Note 231 — Chapter XLI · BATTLE OF SALAMIS. — RETREAT OF XERXES.

Pausanias, i, 22, 4; Kruse, Hellas, vol. ii, ch. vi, p. 76. Ernst Curtius (Die Akropolis von Athens, p. 5, Berlin, 1844) says that the plateau of the acropolis is rather less than four hundred feet higher than the town: Fiedler states it to be one hundred and seventy-eight fathoms, or one thousand and sixty-eight feet above the level of the sea. (Reise durch das Königreich Griechenland, i, p. 2); he gives the length and breadth of the plateau in the same figures as Kruse, whose statement I have copied in the text. In Colonel Leake’s valuable Topography of Athens, I do not find any distinct statement about the height of the acropolis. We must understand Kruse’s statement, if he and Curtius are both correct, to refer only to the precipitous impracticable portion of the whole rock.