Athens, 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.