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INTRODUCTORY
(p.1).
The traveller who visits Athens for the first time will
naturally, if he be a classical scholar, devote himself at the outset
to the realization of the city of Perikles. His task will here be beset
by no serious difficulties. The Acropolis, as Perikles left it, is,
both from literary and monumental evidence, adequately known to us.
Archaeological investigation has now but little to add to the familiar
picture, and that little in matters of quite subordinate detail. The
Parthenon, the Propylaea, the temple of Nike Apteros, the Erechtheion
(this last probably planned, though certainly not executed by Perikles)
still remain to us; their ground-plans and their restorations are for
the most part architectural certainties.
Moreover, even outside the
Acropolis, the situation and limits of the city of Perikles are fairly
well ascer-tained. The Acropolis itself was, we know, a fortified
sanctuary within a larger walled city. This city lay, as the oracle in
Herodotus [1] said, ‘wheel-shaped’ about the axle of the sacred hill.
Portions of this outside wall have come to light here and there, and
the foundations of the great Dipylon Gate are clearly made out, and are
marked in every guide-book.
Inside the circuit of these walls, in the
inner Kerameikos, whose boundary-stone still remains, lay the agora.
Outside is still to be seen, with its street of tombs, the ancient
cemetery. Should the sympathies of the scholar extend to Roman times,
he has still, for the making of his mental picture, all the help
imagination needs. Through the twisted streets of modern Athens the
beautiful Tower of the Winds is his constant land-mark; Hadrian, with
his Olympieion, with his triumphal Arch, with his Library, confronts
him at every turn; when he goes to the great (p.2) Stadion to see ‘Olympian’ games or a revived ‘Antigone,’
when he looks down from the Acropolis into the vast Odeion, Herodes
Atticus cannot well be forgotten. Moreover, if he really cares to know
what Athens was in Roman days, the scholar can leave behind him his
Murray and his Baedeker and take for his only guide the contemporary of
Hadrian, Pausanias.
But returning, as he inevitably will, again and
again to the Acropolis, the scholar will gradually become conscious, if
dimly, of another and an earlier Athens. On his plan of the Acropolis
he will find marked certain fragments of very early masonry, which, he
is told, are ‘Pelasgian. As he passes to the south of the Parthenon he
comes upon deep-sunk pits railed in, and within them he can see traces
of these ‘Pelasgian’ walls and other masonry about which his guide-book
is not over-explicit.
To the south of the Propylaea, to his
considerable satisfaction, he comes on a solid piece of this
‘Pelasgian’ wall, still above ground. East of the Erechtheion he will
see a rock-hewn stair-way which once, he learns, led down from the
palace of the ancient prehistoric kings, the ‘strong house of
Erechtheus.’ South of the Erechtheion he can make out with some effort
the ground plan of an early temple ; he is told that there exist bases
of columns belonging to a yet earlier structure, and these he probably
fails to find.
With all his efforts he can frame but a hazy picture of
this earlier Acropolis, this citadel before the Persian wars. Probably
he might drop the whole question as of merely antiquarian interest—a
matter to be noted rather than realized—but that his next experience
brings sudden revelation. Skilfully sunk out of sight—to avoid
interfering with his realization of Periklean Athens—is the small
Acropolis Museum. Entering it, he finds himself in a moment actually
within that other and earlier Athens dimly discerned, and instantly he
knows it, not as a world of ground-plans and fragmentary Pelasgic
fortifications, but as a kingdom of art and of humanity vivid with
colour and beauty.
As
he passes in eager excitement through the
ante-rooms he will glance, as he goes, at the great blue lion and the
bull, at the tangle of rampant many-coloured snakes, at the long-winged
birds with their prey still in beak and talon; he will pause to smile
back at the three kindly ‘Bluebeards,’ he will be glad when he sees
that the familiar Calf-Carrier has found his feet and (p3) his
name, he will note the long rows of solemn votive terra-cottas,
and, at last, he will stand in the presence of those Maiden-images (plate 1),
who, amid all that coloured architectural splendour, were consecrate to
the worship of the Maiden.
