Athens
Athens names 5 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Athens the chief city of Attica
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the chief city of Attica, and the present capital of the modern kingdom of Greece. It was built on an irregular assemblage of hills in the sides of which explorers have found rock caves which may have been the homes of the original inhabitants. Historically, the city grew up around a central acropolis or hill. The Acropolis of Athens was a craggy rock about 150 feet high, with a flat summit 1,000 feet long and half as wide, accessible on one side only. It was an admirable place of refuge. The city which grew up about its base was four or five miles distant from the sea. In the course of time it was surrounded by a strong wall. Notwithstanding their inland location, the Athenians became noted as the boldest sailors and the most enterprising merchants of Greece. Three harbors were improved; the most important of these, the Peiraeus, was fortified by Themistocles with a massive wall of masonry, sixteen feet broad and thirty feet high. The blocks of stone were clamped together with iron. To connect the city of the Acropolis and the city of the harbor, the Athenians built long walls, inclosing a lane five miles long and 550 feet in width. These walls were made so broad and massive that their tops served as carriage roads. At the height of Athenian power, which may be placed at 460 B. C., Athens not only monopolized the greater part of the commerce of the Mediterranean but reduced no less than 280-Aristophanes says 1,000-other Greek cities to the position of allies and required them to pay tribute. An immense amount of treasure was thus brought into the public coffers and was expended in magnificent public buildings. Athens became the world's metropolis, the center of art, literature, and science. Athens possessed the finest public buildings of the ancient world. There were several open air auditoriums, designed for public assemblies, musical recitals, and the presentation of dramas. A semi-circular excavation was cut in the side of a hill, resembling one-half of a saucer or shallow cup. The natural stone was left in terraces to serve as seats, or terraces were built of marble slabs in the shape of steps. Sometimes a stone wall was built across the open space from end to end of the arc. A table of masonry at the middle of this wall, attained by steps, served as a platform for the speaker. In speaking he faced the hill. In the case of a theater the wall was replaced by a building which served as a retiring room for the actors. The performances, however, were given in the open air. The greatest of these audience rooms is said to be the Stadium. It was finished in Pentelic marble and was capable of seating 40,000 persons. Another famous place of public assembly was the Pnyx (nix) on a low hill. The venerable Areopagus had an open air auditorium of its own. The temple of Theseus, like other important buildings, was constructed of marble. It is still in a tolerable state of preservation. Every alternate slab of stone in its frieze is devoted to a representation of the heroic deeds of Theseus and Hercules. A temple of Jupiter was 354 feet long and 171 feet broad. It was adorned with 120 magnificent Corinthian columns, 61 feet in height and over 6 feet in diameter. Sixteen of these still stand. This was the largest and most magnificent temple of Zeus ever erected. The famous statue of the Olympian Jupiter was sheltered here. It was made in ivory and gold by Phidias, the most celebrated sculptor of antiquity. The crowning architectural glory of the city was a group of buildings on the Acropolis. As stated, this could be approached only on the western slope by passage 160 feet in breadth. A magnificent marble vestibule fifty feet deep was built across this entire width, with a wing at either end, the entire edifice presenting a colonnade supported on Doric columns. A carriageway thirteen feet wide passed through the center. Two ways of less width led between columns along either side. The summit of the Acropolis was adorned with many temples, altars, and statues, including the colossal bronze figure of Athena, at least fifty feet in height. One of the principal buildings was the Erechtheum. It was one of the most graceful examples of the Ionic order. A porch is especially celebrated, being supported by six columns, representing perfectly proportioned, chastely clad female figures in marble, called the Caryatides. The greatest building of all was the Parthenon, still considered the crowning effort of Grecian architecture. The pillars were of the Doric order. It was sacred to Athena, the patron goddess of the city. Other famous places which the student now finds it difficult to locate were the Agora, or public market place, with tree-lined walks; the Academy, with its groves and walks and fountains where Plato taught; and the Lyceum, the no less celebrated haunt of Aristotle. During the Roman occupation of Greece, particularly during the reign of the Antonines, the buildings of Athens were guarded with care. Several hundred years after it had been begun, the Emperor Hadrian himself gave orders for the final completion of the temple Zeus mentioned above. A triumphal arch in Hadrian's memory still stands in the vicinity. With the removal of Roman protection, however, the art treasures of Athens were pilfered by the East and by the West. Many were carried to Rome and to Constantinople. The choicest sculpture was used to build garden walls or to construct huts. The marble steps of the Stadium were quarried like common rock for the most ordinary building purposes. Under Turkish rule Athens became a mass of tumble-down ruins, inhabited by a few wretched people, still clinging to the scenes of magnificence witnessed by their once proud ancestors. The Parthenon became at one time a church of the Virgin Mary, and the Arabs turned it into a mosque. It remained almost intact until 1687. During the siege of the city by the Venetians it was partially destroyed by an explosion of powder. A large number of the finest pieces of sculpture, particularly blocks of the friezes, were taken from the Acropolis early in the nineteenth century and are preserved in the British Museum . The porch of the Caryatides still stands. Travelers speak with admiration also of a Temple of the Winds, yet found in a tolerable state of preservation. It is an octagonal marble building, formerly surmounted by a bronze weather vane. Each of the eight faces of the cornice bears a figure of the wind god of the quarter toward which it turns. Boreas, the north wind, on the northern cornice, is represented as blowing a noisy conch. Notus, the rainy south wind, carries