The attack here described to have been made by order of Xerxes upon the Delphian temple, seems not easy to reconcile with the words of Mardonius, Herodot. ix, 42: still less can it be reconciled with the statement of Plutarch (Numa, c. 9), who says that the Delphian temple was burnt by the Medes.
[230] Herodot. viii, 52.
[231] Pausanias, i, 22, 4; Kruse, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 76. Ernst Curtius (Die Akropolis von Athens, p. 5, Berlin, 1844) says that the plateau of the acropolis is rather less than four hundred feet higher than the town: Fiedler states it to be one hundred and seventy-eight fathoms, or one thousand and sixty-eight feet above the level of the sea. (Reise durch das Königreich Griechenland, i, p. 2); he gives the length and breadth of the plateau in the same figures as Kruse, whose statement I have copied in the text. In Colonel Leake’s valuable Topography of Athens, I do not find any distinct statement about the height of the acropolis. We must understand Kruse’s statement, if he and Curtius are both correct, to refer only to the precipitous impracticable portion of the whole rock.
[232] Athenian legend represented the Amazons as having taken post on the Areopagus, and fortified it as a means of attacking the acropolis,—ἀντεπύργωσαν (Æschyl. Eumenid. 638).
[233] Herodot. viii, 52, 53. ... ἔμπροσθε ὦν πρὸ τῆς ἀκροπόλιος, ὄπισθε δὲ τῶν πύλεων καὶ τῆς ἀνόδου, τῇ δὴ οὔτε τις ἐφύλασσε, οὔτ’ ἂν ἤλπισε μή κοτέ τις κατὰ ταῦτα ἀναβαίη ἀνθρώπων, ταύτῃ ἀνέβησάν τινες κατὰ τὸ ἱρὸν τῆς Κέκροπος θυγατρὸς Ἀγλαύρου, καίτοιπερ ἀποκρήμνου ἐόντος τοῦ χώρου.
That the Aglaurion was on the north side of the acropolis, appears clearly made out; see Leake, Topography of Athens, ch. v, p. 261; Kruse, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 119; Forchhammer, Topographie Athens, pp. 365, 366; in Kieler Philologischen Studien, 1841. Siebelis (in the Plan of Athens prefixed to his edition of Pausanias, and in his note on Pausanias, i, 18, 2) places the Aglaurion erroneously on the eastern side of the acropolis.
The expressions ἔμπροσθε πρὸ τῆς ἀκροπόλιος appear to refer to the position of the Persian army, who would naturally occupy the northern and western fronts of the acropolis: since they reached Athens from the north,—and the western side furnished the only regular access. The hill called Areopagus would thus be nearly in the centre of their position. Forchhammer explains these expressions unsatisfactorily.
[234] Herodot. viii, 52, 53.
[235] Herodot. i, 84.
[236] Herodot. v, 102; viii, 53-99; ix, 65. ἔδεε γὰρ κατὰ τὸ θεοπρόπιον πᾶσαν τὴν Ἀττικὴν τὴν ἐν τῇ ἠπείρῳ γενέσθαι ὑπὸ Πέρσῃσι.