remarkable for their luxuriant growth, made the air unhealthy 2. They still cause the spot to be one of the most advantageous situations near Athens for the growth of fruit and pot-herbs, and maintain a certain degree of verdure when all the surrounding plain is parched with the heat of summer. Half a mile to the northward of this position are two small heights, the nearer and larger of which corresponds exactly with Colonus. On the side of the road leading to the Academy from the centre of Athens, are seen several rude masses of masonry, the remains probably of some of the numerous sepulchral monuments which once embellished this most beautiful of the suburbs of Athens. From a part of the ground, called Akadhimía, was removed about the year 1802, a marble (now in the British Museum) which bears part of one of the epitaphs placed in this quarter to ἀλσώδες, από τινος ἤρωος ὀνομασθὲν Εκαδήμου, καθὰ καὶ Εὔπολις ἐν ̓Αστρατεύτοις φησίν. Ἐν εὐσκίοις δρόμοισιν Εκαδήμου θεοῦ. ἀλλὰ καὶ ὁ Τίμων εἰς τὸν Πλάτωνα λέγων φησί. Τῶν πάντων δ' ἡγεῖτο πλατύστατος, ἀλλ' ἀγορήτης Δένδρεσ ̓ ἐφεζόμενοι ὄπα λειριόεσσαν ἱεῖσι, πρότερον γὰρ διὰ τοῦ ε Εκαδημία ἐκαλεῖτο. Diogen. Laërt. 3, 7. V. et Suid. in 'Akadŋμía. 1 Plin. H. N. 12, 1 (5). 2 Ælian. Var. Hist. 9, 10. 3 Porphyr. de Abst. ab esu animal. 1, 36. Eneas Gazæus de Animal. Immort. p. 20, Ven. 1513. τὸ δημόσιον σῆμα, ὅ ἐστιν ἐπὶ τοῦ καλλίστου προαστείου THE TOXεw. Thucyd. 2, 34. record the names of the Athenians who had been slain in battle. It was the sepulchral monument of the men who fell at Potidæa, in the year preceding the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, or 432 B.C.' Thus from the situation where this stone was found, it is no less useful in the illustration of topography, than important as a historical and palæographical document. Hadrian, or gate of Hadrianopolis. The arch of Hadrian, now deprived of the elegant Arch of Corinthian columns which adorned it, and covered at the base with three feet of accumulated soil, consisted when complete of an archway twenty feet wide, between piers about fifteen feet square, decorated with a column and a pilaster on each side of the arch, and the whole presenting an exactly similar appearance on either face. Above the centre of the arch stood an upper order surmounted by a pediment, and consisting on either front of a niche between semi-columns; a thin partition separating the niches from each other at the back. Two columns between a pilaster flanked this structure at either end, and stood immediately above the larger Corinthian columns of the lower order. The height of the lower order to the summit of the cornice was about thirty-three feet, that of the upper to the summit of the pediment about twenty-three. the frieze immediately above the centre of the arch is inscribed on the north-western side, ΑΙΔΕΙΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΙΘΗΣΕΩΣΗ ΠΡΙΝΠΟΛΙΣ, "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus." On And on the opposite side the following: ΑΙΔΕΙΣ ΑΔΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΚΑΙΟΥΧΙΘΗΣΕΩΣ ΠΟΛΙΣ, "This is the City of Hadrian, and not of Theseus 1." These inscriptions, which are alluded to by the Scholiast of the Sophist Aristides, were transcribed in the year 1436 by Ciriaco d'Ancona, and again in the beginning of the sixteenth century by Urban di Belluno, preceptor of Pope Leo X.; who published them in his Greek grammar: a copy of the first is found in a letter of Simeon Kavásilas addressed in the year 1578 to Martin Crusius, author of the Turco-Græcia, and they were both again published by Spon and Wheler, and by Stuart'. According to a common practice of the Greeks in similar cases, they are trimeter iambics, and their form is such as was often found on the two sides of a boundary; as for instance, on an ancient column in the isthmus of Corinth, upon which was inscribed on the Peloponnesian side, Τὰ δ ̓ ἐστὶ Πελοπόννησος οὐκ Ιωνία, and on the other Τὰ δ ̓ οὐχὶ Πελοπόννησος ἀλλ ̓ Ἰωνία. For the architectural details of this monument, see Stuart III. 3. "Schol. in Arist. p. 69, Frommel. 