Chapter IV: Part 4

TRIPHYLIA, in the corner between Pisatis, Messenia and Arcadia, was the third part of the country, though it did not always belong to the Elean territory. Its capital was _Lepreon_, but it contained a number of small towns besides, one of which was _Scillus_, where the Spartans gave a house to Xenophon. Triphylia was repeatedly taken by the Arcadians, as in Olymp. 102, when they attempted by force to assume the management of the Olympic games. But as early as Olymp. 96, it had been seized by the Spartans, and for a time remained under their protection. Scylax (Olymp. 106) calls it a part of Arcadia, but afterwards it was again in the possession of the Eleans, until in Olymp. 140 it fell into the hands of Philip III. of Macedonia, who, when his policy required it, gave it up to the Achaeans.

ACHAIA.

Previous to the Doric migration, Achaia was called Ionia, and as such was divided into twelve towns. All the Ionians, it is said, emigrated on the invasion of the Achaeans, who had obtained from the Lacedaemonians a free departure from Laconia—an account which appears to me very problematical, but which I cannot remove by substituting a better one. On that occasion the Achaeans are reported to have become possessed of the twelve towns. The intentional and artificial character of this division is obvious: when people meet together with a view to satisfy their natural wants, we never find such exact calculations. The Waldstädte in Switzerland were originally three in number, but this number increased more and more, until it amounted to thirteen. The United States of North America have increased from thirteen to twenty-four, and they will increase still more. A design similar to that in Achaia appears in the Doric part of Asia Minor, where we find the number six, and among the Romans we find three tribes and thirty curiae. The Doric immigration corresponds with what we find in Laconia and Messene, and it was probably the same in Argolis. In the same manner arose the twelve Achaean towns, according to a designed division among the Ionians, and the same was preserved under the Achaeans. _Helice_, on the coast of the Corinthian gulf, was the capital of the Ionians, but whether it occupied the same rank under the Achaeans for any length of time, is unknown. Helice and _Olenos_ are two of the twelve towns which occur in the list of the Achaean towns, and besides them the following ten are mentioned: _Patrae_, _Dyme_, _Pharae_, _Tritaea_, _Leontion_, _Aegira_, _Pellene_, _Aegion_, _Bura_, and _Cerynea_.[39] We here meet with a difficulty: how is it, that we have the differing lists in Strabo and Pausanias, in which, besides these towns, _Aegae_ and _Rhypes_ are mentioned? The solution of the mystery is this: for the very reason, for which originally twelve towns had been instituted, attempts were made, when two towns perished to supplement the number by introducing two others; hence these last are sometimes mentioned, and sometimes not, the writers themselves not being clear about the matter.

The whole coast sinks rapidly down towards the Corinthian gulf, which itself seems to have been formed by a sinking of the whole ground, which is further indicated by the abrupt descent of the mountains that come down from Arcadia; the props which once supported the ground must have given way. That part of the country is still the seat of violent subterraneous fire, whence Helice was regarded as one of the principal seats of Ποσειδῶν Ἐνοσίχθων, who however could not save it from destruction. Whether Olenos, as Polybius states, likewise perished by an earthquake, or whether he is mistaken on this point, cannot be decided. It certainly was not swallowed up by the sea, like Helice, which sank down with the coast and all its buildings, for ruins of it were seen at a late period. It is very probable, that if the site of Helice could be ascertained, very important antiquities might be brought to light by diving. Eratosthenes was informed on the spot, that, according to the belief of the neighbouring people, the place had not been destroyed by a shock, but that it had simply sunk; they related that a statue which had formerly stood in the market place, was still standing upright in the sea, and that fishermen took care not to entangle their nets in it.

These twelve towns formed a league or confederacy under a common strategus, and of all the Greek confederacies this lasted the longest; but the union was so loose that in the Peloponnesian war Pellene alone joined Sparta, while all the other towns remained neutral, and for a time were even allied with Athens. Afterwards, however, all the Achaeans were in alliance with the Lacedaemonians, though then again Pellene acted independently and by itself. Even at a later period, under Philip and Alexander—the time referred to in the speech περὶ τῶν πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ξυνθηκῶν, which is printed among those of Demosthenes, but is undoubtedly the work of Hyperides—Pellene still stood aloof. The dissolution of the Achaean state was then very manifest, and lasted, according to Polybius, until Olymp. 126, when the three westernmost towns again formed an alliance among themselves. As early as the reign of Antigonus Gonatas, Achaia, though then a poor and weak country, had formed itself into one state, and that even before Aratus had delivered Sicyon. At the time when this Achaean confederation rose from its tomb, the real seat of government was at Aegion, and Pellene lost its former importance, which may have been partly the consequence of the ravages made during the war of Demetrius Poliorcetes. Aegion became the new rallying point, probably on account of its situation on the Corinthian gulf; hence it acquired an importance which it had never had before. _Pellene_ was situated on a hill of considerable height, the termination of the northern range of the Arcadian mountains, and was accordingly a strong place.