The Persian harried them, Perikles left them
to lie beneath his feet, yet their antique loveliness is untouched and
still sovran. They are alive, waiting still, in hushed, intent
expectancy—but not for us. We go out from their presence as from a
sanctuary, and henceforth every stone of the Pelasgian fortress where
they dwelt is, for us, sacred.
Plate 1: Statue of "Maiden" from the Acropolis.
But if he leave that museum aglow with a
new enthusiasm, determined to know what is to be known of that antique
world, the scholar will assuredly be met on the threshold of his
enquiry by difficulties and disillusionment. By difficulties, because
the information he seeks is scattered through a mass of foreign
periodical literature, German and Greek; by disillusionment, because
to the simple questions he wants to ask he can get no clear,
straightforward answer. He wants to know what was the nature and extent
of the ancient city, did it spread beyond the Acropolis, if so in what
direction and how far? what were the primitive sanctuaries inside the
Pelasgic walls, what, if any, lay outside and where? Where was the
ancient city well (Kallirrhoe), where the agora, where that primitive
orchestra on which, before the great theatre was built, dramatic
contests took place?
Straightway he finds himself plunged into a very
cauldron of controversy. The ancient agora is placed by some to the
north, by others to the south, by others again to the west. The
question of its position is inextricably bound up, he finds to his
surprise, with the question as to where lay the Enneakrounos, a
fountain with which hitherto he has had no excessive familiarity ; the
mere mention of the Enneakrounos brings either a heated discussion or,
worse, a chilling silence. This atmosphere of controversy, electric
with personal prejudice, exhilarating as it is to the professed
archaeologist, plunges the scholar in a profound dejection. His concern
is not jurare in verba magistri—he wants to know not who but what is
right.
Two questions only he asks. First, and perhaps to him unduly
foremost, What, as to the primitive city, is the literary testimony of
the ancients themselves, and preferably the testimony not of (p.4) scholiasts and second-hand lexicographers, but of
classical writers who knew and lived in Athens, of Thucydides, of
Pausanias? Second, To that literary testimony, what of monumental
evidence has been added by excavation ?
It is to answer these two
questions that the following pages are written. It is the present
writer’s conviction that controversy as to the main outlines of the
picture, though perhaps at-the outset inevitable, is, with the material
now accessible, an anachronism ; that the facts stand out plain and
clear and that between the literary and monumental evidence there is no
discrepancy. The plan adopted will therefore be to state as simply as
may be what seems the ascertained truth about the ancient city, and to
state that truth unencumbered by controversy. Then, and not till then,
it may be profitable to mention other current opinions, and to examine
briefly what seem to be the errors in method which have led to their
acceptance.
CHAPTER I
The Ancient City, its Character and Limits (p.5)
By a rare good fortune we have from Thucydides
himself an account of the nature and extent of the city of Athens in
the time of the kingship. This account is not indeed as explicit in
detail as we could wish, but in general outline it is clear and vivid.
To the scholar the remembrance of this account comes as a ray of light
in his darkness. If he cannot find his way in the mazes of
archaeological controversy, it is at least his business to read
Thucydides and his hope to understand him.
The account of primitive
Athens is incidental. Thucydides is telling how, during the
Peloponnesian War, when the enemy was mustering on the Isthmus and
attack on Attica seemed imminent, Perikles advised the Athenians to
desert their country homes and take refuge in the city. The Athenians
were convinced by his arguments. They sent their sheep and cattle to
Euboea and the islands; they pulled down even the wood-work of their
houses, and themselves, with their wives, their children, and all their
moveable property, migrated to Athens.
But, says Thucydides [2], this
‘flitting’ went hard with them; and why? Because ‘they had always, most
of them, been used to a country life.’ This habit of ‘living in the
fields, this country life was, Thucydides goes on to explain, no affair
of yesterday; it had been so from the earliest times. All through the
days of the kingship from Kekrops to Theseus the people had lived
scattered about in small communities—‘ village communities’ we expect
to hear him say, for he is insisting on the habit of country life; but,
though he knows the word ‘village’ (κώμη) and employs it in discussing (p.6) Laconia
elsewhere [3], he does not use it here. He says the in-habitants of Athens
lived ‘in towns’ (κατὰ πόλεις), or, as it would be safer to translate
it, ‘in burghs.’
