Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

Called after Pallas of the golden spear,

And, where the northern rocks ’neath Pallas’ hill

Are called the Long Rocks, Phoebus there by force

Did wed Creousa.’

Nor is it Ion only who knows that this place was honoured by the Pythian fires, it is no mere ‘poetical’ figure. Strabo[153], in speaking of a place called Harma in Boeotia, says we must not confuse this Harma with another Harma near Pyle, a deme in Attica bordering on Tanagra. In connection with this Attic Harma, he adds, the proverb originated ‘When it has lightened through Harma.’ Strabo further goes on to say that this Harma, which is on Mt Parnes, to the North-West of Athens, was watched by certain officials called Pythiasts for three days and nights in each of three successive months; when a flash of lightning was observed a sacrifice was despatched to Delphi. The place whence the observation was taken was the altar of Zeus Astrapaios, Zeus of the Lightning, and this altar was in (or on) the (Acropolis) wall between the Pythion and the Olympion.

Euripides, it is clear, is alluding to this definite ritual which of course would be familiar to Ion. That ritual he clearly conceived of as taking place near the Long Rocks. Near the Long Rocks must therefore have stood the altar of Zeus of the Lightning, on the wall between the Olympieion and the Pythion. Not only the Pythion but the Olympieion must therefore have been close to the Long Rocks. The word used by Strabo for wall (τεῖχος) is strictly a fortification wall, and we should naturally understand it of that portion of the Pelargikon which defends the North-West corner of the citadel and abuts on the Long Rocks ([Fig. 2]). It is just here, close to the Pelargikon that we should, from the account of Pausanias[154], expect to find Apollo’s ‘best loved’ sanctuary. Pausanias on leaving the Acropolis notes the Pelargikon, or as he calls it Pelasgikon, and immediately after says ‘on the descent not to the lower parts of the city but just below the Propylaea, is a spring of water, and close by a sanctuary of Apollo in a cave; they think that it was here he met Creousa, the daughter of Erechtheus.’

Pausanias says ‘a sanctuary of Apollo in a cave.’ It is the fact that the sanctuary is in a cave that strikes and interests him. He does not call it a Pythion. But by another writer the actual word Pythion is used. Philostratos[155] describes the route taken by the Panathenaic ship thus: starting from the outer Kerameikos it sailed to the Eleusinion, and, having rounded it, it was carried along past the Pelasgikon and came alongside of the Pythion, where it is now moored. The Panathenaic way has been, as will later be seen ([p. 131]), laid bare; for the moment all that concerns us is that the Pythion is mentioned immediately after the Pelasgikon and was therefore presumably next to it. Philostratos puts what he calls the Pythion in just the place where Pausanias[156] saw his ‘sanctuary in a cave’; the two are identical. Further, any doubts as to where the ship was moored are set at rest by Pausanias himself. He saw the ship and noted its splendour. It stood ‘near the Areopagus.’ The Pythion must have stood at the North-West corner of the Acropolis ([Fig. 46]).

Even if we relied on literary evidence only we should be quite sure that the Pythion of which Thucydides speaks was somewhere on the Long Rocks, at the North-West end of the Acropolis. Happily however the situation is not left thus vague; the actual cave of Apollo has been found, and thoroughly cleared out, and in it there came to light numerous inscribed votive offerings to the god, which make the ascription certain.

From the lower tower at the North-West corner there have always been clearly visible to any one looking up from below three caves ([Fig. 21]), a very shallow one immediately over the Klepsydra, and two others nearer together and somewhat deeper separated from the first by a shoulder of rock. On the plan in [Fig. 22] these are marked Α, Β and Γ. The question has long been raised which of the three belonged to Apollo and which to Pan. As Pausanias[157] first mentions the sanctuary of Apollo in a cave and then passes on to tell the story of Pheidippides, manifestly à propos of Pan’s cave, it has been usual to connect Α with Apollo and Β and Γ, one or both, with Pan.