In later times, _Patrae_ was of greater importance as a commercial town; in the earliest ages it is not mentioned as a place of any consequence, though its harbour is beautiful. It acquired its importance, which it retained until its destruction in our own days, at the time when Pompey established a colony there, which was increased by Augustus. Pompey restored it as a maritime town, for it had been destroyed in the Achaean war. He compelled some of the Asiatic pirates to settle there, and Augustus made it a Roman colony, whence, like Corinth, it issued coins with Latin inscriptions. Throughout the middle ages, under Constantine Porphyrogenitus, as well as under the Frankish and Venetian dominion, Patrae was the most flourishing city in all Peloponnesus. The other places are too unimportant to engage our attention.

The coast of Achaia bore the peculiar name of Aegialos. What is said of it in the Homeric Catalogue, remained essentially the same after the destructive immigrations; hence its case was quite different from that of other countries of Peloponnesus, especially the coast of Messenia, where nothing remained except Cyparissia. Its topography also underwent scarcely any change on account of the uniformity of its history: thus the course of events is often marked in the geography of a country.

GREECE BEYOND PELOPONNESUS.

ATTICA AND MEGARIS.

ATTICA and MEGARIS, if we look at their physical features, form but one country, and in this light they were viewed in the earliest times of which we still have the traditions. The tradition that all this country, from the Isthmus as far as the coast opposite to Euboea, was formerly called Ionia, and inhabited by Ionians, cannot be reconciled with the other, that the Ionians, when expelled from Achaia, went to Attica, and that through them Attica was changed into Ionia. If we wish to form any clear notion at all about the matter, it will probably be most correct to suppose, that originally both coasts, Aegialos and Attica, as well as the whole of the intervening country, Sicyon, Corinth, etc., were inhabited by one and the same Pelasgian branch, that is, by Ionians. This hypothesis gives consistency to the geography of those countries, and we obtain a definite idea of them, which has at least great probability in its favour. The column said to have been erected in the time of Theseus, with the strange inscriptions—

Τάδ’ ἐστὶ Πελοπόννησος οὐκ Ἰωνιά,

and

Τάδ’ οὐχὶ Πελοπόννησος ἀλλ’ Ἰωνία,

is an invention of a comparatively very late period. When Attica and Megaris are taken as one country, it is designated by the name of Ἀκτή. This, however, is not a proper name, but, as we have seen before, an appellative designating a country running out into the sea, without being united with the main land by means of an isthmus. I consider this name to be very ancient, because there can be no doubt that Ἀττικὴ was formed from Ἀκτικὴ on the same principle on which the Italian language substitutes _tt_ for the Latin _ct_. In the earliest traditions, however, the country has several names, the exact meaning and age of which we are unable to ascertain, but which, though they are preserved only in late writers, mostly Alexandrian poets, we ought not to disregard, for these authors fondly adopted those very things which were rare, and which were preserved only in ancient poems. The country, to mention one example, was also called _Mopsopia_, a name of which we can say absolutely nothing, though the country certainly bore it at one time. However, even though the Acte formed one whole, it does not follow by any means that it also formed one state.

Much may be conjectured respecting the early history of Attica, if we rid ourselves of the later traditions about Cecrops and the Pandionids, which were transferred from the Atthids to the works of the Alexandrians, and have been handed down by them to our time,—if, I say, we rid ourselves of them so far as not to regard them altogether as history, and, on the other hand, not to indulge in too artificial and subtle explanations, but so as to take only certain facts which are clearly implied in the stories, and to let these speak for themselves. One tradition about the Acte, in which it extends as far as the Isthmus, is, that it was divided by the Pandionids into four states; and why should not this have been the case? Another division refers apparently to Attica, in the narrower sense of the name. I allude to that ascribed to Cecrops; here, too, we have a kind of tetrapolis, and thus far it agrees with the earlier division though the detail is different, for according to it Attica consisted of twelve (3 × 4) states. We accordingly find in Attica an historical trace of a division into twelve, like that of the Ionian Aegialos; it was also historically remembered, that these towns became united in Athens. The boundaries of Attica, as an Athenian state, stand in relation to those of Megaris, which, however, were changeable, and were moved sometimes forward and sometimes backward. At the time when Megaris was an extensive country, and Attica small, Salamis belonged to the former. Other changes in the Athenian possessions occur on the Boeotian side. But there certainly is some gap in our history of Attica, which we can hardly wonder at, seeing that the political history of the Greeks in general is very fragmentary. What I mean is this: in very ancient times all Attica did not form one state, and the boundary must have been altered in some sense, so that during the time after Cleisthenes, the country districts, formerly occupied by perioeci, obtained the full franchise, as was the case, for example, with Salamis. Herodotus attests, that, in his topical division of Attica into ten phylae, Cleisthenes gave to every phyle ten demi. But at a later time Attica contained 174 demi. Strabo is not the man to write down such a statement thoughtlessly; and moreover the correctness of the number may be calculated from inscriptions and grammarians, especially from Harpocration. It is, therefore, probable that, as at Rome, when its territory was extended, the towns which received the full franchise, were constituted as new local tribes, so also at Athens new demi were formed under similar circumstances, without there being any change in the number of the phylae. We might also explain the change by the supposition that at first Cleisthenes allowed the ancient γένη to continue, so that the φυλαὶ τοπικαί originally did not contain the Eupatrids and the demi together; but afterwards, and even before the Persian wars, this constitution was so altered, as to change the most distinguished among the ancient γένη, of which only very few remained, into separate demi, and incorporate them with the phylae, in order to prevent their sinking into utter insignificance, and especially their losing the right of voting. Thus the Butadae are mentioned both as a γένος and as a δῆμος. Within such a γένος, which had become a δῆμος, the real descendants of the ancient race were distinguished, by the addition ἐτεο, from those who had become members of the same demos by accident. This is the sense in which we have probably to understand the often-mentioned Eteobutadae.