It is necessary at the outset to understand clearly
what the word polis here means. We use the word ‘town’ in
contra-distinction to country, but from the account of Thucydides it is
clear that people could live in a polis and yet lead a country life.
Our word city is still less appropriate; ‘city’ to us means a very
large town, a place where people live crowded together. A polis, as
Thucydides here uses the word, was a community of people living on and
immediately about a fortified hill or citadel— a citadel-community. The
life lived in such a community was essentially a country life. A polis
was a citadel, only that our word ‘citadel’ is over-weighted with
military association.
Athens then, in the days of Kekrops and the other
kings down to Theseus, was one among many other citadel-communities or
burghs. Like the other scattered burghs, like Aphidna, like Thoricus,
like Eleusis, it had its own local government, its own council-house,
its own magistrates. So independent were these citadel-communities
that, Thucydides tells us, on one occasion Eleusis under Eumolpos
actually made war on Athens under Erechtheus.
So things went on till
the reign of Theseus and his famous Synoikismos, the
Dwelling-together or Unification. Theseus, Thucydides says, was a man
of ideas and of the force of character necessary to carry them out. He
substituted the one for the many; he put an end to the little local
councils and council-houses and centralized the government of Attica in
Athens. Where the government is, thither naturally population will
flock. People began to gather into Athens, and for a certain percentage
of the population town-life became fashionable. Then, and not till
then, did the city become ‘great, and that ‘great’ city Theseus handed
down to posterity. ‘And from that time down to the present day the
Athenians celebrate to the Goddess at the public expense a festival
called the Dwelling-together [4].’
One unified city and one goddess, the
goddess who needs no [p.7] name.
Their unity and their greatness the Athenians are not likely to forget,
but will they remember the time before the union, when Athens was but
Kekropia, but one among the many scattered citadel-communities? Will
they remember how small was their own beginning, how limited their
burgh, how impossible—for that is the immediate point—that it should
have contained in its narrow circuit a large town population?
Thucydides clearly is afraid they will not. There was much to prevent
accurate realization. The walls of Themistocles, when Thucydides wrote,
enclosed a polis that was not very much smaller than the modern town;
the walls of the earlier community, the old small burgh, were in part
ruined. It was necessary therefore, if the historian would make clear
his point, namely, the smallness of the ancient burgh and its
inadequacy for town-life, that he should define its limits. This
straightway he proceeds to do. Our whole discussion will centre round
his definition and description, and at the outset the passage must be
given in full. Immediately after his notice of the festival of the ‘
Dwelling-together, celebrated to ‘the Goddess, Thucydides [5] writes as
follows:
" Before this, what is now the citadel was the city, together
with what is below it towards about south. The evidence is this. The
sanctuaries are in the citadel itself, those of other deities as well [6]
(as the Goddess). And those that are outside are placed towards this
part of the city more (than elsewhere). Such are the sanctuary of Zeus
Olympios, and the Pythion, and the sanctuary of Ge, and that of
Dionysos-in-the-Marshes (to whom is celebrated the more ancient
Dionysiac Festival on the 12th day in the month Anthesterion, as us
also the custom down to the present day with the Ionian descendants of
the Athenians); and other ancient sanctuaries also are placed here. And
the spring which is now called Nine-Spouts, (p.8) from the form given it by the
despots, but which formerly, when the sources were open, was named
Fair-Fount—this spring (I say), being near, they used for the most
important purposes, and even now it is still the custom derived from
the ancient (habit) to use the water before weddings and for other
sacred purposes. Because of the ancient settlement here, the citadel
(as well as the present city) is still to this day called by the
Athenians the City."
