ATHENS. 



ATHERSTONE. 



NO 



i of Philip was most destructive to the monumcnU of Attica, 

 though Eleusis and Athens itself escaped. 



The next great calamity of Athens was its capture by the Romans 

 trader Sulla (B.C. 84). Athens had espoused the cause of MithridateR, 

 and AmittA his general Archelaus into the Peineus. The city was 

 taken by assault (1'lut. Sulla,' 14), and the Roman soldiers made the 

 UeU swim with Athenian blood. This was the first time that the 

 fortification* of Athens had been forced by an enemy. Sulla 

 demolished the walls of the Petrous together with the great arsenal 

 of Philo, and from this time the commerce of Athens was annihilated. 



I'nder Roman government Athens, though she had lost her 

 political power and her commerce, was still the centre of the arts and of 

 philosophy, and a favourite residence of the wealthy Romans. From the 

 time of Julius Cnsar to that of Hadrian it was occasionally honoured 

 by the visits of the masters of the Roman world, and to them it owed 

 much of that splendour which Pausanias admired in the second 

 century of our era. As a school of learning it was frequented by 

 the Romans who aspired to perfect themselves in the language and 

 philosophy of Greece. The poet Horace was a student here when 

 the civil wars broke out after the assassination of Julius Caesar ; and 

 Cicero addresses one of his moral treatises to his son Marcus, 

 who was then studying here under Cratippus. ('Officia,' lib. i. 

 cap. 1.) 



" No other city ever enjoyed her fortune in the prosperity which 

 attended her so long after the loss of her political importance. 

 Even the respect which has been paid to Rome since the decline of 

 her temporal power is but a feeble representation of that enjoyed by 

 Athens during five centuries, among all the cations into which 

 Grecian civilisation had penetrated. We cannot have a stronger 

 proof of this fact than that the most remarkable buildings erected 

 in Athens, after the decline of her naval power, were executed at the 

 expense of foreign potentates." (Leake's 'Topography of Athens,' 

 pref.) To compress within reasonable limits the history of Athens 

 from the epoch indicated in the above extract, we shall arrange in 

 chronological order those events which are worthy of record as 

 denoting the influence or the interest of foreign powers in this city, 

 which the world at one time regarded as the parent and nurse of arts 

 and philosophy. 



B.O. 275. Ptolemy Philadelphus king of Egypt built a gymnasium 

 near the temple of Theseus, and gave his name to a new tribe at 

 Athens. 



B.C. 240 ( ? ). Attains king of Pergamus had also the honour of giving 

 name to a tribe, and ornamented the Notiuin or south-east wall of 

 the Acropolis with four compositions in statuary, one of which 

 commemorated his own victory over the Gauls (Pausan. i. 25.) 



ac. 167. Antiochus Epiphanes, assisted by the architect Cossutius, 

 commenced the great temple of Jupiter Olympian, which was not 

 finished till the time of Hadrian. 



Ariobaraanes II. king of Cappadocia repaired the Odeium, or 

 Music Hall of Pericles. 



Julius Csnar contributed to the erection of the Propylseum of the 

 New Agora, which still exists. 



A.D. 117-138. Hadrian the imperial architect was the great bene- 

 factor of Athens. He finished the great temple of Jupiter, adorned 

 the city with numerous other public works, and furnished the new 

 quarter of the Hadrianopolis with water by an aqueduct Antonius 

 and M. Aurelius continued to extend to Athens the munificence of 

 their predecessor ; and at the same time Herodes Atticus, a native 

 Marathon, erected the theatre which bore the name of his wife 

 Regilla, and covered with the white marble of Pentelicus the seats 

 in the SUdium of Lycurgus. To this epoch belongs the description 

 of Athens by Pausanias, which applies to a time when the great 

 works of the age of Pericles still showed all their original freshness 

 and perfection, and the colossal structure of the Olympium had just 

 received its completion. 



Though Athens was pillaged by Sulla's soldiers, and perhaps with 

 the other cities of Greece may have been robbed of some of its 

 pictures and statues by the Romans on subsequent occasions, there 

 is no reason for supixMing that at the close cf the second or even the 

 third century Athens had lost much of its unrivalled works of art. 

 The gradual decay of its buildings has been attributed with good 

 reason by Leake, partly to the decline of paganism and to the slow 

 though gradual progress of the new faith. 



A.I>. 268. The walls of the city were repaired under Valerian. 



A.I). 267. The Goths entered Athens, but were repelled by 

 Dexippiu an Athenian. 



A.I>. 38. Alaric took Athens, but probably did not treat it with 

 great severity. 



A.D. 420. General abolition of paganism in Greece and Athens in 

 the reign of the younger Theodosius. About this time or probably 

 earlier the Parthenon, the temple of the Virgin-Goddess, was con- 

 retted into a church dedicated to the Virgin-Mother, and the temple 

 of Theneu* was appropriated to the warrior Saint George. 



A.D. 1 204. Athens became a duchy conferred on one of his followers 



r Boniface marquis of Montferrat, who assumed the title of King of 

 Thensalonica. It continued in the possession of the Christians, but 

 with many changes till it fell into the hands of the Turkish sultan, 

 Mohammed II., in 1460. 



