Athenian Topography

In AJA 89 of 1985 I published an article "The Panathenaic Stadium and Theater of Lykourgos: A Re-Examination of the Facilities on the Pnyx Hill" in which I proposed that the architectural facilities on the Pnyx were those as described in IG II2 351, 329 B.C., the Panathenaic Stadium and Theater of Lykourgos, the site of the Panathenaic Games. Here I further suggest that the Great Altar of Athena mentioned in IG II2 334,  336-330 B.C., was originally found on the Pnyx Hill and it was on this altar that the sacrifice of the Panathenaic Hekatomb was performed.

With this essay I am going to develop the theme of the birth of the city of Athens as a Modern city, analyzing all the plans that have occurred over time, referring to similar situations related to other Greek cities too.
The study concerns state interventions to reform cities in the XIX century, from Otto’s reign (1833) to 1890, with a particular focus on the Kleanthis-Schaubert and Klenze plans.
It is interesting to see how these urban reforms have changed the social status in a Country, Greece, characterized by a strong identity and an important history behind it. In the first part of the essay I am going to analyze the actions that the new state took to organize its settlements (plans and the legislation); in the second part what happened in the urban planning of Athens, in particular the Kleanthis-Schaubert and Klenze plans.

The author proposes that the Athenian Prytaneion, one of the city's most important civic buildings, was located in the peristyle complex beneath the court and church Agia Aikaterini, on the ancient square that once stood before the Lysikrates and other choregic monuments as well as a fourth-century stoa, and situated below the likely remains of the Anakeion on the southeast slope of the Acropolis.  This thesis, which elucidates Pausanias' tour from the original Agora of Athens to the Theater of Dionysus, is supported by archaeological and epigraphical evidence.  The identification of the Prytaneion at the eastern foot of the Acropolis, close to the oldest residential neighborhoods around the Acropolis as well as the Cephisus River, helps to reconstruct the map of Archaic and Classical Athens and illuminates the testimony of Herodotus and Thucydides.

The present study examines the  topographical development of early Athens from around 1075 BC until 480/479 BC, as this is ascertained from the archaeological remains, particularly of the cemeteries but also of the few houses or other indications of habitation.
Taking the graves as stable starting points and correlating their location with the Acropolis, the administrative, residential, and religious center of Athens, an attempt is made to approach the areas in which the early
nuclei of habitation, which are related to the nearby burial grounds and cemeteries, developed.
Through the overall assessment of the continuous interaction between
the areas of burial and of settlement, we try to detect the limits of habitation in each period, as this becomes clear from the development of the Submycenaean cemeteries in Geometric times, the Archaic settlement remains, and the successive changes in the uses of space down until the Persian destruction.

The relief fragment in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Inv. 12059 of unknown provenance comes from the left corner slab of the tympanon of a small pediment and carries a relief depicting a leftwards reclining Papposilenus, who can be identified by the close-fitting woolen garment. The relief together with the projecting ledge on which the Silenus lies is carved from one block. The relief fragment Inv. 4760 in the Acropolis Museum, which shows  the figure of a Papposilenus reclining to the right wearing an identical woolen garment, can  be attributed to the right corner of the same pediment on the grounds of measurements, technical features and style. Papposilenus supports himself with his right arm on a wineskin, whose neck he squeezes in such a way that the wine can pour into the drinking horn. Both relief fragments come from the pediment of a small building, very probably a temple-shaped choregic monument. The naiskos, which can be dated to the 2nd half of the 4th century BC on account  of the relief style, stood (very probably) on the Street of the Tripods east of the entrance to the sanctuary of Dionysos.

Das Relieffragment im Athener Archäologischen Nationalmuseum Inv. 12059 unbekannter Herkunft stammt von der linken Eckplatte des Tympanons eines kleinen Giebels und trägt die Reliefdarstellung eines nach links gelagerten Papposilens, der durch das eng anliegen- de  wollene  Trikot  identifiziert  werden  kann.  Das  Relief  ist  zusammen  mit  der  vortretenden  Standleiste, auf dem der Silen liegt, aus demselben Block gearbeitet. Das Relieffragment Inv. 4760 im Akropolis-Museum, das die Figur eines nach rechts gelagerten Papposilens mit  einem identischen Wolltrikot zeigt, ist auf der Grundlage der Maße, der technischen Merkmale und des Stils der gegenüberliegenden rechten Ecke desselben Giebels zuzuweisen. Mit dem rechten Arm stützt der Papposilen sich auf einen Weinschlauch, dessen Hals er auf eine Weise zusammendrückt, dass sich der Wein in das Trinkhorn ergießen kann. Die beiden Relieffragmente stammen vom Giebel eines kleinen Gebäudes, sehr wahrscheinlich eines tempelförmigen choregischen Monuments. Der Naiskos, der aufgrund des Reliefstils in die 2. Hälfte des 4. Jhs. v. Chr. datiert werden kann, stand (sehr wahrscheinlich) an der Tripodenstraße östlich vom Eingang zum Dionysosheiligtum.

