It was to Pericles, however, that Athens was chiefly indebted for her architectural splendour. On the Acropolis, he built those wonderful works of art, the Parthenon, the Erechtheium, and the Propylaea; in the city he erected a new Odeium; and outside the walls he improved and enlarged the Lyceium. The completion of the Erechtheium appears to have been prevented by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war; but the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and the Odeium, were finished in the short space of 15 years. He also connected Athens with Peiraeeus by the two long walls, and with Phalerum by a third wall, known by the name of the Phaleric wall. The Petopomie^an war put a stop to any farther public buildings at Athens. On the capture of the city in B.C. 404, the long walls and the fortifications of the Peiraeeus were destroyed by the Lacedaemonians; but they were again restored by Conon in B.C. 393, after gaining his great naval victory over the Lacedaemonians off Cnidus. (Xen. Hell. iv. 8. § 10; Diod. xiv. 85.) The Athenians now began to turn their thoughts again to the improvement of their city; and towards the close of the reign of Philip, the orator Lycurgus, who was entrusted with the management of the finances, raised the revenue to 1200 talents, and thus obtained means for defraying the expenses of public buildings. It was at this time that the Dionysiac theatre and the Stadium were completed, and that further improvements were made in the Lyceium. Lycurgus also provided for the security of the city by forming a magazine of arms in the Acropolis, and by building dock-yards in the Peiraeeus. (Plut. Vit. X. Orat. p. 841, seq.) After the battle of Chaeroneia (B.C. 338) Athens became a dependency of Macedonia, — though she continued to retain her nominal independence down to the time of the Roman dominion in Greece. It was only on two occasions that she suffered materially from the wars, of which Greece was so long the theatre. Having sided with the Romans in their war with the last Philip of Macedonia, this monarch invaded the territory of Athens; and though the walls of the city defied his attacks, he destroyed all the beautiful temples in the Attic plain, and all the suburbs of the city, B.C. 200. (Liv. xxxi. 26.) Athens experienced m still greater calamity upon its capture by Sulla in B.C. 86. It had espoused the cause of Mithridates, and was taken by assault by Sulla after a siege of several months. The Roman general destroyed the long walls, and the fortifications of the city and of Peiraeeus; and from this time the commerce of Athens was annihilated, and the maritime city gradually dwindled into an insignificant place. Under the Romans Athens continued to enjoy great prosperity. She was still the centre of Grecian philosophy, literature and art, and was frequented by the Romans as a school of learning and refinement Wherever the Grecian language was spoken, and the Grecian literature studied, Athens was held in respect and honour; and, as Leake has remarked, we cannot have a more striking proof of this fact than that the most remarkable buildings erected at Athens, after the decline of her power, were executed at the expense of foreign potentates. The first example of this generosity occurred in B.C. 275, |
About B.C. 174 Antiochus Epiphanes commenced the completion of the temple of Zeus Olympius, which had been left unfinished by the Peisistratidae, but the work was interrupted by the death of this monarch. Soon after the capture of Athens by Sulla, Ariobarzanes II., king of Macedonia, repaired the Odeium of Pericles, which had been partially destroyed in the siege. Julius Caesar and Augustus contributed to the erection of the portico of Athena Archegetis, which still exists. But Hadrian (A.D. 117—138) was the greatest benefactor of Athens. He not only completed the temple of Zeus Olympius, which had remained unfinished for 700 years, but adorned the city with numerous other public buildings, — two temples, a gymnasium, a library and a stoa, — and gave the name of Hadrianopolis to a new quarter of the city, which he supplied with water by an aqueduct (Comp. Paus. i. 18.) Shortly afterwards a private individual emulated the imperial munificence. Herodes Atticus, a native of Marathon, who lived in the reigns of Antoninus and M. Aurelius, built a magnificent theatre on the south-western side of the Acropolis, which bore the name of his wife Regilla, and also covered with Pentelic marble the seats in the Stadium of Lycurgus. Athens was never more splendid than in the time of the Antonines. The great works of the age of Pericles still possessed their original freshness and perfection (Plut. Pericl. 13); the colossal Olympieinm — the largest temple in all Greece, — had at length been completed; and the city had yet lost few of its unrivalled works of art It was at this epoch that Athens was visited by Pansanias, to whose account we are chiefky indebted for our knowledge of its topography. From the time of the Antonines Athens received no further embellishments, but her public buildings appear to have existed in undiminished glory till the third or even the fourth century of the Christian era. Their gradual decay may be attributed partly to the declining prosperity of the city, which could not afford to keep them in repair, and partly to the fell of paganism and the progress of the new faith. The walls of Athens, which had been in ruins since the time of their destruction by Sulla, were repaired by Valerian in A.D. 258 (Zosim. i. 29); and the fortifications of the city protected it from the attacks of the Goths and the other barbarians. In the reign of Gallienus, A.D. 267, the Goths forced their way into the city, but were driven out by Dexippus, an Athenian. In A.D. 396 Alaric appeared before Athens, but not having the means of taking it by force, he accepted its hospitality, and entered it as a friend. Notwithstanding the many edicts issued against paganism by Theodosius, Arcadius, Honorius, and Theodosius the younger in the fourth and fifth centuries, the pagan religion continued to flourish at |
Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/274
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