A.D. 1687. Siege and capture of the Acropolis by the Venetians 

 under Morosini, when the Parthenon and other buildings on the 

 Acropolis sustained great damage. Though Athens hi suffers I 

 since that time, the siege of Morosiui <li<l infinitely more damage to 

 the Parthenon than it had sustained during the 2000 years of its 

 existence. The explosion of some powder which had been placed in 

 it by the Turks reduced it from its then almost perfect state to 

 a nuu. 



A.D. 1827. Athens having been occupied by the revolted Greeks, 

 was besieged and bombarded by the Turks, and many of its ancient 

 buildings were much injured. 



On the establishment of the Independent Kingdom of Greece, 

 Athens was declared by a royal ordinance (1834) to be the capital 

 of the new kingdom. 



ATHKNS. ((iKomiiA, U.S. ; OHIO, U.ai 



ATHENS, NEW. [OHIO, U.S.] 



ATHERSTONE, Warwickshire, a town in the parish of Mancetter, 

 in Atherstone division of the hundred of Hemlingford, is situated 

 close upon the border of Leicestershire, in 52 34' N. lat, 1" I 

 long., distant 23 miles N. from Warwick; 105 miles N.W. from 

 London by road, and 101 j miles by the Trent Valley branch of the 

 London and North-Western railway : the population of the town- 

 ship in 1851 was 3819. The living is a perpetual curacy in the 

 archdeaconry of Coventry and diocese of Worcester. 



Atherstone which owes its origin to the Saxons stands on the 

 great Roman Way, Watling Street. The manor was given by William 

 the Conqueror to his nephew Hugh Lupus, earl of Chester, and is 

 called in Domesday Book ' Aderestoiie." Henry III. grants! in 124t> 

 and 1247 n yearly fair, and a market weekly on Tuesday. From its 

 convenient situation the market increased very much. 



Atherstone consists chiefly of one street, in which ancient and 

 modern houses are mingled together. It is pared and well lighted 

 with gas. The sanitary condition of the town has been much improved. 

 The market-place is on the north side of the street ; the market-house 

 containing a commodious hall was erected not many years since. 

 A spacious church in the decorated style, to accommodate 1300 

 persons, has been erected on the site of an ancient chapel which had 

 been attached to an Angustinian friary. The former tower was 

 suffered to remain, and also the ancient chancel, which had been 

 appropriated to the use of a Free Grammar-school, endowed by Sir 

 William Dovereux and others in 1573. A parsonage house has been 

 recently erected. There are chapels for Wesleyan Methodists and 

 Independents; also a Roman Catholic chapel and convent The 

 <ar-Rchool, which has been extended so as to afford a com- 

 mercial education to the sons of tradesmen living in Atherstone, had 

 in 1851 in the classical school 5 pupils, in the English school 40, and 

 13 private pupils. The income from endowment is 3001. a year. 

 There are also a Free school fur poor boys and another for girls, 

 which were built and endowed by H. Bracebridge, Esq., of Atherstone 

 Hall ; and an Infant school. In the town are a literary institution, a 

 subscription library, a savings bank, and a dispensary. 



The chief manufacture of Atherstone is that of hats. Ribands 

 and shalloons are also made. There are four fairs in the year, at 

 which considerable business is transacted. A county court is 1.' 

 Athcrstone. The Coventry Canal which passes the town on the west 

 contributes to its trade. At a short distance on the east flows the 

 river Anker, a tributary of the Tame, which itself flows into the 

 Trent 



It was at Atherstone that the Earl of Richmond, afterwards ]|>-nry 

 VII. and his army halted on the night of the 20th August, 1485, 

 two nights before the decisive battle of Bosworth Kit-Id. The troops 

 encamped in a meadow to the north of the church, since called tin; 

 Royal Meadow ; and during the night Henry held a conference in 

 Atherstone with the two Stanleys, in which the measures were 

 agreed upon which resulted in the defeat and death of Richard III. 



Mr. Dugdalu's park, adjacent to Atherstone, contains some of the. 

 tallest and finest oaks in England. A remarkable bed of trap rock 

 runs through this park ; and there are many other formations in the 

 neighbourhood of Atherstone highly interesting. Among the 

 anomalous rocks by which the coal-field is bounded on the south-east is 

 a peculiar quarUose sandstone of extraordinary hardness, which is exten- 

 sively quarried, and sent to a great distance for the purpose of road- 

 making. Nearly adjacent to this is a rich bed of marigancse, which 

 at Hartshill has yielded a very profitable return, but which is now 

 nearly exhausted. Coal is found at Baddesley Moor, in the \i. inity 

 of Atherstone. 



Besides the townships of Atherstone and Mancetter, the parish of 

 Mancetter includes the hamlets of Hartflhill and Oldbury. Mancetter 

 itself though now a poor village is worthy of notice on account of 

 it" having been the Roman station MmtlHrurdum. On the Roman 

 Way Watling Streets-near the present village, are the remains of 

 works of considerable extent The dimensions of the area included 

 within the works are 627 feet by 488 feet mean breadth. Fra>;r 

 of buildings and Roman coins have often been found in the neigh- 

 bourhood ; and at Oldbury are the remains of what is supposed to 

 have been a Roman summer-camp. Three sides of this work are yet 

 well preserved ; the ramparts are about 20 feet broad at the bottom, 

 and 6 feet high. On the north side of the fort some stone axes or 



