DOI chapter:
Division A: The Agora and adjacent buildings lying to the west and north of the Acropolis, from the city gate to the Prytaneion
DOI chapter:Section I
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61302#0185
SEC. I
OF ANCIENT ATHENS
13
To the daemon of wine unmixed in the Acharnians^ Dikaiopolis
gulped down the “ amystin,” the deep, long, breathless draught.23
It is impossible to pass by the votive offering of Eubulides
without noting a famous controversy.24 In 1837, during the laying
of the foundations of a house just opposite the Peiraeus station, the
workmen came upon pieces of a monument made of great blocks
of poros stone, three heads, and a colossal torso. Among the blocks
was a fragment of blue Hymettian marble bearing an inscription,
which, from the analogy of an inscription already in the Louvre,
could be restored :—
[Ί8νβονλί8ης Ευ]χε(.ρο9 Κρωνί8ης εττο^σεν.
It was long thought that this was the monument seen by Pau-
sanias. The remains of the monument, with the exception of the
inscribed block and the sculptures, were speedily covered up, so
the controversy has always been in an unsatisfactory condition.
Of course, if the identity could be proved, we should have here a
most valuable fixed point in the topography ; but I follow Dr.
Lolling in thinking that all the available evidence points the other
way, and that the monument dug up is simply one of many other
signed works of Eubulides that were scattered over Athens,
Eubulides lived about the end of the Roman Republic.
The monuments mentioned by Pausanias relate so far un-
deniably to the worship of the three closely allied deities, Demeter,
Persephone, and Dionysos. This certainly strengthens the sup-
position that he entered by the Dipylon, which, as has been seen,
was also the Sacred Gate. The predominance of the worship of
Dionysos led the learned to invent an eponymous hero for the
Kerameikos—Keramos, son of Dionysos and Ariadne. It does
not of course in the least follow that the whole way traversed by
Pausanias was formally sacred ground. On the contrary, it was
mainly secular ; mixed with occasional precincts there would be
private houses, colonnades, booths for shops, and the like. By
the time of Pausanias the fame of the precinct of Dionysos in the
Marshes (ev Atjuvcas) was probably quite extinct—effaced by the
glory of the new precinct to the south of the Acropolis. This is
clear from the vagueness with which scholiasts and lexicographers
note its topography. It seems probable that the monuments now
noted are to be associated with that precinct, already in the days
of Thucydides a venerable foundation.
Pausanias nowhere says that he is passing through the Kera-
meikos—in fact, he distinctly implies the contrary ; he says that
OF ANCIENT ATHENS
13
To the daemon of wine unmixed in the Acharnians^ Dikaiopolis
gulped down the “ amystin,” the deep, long, breathless draught.23
It is impossible to pass by the votive offering of Eubulides
without noting a famous controversy.24 In 1837, during the laying
of the foundations of a house just opposite the Peiraeus station, the
workmen came upon pieces of a monument made of great blocks
of poros stone, three heads, and a colossal torso. Among the blocks
was a fragment of blue Hymettian marble bearing an inscription,
which, from the analogy of an inscription already in the Louvre,
could be restored :—
[Ί8νβονλί8ης Ευ]χε(.ρο9 Κρωνί8ης εττο^σεν.
It was long thought that this was the monument seen by Pau-
sanias. The remains of the monument, with the exception of the
inscribed block and the sculptures, were speedily covered up, so
the controversy has always been in an unsatisfactory condition.
Of course, if the identity could be proved, we should have here a
most valuable fixed point in the topography ; but I follow Dr.
Lolling in thinking that all the available evidence points the other
way, and that the monument dug up is simply one of many other
signed works of Eubulides that were scattered over Athens,
Eubulides lived about the end of the Roman Republic.
The monuments mentioned by Pausanias relate so far un-
deniably to the worship of the three closely allied deities, Demeter,
Persephone, and Dionysos. This certainly strengthens the sup-
position that he entered by the Dipylon, which, as has been seen,
was also the Sacred Gate. The predominance of the worship of
Dionysos led the learned to invent an eponymous hero for the
Kerameikos—Keramos, son of Dionysos and Ariadne. It does
not of course in the least follow that the whole way traversed by
Pausanias was formally sacred ground. On the contrary, it was
mainly secular ; mixed with occasional precincts there would be
private houses, colonnades, booths for shops, and the like. By
the time of Pausanias the fame of the precinct of Dionysos in the
Marshes (ev Atjuvcas) was probably quite extinct—effaced by the
glory of the new precinct to the south of the Acropolis. This is
clear from the vagueness with which scholiasts and lexicographers
note its topography. It seems probable that the monuments now
noted are to be associated with that precinct, already in the days
of Thucydides a venerable foundation.
Pausanias nowhere says that he is passing through the Kera-
meikos—in fact, he distinctly implies the contrary ; he says that