Before we pass to the consideration of the second clause in the historian’s statement, ‘together with what is below it towards about south,’ it is necessary to say a word as to when the old fortress walls were built and by whom. Kimon and Themistocles we know, but who were these earlier master-builders?
A red-figured vase painter of the fifth century B.C. gives us what would have seemed to a contemporary Athenian a safe and satisfactory answer—‘There were giants in those days.’ The design in [Fig. 10] is from a skyphos[24] in the Louvre Museum. Athena is about to fortify her chosen hill. She wears no aegis, for her work is peaceful; she has planted her spear in the ground perhaps as a measuring rod, and she has chosen her workman. A great giant, his name Gigas, inscribed over him, toils after her, bearing a huge ‘Cyclopean’ rock. She points with her hand where he is to lay it.
Fig. 10.
On the obverse of the same vase ([Fig. 11]) we have a scene of similar significance. To either side of a small tree, which marks the background as woodland, stands a man of rather wild and uncouth appearance. The man to the left is bearded and his name is inscribed, Phlegyas. The right-hand man is younger, and obviously resembles the giant of the obverse. He is showing to Phlegyas an object, which they both inspect with an intent, puzzled air. And well they may. It is a builder’s staphyle[25], or measuring line, weighted with knobs of lead like a cluster of grapes; hence its name. Phlegyas[26] and his giant Thessalian folk were the typical lawless bandits of antiquity; they plundered Delphi, they attacked Thebes after it had been fortified by Amphion and Zethus. But Athena has them at her hest for master-builders. All glory to Athena!
Fig. 11.
It is not only at Athens that legends of giant, fabulous workmen cluster about ‘Mycenean’ remains. Phlegyas and his giants toil for Athena, and at Tiryns too, according to tradition, the Kyklopes work for King Proetus[27], and they too built the walls and Lion-Gate of Mycenae[28]. At Thebes the Kadmeia[29] is the work of Amphion and Zethus, sons of the gods, and the fashion in which art represents Zethus as toiling is just that of our giant on the vase. The mantle that Jason wore was embroidered, Apollonius of Rhodes[30] tells us, with the building of Thebes,
Of river-born Antiope therein