The Ancient Circuit Walls of Athens

Anna Maria Theocharaki, Robert K. Pitt

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110637069
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Historia del arte antiguo

In Athens, most remains of the ancient city-wall were revealed during rescue excavations; as a result, documentation is scattered and fragmented. This book systematically investigates all published data, revealing the history and the nature of the surviving remains of this significant monument.

The book provides an analysis of the ancient literary sources, the western travellers' accounts, and the history of archaeological research on the circuit walls of ancient Athens. It collects, records, and maps all archaeological data from systematic and rescue excavations of the physical remains of the wall as it evolved over eleven centuries and through more than a dozen construction phases. It reviews issues relating to structure, chronology and topography of the ancient city wall, as well as to the management of its remains by the state authorities.

The enormous amount of primary evidence makes the book essential reading for scholars of the topography of ancient Athens. This monograph also aspires to increase community awareness of cultural heritage in everyday urban contexts, as the wall has been preserved in a number of ways: in basements of buildings, reburied in situ, in the open air or beneath glass floors.

1 Ancient Sources for the City Walls

1 Ancient sources for the pre-fifth century B.C. walls

The ancient testimonia have always provided a rich source of inspiration as well as a fundamental guide for the study of Athenian topography. Scholars of the 17th century attempted to write the history of Athens relying solely on these ancient sources, while western travellers visited the city in the hope of identifying its ancient monuments, following in the footsteps of Pausanias. From such early endeavours and up to our own times, students of the city’s ancient remains begin from the works of these same authors. This chapter will present the literary and epigraphical testimonia for the Athenian walls in chronological order, covering the period from the 5th century B.C. to the 6th century A.D.

Indisputable historical evidence and concrete physical remains exist only for the Themistoklean wall and its subsequent reconstructions and extensions. The present study of the Athenian fortifications thus has as its starting point the testimonies of those written sources referring to the Themistoklean wall, but we must first consider two prior questions which relate to the earlier fortifications of Athens, topics that have long occupied researchers. The first relates to the Pelargikon and its extent, and the second to the existence of a fortified peribolos in the period before Themistokles. Before dealing with the main theme of this study, we will attempt to explore through the written evidence some of the principal problems which must be tackled by any researcher investigating the evolution of the fortifications of the city before 479/8 B.C., the year the Themistoklean wall was constructed, beginning with the Mycenaean period.

The earliest mention of habitation on the Acropolis is from Thucydides, who says that before the time of Theseus the city consisted entirely of the Acropolis (2.15.3): τὸ δὲ πρὸ τοῦ ἡ ἀκρόπολις ἡ νῦν οὖσα πόλις ἦν.¹ Thucydides’ testimony is supported by the earliest pottery finds from the Acropolis, which date to the Middle Helladic period (ca. 2050–1600 B.C.),² while the oldest building remains discovered on the rock go back to around 1600–1500 B.C.; later still, retaining walls and terraces were constructed (ca. 1375–1225 B.C.), upon which the Mycenaean palace was built (Fig. 1),³ and it is perhaps to this that Homer makes reference in the Odyssey when he tells of the visit of the goddess Athena to Ἐρεχθῆος πυκινὸν δόμον (7.81), the strong house of Erechtheus.⁴

Fig. 1: The wall of the Athenian Acropolis encircled most of the surface of the rock during the Mycenaean period; here is a plan of the walls according to Iakovidis with the Pelargikon at the northwest. Within the circuit of the walls are traces of the retaining walls and terraces on which the Mycenaean palace was built. Iakovidis (1962) 204, fig. 38.

The main residential area of the Mycenaean period, however, developed around the rock and beyond it. This has been proven by the rich pottery finds discovered on the sunnier southern slope of the Acropolis, particularly in the area west and south of the Asklepieion, which mainly date to the period ca. 1500–1300 B.C.⁵ The evidence is consistent with Thucydides’ assessment concerning the direction in which the city of Athens developed beneath the Acropolis in the time before Theseus: τὸ ὑπ᾽ αὐτὴν πρὸς νότον μάλιστα τετραμμένον (2.15.3).⁶

It must have been the fear of imminent invasion that led the residents of the Acropolis and the area below it to construct the strong fortification encircling the upper surface of the rock which dates to LH IIIB2 (ca. 1225–1190 B.C.)⁷ (Fig. 1). The two faces of the wall were built in irregular courses with huge boulders, founded directly into the rock and following its contours, and it was assembled using the same construction techniques we find at the other Mycenaean citadels, such as Mycenae and Tiryns.⁸ Apart from the fortification of the rock itself, some other points must have been walled around its slopes, perhaps including the so-called Pelargikon, in order to safeguard the residential areas, sanctuaries and animals of the population located at the foot of the Acropolis.⁹ A brief tour of the ancient written sources for the Pelargikon is perhaps a useful introduction to the questions surrounding the position and extent of this wall.

