The Parthenon Enigma (9 page)

Cave C, a shallow rock shelter just to the east of Apollo’s Long Rocks, has sometimes been identified as housing the shrine of
Zeus Astrapaios. This suggestion rests on somewhat tenuous evidence put forward by
Strabo, who writes of a place that was used as a lookout for determining the appropriate moment for
sacrifices to be sent to Delphi.
¹⁰⁴
The
Pythaistai, organizers of the sacred procession, are said to have watched from the sanctuary of Zeus Astrapaios for a starting signal in the sky: lightning above a place called
Harma on the distant slopes of
Mount Parnes (
this page
).

The next cave to the east, the one identified as sacred to
Pan and the
nymphs, is actually a complex of three adjoining caves, designated D, D
₁
, D
₂
, their rock faces covered with cuttings and niches for votive offerings. A number of marble votive reliefs showing Pan and the nymphs have been recovered here.
¹⁰⁵
The
cult of Pan was introduced to Athens relatively late, around 490
B.C.
, in thanks for the god’s assistance in defeating the Persians at Marathon. Pan worship spread quickly throughout Attica with numerous mountainside shrines identified on
Mounts Parnes,
Pentelikon,
Aigaleos, and Hymettos, as well as at Marathon and the hill of
Eleusis.
¹⁰⁶

The cave of Pan and the Nymphs on the north slope facilitated Pan’s worship without a long trip to his woodland haunts. Families regularly made pilgrimages to such shrines, but the Acropolis cave site enabled more continuous devotions. We hear that shortly after
Plato’s birth, his parents took him up to
Mount Hymettos to
sacrifice to Pan, the nymphs, and
Apollo Nomios. Going off to make a sacrifice, Plato’s father laid the infant down for a moment, returning to find bees swarming about little Plato’s lips, now smeared with honey, an omen of his future mellifluence.
¹⁰⁷
No doubt, other Athenian parents brought their little ones up to Pan’s cave on the Acropolis in similar devotions experienced closer to home.

In his
Ion
, Euripides focuses on this cave of Pan and indicates that it was close to a place where Athenian maidens danced. We hear that Pan’s pipe playing accompanied their nimble steps:

O seats of Pan and rock lying near the Long Rocks full of recesses, where the girls of Aglauros, all three, tread choral dancing places with their feet, running-courses of green-sprouting grass in front of Pallas’s [Athena’s] temple, to the flashing-tuned, wild cry of
hymns when you pipe the syrinx, O Pan, in your caves where sunlight does not enter…

Euripides,
Ion
492–502
¹⁰⁸

This would suggest that ritual dancing took place near the caves of Pan and Apollo, a subject we will return to in
chapter 7
.

Farther east on the
Peripatos, more than halfway along the north slope, we come to a broad terrace near the entrance of Cave S, a natural cleft in the rock from which a well shaft leads down to the water beneath and a Mycenaean ascent leads up to the summit (
this page
). More than twenty niches were carved into the cliff face of the adjacent ledge and once held votive dedications in marble. Two inscriptions carved in the living rock and dating to the mid-fifth century
B.C.
have led to the site’s identification as a shrine to Aphrodite and
Eros. One text specifically mentions Aphrodite and a festival of Eros.
¹⁰⁹
A nearby pit filled with stone
phalloi
, pottery, and terra-cotta figurines further bolsters the case
for a link with Aphrodite. This shrine has sometimes been identified as the
sanctuary of
Aphrodite in the Gardens, mentioned by
Pausanias as the destination of the girl
arrephoroi
who carried unnamable things (
arreta
) in night rituals during the
Arrephoria
festival.
¹¹⁰
But this is by no means certain.

Meanwhile, beneath the sanctuary of Aphrodite, some 20 meters (66 feet) down from the
Peripatos walkway, an artificially leveled terrace (designated the “
Skyphos Sanctuary”) preserves a rare look at ritual practices of the early third century
B.C.
¹¹¹
Here, some 221 miniature drinking cups, all of the same
skyphos
shape, have been found in the exact placement where they were carefully set by worshippers thousands of years ago.

