Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/442

 The Acropolis of Athens. 415 with which the stone-cutter fashioned his native soft chalky stone, is even better seen in the sanctuary of Zeus, which the inhabit- ants of these scattered hamlets jointly raised to the great god of the Pelasgi, whom they also worshipped on the summit of the Pnix. The site, as has been remarked somewhat earlier, was long held as the Athenian Agora. A better-informed criticism, however, has identified the double esplanade extending along the eastern side of the Pnix, between the Observatory and the Monument, as a high-place, a kind of temple open to the sky (Fig. 153), and the religious centre of the surrounding ^popula- tions. The two esplanades are separated by a ledge of rock which has been vertically cut. In process of time the lower esplanade was enlarged to accommodate the ever-increasing EiG. 153.— -View of double esplanade known under the name of Pnix. numbers that flocked here. The area was levelled out into a semi-circle or thereabouts, and a wall of polygonal stones was built to support the imported earth (Fig. 154). That this sub- structure was a later addition, is inferred from the fact that it has covered the stairs which formerly mounted to the esplanade. Midway between the staircases which connect the twin levels is a landing carried on three steps (Fig. 155). Although the ground- plan of these buildings is simplicity itself, our habits are so far removed from those they imply, as to make a sympathetic restora- tion a difficult matter. Did the stone block of the lower esplanade constitute the altar towards which converged the paths, one of which still shows chariot-ruts ? or, with Curtius, should we rather identify it with the marks seen on the quadrangular block of the upper level .^ (Fig. 155). In his opinion the stepped landing in