanity or munificence, her connection with these foreign potentates brought her far more of injury than advantage. She became entangled in their wars, and usually found herself upon the losing side. Upon the death of Alexander the Athenians claimed their liberty, but they at once had to submit to Antipater (322 B.C.), who placed a garrison in Munychia. It perhaps was he who defaced the ancient Pnyx ; at all events, from this time forward the political oratory of Athens became silent for ever. In 318 B.C. Demetrius the Phalerean was made governor of Athens by Cassander, arid received every kind of homage from his servile subjects. But as soon as the other Demetrius, surnamed Poliorcetes, appeared in the Piraeus, the Athenians welcomed him with open arms. For restoring to them the forms of democracy he was extolled with abject adulation, and had assigned to him a residence in the Opisthodomus of the Parthenon itself, where he profaned the sanctuary of the virgin goddess with unbridled sensuality. Upon the defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus (301 B.C.), Demetrius fled from Athens, and under Lachares, the leading demagogue of the time, the city enjoyed the shadow of independence. But the demagogue soon developed into a tyrant, and when Demetrius reappeared in 296 B.C. and besieged the city, Lachares had to fly from the indignation of the citizens, taking with him the golden shields that adorned the eastern front of the Acropolis, and having rifled the chryselephan tine statue itself. Again, in 268 B.C., Athens endured a long siege from Antigonus Gonatas, who laid waste the surrounding country. Still more disastrous was the in effectual siege by Philip V. in 200 B.C., who, pitching his camp at Cynosarges, destroyed everything that lay around the temple of Heracles, the gymnasium there, and the Lyceium as well. At length, in 146 B.C., Greece became a Roman province, and Athens succumbed peacefully to the Roman yoke. During the inglorious period of Athenian history which has just been sketched, several new buildings were reared by the munificence of foreign princes. Ptolemy Philadelphia ​gave his name to a large gymnasium the Ptolemseum built by him near the Theseium. Attalus I., king of Pergamus, erected a stoa on the north-east of the Agora, and laid out a garden in the Academy. His successor, Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.), built another stoa near the . great theatre. Antiochus Epiphanes designed the completion of the Olympian!, a work which was interrupted by his death. Roman period. Under the rule of the Romans Athens enjoyed the privileges of a libera civitas, i.e., no garrison was introduced into the town, no tribute was levied upon it, and the constitution was nominally left unaltered. The Areopagus, indeed, under Roman influence, recovered some of its ancient power, and was made to take precedence of the more democratic assemblies of the Boule and Ecclesia. The revision also of the laws by Hadrian would, of course, introduce some changes. Yet it may surely be maintained that Athens under the Roman dominion was in a far better position than in the days before the taking of Corinth by Slummius, when she had been at the mercy of each successive Macedonian pretender. The Romans appear to have shown a remarkable respect for the feelings of the Athenian people. It would be superfluous here to recall the warm expressions of admiration which fall from Cicero and Horace when speaking of Athens. A visit to Athens was regarded by the educated Sulla at Roman as a kind of pilgrimage.1 One great disaster Athens Athens did indeed undergo at the hands of Rome ; this was the siege and plunder of the city by Sulla in the Mithridatic War. Yielding to the threats of the king and the representations of the villainous Aristion, the Athenians had joined the cause of the king of Pontus, and Sulla deliberately resolved to gratify his revenge (Athenseus, v. 47, foil.; Plut., Sulla, 12). After a protracted siege, in which the inhabitants suffered the extreme of famine, mocked at once by the insolence of Aristion within, and pressed by a remorseless foe without, Athens at length was taken on March 1, 86 B.C. Many of the public buildings (happily not the most important) were overthrown, much of the sacred treasure was rifled by the soldiers, and many works of art, together with the library of Apellicon, containing the collections of Aristotle and Theophrastus, were carried off by the cultivated Sulla. The loss of life was also great : large numbers were butchered by the soldiery, and the Agora of Cerameicus flowed with blood. We are told that Sulla was wont to take credit for having "spared Athens." He did not indeed destroy it, but his conduct on this occasion alone would suffice to fix an indelible stain upon his memory. With this disastrous exception, Athens prospered under the Roman rule, and students from all parts of the Graeco-Roman world flocked thither to attend the lectures of the philosophers and rhetoricians, or to view the countless works of art that adorned the city. Athenian society grew more and more academic. ^ The current tone of educated circles was antiquarian even to pedantry. 