Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides / by Jane Ellen Harrison.

  • Harrison, Jane Ellen, 1850-1928.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides / by Jane Ellen Harrison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    but for that earlier Parthenon begun before the Persian War, and fated never to be completed. At 4 we see the great Kimonian wall as it exists to-day, though obscured by its mediaeval casing. All this, if we want to realize primitive Athens, we must think away. The date of Kimon’s wall is of course roughly fixed as shortly after 469 B.C., the foundations of the early Parthenon are certainly before the Persian War, probably after the date of Peisistratos. We may probably, though not quite certainly, attribute them to the time of the first democracy, the activity of Kleisthenesh a period that saw the building of the theatre- shaped Pnyx, the establishment of the new agora in the Kera- meikos, and the Stoa of the Athenians at Delphi. Laurium had just begun to yield silver from her mines. Themistocles, before and after the war, was all for fortification; the Alkmaeonid Kleisthenes may well have indulged an hereditary tendency to temple building. Save for the clearing of our minds, the date of the early temple-foundations does not immediately concern us. Their importance is that, but for the building of the Parthenon, early and late, we should never apparently have had the great altera- tion and addition to the south side of the hill and the ancient Pelasgian wall would never have been covered in. Let us see how this happened*'*. We start with nothing but the natural rock, and on it the Pelasgian wall (1). Over the natural rock is a layer of earth, marked I. Whatever objects have been found in that layer date before the laying of the great foundations; these objects are chiefly fragments of pottery, many of them of ‘ Mycenean ’ character, and some ordinary black-figured vases. It is decided to build a great temple, and the foundations are to be laid. The ground slopes away somewhat rapidly, so the southern side of the temple is to be founded on an artificial plat- form. The trench (6) is dug in the layer of earth; then, just as on the north side of the hill, no scaffolding is used, but as the foundations are laid course by course, the debris is used as a plat- form for the workmen. A supporting wall (2) is required and built of polygonal masonry; it rises course by course, corresponding 1 Dorpfeld, ‘Die Zeit des alteren Parthenon,’ A. Mitt. 190‘2, p. 410. 2 A. Mitt. ]892, p. 158, pi. viii. and ix.