Tradition loves to embroider a story with names and definite details. The prudent Attic vase-painter gives us only a nameless ‘Giant.’ Others knew more. Pausanias[33] had heard the builders’ actual names and tried to fix their race. He tells us—just as he leaves the Acropolis—‘Save for the portion built by Kimon, son of Miltiades, the whole circuit of the Acropolis fortification was, they say, built by the Pelasgians, who once dwelt below the Acropolis. It is said that Agrolas and Hyperbios ... and on asking who they were, I could only learn that in origin they were Sikelians and that they migrated to Acarnania.’
Spite of the lacuna, it is clear that Agrolas and Hyperbios are the reputed builders. The reference to Sicily dates probably from a time when the Kyklopes had taken up their abode in the island. The two builder-brothers remind us of Amphion and Zethus, and of their prototypes the Dioscuri[34]. Pliny[35] tells of a similar pair, though he gives to one of them another name. ‘The brothers Euryalos and Hyperbios were the first to make brick-kilns and houses at Athens; before this they used caves in the ground for houses.’
The names of the two ‘Pelasgian’ brothers are, as we know from the evidence of vase-paintings[36], ‘giant’ names, and Hyperbios is obviously appropriate. The names leave us in the region of myth, but the tradition that the brothers were ‘Pelasgian’ deserves closer attention.
In describing the old wall we have spoken of it as ‘Pelasgian,’ and in this we follow classical tradition. Quoting from Hecataeus (circ. 500 B.C.), Herodotus[37] speaks of land under Hymettus as given to the Pelasgians ‘in payment for the fortification wall which they had formerly built round the Acropolis.’ Again, Herodotus[38] tells how when Kleomenes King of Sparta reached Athens, he, together with those of the citizens who desired to be free, besieged the despots who were shut up in the Pelasgian fortification.
A Pelasgian fortification, a constant tradition that Athens was inhabited by Pelasgians—we seem to be on solid ground. Yet on a closer examination the evidence for connecting the name of the fortification with the name ‘Pelasgian’ crumbles. In the one official[39] inscription that we possess the word is written, not Pelasgikon, but Pelargikon. In like manner, in Thucydides[40], where the word occurs twice, it is written with an r. Pelargikon is ‘stork-fort,’ not Pelasgian fort. The confusion probably began with Herodotus, who was specially interested in the Pelasgians.
Why the old citadel was called ‘stork-fort’ we cannot say—there are no storks there now—but we have one delightful piece of evidence that, to the Athenian of the sixth century B.C., ‘stork-fort’ was a reality.
Immediately to the south of the present Erechtheion lie the foundations of the ancient Doric temple[41], currently known by a pardonable Germanism as the ‘old Athena-temple.’ For its date we have a certain terminus ante quem. The colonnade was of the time of Peisistratos; it was a later addition; the cella of the temple existed before—how much before we do not know. The zeal and skill of Prof. Dörpfeld for architecture, of Dʳˢ Wiegand and Schrader for sculpture, have restored to us a picture of that ancient Doric temple all aglow with life and colour and in essentials complete[42].
Fig. 12.
Of all the marvellous fragments of early sculpture recently discovered, none is more widely known nor more justly popular than the smiling, three-headed monster known throughout Europe as the ‘Blue-beard.’ He belongs to the sculptures of the west pediment of the inner pre-Peisistratean cella of the ‘old Athena-temple,’ a portion of which is shown in [Fig. 12]. It is tempting to turn aside and discuss in detail the whole pediment composition to which he belongs. It will, however, shortly be seen ([p. 37]) that our argument forbids all detailed discussion of the sanctuaries of Athena, and the pediments of her earliest temple have therefore, for us at the moment, an interest merely incidental.