2 The inscriptions relating to the Roman period clearly reveal to us the chief interests of contemporary Athenian life. Epitaphs in abundance testify to the SetcrtSat/iovt a which delighted in proper names derived from deities and religious ceremonies, 3 and the pride of genealogical pedantry. Honorary decrees abound to justify the charge of adulation which was the reproach of the later Athenians. But the commonest class of monuments are the gymnastic inscriptions, which give 1 The beautiful elegy of Propertius, beginning " Magnum Her ad doctas proficisci cogor Athenas" (iv. 21), is worth referring to. 2 See note in No. 81 of Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, also No. 93. 8 Cf. ibid., No. 47 ; and Cumanudes, Eiriypaupal A.TTIKTJS tTriTvfj.- /3ici, passim. us lists of the students from all quarters who, while pursuing their studies at Athens, enrolled themselves at a gymnasium, and there had the advantage of a social life and regular discipline, which reminds one somewhat of the college system in the English universities. 4 But enough has now been said of the condition of Athenian society under the Roman rule ; it is time to enumerate the embellishments which the city received during this period. It is uncertain at what exact date the Horologium of Andronicus of Cyrrhus was erected, which Horologium is generally known as the Tower of the Winds. It is first
mentioned by Varro (De Re Rust., iii. 5, 17), and is there- Allclr01 fore older than 35 B.C., though certainly not earlier than 0113 the Roman conquest. This monument, so familiar to every scholar, is described by Vitruvius (i. 6, 4) as an octagonal tower of marble. It stands at what anciently formed the eastern extremity of the Roman Agora, presently to be described. On each face, beneath the cornice, is sculptured the figure of the wind which blew from the corresponding quarter ; on the top of the roof was a pedestal supporting a bronze triton (now destroyed), which was constructed to turn with the wind, and to point out the winds quarter with a wand which he held in his hand. The sculptured figures of the winds are in good preservation, though of a declining period of art. They represent the four cardinal points and the intermediate quarters between these. Each has his emblems : Boreas, the north wind, blows his noisy conch ; Notus, the rainy south wind, bears his water-jar ; Zephyrus, the west wind, has his lap full of flowers, and so on. Under each figure are the remains of a sun-dial ; and besides all these external features, the interior was constructed to form a water-clock, supplied with water from the spring at the Acropolis called Clepsydra. Thus in cloudy weather a substitute was provided for the dial and the sun. The Agora in Cerameicus has already been described, and it was there noticed that the name Cerameicus often appears to be employed alone to denote the Agora. This may be easily accounted for. By the munificence of Julius Caesar and of Augustus, a propylaeum of four Doric columns, which still exist, was reared at the N.E. extremity of the Cerameicus Agora. The space between the central columns is about 12 feet, between the side columns not quite 5 feet. Over the pediment is a pedestal, with an inscription in honour of Lucius Caesar, the grandson of Augustus, whose equestrian statue it appears to have supported. This propylaeum has by some archaeologists been regarded as a portico of a temple to Athena Archegetis, to whom we learn, from an inscription on the architrave, that the building was dedicated out of the moneys given by Julius and Augustus. But there can be no reasonable doubt that these columns formed the entrance into a new Agora, dedicated to Athena New 01 Archegeti?, just as it was customary with the Romans Roman to dedicate; a forum to some deity, and intended chiefly, A g ra - it would seem, for the sale of the olive oil which formed so large and characteristic an export from Athens. This appears to be proved by the lengthy inscription (see Bockh, Corp. Inscr. Grcec., No. 355) which exists immediately within the entrance, and contains an edict of the Emperor Hadrian regulating the sale of oil and the duties payable upon it. It is easy to understand how, after the erection of the Roman Agora, the old market would be styled rj S.yopa eV Ke/aa/xeiKw or simply Cerameicus, while the new oil-market would be distinguished as the 4 See Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, No. 39, and foil. The best account of the condition of Athens under the Romans may be found in a dissertation by H. L. Ahrens, De Athenarum statu politico, &c., and another by Professor Dittenberger, De EphcUn Attica.
