Of all the marvellous fragments of early sculpture recently discovered, none is more widely known nor more justly popular than the smiling, three-headed monster known throughout Europe as the ‘Blue-beard.’ He belongs to the sculptures of the west pediment of the inner pre-Peisistratean cella of the ‘old Athena-temple,’ a portion of which is shown in Fig. 12. It is tempting to turn aside and discuss in detail the whole pediment composition to which he belongs. It will, however, shortly be seen (p. 37) that our argument forbids all detailed discussion of the sanctuaries of Athena, and the pediments of her earliest temple have therefore, for us at the moment, an interest merely incidental.

Thus much, however, for clearness sake may and must be said. The design of the western pediment fell into two parts. In one angle, that to the left of the spectator, Herakles is wrestling with Triton; the right-hand portion, not figured here, is occupied by the triple figure of ‘Blue-beard,’ whose correct mythological name is probably Typhon[43]. He is no protagonist, only a splendid smiling spectator. The centre of the pediment, where, in the art of Pheidias, we should expect the interest to culminate, was occupied by accessories, the stem of a tree on which hung, as in vase-paintings, the bow and arrows and superfluous raiment of Herakles.

It is a point of no small mythological interest that in this and two other primitive pediments the protagonist is not, as we should expect, the indigenous hero Theseus, but the semi-Oriental Herakles; but this question also we must set aside; our immediate interest is not in the sculptured figures of the pediment, but in the richly painted decoration on the pediment roof above their heads.

The recent excavations on the Acropolis yielded a large number of painted architectural fragments, the place and significance of which was at first far from clear. Of these fragments forty were adorned with two forms of lotus-flower; twenty had upon them figures of birds of two sorts. Fragmentary though the birds mostly are, the two kinds (storks and sea-eagles) are, by realism as to feathers, beak, legs, and claws, carefully distinguished. The stork (πελαργός) in the Pelargikon is a surprise and a delight. Was Aristophanes[44] thinking of this Pelargikon when to the building of his Nephelokokkygia he brought

One of the storks is given in Fig. 13. The birds in the original fragments are brilliantly and delicately coloured. Their vivid red legs take us to Delphi. We remember Ion[45] with his laurel crown, his bow and arrows, his warning song to swan and eagle.

In days when on open-air altars sacrifice smoked, and there was abundance of sacred cakes, birds were real and very frequent presences. To the heads of numbers of statues found on the Acropolis is fixed a sharp spike to prevent the birds perching[46]. They were sacred yet profane.

The lotus-flowers carry us back to Egypt. The rich blending of motives from the animal and vegetable kingdom is altogether ‘Mycenaean.’ Man in art, as in life, is still at home with his brothers the fish, the bird, and the flower. After this ancient fulness and warmth of life a pediment by Pheidias strikes a chill. Its sheer humanity is cold and lonely. Man has forgotten that

There are two sorts of birds, two sorts of lotus-flowers, and there are two pediments. It is natural to suppose, with Dr Wiegand, that the eagles belonged to the east, the principal pediment. There, it will later be seen (p. 47), were seated the divinities of the place. Our pediment decorated the west end, the humbler seat of heroes rather than gods. There Herakles wrestled with the Triton; there old Blue-beard—surely a monster of the earlier slime—kept his watch; and over that ancient struggle of hero and monster brooded the stork.

The storks themselves are there to remind us that the old name of the citadel was Pelargikon, and that Pelargikon meant ‘stork fort’; by an easy shift it became Pelasgikon[47], and had henceforth an etymologically false association with the Pelasgoi. Etymologically false, but perhaps in fact true, for happily the analogy between the Pelargic walls and those of Mycenae is beyond dispute, and if the ‘Mycenaeans’ were Pelasgian, the walls are, after all, Pelasgic.

We have seen that both Thucydides and the official inscription write Pelargikon; their statements will repay examination.

Thucydides, after his account of the narrow limits of the city before Theseus, returns to the main burden of his narrative, the crowding of the inhabitants of Attica within the city walls. ‘Some few,’ he says[48], ‘indeed had dwelling places, and took refuge with some of their friends or relations, but the most part of them took up their abode on the waste places of the city and in the sanctuaries and hero-shrines, with the exception of the Acropolis and the Eleusinion, and any other that might be definitely closed. And what is called the Pelargikon beneath the Acropolis, to dwell in which was accursed, and was forbidden in the fag end of an actual Pythian oracle on this wise,

was, notwithstanding, in consequence of the immediate pressure thickly populated.’

