From these more general considerations, into which it was perhaps necessary to enter, let us now pass to the picture antiquity has left us of the principal capitals, confining ourselves chiefly to Athens and Sparta, which may be regarded as the representatives of all the rest. The physiognomy of these, like the features of an individual, may in some respects be considered as a key to the character of the inhabitants; a remark which, with great truth, may be applied to all capitals.
In the structure of the one, external and internal,[[219]] there was everywhere visible an effort to embody the principle of beauty, improving the advantages and overcoming the difficulties of position. In the other little could be discovered indicative of imaginative power, of the thirst to create, of the yearning of the mind after the ideal, of the desire of genius to breathe a soul into stone, to live and obtain a perpetuity of existence in the works of its own hands, to gaze on its own beauty reflected on all sides from its own creations as from a concave mirror. At Athens everything public, everything which had reference to the united efforts of the people wore an air of grandeur. The Acropolis inhabited only by the gods appeared worthy to be the dwelling place of immortal beings: all the poetry of architecture was there; it seemed to have owed its birth to a concentration of the best religious spirit of the ancient world, aiming at giving earth a resemblance to heaven; at peopling it with mute deities, speaking only through their beauty and surrounding these representatives of the invisible Olympos with everything most excellent, most valuable, most cherished among men. At Sparta a spirit of calculating economy entered into the very worship of the gods. They seemed, in the manner they lodged and entertained them, to have always had an eye to their common tables and their black broth. Between the temples of Athens and Sparta there was, in fact, the same contrast that now exists between St. Peter’s at Rome and a Calvinistic conventicle. Accordingly, several ancient writers have vied with each other in heaping encomiums upon Athens, which they regarded as at once the most glorious and the most beautiful of cities. Athenæus denominates it the “Museum of Greece;” Pindar, “the stay of Greece;” Thucydides, in his epigram upon Euripides, “the Greece of Greece;” and the Pythian Apollo, “the home and place of council of all Greeks.”[[220]] By others it was termed “the Opulent;” though the principal part of its riches consisted in the wise and great men whom it produced, and whose achievements covered it with glory. In the same spirit the Arabs call Cairo the “Mother of cities;” and all nations concentrate more or less upon their capital, their affection and their pride.
The superior magnificence of Athens appears from this; that it was always the place to which the Greeks referred when desirous of magnifying the splendour of their own country, in comparison with what could be found elsewhere. Thus Dion Chrysostom[[221]] affirms that Athens and Corinth in all that constitutes real grandeur surpassed the famous capitals of Persia, Syria, and Ecbatana, and Babylon, and the metropolis of Bactriana. Nay, in the opinion of this writer the Kraneion with its gymnasia, fountains, and shady walks, and the Acropolis with its Propylæa, antique altars, temples, and population of gods, exceeded in magnificence the palaces of the Great King, though there was something exceedingly striking in the site and structure of what may properly be called the Acropolis of Ecbatana.[[222]] The city itself was unwalled, but the citadel, which probably rose in the midst of it, occupied the slopes of a conical hill, not unlike Mount Tabor, and was girt by seven walls of different colours and elevation, rising in concentric circles above each other to the summit. The circumference of the lowest is said to have equalled that of Athens including the Peiræeus. The colour of this wall was white; the next being black for the sake of contrast, was succeeded by one of light purple, which was followed by walls of sky blue, of scarlet, of silver and of gold.
In mere magnitude the great capitals of the East far exceeded Athens. The circuit, for example, of Babylon, is said to have been at least four hundred stadia, while, according to the orator Dion, that of Athens was in round numbers two hundred stadia, or twenty-five miles. Aristeides probably adopted the same calculation when he pronounced it to be a day’s journey in compass. But there is some exaggeration in these accounts; for, according to Thucydides, the total extent of the walls did not exceed one hundred and seventy-eight stadia. The area, however, of the city was not proportioned to the vast range of its fortifications, consisting of two distinct systems of buildings, the Astu, or city proper, and the Peiræeus or harbour, connected together by three walls more than four miles in length. There were other capitals in the western world equal in dimensions, as Syracuse, one hundred and eighty stadia in circumference, and Rome, which in the time of Dionysios of Halicarnassos did not command a larger circuit, though the space included within the walls was much greater.
