The Walls

The history of the walls of Athens is the history of the expansion and contraction of the city in its successive phases of growth and decline, in victory, disaster, and recovery. Construction and destruction mark the great epochs; and an account of the walls will incidentally provide a general historical introduction. What follows is mainly a study of the great Themistoklean circuit of classical Athens, built immediately after the glorious defeat of the Persian invasion of 480 B.C. This was a dominant feature of the city in her greatest days, an object of immense expenditure of effort and resources by the Athenian Demos, a symbol of the power of Athens, and a notable example of Greek military architecture; and, with repeated repair and reconstruction of course, it remained more or less in being for sixteen centuries of varying fortunes, rising again and again after severe dilapidation. At the same time, in the light of modern archaeological investigation, one can put this wall in its place in a series which extends over three thousand years.

In prehistoric Athens, when the Acropolis with its immediate adjuncts was the polis, as Thucydides tells us (2.15.3), the fortification of the Acropolis with its outworks was the city wall. The hill was surrounded by a powerful wall in the Mycenean period, with additional fortifications, of which only slight traces have been found, to protect the main approach on the west. This fortress is probably what was known as the Pelasgikon or Pelargikon, though in certain contexts (notably Thucydides, 2.17.1) the name seems to be used of the western outwork in particular. Naturally the alternative names gave rise to confusion in the minds of the ancients and of the writers of manuscripts. Pelasgikon means "building of the Pelasgi," the very obscure early inhabitants of Attica; Pelargikon means "stork-building." The origin of the name is not known; the stork seems to have been a bird of some significance on the early Acropolis — it is found in the decoration of the cornice of the old temple of Athena. The structure known as Enneapylon, Nine-gated, is commonly thought to be the western approach to the fortress, but this is uncertain.

In modern times the evidence of the massive walls has been supplemented increasingly by other finds; and we can see that Mycenean Athens, though not one of the major centers, was a place of moderate importance.

The Pelasgic wall continued to guard the Acropolis, for seven centuries or more, that is, through the "sub-Mycenean" dark ages, the geometric period (9th and 8th centuries) when the pottery and other finds show that Athens enjoyed a certain degree of culture and prosperity even though as in the rest of Greece architecture had reverted to primitive forms, the archaic period (7th and 6th centuries) when the city made great progress commercially, politically, and artistically, and indeed up to the time of the Persian invasion (480 B.C.).On the northern side little trace of this wall has been found, and it is assumed that it has been obliterated by the post-Persian wall, built by Kimon, which took the same irregular course; there are indications of successive posterngates east and west of the Erechtheion. On the south side, where the straight lines of the wall of Kimon thrust farther outwards, forming a great terrace, massive sections have been preserved, notably south of the Propylaia, southwest of the Parthenon (deep in the terrace fill, forming a kind of intermediate retaining wall) and at the extreme eastern end of the hill, near the modern Museum. At the southwest corner a bastion was constructed to threaten a flank of attackers who advanced as far as the principal gate. The main wall nearby abuts somewhat awkwardly on the south wing of the Propylaia. At this crucial point it is over 5m broad (elsewhere it is somewhat less). The style of the masonry is fine Cyclopean, with huge blocks of the native limestone, roughly worked on the outer face, small blocks filling the interstices, and originally with some use of clay bedding. The inner part was of less careful construction. The old wall now stands here to a height of nearly 4m; but the working of the wall of the Propylaia shows that in the fifth century it was no less than 10m high — an impressive monument to Athens' legendary past. By this time the western extension, farther down the slope, hardly served as a fortification of any kind; but its line still marked a traditionally sacred area. The old tag quoted by Thucydides said, "The Pelargikon is better unworked."

The Cyclopean wall of the Acropolis is solid enough. The very existence of a pre-Persian wall around the whole city, not to speak of its date and its course, is still a matter of dispute. Literary sources are ambiguous and tell us nothing definite and positive. Even more surprising, if there was indeed a wall, is the fact that no certain trace of it has been found, whereas enough is known of the Themistoklean circuit and its gates to determine most of its course. The earlier wall may have been of simple construction, rough stone socle with crude brick superstructure; but even walls of this kind seldom vanish without trace; and some at least of its course must have run through known archaeological areas.