​Agora, 1 The " Tower of the Winds," which had previously been erected, formed, with its useful timepieces, an appropriate embellishment at the north-eastern extremity. The market was enclosed by a wall, and it was reserved for Hadrian to complete its decoration by building a magnificent stoa on its northern side. Augustus himself received the honour of a small circular shrine upon the Acropolis, dedicated to Augustus and Roma. His son-in-law Agrippa was honoured by an equestrian statue in front of the Propylcea, the pedestal of which still exists. The Agrippeium was a theatre erected by Agrippa in the Cerameicus. It is possible, moreover, that the Diogeneium the only gymnasium mentioned in the Ephebic inscriptions of the imperial period was built about this time. Its site has recently been thought to have been discovered about 200 yards east of the Tower of the Winds. Whatever licentiousness and misgovernment might mark the reign of succeeding emperors, they at all events refrained from doing injury to Athens. It had been proposed to finish the great temple of Zeus Olympius in honour of Augustus, but the design fell through, and it was reserved for Hadrian to finally complete the building of this magnificent temple, some six centuries from the time when the first stone was laid. Irian at ens
The reign of Hadrian made literally a new era in the history of Athens. 2 For Greece, and especially for Athens, this emperor entertained a passionate admiration. He condescended to hold the office of archon eponymus ; in his honour a thirteenth tribe, Hadrianis, was instituted ; and the emperor shared with Zeus the title of Olympius, and the honours of the newly-finished temple. While, however, many portions of the city bore witness to his munificence, it was in the south-eastern quarter that most of his new buildings arose, in the neighbourhood of the Olympium. This suburb was accordingly styled Hadrianopolis, or New Athens, to distinguish it from the old city of Theseus and of Themistocles. The arch of Hadrian still stands in a fairly perfect state, and marks the boundary between the ancient town and the new suburb embellished by Hadrian. On the north-western front of the architrave is the inscription cu8 eio- A^vat T/CTCWS rj -irplv TroAis , on the other front, atS etcr ASptavou KO.I ovi ^crecos TroAis. At the same time many of the older buildings underwent restoration at his command. Nor was his bounty shown in works of building alone. He ceded to the Athenians the island of Cephallenia, and bestowed upon them large presents of money, and an annual largess of corn. The immediate successors of Hadrian were guided by his example. Antoninus Pius completed an aqueduct which Hadrian had commenced for bringing water into the town from the Cephisus. Marcus Aurelius visited Athens for the purpose of initiation at the Eleusinian mysteries, odes The list of distinguished persons who made themselves icus - famous as benefactors of Athens may be said to close with the name of Herodes Atticus the rhetorician. Herodes had counted Marcus Aurelius amongst his pupils, and was sure of a distinguished career at Rome ; but, like the friend of Cicero, he preferred the more peaceful atmosphere of Greece and took the surname of Atticus. His ambition was to excel as a sophist, but he owed his fame yet more to the enormous wealth he inherited from his father, which he spent in works of public munificence. Various towns of Greece and even of Italy were enriched by his bounty, but Athens most of all. In addition to his many other benefactions, two architectural works in parti- 1 The name Cerameicus is never used by writers of pre-Roman times for the old market; they always speak of " the Agora." Pausanias uses both words in their more modern meanings respectively. Many inscribed documents are found, dated " from Hadrian s first visit." See Dittenberger in the Hermes, 1872, p. 213. cular immortalised his name. One was the Stadium, which he adorned with magnificent marble seats. The other was the Odeium (see Pausan., vii. 20), the ruins of which are still to be seen under the south-west of the Acropolis. An odeium resembled a theatre in its general plan and the purposes it served : it differed apparently in being roofed in. The ancient theatres were open to the sky ; but the most remarkable feature of this odeium, built by Herodes in honour of his deceased wife Regilla, was its roof of cedar, fragments of which were actually discovered in the excavations made upon this site in 1857. It is a fortunate circumstance that the best and only Tour of extant account of ancient Athens came from the pen of a Pausanias. traveller who visited the city just at the time when the munificence of Hadrian and of Herodes had left nothing more to be added to its embellishment. The Odeium of Regilla, indeed, had not been commenced when Pausanias visited Athens, and he describes it later on in his seventh book. We may place his tour through Athens about the year 170 A.D. His manner of description is as methodical as a modern guide-book, and his very knowledge and appreciation of the endless masterpieces of Grecian art prevent him from covering his pages, like some modern tourists, with rapturous word-painting and expressions of delight. He begins his account of Athens (bk. i. ch. i.