From the disastrous termination of the Peloponnesian war to the yet more fatal defeat at Charoneia, the architectural history of Athens is a blank, only interrupted by the restoration of the Long Walls and the rebuilding of the fortifications of Piraeus by Conon, both of which had been destroyed by Lysander. The financial genius of the orator Lycurgus, whose administration lasted from 338 to 325 B.C., replenished to some extent the exhausted resources of his country. He reorganised her finance, he catalogued and rearranged the sacred and national treasuries, and brought order and efficiency into every department of state. This new impulse made itself felt in building activity. The Dionysiac theatre was now first completed; and though, as we have already seen, many of the sculptures and other marbles recently uncovered on its site are the restorations of a very much later age, yet we may confidently assume that in all material points the theatre as we are now able to view it represents the condition of the building as it stood in the time of Lycurgus. Another remarkable work which signalised his administration was the Panathenaic Stadium. On the southern side of the Ilissus, at right angles to the stream, a hollow space was scooped out of the soil, some 680 feet in length and 130 in breadth. It is possible that the site had been used for gymnastic contests before the orator's time; it was he, however, who first undertook to level it properly and lay it out. But it was reserved for the munificence of Herodes Atticus finally to complete it. He furnished the place with magnificent seats of Pentelic marble, tier upon tier, capable of accommodating, at the very least, 40,000 spectators. An attempt was recently made to excavate the Stadium, but it was found that every trace of antiquity had been destroyed, the marble having been used as a quarry for building purposes.

The administration of Lycurgus is an important era in Athenian architecture; for after his time we never seem to hear of any more buildings having been reared by the Athenian Government. The best-known extant edifices of the period immediately following were the work of wealthy private persons. Round the eastern end of the Acropolis, starting from the eastern entrance of the Dionysiac theatre, then leaving the Odeium of Pericles to the left, and thence sweeping westward to the Agora, there ran a street which formed a favourite promenade in ancient Athens, commonly known as the "Street of Tripods." It gained this name from the small votive shrines which adorned it, supporting upon their summit the bronze tripods which had been obtained as prizes in the choragic contests. The tripods thus mounted often themselves served as a frame to some masterpiece of sculpture, such, for example, as the famous satyr of Praxiteles. It had early become the custom to

the theatre; but when this space was filled, they gradually extended all along this street, and their erection was made more and more a matter of private display. One of these shrines still stands, and is well known as the monument of Monument Lysicrates. It bears the following inscription upon its of Lysiarchitrave :-"Lysicrates, son of Lysitheides, of the deme crates. Cicynna, was choragus; the tribe Acamantis gained the prize with a chorus of boys; Theon accompanied them upon the flute; Lysiades of Athens taught them; Euænetus was archon." In other words, the date of this monument was 335 B.C. Fifteen years after that a somewhat similar shrine was reared at the topmost summit of the back of the great theatre, where an ancient grotto was by Thrasyllus Monument converted into a choragic monument. The Byzantine of ThraChristians transformed the building into a chapel of the syllus. Virgin, under the title of Panaghia Spiliotissa, or Our Lady of the Grotto. Early travellers describe this little shrine as consisting of three pilasters engaged in a plain wall, surmounted by an inscribed architrave; above was supported a figure of Dionysus, now preserved, but in a much injured state, in the British Museum. On the top of the statue originally rested the tripod that formed the prize of Thrasyllus.

period.

The Macedonian period again marks a new epoch in the Macehistory of Athenian topography. Henceforward almost donian every embellishment Athens received was at the hands of the various foreign princes, whose tastes inclined them to patronise a city so rich in historical associations, and so ready to reward each new admirer with an equal tribute of servile adulation. But whatever decoration the city might owe to royal vanity or munificence, her connection with these foreign potentates brought her far more of injury than advantage. She became entangled in their wars, and usually found herself upon the losing side.

