Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1.1882-1883)

192

THE OLYMPIEION AT ATHENS.

tifies this with a large underground cistern connected with the foun-
tain Kallirrhoe, no one will follow him in supposing that this is what
Pausanias meant. Of what style the old temple may have.been we
have no means of knowing; but the fact of its existence does not
rest on a popular report or a superstitious rite, since we have the
express testimony of Thucydides in the passage already cited. He
asserts that the Acropolis and the southern part originally formed all
that there was of the city, which after the political unification of
Attica under Theseus spread out to its later large dimensions. As
proof of this he shows that all the old temples, such as those on the
Acropolis, the Olympieion, those of the Pythian Apollo, of Earth,
and of Dionysos, were situated here, demonstrating that in this, as
in so many other cases, the later large and magnificent temple was
but a substitute for an older and simpler one. There is still another
passage which may refer to this older temple. Among the most
notable antiquities which stood in the peribolos when Pausanias
visited it was a bronze statue of Zeus, which may have been the
sacred image of the antique temple.* Anything more it is impossible
to learn, and the history of the Olympieion properly begins with the
Peisistratidae. It is clear at the outset that the main work of its
erection was done at three widely different epochs. First, under the
tyrant Peisistratos and his sons; secondly, under the Syrian king
Antiochos Epiphanes; and thirdly, under the Roman emperor
Hadrian. Besides this, something may have been done in the reign
of Augustus, nor is it impossible that the work was taken up at
other times also ; but of such work there are no traces and no
records.

It was not until about the year 541 B.C. that the reign of Peisis-
tratos really, began. Twice before he had seized the supreme power
by various stratagems ; but twice the union of the two other factions
under Lykurgos and Megakles had driven him from the city, the
second time to an exile of more than ten years in Eretria. The third
return he effected by force of arms, and he then took measures to
render his expulsion impossible for Te future. The first part of his
reign was full of active enterprises abroad, having in view the aggran-
dizement of Athens and the legitimatization of his own title to power,
— such were the purification of Delos, the restoration of Lygdamos

* Paus., I. 18, 7 : effTi Se ap^ala iv tijj irepi^6\r-j Zeus ^aAKoCs, k.t.L