https://www.steiner-verlag.de/Raeume-der-Reputation/9783515122337           

Dass sich Reputation und Anerkennung in vormodernen Gesellschaften, darunter im spätklassischen Athen, über Kommunikation in der Öffentlichkeit konstituierten, gilt als unbestritten. Wie wirkten sich aber Präsenz und Agieren in bestimmten Räumen, etwa auf der Straße oder der Agora, auf die Reputation der Athener aus? Welche Strategien setzten sie beim öffentlichen Auftreten ein und über welche Medien erfolgte die bürgerliche Kommunikation? Wie strukturierten Räume das Handeln der athenischen Bürger und inwiefern prägten soziale Normen ihr Alltagsverhalten?

Antworten auf diese Fragen findet Rafał Matuszewski im athenischen Stadtbild: von den Straßen und Wegen, über die Agora, Bäder, Walkereien, Bordelle, Gymnasien und Palästren bis hin zu den Läden der Barbiere, Parfümhersteller, Schuhmacher und den Tischen der Bankiers, aber auch in Hotels, Wirts- und Spielhäusern. Darüber hinaus nimmt er gesellschaftliche Verhaltensnormen und Kommunikationsmedien der Athener in den Blick und zeigt, wie Räumlichkeit, Normativität und Sozialität im spätklassischen Athen miteinander verschränkt waren. So entwirft Matuszewski ein anschauliches Bild der Lebenswelt athenischer Bürger im 4. Jh. v. Chr.

The structural history of the Propylaia, the west access and the west area of the Acropolis plateau based on historians' and travellers' reports from the middle Ages to date, and on evidence from a thorough study of the surviving evidence in-situ. The first volume contains text with notes, bibliography and index. Figures, drawings, English captions and summary are in the second volume, also presented here.

Tra i segnacoli funerari scoperti ad Atene nella prima metà dell’Ottocento figura- no quattro marmi – una lekythos e tre horoi – su cui è iscritto il nome di uno stesso individuo, Onesimos. Certamente essi provengono da un unico monumento sito nella necropoli che si estendeva fuori dalle Porte di Acarne. Partendo dall’analisi di questi disiecta membra, il contributo propone una ricostituzione del contesto originario e presenta le circostanze della scoperta, avvenuta a più riprese a partire dal 1810, sulla base dell’analisi di documenti di archivio in parte inediti. Le mo- dalità di rinvenimento e poi di dispersione dei pezzi sembrano infatti particolar- mente emblematiche delle molte vite che un’iscrizione può vivere lungo le strade, spesso incredibilmente tortuose, del collezionismo.
Parole chiave: Atene; necropoli classiche; segnacoli funerari; studi antiquari; L.F.S. Fauvel; C. Haller von Hallerstein; L. Ross; K. Pittakys.

Abstract: In early 1934 the distinguished collector and connoisseur Michael P. Vlastos, founder and first president of the Society of the Friends of the National Archaeological Museum, purchased from an art dealer in Athens a pair of white ground lekythoi, said to have been found in a tomb illicitly excavated in Gouva, i.e. in the modern Athenian neighbourhood of Pangrati, approximately on the location of the ancient attic demos of Agryle. A few years later, in 1942, Sir J.D. Beazley, Vlastos’ close friend, listed the two lekythoi, now exhibited at the M.P. Vlastos Collection in the National Archaeological Museum, in the oeuvre of his Sabouroff Painter, stating that with them a third white ground lekythos by the same painter was found in the same grave. This third lekythos was left
unsold in the Athenian Art Market, and since the 1930’s considered to be of unknown whereabouts. With the aid of the collector’s archive it has been possible to prove that the third lost lekythos is no other than the white ground lekythos inv. no. 51.11.4 of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, acquired in 1951 at the New York Art Market. Thus, at least a
part of the original grave context is now reconstructed.
All three vases depict the same subject; the tomb of a young warrior is visited by a woman. It seems reasonable to suppose that one iconographical “program” unites the three lekythoi, since the warrior is represented in three successive conditions, each on a single lekythos; as an ephebe/peripolos, then as an adult citizen/hoplite receiving his helmet and, finally, as deceased, sitting isolated from the living, on a rock, probably the so-called “White Rock”, immediately inside the Gates of the Underworld, with his weapons lying emblematically unserviceable on the ground.