In spite of certain obscurities, which are mainly
due to a characteristically Thucydidean over-condensation of style, the
main purport of the argument is clear. Thucydides, it will be
remembered, wants to prove that the city before Theseus was, because of
its small size, incapable of holding a large town population. This
small size not being evident to the contemporaries of Thucydides, he
proceeds to define the limits of the ancient city. He makes a statement
and supports it by fourfold evidence.
The statement that he makes is
that the ancient city comprised the present citadel together with what
is below τέ towards about south. The fourfold evidence is as follows :
1. The sanctuaries are in the citadel itself, those of other deities as
well as the Goddess.
2. Those ancient sanctuaries that are outside are
placed towards this part of the present city more than elsewhere. Four
instances of such outside shrines are adduced.
3. There is a spring
near at hand used from of old for the most important purposes, and
still so used on sacred occasions.
4. The citadel, as well as the
present city, was still in the time of Thucydides called the ‘city.'
We
begin with the statement as to the limits of the city. Not till we
clearly understand exactly what Thucydides states, how much and how
little, can we properly weigh the fourfold evidence he offers in
support of his statement.
"Before this what is now the citadel was the
city, together with what is below it towards about south." The city
before Theseus was the citadel or acropolis of the days of Thucydides,
plus something else. The citadel or acropolis needed then, and needs
now, no further definition. By it is clearly meant not the whole hill
to the base, but the plateau on the summit enclosed by the walls of
Themistocles and Kimon together with the fortification outworks (p.9) on
the west slope still extant in the days of Thucydides. But the second
and secondary part of the statement is less clearly defined. The words
neither give nor suggest, to us at least, any circumscribing line;
only a direction, and that vague enough, ‘ towards about south.’ It is
a point at which the scholar naturally asks, whether archaeology has
anything to say?
But before that question is asked and answered, it
should be noted that from the shape of the sentence alone something may
be inferred. That the present citadel is coextensive with the old city
is the main contention. We feel that Thucydides might have stopped
there and yet made his point, namely, the smallness of that ancient
city. But Thucydides is a careful man, he remembers that the two were
not quite coextensive. To the old city must be reckoned an additional
portion below the citadel (τὸ ὑπ᾽ αὐτήν), a portion that, as will later
be seen, his readers might be peculiarly apt to forget; so he adds it
to his statement. But, by the way it is hung on, we should naturally
figure that portion as ‘not only subordinate to the acropolis, but in
some way closely incorporated with it. In relation to the acropolis,
this additional area, to justify the arrangement of the words of
Thucydides, should be a part neither large nor independent. [7]
Thus
much can be gathered from the text; it is time to see what additional
evidence is brought by archaeology.
Thucydides was, according to his
lights, scrupulously exact. It happens, however, that in the nature of
things he could not, as regards the limits of the ancient city, be
strictly precise. The necessary monuments were by his time hidden deep
below the ground. His first and main statement, that one portion of the
old city was coextensive with the citadel of his day, is not quite
true. This upper portion of the old burgh was a good deal smaller; all
the better for his argument, had he known it!
Thanks to systematic
excavation we know more about the limits of the old city than
Thucydides himself, and it happens curiously enough that this more
exact and very recent knowledge, while it leads us to convict
Thucydides of a real and unavoidable inexactness, gives us also the
reason for his caution. It explains (p.10).
to us why, appended to his statement about the city and the citadel, he
is careful to put in the somewhat vague addendum, ‘together with what
is below it towards about south.’
To us to-day the top of the Acropolis
appears as a smooth plateau sloping gently westwards towards the
Propylaea, and this plateau is surrounded by fortification walls, whose
clean, straight lines show them to be artificial. Very similar in all
essentials was the appearance presented by the hill to the
contemporaries of Thucydides, but such was not the ancient Acropolis.
What manner of thing the primitive hill was has been shown by the
excavations carried on by the Greek Government from 1885-1889. The
excavators, save when they were prevented by the foundations of
buildings, have everywhere dug down to the living rock, every handful
of the débris exposed has been carefully examined, and nothing more now
remains for discovery.