The passage comes for a moment as something of a shock. We have been thinking of the Pelargikon as the Acropolis, we have traced its circuit of walls on the Acropolis, and now suddenly we find the two sharply distinguished. The Acropolis, though closed, is surely not cursed. The Acropolis is one of the definitely closed places, to which the refugees cannot get access; the Pelargikon, though accursed, is open to them, and they take possession of it; the two manifestly cannot be coincident. But happily the words ‘below the Acropolis’ bring recollection, and with it illumination. What is called the Pelargikon below the Acropolis is surely that appanage of the citadel which Thucydides in his second clause mentions so vaguely. The ancient polis comprised not only ‘what is now the citadel,’ but also together with it, ‘what is below it towards about south[49].’ Thucydides would have saved a world of trouble if he had stated that ‘what is below towards the south’ was the Pelargikon; but he does not, probably because he is concerned with dimensions, not with nomenclature.

The Pelasgikon meant originally the whole citadel, the ancient city as defined by Thucydides. This was its meaning in the days of Herodotus. In the Pelasgikon the tyrants were besieged (p. 25). But by the time of Thucydides the Acropolis proper, i.e. much the larger and more important part of the old city, had ceased to be ‘Pelasgic’; the old fortifications were concealed by the new retaining walls of Themistocles and Kimon. It was only at the west and south-west that the Pelasgic fortifications were still visible, hence this portion below the Acropolis took to itself the name that had belonged to the whole; but this limited use of the word was at first tentative. Thucydides says, ‘which is called the Pelargikon.’ This is quite different from the definite ‘the Pelasgian citadel’ used by Herodotus. The neuter adjectival form is, so far as I know, never used of the whole complex of the Acropolis plus what is below.

From Thucydides we learn only that what was called the Pelargikon was below the Acropolis. ‘Below’ means immediately, vertically below, for when, in Lucian’s Fisherman[50], Parrhesiades, after baiting his hook with figs and gold, casts down his line to fish for the false philosophers, Philosophy, seeing him hanging over, asks, ‘What are you fishing for, Parrhesiades? Stones from the Pelasgikon?’ An inscription[51] of the latter end of the fifth century confirms the curse mentioned by Thucydides, and shows us that the Pelargikon was a well-defined area, as it was the subject of special legislation. ‘The king (i.e. the magistrate of that name) is to fix the boundaries of the sanctuaries in the Pelargikon, and henceforth altars are not to be set up in the Pelargikon without the consent of the Council and the people, nor may stones be quarried from the Pelargikon, nor earth or stones had out of it. And if any man break these enactments he shall pay 500 drachmas and the king shall report him to the Council.’ Pollux[52] further tells us that there was a penalty of 3 drachmas and costs for even mowing grass within the Pelargikon, and three officers called paredroi guarded against the offence. Evidently the fortifications of the Pelargikon, partially dismantled by the Persians, had become a popular stone quarry; as evidently the state had no intention that these fortifications should fall into complete disuse. The question naturally arises, what was the purport of this surviving Pelargikon, why did it not perish with the rest of the Pelasgic fortifications?

The answer is simple: the Pelargikon remained because it was the great fortification of the citadel gates. According to Kleidemos, it will be remembered (p. 11), the work of the early settlers was threefold; they levelled the surface of the citadel, they built a wall round it, and they furnished the fortifications with gates. Where will those gates be? A glance at the section in Fig. 1 shows that they must be where they are, i.e. at the only point where the rock has an approachable slope, the west or south-west. We say advisedly south-west. The great gate of Mnesicles, the Propylaea which remain to-day, face due west; but within that great gate still remain the foundations[53] of a smaller, older gate (Fig. 2, G), built in direct connection with the great Pelasgic fortification wall, and that older gate, there before the Persian War[54], faces south-west.

This gate facing south-west stands on the summit of the hill, and is but one. Kleidemos (p. 11) tells us that the Pelargikon had nine gates. That there should be nine gates round the Acropolis is unthinkable, such an arrangement would weaken the fortification, not strengthen it. The successive gates must somehow have been arranged one inside the other, and the fortifications would probably be in terrace form. The west slope of the Acropolis lends itself to such an arrangement, and in Turkish days this slope was occupied by a succession of redoubts (Fig. 14). Fortified Turkish Athens is in some ways nearer to the old Pelasgian fortress than the Acropolis as we see it to-day. We shall probably not be far wrong if we think of the approach to the ancient citadel as a winding way (Fig. 15), leading gradually up by successive terraces, passing through successive fortified gates[55], and reaching at last the topmost propylon which faced south-west. These terraces, gates, fortifications, covering a large space, the limits of which will presently be defined, formed a whole known from the time of Thucydides to that of Lucian as the Pelargikon or Pelasgikon.

Lucian indeed not only affords our best evidence that, down to Roman days, a place called the Pelasgikon existed below the Acropolis, but is also our chief literary source for defining its limits. We expect those limits to be wide, otherwise the refugees would not have crowded in.

