Roman Munificence
Mark Anthony loved the city, and took up residence there with Octavia, Octavian's sister, in 39. When Anthony was defeated by Octavian in 31, he asked to be allowed to retire to Athens, but his request was refused. When Octavian returned to the city, he half-heartedly punished the Athenians for their disloyalty to him by taking Aegina and Eritreia from them, but then distributed grain before being initiated into the mysteries at Eleusis. He then awarded the Athenians some islands and took over the unfinished project of the Roman agora, which was dedicated in 11-10. The Roman Agora was still being used as the wheat market, known as the Wheat Bazaar, and the original Roman weights were still being used to weigh out the wheat, until 1672 at least. Just to the east of the Parthenon a small circular temple of Rome and Augustus was erected, modelled on the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum. At the same time, Agrippa, who visited in 15 B.C., built an Odeion, or concert hall, which seated one thousand people. The unique Tower of the Winds, with its sundial and ingenious water clock, and perhaps even a Ñlanetarium, a gift of Andronikos of Kyrrhos, in Syria, was probably built at this time. In AD 45 the temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous was dedicated to Augustus' wife, although there was some despoiling of Attic sanctuaries to adorn the city.
Under the emperor Claudius, further improvements were made. In AD 61, the emperor Nero íisited the city. He looted statues from here as elsewhere in Greece, and had an inscription in bronze lettering placed on the Parthenon recording its (temporary) rededication to himself. However, he did improve the Theatre of Dionysos, which was adapted for gladiatorial contests, much to the disgust of many Athenians. Under Trajan the lower length of the Panathenaic Way was covered with a colonnade in '' accordance with the contemporary fashion.'
Ïne ïf the least noticed visitors during this period was Saint Paul, who preached a sermon on the Areopagos Hill in or near AD 51, and left behind him a small community under Dionysios Areopagitos. His successor as leader of the Athenian church, Publius, was martyred under Trajan. [Read more about the visit of Saint Paul in Between Heaven and Earth.]
In ÁD 114-116, during the reign of Trajan, C. Julius Antiochus Philopappos, king of Commagene, in Asia Minor, built the funerary monument on the summit of the hill which bears his name today. The small kingdom he had inherited had fallen under Roman rule, leaving him rather redundant, so he chose to live in Athens, where he was a generous benefactor at festivals. It is characteristic of the cosmopolitan nature of the times that he recorded the details of his career on his monument in Latin, while he listed his titles in Greek.
The Emperor Hadrian
The most munificent of all the benefactors of Athens was the Philhellene emperor Hadrian (117-138). By this tirne the Athenians had learned their lesson, and adjusted their behaviour to suit a city which had to make its way in a world dominated by a single superpower. Hadrian had been courted by the Athenians, and he loved Athens in return, long before he rose to power. When he became emperor in 117, the Athenians created a new tribe in his honour and made him head of it. When he actually visited the city for the first time, in 122, he was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, presided over a dramatic competition in the Theatre of Dionysos, was elected archon, and was accorded the honours of a god under no less a tit1e than Zeus 0lympios.
Áll this ingratiation paid off handsomely. By the time of his second visit, in 125, a building programme had already been initiated. Many old buildings and monuments were repaired, including the Ñny÷ and the Theatre of Dionysos. An entire new suburb, called Hadrianopolis, was built on the east of the city outside the walls, in the area of the present National and Zappeion Gardens and beyond. The gateway between the old city and this suburb still remains, with its double inscription. On the side seen by those approaching Athens it says 'This is Athens, the former city of Theseus.' On the other side: 'This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus.' Hadrian it was who finally carried out the unrealised intentions of the tyrant Peisistratos by finally completing the huge temple of Olympian Zeus, six hundred and forty-seven years after the project had been initiated. It contained a huge chryselephantine statue of the god, modelled upon the statue of Zeus created by Pheidias at Olympia. In addition to other sanctuaries in the same area, he founded a library and a gymnasium, each with a hundred columns. The gymnasium has disappeared, but the ruins of the library, which may have been able to hold 200,000 rolls of parchment in especially designed recesses, stands above the mosque on Monastiraki Square. He also built the Panhellenion, a common meeting place for all the Greek states, and established a new festival, the Panhellenia, with a special 'Greater Panhellenia' every four years. The site of the Panhellenia is unknown.
