or chapel of Aglaurus, which lay nearly in front of the Persian position, but behind the gates and the western ascent. Here the rock was naturally so inaccessible, that it was altogether unguarded, and seemingly even unfortified:[233] moreover, the attention of the little garrison was all concentrated on the host which fronted the gates. Hence the separate escalading party was enabled to accomplish their object unobserved, and to reach the summit in the rear of the garrison; who, deprived of their last hope, either cast themselves headlong from the walls, or fled for safety to the inner temple. The successful escaladers opened the gates to the entire Persian host, and the whole acropolis was presently in their hands. Its defenders were slain, its temples pillaged, and all its dwellings and buildings, sacred as well as profane, consigned to the flames.[234] The citadel of Athens fell into the hands of Xerxes by a surprise, very much the same as that which had placed Sardis in those of Cyrus.[235] [230] Herodot. viii, 52. [231] Pausanias, i, 22, 4; Kruse, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 76. Ernst Curtius (Die Akropolis von Athens, p. 5, Berlin, 1844) says that the plateau of the acropolis is rather less than four hundred feet higher than the town: Fiedler states it to be one hundred and seventy-eight fathoms, or one thousand and sixty-eight feet above the level of the sea. (Reise durch das Königreich Griechenland, i, p. 2); he gives the length and breadth of the plateau in the same figures as Kruse, whose statement I have copied in the text. In Colonel Leake’s valuable Topography of Athens, I do not find any distinct statement about the height of the acropolis. We must understand Kruse’s statement, if he and Curtius are both correct, to refer only to the precipitous impracticable portion of the whole rock. [232] Athenian legend represented the Amazons as having taken post on the Areopagus, and fortified it as a means of attacking the acropolis,—ἀντεπύργωσαν (Æschyl. Eumenid. 638). [233] Herodot. viii, 52, 53. ... ἔμπροσθε ὦν πρὸ τῆς ἀκροπόλιος, ὄπισθε δὲ τῶν πύλεων καὶ τῆς ἀνόδου, τῇ δὴ οὔτε τις ἐφύλασσε, οὔτ’ ἂν ἤλπισε μή κοτέ τις κατὰ ταῦτα ἀναβαίη ἀνθρώπων, ταύτῃ ἀνέβησάν τινες κατὰ τὸ ἱρὸν τῆς Κέκροπος θυγατρὸς Ἀγλαύρου, καίτοιπερ ἀποκρήμνου ἐόντος τοῦ χώρου. That the Aglaurion was on the north side of the acropolis, appears clearly made out; see Leake, Topography of Athens, ch. v, p. 261; Kruse, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 119; Forchhammer, Topographie Athens, pp. 365, 366; in Kieler Philologischen Studien, 1841. Siebelis (in the Plan of Athens prefixed to his edition of Pausanias, and in his note on Pausanias, i, 18, 2) places the Aglaurion erroneously on the eastern side of the acropolis.