The Pelargikon

Recounting an old tradition preserved by Hecataeus of Miletus (545–475 B.C.), Herodotus says that the Pelasgians were allowed by the Athenians to live on Mount Hymettus in return for having built the strong walls (6.137.2): τὴν σϕίσι αὐτοῖσι ὑπὸ τὸν Ὑμησσὸν ἐοῦσαν ἔδοσαν Πελασγοῖσι οἰκῆσαι μισθὸν τοῦ τείχεος τοῦ περὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολίν κοτε ἐληλαμένου.¹⁰ The Pelargikon, as a work of the Pelasgians, was thus connected by Herodotus to the fortification of the rock, and up until the time of Pausanias the tradition was still alive that the legendary Pelasgian masons of the walls of the Acropolis were Agrolas and Hyperbios (Paus. 1.28.3). It is not possible to verify if this reflects a memory of historical events or is merely fiction; the idea, however, is thought to be interwoven with the tradition in the Classical era that the Athenians were autochthonous.¹¹

Ancient sources mention both the Pelasgikon and the Pelargikon. Moreover, it appears that the two names could be used in antiquity to refer not only to the Mycenaean wall of the Acropolis, but also to a wall on the slopes, as well as to an area that that wall enclosed, but research into these names has until now failed to deliver any tangible results.¹² In the following discussion, the conventional name Pelargikon will be used, which, as we will see, had already prevailed during the 5th century B.C.

Herodotus provides several references to the Acropolis being the last refuge for certain political men in the Archaic period, such as Kylon in 632/1 B.C. (5.71), Peisistratos around 560 B.C. (1.59.6), and Isagoras in 508 B.C. (5.72), but he makes no explicit reference to the walls of the Acropolis. With regard to the Pelasgikon or Pelargikon, the historian connects it to a critical moment in the political history of the Archaic period, the overthrow of tyranny in 510 B.C., when Hippias, son of Peisistratos, and his followers were besieged there by their Athenian opponents and the Spartan king Kleomenes (Hdt. 5.64): Κλεομένης … ἐπολιόρκεε τοὺς τυράννους ἀπεργμένους ἐν τῷ Πελασγικῷ τείχεϊ.¹³ The same event is told by Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 19.5): κατακλείσας τὸν Ἱππίαν εἰς τὸ καλούμενον Πελαργικὸν τεῖχος ἐπολιόρκει μετὰ τῶν Ἀθηναίων.¹⁴

Subsequent references to the Pelargikon relate to Classical times, when most of the Acropolis fortifications had changed completely, since the Mycenaean wall of the summit had first been covered by the fortifications orchestrated by Themistokles (479 B.C.),¹⁵ later by those of Kimon (466 B.C.), and further still under the Periklean building programme (447–438 B.C.).¹⁶ The character of the Pelargikon at this point is mentioned by Thucydides while recounting the events of the first year of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C. In this context, the historian refers to the settlement of Athenian refugees in the area of the Pelargikon who had moved from the Attic countryside (2.17.1): οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ τά τε ἐρῆμα τῆς πόλεως ᾤκησαν καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ καὶ τὰ ἡρῷα πάντα πλὴν τῆς ἀκροπόλεως καὶ τοῦ ’Ελευσινίου καὶ εἴ τι ἄλλο βεβαίως κλῃστὸν ἦν· τό τε Πελαργικὸν καλούμενον τὸ ὑπὸ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν, ὃ καὶ ἐπάρατόν τε ἦν μὴ οἰκεῖν καί τι καὶ Πυθικοῦ μαντείου ἀκροτελεύτιον τοιόνδε διεκώλυε, λέγον ὡς «Τὸ Πελαργικὸν ἀργὸν ἄμεινον», ὅμως ὑπὸ τῆς παραχρῆμα ἀνάγκης ἐξῳκήθη.¹⁷ It seems that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War the Pelargikon was considered a sacred area, fenced off with a clearly defined boundary and in a position expressly distinguishable from the Acropolis and located beneath it.¹⁸

The Athenians attempted to address the undesirable situation caused by the settlement of the Pelargikon during the Archidamean War in the amendment of Lampon to the decree ‘on the first fruits’ (IG I³ 78, ll. 47–61), which dates between 423 and 421/420 B.C.¹⁹: ἐν τ[õ]ι Πελαργικõι (ll. 54–55).²⁰ The decree instructs the Archon Basileus to define the boundaries of the sanctuaries within the Pelargikon, and prescribes that altars are not to be established within those areas without the consent of the Council and the Assembly of the people, as well as forbidding the removal of stones and earth from the Pelargikon. Any violation of the terms of the decree will result in large financial penalties, and anyone infringing any of its provisions is to be denounced in the Council by the Archon Basileus and forced to pay a fine of five hundred drachmas.

Leaving aside the historians of the 5th century B.C., there are also references to the Pelargikon in Athenian drama, in which it is presented as an emblematic site in the history of the city.²¹ It may be on the grassy land of the Pelargikon, near the cave of Pan, that the daughters of Kekrops danced, as described by Euripides in the Ion (ll...