Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/432

 The Acropolis of Athens. 405 opposite side, intervening between it and Museum Hill, is sixty- five metres below the first course of the citadel wall. With the exception of a narrow path from the west, the rocky height offers on all sides vertically precipitous rocks, which defy attempts at an escalade. Cecrops, Erechtheus, and Theseus are successively connected with the primitive epoch of the national history ; just as Inachus, Danaiis, Perseus, the Pelopidae and Atridse, are bound up with the more varied and richer cycle of Argian tradition. Let the mythical proportion and poetic inventions of later days be ever so large, it remains true that the names of the Attic heroes represent a long series of hereditary princes who, en- trenched on this plateau, covered with their protection the home- steads of the low-lying valleys of Ilissus and Cephisus. To have his authority acknowledged by subjects who paid him tribute, and by strangers who might be tempted to invade and harry the country, the position of the king must not only be a strong one, but he must be able to insure a shelter to his people. The existence here of mighty walls was known from ancient records and epigraphic evidence, where allusion is fre- quently made to an enclosure cast around the Acropolis by the laborious and skilful Pelasgi. Hence the name " Pelasgic,*' We learn from Herodotus that the Pelasgi obtained the land skirting the foot of Hymettus as a reward for *' having led a wall around the Acropolis."^ Taken by itself, the meaning of this passage might be construed as applying to a defence which, like that of Cimon, and the later Turkish rampart, ran at the outer edge of the plateau, but for Thucydides, who sets us right as to the situation of the Pelasgic circuit. '* The wall they call Pelar- gicon," he writes, ** is below the citadel." ^ The two prepositions, explain and complete each other: they make it plain that the term ** Pelargicon enclosure " was applied to a wall surrounding quellen zur Topographie von Athen^ which forms the first part of Curtius' fine work, Die Stadtgeschichte von A then, in which the author in his admirable style and easy exposition, wholly unimpaired by old age, has summed up the researches of a long and laborious life entirely devoted to the history of Greece. A careful list of the authorities consulted has been made by A. Milchofer. ^ Herodotus : fHfrOdy tov Tet'xfoc tov Trepl rrjr Qk-poiroXw Korc iXrjXafihnv. ^ Thucydides : t6 te UeXapyikov wiXow/itror, to vtto ri)y aVpoTToXiK.
 * Pelasgicon," ** Pelargicon," prefixed to the wall.^
 * around" and '* below," used by Herodotus and Thucydides,
 * The literary information relating to the Pelasgic wall will be found in Schrift-