Upon the death of Alexander the Athenians claimed their liberty, but they at once had to submit to Antipater (322 B.C.), who placed a garrison in Munychia. It perhaps was he who defaced the ancient Pnyx; at all events, from this time forward the political oratory of Athens became silent for ever. In 318 B.C. Demetrius the Phalerean was made governor of Athens by Cassander, and received every kind of homage from his servile subjects. But as soon as the other Demetrius, surnamed Poliorcetes, appeared in the Piraeus, the Athenians welcomed him with open arms. For restoring to them the forms of democracy he was extolled with abject adulation, and had assigned to him a residence in the Opisthodomus of the Parthenon itself, where he profaned the sanctuary of the virgin goddess with unbridled sensuality. Upon the defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus (301 B.C.), Demetrius fled from Athens, and under Lachares, the leading demagogue of the time, the city enjoyed the shadow of independence. But the demagogue soon developed into a tyrant, and when Demetrius reappeared in 296 B.C. and besieged the city, Lachares had to fly from the indignation of the citizens, taking with him the golden shields that adorned the eastern front of the Acropolis, and having rifled the chryselephantine statue itself. Again, in 268 B.C., Athens endured a long siege from Antigonus Gonatas, who laid waste the surrounding country. Still more disastrous was the ineffectual siege by Philip V. in 200 B.C., who, pitching his camp at Cynosarges, destroyed everything that lay aroundthe temple of Heracles, the gymnasium there, and the Lyceium as well. At length, in 146 B.C., Greece became a Roman province, and Athens succumbed peacefully to the Roman yoke.

During the inglorious period of Athenian history which has just been sketched, several new buildings were reared by the munificence of foreign princes. Ptolemy Philadelphus

ing their studies at Athens, enrolled themselves at a gymnasium, and there had the advantage of a social life and regular discipline, which reminds one somewhat of the college system in the English universities.

his death.

Under the rule of the Romans Athens enjoyed the privileges of a libera civitas, i.e., no garrison was introduced into the town, no tribute was levied upon it, and the constitution was nominally left unaltered. The Areopagus, indeed, under Roman influence, recovered some of its ancient power, and was made to take precedence of the more democratic assemblies of the Boule and Ecclesia. The revision also of the laws by Hadrian would, of course, introduce some changes. Yet it may surely be maintained that Athens under the Roman dominion was in a far better position than in the days before the taking of Corinth by Mummius, when she had been at the mercy of each successive Macedonian pretender. The Romans appear to have shown a remarkable respect for the feelings of the Athenian people. It would be superfluous here to recall the warm expressions of admiration which fall from Cicero and Horace when speaking of Athens. A visit to Athens was regarded by the educated Roman as a kind of pilgrimage. One great disaster Athens did indeed undergo at the hands of Rome; this was the siege and plunder of the city by Sulla in the Mithridatic War. Yielding to the threats of the king and the representations of the villainous Aristion, the Athenians had joined the cause of the king of Pontus, and Sulla deliberately resolved to gratify his revenge (Athenæus, v. 47, foll.; Plut., Sulla, 12). After a protracted siege, in which the inhabitants suffered the extreme of famine, mocked at once by the insolence of Aristion within, and pressed by a remorseless foe without, Athens at length was taken on March 1, 86 B.C. Many of the public buildings (happily not the most important) were overthrown, much of the sacred treasure was rifled by the soldiers, and many works of art, together with the library of Apellicon, containing the collections of Aristotle and Theophrastus, were carried off by the cultivated Sulla. The loss of life was also great large numbers were butchered by the soldiery, and the Agora of Cerameicus flowed with blood. We are told that Sulla was wont to take credit for having "spared Athens." He did not indeed destroy it, but his conduct on this occasion alone would suffice to fix an indelible stain upon his memory. With this disastrous exception, Athens prospered under the Roman rule, and students from all parts of the GræcoRoman world flocked thither to attend the lectures of the philosophers and rhetoricians, or to view the countless works of art that adorned the city. Athenian society grew more and more academic. The current tone of educated circles was antiquarian even to pedantry. The inscriptions relating to the Roman period clearly reveal to us the chief interests of contemporary Athenian life. Epitaphs in abundance testify to the deridapovía which delighted in proper names derived from deities and religious ceremonies, and the pride of genealogical pedantry. Honorary decrees abound to justify the charge of adulation which was the reproach of the later Athenians. But the commonest class of monuments are the gymnastic inscriptions, which give

