The people are represented as coming up to the Acropolis in crowds, filling the road. The way becoming blocked by numbers, in their eagerness they begin to climb up by ladders, first from he Pelasgicum itself, through which the road passes. As this space became filled, they placed their ladders a little further from the road, in the Aesculapieum to the right and by the Areopagus to the left. Still others come, and they must move still further out to find room, to the grave of Talos beyond the Aesculapieum and to the Anaceum beyond the Areopagus. In another passage of Lucian, [121] Hermes declares that Pan dwells just above the Pelasgicum; so it reached at least as far as Pan's grotto.
Footnote 121:[ (return) ] Bis Accus, 9.
The fortifications of Mycenæ and Tiryns prove that it was not uncommon in ancient Greek cities to divide the Acropolis, the most ancient city, into an upper and a lower citadel.
Finally, that the strip of hillside in question was in fact the Pelasgicum, we are assured by the existing foundations of the ancient walls. A Pelasgic wall extends as a boundary-wall below the Aesculapieum, then onward at about the same level until interrupted by the Odeum of Herodes Atticus. At this point there are plain indications that before the construction of this building, this old wall extended across the space now occupied by the auditorium. Higher up the hill behind the Odeum, and both within and without the Beulé gate, we find traces of still other walls which separated the terraces of the Pelasgicum and probably contained the nine gates which characterized it. Here then we have the ancient city of Cecrops, the city before Theseus, consisting of the Acropolis and the part close beneath, particularly to the south, the Pelasgicum. We shall find for other reasons also that there is no need to stretch the meaning of the words ὑπ αὐτὴν πρὸς νότον to make them cover territory something like half a mile to the eastward, and to include the later Olympieum within the limits of our early city.
Wachsmuth has well said, [122] although this is not invariably true, [123] that υπο την ακρόπολιν and υπο τη ακροπόλει are used with reference to objects lying halfway up the slope of the Acropolis. On the next page he adds, however, that Thucydides could not have meant to describe as the ancient city simply the ground enclosed within the Pelasgic fortifications, or he would have mentioned these in the τεκμήρια. Thucydides, in the passage quoted, wished to show that the city of Cecrops was very small in comparison with the later city of Theseus; that the Acropolis was inhabited; and that the habitations did not extend beyond the narrow limits of the fortifications. He distinctly says that before the time of Theseus, the Acropolis was the city. He proceeds to give the reasons for his view: The presence of the ancient temples on the Acropolis itself, the fact that the ancient precincts outside the Acropolis were προς τουτο το μέρος της πολεως, and the neighborhood of the fountain Enneacrounus. We know, that the Acropolis was still officially called πολις in Thucydides' day; and πόλις so used would have no meaning if the Acropolis itself was not the ancient city. Προς τουτο το μέρος, in the passage quoted, refers to the city of Cecrops, the Acropolis and Pelasgicum taken together; and της πολεως refers to the entire later city as it existed in the time of Thucydides. It is, however, in the four temples outside the Acropolis included under the τεκμήριον δέ that we are particularly interested. The Pythium of the passage cannot be that Pythium close by the present Olympieum, which was founded by Pisistratus. Pausanias (I. 28, 4,) says: "On the descent [from the Acropolis], not in the lower part of the city but just below the Propylæa, is a spring of water, and close by a shrine of Apollo in a cave. It is believed that here Apollo met Creusa." Probably it was because this cave was the earliest abode of Apollo in Athens that Euripides placed here the scene of the meeting of Apollo and Creusa.
Footnote 122:[ (return) ] Berichte der philol.-histor. Classe der Königl. Sächs. Gesell. der Wiss., 1887, p. 383.
Footnote 123:[ (return) ] Am. Jour. of Archæology, III. 38, ff.
According to Dr. Dörpfeld it was opposite this Pythium that the Panathenaic ship came to rest. [124] In Ion, 285, Euripides makes it clear that, from the wall near the Pythium, the watchers looked toward Harma for that lightning which was the signal for the sending of the offering to Delphi. This passage would have no meaning if referred to lightning to be seen by looking toward Harma from any position near the existing Olympieum; for the rocks referred to by Euripides are to the northwest, and so could not be visible from the later Pythium. To be sure, in later times the official title of the Apollo of the cave seems to have been υπ' ακραίω or εν ακραις, but this was only after such a distinction became necessary from the increased number of Apollo precincts in the city. The inscriptions referring to the cave in this manner are without exception of Roman date. [125] From Strabo we learn [126] that the watch looked "toward Harma" from an altar to Zeus Astrapæus on the wall between the Pythium and the Olympieum. This wall has always been a source of trouble to those who place the Pythium in question near the present Olympieum. But this difficulty vanishes if we accept the authority of Euripides, for the altar of Zeus Astrapæus becomes located on the northwest wall of the Acropolis; and from this lofty position above the Pythium, with an unobstructed view of the whole northern horizon, it is most natural to expect to see these flashes from Harma.
Footnote 124:[ (return) ] PHILOSTRAT. Vit. Sophist. II p. 236.