a water jar. Zephyrus, the west wind, has his lap full of flowers. Within the tower, the architect constructed a water clock, or clepsydra, supplied with water from a spring on the Acropolis. In the day of its greatest power the population of Athens was rated at 200,000. Since Greece gained its independence the city has had a revival of prosperity. Its population cannot now be much less than 120,000, and its ancient port, Peiraeus, enjoying similar good fortune, has a population of perhaps 40,000. The old buildings have been excavated and, so far as possible, many of them have been restored. A royal palace, an academy of science and art, a national museum, an observatory, a chamber of deputies, a library, a new theater, and other buildings give the city quite a modern appearance. The national library contains over 200,000 volumes. The national university, founded 1837, has handsome buildings, a large faculty, and an attendance of over 2,000 students. Many foreign students resort to Athens to study the remains of classic art, and to study Greek, still the language of the people. An American school of classical studies is maintained by an association of universities. It has 4,000 volumes. The tuition is twenty-five dollars a year. The lecturers are American professors on temporary leave of absence. See Athena; Parthenon ; Caryatides; Areopagus ; Phidias ; Pericles ; Aristides ; Sophocles ; Themistocles ; Solon; Draco; Thermopylae ; Marathon ; Elgin ; Architecture ; Greece The history of Athens is for us the history of Greece.--Holm. No description can give anything but a very inadequate idea of the splendor, the strength, the beauty, which met the eye of the Athenian, whether he walked round the fortifications, or through the broad streets of the Peiraeus, or along the Long Walls, or in the shades of the Academy, or amidst the tombs of the Ceramicus; whether he chaffered in the market place, or attended assemblies in the Pnyx, or loitered in one of the numerous porticoes, or watched the exercises in the Gymnasia, or listened to music in the Odeum or plays in the theaters, or joined the throng of worshipers ascending to the great gateway of the Acropolis.--Abbott, Pericles. Moderns are apt to blame the Athenian Democracy for putting power in hands unfit to use it. The truer way of putting the case would be to say that the Athenian Democracy made a greater number of citizens fit to use power than could be made fit by any other system.... The Assembly was an assembly of citizens--of average citizens without sifting or selection; but it was an assembly of citizens among whom the political average stood higher than it ever did in any other state.... The Athenian, by constantly hearing questions of foreign policy and domestic administration argued by the greatest orators the world ever saw, received a political training which nothing else in the history of mankind has been found to equal.-Freeman.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
Lyceum or temple of Apollo Lyceus-all near the Ilissus; and to whom were due the inclosure of the academy, a gymnasium and gardens to the N. of the city, and the building of the Agora with its Portico or Stoa, Bouleuterium or Senatehouse, Tholus and Prytanium. With the foundation of Athenian democracy under Clisthenes, the Pnyx or place of public assembly, with its semi-circular area and cyclopean wall, first became of importance, and a commencement was made to the Dionysiac theater (theater of Dionysus or Bacchus) on the S. side of the Acropolis. Reconstruction. - After the destruction wrought by the Persians in 480 B. c., Themistocles reconstructed the city upon practical lines, and with a larger area, inclosing the city in new walls 7½ miles in circumference, erecting the N. wall of the Acropolis, and developing the maritime resources of the Pireus; while Cimon added to the southern fortifications of the Acropolis, placed on it the temple of Wingless Victory, planted the Agora with trees, laid out the Academy, and built the Theseum on an eminence N. of the Areopagus; his brother-in-law, Peisianax, erecting the famous Stor Poecile, a hall with walls covered with. paintings (whence the Stoics got their name). Under Pericles the highest point of artistic development was reached. An odeium was erected on the E. of the GREECE Dionysiac theater, for the recitations of rhapsodists and musicians; and with the aid of the architects Ictinus and Mnesicles and of the sculptor Fhidias the Acropolis was perfected. In the interval between the close of the Peloponnesian War and the battle of Chæronea, few additions were made. Then, however, the long walls and Piræus, destroyed by Lysander, were restored by Conon, and under the orator, Lycurgus, the Dionysiac temple was completed, the Panathenaic stadium commenced, and the choragic monuments of Lysicrates and Thrasyllus erected. Later on Ptolemy Philadelphus gave it the Ptolemæum near the Theseum, Attalus I. the stoa N. E. of the Agora, Eumenes II. that near the great theater, and Antiochus Epiphanes carried on the Olympium. Under the Romans, it continued a flourishing city. The City in Decline. But after a time Christian zeal, the attacks of barbarians, and robberies of collectors, made sad inroads among the monuments. About 420 A. D. paganism was totally annihilated at Athens, and when Justinian closed even the schools of the philosophers, the reverence for buildings associated with the names of the ancient deities and heroes was lost. The Parthenon was turned into a church of the Virgin Mary, and St. George stepped into the place of Theseus. Finally in 1456, the place fell into the hands of the Turks. The Parthenon became a mosque, and in 1687 was greatly damaged by an explosion at the siege of Athens by the Venetians. Modern Athens. --Soon after the beginning of the War of Liberation, in 1821, the Turks surrendered Athens, but captured it again in 1826-1827. It was then abandoned until 1830. In 1835 it became the royal residence, and made rapid progress. The modern city mostly lies northward and eastward from the Acropolis, and consists mainly of straight and well-built streets. Among the principal buildings are the royal palace, a stately building with a façade of Pentelic marble (completed in 1843), the university, the academy, public library, theater, and observatory. There are four foreign archæological schools or institutes, the French, German, American, and British. During the European War of 1914-1918, Athens was a center of intrigue for the combattant nations, each endeavoring to coerce the government in their favor. These conditions led to occasional violent outbreaks, especially when the Allies sought to disarm the Greeks guarding the city. Pop. about 200,000. See GREECE.
