Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (6.1890-1897 (1897))

64

ERETRIA: HISTORICAL SKETCH.

The great question in regard to the topography of Eretria is whether
or not the present acropolis walls are those of the pre-Persian city. I
believe that they are pre-Persian, and the very walls to which the
scattered Eretrians who were not carried off to Asia returned. But
for a single passage in Strabo, no one would ever have supposed
that a city like the pre-Persian Eretria could have been established
anywhere along this coast except on this very hill. Settlers who left
this out, and chose another spot near by, would have become more
proverbial in Greece than the " blind men " who chose Chalcedon and
left Byzantium to later arrivals. But Strabo (p. 403), in reckoning
distances from the Boeotian side to the Eubocan s'de of the gulf, makes
a distinction between Old Eretria and New Eretria, which would seem
to locate the pre-Persian city a little over a mile to the east of the later
one. In spite of the doubt whether Strabo ever visited this region, and
in spite of his colossal errors in regard to places which he has not vis-
ited,20 geographers have generally sought to identify some of the foun-
dations of walls to the east of the acropolis with old Eretria. It is re-
freshing to find recently a spirit of revolt against this slavery to a pass-
age of Strabo. Lolling, in Iwan Miiller's Handbuch der klassischen
Altertumsivissenschaft (in, p. 192), says simply: Eine Stelle iveiter
osilich wurde als Alt-Eretria bezeichnet. The same author in the
Mittlieilungen d. deutschen archdolog. Instihdes in Athen, vol. x, p.
353, says : Das Schiveigen der Historiher und aller anderen Schrift-
steller berechtigt uns zu der Annahme, das die Bezeichnung der Funda-
mente unweit der Stadt als Alt-Eretria auf eine Linie zu stellen ist mit
der jetzigen Bezeichnung Paldochora, fur eine Ortschaft deren Name
verschollen ist.21 Strabo be;ng treated as a reporter of traditions, we
may make Lolling's words (I. c.) our own : An eine wirkliehe Vcrle-
gung der Stadt, und noch dazu an eine so nahe liegende andere Stelle,
wird Niemand glauben, denn so gewiss die Stadtgrundung Athens sich
an die Altropolis anschloss, so deutlich ist auch die vortretende Holie des
eretrisohen Olympos von Natur zur Ahropolis einer grosseren Stadtgrun-
dung des Nord-Attika gegenuber liegenden Kustenstrichs prddestinirt.

But, besides the impression which one gets from sojourning in Ere-
tria that here and here only must the city have found its acropolis,

20 For the confusion between Cirrha and Crissa cf. Strabo, p. 416.

81 In addition to the several cases of " Alt-Theben," which Lolling adduces, the
striking case of Palaia Larissa might be adduced, the name under which Crannon was
hidden until it was brought forth by Leake.