633 



ATHENS. 



ATHENS. 



634 



constructed at a very great cost, and of fine Pentelic marble, the 

 building has a bald and heavy appearance, and finds few admirers. 

 The ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Olympus are inclosed within the 

 gardens of the palace. The university is said to be the handsomest 

 of the modern buildings. Hermes Street, which may be considered 

 the main street, extends through the city from east to west, and two 

 other principal new streets, jEolus and Athene streets, run into it on 

 its north side. The street called Stadion Street is to the north-east 

 of the old town. The city contains numerous shops, hotels, taverns, 

 coffee-houses, and baths, similar in character to those of the English, 

 French, and German towns, and many of them kept by natives of 

 those countries ; as well as bazaars and other establishments of an 

 oriental character. It has no manufactures of any consequence. 

 Walking-sticks, pipes, smoking-tubes, and the like are the chief 

 articles made. The university has 34 professors and about 200 

 students. There is a gymnasium with about 500 pupils; and there 

 are also ecclesiastical, polytechnic, missionary, Lancastrian, infant, 

 and other schools, a natural history society, botanic gardens, Ac. 



Th* Peirseus is still the port of Athens. The modern port-town of 

 Pircmt, wholly erected since 1 834, is a busy and apparently nourishing 

 place. It contains a custom-house and quay, a lazaretto, several 

 ranges of warehouses, hotels, coffee-houses, and shops. An omnibus 

 runs regularly between Athens and Piraeus, and omnibuses traverse 

 the streets of the classic city. 



History of Athens. -The origin of civil communities is generally 

 unknown, and that of Athens does not form an exception to the 

 remark. Our object here will be to give a brief sketch of the history 

 of this state, referring to the particular names of eminent persons for 

 a more detailed account of the most important periods and events. 

 C. HIST. AND Bioc. Drv.] 



Athenian coin, silver. Brit. Mus. 



The first period of Athenian history, ending with the war of Troy, 

 is of a mythical character. Actacus (Pausan. i. 2) was the first king of 

 Attica. Cecrops according to one fable was a native of Attica, who 

 married the daughter of Actaeus, and succeeded to the monarchy. 

 According to another fable Cecrops was an Egyptian who brought 

 from Egypt the arts of social life, and laid the foundations of the 

 religious and political system of the Athenians. The name of Cecrops, 

 whatever may have been its origin, was perpetuated among the 

 Athenians to the latest epoch of their existence as a people. Of the 

 successors of Cecrops, Erechtheus the first, otherwise called Erichtho- 

 nius, was of divine or unknown descent ; he erected on the Acropolis 

 a temple of Athena, and set up in it the image of the goddess (Athena 

 Polias) made of olive wood, which in after years was regarded as the 

 most sacred object in Athens. In this temple he was buried, whence 

 it came to be called the Erechtheium. His name also survived and 

 retained a place in the religious observances of Athens. In the reign 

 of Pandion the son of Erichthonius, Demeter (Ceres) was wandering 

 on earth in quest of her lost daughter ; out of gratitude for informa- 

 tion about her child the goddess taught Triptolemus of Eleusis the 

 art of agriculture, and the Rharian plain waved with a harvest hitherto 

 unknown to man. A second Erechtheus fought with the Eumolpidaj 

 of Eleusis, and lost his life. ^Egeus the son of a second Pandion in 

 course of time came to the throne, and his son Theseus, as he was the 

 last, so he was the greatest of the Athenian heroes. Theseus was the 

 friend of Hercules and Peirithous, and the venerable Nestor who 

 assisted the Greeks with his counsels at the war of Troy had fought 

 when a young man in the same ranks with Theseus. The mytholo- 

 gical fame of Theseus was perpetuated by his martial exploits against 

 the bull of Marathon, by his descent to the infernal regions, his voyage 

 to Crete, and his combat with the centaurs. As the reputed founder 

 of the Athenian polity, who united in one confederation the twelve 

 hitherto independent states or cities of Attica established by Cecrops 

 (Strab. p. 397), he appears to be invested with the character of an 

 historical personage. (Thucyd. ii. 15.) Theseus is also said to have 

 instituted the great quinquennial festival of the Panathentca in 

 commemoration of the political union of all Attica. (Pausan. viii. 2.) 

 To the latest period of their history the Athenians retained the grateful 

 remembrance of this hero, and the beautiful temple which is still called 

 theTheseium has perpetuated to the |.n ^cut <l;iy a name which belongs 

 to a period when the truth of history is wrapped in the impenetrable 

 veil of the mythi of the Greeks. 



The Athenians sent fifty ships to the war of Troy under the com- 

 mand of Menestheus, who had driven Theseus from Athens; but 



neither the general nor his soldiers occupy a conspicuous place among 

 the worthies of Homer. 



