Camp J. The Archaeology of Athens

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of ] Lagos, sent to help the Athe-

nians when Antigonos, [Go-

natas] son of Demetrios, had in-

vaded their country at the head

of an army and was ravaging it

while his ships blockaded the

coast.

Opposite the island, the Athenians ex-

panded and strengthened the fort at

Sounion at about this time. The new

parts of the walls and a huge artillery

tower built to carry catapults show the

characteristic signs of hasty construction: many of the structure blocks come from plun-

dered grave monuments (see fig. 100). From Athens, Eleusis, Rhamnous, and Sounion

come dozens of garrison inscriptions, indicative of the intense military activity which char-

acterizes the third century.

Athens was freed from Macedonian control in 229 and continued a close association

with the Ptolemies. In 223 the reigning king, Ptolemy III Euergetes, was made an epony-

mous hero with a new tribe, Ptolemais, named after him, and a new deme named after his

wife Berenike. The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Agora was extended to in-

clude his statue as well, as the number of tribes swelled to thirteen (see figs. 153, 154). Pau-

sanias saw statues of several Ptolemies set up in the Agora, and east of the marketplace, in

an area still covered by the modern houses of Plaka, one of the Ptolemies built the Atheni-

ans a new gymnasium.

While Ptolemy was fostering good relations with Athens, the stock of the Macedo-

nians was sinking lower and lower. In 200, after failing to take Athens itself, Philip V took

out his frustration on the cemeteries outside the walls and on the sanctuaries of Attica:

Afterward, when the Athenians held their men within the walls, Philip, giving

the signal to retire, pitched camp at Kynosarges, where there was a precinct of

Herakles and a gymnasium with a grove around it. But Kynosarges, the Ly-

ceum, and all the sacred and pleasant spots around the city were burned; the

buildings and even the tombs were destroyed, and nothing consecrated to di-

vine or human use escaped his uncontrollable passion. . . .

168 HELLENISTIC ATHENS

163

162. Koroni peninsula, with traces of the

Ptolemaic fort, 260s b.c.

While he had devoted his former raid to destroying the tombs around the

city, in order that he might leave nothing inviolate, he ordered the temples of the

gods which the Athenians had dedicated in all the demes to be torn down and

burned; and the land of Attica, with its wonderful adornment of works of art and

its abundance of native marble and the skill of its artists, offered material for his

rage. For he was not satisfied merely with destroying the temples and statues

themselves but even ordered the separate stones to be broken up, lest they be

left whole on the piles of ruins. After his anger, or rather objects on which to

vent his anger, had been exhausted, he retired from enemy territory to Boiotia

and did nothing else worth mentioning in Greece. (Livy 31.23–26)

The likeliest place where evidence for these attacks can be detected is at the temple of

Nemesis at Rhamnous, which needed extensive repairs to its eastern facade in the Roman

period. The sanctuary at Brauron is also left desolate in the Hellenistic period, and Philip’s

attack may well have been a factor. Fortified sites, such as Eleusis and Sounion, survived in-

tact. One result of his actions was a decree passed by the Athenians:

Hellenistic Athens 169

163. Sounion, artillery bastion built in part out of marble blocks taken from earlier tombs, 3rd century

b.c. (Cf. figs. 100, 266)

[To view this image, refer to

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All statues and pictures of Philip as well as of all his ancestors

in both the male and female line should be taken and de-

stroyed; all holidays, rites, and priesthoods instituted in his

honor or that of his forefathers should be disestablished; the

places too in which a dedication or an inscription of this import

stood should be accursed. (Livy 44.4–8)

Demetrios and Antigonos ceased to be eponymous heroes, and in in-

scriptions referring to them their names were carefully chiseled off.

Pieces of a bronze equestrian statue thrown down a well in the Agora

in about 200

. can almost certainly be identified as a statue of Demetrios; the fact that it

was discarded instead of melted down gives some indication of the passionate hatred be-

hind this damnatio memoriae.

The benefaction of the Ptolemaic gymnasium for the Athenians was a precursor of

the recovery to take place during the second century

. Athens was once again adorned

with a series of handsome new marble buildings of various types, almost all paid for by for-

eign potentates. By this time Athens had lost all military, political, and economic preemi-

nence, but in two areas the city was to remain dominant throughout the Hellenistic and

succeeding Roman period: as both the cultural and the educational center of the Mediter-

ranean. The great philosophical schools of the Academy and the Lyceum, as well as the Sto-

ics and Cynics, made Athens the place to study, even when Alexandria and Antioch and

other great centers of learning arose. As soon as one Hellenistic king made a grandiose gift

of a building to the Athenians, the healthy spirit of rivalry which infuses all of Greek life

took over, and others felt the need to compete. In addition to the Ptolemies, the Attalids of

Pergamon, the Seleucid dynasty of Syria, King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia, and perhaps

others built the Athenians rich buildings of the sort the citizens could never have paid for

themselves.

