Word Finder - acropolis

definition

A promontory (usually fortified with a citadel) forming the hub of many Grecian cities, and around which many were built for defensive purposes before and during the classical period; compare Acropolis.

Little was known of the buildings on the Acropolis in the pre-Persian period before the great excavations of 1885-1888, which rank among the most surprising achievements of modern research.

The almost complete destruction of the buildings on the Acropolis and in the lower city, among them many temples and shrines which religious send- the walls of ment might otherwise have preserved, facilitated the Themis- realization of the magnificent architectural designs tocles .

The "Acropolis" is in some ways more remarkable than the great kraal which has just been described.

With regard to the buildings on the east end of the Acropolis, where the present museums stand, no certainty exists; among the many statues here were those of Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, and of Anacreon.

Farther west, along the north wall of the Acropolis, is the space probably occupied by the abode and playground of the Errephori.

On the inner side towards the Acropolis, this wall is faced with a portico of six Doric columns.

There are three distinct though connected groups of ruins at Zimbabwe, which are commonly known as the "Elliptical Temple," the "Acropolis" and the "Valley Ruins."

The name is especially given to the great entrance hall of the Acropolis at Athens, which was begun in 437 B.C. by Pericles, to take the place of an earlier gateway.

On the northern side Cimon completed the wall of Themistocles at both ends and added to its height; the ground behind was levelled up on this side also, the platform of the Acropolis thus receiving its present shape and dimensions.

Of these a portion may probably be attributed to the Peisistratids, in whose time the Acropolis once more became the stronghold of a despotism.

The Acropolis had been dismantled as a fortress after the expulsion of Hippias; its defenders against the Persians found it necessary to erect a wooden barricade at its entrance.

Acropolis is a reverse semi-rimless frame.

Curtius places the original Prytaneum south of the Acropolis in the Old Agora, speaks of a second identical with the Tholos in the Cerameicus, and regards that of Pausanius as a building of Roman times (Stadtgeschichte, p. 302).

If Plutarch tells us that he superintended the great works of Pericles on the Acropolis, this phrase is very vague.

On the Acropolis of Athens he set up a colossal bronze image of Athena, which was visible far out at sea.

With this force he proceeded to make himself master of the Acropolis and tyrant of Athens.

Temple C is the earliest of those on the acropolis.

The distance from the Acropolis to the nearest point of the sea coast at Phalerum is a little over 3 m.

For the ceramic art admirable material was at hand in the district north-west of the Acropolis.

Such in fact have been brought to light by the modern excavations on the Acropolis (1885-1889).

The district thus occupied sloped towards the sun and was sheltered by the Acropolis from the prevailing northerly winds.

The Pelasgic wall enclosed the spring Clepsydra, beneath the north-western corner of the Acropolis, which furnished a watersupply to the defenders of the fortress.

Farther east is an underground passage leading eastward to a cave supposed to be the sanctuary of Aglaurus where the ephebi took the oath; with this passage is connected a secret staircase leading up through a cleft in the rock to the precinct of the Errephori on the Acropolis.

Of the great monuments of this epoch few traces remain except on the Acropolis.

The island (Ortygia) had been provided with its own defences, converted, in fact, into a separate stronghold, with a fort to serve specially as a magazine of corn, and with a citadel or acropolis which stood apart and might be held as a last refuge.

It now bears the ruins of a mighty fortress, finer than that which defends the entrance to the acropolis of Selinus - the most imposing, indeed, that has come down to us from the Greek period - which there is no doubt is the work of Dionysius.

The Siegestor (or gate of victory) is a modern imitation of the arch of Constantine at Rome, while the stately Propylaea, built in 1854-1862, is a reproduction of the gates of the Athenian Acropolis.

The palace of the sultans and the mosque of Ala ed-din Kaikobad formerly covered great part of the Acropolis hill in the northern part of the city.

The ground round it has been left rough like the space on the Acropolis at Athens identified as the ancient altar of Athena.

After a considerable interval, during which the island probably remained uninhabited, the Carthaginians took possession of it (no doubt owing to its importance as a station on the way to Sicily) probably about the beginning of the 7th century B.C., occupying as their acropolis the twin hill of San Marco and Sta Teresa, 1 m.

It possesses considerable natural strength, and consists of a small hill, the original acropolis, occupied byy the modern castle and the village surrounding it, and a larger one, now given over to cultivation, where the city stood.

They lie mainly on the ancient Acropolis, which has been shored up with huge walls to form a terrace raised on vaults and measuring about 110o ft.

The temple of Bacchus stood on a platform of its own formed by a southern projection of the Acropolis.

The extant remains of the town of Mycenae are spread over the hill between the village of Charvati and the Acropolis.

The walls of the Acropolis are in of thin slabs of stone set up on end, with others laid across the top of them; at the part of this enclosure nearest to the Lion Gate is an entrance.

Outside the circle, especially to the south of it, numerous remains of houses of the Mycenaean age have been found, and others, terraced up at various levels, occupy almost the whole of the Acropolis.

It is generally supposed that these tombs, as well as those excavated in the rock, belong to a later date than the shaft-tombs on the Acropolis.

In the west Khurshid's lieutenant, Omar Vrioni (a Mussulman Greek of the race of the Palaeologi), had inflicted a series of defeats on the insurgents, recaptured Levadia, and on the 30th of June relieved the Acropolis; but the rout of the troops which Mahommed Pasha was bringing to his aid by the Greeks in the defile of Mount Oeta, and the news of the fall of Tripolitsa, forced him to retreat, and the campaign of 1821 ended with the retirement of the Turks into Thessaly.

Omar was held in check by the mud Expedi- ramparts of Missolonghi; but Dramali, after exacting Lion of fearful vengeance for the massacre of the Turkish Dramali, garrison of the Acropolis at Athens, crossed the 1822.

Demetrios Ypsilanti, however, with a few hundred men joined the Mainote Karayanni in the castle of Larissa, which crowns the acropolis of ancient Argos.

Early in 1825 the government was victorious; Kolokotrones was in prison; and Odysseus, the hero of so many exploits and so many crimes, who had ended by turning traitor and selling his services to the Turks, had been captured, imprisoned in the Acropolis, and finally assassinated by his former lieutenant Gouras (July 16, 1824).

The peasants of the open country welcomed the Turks as deliverers, and Reshid's conciliatory policy facilitated his march to Athens, which fell at the first assault on the 25th of August, siege being at once laid to the Acropolis, where Gouras and his troops had taken refuge.

The hill occupied by the Pisan fortifications and the medieval town within them must have been the acropolis of the Carthaginian settlement; it is impossible to suppose that a citadel presenting such natural advantages was not occupied.

The cemetery, extending from archaic Greek to Roman times, and the acropolis were explored.

The city lay between a mountain (its acropolis) and the river Pactolus, and its site was marked by two great Ionic columns standing deep in earth.

The excavators began by driving a level platform from the river bank towards the acropolis on the line of the two columns.

The temple, which (as inscriptions show) was dedicated to Artemis, had been half-buried by a landslip from the acropolis hill in the historic earthquake of 17 A.D.

A temple of Zeus was excavated on a terrace of the acropolis; the great temple of Apollo crowned the summit of the hill.

Antiope fell fighting on the side of Theseus, and her tomb was pointed out on the south side of the acropolis.

With this agrees the legend of the contest between Athena and Poseidon for supremacy on the acropolis of Athens, for Theseus is intimately connected with Poseidon, the great Ionian god.