In order, however, to convey a more complete idea of the ancient home of Democracy and the Arts, we must, as far as possible, open up a view into the interior of Athens, which, with its harbours, docks, arsenals, its market-places, bazārs, porticoes, public fountains and gymnasia, probably formed the noblest spectacle ever presented to the eye by a cluster of human dwellings. From whatever side approached, whether by land or by sea, the city appeared to be but one vast group of magnificence. In sailing up along the shore from the promontory of Sunium, the polished brazen helmet and shield of the colossal Athena,[[223]] standing on the brow of the Acropolis, were beheld from afar flashing in the sun. On drawing nearer, the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the temple of Erectheus, with the other marble edifices crowning the Cecropian rock, glittered above the pinnacles of the lower city, and the deep green foliage of the encircling plain and olive groves. Among its principal ornaments in the later ages of the republic was a remarkable monument in the road to Eleusis,—the tomb of the hetaira Pythionica, who dying while her beauty still bloomed and her powers of fascination were unimpaired, the love she had inspired survived the grave and manifested itself by rearing a costly pile of marble over her ashes.[[224]]
Upon sailing into the Peiræeus,[[225]] where generally ships from every quarter of the ancient world lay at anchor, the stranger was immediately struck by manifestations of the people’s power and predilection for stateliness and grandeur. The entrance into the port, barely wide enough to admit a couple of galleys abreast, with their oars in full sweep, lay between two round towers, in which terminated on either hand the maritime fortifications of the city. Across the mouth vast chains were extended in time of war, rendering the Peiræeus a closed port;[[226]] arrived within which, the pleased eye wandered over the spacious quays, wharfs, and long ranges of warehouses extending round the harbour, with tombs and sepulchral monuments rising here and there in open spaces between. Among them was a cenotaph in the form of an altar, raised by the repentant people in memory of Themistocles,[[227]] the founder of the naval power of Athens, whose bones however it has sometimes been supposed were brought thither from Magnesia. The Peiræeus consisted of three basins, Zea, Aphrodision, which was by far the largest, and Cantharos. On the western shore were the vast docks and arsenals of the commonwealth erected by Philon,[[228]] in which, during peace, all that portion of the public navy not engaged in protecting its trade in distant colonies, was drawn up in dry docks, roofed over and surrounded by massive walls. Towards the centre of the town stood the Hippodameia,[[229]] an agora or market place, which appears to have resembled Covent Garden, with ranges of stalls in the area and surrounded by dwelling-houses. This building derived its name from Hippodamos of Miletos, the architect who erected it, and laid out the whole maritime city in the regular and beautiful style of which he was the inventor.[[230]] Here, also, were several other market-places or bazārs, among which may be reckoned a place[[231]] resembling the Laura of Samos, the Sweet Ancon of Sardis, the Street of the Happy at Alexandria, and the Tuscan Street at Rome, in which fruit, confectionary, with delicacies and luxuries of every kind were exposed for sale. In these agora, as now in the bazārs of Cairo, Damascus, and Constantinople, were beheld, in close juxtaposition, the wines of Spain and Portugal, amber from the shores of the ocean, the carpets, shawls, and jewels of the East, fruit and gold from Thasos, ivory and ostrich feathers from Africa, and beautiful female slaves from Syria, Dardania, and the southern shores of the Euxine, the Mingrelians and Georgians of the modern world.[[232]] Around these singular groups the young men of Athens, in an almost oriental pomp of costume, might be seen lounging, some perhaps purchasing, others merely looking on, half in haste to return to the gymnasium or to the lectures of Socrates.
Among the public buildings[[233]] in the harbour were the Deigma[[234]] or Exchange, where the merchants met to transact business, bringing along with them samples of their goods; the Serangion[[235]] or public baths; the superb temples of Zeus and Athena adorned with exquisite pictures and statues, where in an open court seems to have stood the celebrated altar erected by Demosthenes[[236]] in commutation of his fine of thirty talents; the Long Portico which served as an agora to those living near the shore;[[237]] the theatre,[[238]] and the court of Phreattys[[239]] on the beach, where the accused pleaded his cause from a galley lying afloat. Somewhere in the Peiræeus was an altar to “the unknown Gods,”[[240]] which, notwithstanding that the plural form is used, may possibly have been that to which Saint Paul alludes in his speech to the Athenians on the hill of Areiopagos.
Besides the Peiræeus, Athens possessed two other harbours Munychia and Phaleron, which were enclosed by the same line of fortifications, and in process of time formed but one city, superior in extent to the Astu itself. Of these the latter was the most ancient, and from hence Mnestheus sailed for Troy and Theseus for Crete.[[241]] The Munychian promontory,[[242]] abounding in hollows and artificial excavations, and connected by a narrow neck of land with the continent, was the strongest position on the coast, and may be regarded as the key of Athens, since whoever held possession of it could command the city. In this Demos stood the Bendideion[[243]] where shows were exhibited in honour of Bendis the Thracian Artemis, to behold which Socrates and his friends came down from the city, when at the house of Cephalos that conversation took place with Glaucon and Adimantos, out of which arose the Republic of Plato. This division of the port likewise possessed its theatre,[[244]] and here were fought some of those battles with the thirty that re-established the liberty of the commonwealth.
Proceeding inland towards the Astu or city of Athens proper, the stranger beheld before him a straight street upwards of five miles in length, extending from the Peiræeus to the foot of the Acropolis, between walls[[245]] of immense elevation and thickness, flanked by square towers at equal distances. Along the summit of these vast piles of masonry a terrace was carried, commanding superb views of the Saronic bay and distant coasts of Peloponnesos; and, on the other hand, of the city relieved against the green slopes of Lycabettos[[246]]. The space between the long walls abounded with remarkable monuments. Here were the tombs of Diopethes, Menander, and Euripides, the temple of Hera, burned by the Persians, and left in ruins as a memento to revenge, and numerous cenotaphs and statues of illustrious men.
Spacious and lofty gates admitted you into the Astu, through a belt of impregnable fortifications: and the appearance of the interior,[[247]] though the streets for military purposes were mostly narrow and winding, and the houses low, projecting over the pavement or concealed by elevated front-walls, surpassed in all probability the promise of its distant aspect. The grandeur which peculiarly belonged to the Athenian democracy was visible at every step. But it would weary the reader to lead him in succession through all the public places—the Pnyx, the Agora, the Cerameicos: let us ascend the Acropolis, from whose ramparts the plan of the whole city will unfold itself before us like a map.