When the traveller first reaches Athens he is so
impressed by the unexpected height and dominant situation of
Lycabettus, that he wonders why it plays so small a part in classical
record. Plato [8] seems to have felt that it was hard for Lycabettus to be
left out. In his description of primitive Athens he says, ‘in old days
the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Tlissus, and
included the Pnyx on one side and Lycabettus as a boundary on the
opposite side of the hill, and there is a certain rough geological
justice about Plato’s description. All these hills are spurs of that
last offshoot of Pentelicus, known in modern times as Turkovouni. Yet
to the wise Athena, Lycabettus was but building material; she was
carrying the hill through the air to fortify her Acropolis, when she
met the crow [9] who told her that the disobedient sisters had opened the
chest, and then and there she dropped Lycabettus and left it...to the
crows.
A moment’s reflection will show why the Acropolis was chosen and
Lycabettus left. Lycabettus is a good hill to climb and see a sunset
from. It has not level space enough for a settlement. The Acropolis has
the two desiderata of an ancient burgh, space on which to settle, and
easy defensibility. The Acropolis, as in neolithic days the first
settlers found it, (p.11) was,
it will be seen in fig.1, a long, rocky ridge, broken at intervals [10]. It
could only be climbed with ease on the west and south-west sides, the
remaining sides being everywhere precipitous, though in places not
absolutely imaccessible.
Fig.1: Section drawing of the Acropolis.
For a primitive settlement it was an ideal
situation. Two things remained for the settlers to do: first, they had
to level the surface Poctienon by hewing away jagged rocks and filling
up cracks with earth and stones to make sites for their houses and
their sanctuaries; and second, they had to supplement what nature had
already done in the way of fortification; here and there to make the
steep rocks steeper, build a wall round their settlement, and, above
all, fortify that accessible west and south-west end and build an
impregnable gateway. Kleidemos [11], writing in the fifth century BC,
says, ‘they levelled the Acropolis and made the Pelasgicon, which they
built round it nine-gated.’ They levelled the surface, they built a
wall round it, they furnished the fortification wall with gates. We
begin for convenience sake with the wall.’ In tracing its course the
process of levelling is most plainly seen. The question of the gates
will be taken last.
In the plan in fig.2 is shown what excavations
have laid bare of the ancient Pelasgic fortress. We see instantly the
inexactness of the main statement of Thucydides. It is not ‘what is
now the Citadel’ that was the main part of the old burgh, but something
substantially smaller, smaller by about one-fifth of the total area. We
see also that this Thucydides could not know. The Pelasgic wall
following the broken outline of the natural rock was in his days
covered over by the artificial platform reaching everywhere to the wall
of Kimon. At one place, and one only, in the days of (p.13) Thucydides, did the
Pelasgic wall come into sight, and there it still remains above ground,
as it has always been, save when temporarily covered by Turkish
out-works. This visible piece is the large fragment (A), 6 metres
broad, to the south of the present Propylaea and close to the earlier
gateway (G).
Fig.2: Plan of Acropolis.
In the days of Thucydides it stood several metres high. Of
this we have definite monumental evidence. The south-east corner of the
wall of the south-west wing of the present Propylaea is bevelled
away[12] so as to fit against this Pelasgic wall, and the bevelling can be
seen to-day. This portion of the Pelasgic wall is of exceptional
strength and thickness, doubtless because it was part of the gate-way
fortifications, the natural point of attack.
Save for this one
exception, the Pelasgic walls lie now, as they did in the day of
Thucydides, below the level of the present hill, and their existence
was, until the excavations began, only dimly suspected. Literary
tradition said there was a circuit wall, but where this circuit wall
ran was matter of conjecture; bygone scholars even placed it below the
Acropolis. Now the outline, though far from complete, is clear enough.
To the south and south-west of the Parthenon there are, as seen on the
plan, substantial remains and what is gone can be easily supplied. On
the north side the remains are scanty. The reason is obvious; the line
of the Pelasgic fortification on the south lies well within the line of
Kimon’s wall; the Pelasgic wall was covered in, but not intentionally
broken down. To the north it coincided with Themistocles’ wall, and was
therefore, for the most part, pulled down or used as foundation.