If we endeavour to trace the history of the Athenian people we 

 find the obscurity of their origin expressed by the statement that 

 they were ' Autochthones ' people coeval with the land which they 

 inhabited. Herodotus (L 57) says that the Athenians were originally 

 Pelasgi, and that they became changed into Hellenes (Greeks). Such 

 a change implies the conquest of the country by one race while it was 

 already in the possession of another ; it implies also either the amal- 

 gamation of the conquered and the conquering races, or the extinction 

 of those who were compelled to yield. The former we believe to be 

 supported by more probabilities. Xuthus the sou of Hellen married 

 a daughter of the second Erechtheus, and became the father of Achaeus 

 and Ion ; thus the name ' Ionian ' became attached to the Attic soil ; 

 and we have the historical fact that the names of the four tribes which 

 existed till the time of Cleisthenes were supposed to be derived from 

 the names of the four sons of Ion. (Herod, v. 66 : comp. Pausan. 

 vii. 1.) " The Athenians," says Herodotus (viii. 44), " during the 

 occupation by the Pelasgi of the country now called Hellas were 

 Pelasgi, with the distinctive name of Cranai. From Cecrops they 

 received the name of Cecropidae, and upon Erechtheus succeeding to 

 the royal power their name was changed to Athenians. After Ion the 

 son of Xuthus had become the leader of the forces of the Athenians 

 the people got the name of lonians." In the fable of Poseidon and 

 Athena (Neptune and Minerva) contending for the honour of giving a 

 name to Athens, Poseidon, the god of the loniaus of Helice and the 

 national god of those who were afterwards the lonians of Asia, con- 

 tended though unsuccessfully against Athena, the primitive deity of 

 the country. Yet the name and worship of Poseidon was not neglected 

 in Athens ; the Erechtheium of the Acropolis preserved the remem- 

 brance of the contest, and the altar on which it was usual to sacrifice 

 (Pausan. i. 26) both to Erechtheus and Poseidon indicated that the 

 mythical king was the representative of the deity whose worship strove 

 for the supremacy. Among the various names by which Athens was 

 known we find that of Poseidonia, or the City of Neptune (Strabo, 

 ix. 397), and the name of Athens itself was 

 given to eight different places. (Steph. Byzant. 

 VMSrw.) 



The fable of the two deities contending for 

 Attica is represented on a coin of Athens. 



The remembrance of the Pelasgi was retained 

 in the name of the northern wall of the Acro- 

 polis of which they were the architects, and in 

 that part of the city which was below it in 

 the plain. 



The line of Athenian kings, whatever may have been its historical 

 commencement, terminated with Codrus, son of the Messenian Melan- 

 thus. Melanthus, himself a fugitive, had received the loniaus who 

 fled from the Peloponnesus before the victorious Heraclida; (B.C. 1104) 

 partly as it is said for the sake of Ion that is, because they were 

 kinsmen and partly because the Athenians wished to strengthen 

 themselves against the Dorians. On the death of Codrus, who fell 

 during an invasion of Attica by a Peloponnesian army (B.C. 1068), his 

 sons disputing about the right of succession referred the matter to 

 the oracle of Delphi, who decided in favour of Medon. Neileus the 

 other son left his country at the head of a colony, chiefly Ionian 

 refugees, and with them founded the twelve Ionian states of Asia. 

 Thucydides in his brief sketch of the early history of Greece, instead 

 of attempting to unravel the web in which even in his time it was 

 involved, gives only these as the general results of his inquiries into 

 the earliest state of his native country : The sterility of Attica offered 

 no temptation to an invader, and it consequently had not like the 

 more fertile parts of Greece a continual change of inhabitants ; the 

 security which it enjoyed made it a place of refuge for those who 

 were driven from other states, and the increase of wealth and popu- 

 lation led to the colonisation of Ionia and the greater part of the 

 islands of the ^Egean after the war of Troy. (Thucyd. i. 2, 12.) The 

 circumstance of the Athenians at this early period directing their 

 attention to the colonisation of islands tends to show that they were 

 always a maritime people, though the foundation of their naval power 

 is referred by their own historians to the epoch of the Persian wars. 



With the death of Codrus the office of king ceased in Athens, and 

 the supreme executive power was vested in an archon, or governor, 

 whose office from being at first hereditary and for life was by degrees 

 changed into a decennial, and finally into an annual office. When the 

 last change took place a further alteration was made by distributing 

 the duties of the archon among nine magistrates, instead of giving 

 them all to one. From the death of Codrus to the legislation of Solon 

 Athenian history presents but few and doubtful facts. With the 

 legislation of Solon (B.C. 594) Athenian history begins to assume a 

 more definite form, and the same epoch marks the historical com- 

 mencement of that series of events which brought the inhabitants of 

 the countries east of the Tigris into connection with the south of 

 Europe. Tradition assigned to Theseus the credit of laying the 

 foundation of their democracy. (Plut. 'Thes.' c. 25.) Of the regu- 

 lations (Oefffiol) of Dracon (B.C. 624), the predecessor of Solon in legis- 

 lation, we know little except that his criminal code was so severe 

 as to require an almost entire change. The constitution of Solon was 



