Mortar made with lime was not used in walls until Roman times. The Greeks tied blocks of stone or marble together with various sorts of dowels and cramps, usually of bronze, fastened in their sockets with lead. The drums of columns, at least of the principal Athenian buildings, are held in place by round dowels of wood set in squared wooden blocks

which fill the sockets in the stone (Fig. 5). Courses in a wall are kept from shifting by metal dowels; the blocks in the same course are held together by cramps. The forms of the cramps varied with the different periods, and furnish a convenient criterion for the determination of approximate dates. Z-shaped cramps (-) seem to have been used mostly before the end of the sixth century B.C. Double-T-shaped cramps (H) are characteristic of the best period, the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C. U-shaped cramps (), with the extremities sinking vertically into the stones, are used from the fourth century B.C. Swallow-tailed cramps () are found in walls of various epochs (Fig. 6), and other kinds are occasionally used.

Cramps are of different sizes. The double-T cramps of the Parthenon are about 12 inches long. The largest cramp known, in the Propylaea, is 31.5 inches long.

The three "orders" of architecture (Fig. 7), Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, will be familiar to most readers. Their use in Athenian buildings, and the architectural forms most often employed, will be indicated in connection with the buildings studied in the following pages.

FIG. 6. Various styles of cramps used in uniting the blocks of a wall. Number 1 is the Z-shaped cramp, 2 the double-T-shaped, 3 the U-shaped, with extremities descending vertically into the stones, and 4 the swallow-tailed cramp.

FIG. 8. Panoramic view of Athens, from the Hill of the Nymphs.

At the right is the Acropolis with the Areopagus in front of it; at the left is Market Hill and the "Theseum;" in the background, at the left, are
Anchesmus with Lycabettus at its end, the summit of Pentelicus, and, at the right, Hymettus.

CHAPTER I

SITUATION AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

1

THE city (Fig. 8) of Athens lies in the midst of an irregular and undulating plain (Fig. 9), which extends from the northeast southwestwards to the Saronic Gulf and is, roughly speaking, about fifteen miles long by ten miles wide. On three sides the plain is hemmed in by mountains, whose foothills extend far out into the central area. The range of Parnes is the highest (4631 feet) and longest, extending westward into Mt. Cithaeron and eastward nearly to Mt. Pentelicus. High up in Parnes is the fort of Phyle, where Thrasybulus assembled the little band that was to terminate the Thirty's tyranny. The naked ridge. of Harma was clearly visible to the Pythian priests at Athens, watching for the lightnings over its summit to tell them of the time to send sacrifices to Delphi (p. 61). Farther east is Decelea, whence at the end of the Peloponnesian War the Spartans spied upon the city; the king's summer palace is now in the vicinity, at Tatoï.

Northeast of Athens is the pyramidal peak (3637 feet) of Mt. Pentelicus (Fig. 10), or Brilessus; white scars in its side mark the site of the modern marble quarries, which are not far from the ancient. The summit of the mountain is about eleven and a half miles, in a direct line, from the

1 The city lies in 37° 58′ north latitude and 23° 42′ east longitude (from Greenwich). The latitude is nearly the same as that of Palermo, Cordovi, and San Francisco.

Acropolis. Hymettus (3369 feet) is the elongated mountain on the eastern borders of the plain. Its sides are

scored with deep and rugged ravines; the southern and lower third, cut off by a high pass, is the Anhydros or Waterless Hymettus. Even more than for its marble was