But
none the less is it clear that the centre of gravity of the ancient
settlement lay to the north of the plateau. Although the north wall was
broken away, it is on this north side that the remains which may belong
to a royal palace have come to light. The plan of these remains cannot
in detail be made out, but the general analogy of the masonry to that
of Tiryns and Mycenae leave no doubt that here we have remains of
‘Mycenaean’ date. North-east of the Erechtheion is a rock-cut stairway
(B) leading down through a natural cleft in the rock to the plain
below. As at Tiryns and Mycenae, the settlement on the Acropolis had
not (p.14)
only its great entrance-gates, but a second smaller approach,
accessible only to passengers on foot, and possibly reserved for the
rulers only.
Incomplete though the remains of this settlement
are, the certain fact of its existence, and its close analogy to the
palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae are of priceless value. Ancient Athens is
now no longer a thing by itself; it falls into line with all the other
ancient ‘Mycenaean’ fortified hills, with Thoricus, Acharnae, Aphidna,
Eleusis. The citadel of Kekrops is henceforth as the citadel of
Agamemnon and as the citadel of Priam. The ‘strong house’ of Erechtheus
is not a temple, but what the words plainly mean, the dwelling of a
king. Moreover we are dealing not with a city, in the modern sense, of vague dimensions, but with a compact fortified burgh.
Thucydides,
though certainly convicted of some inexactness as to detail, is in his
main contention seen to be strictly true— ‘what is now the citadel was
the city. Grasping this firmly in our minds we may return to note his
inexactness as to detail. By examining certain portions of the
Pelasgic wall more closely, we shall realize how much smaller was the
space it enclosed than the Acropolis as known to Thucydides.
The
general shape of the-hill, and its subsequent alteration, are best
realized by Dr Dorpfeld’s simple illustration [13]. A vertical section of
the natural rock, it is roughly of the shape of a house (fig.3) with
an ordinary gable roof. The sides of the house represent the steep
inaccessible cliffs to north and south and east; the lines of the roof
slope like the lines of the upper part of the hill converging at the
middle.
Fig.3: schematic section drawing of shape of Acropolis.
Suppose the sides of the house produced upwards to the height
of the roof-ridge, and
the triangular space so formed filled in, we have the state of the
Acropolis when Kimon’s walls were completed. The filling in of
those spaces is the history of the gradual ‘levelling of the surface of
the hill, the work of many successive generations. The section in fig.4
will show that this levelling up had to be done chiefly (p.15) on
the north and south sides; to the east and west the living rock is near
the surface. It has already been noted that on the north side of the
Acropolis the actual remains of the Pelasgian wall are few and slight;
but as the wall of Themistocles which superseded it follows the
contours of the rock, we may be sure that here the two were nearly
coincident.
The wall of Themistocles remains to this day a perpetual
monument of the disaster wrought by the Persians. Built into it
opposite the Erechtheum, not by accident, but for express memorial, are
fragments of the architrave, triglyphs and cornice of poros stone, and
the marble metopes, from the old temple of Athena which the Persians
had burnt.
Fig.4: Section drawing of Acropolis showing levelling on north and south sides.
Other memorials lay buried out of sight, and were brought to
light by the excavations of 1886. The excavators’.were clearing the
ground to the north-east of the Propylaea. On the 6th of February, at a
depth of from 3—44 metres below the surface, they came upon fourteen of
the ‘Maidens” [15] The section [16] in fig.5 shows the place where they had
slept their long sleep. We should like to think they were laid there in
all reverence for their beauty, but hard facts compel us to own that,
though their burial may have been prompted in part by awe of their
sanctity, yet the practical Athenian did not shrink from utilizing them
as material to level up with.
The deposit, it is here clearly seen,
was in three strata. Each stratum consisted of statues and fragments of
statues, inscribed bases, potsherds, charred wood, stones, and earth.