-ii. 1 ) with a description of the Piraeeus and the harbours, and his first tour is along the road from Phalerum to the city, where he enters by the Itonian gate, within which he finds a monument to the Amazon Antiope. In his next tour (ch. ii. 2-ch. v.) he supposes us to start again from Piraeeus, and approach the city along the remains of the Long Walls. Thus entering the city by the Pirsean gate, 3 he conducts us along the southern side of the old Agora (which he styles the Cerameicus), describing all the buildings that occur upon the way, from the Stoa Basileius and another stoa near it, adorned with a statue of Zeus Eleutherius. in an eastward direction past the temple of Apollo Patrous, the Metroum, the Bouleuterium, and Tholus, and other buildings, which lay at the northern and north-eastern foot of the Areopagus. This walk ends with the mention of the temple Eucleia and the Eleusinium. It is not easy to see why Pausanias here introduces an account of the fountain Enneacrunus and the temple of Demeter and Core, which every archaeologist hitherto has placed near the Ilissus, in the south-eastern extremity of the city. 4 In his next walk (ch. xiv. 5-xviii. 3), having already described the south side of the Cerameicus Agora, he starts again from the Stoa Basileius, describes the buildings on the west and north of the Agora, and then enters the new or Roman Agora. In this tour he mentions the altar of Mercy, the gymnasium of Ptolemy, the Theseium, the temple of Aglaurus, and the Prytaneium. In his next walk he starts from the Prytaneium, and proceeding eastward (ch. xviii. 4, xix.), he mentions the temples of Sarapis and of Ileithuia, until, leaving the eastern end of the Acropolis at some distance on his right hand, he passes through the arch of Hadrian, and describes the Olympium and the other buildings of that emperor. This tour included the temple of Aphrodite lv K^TTOIS, the Cynosarges, the Stadium, and other buildings on both sides of the Ilissus. For his next walk he returns again to the Prytaneium (ch. xx.-xxviii. 3), and enters the Street of Tripods, which leads him to the temple and theatre of Dionysus, which he describes. Thus he at length reaches the western extremity 3 Curtius and others are probably mistaken in supposing the Dipylum to be the gate intended by Pausanias. 4 Dr Dyer, in his recent work on Athens, Appendix i.. endeavours to explain this difficulty by assuming the existence of two fountains called Callirrhoe, one of which (Enneacrunus) he places on the north west of the Acropolis. III. 2 ​of the Acropolis, and entering through the Propyloea, he describes in order each object which adorned the summit, with an accuracy fully borne out by recent excavations. His last walk in Athens (ch. xxviii. 4, xxix. 1) con ducts us through the various buildings at the western base of the Acropolis. From the temple of the Semnns he passes to the court of the Areopagus, and the mention of this leads him to speak of the other judicial courts of Athens. The rest of his first book is occupied with an account of the suburbs of Athens the Academy, the sacred way to Eleusis, &lt;fcc., and the topography of Attica in general. Subsequent A few words may suffice to describe the ultimate fate of history of Athens. In the reign of Valerian the northern barbarians first appeared in the north of Greece, where they laid siege to Thessalonica. This extraordinary apparition having alarmed all Greece, the Athenians restored their city wall, which Sulla had dismantled, and otherwise placed the town in a state of defence sufficient to secure it against a coup- de-main. But under Gallienus, the next emperor, Athens was besieged, and the archonship abolished, upon which the strategos or general, who had previously acted as inspector of the Agora, became the chief magistrate. Under Claudius the city was taken, but recovered soon afterwards. Constantino the Great gloried in the title of General of Athens, which had been conferred upon him, and expressed high satisfaction on obtaining from the people the honour of a statue with an inscription, a dis tinction which he acknowledged by sending to the city a yearly gratuity of grain. He also conferred on the governor of Attica and Athens the title of Mcyas Aou, or Grand Duke, which soon became hereditary ; and his son Constans bestowed several islands on the city, in order to supply it with corn. In the time of Theodosius I., that is, towards the end of the 4th century, the Goths laid waste Thessaly and Epirus ; but Theodorus, general of the Greeks, acted with so much prudence, that he saved the Greek cities from pillage and the inhabitants from captivity, a service which was most gratefully acknowledged. But this deliver ance proved only temporary. The fatal period was now fast approaching, and, in a real barbarian, Athens was doomed to experience a conqueror yet more remorseless than Sulla. This was Alaric, king of the Goths, who, under the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, overran both Italy and Greece, sacking, pillaging, and destroying. Never, indeed, did the fury even of barbarian conquest discharge itself in a fiercer or more desolating tempest. The Peloponnesian cities were overturned ; Arcadia and Lacedaemon were both laid waste ; the gulfs of Lepanto and ^Egina were illuminated with the flames of Corinth ; and the Athenian matrons were dragged in