The traveler who passed through these suburbs came at
length to the great wall, nearly five miles in circumference, raised by
Themistocles to surround the settlement at the foot of the Acropolis. The
area included within this wall made up Old Athens. About six centuries after
Themistocles the Roman emperor Hadrian, by building additional fortifications
on the east, brought an extensive quarter, called New Athens, inside the city
limits.
HILLS OF ATHENS
The region within the walls was broken up by a number of
rocky eminences which have a prominent place in the topography of Athens. Near
the center the Acropolis rises more than two hundred feet above the plain, its
summit crowned with monuments of the Periclean Age. Not far away is the hill
called the Areopagus. Here the Council of the Areopagus, a court of justice in
trials for murder, held its deliberations in the open air. Beyond this height
is the hill of the Pnyx. This was the meeting place of the Athenian Assembly
until the fourth century B.C., when the sessions were transferred to the
theater of Dionysus.