170 HELLENISTIC ATHENS

164

164. Gilded bronze leg and sword of an equestrian statue of Demetrios, set

up ca. 307/6 b.c. and discarded in a well in the Agora ca. 200 b.c.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

The Attalids of Pergamon fostered particularly close ties with Athens, and they clearly

liked to think of themselves as the successors to the Classical tradition. In a series of bitter

battles, they subdued the Gauls who crossed over to Asia Minor in 279/8, and they com-

pared their successes to the Athenian triumphs over the barbarian Persians two hundred

years earlier. Statues of defeated Gauls were set up in Athena’s sanctuary at Pergamon, and

Pausanias reports seeing a series of sculptural groups celebrating these same victories on

the Acropolis of Athens (1.25.2):

At the south wall are figures about 2 cubits [1 meter] high, dedicated by Attalos.

They represent the legendary war of the giants who once dwelt around Thrace

and the isthmus of Pallene, the fight of the Athenians with the Amazons, the

battles with the Medes at Marathon, and the destruction of the Gauls in Mysia.

Attalos I was succeeded in 197 by his son, Eumenes II, who continued to favor the

Athenians. Along the south slopes of the Acropolis, just west of the theater of Dionysos,

Eumenes built a long colonnade, or stoa, to provide shelter for the thousands of people at-

tending the festival and theatrical events (Vitruvius 5.9.1). The steep hillside presented no

great challenge to the engineers, who were familiar with the steep slopes which make up

the citadel at Pergamon. Behind the back wall of the stoa and hidden by it, a huge retaining

wall was built and supported with buttresses; arches spanned the spaces between the tops

of the buttresses. The stoa itself consisted of double colonnades on two stories. On the

ground f loor, the Doric order was used for the outer colonnade and Ionic for the interior;

above, the outer colonnade was Ionic, extended to provide a flat panel for parapet blocks.

Within, the upper order is a type known as Pergamene, an adaptation of an Egyptian palm-

leaf capital. This type was common in northwest Asia Minor in the Archaic period, and two

early treasuries at Delphi have similar capitals, identified as having been built by Klazo-

menai and Massalia (modern Marseille). These capitals become common again in the

Hellenistic Athens 171

165

166

165. Plan of the Stoa of Eumenes on the south slopes of the Acropolis, 196–159 b.c.

Hellenistic period at Perga-

mon and in areas under

Pergamene control, such as

Assos.

An interesting feature

of the stoa of Eumenes is the

evidence for direct inf luence

in the design and construc-

tion of the building. The Pergamene capitals and

the cornice between upper and lower stories are

of large-crystalled gray marble from the area of

Pergamon itself, and masons’ marks characteris-

tic of Pergamon indicate that the blocks were

carved there and shipped to Athens ready to be in-

stalled. Clearly the king did not just send a check

when he offered to build the stoa for the Atheni-

ans. This same hands-on approach in Attalid ded-

ications is attested to also at Delphi, where work-

men and painters were sent from Pergamon to

work on the theater and a stoa.

We can also recognize Pergamene work-

manship on a prominent tall statue base erected

just to the left before one enters the Propylaia.

The structure is of Hymettian marble, just under

9 meters tall, with courses of alternating heights;

in style it closely matches several bases erected

east of the temple of Apollo at Delphi to carry stat-

ues of the Attalid kings and their allies. The

172 HELLENISTIC ATHENS

167

167. Statue base originally built for Eumenes and

Attalos of Pergamon, just outside the Propylaia, later

reused to carry a statue of Agrippa.

166. Column capital from the

Stoa of Eumenes made of

marble from near Pergamon.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

Athenian example may have also carried a statue of one of the Pergamene dynasts. The

original dedicatory inscription was erased in the Roman period, when the base was reused

for a statue of the general Agrippa. This is by far the best-preserved example, but several

other tall Hellenistic bases of this type have been recognized in fragments on the Acropo-

lis—one set prominently at the north end of the facade of the Parthenon—and in the Agora

as well.

Eumenes’ brother, Attalos II, studied in Athens under the philosopher Karneades,

and when he became king of Pergamon in 159 he, too, offered the Athenians a stoa in ap-

preciation of his happy college days. The stoa of Attalos lay along the east side of the Agora

and served as the principal market building of the city. It had the same arrangement of

colonnades as the stoa of Eumenes: Doric outside and Ionic inside on the ground f loor, and

on the top f loor Ionic with a parapet outside and Pergamene inside. In this instance all the

building materials are Athenian: limestone for the walls, Hymettian and Pentelic marble

for the superstructure. The other major difference was the row of shops behind the colon-

nades on each story, twenty-one to a f loor. With forty-two shops under a single roof, the stoa

of Attalos begins to look like an early shopping mall, and we are invited to consider once

again how little has changed since antiquity except the technology.

