Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

Incomplete though the remains of this settlement are, the certain fact of its existence, and its close analogy to the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae are of priceless value. Ancient Athens is now no longer a thing by itself; it falls into line with all the other ancient ‘Mycenaean’ fortified hills, with Thoricus, Acharnae, Aphidna, Eleusis. The citadel of Kekrops is henceforth as the citadel of Agamemnon and as the citadel of Priam. The ‘strong house’ of Erechtheus is not a temple, but what the words plainly mean, the dwelling of a king. Moreover we are dealing not with a city, in the modern sense, of vague dimensions, but with a compact fortified burgh.

Thucydides, though certainly convicted of some inexactness as to detail, is in his main contention seen to be strictly true—‘what is now the citadel was the city.’ Grasping this firmly in our minds we may return to note his inexactness as to detail. By examining certain portions of the Pelasgic wall more closely, we shall realize how much smaller was the space it enclosed than the Acropolis as known to Thucydides.

Fig. 3.

The general shape of the hill, and its subsequent alteration, are best realized by Dr Dörpfeld’s simple illustration[13]. A vertical section of the natural rock, it is roughly of the shape of a house ([Fig. 3]) with an ordinary gable roof. The sides of the house represent the steep inaccessible cliffs to north and south and east; the lines of the roof slope like the lines of the upper part of the hill converging at the middle. Suppose the sides of the house produced upwards to the height of the roof-ridge, and the triangular space so formed filled in, we have the state of the Acropolis when Kimon’s walls were completed. The filling in of those spaces is the history of the gradual ‘levelling of the surface of the hill, the work of many successive generations.’ The section in [Fig. 4] will show that this levelling up had to be done chiefly on the north and south sides; to the east and west the living rock is near the surface.

Fig. 4.

It has already been noted that on the north side of the Acropolis the actual remains of the Pelasgian wall are few and slight; but as the wall of Themistocles which superseded it follows the contours of the rock, we may be sure that here the two were nearly coincident. The wall of Themistocles remains to this day a perpetual monument of the disaster wrought by the Persians. Built into it opposite the Erechtheum, not by accident, but for express memorial, are fragments of the architrave, triglyphs and cornice of poros stone, and the marble metopes, from the old temple of Athena which the Persians had burnt. Other memorials lay buried out of sight, and were brought to light by the excavations of 1886. The excavators[14] were clearing the ground to the north-east of the Propylaea. On the 6th of February, at a depth of from 3-4½ metres below the surface, they came upon fourteen of the ‘Maidens[15].’ The section[16] in [Fig. 5] shows the place where they had slept their long sleep. We should like to think they were laid there in all reverence for their beauty, but hard facts compel us to own that, though their burial may have been prompted in part by awe of their sanctity, yet the practical Athenian did not shrink from utilizing them as material to level up with.

The deposit, it is here clearly seen, was in three strata. Each stratum consisted of statues and fragments of statues, inscribed bases, potsherds, charred wood, stones, and earth. Each stratum, and this is the significant fact, is separated from the one above it by a thin layer of rubble, the refuse of material used in the wall of Themistocles. The conclusion to the architect is manifest. In building the wall, perhaps to save expense, no scaffolding was used; but, after a few courses were laid, the ground inside was levelled up, and for this purpose what could be better than the statues knocked down by the Persians? Headless, armless, their sanctity was gone, their beauty uncared for. In the topmost of the three strata—the stratum which yielded the first find of ‘Maidens’—a hoard of coins was found: thirty-five Attic tetradrachms, two drachmas, and twenty-three obols. All are of Solon’s time except eight of the obols, which date somewhat earlier. Besides the ‘Maidens,’ on this north side of the Acropolis other monuments came to light, many bronzes, and among them the lovely flat Athena[17], the beautiful terra-cotta plaque[18] painted with the figure of a hoplite, and countless votive terra-cottas.