1 The beautiful elegy of Propertius, beginning "Magnum iter ad doctas proficisci cogor Athenas" (iv. 21), is worth referring to.

2 See note in No. 81 of Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, also No. 93.

8 Cf. ibid., No. 47; and Cumanudes, 'Emiypapal ’Attikĝs ¿TITÚμBiol, passim.

cus.

But enough has now been said of the condition of Athenian society under the Roman rule; it is time to enumerate the embellishments which the city received during this period. It is uncertain at what exact date the Horologium of Andronicus of Cyrrhus was erected, which Horois generally known as the Tower of the Winds. It is first logium ef mentioned by Varro (De Re Rust., iii. 5, 17), and is there- Androni fore older than 35 B.C., though certainly not earlier than the Roman conquest. This monument, so familiar to every scholar, is described by Virruvius (i. 6, 4) as an octagonal tower of marble. It stands at what anciently formed the eastern extremity of the Roman Agora, presently to be described. On each face, beneath the cornice, is sculptured the figure of the wind which blew from the corresponding quarter; on the top of the roof was a pedestal supporting a bronze triton (now destroyed), which was constructed to turn with the wind, and to point out the wind's quarter with a wand which he held in his hand. The sculptured figures of the winds are in good preservation, though of a declining period of art. They represent the four cardinal points and the intermediate quarters between these. Each has his emblems: Boreas, the north wind, blows his noisy conch; Notus, the rainy south wind, bears his water jar; Zephyrus, the west wind, has his lap full of flowers, and so on. Under each figure are the remains of a sun-dial; and besides all these external features, the interior was constructed to form a water-clock, supplied with water from the spring at the Acropolis called Clepsydra. Thus in cloudy weather a substitute was provided for the dial and the sun.

The Agora in Cerameicus has already been described, and it was there noticed that the name Cerameicus often appears to be employed alone to denote the Agora. This may be easily accounted for. By the munificence of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus, a propylæum of four Doric columns, which still exist, was reared at the N.E. extremity of the Cerameicus Agora. The space between the central columns is about 12 feet, between the side columns not quite 5 feet. Over the pediment is a pedestal, with an inscription in honour of Lucius Caesar, the grandson of Augustus, whose equestrian statue it appears to have supported. This propylæum has by some archæologists been regarded as a portico of a temple to Athena Archegetis, to whom we learn, from an inscription on the architrave, that the building was dedicated out of the moneys given by Julius and Augustus. But there can be no reasonable doubt that these columns formed the entrance into a new Agora, dedicated to Athena New of Archegetis, just as it was customary with the Romans Roman to dedicate a forum to some deity, and intended chiefly, Agora. it would seem, for the sale of the olive oil which formed so large and characteristic an export from Athens. This appears to be proved by the lengthy inscription (see Böckh, Corp. Inser. Græc., No. 355) which exists immediately within the entrance, and contains an edict of the Emperor Hadrian regulating the sale of oil and the duties payable upon it. It is easy to understand how, after the erection of the Roman Agora, the old market would be styled ǹ ¿yopà ev Kepaμeik@ or simply Cerameicus, while the new oil-market would be distinguished as the

4 See Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, No. 39, and foll. The best account of the condition of Athens under the Romans may be found in a dissertation by H. L. Ahrens, De Athenarum statu politico, &c., and another by Professor Dittenberger, De Ephebia

Attica.