This article summarizes excavations conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in the Athenian Agora during the 2013–2019 seasons. Excavations were carried out for eight weeks each summer. In this report, we concentrate on a Mycenaean cemetery, the Classical Commercial Building and its earlier phases, further information concerning the building identified as the Painted Stoa (Stoa Poikile), the late phases of the Eridanos River, and an enclosure along the south side of the river that can plausibly be identified as a sanctuary of the eponymous hero Leos and perhaps his three daughters.

This article intends to draw the scholars’ attention to the main contents and features of the research project The Epigraphic Landscape of Athens (University of Turin), and of the relevant online database ELA: www.epigraphiclandscape.unito.it. The article is divided into four parts. In the first one, a general overview of the project is provided: by means of an extensive mapping of the places of the original display and discovery of the Athenian public inscriptions, performed through the ELA Database, the research project intends to outline a ‘virtual map’ of ancient Athens as a ‘written space'. The second part of the article is devoted to the ELA Database, of which it describes both the back-end environment (data entry boards and other tools) and the front-end environment (browse/search functions). The third part provides a brief account of the current state of the works, as far as it concerns both the database population work, and the presence of recurring phaenomena, that are emerging as possible interpretative keys in the reconstruction of the Athenian epigraphic landscape. The fourth part is devoted to a series of case studies, taken from a group of decrees (IG II3 1, 1135-1186) issued between 229/8 and 197/6 BCE, and currently published in the ELA Database; this section is intended to show how the information about the original location of the epigraphic monument, which represents the key-data of each document, is very often the result of an in-depth analysis of the inscription, which takes into account archaeological and material, as well as historical and textual data.

This volume for the first time systematically compiles the archaeological evidence of Athens from the late 8th century to the early 6th century BCE. It aims to classify the material within the context of the urban topography and to offer a religious, social, and political interpretation. It provides the story of birth of the Athenian polis with a new archaeological and historical basis.

The date and location of the cult of Apollo Patroos in the Athenian Agora are still being debated. Recent studies
have proven that the epiclesis Patroos was a 4th century invention, while the cult site in the public space seems
to have already been established by the 6th century BC. hese contradictory results open up new perspectives
and questions regarding the political role of Apollo in Athens starting rom the time of the formation of the
polis. Before being named Patroos, the ancestral Apollo was probably to be identiied with the Pythios, whose
main sanctuary was in a suburban area on the banks of the Ilissos river. he relationships between Apollo
Patroos and Pythios and then between Pythios and the god hypo Makrais and Delphinios are examined.
he purpose of this paper is to reconsider the archaeological, epigraphic and literary documentation related to
the cult of Apollo with the aim to reconstruct its development and place in the religious history of Athens and
hence its relationship to the political space of the city.

και στη συνέχεια, παρουσιάζεται η μελέτη, συντήρηση και αποκατάσταση του μουσικού οργάνου που απετέλεσε ένα εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον πεδίο εργασίας, καθώς, παράλληλα με την πορεία των επεμβάσεων συντήρησης, έπρεπε να εξεταστούν και να ερμηνευτούν οι ιδιαιτερότητες στον σχεδιασμό του και να γίνει οργανολογική μελέτη των επιμέρους τμημάτων του, πράγμα που έγινε εφικτό με τη στενή συνεργασία μελετητή αρχαίων μουσικών οργάνων. Η τεχνολογία κατασκευής και η κατάσταση διατήρησης του πλαγίαυλου κατέστησαν επιβεβλημένο τον διαχωρισμό των πέντε οστέινων στελεχών και των έξι μεταλλικών δακτυλίων του και την αντιμετώπισή τους τμηματικά, ως προς τις βασικές επεμβάσεις συντήρησης. Η διεπιστημονική προσέγγιση, οδήγησε, αφενός στην αποκατάσταση του πολύτιμου μουσικού οργάνου στην πληρότητά του και, αφετέρου, στην ταύτισή του ως μοναδικού ακέραιου σωζόμενου αρχαίου πλαγίαυλου στον ελληνικό χώρο, που η ύπαρξή του συμβάλλει σημαντικά στην επιστήμη της αρχαίας μουσικολογίας. Η εξέταση από την άλλη μεριά των κτερισμάτων του τάφου, που εκτός από τον πλαγίαυλο έφερε στο φως και μια μοναδική σε όγκο ποσότητα μυροδοχείων, μας οδηγούν στο συμπέρασμα ότι στον τάφο της Κοίλης τάφηκε μια περίφημη στην εποχή της αυλητρίδα.