Works also began to build an aqueduct to bring water into the city from Mount Pendeli, and to build a reservoir on Lycabettus. These massive enterprises were completed by Çadrian's successor, Antoninus Pius, and continued to deliver water into the city until 1778, one of the delivery points being revealed by the Metro works under Monastiraki Square. Athens was also granted a free distribution of grain: the ïnly city in the empire, other than Rome itself, to enjoy this priíilege.
Hadrian's govemor, Plutarch, the procurator of Achaia, spent as much time ßç the city as he could, and sought to beautify it on his own account. The later Antonine emperors followed Hadrian's example; thus Marcus Aurelius endowed professorships on the occasion of his visit to the city.
Herodes Atticus
These efforts were crowned by the achievements of a local worthy, Herodes Atticus of Marathon. More properly Lucius Vibullius Hipparchus Ôßberius Claudius Atticus, he was without doubt the greatest priíate benefactor in the long history of the city. Herodes' father had enjoyed an incredible stroke of good fortune. He was supervising structural alterations to one of his father's houses in the city, when a wall that was being demolished was found to conceal a secret room containing a huge fortune in coin. This was almost certainly his father's accumulated treasure, which he had prudently hidden away from the agents of the grasping emperor Domitian.
Heir to a vast fortune, Herodes was educated in Rome, in the most exalted imperial circles, where he succeeded in building a reputation as one of the greatest orators of his day, and was known in Rome as 'the tongue of Athens.' In ÁD 143, he enjoyed the singular honour, for a Greek, of being appointed Roman Consul.
When Herodes' father died, it was discovered that in his will he had left the sum of five minae for each of the citizens of Athens. Atticus had been a money lender, and many of the citizens were in his debt. Herodes provoked great resen1ment when, as each man came to collect his portion, he first subtracted from it outstanding debts owed to his father. This apparent stinginess was keenly resented at the time, but Herodes intended to use his wealth, augmented by a good marriage, to enrich the city.
Át the Panathenaic Games of 138-9, when he publicly took upon himself the duty of providing for the next Games in four years' time, he announced that he would stage them in a marble stadium. He made good his word by magnificently surfacing the entire stadium seating in marble from his quarries on Mount Pendeli. He also built a temple to Fortune on the hill of Ardettos, just above, together with a bridge over the River Ilissos to connect the stadium with the city.
He may also have remodelled Agrippa's Odeion at this time to function as a lecture hall. Perhaps his greatest gift to the Athenians, however, was the Odeion he dedicated to his wife, Regilla, although nowadays it is usually referred to as the Odeion of Herodes Atticus. Seating five thousand, the audßtïrium was roofed over with cedar wood. Its acoustics can be appreciated even today - even without the roof - when concerts are held there.
Although Herodes had inherited the family estate at Marathon and houses in the city, he especially favoured his residence at the Villa Kifissia. This shady inland town, built on the lower slopes of Mount Pendeli, had long been a summer resort for wealthy Athenians. The Villa Kifissia became famous throughout the ancient world as a centre of intellectual enquiry and philosophical debate. In his Attic Nights, Aulus Gellius describes its unique atmosphere of intellectual questioning and aristocratic leisure in an idyllic setting. This enchanted visitor waxed lyrical over its spacious groves, long promenades, elegant baths with an abundance of sparkling water, and the charming cool villa 'which was everywhere melodious with plashing waters and tuneful birds.'
An ambitious builder and benefactor throughout Greece, who regretted most never fulfilling his dream of cutting a canal through the isthmus of Cïrinth, Herodes also rebuilt some of the countryside shrines in Attica, such as the temple of Artemis of the Wilds at Maroussi. {Read more about Herodes Atticus and his works, and the Villa Kifissia, in Athens.]
