Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

From Thucydides we learn only that what was called the Pelargikon was below the Acropolis. ‘Below’ means immediately, vertically below, for when, in Lucian’s Fisherman[50], Parrhesiades, after baiting his hook with figs and gold, casts down his line to fish for the false philosophers, Philosophy, seeing him hanging over, asks, ‘What are you fishing for, Parrhesiades? Stones from the Pelasgikon?’ An inscription[51] of the latter end of the fifth century confirms the curse mentioned by Thucydides, and shows us that the Pelargikon was a well-defined area, as it was the subject of special legislation. ‘The king (i.e. the magistrate of that name) is to fix the boundaries of the sanctuaries in the Pelargikon, and henceforth altars are not to be set up in the Pelargikon without the consent of the Council and the people, nor may stones be quarried from the Pelargikon, nor earth or stones had out of it. And if any man break these enactments he shall pay 500 drachmas and the king shall report him to the Council.’ Pollux[52] further tells us that there was a penalty of 3 drachmas and costs for even mowing grass within the Pelargikon, and three officers called paredroi guarded against the offence. Evidently the fortifications of the Pelargikon, partially dismantled by the Persians, had become a popular stone quarry; as evidently the state had no intention that these fortifications should fall into complete disuse. The question naturally arises, what was the purport of this surviving Pelargikon, why did it not perish with the rest of the Pelasgic fortifications?

The answer is simple: the Pelargikon remained because it was the great fortification of the citadel gates. According to Kleidemos, it will be remembered ([p. 11]), the work of the early settlers was threefold; they levelled the surface of the citadel, they built a wall round it, and they furnished the fortifications with gates. Where will those gates be? A glance at the section in [Fig. 1] shows that they must be where they are, i.e. at the only point where the rock has an approachable slope, the west or south-west. We say advisedly south-west. The great gate of Mnesicles, the Propylaea which remain to-day, face due west; but within that great gate still remain the foundations[53] of a smaller, older gate ([Fig. 2], G), built in direct connection with the great Pelasgic fortification wall, and that older gate, there before the Persian War[54], faces south-west.

Fig. 14.

This gate facing south-west stands on the summit of the hill, and is but one. Kleidemos ([p. 11]) tells us that the Pelargikon had nine gates. That there should be nine gates round the Acropolis is unthinkable, such an arrangement would weaken the fortification, not strengthen it. The successive gates must somehow have been arranged one inside the other, and the fortifications would probably be in terrace form. The west slope of the Acropolis lends itself to such an arrangement, and in Turkish days this slope was occupied by a succession of redoubts ([Fig. 14]). Fortified Turkish Athens is in some ways nearer to the old Pelasgian fortress than the Acropolis as we see it to-day. We shall probably not be far wrong if we think of the approach to the ancient citadel as a winding way ([Fig. 15]), leading gradually up by successive terraces, passing through successive fortified gates[55], and reaching at last the topmost propylon which faced south-west. These terraces, gates, fortifications, covering a large space, the limits of which will presently be defined, formed a whole known from the time of Thucydides to that of Lucian as the Pelargikon or Pelasgikon.

Fig. 15.

Lucian indeed not only affords our best evidence that, down to Roman days, a place called the Pelasgikon existed below the Acropolis, but is also our chief literary source for defining its limits. We expect those limits to be wide, otherwise the refugees would not have crowded in.

The passages about the Pelasgikon in Lucian are two. First in the ‘Double Indictment[56],’ Dike, standing on the Acropolis, sees Pan approaching, and asks who the god is with the horns and the pipe and the hairy legs. Hermes answers that Pan, who used to dwell on Mt Parthenion, had for his services been honoured with a cave below the Acropolis ‘a little beyond the Pelasgikon.’ There he lives and pays his taxes as a resident alien. The site of Pan’s cave is certainly known; close below it was the Pelasgikon. This marks the extreme limit of the Pelasgikon to the north, for the sanctuary of Aglauros ([p. 81]) by which the Persians climbed up was unquestionably outside the fortifications. Herodotus[57] distinctly says, ‘In front then of the Acropolis, but behind the gates and the ascent, where neither did anyone keep guard, nor could it be expected that anyone could climb up there, some of them ascended near the sanctuary of Aglauros, daughter of Kekrops, though the place was precipitous.’

A second passage[58] in Lucian gives us a further clue. Parrhesiades and Philosophy, from their station on the Acropolis, are watching the philosophers as they crowd up. Parrhesiades says, ‘Goodness, why, at the mere sound of the words, “a ten-pound note,” the whole way up is a mass of them shouldering each other; some are coming along the Pelasgikon, others and more of them by the Areopagos, some are at the tomb of Talos, and others have got ladders and put them against the Anakeion; and, by Jove, there’s a whole hive of them swarming up like bees.’ A description like this cannot be regarded as definite proof; but, taking the shrines in their natural order, it certainly looks as though in Lucian’s days the Pelasgikon extended from the Areopagos to the Asklepieion. The philosophers crowd up by the regular approach (ἄνοδος) to the Propylaea; there is not room for them all, so they spread to right and left, on the right to the Asklepieion, on the left to the Areopagos; some are crowded out still further on the right to the tomb of Talos[59], near the theatre of Dionysos; on the left to the Anakeion[60] on the north side of the Acropolis.