MEGARIS.

I shall treat of Megaris very briefly. It is that part of the Cecropian Acte which was taken possession of by the Dorians when they extended their dominion beyond Peloponnesus, in the hope of subduing all Attica, which was then very weak. If we look at it within the limits which it had at the time of the Peloponnesian war, it was as thoroughly Doric as any part of Peloponnesus, and even in its dialect, notwithstanding the probably small number of immigrants who, perhaps, formed only a military colony. The town of MEGARA was, according to all appearances, built by the Dorians; previously there existed no Megara. The version of the passage in Homer, with which the Megarians opposed the proof of the Athenians, does not mention Megara, but only Polichna, Nisaea, Tripodes, and Aegirussa.[40] It was not an important town, and its whole territory was small; if, however, we credit Herodotus’ account of their contingent in the battle of Plataeae, it must have been extremely populous.

NISAEA, the port of Megara, was older than the city, and is connected in the traditions of the poets with Nisus and his daughter Scylla or Ciris; and when the poets in this fable mention Megara, it must be regarded as mere prolepsis. The Megarians were a maritime people, but not of great importance; they had a small fleet at Nisaea, which was rather more than a mile from the city, and was connected with it by two long walls (σκέλη); the city itself was situated on a hill. The long walls were built by the Athenians after the Persian wars, when they were masters of Megaris. _Pagae_ or _Pegae_ was another town of Megaris on the Corinthian Gulf, and contained a ship-wharf; it likewise had some ships, and was strongly fortified.

The history of Megaris is not uninteresting; it is, in fact, that of all the Greek peoples. In the earliest times it was governed by an aristocracy, or rather oligarchy; then the demos rose, and the old inhabitants, oppressed by the conquerors, were led by a man of the highest rank, who set himself up as tyrant. This man was Theagenes. The period of the overthrow of the aristocracy in all the states of Greece and the rising of tyrants falls between Olymp. 30 and 70, a period which may be likened to the 15th century in the middle ages. These τυραννίδες were of a very different character from those of later times; they always belonged to the first families, and were mere usurpations, without the odiousness which generally attaches to the name. Their rule accordingly was by no means hated, as it is when the tyrannis is the result of general anarchy, or of the degeneracy of liberty. The ancient tyrannides arose from a natural want, and from the consciousness that the state could no longer be governed in the way in which it had been done before; they were not cruel, because the sovereignty was not claimed by more than one, so that there was no cause for making him bloodthirsty. If we bear in mind this ancient meaning of the name, we cannot view the tyrannis in an odious light. The tyrannis of later times is very different, for it no longer helps to develop, but rules with cruelty over a mass which cannot control itself. The later these tyrants are the worse they are; and the worst of all are those after the time of Alexander, such as Aristodemus of Elis, Agathocles and Apollonius of Cassandrea. After the fall of Theagenes, the democracy ceased, and Megara, notwithstanding its Doric character, was governed by an oligarchy, just as Corinth after the fall of the Cypselids. During the Persian wars it was a flourishing state, but afterwards it became involved in disputes with its powerful neighbours, the Athenians; and by all kinds of insults offered to them, it drew upon itself their anger; this was senseless, as it always is when the weaker provokes the stronger. The Spartans undertook the Peloponnesian war ostensibly to protect the Megarians, but Megara fared ill in that war. Previously, the Athenians had left them alone, but they now made frequent inroads into their country, and cruelly ravaged it; and the marches of the Peloponnesians through it seem to have completely ruined it. Afterwards it was a place of no importance. Its situation, which, if Peloponnesus had formed one state, might have made it an excellent bulwark, appears to have always exposed it to ravages. It was taken and destroyed by Demetrius Poliorcetes; Antigonus Gonatas carried on a severe war against the country, to obtain in it a place for a Macedonian garrison. Such a garrison was at that time the most fearful scourge for a Greek town; it generally consisted of barbarians, such as Gauls, Thracians, or Getae, who conducted themselves entirely according to their own discretion, and against whom it was impossible for any individual to protect his property, unless the governor took pity upon him, as was the case at Athens, which had the good fortune of having in Antigonus Gonatas a humane commander. Hence Megara, like the other places, was in a wretched condition. During the first great period of the Achaeans, Megara, together with Corinth, became free again; but afterwards it was so insignificant, that it is not even mentioned as to whether, when Corinth became Macedonian, Megara experienced the same fate or not: it had probably joined Boeotia. Before the battle on the Isthmus, the Romans again destroyed everything that was still standing. Ser. Sulpicius, in his consolatory letter to Cicero, mentions Megara, too, as one of the “corpses of towns” which he saw on the Saronic gulf; according to Strabo, however, it still existed in his time ἀμῶς γέ πως, though it had sunk very low: it still contained some ancient buildings and temples, and among them, within the ring-walls, a small Population. The devastation of Greece under the Romans can scarcely be conceived too fearful: Pausanias misleads us on this point; the true description is furnished by Dion Chrysostomus, who states, that a person might travel about in Arcadia and Thessaly for a whole day without seeing a human being, except a few shepherds. My belief is, that in the time of Pausanias, Peloponnesus, with the exception of a few districts, had no more inhabitants than previously to the Venetian conquest in the year 1650.