We are lucky in having a detailed descriptiïç of the many monuments of Athens at some time between 160 and 177 by Pausanias. His timing was magnificent, for, as Peter Levi observed, 'every.. important monument of Greek antiquity was standing in his time. Here and there a temple had been moved bodily, ivy had covered an inscriñtiïç, a roof had fallen in, but his was the only lifetime in which the final embellishments of Hadrian and Herod of Athens could be seen, yet seventeen centuries of neglect had not begun.' However, like many later visitors, he had eyes mainly for the relics of the classical period, and tended to ignore the 'modern' Roman buildings.
The practice of having future rulers of the empire educated in Athens could be a mixed blessing. When Septimus Severus was a student in Athens he was widely derided for his uncouth accent When he became emperor (193-211) he returned the compliment and the Athenians found themselves deprived of many privileges. Worse still, under his successor, Caracalla (212-217), when all citizens of the empire were made Roman citizens, Athens lost important tax exemptions.
During the second and third centuries Christianßty made significant progress in many parts of the empire, but met with only limited success in Athens among the lower classes to the fierce persecutions during the reign of Decius (249-261), bishop Leonides of Athens and seven women of his flock were martyred in Cïrinth.
The Barbarians Arrive
In the mid-third century pressure on the borders of the empire by barbarian tribes led to widespread concerns about security. The ability of the Romans to enforce a universal peace was limited. The barbarian tribes in the north, attracted by tales of wealth unimaginable, pressed constantly against the borders, and occasionally burst through with devastating consequences. As a precaution, under the emperor Valerian (253-60) the damaged sections of the Themistokleian Walls were rebuilt, and the circuit extended in the east to include the new suburb built by Çadrian.
Unfortunately, these concerns were well-founded, and the city described by Pausanias was not to survive for long. In 267 the Heruli, a German tribe from the area of the Black Sea, set sail in some fifty ships from Crimea and landed at Piraeus. The repaired fortifications proved inadequate, and the tribesmen were able to break in and sack the city. Only the Acropolis was untouched, saved by its own fortifications. Many of the ancient monuments in the lower city were reduced to ruins, particularly those in the agora. Among the buildings probably largely destroyed at this time were the Library' of Hadrian, the Odeion of Herodes Atticus, the Metroon, which held the state archives, and the Stoa of Eumenes. Many of the Athenians had fled to the wooded slopes of Pames and Pendeli. Á certain Publius Herennius Dexippus quickly rallied a force of about two thousand armed men, who returned to the city, killed many of the invaders and drove out the others.
The Athenians, now no longer so carefree, withdrew into a smaller area north of the acropolis, roughly that of the present day Plaka and part of the Monastiraki district, and hastily surrounded it with a new defensive wall, known as the Valerian Wall. Many of the great buildings of the city, such as the temple of Zeus and the Odeion of Herodes lay outside the circuit. Others, such as the Library of Hadrian, were incorporated into the wall itself. So hastily was it constructed that readily available stonework was used wherever possible. In consequence, archaeologists have found it to be a rich store of fragments of earlier buildings and monuments.
Yet Athens survived as a university town, and the Library of Çadrian was restored. Since students will be students, and were the spoiled children of the wealthy, it was a lively place. Contemporaries wrote about a great deal of the pranks and collective violence, as groups of students fought each other for the honour of their teachers, kidnapped the followers of rival teachers, and held wild parties. Inevitably, there were also times when conflict arose between 'town and gown.' Rival teachers drew their following from students from different parts of the empire. Some of these teachers became wealthy, and built large houses to the south of the Acropolis, in the area now known as Makryianni. Inevitably, there was also a large population of 'eternal students', who had failed to win professorial chairs, yet who could not bear to leave the city, and the life, they had come to love.
When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire, it is unlikely that many Athenians were content with his decision. Nevertheless, Constantine was proud of the honours conferred upon him by the Athenians. Despite robbing the city of many treasures to adorn his refoundation of Byzantium as 'New Rome' (Constantinople), he rewarded them with tens of thousands of bushels of wheat annually.
The emperor Julian the Apostate, who had studied in Athens, briefly re-established paganism during 361-3. Although the grandson, nephew and cousin of emperors, he had conducted himself modestly as a student. Despite the dominance of the pagan schools, many fathers of the Church also received their education in Athens, such as Basil of Caesaria and Gregory Nazianzus.
© John L. Tomkinson |