Other dynasts took an interest in Athens as well; Antiochos IV of Syria (175–164),

Hellenistic Athens 173

168, 169, 170

168. The reconstructed Stoa of Attalos in the Agora, 159–138 b.c.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

known for his megalomania, worked on the abandoned temple of Olympian Zeus, a god

with whom he felt a distinct affinity. An earlier temple had been left unfinished since the

days of Peisistratos:

For at Athens the architects Kallaischros, Antistates, Antimachides, and Pori-

nos laid the foundations for Peisistratos when he was building a temple for

Jupiter Olympius; but after his death, because a republican regime intervened,

they abandoned the task they had begun. So it was that about two hundred years

later (after Alexander the Great), when King Antiochos had promised to meet

the expense of the work, a Roman citizen, Cossutius, with great ingenuity and

supreme technical skill splendidly designed the great size of the cella, the

dipteral arrangement of columns around it, and the symmetrical disposition of

the epistyles and other decorative features. The building is known for its gran-

deur not only among the masses but also among experts. (Vitruvius 7 praef. 15)

The temple of Olympian Zeus envisioned by Antiochos was indeed a magnificent build-

ing. It measured just over 110 meters long and more than 43 meters wide, about the size of

an American football field, including the end zones (see fig. 247). Of Pentelic marble with

Corinthian columns set in a dipteral arrangement (three rows of columns on the ends and

two rows down the long sides), it had eight columns across the front and twenty down the

long sides: a forest of columns, 104 in all. Ancient authors suggest that the cella was to be

open to the sky. The scale and plan made the Olympieion the match of the other giant tem-

ples of the Greek world, the Ionic ones at Samos, Ephesos, and Didyma near Miletos, and

the Doric ones at Selinous and Akragas. The building in its Hellenistic phase was never

174 HELLENISTIC ATHENS

171

172

Left 169. The interior of the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos.

Right 170. A cross-section model of the Stoa of Attalos, showing colonnades, rooms,

and roofing system.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

171. The southeast corner of the temple of Olympieion Zeus, laid out and partially built by Antiochos

IV of Syria (175–164 b.c.), finished under Hadrian in the 2nd century a.d.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]

fully completed, though careful analysis has confirmed Vitruvius’ information that at least

parts of the structure were raised to architrave level. Presumably abandoned at the death of

Antiochos in 164, the temple was only finished some three hundred years later, under the

Roman emperor Hadrian.

In contrast to the Olympieion, one of the most interesting monuments of Hellenistic

Athens is also the smallest: the so-called Tower of the Winds or the Horologion (timepiece)

of Andronikos:

Some have held that there are four winds. . . . But those who have inquired

more diligently lay down that there are eight: especially indeed Andronikos of

Kyrrhos, who also for an example built at Athens an octagonal tower, and on the

sides of the octagon had representations of the winds carved facing their cur-

rents. Above the tower he caused to be made a marble upright, and on that he

placed a bronze Triton holding a rod in his right hand. He arranged it so it was

driven around by the wind and always faced the current of air, with the rod as an

indicator above the correct representation of the wind. (Vitruvius 1.6.4)

176 HELLENISTIC ATHENS

173

172. Plan of the sanctuary of Olympieion Zeus as finished by Hadrian, ca. a.d. 124–132. Note the

dipteral plan, with two rows of columns all around (three rows on the ends).

Varro, in the Res Rusticae (3.5.17), describes

a building in Italy in terms of its similarity

to the tower in Athens:

Inside, under the dome, the morning

star by day and the evening star by

night move round the lower part of

the hemisphere in such a way as to in-

dicate the hour. In the middle of the

same hemisphere, which has a spin-

dle in the center, is painted the cycle

of the eight winds, like the Horolo-

gion at Athens made by the Kyrrhest-

ian, and projecting from the spindle a

pointer which moves so as to touch whatever wind is blowing at that time, so

that anyone inside can tell.

The Athenian building survives virtually intact, lying east of the Roman marketplace. It is

an octagonal tower, about 14 meters high, made of Pentelic marble. The roof, of wedge-

shaped marble slabs, is original; the bronze Triton described by Vitruvius is long gone.

There are two entrances into the building, at the northwest and northeast, each approached

through a porch of two columns, pieces of which survive. In addition, there are the remains

of a truncated circular chamber, also original, attached to the south side and rising two-

thirds of the way up the wall.

At the top of each wall, as described by Vitruvius, are sculpted representations of the

winds, shown as winged male figures f lying toward the viewer’s right. Inscriptions, now

barely legible, identify the eight winds: Boreas (north), Skiron (northwest), Zephyros

(west), Lips (southwest), Notos (south), Euros (southeast), Apeliotes (east), and Kaikias

(northeast). The figures are planned as a program; each wind carries an attribute appropri-

ate to the weather that can be expected from that quarter. The northerly winds carry basins

of rain or hailstones, the southerly ones f lowers or the poop of a ship to indicate fair sailing.

In addition, the southerly winds have bare feet and wear light mantles, while their northern

counterparts wear boots and heavy cloaks.

Hellenistic Athens 177

174

173. View of the Tower of the Winds, or

Horologion, of Andronikos from the southeast,

mid-2nd century b.c.

[To view this image, refer to

the print version of this title.]