Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (4.1885-1886)

25S

THE ATHENIAN PNYX.

than that they refer to Cleon haranguing the people from the
bema.1

7. Welcker and Curtius have also made much of the blowing of the
north wind, as against the Pnyx theory.

Curtius says that the advocates of the Pnyx theory have been so.
carried away with the thought of finding the place in which the popular
assemblies of the ancient Greeks were held, that this and other un-
favorable features of the so-called Pnyx for such assemblies have been
overlooked. How severely the north wind sometimes blows over
the Pnyx Hill we learned from experience, but there seems to be no
solution of this difficulty. The climate has changed in some respects,
but it is scarcely possible that the wind blew less hard in ancient
times than now. If this be not true, the Greeks must often have held
their assemblies in the wind. The site which Curtius and Welcker
ascribe to the place of assembly is but little less exposed to the north
wind than the so-called Pnyx. If from extant remains of structures
built for purposes similar to those of the Pnyx any principle could be
established as to their location or the relative position of speaker and
audience, this argument would gain importance. But, judging from
the theatres of which remains still exist, the Greeks seem to have
had no rule about this matter. The Dionysiac theatre faces the
south, the one at Argos looks toward the east, that at Nauplia
toward the north-north-west, and that at Megalopolis to the north.
Other theatres as well as stadia show that the Greeks constructed
such places of assembly with little or no regard to wind and weather.
If the Pnyx could be located on the south slope of a hill, the protec-
tion which Curtius feels is necessary for the place of assembly would
be secured, but this is scarcely possible ; it must have been some-
where on the north-east slope of the Pnyx Hills. These are all
about equally exposed to the wind.

In conclusion, we wish to notice but two points more. The
first is the use which Curtius is forced by his location of the Pnyx to
make of the passage in Plutarch's Theseus in regard to the battle of
the Amazons. The camp of the Amazons was on the Areopagus
(Aesch. Eumen. 685). Before the battle began, they were so arrayed

1 See note on this verse in Droysen's translation of Aristophanes, Berlin, 1838;
Ribbeck's edition of the Knights, Berlin, 1867; Hiclde's note on this verse in his
translation of Aristophanes, London, 1SS1.