Primitive Athens as described by ThucydidesHarrison, Jane Ellen
History
Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides
Harrison, Jane Ellen
Athens (Greece) -- Antiquities; Athens (Greece) -- Description and travel
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Some of the details of the restoration have been suggested by the
water-works discovered at Megara, which are in some respects better
preserved than those at Athens. At Megara are extant not only a great
conduit to bring water from a distance but an elaborate arrangement for
utilizing it consisting of a reservoir and a pillared draw-well besides
a fountain house. It is very probable that the works of Theagenes served
as a model to Peisistratos, and therefore before the draw-well and
fountain house of Peisistratos are discussed a word must be said of the
excavations at Megara.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
Pausanias[273] begins his account of the city of Megara somewhat abruptly
thus. ‘In the city there is a fountain. And Theagenes built it for them.
About him I have already mentioned that he gave his daughter in marriage
to Kylon the Athenian. This Theagenes, having possessed himself of the
tyranny, built the fountain, and from its size, its decorations, and
the number of its columns, it is worth looking at. Water flows into it
called the water of the Sithnidian nymphs.’ After the excavations at
Athens, the fountain or, as perhaps it is best called, the well-house
of Theagenes at Megara was sought and found[274] at the bottom of the
Eastern Acropolis of Megara, called Karia. The aqueduct leading to the
reservoir was excavated for a considerable distance, and proved to be a
structure closely resembling those found at Athens and Samos. Eupalinos
it will be remembered was a native of Megara. The draw-well, the
supporting walls of which are well preserved, was about 15 by 20 metres
in size and built of Kara limestone, a material much used in the 6th
century B.C. for the foundations and stylobates of buildings. All round
the side whence water was drawn was a low parapet wall. This wall shows
signs in many places of being worn away by the friction of ropes and
dripping of water. The block shown in Fig. 39 is closely paralleled by
the block found in Athens and placed beneath it for comparison.
Not only, then, at Athens did a despot build a well-house and
artificially increase a supply of holy water. The original spring at
Megara was sacred to the Sithnidian nymphs; we do not know what nymphs
guarded Kallirrhoë at Athens; there were plenty about, for to this day
close at hand is the Hill of the Nymphs. Dionysos who dwelt so near was
called Limnaios, He-of-the-Marshes, Phanodemos[275] says, because he
invented the blending of must with water; hence, he adds, ‘the springs
are called Nymphs and nurses of Dionysos, because water mixed with wine
increases it.’
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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