Each stratum, and this is the significant fact, is separated from the
one above it by a thin layer of rubble, the refuse of material used in
the wall (p.16) of Themistocles. The
conclusion to the architect is manifest. In building the wall, perhaps
to save expense, no scaffolding was used; but, after a few courses were
laid, the ground inside way was levelled up, and for this purpose what could be better than the
statues knocked down by the Persians? Headless, armless, their sanctity
was gone, their beauty uncared for.
In the top-most of the three
strata—the stratum which yielded the first find of ‘Maidens’—a hoard of
coins was found: thirty-five Attic tetradrachms, two drachmas, and
twenty-three obols. All are of Solon’s time except eight of the obols,
which date somewhat earlier. Besides the ‘Maidens, on this north side
of the Acropolis - other monuments came to light, many bronzes, and
among them the lovely flat Athena [17], the beautiful terra-cotta plaque [18]
painted with the figure of a hoplite, and countless votive
terra-cottas.
Fig.5: Section of excavated area northeast of Propylea.
The excavations on the south side of the Acropolis have
yielded much that is of great value for art and for science, for our
knowledge of the extent of the Pelasgian fortification, results of the
first importance. The section in Fig. 7, taken at the (p.17) south-east
corner of the Parthenon, shows the state of things revealed. The
section should be compared with the view in Fig, 6.
The masonry
marked 2 is the foundation, deep and massive beyond all expectation,
laid, not for the Parthenon as we know it, (p.18) but
for that earlier Parthenon begun before the Persian War, and fated
never to be completed. At 4 we see the great Kimonian wall as it exists
to-day, though obscured by its mediaeval casing. All this, if we want
to realize primitive Athens, we must think away. The date of Kimon’s
wall is of course roughly fixed as shortly after 469 B.c., the
foundations of the early Parthenon are certainly before the Persian
War, probably after the date of Peisistratos. We may probably, though
not quite certainly, attribute them to the time of the first democracy,
the activity of Kleisthenes [19], a period that saw the building of the
theatre-shaped Pnyx, the establishment of the new agora in the
Kerameikos, and the Stoa of the Athenians at Delphi.
Fig. 6: Photo of excavation at southeast corner of Parthenon.
Laurium had just
begun to yield silver from her mines. Themistocles, before and after
the war, was all for fortification; the Alkmaeonid Kleisthenes may well
have indulged an hereditary tendency to temple building.
Save for the
clearing of our minds, the date of the early temple-foundations does
not immediately concern us. Their importance is that, but for the
building of the Parthenon, early and late, we should never apparently
have had the great alteration and addition to the south side of the
hill and the ancient Pelasgian wall would never have been covered in.
Let us see how this happened.[20]
We start with nothing but the natural
rock, and on it the Pelasgian wall (1). Over the natural rock is a
layer of earth, marked I. Whatever objects have been found in that
layer date before the laying of the great foundations; these objects
are chiefly fragments of pottery, many of them of Mycenean’
character, and some ordinary black-figured vases.
It is decided to
build a great temple, and the foundations are to be laid. The ground
slopes away somewhat rapidly, so the southern side of the temple is to
be founded on an artificial platform. The trench (b) is dug in the
layer of earth; then, just as on the north side of the hill, no
scaffolding is used, but as: the foundations are laid course by course,
the débris is used as a platform for the workmen. A supporting wall
(2) is required and built of polygonal masonry; it rises course by
course, corresponding (p.19) with
the platform of débris. And then, what might have been expected but was
apparently not foreseen, happens. The slender wall can be raised no
higher and at about the second course the débris unsupported pours over
it, as seen at III. Fig.7: Section of south supporting platform and wall of Parthenon.
The débris, unchecked, fell over as far as the old
Pelasgian wall, How high this originally stood it is not possible now
to say; but, from the fact that outside the supporting wall the layers
of débris again lie horizontally, and from the analogy of another
section taken further west, which need not be discussed here, it is
probable that the old wall was raised by several new courses, and that
the higher ones were of quadrangular blocks, as restored in fig.7.
