The circumference of ATHENS was much changed in the course of time. According to the traditions, it was at first small like all the towns in Attica, when the lower hills all around were thinly peopled. The arx of Athens, we are told by Thucydides, was called the πόλις, though more probably ἄστυ;[41] for everywhere πόλις and ἄστυ seem to stand in the same relation to each other as _civitas_ stands to _urbs_ or _oppidum_. As _civitas_, in good Latinity, is never used of the buildings, so πόλις in Greece, even at an early time signified the body of citizens, and ἄστυ the place they inhabited. In the most ancient times the ἄκραι alone were fortified in all parts of Greece, the places below them were inhabited κωμηδόν; such was the case in the Pelasgian times at Athens, and also at Sparta. When the town was surrounded with walls cannot be ascertained, but it was probably as early as the time of the Pisistratidae; that κύκλος, however, must have been feeble and unimportant, for if the town had been strong, we cannot conceive why the citizens, on the approach of the Persians, abandoned it without any thought of being able to defend it. After the evacuation of Attica, Themistocles restored the walls, and gave them a much greater circumference. This is, properly speaking, not mentioned anywhere expressly by the ancients[42], but has long ago been assumed by the moderns from the context of the narrative and from the circumstances of the case, and that too with full justice: matters happened in a similar way at Cologne, Nürnberg, Frankfort and Florence. In building walls the ancients sometimes followed the lines of the suburbs, which were surrounded by palisades; but sometimes the circumference was made larger than was really needed, and such may have been the case at Athens. But what was the circumference of Athens? The walls of Themistocles cannot be traced with the same accuracy as the agger of Serv. Tullius at Rome. In the time of Pausanias they were still standing; they had been built by Themistocles in a very hurried manner, but still of such strength that their complete disappearance is a mystery. I have no doubt that the foundations might be discovered if it were possible to make excavations. All we know about the subject is the statement of Thucydides, that the city was forty-three stadia in circumference, exclusive of the empty space between the two long walls. This empty space is estimated in different ways, but there can be no doubt that it occupied only a few stadia, for there was no necessity for keeping those walls far asunder. Fauvel, who resided several years in Athens, declares that he cannot make out that the circumference of Athens was so large, and therefore assumes the passage of Thucydides to be corrupt. But his supposition cannot be admitted, for Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the Rome of Serv. Tullius was about equal to the ancient ἄστυ: now the circumference of the agger of Serv. Tullius,