Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/434

 The Acropolis of Athens. 407 they sufficed for the wants of man and beast ; a little of the precious liquid was diverted to the small garden-plots, an olive or two, or a fig tree growing around the hovels ; whilst the family goat and sheep would find in the rock crevices a few blades of parthenion, which the inhabitants themselves were glad enough to share with the animals, when besieged by Sylla. These habitations were parted by narrow alleys and staircases cut in the rock,^ and the enclosure was pierced by numerous passages and outlets; hence the name of *' Enneapylon,"^ by which the wall is sometimes called. These exits led into the adjacent country, where the inhabitants of the circular village tilled the land and pastured their flocks by day, returning at eventide to find shelter behind the ramparts. What was the trace of the ellipsoidal wall ? Did it preserve a uniform level around the hill ? It is as yet impossible to say. The only literary evidence on this head tends to prove that, to the westward, the Pelasgic rampart passed near the Areopagus, and the only portion which has been identified is by the Odeon of Herod Atticus.^ Thorough excavations like those lately made within the Acropolis, would alone disclose its whole course ; here, however, the work would be much more difficult, because of the rubbish heaped up high towards the foot of the hill, either shot down from the fortress rampart, or arising from the ruins of surrounding houses. The explorations above mentioned have cleared, here and there, a primitive enclosure which is certainly not the Pelasgic fortification alluded to by the historians, since it is found on and not below the Acropolis, but yet is contemporary with the Pelasgicon, and shows a close analogy to the Tirynthian and Mycenian walls, whose style of construc- tion it reproduces. That it belongs to the primitive period is indubitable (Fig. 148). The wall in question is built of stone, torn from the upper ^ Plutarch, Sylla : to vepl ri;V aKpoiroXiy ipvofityov wapOivvov. Pliny, Jlisf. Nat, 2 According to some modem writers, the Enneapylon was a kind of advanced work, a redoubt standing on the west of the Acropolis, just before the rise of the hill, up which were staged nine gates. But in no extant primitive fortress has any- thing like this array of gates set back to front been met with. Furthermore, the testimony of Herodotus does not make for it; whilst the nine entrances are better accounted for by doorways pierced in the circular wall, more than one kilometre long, enclosing the Acropolis. ^ E. CuRTius, Die Stadtgeschichte^ c-^v.