the mountain famous for its bees, which gathered honey, as they do to-day, from the wild thyme and savory and other fragrant herbs growing on its rugged slopes. But its most wonderful feature is the glow cast over it by the setting sun; purpureos colles florentis Hymetti the poet Ovid called the deep-tinted heights. Marking the western

FIG. 10.

- Mt. Pentelicus in winter, as seen from the American School.

border of the plain are the lower summits (1535 feet) of Mt. Aegaleus, or Corydallus, which divides the Athenian from the Eleusinian plain. Aegaleus is really a spur of Parnes and is joined to it by the low ridge (564 feet), over which the railroad to the Peloponnesus now passes. In Aegaleus, almost directly west of Athens, is a low pass (416 feet) where now is the mediaeval monastery of Daphní; here in antiquity ran the Sacred Way which led to the mystic close at Eleusis. In the middle of the plain is another low range, the ancient Anchesmus, which terminates abruptly at the south end in the conical hill of Lycabettus (912 feet, Fig. 11), at the northern edge of modern as of ancient Athens; it is now crowned by the little chapel of St. George.

In shape Athens formed an irregular ellipse (Fig. 22), about a mile and a half long from east to west and a mile wide from north to south. The northern half is fairly level, the southern, hilly. Near the middle of the ellipse is the lofty rock of the Acropolis, whose west slopes blend with those of the Areopagus and the Pnyx.

FIG. II.

- Mt. Lycabettus, from the Acropolis.
The palace lies at the right of Lycabettus; in the background is Mt. Pentelicus.

The hills of Athens were once connected geologically with Mt. Lycabettus, and so the ancients surmised, as we see from a passage in Plato's Critias (p. 112A). The Acropolis, by nature the most important hill, was the seat of earliest settlement. It is an abrupt and rocky plateau, nearly 1000 feet long by 445 feet wide; it reaches its greatest elevation (512 feet) northeast of the Parthenon. The

west end descends gradually and provides the only natural approach; the other sides are precipitous, though the fall on the south side was less pronounced before the height was increased by filling, on the inside of the wall. Northwest of the Acropolis is the Areopagus (pp. 357 ff.), a triangular rock, precipitous about its east end, where it is highest (377 feet), and sloping away gently toward the west. Bounding the city on the

southwest is the Pnyx Hill, which is divided by depressions into three parts. Of these the southernmost, the Museum Hill (Fig. 144), is the highest (485 feet); on its summit stands the conspicuous monument of Philopappus (Fig. 12), which has now lent its name to the hill. The central elevation, the Pnyx proper, held the ancient meeting place of the ecclesia (pp. 110 ff.). The northernmost hill is now called the Hill of the Nymphs, from an inscription hewn in its side; the ancient name is unknown. Here the national observatory now stands; behind it is the pit known as the Barathrum, into which were thrown the bodies of executed criminals. A low, flat ridge running north from between the Hill of the Nymphs and the Areopagus is the ancient Colonus Agoraeus (p. 88), the western boundary of the Agora, or market-place. Some hills of minor importance will be mentioned later in special connections.

C

FIG. 12.

Monument of Philopap

The geological formation of the hills is shown in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 13).

The Athenian plain has always been scantily watered. The largest river, the Cephissus, has its sources in Parnes and Pentelicus, and flows through the middle of the plain, passing about two miles from the city; it empties into the Phaleric Bay. Except in time of freshets, however, its

water is either exhausted by irrigating ditches or sinks into the gravelly soil before its mouth is reached. Its moisture is not all wasted, for on either side of the stream are miles of luxuriant olive groves. The Ilissus River rises in Hymettus and flows westward past the southern borders of the city toward the Cephissus. Its bed (Fig. 56) is usually dry, save for a slender thread or an occasional pool, but a heavy rain sometimes turns the rivulet into a rushing torrent. A third river, the Eridanus, had its rise in springs on the side of Lycabettus, and flowed westward through the city, issuing at the Sacred Gate; but it has gradually been filled or arched over, and its very course until recently was lost. Even in antiquity it was turbid except near its sources. Of two other streams, the Sciron and the Cycloborus, we know little more than the names and the fact that they were north of the city.

The city contained a few natural springs; we have information concerning Callirrhoë, south of the Areopagus (pp. 108 ff.), the Clepsydra (pp. 351 f.), and the spring of the Ascle

pieum (p. 209), on the slopes of the Acropolis. Another Callirrhoë, in the bed of the Ilissus, is apparently supplied by subterranean streams of the river. Of cisterns the number was legion. Peisistratus, in the sixth century B.C., was probably the first to bring water into the city by a conduit to supplement Callirrhoë; near the other end of the city's life Hadrian began to build an aqueduct from Pentelicus, which Antoninus Pius completed. This aqueduct and its terminal reservoir on the side of Lycabettus have been restored and are in use to-day to supply the modern city.

The arid, calcareous soil of the Athenian plain produces little vegetation save olive and fig trees, though by irrigation considerable tracts are being redeemed for vineyards and gardens. Thucydides and other ancient writers mention the thinness of the soil, which, except along the Cephissus, in many places barely hides the rock beneath. The upper slopes of the mountains support the holm oak and a variety of shrubs, but the lower declivities and the strip of plain adjoining have forests, which are subject to destructive fires. Athens itself contains few trees, except those planted in the parks; apparently in antiquity it was not much better off in this respect, though we read of planes and other trees in the Agora and the parks and along the Ilissus.

Accurate meteorological observations have been taken at the national observatory for more than half a century, and comparisons have been made between the recent records and all available evidence regarding ancient conditions. Continued denudation of both mountains and plain has no doubt increased the aridity of the region, but the records show that forest fires and the destruction of timber by human agencies, such as charcoal burners, were familiar in antiquity; on the whole the climatic conditions seem not to have undergone material change.