Primitive Athens As Described By Thucydides eBook

The traveller who visits Athens for the first time will naturally, if he be a classical scholar, devote himself at the outset to the realization of the city of Perikles. His task will here be beset by no serious difficulties. The Acropolis, as Perikles left it, is, both from literary and monumental evidence, adequately known to us. Archaeological investigation has now but little to add to the familiar picture, and that little in matters of quite subordinate detail. The Parthenon, the Propylaea, the temple of Nike Apteros, the Erechtheion (this last probably planned, though certainly not executed by Perikles) still remain to us; their ground-plans and their restorations are for the most part architectural certainties. Moreover, even outside the Acropolis, the situation and limits of the city of Perikles are fairly well ascertained. The Acropolis itself was, we know, a fortified sanctuary within a larger walled city.