Athens.

of the Acropolis, and entering through the Propylæa, he describes in order each object which adorned the summit, with an accuracy fully borne out by recent excavations. His last walk in Athens (ch. xxviii. § 4, xxix. § 1) conducts us through the various buildings at the western base of the Acropolis. From the temple of the Semnæ he passes to the court of the Areopagus, and the mention of this leads him to speak of the other judicial courts of Athens. The rest of his first book is occupied with an account of the suburbs of Athens-the Academy, the sacred way to Eleusis, &c., and the topography of Attica in general.

Subsequent A few words may suffice to describe the ultimate fate of history of Athens. In the reign of Valerian the northern barbarians first appeared in the north of Greece, where they laid siege to Thessalonica. This extraordinary apparition having alarmed all Greece, the Athenians restored their city wall, which Sulla had dismantled, and otherwise placed the town in a state of defence sufficient to secure it against a coup. de-main. But under Gallienus, the next emperor, Athens was besieged, and the archonship abolished, upon which the strategos or general, who had previously acted as inspector of the Agora, became the chief magistrate. Under Claudius the city was taken, but recovered soon Constantine the Great gloried in the title of General of Athens, which had been conferred upon him, and expressed high satisfaction on obtaining from the people the honour of a statue with an inscription,-a distinction which he acknowledged by sending to the city a yearly gratuity of grain. He also conferred on the governor of Attica and Athens the title of Méyas Aoûέ, or Grand Duke, which soon became hereditary; and his son Constans bestowed several islands on the city, in order to supply it with corn. In the time of Theodosius I., that is, towards the end of the 4th century, the Goths laid waste Thessaly and Epirus; but Theodorus, general of the Greeks, acted with so much prudence, that he saved the Greek cities from pillage and the inhabitants from captivity, a service which was most gratefully acknowledged. But this deliverance proved only temporary. The fatal period was now fast approaching, and, in a real barbarian, Athens was doomed to experience a conqueror yet more remorseless than Sulla. This was Alaric, king of the Goths, who, under the Emperors Arcadius and Honorius, overran both Italy and Greece, sacking, pillaging, and destroying. Never, indeed, did the fury even of barbarian conquest discharge itself in a fiercer or more desolating tempest. The Peloponnesian cities were overturned; Arcadia and Lacedæmon were both laid waste; the gulfs of Lepanto and Ægina were illuminated with the flames of Corinth; and the Athenian matrons were dragged in chains to satisfy the brutal desires of the barbarians. The invaluable treasures of antiquity were removed; stately and magnificent structures were reduced to heaps of ruin; and Athens, stripped of the monuments of her ancient splendour, was compared by Synesius, a writer of that age, to a victim of which the body had been consumed, and the skin only remained.

After this dreadful visitation Athens sank into insignificance, and became as obscure as it had once been illustrious. We are indeed informed that the cities of Hellas were put in a state of defence by Justinian, who repaired the walls of Corinth, which had been overturned by an earthquake, and those of Athens, which had fallen into decay through age. But from the time of this emperor a chasm of nearly seven centuries ensues in its history; except that, about the year 1130, it furnished Roger, the first king of Sicily, with a number of artificers, who there introduced the culture of silk, which afterwards passed into Italy. The worms, it seems, had been brought from India to Constantinople in the reign of Justinian.

