spot as the scene of St Paul’s address to the Athenians (E. Gardner, Anc. Athens, p. 505).
Hellenic Period.—While modern research has added considerably to our knowledge of prehistoric Athens, a still greater light has been thrown on the architecture and topography of the city in the earlier historic or “archaic” era, the subsequent age of Athenian greatness, and the period of decadence which set in with the Macedonian conquest; the first extends from the dawn of history to 480–479 B.C., when the city was destroyed by the Persians; the second, or classical, age closes in 322 B.C., when Athens lost its political independence after the Lamian War; the third, or Hellenistic, in 146 B.C., when the state fell under Roman protection. We must here group these important epochs together, as distinguished from the later period of Roman rule, and confine ourselves to a brief notice of their principal monuments and a record of the discoveries by which they have been illustrated in recent years.
The earliest settlement on the Acropolis was doubtless soon increased by groups of dwellings at its base, inhabited by the dependents of the princes who ruled in the stronghold. These habitations would naturally in the first instance The city
in the
“archaic”
era. lie in close proximity to the western approach; after the building of the Pelasgicum they seem to have extended beyond its walls towards the south and south-west—towards the sea and the waters of the Ilissus. The district thus occupied sloped towards the sun and was sheltered by the Acropolis from the prevailing northerly winds. The Thesean synoecism led to the introduction of new cults and the foundation of new shrines partly on the Acropolis, partly in the inhabited district at its base both within and without the wall of the Pelasgicum. Some of the shrines in this region are mentioned by Thucydides in a passage which is of capital importance for the topography of the city at this period (ii. 15). By degrees the inhabited area began to comprise the open ground to the north-west, the nearer portion of the later Ceramicus, or “potters’ field” (afterwards divided by the walls of Themistocles into the Inner and Outer Ceramicus), and eventually extended to the north and east of the citadel, which, by the beginning of the 5th century B.C., had become the centre of a circular or wheel-shaped city, πόλιος τροχοειδέος ἄκρα κάρηνα (Oracle apud Herod, vii. 140). To this enlarged city was applied, probably about the second half of the 6th century, the special designation τὸ ἄστυ, which afterwards distinguished Athens from its port, the Peiraeus; the Acropolis was already ἡ πόλις (Thucyd. ii. 15). The city is supposed to have been surrounded by a wall before the time of Solon, the existence of which may be deduced from Thucydides’ account of the assassination of Hipparchus (vi. 57), but no certain traces of such a wall have been discovered; the materials may have been removed to build the walls of Themistocles.
The centre of commercial and civic life of the older group of communities, as of the greater city of the classical age, was the Agora or market. Here were the various public buildings, which, when the power of the princes on The
Agora. the citadel was transferred to the archons, formed the offices of the administrative magistracy. The site of the primitive Agora (ἀρχαία ἀγορά) was probably in the hollow between the Acropolis and the Pnyx, which formed a convenient meeting-place for the dwellers on the north and south sides of the fortress as well as for its inhabitants. In the time of the Peisistratids the Agora was enlarged so as to extend over the Inner Ceramicus on the north-west, apparently reaching the northern declivities of the Areopagus and the Acropolis on the south. After the Persian Wars the northern portion was used for commercial, the southern for political and ceremonial purposes. In the southern were the Orchestra, where the Dionysiac dances took place, and the famous statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton by Antenor which were carried away by Xerxes; also the Metroum, or temple of the Mother of the Gods, the Bouleuterium, or council-chamber of the Five Hundred, the Prytaneum, the hearth of the combined communities, where the guests of the state dined, the temple of the Dioscuri, and the Tholus, or Skias, a circular stone-domed building in which the Prytaneis were maintained at the public expense; in the northern were the Leocorium, where Hipparchus was slain, the στοὰ βασιλική, the famous στοὰ ποικίλη, where Zeno taught, and other structures. The Agora was commonly described as the “Ceramicus,” and Pausanias gives it this name; of the numerous buildings which he saw here scarcely a trace remains; their position, for the most part, is largely conjectural, and the exact boundaries of the Agora itself are uncertain. What are perhaps the remains of the στοὰ βασιλική, in which the Archon Basileus held his court and the Areopagus Council sat in later times, were brought to light in the winter of 1897–1898, when excavations were carried out on the eastern slope of the “Theseum” hill. Here was found a rectangular structure resembling a temple, but with a side door to the north; it possessed a portico of six columns. The north slope of the Areopagus, where a number of early tombs were found, was also explored, and the limits of the Agora on the south and north-west were approximately ascertained. A portion of the main road leading from the Dipylon to the Agora was discovered.
In 1892 Dörpfeld began a series of excavations in the district between the Acropolis and the Pnyx with the object of determining the situation of the buildings described by Pausanias as existing in the neighbourhood of the The
Ennea-
crunus. Agora, and more especially the position of the Enneacrunus fountain. The Enneacrunus has hitherto been generally identified with the spring Callirrhoe in the bed of the Ilissus, a little to the south-east of the Olympieum; it is apparently, though not explicitly, placed by Thucydides (ii. 15) in proximity to that building, as well as the temple of Dionysus ἐν λίμναις and other shrines, the temples of Zeus Olympius and of Ge and the Pythium, which he mentions as situated mainly to the south of the Acropolis. On the other hand, Pausanias (i. 14. 1), who never deviates without reason from the topographical order of his narrative, mentions the Enneacrunus in the midst of his description of certain buildings which were undoubtedly in the region of the Agora, and unless he is guilty of an unaccountable digression the Enneacrunus which he saw must have lain west of the Acropolis. It is now generally agreed that the Agora of classical times covered the low ground between the hill of the “Theseum,” the Areopagus and the Pnyx; and Pausanias, in the course of his description, appears to have reached its southern end. The excavations revealed a main road of surprisingly narrow dimensions winding up from the Agora to the Acropolis. A little to the south-west of the point where the road turns towards the Propylaea was found a large rock-cut cistern or reservoir which Dörpfeld identifies with the Enneacrunus. The reservoir is supplied by a conduit of 6th-century tiles connected with an early stone aqueduct, the course of which is traceable beneath the Dionysiac theatre and the royal garden in the direction of the Upper Ilissus. These elaborate waterworks were, according to Dörpfeld, constructed by the Peisistratids in order to increase the supply from the ancient spring Callirrhoe; the fountain was furnished with nine jets and henceforth known as Enneacrunus. This identification has been hotly contested by many scholars, and the question must still be regarded as undecided. An interesting confirmation of Dörpfeld’s view is furnished by the map of Guillet and Coronelli, published in 1672, in which the Enneacrunus is depicted as a well with a stream of running water in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx. The fact that spring water is not now found in this locality is by no means fatal to the theory; recent engineering investigations have shown that much of the surface water of the Attic plain has sunk to a lower level. In front of the reservoir is a small open space towards which several roads converge; close by is a triangular enclosure of polygonal masonry, in which were found various relics relating to the worship of Dionysus, a very ancient wine-press (ληνός) and the remains of a small temple. Built over this early precinct, which Dörpfeld identifies with the Dionysium ἐν λίμναις, or Lenaeum, is a basilica-shaped building of the Roman period, apparently sacred to Bacchus; in this was found an inscription containing the rules
