The ostracism of Thucydidês apparently took place about two years[34]
after the conclusion of the thirty years’ truce,—443-442 B.C.,—and
it is to the period immediately following that the great Periklêan
works belong. The southern wall of the acropolis had been built out
of the spoils brought by Kimon from his Persian expeditions; but the
third of the long walls connecting Athens with the harbor was the
proposition of Periklês, at what precise time we do not know. The
long walls originally completed—not long after the battle of Tanagra,
as has already been stated—were two, one from Athens to Peiræus,
another from Athens to Phalêrum: the space between them was broad,
and if in the hands of an enemy, the communication with Peiræus
would be interrupted. Accordingly, Periklês now induced the people
to construct a third or intermediate wall, running parallel with the
first wall to Peiræus, and within a short distance[35]—seemingly
near one furlong—from it: so that the communication between the
city and the port was placed beyond all possible interruption, even
assuming an enemy to have got within the Phaleric wall. It was
seemingly about this time, too, that the splendid docks and arsenal
in Peiræus, alleged by Isokratês to have cost one thousand talents,
were constructed:[36] while the town itself of Peiræus was laid out
anew with straight streets intersecting at right angles. Apparently,
this was something new in Greece,—the towns generally, and Athens
itself in particular, having been built without any symmetry, or
width, or continuity of streets:[37] and Hippodamus the Milesian, a
man of considerable attainments in the physical philosophy of the
age, derived much renown as the earliest town architect, for having
laid out the Peiræus on a regular plan. The market-place, or one of
them at least, permanently bore his name,—the Hippodamian agora.[38]
At a time when so many great architects were displaying their genius
in the construction of temples, we are not surprised to hear that the
structure of towns began to be regularized also: moreover, we are
told that the new colonial town of Thurii, to which Hippodamus went
as a settler, was also constructed in the same systematic form as to
straight and wide streets.[39]
[34] Plutarch, Periklês, c. 16: the indication of time, however,
is vague.
[35] Plato, Gorgias, p. 455, with Scholia; Plutarch, Periklês, c.
13: Forchhammer, Topographie von Athen, in Kieler Philologische
Studien, pp. 279-282.
[36] Isokratês, Orat. vii: Areopagit. p. 153. c. 27.
[37] See Dikæarchus, Vit. Græciæ, Fragm. ed. Fuhr. p. 140:
compare the description of Platæa in Thucydidês, ii, 3.
All the older towns now existing in the Grecian islands are put
together in this same manner,—narrow, muddy, crooked ways,—few
regular continuous lines of houses: see Ross, Reisen in den
Griechischen Inseln, Letter xxvii, vol. ii, p. 20.
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