Doomed, apparently, to become the prey of every spoiler, Athens again emerges from oblivion in the 13th century, under Baldwin and his crusaders, at a time when it was besieged by a general of Theodorus Lascaris, the Greek emperor. In 1427 it was taken by Sultan Amurath II.; but some time afterwards it was recovered from the infidels by another body of crusaders under the marquis of Montferrat, a powerful baron of the West, who bestowed it, along with Thebes, on Otho de la Roche, one of his principal followers. For a considerable time both cities were governed by Otho and his descendants, with the title of dukes; but being unable to maintain themselves in their Greek principality, they were at length succeeded by Walter of 'Brienne, who, soon after his succession, was expelled by his new subjects, aided by the Spaniards of Catalonia. The next rulers of Athens were the Acciajuoli, an opulent family of Florence, in whose possession it remained until 1455, when it was taken by Omar, a general of Mahomet II., and thus fell a second time into the hands of the barbarians. The victorious sultan settled a Mahometan colony in his new conquest, which he incorporated with the Ottoman empire; and Athens, as well as Greece, continued to form an integral part of the Turkish dominions, until the treaty of Adrianople in 1829, following up the provisions and stipulations of the treaty of London, 7th July 1827, established within certain limits the new state of Greece, of which Athens is now the capital.

From the period of the Ottoman conquest to the com- Modern mencement of the insurrection in 1821, Athens was only sieges, known in history by two attempts, on the part of the Venetians, to expel the Turks and make themselves masters of the city. The first of these took place in 1464, only nine years after its capture by the Osmanlis, and proved an entire failure. But the second, which was undertaken in 1687, more than two centuries later, was crowned with a temporary and fatal success. In the month of September of that year, Count Königsmark, a Swede in the service of Venice, having disembarked at the Piraeus a force of 8000 foot and 870 horse, forming part of the armament under Francesco Morosini, afterwards doge, marched to Athens, and having summoned the citadel without effect, he erected a battery of heavy ordnance on the hill of the Pnyx, and placing two mortars near the Latin convent at the western foot of the Acropolis, bombarded it for several days. The fire of the cannon was chiefly directed against the Propylæa, and the modern defences below that edifice, whilst the mortars continued, without intermission, to throw shells into the citadel. The consequence was, that the beautiful little temple of Nike Apteros, the frieze of which is now in the British Museum, was completely destroyed by the breaching battery; and the Parthenon, besides being greatly injured by the bursting of the shells, was, towards the close of the attack, almost rent in pieces by the explosion of a powder magazine, which reduced the middle of the temple to a heap of ruins, threw down the whole of the wall at the eastern extremity, and precipitated to the ground every statue on the eastern pediment. western extremity was fortunately less injured, and a part of the Opisthodomos was still left standing, together with some of the lateral columns of the peristyle adjoining to the cell. But the shock was nevertheless abundantly disastrous; and when the Turks afterwards regained possession of the citadel (from which, on this occasion, they were expelled), they did all in their power to complete the destruction which the Venetians had so vigorously begun, by defacing, mutilating, or burning for lime every fragment of the edifice within their reach.

The

In the course of the revolutionary war Athens sustained three sieges. The first was laid by the Greeks in 1822. Having carried the town by storm, and driven

the Turks into the citadel, they established a strict blockade of the fortress, which was continued until the advance of the Pasha at the head of 4000 men induced them to abandon their enterprise, and fly, with the Athenians, to Salamis and Ægina. Two months afterwards, the Pasha having left Athens to the defence of 1500 men, the Greeks again ventured to attack the town, and succeeded in obliging the Turks to seek refuge in the citadel, which they forthwith determined to besiege; but, from ignorance and want of means, no progress whatever was made in the operation until they obtained possession of the well which supplied the garrison with water, when the Turks agreed to capitulate upon condition of being immediately embarked with their families and sent to Asia Minor. On various pretences, however, embarkation was delayed from time to time; and when intelligence at length arrived that a large Turkish force was advancing upon Athens, the Palicari, instead of manning the walls and preparing for a vigorous defence, rushed in a body to the houses where the prisoners were confined, and commenced an indiscriminate massacre. For this atrocity it is no palliation to remember that the Greek character had morally suffered from centuries of servitude, and that they had terrible arrears of vengeance to exact. The third siege was laid by the Turks in 1826. The Greeks had left a strong garrison in the Acropolis, with provisions for several months; and a spring of water having been discovered in the cave of Pan, and enclosed by Odysseus within the defences of the citadel, there was no danger of its being starved into a surrender. But the Turks having established batteries near the Pnyx and on the hill of the Museium, and having drawn a line of trenches round the citadel, with the view of intercepting all communication between the besieged and the Greek army, the garrison was hard pressed; and although Colonel Fabvier succeeded in forcing his way through the Turkish lines with 500 men and a supply of ammunition, and thus affording immediate relief, yet the total defeat of the Greek army under General Church at the battle of Athens, fought in the hope of raising the siege, led soon afterwards to the surrender of the Acropolis, which remained in the hands of the Turks until the termination of the revolutionary war. In 1812 Athens could boast of a population of 12,000 dition. souls, but during the war the greater part of the city was laid in ruins, and most of the inhabitants were dispersed. In 1834 it was declared the capital of the new kingdom of Greece. Great exertions have been made since then to restore the city; streets have been opened, levelled, widened; the ancient sewers have been cleared and repaired, and the marshes of Cephisus drained. Excavations of ancient sites and buildings have been carried out,

