Note (return) — THE TEMPLE ON THE ACROPOLIS BURNT BY THE PERSIANS.

Wachsmuth has well said, 122 although this is not invariably true, 123 that υπο την ακρόπολιν and υπο τη ακροπόλει are used with reference to objects lying halfway up the slope of the Acropolis. On the next page he adds, however, that Thucydides could not have meant to describe as the ancient city simply the ground enclosed within the Pelasgic fortifications, or he would have mentioned these in the τεκμήρια. Thucydides, in the passage quoted, wished to show that the city of Cecrops was very small in comparison with the later city of Theseus; that the Acropolis was inhabited; and that the habitations did not extend beyond the narrow limits of the fortifications. He distinctly says that before the time of Theseus, the Acropolis was the city. He proceeds to give the reasons for his view: The presence of the ancient temples on the Acropolis itself, the fact that the ancient precincts outside the Acropolis were προς τουτο το μέρος της πολεως, and the neighborhood of the fountain Enneacrounus. We know, that the Acropolis was still officially called πολις in Thucydides' day; and πόλις so used would have no meaning if the Acropolis itself was not the ancient city. Προς τουτο το μέρος, in the passage quoted, refers to the city of Cecrops, the Acropolis and Pelasgicum taken together; and της πολεως refers to the entire later city as it existed in the time of Thucydides. It is, however, in the four temples outside the Acropolis included under the τεκμήριον δέ that we are particularly interested. The Pythium of the passage cannot be that Pythium close by the present Olympieum, which was founded by Pisistratus. Pausanias (I. 28, 4,) says: "On the descent [from the Acropolis], not in the lower part of the city but just below the Propylæa, is a spring of water, and close by a shrine of Apollo in a cave. It is believed that here Apollo met Creusa." Probably it was because this cave was the earliest abode of Apollo in Athens that Euripides placed here the scene of the meeting of Apollo and Creusa.