So
far all that has been accomplished is the raising of the old Pelasgian
wall and a levelling up of the terrace to its new height. That these
terraces were raised step by step with the foundations of the Parthenon
is clear. Between each layer of earth and poros fragments—just as we
have seen in the similar circumstances of the north wall (p.15)—is
interposed a layer of splinters and fragments of the stones used in the
building of the foundations. This can clearly be seen at II. in the
section in fig.7.
Footnotes:
1. Herod, viz. 140. 2. Thucyd. 1. 14 χαλεπῶς δὲ αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὸ ἀεὶ εἰωθέναι τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐν τοῖς ἀγροῖς διαιτᾶσθαι, ἡ ἀνάστασις ἐγίγνετο.
3. Thucyd. 1. 5, 10. 4. Thueyd. τι. 15 καὶ ξυνοίκια ἐξ ἐκείνου ᾿Αθηναῖοι ἔτι καὶ viv τῇ θεῷ ἑορτὴν δημοτελῆ ποιοῦσι.
5. Thucyd.
1. 15 τὸ δὲ πρὸ τούτου ἡ ἀκρόπολις ἡ viv 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 Ἰοχυλλ δου καὶ τὸ Πύθιον καὶ
τὸ τῆς Τῆς καὶ τὸ ἐν Λίμναις Διονύσου (ᾧ τὰ ἀρχαιότερα Διονύσια τῇ
δωδεκάτῃ ποιεῖται ἐν μηνὶ ᾿Ανθεστηριῶνι) ὥσπερ καὶ οἱ ἀπ᾿ ᾿Αθηναίων"
Iwves ἔτι καὶ νῦν νομίζουσιν, ἵδρυται δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἱερὰ ταύτῃ ἀρχαῖα. .
καὶ τῇ κρήνῃ τῇ νῦν μὲν τῶν τυράννων οὕτω σκευασάντων ᾿Εννεακρούνῳ
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 TE γαμικῶν καὶ ἐς ἄλλα τῶν ἱερῶν νομίζεται τῷ ὕδατι
χρῆσθαι. καλεῖται δὲ διὰ τὴν παλαιὰν ταύτῃ κατοίκησιν καὶ ἡ ἀκρόπολις
μέχρι τοῦδε ἔτι ὑπ᾽ ᾿Αθηναίων πόλις. 6. I keep the ms. reading; see
Critical Note.
7. See Dr A. W.
Verrall, The Site of Primitive Athens. Thucydides τι. 15 and recent
explorations, Class. Rev. June 1900, p. 274. In the discussion of the
actual text, I have throughout followed Dr Verrall.
8. Plato Kritias 112. 9. Antigonos, Hist. Mirab. 12.
10. W.
Dorpfeld, ‘‘Ueber die Ausgrabungen auf der Akropolis,” Athen. Mitt. x1.
1886, p. 162. 11. ap. Suidam, s.v. ΓΛπεδα el. ᾿Ηπέδιζον : ἄπεδα, τὰ
ἰσόπεδα. Knreldnuos “ καὶ ἠπέ- διζον τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, περιέβαλλον δὲ
ἐννεάπυλον τὸ Πελασγικόν.
12. Dorpfeld, ‘Die Propylaeen,” A. Mitt. x. 1885, p. 189 and
see the plan of the Propylaea in my Myth. and Mon. Anc. Athens, p. 352.
13. Dorpfeld, ‘Ausgrabungen auf der Akropolis,’ A. Mitt, xr. 1896, p. 167.
14. Dr Kabbadias, Fouilles de lV’Acropole, 1886, Pl. 1. and descriptive text 15. The discussion and interpretation of these figures is reserved for p. 51. 16. 'Ἐφήμερις ᾿Αρχαιολογική, 1866, p. 78.
17. Eph. Arch. 1887, pl. 4. 18. Eph. Arch. 1887, pl. 8.
19. Dorpfeld, ‘Die Zeit des iilteren Parthenon,’ A. Mitt. 1902, p. 410. 20. A. Mitt. 1892, p. 158, pl. viii. and ix.
[Continue to Part 2 of Chapter 1]
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