Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
The Archaic wall of Athens: reality or myth?
View through CrossRef
This paper reviews the philological and archaeological evidence for an Archaic, pre-Persian, city wall of Athens, and concludes that there was no Archaic enceinte separate from the fortifications of the Acropolis and Pelargikon. The extant testimonia, primarily Thucydides and Herodotos, can be interpreted in different ways, but there is nothing in these sources to suggest categorically fortifications other than those of the Acropolis/Pelargikon. Previous arguments put forward for the existence of such a putative wall do not stand up to closer scrutiny and, despite extensive excavations in those areas where the wall has been claimed, there is to date no archaeological evidence for an Archaic wall. The wall that the Persians breached in their sack of Athens in 480/79 B.C. was the Mycenaean circuit wall surrounding the Acropolis and Pelargikon; together these walls, built in the Mycenaean period, continued to serve through the Archaic period until 479 B.C. when work was begun on the Themistoklean Wall.
Editorial Committee of the Swedish Institutes at Athens and Rome (ECSI)
Title: The Archaic wall of Athens: reality or myth?
Description:
This paper reviews the philological and archaeological evidence for an Archaic, pre-Persian, city wall of Athens, and concludes that there was no Archaic enceinte separate from the fortifications of the Acropolis and Pelargikon.
The extant testimonia, primarily Thucydides and Herodotos, can be interpreted in different ways, but there is nothing in these sources to suggest categorically fortifications other than those of the Acropolis/Pelargikon.
Previous arguments put forward for the existence of such a putative wall do not stand up to closer scrutiny and, despite extensive excavations in those areas where the wall has been claimed, there is to date no archaeological evidence for an Archaic wall.
The wall that the Persians breached in their sack of Athens in 480/79 B.
C.
was the Mycenaean circuit wall surrounding the Acropolis and Pelargikon; together these walls, built in the Mycenaean period, continued to serve through the Archaic period until 479 B.
C.
when work was begun on the Themistoklean Wall.
Related Results
The Archaic of the Lower Mississippi Valley
The Archaic of the Lower Mississippi Valley
AbstractNo archaeological remains which the majority of specialists will accept as Archaic have been found in the Mississippi Valley from the mouth of Ohio River to the Gulf of Mex...
Color and Architecture: Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus Wall-Painting Workshop in Collaboration, 1922-1926
Color and Architecture: Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus Wall-Painting Workshop in Collaboration, 1922-1926
The Bauhaus was rooted in the idea of collaboration between artist and craftsman and the visual arts and architecture. No medium was more dependent on this spirit of cooperation th...
Archaic Period Canoes from Newnans Lake, Florida
Archaic Period Canoes from Newnans Lake, Florida
Low lake levels, due to drought in spring and summer 2000, revealed the decayed remnants of over 100 dugout canoes buried in the sediments of Newnans Lake near Gainesville, Florida...
Excavation of the Greek Temples at Mycenae by the British School at Athens
Excavation of the Greek Temples at Mycenae by the British School at Athens
The Greek temples on the summit of the citadel at Mycenae were discovered and partially cleared by Ch. Tsountas in 1886, but the major excavation was undertaken in 1939 under the d...
Icônes récrites. Georges Schehadé / Lorand Gaspar
Icônes récrites. Georges Schehadé / Lorand Gaspar
Rewritten Icons. Georges Schehadé/Lorand Gaspar
For Ricoeur, literature is the destiny of writing separated from myth. Icons, which are, in Greek or Russian, not painted but ...
What Do Service Providers’ Understand About Cross-Cultural Differences In The ‘Stranger Danger’ Myth?
What Do Service Providers’ Understand About Cross-Cultural Differences In The ‘Stranger Danger’ Myth?
The paucity of research on cross-cultural diversity in the psychosocial experience of child sexual abuse can affirm biases toward universality. However, belief of the myth that mos...
The Return of Proserpina
The Return of Proserpina
In the first century BC, Cicero praised Sicily as Rome's first overseas province and confirmed it as the mythic location for the abduction of Proserpina, known to the Greeks as Per...
Violence, Speech, and Reality: The Case ofCinq Visages pour Camille Brunelle
Violence, Speech, and Reality: The Case ofCinq Visages pour Camille Brunelle
This article focuses on the connection between violence, obscenity, language, and character in contemporary Quebec theatre and how it might help us redefine the tension between the...