3 S. Kabasilas ар. Crus. Turcogræc. p. 461. See above, p. 89. Crusius, in a note upon this passage, says, Hunc versum Urbanus, qui Grammaticam Græcam post Gazam scripsit, a se Athenis in arcu marmoreo Adriani imperatoris visum scribit, additumque in fronte orientem versus hunc Αἵδ' εἰσ' 'Αδριανοῦ. 4 Boeckh, C. Ins. Gr. No. 520. 6 Strabo p. 392. Androtion ap. Schol. Villois. in II. N. 685. There can be no reasonable doubt, therefore, that the quarter on the southern side of the arch was a division of the Asty, called Hadrianopolis or New Athens, in honour of Hadrian '. It is true that some of the buildings which this emperor raised for the Athenians, were not in this quarter; but the benefactions of Hadrian in Attica were neither confined to Athens, nor in Athens to one particular part of the town, circumstances having naturally determined their locality. On the other hand, it is impossible to believe that any part of Athens from which the Olympium was excluded, could have been complimented with the title of Hadrianopolis. For of all the benefits which Hadrian conferred upon the Athenians, the finishing and dedicating of the temple of Jupiter Olympius, a work which had defied the Quum titulos in operibus non amaret, multas civitates Hadrianopolis appellavit et ipsam Carthaginem et Athenarum partem. Spartian. Hadrian. 20. Chandler dissenting from preceding travellers, as well as from Crusius, Meursius, Gruter, and the other learned men who had had occasion to refer to these inscriptions, supposed ΑΙΔΕΙΣΑΘΗΝΑΙ to be & ἴδεις ̓Αθήναι, "the things which you see are Athens," which has no support in any customary Greek form, destroys the verse, and has had the remarkable effect of inducing another writer who adopted the same reading (Wilkins, Atheniensia, p. 49) to deduce an inference from the words, directly opposite to that of Chandler; for while Chandler still supposed Hadrianopolis to have been on the south-eastern side of the arch, Mr. Wilkins regarding it as absurd that the words "what you see" should refer to a part of the city upon which the reader of them turns his back, concluded that they were meant to direct his view through the arch and consequently, that Hadrianopolis was on the opposite side to that on which the name of Hadrian appears. of Hadrian. successive efforts both of the Athenians aud their foreign benefactors, was that which conferred the greatest glory upon the Roman emperor. For this he assumed the title of Olympius. Here the cities of Greece concentrated their testimonies of admiration by an immense number of statues dedicated in the peribolus of the temple; and here the Athenians exceeded them all by the colossal statue of the emperor, which they erected'. It is not improbable that the niches which are between the semi-columns of this monument above the centre of the arch contained statues of Theseus and Hadrian; of the former on the north-western, and of the latter on the south-eastern side. Aqueduct On the southern extremity of the mountain of St. George, at a distance of four or five hundred yards from the north-eastern walls of the Asty, stood in the time of Stuart two unfluted Ionic columns two feet and a half in diameter, supporting an entablature, and forming one side of an arch, of which Stuart by an excavation ascertained the exact dimensions, and determined that it was part of the frontispiece of a reservoir, which had been supplied by an aqueduct conveying water from the Cephissus. The piers of some of the arches of this aqueduct are still extant, particularly to the eastward of the village of Dervish-agú, five or six miles to the north of Athens. The monument at the foot of mount St. George, was not in better preservation when Spon saw it seventy-five years before the time of Stuart. Half the inscription, therefore, was want In several of the inscriptions found on the site of the Olympium, Hadrian is styled Ολύμπιος καὶ κτίστης. |