Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/18

Rh gave his name to a large gymnasium the Ptolemseum built by him near the Theseium. Attalus I., king of Pergamus, erected a stoa on the north-east of the Agora, and laid out a garden in the Academy. His successor, Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.), built another stoa near the. great theatre. Antiochus Epiphanes designed the completion of the Olympian!, a work which was interrupted by his death. Roman period. 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 Slummius, 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 Sulla at Roman as a kind of pilgrimage.1 One great disaster Athens 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 (Athenseus, v. 47, foil.; 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 &quot;spared Athens.&quot; 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 Grseco-Roman 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. 2 The inscriptions relating to the Roman period clearly reveal to us the chief interests of contemporary Athenian life. Epitaphs in abundance testify to the SetcrtSat/iovt a which delighted in proper names derived from deities and religious ceremonies, 3 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 &quot; Magnum Her ad doctas proficisci cogor Athenas&quot; (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, Eiriypaupal A.TTIKTJS tTriTvfj.- /3ici, passim. us lists of the students from all quarters who, while pursuing 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. 4 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 Horo- is generally known as the Tower of the Winds. It is first logium mentioned by Varro (De Re Rust., iii. 5, 17), and is there- Allclr01 fore older than 35 B.C., though certainly not earlier than 0113 the Roman conquest. This monument, so familiar to every scholar, is described by Vitruvius (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 winds 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 Caesar and of Augustus, a propylaeum 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 propylaeum has by some archaeologists 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 01 Archegeti?, just as it was customary with the Romans Roman to dedicate; a forum to some deity, and intended chiefly, A g ra - 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 Bockh, Corp. Inscr. Grcec., 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 rj S.yopa eV Ke/aa/xeiKw or simply Cerameicus, while the new oil-market would be distinguished as the 4 See Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum, No. 39, and foil. 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 EphcUn Attica.