Athens anciently the capital of Attica and center of Greek culture
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
anciently the capital of Attica and center of Greek culture, now the capital of the Kingdom of Greece. It is situated in the central plain of Attica, about 4 miles from the Saronic Gulf or Gulf of Ægina, an arm of the Ægean Sea running in between the mainland and the Peloponnesus. It is said to have been founded about 1550 B. C. by Cecrops, the mythical Pelasgian hero; and to have borne the name Cecropia until under Erechtheus it received the name of Athens in honor of Athene. Topography. The Acropolis, an irregular oval crag, 150 feet high, with a level summit 1,000 feet long by 500 in breadth, was the original nucleus of the city. The three chief eminences near the Acropolis-the Areopagus to the N. W., the Pnyx to the S. W., and the Museum to the S. of the Pnyx-were included within the city boundary as the sites of its chief public buildings, the city itself, however, afterward taking a northerly direction. On the E. ran the Ilissus and on the W. the Cephissus, while to the S. W. lay three harbors-Phalerum, the oldest and nearest; the Piræus, the most important; and Munychia, the Piræan Acropolis. At the height of its prosperity the city was connected with its harbors by three massive walls (the "long walls"). Architecture. - The architectural development of Athens may be dated from the rule of the Pisistratids (560-510 B. c.), who are credited with the foundation of the huge temple of the Olympian Zeus, completed by Hadrian seven centuries later, the erection of the Pythium or temple of Pythian Apollo, and of the 0
Athens city and county-seat of Clarke co.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
city and county-seat of Clarke co., Ga.; on the Oconee river, and the Central of Georgia, the Georgia, the Southern and the Seaboard Air Line railroads; 67 miles E. of Atlanta, the State capital. It is in a cotton-growing region; has a large trade in that staple; and contains cotton and woolen, cottonseed oil, bobbin, and hosiery mills, iron works, furniture factories, and other industrial plants. It is the seat of the University of Georgia, the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, Lucy Cobb Institute, and a State Normal School. There are electric light and street railway plants, banks, several hotels, and daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals. Pop. (1910) 14,913; (1920) 16,748.
Athens In 124, he received from Hadrian the Roman citizenship
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
In 124, he received from Hadrian the Roman citizenship, and from this time assumed the name of Flavius. Arrian was one of the best writers of his time. He was a close imitator of Xenophon both in the subjects of his works and in the style in which they were written. The most important of them is his History of the expedition of Alexander the Great, in seven books, which was based upon the most trustworthy histories written by the contemporaries of Alexander.
Athens a city of Ohio
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city of Ohio, the countyseat of Athens co., on the Hocking river, and the Baltimore and Ohio Southwestern, the Toledo and Ohio Central, and the Hocking Valley railroads. It has important manufactures of umber products and is the center of an important coal-mining region. There is situated the OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY (q. v.), a State hospital for the insane, a library, and other public buildings. Pop. (1910) 5,463; (1920) 6,418.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote this in 1910, the Agora, the Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were places "which the student now finds it difficult to locate"; all three have since been found. American excavations of the Agora began in 1931 and cleared the whole square, rebuilding the Stoa of Attalos as a museum in 1956, and the Lyceum was uncovered in 1996 during building work near Syntagma. The Caryatids described on the Erechtheum porch are now weather-worn casts, the five surviving originals having been moved indoors, and since 2009 they stand in the Acropolis Museum at the foot of the hill, alongside a systematic restoration of the Parthenon running since 1975. The "mass of tumble-down ruins" of Turkish times is now a metropolis of some three million people, swollen above all by the refugees of the 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe, and host of the 2004 Olympic Games.
Written for this edition, 2026.