sent

chiefly through the efforts of the Archæological Society of Athens, but the antiquaries and scholars of all Europe have anxiously watched their endeavours, and France and Prussia have vied with Great Britain in the prosecution of Athenian discovery. The Theseium has become a treasury of ancient sculpture, and a new archæological museum has been also erected to contain the ever-increasing stores of ancient inscriptions and sculptures. The royal palace is a large building of Pentelic marble, situated in the eastern quarter of the city, on the highest part of the gentle eminence which rises from the level of the Ilissus and Cephisus towards Lycabettus. The University (πavetiorýμov) was founded in 1837, and numbers over 1200 students, while its staff of 52 professors includes the names of some of the most learned Greek archæologists in Europe. In fact, the schools and other educational institutions of Athens are | very numerous, and thoroughly efficient. The archæological journals of Athens are full of information concerning the progress of excavations, and publish the texts of newly-discovered inscriptions. The population in 1871 was over 48,000, exclusive of the population of the Piraeus, which would bring the total up to about 60,000. The harbour is visited by ships of all nations. A railway connects the Piraeus with the city, and enters the ancient town about half-way between the site of the Dipylum and Piraan gates. The terminus stands in the midst of what once was the Agora in Cerameicus. The principal street is Hermes Street, running from west to east, a little north of the terminus, until it reaches the royal palace. Two other good streets, Athena Street and Æolus Street, traverse this at right angles. The other streets, with the exception of Stadium Street on the N.E., between the chamber of deputies and the University, are generally narrow and winding. Altogether, Athens, like the rest of Greece, is in a condition of increasing prosperity, and reaps the blessings of freedom. It is true that in our own country the ardent philhellenism of forty years ago has cooled down, and Greece is no longer an object of popular and sentimental admiration. Yet never did the scholars of Europe turn with keener zest to the study of her ancient monuments; and if Attica were cleared for ever of brigands, and furnished with satisfactory roads, then in numbers tenfold greater than now would reverent travellers from the west of Europe delight to make their pilgrimage to the birthplace of philosophy, literature, and art.

|

ATHIAS, JOSEPH, a celebrated rabbi and printer at Amsterdam, whose editions of the Hebrew Bible are noted for the general correctness of the text. Although he was a learned Hebraist, there are occasional errors in the points, especially in the edition of 1661, but many of these were corrected in that of 1667. He also printed several editions of the Bible in the corrupted Hebrew spoken by the Jews of Spain, Germany, Poland, and England. He died in 1700.

ATHLETÆ (åλraí), among the Greeks and Romans, was the designation of persons who contended for prizes (20λa) in the public games, exclusive of musical and other contests, where bodily strength was not called into play, though here also the word was sometimes applied, and it was even extended to horses which had won a race, and again metaphorically, e.g., to persons who had exerted themselves in good deeds (αθλητὰς τῶν καλῶν ἔργων). On the other