Just above the shrine of Aphrodite and Eros, we see column drums salvaged from the Older Parthenon (destroyed by the Persians in 480
B.C.
) set in commemorative display within fortifications built after the Persian siege (
this page
). Metopes and architrave blocks from the ruins of the Old Athena Temple are similarly set into this wall just a little farther to the west. These architectural members bear witness to the most devastating event in Athenian history: the Persian sack. Their display rendered the
memory of this destruction ever present. Keeping open the wounds of trauma, as we shall see, was a definitive feature of Athenian public art and the collective psyche.

THE EASTERN FACE
of the Acropolis is the most precipitous of all (insert
this page
, bottom). Its sheer cliffs are penetrated by one deep cave measuring 14 meters (46 feet) in width and 22 meters (72 feet) in depth. This cave was first excavated by
Oscar Broneer in 1936; he found little in it.
¹¹²
But years later, laborers clearing for a “modern” Peripatos in front of the cave and down its slopes found (at a much lower elevation) an inscribed stele still attached to its base. The text, published by
George Dontas in 1983, concerns
sacrifices made to the nymph Aglauros, one of the three daughters of the legendary king Kekrops.
¹¹³
It records honors awarded by the Athenians to
Timokrite, priestess of Aglauros in 247/246 or 246/245
B.C.
, with specific instructions that the decree be mounted “in the shrine of Aglauros.”
¹¹⁴
The location of this sanctuary concurs with
Herodotos’s description of the surprise attack by the Persians in 480:

In front of the Acropolis, and behind the gates and the ascent, was a place where no one was on guard, since no one thought any man could go up that way. Here some [Persian] men climbed up, near the sacred precinct of Kekrops’s daughter Aglauros, although the place was a sheer cliff.

Herodotos,
Histories
8.52–53
¹¹⁵

It is within this sanctuary that the eighteen-year-old ephebes would come to make their solemn pledge of allegiance to Athens. Invoking Aglauros (one of the daughters of Kekrops),
Ares (god of war), and other divinities, the young men swore the
Ephebic Oath upon their freshly acquired weapons, promising to defend their city as new soldiers.
¹¹⁶
Its nearness to the very spot where the Persians breached the Acropolis made the sanctuary of Aglauros a perfect place for the ephebes to pledge their defense of Athens. Herodotos goes on to say that once the Persians had breached the citadel, some
Athenians leaped to their
deaths from this eastern cliff, rather than leave themselves to the enemy’s rage:

When the Athenians saw that they [the Persians] had ascended to the acropolis, some threw themselves off the wall and were killed, and others fled into the chamber [of the temple?].

Herodotos,
Histories
8.53
¹¹⁷

It is from these same cliffs that, according to a later source, Aglauros is said to have willingly jumped to save Athens from a siege by
Eumolpos, fulfilling a prophecy given by the Delphic oracle. This story, told in a commentary on a speech by Demosthenes, says that the Athenians then established a sanctuary to Aglauros under the cliffs and that it was here the ephebes swore their oath.
¹¹⁸
The commentator is surely confusing Aglauros with yet another princess of Athens, the daughter of the Athenian king
Erechtheus, she who was
sacrificed to save the city from Eumolpos’s attack. In the chapters that follow, we will see just how the myths of the maiden princesses of Athens become fused and blended over time. Nonetheless, the memory of a triad of heroic daughters survives, including the one who gave her life for the city and who thus provided special inspiration for the young soldiers of Athens. Here, on the dramatic eastern cliffs of the Acropolis, landscape,
topography, myth, history, and memory come powerfully together in a single highly charged location.

