Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/140

 116 fflSTOEY OF GREECE. the Peisistratids, eager to preserve the holy place from pillage, induce them to surrender.i The Athenian acropolis, — a craggy rock rising abruptly about one hundred and fifty feet, with a flat summit of about one thousand feet long from east to west, by five hundred feet broad from north to south, — had no practica- ble access except on the western side fi moreover, in all parts where there seemed any possibility of cHmbing up, it was de- fended by the ancient fortification called the Pelasgic wall. Obliged to take the place by force, the Persian army was posted around the northern and western sides, and commenced their operations from the eminence immediately adjoining on the northwest, called Areopagus :3 from whence they bombarded, if we may venture upon the expression, with hot missiles, the wood- work before the gates ; that is, they poured upon it multitudes of arrows with burning tow attached to them. The wooden pali- sades and boarding presently took fire and were consumed : but when the Persians tried to mount to the assault by the western road leading up to the gate, the undaunted little garrison still kept them at bay, having provided vast stones, which they rolled down upon them in the ascent. For a time the Great Kling seemed likely to be driven to the slow process of blockade ; but at length some adventurous men among the besiegers tried to scale the precipitous rock before them on its northern side, hard by the temple or chapel of Aglaurus, which lay nearly in front of the Persian position, but behind the gates and the western ascent. Here the rock was naturally so inaccessible, that it was ' Herodot. viii, 52. (Die Akropolis von Athens, p. 5, Berlin, 1844) says that the plateau of the acropolis is rather less than four hundred feet higher than the town: Fiedler states it to be one hundred and seventy-eight fathoms, or one thou- sand and sixty-eight feet above the level of the sea (Reise durch das Koni- greich Griechenland, i, p. 2) ; he gives the length and breadth of the plateau in the same figures as Kruse, whose statement I have copied in the text. In Colonel Leake's valuable Topography of Athens, I do not find any distinct statement about the height of the acropolis, "^^e must under- stand EoTise's statement, if he and Curtius are both correct, to refer only to the precipitous impracticable portion of the whole rock. ^ Athenian legend represented the Amazons as having taken post on the
 * Pausanias, i, 22, 4 ; Krase, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 76. Ernst Curtius