ste trabajo se centra en demostrar que en la tragedia sofoclea, representada en el año 401 a.C., tras su muerte, pero escrita en los años 407-406 o en 405, la puesta en escena de atenienses y tebanos manifiesta el contraste entre unidad y división como problema de la democracia, es decir, como cuestión política fundamental inherente a la pólis. Esta escenificación de ambos conjuntos, a través de sus representantes más conspicuos en cada caso, se da en tierra del Ática y en particular en el demo de Colono, un espacio en el que los problemas de la unidad y la división se habían ventilado de manera notable durante el golpe oligárquico de los Cuatrocientos en 411, pues allí la unidad con la que se impone la oligarquía se logra mediante la borradura de la parte democrática de la participación en el debate, es decir, mediante la supresión de uno de los términos de la escisión y la imposición de una parte sobre la otra: la asamblea en Colono versus la asamblea en la Pnyx.

Early topographers of ancient Athens played down the effect of Herulian seaborne raids on the Aegean littoral in the mid-3rd century noted by contemporary ancient sources. More recent archaeological literature now prefers the accounts of Zosimus, writing ca. A.D. 500, and George Synkellos writing at the end of the 8th century. According to Zosimus, the Herulians “took” Athens in 267/8 and Synkellos adds that they burned and devastated Athens, Corinth, Sparta, Argos and all Achaia. Thanks to Synkellos and archaeology, the Herulian sack and widespread destruction are now firmly entrenched in the academic and popular literature.
The change in scale from raids to wholescale destruction began in 1935 with a coin of Probus found in the foundation trench of the Valerianic / Justinianic / Venetian Wall at Athens and coins beginning with Constantius II in the layers deposited against the wall; the Herulians were not mentioned. In the following year, Arthur Parsons wrote that the wall was built after the “disastrous invasion of the Herulii in 267” and then, in 1937, Homer Thompson professed that it was “beyond question” that the entire region of the Athenian agora, as well as the Dipylon gate, was laid waste by the Herulians. This was a position he retained for the remainder of his life and the identity of both the perpetrators and the date of the destruction were certainly beyond question when Thompson was director of the Athenian agora excavations between 1947 and 1968. This was a period when two important bodies of material from the excavations, the Roman lamps and the Roman pottery, were being researched for publication. In the three volumes which resulted, the event was a horizon marker for what came before and after to the extent that coins did not play role in dating pottery contexts and the lamps found with them.
This article begins with two pivotal post-Herulian contexts believed to mark the transition of unglazed to glazed Athenian lamps ca. A.D. 310-320 then expands the enquiry to examine contexts with lamps in the phases before and after the transition. It relies on the numismatic evidence to date the deposits themselves and to date contexts containing close parallels for the lamps found in them. The results indicate that the transition in Athenian lamps took place in the early 5th century. Further enquiry indicates that pre-Herulian deposits date to the mid-4th century and that Herulian destruction and post-destruction deposits date to
the late 4th and early 5th centuries. This chronological refinement places the post-Herulian wall in the early decades of the 5th century, refines the duration and dates of the lamp makers’ careers and restricts the date of African Red Slip forms 45, 49 and 50 to the second half of the 4th century. These amendments are significant for the chronology of later ARS and the earliest Phocean Red Slip at Athens.

El objetivo principal del trabajo consiste en analizar las perspectivas oligárquicas sobre la condición esclava el dêmos ateniense que se manifiestan durante la Guerra del Peloponeso, y en especial durante los últimos años del siglo V a.C. Esta consideración es particularmente notable en el autor conocido como el Viejo Oligarca, pero también en autores como Andócides, Jenofonte y Platón que desarrollan diferentes críticas al poder político del dêmos. Una de ellas se concreta en el enunciado del carácter pantodapós del pueblo, es decir, la mezcla y la coexistencia sin principio alguno de distinción de gentes de cualquier procedencia y estatus. Jenofonte caracteriza de esta manera a los demócratas del Pireo que se oponen a los oligarcas de la ciudad en la guerra civil que se desata con el golpe de los Treinta. Sin embargo, como destaca Nicole Loraux, en las conmemoraciones posteriores tras la restauración democrática no sería a los del Pireo sino a los de File a quienes se glorificaría como los que hicieron posible el retorno de la democracia. De esta manera, los espacios aparecerían ligados no solo a diferentes grupos políticos sino también a distintas caracterizaciones de las condiciones sociales de sus integrantes, asociándose a los del Pireo con una mezcla que en su indistinción los haría pasibles de ser considerados inferiores y, por tanto, susceptibles de caer en dependencia.

