CHAPTER XI
LIFE IN ANCIENT ATHENS IN THE TIME OF PERICLES
I. A WALK IN ANCIENT ATHENS
Almost in the centre of Attica lies a plain surrounded in the distance by hills: towards the East, Mount Hymettus, the home of goats, purple with thyme and filled with the murmur of bees; and to the North, Mount Pentelicus, famous for its shining white marble, that gleamed a rosy-red when the sun went down. Rising straight out of the plain is a great oval-shaped rock, the famous Acropolis of Athens, once its citadel and fortress, but transformed by Pericles into a great shrine for Athena. From this rock the land sloped gently to the sea. The plain was watered by the Cephisus, the only stream in Attica which did not run dry in the summer, and along its banks were olive groves, adding their touch of dark grey-green to the landscape. In the centre of this plain, at the foot of the Acropolis, was Athens.
ATHENS, WITH THE ACROPOLIS.
Roads from all directions led to Athens, but the Greeks, unlike the Romans, were not great road-makers, and except for those used for processions on festivals, such as the Sacred Way that led to Eleusis, the roads in Attica were not in good repair, and foot-passengers when they went on a journey generally preferred the shorter paths over the hills. In the early morning, the roads outside the city were thronged with people coming in from the country on various kinds of business. Chief of these were the farmers, bringing their fruit and vegetables and other produce to sell in the market, but merchants from distant lands were also to be seen bringing their wares along the road from the Peiraeus. The city was entered by gates in the great wall which had been built by Themistocles after the Persian Wars, and from the gates, the streets all led to the Market Place, or Agora, as it was called by the Greeks. The streets were narrow, crooked and dark, and were not paved, and the houses on each side presented a very dull appearance, for the windows rarely faced the street. The streets were dirty, too, for all kinds of refuse were thrown into them. This absence of light and air did not make for health, and so very often pictures of Apollo, the Bringer of Health, were painted on the walls. The Athenians spent their wealth on their great public buildings, and there was very little to distinguish one private house from another. Demosthenes, writing at a later time, said of the Athenians of the age of Pericles:
The public buildings they constructed for us; the number and beauty of the temples, and of the offerings they contained, are such that their successors can never surpass them; but in private life they practised so great a moderation, that even if any of you knew which was the house of Aristeides or Miltiades or any of the famous men of old, you would find it no more pretentious than those of its neighbours.