From Thucydides we learn only that what was called the Pelargikon was _below_ the Acropolis. ‘Below’ means immediately, vertically below, for when, in Lucian’s _Fisherman_[50], Parrhesiades, after baiting his hook with figs and gold, casts down his line to fish for the false philosophers, Philosophy, seeing him hanging over, asks, ‘What are you fishing for, Parrhesiades? Stones from the Pelasgikon?’ An inscription[51] of the latter end of the fifth century confirms the curse mentioned by Thucydides, and shows us that the Pelargikon was a well-defined area, as it was the subject of special legislation. ‘The king (i.e. the magistrate of that name) is to fix the boundaries of the sanctuaries in the Pelargikon, and henceforth altars are not to be set up in the Pelargikon without the consent of the Council and the people, nor may stones be quarried from the Pelargikon, nor earth or stones had out of it. And if any man break these enactments he shall pay 500 drachmas and the king shall report him to the Council.’ Pollux[52] further tells us that there was a penalty of 3 drachmas and costs for even mowing grass within the Pelargikon, and three officers called paredroi guarded against the offence. Evidently the fortifications of the Pelargikon, partially dismantled by the Persians, had become a popular stone quarry; as evidently the state had no intention that these fortifications should fall into complete disuse. The question naturally arises, what was the purport of this surviving Pelargikon, why did it not perish with the rest of the Pelasgic fortifications? The answer is simple: the Pelargikon remained because it was the great fortification of the citadel gates. According to Kleidemos, it will be remembered (p. 11), the work of the early settlers was threefold; they levelled the surface of the citadel, they built a wall round it, and they furnished the fortifications with gates. Where will those gates be? A glance at the section in Fig. 1 shows that they _must be_ where they _are_, i.e. at the only point where the rock has an approachable slope, the west or south-west. We say advisedly _south_-west. The great gate of Mnesicles, the Propylaea which remain to-day, face due west; but within that great gate still remain the foundations[53] of a smaller, older gate (Fig. 2, G), built in direct connection with the great Pelasgic fortification wall, and that older gate, there before the Persian War[54], faces _south_-west. [Illustration: FIG. 14.]