On general grounds, one would not expect Athens to be still unfortified at the beginning of the fifth century; as Travlos points out, walls had already been built at Eleusis. Thucydides' evidence is crucial but interpreted in different ways. After the Persian invasion, he says, "The Athenians set about rebuilding the city and the walls; for only short sections of the circuit (peribolos) were still standing" (1.89.3); and again (93. 2) "the peribolos of the city was extended on all sides." It is somewhat perverse to take the view that Thucydides has in mind the primitive fortifications of the Acropolis and its immediate appendages, and not an outer circuit. Of course he may simply be mistaken; but it is reasonable to assume that he knew what he was talking about, and to let him turn the scale in favor of an early wall.

Another passage (Thuc. 6.57.1-3) is relevant not only to the existence but also to the position of this wall. Finding the tyrant Hippias "outside in the Kerameikos" marshaling the Panathenaic procession, Harmodios and Aristogeiton rushed inside the gates, where they met and killed his brother Hipparchos near the shrine called the Leokorion (in 514 B.C). This probably implies that the wall ran past the northwest corner of the classical agora; and at this point many centuries later Pausanias (1.15.1) saw a gateway which, like such structures in modern cities, e.g., Paris, may have marked the site of a primitive town gate. It has been suggested that the Arch of Hadrian, diagonally opposite in southeast Athens, may also have been the successor of the early gate; but this is even more highly conjectural — the Arch may be explained simply as an ornamental approach to the region of the Olympieion, with its fine Hadrianic buildings, the orientation being due to the line of an ancient street leading in this direction.

When so much is uncertain it is perhaps rash to attempt to trace the line of the early wall even approximately. One can assume that it formed a rough circle or ellipse around the Acropolis — this shape may have helped to suggest the adjective "wheel-shaped" which is applied to Athens in an oracle quoted by Herodotus (7.140.2) — and that on the north it stopped short of the Eridanos stream. Judeich would take it over the crest of the southwestern hills, the Mouseion, the Pnyx, and the Hill of the Nymphs. Travlos confines it more closely to the slopes of the Acropolis and the Areopagus, with a total length of about 2600m; he assumes gates on the principal arteries of communication, corresponding to the most important gates, placed farther out of course, in the Themistoklean wall.

When such a wall can have been first constructed is entirely conjectural, and dates from the late seventh century to the late sixth have been suggested. Early in the sixth century, in the time of Solon, the city expanded northwards and the spacious agora was established northwest of the Acropolis. This quarter needed protection; the idea of enclosing the whole city was to some extent bound up with the emergence of more broadly based democratic institutions. On the other hand the tyrant Peisistratos (561-527 B.C.) was much concerned with giving visible expression to the growing power of Athens, and he may have constructed or completed the circuit.

The restored democracy had to face the might of the Persian invader; and in 480 B.C. whatever fortification the city had was quite inadequate, and victory depended on the fleet at Salamis. After the defeat of the Persians defense works took precedence over temples and public buildings.

Thucydides (1.90) describes how in 479 B.C, while Themistokles talked evasively to the Spartans, who, suspicious and jealous as ever, wished to discourage their allies from building powerful fortifications, his fellow-citizens back home threw up their new wall to a defensible height in an incredibly short time. Everyone joined in the work, and all kinds of material, including funeral monuments, were flung in. One might have expected that a wall built in such haste and in such an apparently makeshift and amateurish fashion would before long be discarded and superseded by something more deliberately planned and more carefully constructed. In fact the defenses of Athens remained for centuries essentially the Themistoklean wall.

Perhaps Thucydides exaggerates somewhat the impromptu character of the work. Though a certain amount of odd material was indeed incorporated in places, as the remains at the Dipylon and elsewhere show, the stone socle was built solidly enough. The greater part of the wall was of course of unbaked brick. "With such a method of construction," says I. T. Hill, "it would certainly have been possible to complete it in the short space of a month or so"; but one doubts whether the wall reached its full height in so short a time. In fact the method was not essentially different from what was in general use. The main difference lay in the great numbers at work on the job, supplemented by a saving of time in the working of some of the stones.

It may well be that Themistokles, who with a view to developing Athenian naval power had planned and begun the massive fortifications of Peiraeus in his archonship in 493/2 B.C, had also given some thought to the planning of the wall of the upper city. In a purely makeshift job, one might have expected that the old wall would be repaired, if it existed; or if it did not, that a less extensive and ambitious circuit would be attempted. The line chosen allowed for a great extension of the city, and defensively it could not be greatly bettered. Where possible, i.e. mainly on the hills in the west and southwest, natural features were skillfully used. Even though remains are very scanty, the line can now be traced with great accuracy. Few continuous stretches have been thoroughly investigated, but odd bits are constantly coming to light, often in chance excavations; a number of towers and gates are known — they were more solidly built than most of the rest. A few sections no longer visible were noted by early topographers such as Stuart and Revett.