chains to satisfy the brutal desires of the barbarians. The invaluable treasures of antiquity were removed ; stately and magni ficent structures were reduced to heaps of ruin ; and Athens, stripped of the monuments of her ancient splendour, was compared by Synesius, a writer of that age, to a victim of which the body had been consumed, and the skin only remained. After this dreadful visitation Athens sank into insigni ficance, and became as obscure as it had once been illustrious. We are indeed informed that the cities of Hellas were put in a state of defenca by Justinian, who repaired the walls of Corinth, which had been overturned by an earthquake, and those of Athens, which had fallen into decay through age. But from the time of this emperor a chasm of nearly seven centuries ensues in its history ; except that, about the year 1130, it furnished Roger, the first king of Sicily, with a number of artificers, who there introduced the culture of silk, which afterwards passed into Italy. The worms, it seems, had been brought from India to Con stantinople in the reign of Justinian. Doomed, apparently, to become the prey of every spoiler, Athens again emerges from oblivion in the 13th century, under Baldwin and his crusaders, at a time when it was besieged by a general of Theodorus Lascaris, the Greek emperor. In 1427 it was taken by Sultan Amurath II. ; but some time afterwards it was recovered from the infidels by another body of crusaders under the marquis of Montferrat, a powerful baron of the West, who bestowed it, along with Thebes, on Otho de la Roche, one of his principal followers. For a considerable time both cities were governed by Otho and his descendants, with the title of dukes ; but being unable to maintain themselves in their Greek principality, they were at length succeeded by Walter of Brienne, who, soon after his succession, was expelled by his new subjects, aided by the Spaniards of Catalonia. The next rulers of Athens were the Acciajuoli, an opulent family of Florence, in whose possession it remained until 1455, when it was taken by Omar, a general of Mahomet II., and thus fell a second time into the hands of the barbarians. The victorious sultan settled a Mahometan colony in his new conquest, which he incorporated with the Ottoman empire ; and Athens, as well as Greece, continued to form an integral part of the Turkish dominions, until the treaty of Adrianople in 1829, following up the provisions and stipulations of the treaty of London, 7th July 1827, estab lished within certain limits the new state of Greece, of which Athens is now the capital. From the period of the Ottoman conquest to the com- mencement of the insurrection i-i 1821, Athens was only known in history by two attempts, on the part of the Venetians, to expel the Turks and make themselves masters of the city. The first of these took place in 1464, only nine years after its capture by the Osmanlis, and proved an entire failure. But the second, which was undertaken in 1687, more than two centuries later, was crowned with a temporary and fatal success. In the month of September of that year, Count Konigsmark, a Swede in the service of Venice, having disembarked at the Piraeus a force of 8000 foot and 870 horse, forming part of the armament under Francesco Morosini, afterwards doge, marched to Athens, and having summoned the citadel without effect, he erected a battery of heavy ordnance on the hill of the Pnyx, and placing two mortars near the Latin convent at the western foot of the Acropolis, bombarded it for several days. The fire of the cannon was chiefly directed against the Propyloea, and the modern defences below that edifice, whilst the mortars continued, without intermission, to throw shells into the citadel. The consequence was, that the beautiful little temple of Nike Apteros, the frieze of which is now in the British Museum, was completely destroyed by the breaching battery ; and the Parthenon, besides being greatly injured by the bursting of the shells, was, towards the close of the attack, almost rent in pieces by the explosion of a powder magazine, which reduced the middle of the temple to a heap of ruins, threw down the whole of the wall at the eastern extremity, and precipitated to the ground every statue on the eastern pediment. The western extremity was fortunately less injured, and a part of the Opisthodomos was still left standing, together with some of the lateral columns of the peristyle adjoining to the cell. But the shock was nevertheless abundantly disastrous ; and when the Turks afterwards regained possession of the citadel (from which, on this occasion, they were expelled), they did all in their power to complete the destruction which the Venetians had so vigorously begun, by defacing, mutilating, or burning for lime every fragment of the edifice within their reach. In the course of the revolutionary war Athens sus tained three sieges. The first was laid by the Greeks in 1822. Having carried the town by storm, and driven ​the Turks into the citadel, they established a strict blockade of the fortress, which was continued until the advance of the Pasha at the head of 4000 men induced them to abandon their enterprise, and fly, with the Athenians, to Salamis and Ægina. Two months afterwards, the Pasha having left Athens to the defence of 1500 men, the Greeks again ventured