Megara was important in a military point of view; two roads led thence to Corinth: the one, running along the sea-coast, and by the Scironian rocks, was very dangerous, for it passed between the precipitous rock and the shore, and formed a pass which no one would ever attempt to storm; the other led across the Oneian mountain, right through the middle of the country, towards the Isthmus.

ATTICA.

We shall consider Attica according to the extent it had at the time of the Peloponnesian war. Salamis, and many places on the Boeotian frontier, were evidently added to it at an earlier period, but its boundaries were reduced again during the Macedonian times: under Cassander, Salamis and Eleusis were separated from Attica, they received Macedonian garrisons, and formed small communities under Macedonian supremacy. To this period belong the coins with the inscriptions ΣΑΛΑΜΙΝΙΩΝ, ΣΑΛΑ; ΕΛΕΥΣΙΝΙΩΝ, ΕΛΕΥ, or ΕΛ; but the particulars cannot be clearly ascertained.

The people of Attica are called Ἀθηναῖοι in their relation to the state, and Ἀττικοί in relation to their manners, customs, and dialect; but the name for an Athenian woman is Ἀττική, and Ἀθηναία in this sense, is either affectation or said in joke.

The whole territory of Attica is a thoroughly mountainous country, like Megaris, with one considerable plain on one side and another on the opposite side. The length of the Acte from the Isthmus to Sunion, including Megaris, measured 680 stadia, or about 90 English miles, of which less than one-third belonged to Megaris. Some of the hills are off-shoots of those of Megaris, but, in reality, they are only continuations of the Boeotian chain of Cithaeron. All form, in truth, only one mountain range, which proceeds from the Boeotian and Megarian frontiers in the form of a semicircle behind Athens, and extends as far as Sunion. All these hills consist of a kind of limestone, which in Hymettus and Pentelicus becomes the most excellent marble. This marble is white with greenish veins, of smaller grain and less white than the Parian, and resembles the Carystian. At the extreme end of these hills, above Sunion, are the silver mines of _Laurion_. These mines, which are a great physical curiosity, were very productive, and were worked in very ancient times; but they became exhausted during the period from the time of the Gracchi, when they were still vigorously worked, to that of Strabo, when the produce was not worth the labour, and when only the ancient offal, which had been thrown away in better times, was smelted. At present they have entirely disappeared, just like the gold mines near Philippi. All names in Attica are classical. The most remarkable among the hills are those already mentioned, _Hymettus_ and _Pentelicus_, on account of their marble quarries: they seem to have been the first of which the marble was wrought into statues, perhaps about Olymp. 50 or 60. The use of bronze for such purposes is easier and more natural, and hence more ancient. The other hills are _Parnes_ and _Brilessus_, the former of which was a wooded mountain. Hymettus and Pentelicus may still be clearly identified, in consequence of the marble quarries, and Hymettus in consequence of its honey, which is still excellent. Such means of identification do not occur in the case of Parnes and Brilessus; and although these, too, are unhesitatingly named by modern travellers, yet all is arbitrary. All the Attic hills are at present barren; but in ancient times some were well wooded, as we may infer from the charcoal manufactures near Acharnae, mentioned by Aristophanes; but the greater part of them were not, like our hills, clad with heather, but with thyme, marjoram, and other aromatic herbs. The fact that Hymettus, even in antiquity, had no trees, may be inferred from the circumstance, that it was the habitation of bees, and the place in which their breeding was attended to.

Attica was well known to the ancients themselves as a country that was not fertile, and where the rocky ground was covered only with a very thin crust of soil (λεπτόγεων in Thucydides); it had two plains of a very different character, the one that of Eleusis and Thria (τὸ Θριάσιον πεδίον), which was fertile, whence Eleusis was justly the seat of the worship of Demeter; the other was the plain of Marathon, which was not fertile, and is at present deserted; it was covered only with wild fennel and such like herbs, nor was it as flat as the Thriasian plain.

Attica has little water, and is poor in rivers and springs; Athens itself had only one good spring. The rivers are so insignificant that in any other country they would not be mentioned at all; but in Attica everything has a general interest and cannot be forgotten, so that the Cephisus and Ilisus, though only small rivulets, are better known than the Oxus and Jaxartes. The Cephisus does not even reach the sea; it flows in a western and the Ilisus in an eastern direction. I spell both names with a single _s_, which is the ancient Greek orthography found in the good MSS. of Aristophanes and Plato, and in inscriptions. The spelling Κηφισσός and Ἰλισσός, however, likewise became common in antiquity, and was that generally received by the Romans; and when a Roman uses a single _s_, it must be regarded as his special choice.

