Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

3. There is a spring near at hand used from of old for the most important purposes, and still so used on sacred occasions.

4. The citadel, as well as the present city, was still in the time of Thucydides called the ‘city.’

We begin with the statement as to the limits of the city. Not till we clearly understand exactly what Thucydides states, how much and how little, can we properly weigh the fourfold evidence he offers in support of his statement.

‘Before this what is now the citadel was the city, together with what is below it towards about south.’ The city before Theseus was the citadel or acropolis of the days of Thucydides, plus something else. The citadel or acropolis needed then, and needs now, no further definition. By it is clearly meant not the whole hill to the base, but the plateau on the summit enclosed by the walls of Themistocles and Kimon together with the fortification out-works on the west slope still extant in the days of Thucydides. But the second and secondary part of the statement is less clearly defined. The words neither give nor suggest, to us at least, any circumscribing line; only a direction, and that vague enough, ‘towards about south.’ It is a point at which the scholar naturally asks, whether archaeology has anything to say?

But before that question is asked and answered, it should be noted that from the shape of the sentence alone something may be inferred. That the present citadel is coextensive with the old city is the main contention. We feel that Thucydides might have stopped there and yet made his point, namely, the smallness of that ancient city. But Thucydides is a careful man, he remembers that the two were not quite coextensive. To the old city must be reckoned an additional portion below the citadel (τὸ ὑπ’ αὐτήν), a portion that, as will later be seen, his readers might be peculiarly apt to forget; so he adds it to his statement. But, by the way it is hung on, we should naturally figure that portion as ‘not only subordinate to the acropolis, but in some way closely incorporated with it. In relation to the acropolis, this additional area, to justify the arrangement of the words of Thucydides, should be a part neither large nor independent[7].’

Thus much can be gathered from the text; it is time to see what additional evidence is brought by archaeology.

Thucydides was, according to his lights, scrupulously exact. It happens, however, that in the nature of things he could not, as regards the limits of the ancient city, be strictly precise. The necessary monuments were by his time hidden deep below the ground. His first and main statement, that one portion of the old city was coextensive with the citadel of his day, is not quite true. This upper portion of the old burgh was a good deal smaller; all the better for his argument, had he known it! Thanks to systematic excavation we know more about the limits of the old city than Thucydides himself, and it happens curiously enough that this more exact and very recent knowledge, while it leads us to convict Thucydides of a real and unavoidable inexactness, gives us also the reason for his caution. It explains to us why, appended to his statement about the city and the citadel, he is careful to put in the somewhat vague addendum, ‘together with what is below it towards about south.’

To us to-day the top of the Acropolis appears as a smooth plateau sloping gently westwards towards the Propylaea, and this plateau is surrounded by fortification walls, whose clean, straight lines show them to be artificial. Very similar in all essentials was the appearance presented by the hill to the contemporaries of Thucydides, but such was not the ancient Acropolis. What manner of thing the primitive hill was has been shown by the excavations carried on by the Greek Government from 1885-1889. The excavators, save when they were prevented by the foundations of buildings, have everywhere dug down to the living rock, every handful of the débris exposed has been carefully examined, and nothing more now remains for discovery.

When the traveller first reaches Athens he is so impressed by the unexpected height and dominant situation of Lycabettus, that he wonders why it plays so small a part in classical record. Plato[8] seems to have felt that it was hard for Lycabettus to be left out. In his description of primitive Athens he says, ‘in old days the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side and Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side of the hill,’ and there is a certain rough geological justice about Plato’s description. All these hills are spurs of that last offshoot of Pentelicus, known in modern times as Turkovouni. Yet to the wise Athena, Lycabettus was but building material; she was carrying the hill through the air to fortify her Acropolis, when she met the crow[9] who told her that the disobedient sisters had opened the chest, and then and there she dropped Lycabettus and left it ... to the crows.

A moment’s reflection will show why the Acropolis was chosen and Lycabettus left. Lycabettus is a good hill to climb and see a sunset from. It has not level space enough for a settlement. The Acropolis has the two desiderata of an ancient burgh, space on which to settle, and easy defensibility.