Stuart, James; Revett, Nicholas: The antiquities of Athens (Band 1) (London, 1825)

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40 OF THE OCTOGON TOWER OP ANDRONICUS CYRRHESTES.

worked, it does happen that such a stream is to be found, for there is a spring3 which rises at the foot
of the rock on which the Acropolis is built, somewhat before you arrive at the Propyls, and supplies
a current, of which indeed nobody drinks, for the water is brackish ; but it is conveyed, partly under
ground, and partly in earthen pipes which are supported by walls, to the principal Moschea ; where
the Turks use it for those ablutions which they constantly perform whenever they begin their devo-
tions. It is remarkable that this stream, before it arrives at the Moschea, passes within ten feet of the
tower here treated of, and what particularly deserves our notice, either the stream itself or the fountain
which furnishes the stream, was anciently called by the name of b Clepsydrac.

The silence of Vitruvius in relation to the existence of so curious a machine in this place, it
must be confessed, seems no way favourable to this conjecture ; no inference can however be drawn
from thence to lessen its probability ; since that author takes no notice of the sun-dials on this build-
in g,either in the above-cited description of it, or in that part of his work where he treats particularly
of sun-dials : and that these were not added since the time in which he wrote, is evident from Varrod,
a more ancient writer, who calls this building the horologium of Cyrrhestes; which not only proves

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a This spring is mentioned by Pausanias, who says it is near
the grotto in which were the temples of Apollo and Pan ; these
temples are destroyed, but the grotto, with this spring which is
just under it, still remain exactly in the situation where Pausa-
nias has described them; near it is another less considerable
spring, which soon unites its waters with the abovementioned,
and here Pausanias seems to place the temple of Esculapius, in
which, he observes, there was a fountain. See Pausanias, L. I.
C. XXI. XXVIII.

Sir George Wheler is the first, if not the only traveller who
has taken notice of the water which these springs furnish. See
his Travels, p. 383.

b Aristophanes seems to place this spring, called Clepsydra,
near the Grotto of Pan.

■—KI. oirou to Toy rTcaoc, y.cthay—>
MT. Kal Iraq e'6 c\y?r, c%T u'AxQoiy. i? TroAty ;
KI. KccXXiara Si-rrov "Kovact-^kn TM K^e^iSpa. Lysistrata, V. 909.

—KI. conveniently, in the grotto of Pan—.
MY. But how shall I return purified into the city;
KI. Very well surely, after washing yourself at the Clepsydra.

Plutarch mentions this spring, though without saying in what
part of Athens it rises.

Kcu ya.ro- T( Xoyiov carl Trtc KXs^vSpac vdciroc. Xy.Tt'hr&upuGc ccyyubv
Uoptft. Plutarch in the Life of M. Antonius.

' And pi. Antonius] in obedience to a certain oracle having
filled a vessel with the water of the Clepsydra, he carried it with
him.'

But Hesychius in the following passage is more explicit.

KXz-^icpvToy. v}u:p to Ttfs ¥L?\i-\<vopac. aur-n ob e<7TJ y.pqvvi Avywiciv cciro
TYiq a.y.po7i-6?.Evc E9r) crrah.ovq a'Uotriv utto ym tyiyoyXvrt. Hesychius on the
Word KAs^]/ipftJToi>.

' Clepsyrrhyton, or flowing by stealth. The water of the Clep-
sydra. This is a spring at Athens, which from the Acropolis is
carried under ground a course of about twenty stadia.'

And again, KAe-.|'UcW kpwv). >jtk to kpotepov E^tteo^ 7t^oo-^7o^e^eto,
x.t.A. e^e( o*= t«£ pvertH; a.]/a,rt^Qvo-aq slq Toy <\>u.7\r,pia.v dy/AOu. £lpo7\Qyiov,
Opycwov, h £ aX upui jjcsrpwnTa.1. Hesychius on the word Kx^u^pa.

' Clepsydra, a fountain which was formerly called Empedo, &c.
It has its streams rising in the Demos of Phalerus. An horolo-
gium, a machine by which the hours are measured.'

TIs$u. r, vvv yatovpUri KTvEi^t^a. yprtvi) h "Acttei. Hesychius On
the word ruoi.

' Pedo, which is now called Clepsydra, a fountain in the city'
[of Athens].

From these three passages in Hesychius we may observe, first,
that the source of this water rose at the Acropolis, and ran a con-
siderable way under ground. Secondly, that it afterwards rose
again and made its appearance in the Phalerus. This particular
is indeed expressed with more precision by Pliny, whose words
will be a good comment on the second of these quotations from
Hesychius.

Subeunt terras rursusque redduntur, Lyeus in Asia, Erasinus
in Argolica, Tygris in Mesopotamia, et qua; in iEsculapii fonte
Athenis immcrsa sunt, in Phalerico redduntur. Nat. Hist.
Book II. Chap. 103.

' The river Lycus in Asia, the Erasinus in the territory of
Argos, the Tigris in Mesopotamia, run under groimd, and after-
wards rise again; and the things which are immersed in the foun-
tain of iEsculapius at Athens, are thrown up again in the Pha-
lerus.'

Here we are plainly told, that the exact spot where these wa-
ters were absorbed, was in the temple of iEsculapius, men-
tioned in the preceding note"; and it is clear, that not the
sources, as Meursius interprets this place in Hesychius, but the
streams which had been thus absorbed, rose again in the Phale-
rus. Lastly, there seems to be an error in the text of Hesychius,
where he says that the water of the Clepsydra is carried under
ground the space of twenty stadia, for the distance from the Acro-
polis to the Phalerus is pretty exactly thirty-seven stadia. May
we not therefore suspect that the original reading was thirty-se-
ven expressed by the characters AZ: and that these, by the inac-
curacy of the transcriber, might be changed into AA, the charac-
ters which express twenty? Thucydides (Book II. Section 13.)
makes the length of the Phaleric wall thirty-five stadia, and from
the temple of iEsculapius to the beginning of the Phaleric wall,
must have been at least two stadia. Hesychius therefore with
the correction here proposed, will agree with Thucydides, as he
will also with our actual survey.

c Water from the spring beneath the grotto of Pan, is now
understood to have been formerly conveyed to this building by an
aqueduct, a part of which remains and supports the wall of a
modern house close to the horologium; the details of which aque-
duct are given in the third volume of this work, chap. ix. without
its appropriation being pointed out or understood by Stuart. It
presented a uniform external face on each side, and what appear
to be arcades, three of which are conspicuous, are not so in con-
struction, but each span consists of one block or lintel of marble
hollowed beneath to a semicircle. From Hesychius quoted in
the preceding note, the water of the spring above-mentioned,
called yXi-^if'fVTat derived its name from its supposed furtive course
under the earth from the Acropolis toPhalerum (from j-aeVto, furor,
and pica, fluo,), and does not support Stuart in inducing us to infer
that it named the water-dial, clepsydra, or that that machine gave
a title to the spring. It appears by Aristophanes that clepsydras
were known long previous to the apparent date of this building.
See Wilkins' and Col. Leake's Topography of Athens, [ed.]

d In eodem hocmispherio medio, circum cardinem est orbis ven-
torum octo, ut Athenis in horologio quod fecit Cyrrhestes.
Varro, de Re Rustica, Book III. Chap. 5.

' In the middle of the same hemisphere, round the axis, is the
circle of the eight winds, as at Athens in the horologium which
Cyrrhestes made.'

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