The circumference of ATHENS was much changed in the course of time. According to the traditions, it was at first small like all the towns in Attica, when the lower hills all around were thinly peopled. The arx of Athens, we are told by Thucydides, was called the πόλις, though more probably ἄστυ;[41] for everywhere πόλις and ἄστυ seem to stand in the same relation to each other as _civitas_ stands to _urbs_ or _oppidum_. As _civitas_, in good Latinity, is never used of the buildings, so πόλις in Greece, even at an early time signified the body of citizens, and ἄστυ the place they inhabited. In the most ancient times the ἄκραι alone were fortified in all parts of Greece, the places below them were inhabited κωμηδόν; such was the case in the Pelasgian times at Athens, and also at Sparta. When the town was surrounded with walls cannot be ascertained, but it was probably as early as the time of the Pisistratidae; that κύκλος, however, must have been feeble and unimportant, for if the town had been strong, we cannot conceive why the citizens, on the approach of the Persians, abandoned it without any thought of being able to defend it. After the evacuation of Attica, Themistocles restored the walls, and gave them a much greater circumference. This is, properly speaking, not mentioned anywhere expressly by the ancients[42], but has long ago been assumed by the moderns from the context of the narrative and from the circumstances of the case, and that too with full justice: matters happened in a similar way at Cologne, Nürnberg, Frankfort and Florence. In building walls the ancients sometimes followed the lines of the suburbs, which were surrounded by palisades; but sometimes the circumference was made larger than was really needed, and such may have been the case at Athens. But what was the circumference of Athens? The walls of Themistocles cannot be traced with the same accuracy as the agger of Serv. Tullius at Rome. In the time of Pausanias they were still standing; they had been built by Themistocles in a very hurried manner, but still of such strength that their complete disappearance is a mystery. I have no doubt that the foundations might be discovered if it were possible to make excavations. All we know about the subject is the statement of Thucydides, that the city was forty-three stadia in circumference, exclusive of the empty space between the two long walls. This empty space is estimated in different ways, but there can be no doubt that it occupied only a few stadia, for there was no necessity for keeping those walls far asunder. Fauvel, who resided several years in Athens, declares that he cannot make out that the circumference of Athens was so large, and therefore assumes the passage of Thucydides to be corrupt. But his supposition cannot be admitted, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the Rome of Serv. Tullius was about equal to the ancient ἄστυ: now the circumference of the agger of Serv. Tullius, with a small exception, is perfectly ascertained, and extends about five English miles, which perfectly agrees with the statement of Thucydides. But the topography of Athens is everywhere full of perplexities.[43]

PIRAEEUS was a second city. Its site is certain, but the detail of its topography cannot be determined. I do, indeed, believe that a person living on the spot with the privilege of making excavations, might discover some things, but never as much as at Rome, where we have the numerous documents, and where so many remains still exist. From the drawings of Piraeeus, which I have seen, the statements of the ancients cannot be explained; the line of coast has become very much altered, the harbour is filled with sand, and one or two of the ports seem to have completely disappeared; the ancient bays are at present marshes and morasses, which have no connection with the sea, and the outline of the coast is evidently changed. Piraeeus had separate fortifications, and was connected with the city by the μακρὰ σκέλη, which were constructed, not by Themistocles, but by Pericles. These fortifications are drawn in Barthélemy’s _Voyages du Jeune Anacharsis_, by Barbié du Bocage, with apparent accuracy, but they must be used with caution, and not as exact topographical drawings: they are not intended to give accurate and definite local views, but only to furnish the readers with a picture which is not essentially wrong, and which they may retain in their minds to form a living conception of ancient history. But the picture is not free from faults; one of them, e.g., is that Phalerus is drawn within the walls, which is not supported by a single ancient testimony; Phalerus was on the side of one of the walls, which was hence called the Phalerean.

Many circumstances have conspired to render the topography of Athens difficult. In the first place, we have no description of the city like that furnished by the Regionarii in regard to Rome; in the second place, the historians mention, indeed, particular buildings at Athens, but without stating their relative position to one another; the buildings, with few exceptions, were situated on a plain surface, the several eminences in the ἄστυ having for the most part no buildings. Hence the descriptions cannot be as exact as at Rome, where the hills afforded an easy means of stating the site of buildings and the direction of streets. The many buildings, moreover, some of which existed even in the middle ages, and most of which can even now be recognised in their ruins, are a great assistance in determining the topography of Rome; the study of these combined with that of the ancient topographical documents enables us to ascertain a great many points, and thus to trace the history of the city with great accuracy. If a person makes himself acquainted with modern Rome, tracing it back to its origin, and if, in addition to this, he endeavours to understand the ritual and the roads taken by certain processions, along which the ancient buildings are mentioned, he has already gained a considerable step in advance. The Itineraries of the seventh century are likewise a source of information on topography. In this way a person first comes to the Rome of the middle ages, and thence to ancient Rome. But the city of Athens has completely disappeared; some isolated ancient buildings do indeed exist, to which certain names are given, which are in some cases correct, but in others doubtful. From the middle ages, too, scarcely any thing but walls remain; Athens was several times destroyed and completely deserted; even the churches were demolished, and where anything of them remains, it does not lead us back to ancient buildings. Pausanias, who is our only authority, is an extremely confused writer, and the most different hypotheses may be based upon his statements. He proceeds from Piraeeus to the Ceramicus, thence to the Agora, and further on to the Acropolis; but what road he took it is impossible to make out. The accounts of the moderns of the sites of the ancient buildings are likewise extremely contradictory, and can scarcely be otherwise, considering their short stay on the spot. Stuart was there longest, but his whole object was to make architectural drawings. Fauvel’s and Stuart’s statements, for example, respecting the Areopagus, are in direct contradiction with each other. As matters now stand, a person may find his way on the Acropolis, and perhaps also determine the hill of the Museum; but otherwise nothing can be identified, neither the Areopagus nor the Pnyx. The city of Hadrian can be recognised by its gate. That emperor was a strange, wrong-headed man: though a Spaniard by birth, he was enamoured with everything Greek, but his whole tendency was not ancient Greek; he was in fact a Greek sophist of his own age: he dressed himself in the Greek fashion, and allowed his beard to grow in the Greek fashion, although the Romans had adopted the custom of shaving themselves even before the time of Hannibal. He was ambitious to shine among the Greeks as a Greek, and built several gigantic temples, as for example, the Olympieum, of which many ruins still exist. In like manner, he built an entirely new city by the side of ancient Athens, although the space occupied by the latter was no doubt deserted. The gate of this new city with two inscriptions still exists: ΑΙΔ ΕΙΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΙ ΘΗΣΕΩΣ, Η ΠΡΙΝ ΠΟΛΙΣ, and ΑΙΔ ΕΙΣ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΟΥΧΙ ΘΗΣΕΩΣ ΠΟΛΙΣ. All the other points in our plans, for example the site of the Ceramicus in that of Barbié du Bocage and others, are mere attempts to give something tangible.