to attack the town, and succeeded in obliging the Turks to seek refuge in the citadel, which they forthwith determined to besiege; but, from ignorance and want of means, no progress whatever was made in the operation until they obtained possession of the well which supplied the garrison with water, when the Turks agreed to capitulate upon condition of being immediately embarked with their families and sent to Asia Minor. On various pretences, however, embarkation was delayed from time to time; and when intelligence at length arrived that a large Turkish force was advancing upon Athens, the Palicari, instead of manning the walls and preparing for a vigorous defence, rushed in a body to the houses where the prisoners were confined, and commenced an indiscriminate massacre. For this atrocity it is no palliation to remember that the Greek character had morally suffered from centuries of servitude, and that they had terrible arrears of vengeance to exact. The third siege was laid by the Turks in 1826. The Greeks had left a strong garrison in the Acropolis, with provisions for several months; and a spring of water having been discovered in the cave of Pan, and enclosed by Odysseus within the defences of the citadel, there was no danger of its being starved into a surrender. But the Turks having established batteries near the Pnyx and on the hill of the Museium, and having drawn a line of trenches round the citadel, with the view of intercepting all communication between the besieged and the Greek army, the garrison was hard pressed; and although Colonel Fabvier succeeded in forcing his way through the Turkish lines with 500 men and a supply of ammunition, and thus affording immediate relief, yet the total defeat of the Greek army under General Church at the battle of Athens, fought in the hope of raising the siege, led soon afterwards to the surrender of the Acropolis, which remained in the hands of the Turks until the termination of the revolutionary war.
In 1812 Athens could boast of a population of 12,000 souls, but during the war the greater part of the city was laid in ruins, and most of the inhabitants were dispersed. In 1834 it was declared the capital of the new kingdom of Greece. Great exertions have been made since then to restore the city; streets have been opened, levelled, widened; the ancient sewers have been cleared and repaired, and the marshes of Cephisus drained. Excavations of ancient sites and buildings have been carried out,—chiefly through the efforts of the Archæological Society of Athens, but the antiquaries and scholars of all Europe have anxiously watched their endeavours, and France and Prussia have vied with Great Britain in the prosecution of Athenian discovery. The Theseium has become a treasury of ancient sculpture, and a new archæological museum has been also erected to contain the ever-increasing stores of ancient inscriptions and sculptures. The royal palace is a large building of Pentelic marble, situated in the eastern quarter of the city, on the highest part of the gentle eminence which rises from the level of the Ilissus and Cephisus towards Lycabettus. The University (τανεπιστήμιον) was founded in 1837, and numbers over 1200 students, while its staff of 52 professors includes the names of some of the most learned Greek archæologists in Europe. In fact, the schools and other educational institutions of Athens are very numerous, and thoroughly efficient. The archæological journals of Athens are full of information concerning the progress of excavations, and publish the texts of newly-discovered inscriptions. The population in 1871 was over 48,000, exclusive of the population of the Piræeus, which would bring the total up to about 60,000. The harbour is visited by ships of all nations. A railway connects the Piræeus with the city, and enters the ancient town about half-way between the site of the Dipylum and Pirsean gates. The terminus stands in the midst of what once was the Agora in Cerameicus. The principal street is Hermes Street, running from west to east, a little north of the terminus, until it reaches the royal palace. Two other good streets, Athena Street and Æolus Street, traverse this at right angles. The other streets, with the exception of Stadium Street on the N.E., between the chamber of deputies and the University, are generally narrow and winding. Altogether, Athens, like the rest of Greece, is in a condition of increasing prosperity, and reaps the blessings of freedom. It is true that in our own country the ardent philhellenism of forty years ago has cooled down, and Greece is no longer an object of popular and sentimental admiration. Yet never did the scholars of Europe turn with keener zest to the study of her ancient monuments; and if Attica were cleared for ever of brigands, and furnished with satisfactory roads, then in numbers tenfold greater than now would reverent travellers from the west of Europe delight to make their pilgrimage to the birthplace of philosophy, literature, and art.
The following are some of the most important works on the subject:—Leake's Topography of Athens; Wordsworth's Athens and Attica; Bursian's Geographie von Griechenland, and article "Athenæ" in Pauly's Real-Encyclopädie, 2d ed.; E. Curtius's Attische Studien; Dyer's Ancient Athens; Wachsmuth's Die Stadt Athen in Allerthum. (e. l. h.)