Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

An enlarged plan of the wells r⁶ and r⁷, with their connecting passages and chambers, is given in [Fig. 36]. A detailed description of it is important, because these chambers, recognized as forming the ancient Kallirrhoë, are now closed to the public by a locked gate, behind which few visitors to Athens penetrate.

Fig. 36.

A narrow stairway, a-b, leads into a chamber (Y) hewn in the heart of the rock. This chamber is about 4 metres square, and has an arched roof. Immediately opposite the entrance to Y, in the Western wall, a niche 1·80 m. deep has been cut (C). In this niche the shaft of a well (r⁷) has been sunk 2 metres deep. This is clearly shown in section in [Fig. 43]. In front of the well was a barrier, so that water could be drawn without fear of falling in. Over the well, about 0·80 metre above the pavement, was a small niche, which may have held an image. From the entrance of the chamber Y, about 1·30 metres high from the ground, there is a channel, n-p, worked in the rock. It has a slight inclination towards the niche C, and was obviously meant to collect the water that oozed from the vaulted roof and the walls. Later it was used as a conduit for the new water-supply brought by Peisistratos. Remains of a lead pipe and a terra-cotta conduit were found at m.

For,—doubt is impossible,—we have here in the niche at C the ancient Kallirrhoë. The large rock chamber Y marks it out from the other wells. Its importance down to Roman times is shown by the fact that the chamber Y is paved with a rich mosaic, the patterns of which are like those made elsewhere in Athens in the time of Hadrian. The ancient well must have kept its sanctity, otherwise it would not have been so adorned. After the well had run dry, and when the water-supply was purely artificial, the walls and ceiling were carefully cemented and the cement was later renewed. Such a coating would of course have been impossible when the roof and walls were dripping with natural water.

At the right hand of the entrance to Y was a passage, e-f, leading down by steps into a large elliptical chamber, r⁶. This chamber, presumably a cistern, was paved in Roman days with marble slabs, but below the marble pavement is a stucco pavement of Greek date. From this cistern leads a channel, i, which may have led to the well-house of Peisistratos, or, as suggested in the restoration ([Fig. 43]), to a smaller subordinate fountain.

The supply of water at Kallirrhoë was slender. We have seen that efforts were made to reinforce it by well-sinking, by conduits, by cisterns. But, though the Athenians found the water of Kallirrhoë adequate for their ritual baths, they had other needs, and, as the city grew and grew, the effort to cope locally with the increasing demand proved futile. There was a crying need for water from a distance, a great popular need such as the despots loved to supply. Water was needed, and water was brought in a supply practically inexhaustible, from the district of the upper Ilissos.

By a happy chance in the history of excavations, long before the search for the aqueduct of the despots began, another aqueduct, the work of another despot, had been brought to light—the aqueduct that Polycrates made for the Samians. At the close of his account of Polycrates, Herodotus[267] tells us he had lingered long over the affairs of the Samians ‘because they possessed three of the most wonderful works ever accomplished by the Greeks.’ The first and the only one of these wonders that concerns us was a great aqueduct bored through a mountain 150 fathoms high. The length of the tunnel, he goes on to say, was seven stadia, the height and the breadth eight feet each way. Through this tunnel there went a second passage, 20 cubits deep by three feet wide, through which the water is carried along in tiled pipes from a great spring to the city of Samos. The architect of this tunnel was a Megarean, Eupalinos, son of Naustrophos.

Possibly, pace Herodotus, even if the Samians had had no aqueduct he would anyhow have told us the story of the ring; be that as it may, his account of the first wonder, the aqueduct, is invaluable, and has been fully substantiated. Never was a town by nature worse off for its water-supply than Samos, and rarely has one been supplied by a more astonishing piece of engineering. The ‘great spring’ Hagniades has been found[268], the tunnel with its double channel, even the very earthenware pipes laid down by Eupalinos. We know perfectly well what to expect in an aqueduct made by the despots.

The excavators naturally sought for the conduit of Peisistratos in the immediate neighbourhood of Kallirrhoë, and there, close up to the Pnyx rock, they found it, at a distance of about 40 metres from the rock chamber Y. From that point up to the South of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus its course has been completely excavated. It is best seen in Professor Dörpfeld’s official plan ([Fig. 46]). Just South of the Odeion the conduit could not be cleared out, because of its damaged condition and the mass of débris that had fallen over it. Between the Odeion and the Dionysiac theatre it runs beneath an ancient road, and passes within the precinct of Dionysos, between the earlier and later temples. Beyond that point its course has not been excavated in detail, but beneath the modern Russian church a conduit passes which must be its continuation, and this leads on to the water-course[269] discovered long ago, now utilized for watering the Royal Gardens. This water is known to come from the upper valley of the Ilissus ([Fig. 49]).