The Acropolis was the ornament of Athens; it was situated on a steep rock, though scarcely 200 feet high, and surrounded with walls, that on one side being called the Κιμώνειον τεῖχος; and that on the other, the Πελασγικὸν τεῖχος. Why Cimon should have made additional fortifications to the Acropolis, especially in the days of the democracy, is to me a mystery; and I am almost inclined to suspect that the accounts about it must be explained in a different manner, and that some earlier Cimon is meant. Pericles constructed a flight of steps leading up the Acropolis under a portico, and at the entrance he built the Propylaea, of which now scarcely the site is discernible. The present fortifications of the Acropolis with double walls, were made in the middle ages, at the time of the French dukes and of the Catalani in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and in their construction many of the ancient remains were destroyed. The Propylaea were the triumph of Greek architecture. The chief buildings on the Acropolis were three temples, two of Athena, which must accordingly not be confounded with each other, namely, the Parthenon, and the temple of Athena Polias, in which was preserved the ancient image which had fallen from heaven (ξόανον, εἴδωλον), and thirdly, the temple of Erechtheus, which during the last unfortunate siege has been entirely destroyed; the same was probably the fate of the Parthenon also.[44] All these temples were erected in the age of Pericles, and were built in the Doric style, while the Propylaea were Ionic. The Acropolis also contained the treasury of the republic: it was the Capitol of Athens, and fully as strong as that of Rome.

A place, concerning the site of which there can be no doubt, is the theatre, which can still be distinctly seen: it leans against the Acropolis, the rock itself forming its back wall. This is the sacred spot, where Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, produced their works; there the Athenian people crowned its great men for their merit; and there a golden wreath was given to Demosthenes for his faithful advice.

The site of the Agora, on the other hand, cannot be determined within a hundred paces; and I do not know in what direction to place it. In it was the _Bouleuterion_ of the Council of the Five Hundred, the _Prytaneion_ or Tholos, and the altars, which more than anything else show that the Athenians were animated by a different spirit from that of the other Greeks. I allude to the Βωμὸς Ἐλέους and the Βωμὸς Αἰδοῦς, that is, the altar of Mercy and of Modesty. These altars are characteristic, and shew the amiable nature of the Athenians: that people did not conceive mercy and modesty as demonlike ghosts, nor did they view them abstractedly like the Romans; they declared by those altars, that they had established mercy and the dread of everything that is vulgar, as rules to guide their own conduct. And it was not in vain that they had raised mercy to the rank of a divinity: he who found mercy nowhere, experienced it at Athens during the period of her power. With all their faults, and notwithstanding many acts that make our hearts bleed, the Athenians were the most amiable among the Greeks; and we cannot help asking: was there ever a powerful republic, completely left to itself, which restrained itself so much by its aversion against what is bad? They also had an altar of Report and Impulse (ὁρμή) to preserve their good report, and to prevent their being carried away by impulse.

The Pnyx was the hill where the popular assemblies were held, but it cannot possibly have contained the whole body of the people.

The hill of the Museum was regarded as the strongest point of the city next to the Acropolis, and after the Lamian war it was occupied by a Macedonian garrison, though previously it had not been a place of any importance. The account of the deliverance of Athens by Olympiodorus, shows that the Museum was not a real fort, but only an inaccessible post capable of containing a considerable body of troops. What was the real nature of the place, and what made it so strong, are questions to which no definite answers can be given.

The new town was the strange scheme of Hadrian, who planned buildings the splendour of which was to eclipse that of the ancient ones; but the Olympieum was not completed.[45] Soon after Hadrian, Herodes Atticus, whose life has been written by Philostratus, constructed at Athens a whole stadium of Pentelic marble; his wealth is said to have been immense and almost fabulous, and his grandfather is reported to have found a treasure of Athena. Although the Pentelic marble was obtained in the vicinity of Athens, yet such a building erected by a private person was an amazing undertaking. The buildings of Hadrian and this stadium are still discernible in their ruins.