PROCEEDING ALONG THE
Peripatos walkway to the
south slope of the Acropolis, we find cliffs similarly pocketed with
caves and ledges, home to Neolithic inhabitants already in the fourth millennium.
¹¹⁹
At the east end, an especially deep cave (
this page
) in which significant Neolithic material has been found sits above the later site of the
Theater of Dionysos Eleutherios.
¹²⁰
At some point after the middle of the sixth century
B.C.
, the natural hollow in the slope beneath this cave began to be used for seating viewers who watched dramatic
performances down below, where a
temple of Dionysos was built around 530. By the end of the fifth century this theater comprised a wood-built structure with
theatron
, orchestra, and scene building and seating for around five thousand to six thousand viewers.
¹²¹
In the 330s, the statesman and orator
Lykourgos greatly expanded this theater to accommodate an audience of around seventeen thousand, rebuilding it, along with a new temple of Dionysos, entirely of marble. Just to the east of the Theater of Dionysos stood the
Odeion of
Perikles, believed to be a great covered concert hall built by the leader in the 440s
B.C.
(
this page
).
¹²²

In 320/319
B.C.
, a man named
Thrasyllos who served as
choregos
(a benefactor who financed theatrical productions) set up a monument high above the Theater of Dionysos—just in front of the Neolithic cave—to commemorate his contribution. Two tall
Corinthian columns, reerected at the cave mouth, represent an enhancement of Thrasyllos’s dedication set up by his son years later.
¹²³
The enduring power of this cave as a divine place of
memory is manifest by its use until recently as a shrine of Panagia Spiliotissa, “Our Lady of the Cave.” Painted icons and other offerings to the Virgin are hung all about its rustic interior. Tradition has it that with the coming of
Christianity, the cave’s former resident (possibly
Artemis) was replaced by the
Virgin Mary. Ritual visitation continued at this site, especially by mothers bringing their sick
children to the grotto in hope of a cure.
¹²⁴

At the center of the south slope, we find more caves and a broad rock terrace lying close to yet another major spring (marked “
South Slope Spring” on
this page
). It is easy to understand why this location attracted inhabitants from early on (Middle Helladic material has been found within the caves) and how, in time, an Archaic springhouse came to be built here. The area later served as the setting for an important
sanctuary to the healing gods
Asklepios and
Hygieia.
¹²⁵
Established in 420/419
B.C.
, in the wake of the great plague at Athens, the Asklepieion was a place where pilgrims came to seek cures, pray at the temple, purify themselves in the spring waters, and spend the night in the adjoining stoa. Indeed, one wonders if Our Lady of the Cave takes some of her curative powers from a distant
memory of the healing abilities of Asklepios and Hygieia, long settled here on this same south slope.

To the west of the Asklepieion, a tumulus of Middle Helladic date (1900–1600
B.C.
) and wells of the Late Helladic period (1600–1050
B.C.
) have been discovered, while farther to the south Neolithic remains have been unearthed. What appears to be an ancient foundry has been recovered here, along with evidence of refuse from
bronze casting.
¹²⁶
And much farther down to the southwest, a fascinating sanctuary has been identified by a fifth-century stone inscription reading
horos hiero numphes
, “boundary of the sanctuary of Numphe (the Bride).” The large number of
loutrophoroi (vases used by brides for their nuptial baths) found here suggests it was a place special to women at the time of approaching marriage.
¹²⁷

The south slope remains ever vibrant across the ages, with impressive additions made by the Pergamene king Eumenes II, who built a vast stoa here (
this page
) in the second century
B.C.
, as well as by the Roman philhellene
Herodes Atticus, who constructed a covered theater (
odeion
) here in the second century
A.D.
, a
performance space used to this day. But there is no greater testament to the sanctity of place than the abundance of chapels and churches that have been built on the Acropolis slopes over time. In addition to Panagia Spiliotissa we have the chapels of
Saint George Alexandrinos and
Saint Paraskevi (at the Theater of Dionysos) and Our Lady of the Holy Spring (at the Asklepieion). On the north slope are remains of the cave
chapel of Saint Athanasios, the
Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, and the
Church of
Saint Nikolaos (recently restored).