In the late V cent. BCE, consequently upon the several changes from democratic and oligarchic constitutions which Athens had undergone, the Athenians decided to revise, ratify and republish on stone an official version of nomoi (from now clearly separated from psephismata) and set them up at the Stoa Basileios. As we can infer not only from literary and epigraphic sources (Arist. Ath. 7, 1; And. I 82-85; IG I³ 104, 7-8) but also by archaeological excavations (Agora XIV, 88-89), the Stoa Basileios underwent an institutionalisation as a privileged place for displaying laws. Compared to this scenario, Fourth-Century inscribed nomoi show significant differences. In fact, the ones which preserve publication clauses never mention the Royal Stoa and reveal that they were not all set up at the same location. The new criteria followed in the choice of the place of exhibition seem to be no longer the ideological function of the stoa and the classification of these provisions as laws, but their substantive content and their intended audience. In this presentation, I would like to analyse seven Fourth-Century laws in order to show how this logic is followed. They are the Nikophon’s law on dokimastai of silver coinage of 375/4 BCE, the Agyrrhios’ law on grain tax of 374/3 BCE, the law on Eleusinian aparché of 353/2 BCE, the law on rebuilding the wall at Peiraieus and the Eukrates’ law against the tyranny of 337/6 BCE, the law on Lesser Panathenaia of 336/4 BCE and, finally, the Lykourgan law about cult objects of 335/4 BCE. In line with the wide range of matters which these documents cover, by coupling information about their content and their findspot or, whenever possible, by considering their publication clauses, it is possible to identify a high number of sites for their placement, from the Agora to the Akropolis and probably, outside of the asty, Mounychia. This change in placement could be at least partly explained with the fact that at a certain point when Athens began undergoing changes in its political, institutional and socio-economic order, corrections of laws became so extensive that the idea of a law code stable enough to deserve to be engraved in marble within or in front of a symbolic place was abandoned in favour of the adoption of criteria complying with different needs imposed by the renovated historical background.

www.epigraphiclandscape.unito.it
Every inscription, carved on stone and set up in the city space, can be also seen as a communication medium. Public documents (decrees, laws, treaties, accounts, lists, etc.) can be therefore considered as special objects, through which the 'voice' of the polis community is made tangible, becoming monument. In order to appreciate such an ancient communicative phenomenon in its entirety, it is important not to disjoint it from its physical presence and fruition in the polis-space, just as it is important not to ignore the double nature of the epigraphic documents as texts as well as monuments. In this regard, The Epigraphic Landscape of Athens is specially focused on the places of publication of the Athenian public inscriptions (i.e. documents issued from the late 6th century to Late Antiquity, and set up in the asty), grounding on the idea that urban spaces are able to complete, and even to enrich with further ideological or cultural overtones, the original message of the inscribed texts; and that these latter, with their very presence in the city, are able to produce a different sort of public space as 'written space'.

The image of Athens as one huge and faceless tourist venue should be replaced by a peopled, nuanced cityscape with much to see and to experience. Athens is worth savoring slowly by foot beyond the few days most visitors budget for it in their mad rush to get some other place in Greece.  "Peripatoi: 12 Athenian Walks" is for those individuals who wish to spend more time discovering and unraveling the traces of the multiple layers of cultural developments and artistic achievements over six millennia still visible to the discerning eye in the seemingly chaotic, congested but vibrant  central core and peripheral areas of the city. The myriad of archaeological sites and museums, art museums, public buildings, churches, religious structures, house and apartment buildings, monuments and statues, and districts described in these "Peripatoi" document the palimpsests that constitute the modern Athenian cityscape. The twelve illustrated walks included in the guidebook are divided into six pairs. Part 2 includes: Peripatos 3. "The hills surrounding the Akropolis", and Peripatos 4. "Athens' lower districts, the Ancient Agora and the Kerameikos". The entries on these carefully crafted itineraries have succinct descriptions with ample information and frequent images. In addition, straight forward observations and insightful commentaries help to contextualize the points of interest in the broader picture. The routes with aid of maps and walking directions are easy to follow. This is the 3rd revised and enlarged edition of the well-reviewed 2nd edition, "Peripatoi: Athenian Walks", from 2004.