The position of the cemeteries helps — it can be assumed that from the fifth century onwards all graves except those of very young children are outside the city. All this evidence leaves little to be deduced from a general consideration of the contours. In his plan of forty years ago Judeich was able to indicate the line of the wall with remarkable accuracy, and with the help of more recent finds and researches Travlos has now given it greater precision, especially on the east and south; there are more deviations from a simple continuous line, more kinks and reentrants, than was formerly imagined.

From the region of the Dipylon and the Sacred Gate on the northwest the wall ran southwest to the Peiraeus Gate (excavated a few years ago) and then swung southeast to climb the Hill of the Nymphs, on the slope of which a section is still conspicuous. From here, instead of cutting across south-eastwards to the Mouseion Hill, as did the later diateichisma or crosswall, the Themistoklean wall made a large outward loop round the southwestern spurs of the Pnyx Hill. The course of this section, from which ran the Long Walls to Peiraeus, is not very clear, but it eventually attained the summit of the Mouseion. Descending the hill it ran almost due east, and after making several salients it turned northwards past the Olympieion. Little of the wall has been found on the eastern side; but its course can now be plotted with considerable accuracy, since at several points lucky finds have produced unmistakable traces of the ditch which was later dug outside the wall in the fourth century. Broken pottery and other rubbish was later tipped into the ditch, and this has come to light in great quantities. Remains of the Acharnian Gate and several sections of the wall give the line on the north. On this side as on the east there was little possibility of natural defense, and the wall took a fairly regular course.

The city wall was built largely in the technique which remained common in Greece even after more elegant and solid masonry had become frequent — unbaked brick on a stone socle, composed of several courses of massive well-shaped blocks on either face of a core of rougher stone. The material was poros or harder limestone, with increasing use of conglomerate in later phases. This is not the place to go into details of style and technique. The masonry of Greek walls is notoriously difficult to date in default of some chance piece of archaeological evidence. Walls needed repeated reconstruction or repair, and it is often hard to say to which phase a surviving piece of masonry belongs. There is not as in other arts any clear and consistent development or sequence of styles.

The mode of construction can best be seen and studied in the neighborhood of the Dipylon and the Sacred Gate. The well-preserved section adjacent to the Sacred Gate conveniently fell apart in bad weather several years ago, and the German archaeologists were able to examine its structure before making good the damage. The outer face consists of three successive layers of masonry superimposed on each other, distinguished by material and style. The lowest is assigned to the original Themistoklean wall; the second, of larger polygonal blocks, to the repairs of Konon early in the fourth century (perhaps much of the original socle was below the ground level of that time); the uppermost layer belongs to the reconstruction in the latter part of the fourth century. The filling between the massive blocks of the two faces was stone in the earlier and lower stages, but in the third phase brickwork of the Kononian wall was retained as a core and has thus been unusually well preserved. The full height is entirely conjectural. The width of the curtain wall at this point is about 3.5m. In other sections a width of 3m or somewhat more is commonly found. Clearly, construction varied in different places and times. An exceptionally well-preserved and strongly built stretch of wall socle, of the end of the fourth century, was found several years ago in the northeastern sector, with solid conglomerate masonry about 5m thick standing to a height of eight courses, and with an even greater width at the base to support a stair. As the arts of war advanced, stronger defenses were necessary in the Greek cities. The Athenians made great efforts to keep abreast of the besiegers, but the effect must have been somewhat patchy and hardly equal to the finest fortifications of the period.

According to Thucydides the Themistoklean walls of Peiraeus were of finer construction than those of the upper city, being of solid masonry throughout, but when we examine the remains of the harbor town we find reason to doubt his statement and to believe that it is true only of limited sections. However this may be, together with the walls of the upper city and the connecting Long Walls they formed a single great system of fortification. The Long Walls were not built in the time of Themistokles, as Pausanias says (1.2a), but some years later. Towards the middle of the century two walls were built, one running straight to Peiraeus, the other to Phaleron, 5 km farther east. After several years, on Perikles' suggestion, as Plato tells us (Gorgias 455e), a third wall was added, running parallel to the original wall to Peiraeus at a distance of about 167m. The line of the two parallel walls has been well-established by remains found here and there; the line of the Phaleric Wall, which was not restored after its destruction in 404 B.C, cannot be so precisely fixed. It was not till the whole scheme was near completion, after the middle of the century, that the Athenians were able to turn their thoughts and devote their resources wholeheartedly to embellishing their city with the splendid new temples and other buildings of Perikles' time.