In the vicinity of Athens there were three gymnasia, the Academy, a park with trees and buildings in which gymnastic exercises were carried on; the Lyceum and the Cynosarges served similar purposes, but their sites cannot be determined.

Previous to the time of Themistocles, Piraeeus was a scarcely inhabited coast district; its natural advantages were neglected, because this port was farther off than that of Phalerus, the latter being two or three miles nearer the city; the few galleys which Athens possessed, and most of which had no decks, were in Phalerus. Themistocles, with the keen eye of a great man, selected Piraeeus as the site of a new town, and his intention was to induce the Athenians to abandon their city altogether and to settle in Piraeeus, which he intended to surround with walls of immense height and to fortify in such a manner as to render it impregnable by the arts of war as they were at the time. The wall, which was actually built, had only half the height to which he intended to raise it, and yet, until the time of Sulla, it defied every attack upon it. The thought of abandoning the place in which the citizens had lived honourably for centuries, was too painful to their feelings to be carried into effect. After the battle on the Hellespont, in the Peloponnesian war, such fortifications of Piraeeus could, after all, not have saved Athens, though at other times they would have been of great advantage, and might, perhaps, have exercised an influence upon the course of the Peloponnesian war. The second great plan, the building of the μακρὰ σκέλη, partly supplied this advantage, which they might have enjoyed at less expense.

The circumference of Piraeeus was nearly seven English miles: its nature and topography are the great problem for archaeologists. We can indeed conceive that, as we read in the ancients, it had three large harbours, but two of them are now choked up. Such deposits of sand are frequent in those parts of the coasts of the Mediterranean, where the current is not very strong.

The most difficult, nay, almost impossible, problem, is that of determining the site of _Munychia_. It is described as a peninsula almost surrounded by the sea, near Piraeeus, and as connected with the main land only by a narrow isthmus; it is further said to have been a very strong post; but as yet we have no correct drawing of it, and no description or statement leads us to the discovery of the site of Munychia; though we might fancy that such an eminence could not be mistaken. Strabo describes the place in the above manner, and beyond that we know nothing of it. If a person, intimately acquainted with the ancients, were to examine the localities, he might perhaps make some discoveries. Piraeeus was built along the shore, and surrounded on the landside by the great wall of Themistocles; but whether Munychia was situated within that wall, or was built against it like a citadel, no one can say: our topographers always regard it as a part of Piraeeus, but there can be no doubt, that the historians always distinguish the two places.

Piraeeus was a considerable town attracting all the wealth and commerce of Athens; it was a new place, having arisen after the Persian war; it had previously been a mere village, a δῆμος. This new town was constructed according to a regular plan, while Athens, with the exception of its public places, was an ugly city, with narrow, crooked, and angular streets; the private dwellings were insignificant, almost like our peasant houses, with walls of clay, or wicker-work covered with clay; the house of Pulytion alone, which appeared like a palace, formed an exception.[46] Hence the Greek term for a thief, τοιχώρυχος, signifies one that breaks through a wall. Hence also we find no such ruins at Athens as at Rome, where the houses were built of bricks and puzzolano, at Syracuse, or any other Greek town. Piraeeus was planned by the Milesian architect Hippodamus in the time of Pericles, and it is possible that it may have had far more beautiful houses than Athens; the foundation of that town forms an era in the building of cities, which henceforth were always laid out according to definite plans. In Italy the streets of all towns were, from the earliest times, built according to certain schemes; Rome alone formed an exception in consequence of the haste with which it was restored after the Gallic conflagration. The arsenal (νεώσοικοι) was a curious edifice: each galley had its separate place, in which everything necessary for its outfit was kept in readiness. In modern times, the arsenal of Venice was similarly constructed, probably on the model of that of Constantinople. Piraeeus had two ἀγοραί, a theatre, and everything that was required of an independent town. It was the residence of merchants, mostly metoeci, and of the lower classes of the free citizens who gained their living by all kinds of trades connected with maritime affairs. The nobles who, without privileges, yet exercised a sort of power, and the ancient families, preserving their character, lived in the city, and not in the country. Hence the decided political colour of the city; οἱ ἐν ἄστει signifying the oligarchical faction, whose rallying point at the time of the Thirty Tyrants was in the city, while the democrats lived in the country and in the port town.

