This text is part of:
καταντίον: right opposite the west end, where the asceut and eutrance lay.
τὸν Ἀθηναῖοι καλέουσι: a phrase not taken from an Attic source, uor iutended for an Attic audieuce. Ἀρήιον πάγον. πάγος is a rocky poiut, or summit, as in Homer, Od. 5. 405 etc. The epithet may rather be conuected with άραί than with Ἄρης originally, as the cult of the Σεμναί was certainly far more ancient ou the spot than the cult of the war-god (cp. Aischyl. Eumen. 417, etc.), aud it was with them aud their rights that the Areiopagite court had to do; though in the historical period the association with Ἄρης was fully recognized—perhaps in consequeuce of a pseud-etymology— aud a temple to Ares actually stood on or near the rock: Pausan. 1. 8. 4, with uotes, Frazer ii. 91, Hitzig-Bluemner i. 161 f. The topographical relatiou of the Areios rock, or Atheuiau Ebal, to the Akropolis fitted it to form a base for the Persiau siege-operations, as ouce for the operations of the Amazoues against the Theseian citadel; so Aischyl. Eumen. 685 ff.— τάγον δ᾽ Ἄρειον τόνδ᾽ Ἀμαζόνων ἕδραν, σκηνάς θ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἦλθον Θησέως κατὰ φθόνον στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν τήνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσαν τότε, Ἄρει δ᾽ ἔθυον, ἔνθεν ἔστ᾽ ἐπώνυμος πέτρα, πάγος τ᾽ Ἄρειος κτλ. A passage which could hardly have been recited to an Athenian audience in 458 B.C. (Philokles) without vividly recalling the experiences of twenty-two years before (480, Kalliades). That there was a regular πολιορκία Hdt. expressly admits.
ὅκως ... ἅψειαν, ἐτόξευον: the construction is observable, the sense is clear: they wound tow round their arrows, ignited it, and discharged them into the fortified enclosure on the Akropolis. Nor does Hdt. mean that they discharged any other arrows than those so treated. ἐτόξευον is nsed absolutely (cp. c. 128 infra, where the construction ὅκως γράψειε κτλ. is more regular, or logical, than here).
ἀπιγμένοι καὶ ... προδεδωκότος is not quite regular: the καί is de trop; cp. 3. 127 ἅτε οἰδεόντων ... καὶ ἔχων. The p. or pl.p. participles mark the intense and ntter certainty of their position. Also the words ὅμως ἠμύνοντο would more naturally come after καίπερ κτλ.
τῶν Πεισιστρατιδέων: they have not been heard of since 7, 6 supra, which does not look as if much of the intervening matter had come from the supposed ‘Memoirs of Dikaios’; cp. Introduction, § 10.
τὰς πύλας: at the west end, where afterwards stood (and stand to some extent) the great Propylaia of Mnesikles and Perikles, cp. E. A. Gardner, Ancient Athens, 224 ff. ὀλοιτρόχους, ap. oracul. 5. 92: no donbt ‘ronnd stones’ that conld be rolled down on the assailants. Where did these few poor creatnres get these missiles? Were there any colnmns or pillar-drnms lying about? (These, however, might have needed to have the gates opened for emission, which would not have done.)
ἐπὶ χρόνον συχνόν might mean almost any length of time, and is lamentably vague, but still goes to show the relative success of the desperate resistance. ἀπορίῃσι ἐνέχεσθαι: a common expression; 7. 128, 9. 37, 98 etc.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.