The passages about the Pelasgikon in Lucian are two. First in the ‘Double Indictment[56],’ Dike, standing on the Acropolis, sees Pan approaching, and asks who the god is with the horns and the pipe and the hairy legs. Hermes answers that Pan, who used to dwell on Mt Parthenion, had for his services been honoured with a cave below the Acropolis ‘a little beyond the Pelasgikon.’ There he lives and pays his taxes as a resident alien. The site of Pan’s cave is certainly known; close below it was the Pelasgikon. This marks the extreme limit of the Pelasgikon to the north, for the sanctuary of Aglauros (p. 81) by which the Persians climbed up was unquestionably outside the fortifications. Herodotus[57] distinctly says, ‘In front then of the Acropolis, but behind the gates and the ascent, where neither did anyone keep guard, nor could it be expected that anyone could climb up there, some of them ascended near the sanctuary of Aglauros, daughter of Kekrops, though the place was precipitous.’

A second passage[58] in Lucian gives us a further clue. Parrhesiades and Philosophy, from their station on the Acropolis, are watching the philosophers as they crowd up. Parrhesiades says, ‘Goodness, why, at the mere sound of the words, “a ten-pound note,” the whole way up is a mass of them shouldering each other; some are coming along the Pelasgikon, others and more of them by the Areopagos, some are at the tomb of Talos, and others have got ladders and put them against the Anakeion; and, by Jove, there’s a whole hive of them swarming up like bees.’ A description like this cannot be regarded as definite proof; but, taking the shrines in their natural order, it certainly looks as though in Lucian’s days the Pelasgikon extended from the Areopagos to the Asklepieion. The philosophers crowd up by the regular approach (ἄνοδος) to the Propylaea; there is not room for them all, so they spread to right and left, on the right to the Asklepieion, on the left to the Areopagos; some are crowded out still further on the right to the tomb of Talos[59], near the theatre of Dionysos; on the left to the Anakeion[60] on the north side of the Acropolis.

Yet one more topographical hint is left us. In a fragment of Polemon[61] (circ. 180 B.C.), preserved to us by the scholiast on the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles, we hear that Hesychos, the eponymous hero of the Hesychidae, hereditary priests of the Semnae, had a sanctuary. Its position is thus described: ‘it is alongside of the Kyloneion outside the Nine-Gates.’ It is clear that in the days of Polemon either the Nine-Gates were still standing, or their position was exactly known. It is also clear that, whatever was called the Nine-Gates was near the precinct of the Semnae. The eponymous hero of their priests must have had his shrine in or close to the sanctuary of the goddesses. Moreover the Kyloneion or hero shrine ties us to the same spot. When the fellow-conspirators of Kylon were driven from the Acropolis, where Megacles dared not kill them, they fastened themselves by a thread to the image of the goddess to keep themselves in touch; when they reached the altars of the Semnae the thread broke and they were all murdered[62]. The Kyloneion must have been erected as an expiatory shrine on the spot.

When we turn to examine actual remains of the Pelasgikon on the south slope of the Acropolis (Fig. 2), we are met by disappointment. Of all the various terraces and supporting walls, only one fragment (P) can definitely be pronounced Pelasgian. The remaining walls seen in Fig. 16 date between the seventh and the fifth centuries. The walls marked G in the plan in Fig. 16, but purposely omitted in Fig. 2, are of good polygonal masonry, and must have been supporting walls to the successive terraces of the Pelasgikon; they are probably of the time of Peisistratos[63], but may even be earlier. It is important to note that though not ‘Pelasgic’ themselves they doubtless supplanted previous ‘Pelasgic’ structures. The line followed by the ancient road must have skirted the outermost wall of the Pelargikon; later it was diverted in order to allow of the building of the Odeion of Herodes Atticus. The Pelasgikon of Lucian’s day only extended as far as the Asklepieion; the earlier fortification must have included what was later the Asklepieion[64], as it would need to protect the important well within that precinct.

Thucydides has stated the limits of the ancient city, ‘what is now the citadel was the city together with what is below it towards about south.’ We now-a-days should not question his statement. The remains of the Pelasgian fortifications disclosed by excavation amply support his main contention, namely, that what is now the citadel was the city, the conformation of the hill and literary evidence justify his careful ‘addendum’ together with what is below it towards about south.

But, as noted before, the readers of Thucydides were not in our position, they knew less about the boundaries of the ancient city, and though they probably knew fairly well the limits of the Pelasgikon, even that was becoming rather a matter of antiquarian interest. Above all, they were citizens of the larger city of Themistocles, the Dipylon was more to them than the Enneapylon. Thucydides therefore feels that the truth about the ancient city needs driving home. He proceeds to give evidence for what was, he felt, scarcely self-evident. If we feel that the evidence is somewhat superfluous, we yet welcome it because incidentally he thereby gives us much and interesting information as to the sanctuaries of ancient Athens.

The evidence is, as above stated (p. 8), fourfold.