Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/322

 304 ATHENAE. § 2) as a small mountain with a statue of Zeus Anchesmus. Pausanias is the only writer who mentions Anchesmus; but since all the other hills around Athens have names assigned to them, it was supposed that the hill of St George must have been Anchesmus. But the same argument applies with still greater force to Lycabettus, which is frequently mentioned by the classical writers; and it is impossible to believe that so remarkable an object as the Hill of St. George could have remained without a name in the classical writers. Wordsworth was, we believe, the first writer who pointed out the identity of Lycabettus and the Hill of St George; and his opinion has been adopted by Leake in the second edition of his Topography, by Forchhammer, and by all subsequent writers. The celebrity of Lycabettus, which is mentioned as one of the chief mountains of Attica, is in accordance with the position and appearance of the Hill of St George. Strabo (x. p. 454) classes Athens and its Lycabettus with Ithaca and its Neriton, Rhodes and its Atabyris, and Lacedaemon and its Taygetus. Aristophanes (Ran. 1057), in like manner, speaks of Lycabettus and Parnassus as synonymous with any celebrated mountains:

^ ohf <rh A^ypr AvimlSrfTTobs Rol TloffycurMf iffuy fuy4$fjj rovi' iarl rh

Its proximity to the city is indicated by several passages. In the edition of the Clouds of Aristophanes, which is now lost, the Clouds were represented as vanishing near Lycabettus, when they were threatening to return in anger to Parnes, from which they had come. (Phot. Lex. s. v. Udpvitis.) Plato (Critias, p. 112, a) speaks of the Pnyz and Lycabettus as the boundaries of Athens. According to an Attic legend, Athena, who had gone to Pallene, a demus to the north-eastward of Athens, in order to procure a mountain to serve as a bulwark in front of the Acropolis, was informed on her return by a crow of the birth of Erichthonius, whereupon she dropt Mount Lycabettus on the spot where it still stands. (Antig. Car. 12; for other passages from the ancient writers, see Wordsworth, p. 57, seq.; Leake, p. 204, seq.) Both Wordsworth and Leake suppose Anchesmus to be a later name of Lycabettus, since Pausanias does not mention the latter; but Kiepert gives the name of Anchesmus to one of the hills north of Lycabettus. [See Map, p. 256.]

Between four and five miles SW. of the Asty is the peninsula of Peiraeeus, consisting of two rocky heights divided from each other by a narrow isthmus, the eastern, or the one nearer the city, being the higher of the two. This peninsula contains three natural basins or harbours, a large one on the western side, now called Dráko (or Porto Leone), and two smaller ones on the eastern side, called respectively Stratiotiki (or Paschalimáni), and Fandri; the latter, which was nearer the city, being the smaller of the two. Hence Thucydides describe (i. 93) Peiraeeus as x^pW Kififvas (x^^ rptis a^ro^vcif.

We know that down to the time of the Persian wars the Athenians had only one harbour, named Phalerum; and that it was upon the advice of Themistocles that they fortified the Peiraeeus, and made use of the more spacious and convenient harbours in this peninsula. Pausanias says (i. 1. § 2): 'The Peiraeeus was a demus from early times, but ATHENAE. was not need as a harbour before Themistodes administered the affairs of the Athenians. Before that time their harbour was at Phalerum, at the spot where the sea is nearest to the city. But Themistocles, when he held the government, perceiving that Peiraeeus was more conveniently situated for navigation, and that it possessed three ports instead of the one at Phalerum {Kifiiyas rpus MT Ms fx^ty rov ^aXi7poi), made it into a receptacle of ships." From this passage, compared with the words of Thucydides quoted above, it would seem a natural inference that the three ancient ports of Peiraeeus were those now called Dráko, Stratiotiki, and Fanari; and that Phalerum had nothing to do with the peninsula of Peiraeeus, but was situated more to the east, where the sea-shore is nearest to Athens. But till within the last few years a very different situation has been assigned to the ancient harbours of Athens. Misled by a false interpretation of a passage of the Scholiast upon Aristophanes (Pac. 145), modern writers supposed that the huge harbour of Peiraeeus (Dráko) was divided into three ports called respectively Cantharus (JSAaSapos)^ the port for ships of war, Zea (Z^a) for corn-ships, and Aphrodisium ('A^poSiff-ioy) for other merchant-ships; and that it was to those three ports that the words of Pausanias and Thucydides refer. It was further maintained that Stratiotiki was the ancient harbour of Munychia, and that Fanári, the more easterly of the two smaller harbours, was the ancient Phalerum. The true position of the Athenian ports was first pointed out by Ulrichs in a pamphlet published in modern Greek (o/ ktfiwts km t& /<a- Kpii rtixv rw 'A^vwy, Athens, 1843), of the arguments of which an abstract is given by the author in the Zeitschrift für die Alterthumswissenschaft (for 1844, p. 17, seq.). Ulrichs rejects the division of the larger harbour into three parts, and maintains that it consisted only of two parts; the northern and by far the larger half being called Emporium (*E/4r($p(oi'), and appropriated to merchant vessels, while the southern bay upon the right hand, after entering the harbour, was named Cantharus, and was used by ships of war. Of the two smaller harbours he supposes Stratiotiki to be Zea, and Phandri Munychia. Phalerum he removes altogether from the Peiraic peninsula, and places it at the eastern comer of the great Phaleric bay, where the chapel of St. George now stands, and in the neighbourhood of the Tptis Uvpyoi^ or the Three Towers, Ulrichs was led to these conclusions chiefly by the valuable inscriptions relating to the maritime affairs of Athens, which were discovered in 1834, near the entrance to the larger harbour, and which were published by Böckh, with a valuable commentary under the title of Urkunden über das Seewesen des attischen Staates, Berlin, 1834. Of the correctness of Ulrichs's views there can now be little doubt; the arguments in support of them are stated in the sequel.

The rocky peninsula of Peiraeeus is said by the ancient writers to have been originally an island, which was gradually connected with the mainland by the accumulation of sand. (Strab. i. p. 59; Plin. iii. 85; Suid. s. v. fftJSapos.) The space thus filled up was known by the name of Halipedum ('AAfTc- 8oy), and continued to be a marshy swamp, which rendered the Peiraeeus almost inaccessible in the winter time till the construction of the broad carriage