524 



LONG WALLS OF ATHENS. 



national work*, the erection and completion of the long walls ap- 

 pear to have principally taken place under the administration of 

 Pericles ; and as the southern long wall was built according f#> the 

 testimony of Andocides, subsequently to the northern, it is probable 

 that this last is the very wall which Pericles here recommends. 



The sense, then, in which we are to understand this passage in the 

 Gorgias, must depend, as I have already observed, on the existence 

 or the non-existence of a third wall, which can be no other than the 

 Phaleric ; and as this is a question of so much importance, it is ne- 

 cessary that we should examine it very rigidly. 



I have already stated the very positive information which is derived 

 from the sense of two detached passages of Thucydides, and shewn 

 how much that sense is weakened, if not wholly destroyed by what 

 immediately follows ; insomuch that had Thucydides only spoken of 

 a Phaleric wall, and not given us its precise length and direction, we 

 should feel little or no scruple in rejecting the idea altogether of a 

 wall which connected the city with Phalerum. 



I shall therefore proceed to observe that with the exception of 

 Harpocration f, Thucydides seems to be the only authority for this 

 wall, and that Pausanias has noticed no traces of it on the road from 

 Phalerum to Athens ; whereas he expressly mentions the ruins of 

 the long walls on the road from the Piraeus. In the next place it is 

 evident that after the ships and the docks, and probably the greater 

 part of the inhabitants, had been removed to the Piraeus, Phalerum 

 must have lost all its importance as a sea-port ; and as it does not 

 appear that it was ever fortified, I am at a loss to conceive what 

 could have been the use of a wall connecting it with Athens. 



On the other hand we know that the Pirseus was most strongly 



* Plutarch says that he laid at his own expence a firm foundation for the long walls in 

 the swampy grounds near the Pirseus, and that they were erected some time afterwards. 



f Harpocration says there were three long walls, the northern, the southern, and the 

 Phaleric, the middle one being called the Southern. He refers, to the authority of a lost 

 comedy of Aristophanes. My readers will judge what credit is due to his testimony. 



