Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/301

Some of them are now in the British Museum. (Leake, p. 183; Dodwdell, vol. i. p. 402.)

The area of the Pynx contained about 12,000 square yards, and could therefore easily accommodate the whole of the Athenian citizens. The remark of an ancient grammarian, that it was constructed with the simplicity of ancient times (icvri rV nAiub siX^nrrB, Pollyx, viii. 132), it borne out by the existing remains. We know moreover that it was not provided with seats, with the exception of a few wooden benches in the first row. (Aristoph. Acharn. 25.) Hence the assembled citizens either stood or sat on the bare rock (^cofuo/, Aristoph. Vesp. 43); and accordingly the Sausage-seller, when he seeks to undermine the popularity of Cleon, offers a cushion to the demus. (Aristoph Equit. 783.) It was not provided, like the theatres, with any species of awning to protect the assembly from the rays of the sun; and this was doubtless one reason why the assembly was held at day-break. (Mure, vol. ii. p. 63.)

It has been remarked that a traveller who mounts the bema of the Pnyx may safely say, what perhaps cannot be said with equal certainty of any other spot, and of any other body of great men antiquity: Here have stood Demosthenes, Pericles, Themistocles. Aristides, and Solon. Thia remark, however, would not be true in its full extent, if we were to give cre- ATHBNAE. ass

dence to a passage of Plutarch (Them. 19), to which allusion has been already made. Plutarch relates that the bema originally looked towards the sea, and that it was afterwards removed by the Thirty Tyrants so as to face the land, because the sovereignty of the sea was the origin of the democracy, while the pursuit of agriculture was favourable to the oligarchy. But from no part of the present Pnyx could the sea be seen, and it is evident, from the existing remains, that it is of much more ancient date than the age of the Thirty Tyrants. Moreover, it is quite incredible that a work od such gigantic proportions should have been erected by the Thirty, who never even summoned an assembly of the citizens. And even if they had effected such a change in the place of meeting for the citizens, would not the latter, in the restoration of the democracy, have returned to the former site? We have therefore no hesitation in rejecting the whole story along with Forchhammer and Mure, and of regarding it with the latter writer as one of the many anecdotes of what may be called the moral and political mythology of Greece, invented to give zest to the narrative of interesting events, or the actions and characters of illustrious men.

Wordsworth, however, accepts Plutarch's story, and points out remains which he considers to be those of the ancient Pnyx a little behind the present bema. It is true that there is behind the existing bema, and

on the summit of the rock, an esplanade and terrace, which has evidently been artificially leveled; and near one of its extremities are appearances on the ground which have been supposed to betoken the existence of a former bema. It has been usually stated, in refutation of this hypothesis, that not even from this higher spot could the sea be seen, because the city wall ran across the top of the bill, and would have effectually interrupted any view of the sea; but this answer is not sufficient, since we have brought forward reasons for believing that this was not the direction of the ancient wall. This esplanade, however, is so much smaller than the present Pnyx, that it is impossible to believe that it could ever have been used as the ordinary assembly of the citizens; and it i« much more probable that it served for purposes connected with the great assembly in the Pnyx below, being perhaps covered in part with buildings or booths for the convenience of the Prytanes, scribes, and other public functionaries. Mure calls attention to a passage in Aristophanes, when allusion is made to such appendages (rJjr IKoxi wSffn* aal rii „tKvir nl Tit tiMavi luBf/^ai. Thesm. 659); and though the Pnyx is here used in burlesque application to the Thesmorphorium, where the female assemblies were held, this circumstance dose not destroy the point of the allusion. (Mure, vol. ii p. 319.)

The whole rock of the Pnyx was thickly inhabited in ancient times, as it is flattened and cut in

all direction. We have already had occasion to point oat [see above, p. 261, b.] that even the western side of the hill was covered with houses.

3. Hill of the Nymphs.

This hill, which lay a little to the NW. of the Pnyx, used to be identified with the celebrated Lycabettus, which was situated on the other side of the city, outside the walls; but its proper name has been restored to it, from an inscription found on its summit. (Böckh, Inscr. no. 453; Ross, in Kunstblatt, 1837, p. 391.)

4. The Museium.

The Museium (rh MowtToi-) was the hill to the SW. of the Acropolis, from which it is separated by an intervening valley. It is only a little lower than the Acropolis itself. It is described by Pausanias (i. 24. § 8) as a hill within the city walls, opposite the Acropolis, when the poet Musaeus was buried, and where a monument was erected to a certain Syrian, whose name Pausanias does not mention. There are still remains of this monument, from the inscriptions upon which we learn that it was the monument of Pbilopappus, the grandson of Antiochus, who, having been deposed by Vespasian, came to Rome with his two sons, Epiphanes and Callinicus. [Dict. of Biogr. vol. I. p. 194.] Epiphanes was the father of Philopappus, who had become an Attic citizen of the demus Besa, and he is evidently