Piraeeus was connected with the city by the μακρά σκέλη, which must not be regarded by any means as a work of Themistocles, for they were built during the administration of Cimon and Pericles; of the fortifications of Piraeeus, too, only the smallest part was executed by Themistocles. One of these walls was forty and the other thirty-five stadia in length, but neither was as high as those of Piraeeus; the space between them cannot be regarded as a suburb, nor did it form a road, but consisted rather of open fields protected by the walls, so that in times of war as well as in those of most profound peace, Athens could receive all its supplies from the sea; but it was necessary in time of war to guard the walls. The space on both sides was principally occupied as burying grounds. After the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians were compelled to demolish on each side a portion of the wall of from ten to twelve stadia; but the Lacedaemonians were still more bent upon pulling down the walls of Piraeeus; it is true that not the whole of these latter were demolished, but still so large a portion of them, that on the return of Thrasybulus and his comrades from Phyle, Piraeeus appears as an open place. Athens itself retained its walls. The works which were executed by Conon, after the battle of Cnidus, with Persian money, contributed, among other things, to restore the fortifications of Piraeeus: he succeeded in accomplishing this with the treasures of the Persian king, and with the supply of workmen and money furnished by the maritime Greeks, such as the Corinthians and Boeotians, the same who, ten years before, had madly demanded the destruction of Athens. It is uncertain, however, whether the walls of Piraeeus restored by Conon were as enormous as those of Themistocles described by Thucydides. The rebuilding of the long walls occupied a longer time, for Athens did not possess the means of completing them speedily; in the time of king Philip, however, they were evidently restored. During the regency of Antipater, a Macedonian garrison was quartered in Piraeeus and Munychia, and if I am not mistaken, in the Museum also, just as under Demetrius Poliorcetes. At a time which it is impossible to determine, the long walls were again destroyed, and were not restored before the war of Antigonus Gonatas (Olymp. 127)[47], so that they must have been destroyed either by Antigonus himself[48], or even by Demetrius Poliorcetes, when he entered the city a second time and placed a garrison in the Museum. For the fact that at that time there was no communication between Piraeeus and the city, is clear from the circumstance, that during the siege of Antigonus, when famine was raging most fearfully, it was not he that commanded the sea, but the fleet of Alexandria. This fleet, however, did not venture to land, so that no provisions could be conveyed into the city, and the Macedonians must have been encamped between Athens and Piraeeus, though the latter place was not in their hands. In the last war against Philip III., Olymp. 145 (U.C. 551), the long walls, according to Livy, lay in ruins. So also during the unfortunate siege of Athens by Sulla, U.C. 666; he besieged the κύκλος of the city, and Piraeeus: the city was in the hands of the tyrant Aristion, Piraeeus in those of the troops of Mithridates, and Sulla was encamped between the two. It was a time of the most fearful misery, and those in Piraeeus scarcely ever succeeded in introducing provisions into the city, whence it is clear, that the walls could not then have been restored, which, considering the decay and wretchedness of the city, was in fact impossible. The numerous drachmae and tetradrachmae, consisting of copper with a thin coat of silver, belong to this period of decay; they are ancient, and of a peculiar coinage; the Athenians probably employed copper for the same reason for which paper has been used in modern times. Charles XII. of Sweden, too, once ordered copper coins to be issued. This is a proof of the great decay of Athens; even Xenophon says, that the city was full of unoccupied building grounds: it was not worth while to rebuild the houses; they were abandoned and allowed to crumble to pieces; the places were left as waste-land, and grass grew upon them. The state of the city resembled that of many towns in the East, as for example, Ispahan. Its whole outline, however, still remained the same during the siege of Sulla, and the splendid buildings were still uninjured, while the people lived in the greatest misery, and were very much reduced in numbers. The vessels dedicated in the temples, though they were still exhibited as the ancient originals, were probably counterfeited, the real gold and silver having been exchanged for other metals, just as the French at Loretto took away the precious stones, and filled their places with glass. We still possess the inventories of the precious treasures, which the Athenian curators handed over to their successors in office, and which belong to the Macedonian period; but during the subsequent times, there certainly was no longer any trace of them. As Aristion refused to surrender, Sulla took the city by storm and raged like Mummius against Corinth and the unhappy Achaeans: the Romans murdered every one that came in their way; a great number who had taken refuge in the Ceramicus, had their lives spared, but every tenth man among them was put to death. On that occasion a part of the city was consumed by fire.

But Piraeeus suffered still more severely; it was destroyed by Sulla quite intentionally, for he set fire to the arsenal (ὁπλοθήκη) and the νεώσοικοι, in which there were spaces for 400 galleys. Athens was in a state of the deepest distress: the survivors received, what the Romans in their official language called freedom, that is, they were allowed to choose their own magistrates, and had jurisdiction in criminal cases. But the city was like a wilderness, though it always retained the remembrance of earlier times. The people did not indeed forget the fearful calamities they had experienced, but in that happy climate man enjoys the present; the scenes of terror gradually ceased to be thought of, men soon assembled again, and Athens became one of the most delightful places to live in, to which Romans of education and rank, such as Atticus, withdrew from the political turmoils of the time, and cheered their life in a world of ideas and in dreams of the olden times. Under the emperors, Athens recovered several islands which it had formerly possessed, as Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros, which to some extent enabled it to exist. In the reign of Hadrian the Ilisus flowed with gold; Herodes Atticus was indeed an acquisition for which the city had to pay dearly, for his vanity made him an unbearable and arrogant man, though he was withal empty-headed; but still it was a period of relative prosperity. The philosophical school of Athens acquired more consistency under Hadrian; it was a kind of university, where especially dialectics and speculative philosophy were pursued; but the exact sciences and grammar were less attended to. A residence there was still very beneficial to young men, for the ancient serene spirit of its inhabitants still survived in certain beautiful traits; men loved to dwell there; it was still the soil and the atmosphere of Athens, the vicinity of the monuments of classical antiquity, and with all its degeneracy Athens still preserved a shadow of its ancient urbanity.