Acropolis

For we deposited on the Acropolis a thousand talents of coined money we built one hundred additional triremes, and constructed dockyards;

In the period that followed we again deposited treasure in the Acropolis, seven thousand talents, thanks to this peace, and we acquired triremes, seaworthy and fully equipped, no fewer than three hundred in number;

But the popular speakers arose and with one consent ignored the question of the safety of the state, but called on you to gaze at the Propylaea of the Acropolis, and remember the battle of, Salamis, and the tombs and trophies of our forefathers.

Diocleides said that he went to Callias’ house, and after terms had been arranged, pledged his word on the Acropolis.

The Knights were to be mustered at the Anaceum by trumpet before nightfall, while the Council would take up its quarters on the Acropolis for the night, and the Prytanes in the Tholus.

You enacted, then, that both the originals and all extant copies of these several decrees should be cancelled, and your differences ended by an exchange of pledges on the Acropolis.

You who are to give the verdict have come here knowing better than we, the accusers, that this man, since he is a state-debtor and registered as such in the Acropolis, has no right to speak at all;

Shut out from your right of speech, not by barriers or doors which any man might break open, but by so many heavy penalties, which are registered in the temple of the Goddess, you are trying to force your way in and to approach those precincts from which the laws exclude you.

How on the first of each month will you climb the Acropolis and pray for blessings on the State and on yourselves, when the defendant and his worthy father are registered there, and you have given your verdict clean against your oaths and the documents there preserved?

and, more than this, he stored away in the Acropolis a sum of not less than ten thousand talents.

and, worst of all, we have seen the whole city in peril of being enslaved, and our enemy encamped on the Acropolis.

and what manner of man was he who after him filled the Acropolis with gold and silver and made the homes of the Athenians to overflow with prosperity and wealth:

And so far are we inferior to our ancestors, both those who enjoyed the esteem of the Hellenes and those who incurred their hatred, that whereas they, when they resolved to wage war against any state, deemed it their duty, notwithstanding that the Acropolis was stored with silver and gold, to face danger in their own persons in support of their resolutions, we, on the other hand, not withstanding …

for in place of holding the citadels of other states, her people saw the day when the enemy was in possession of the Acropolis;

And yet Pericles, who was the leader of the people before men of this stamp came into favor, taking over the state when it was less prudent than it had been before it obtained the supremacy, although it was still tolerably well governed, was not bent upon his own enrichment, but left an estate which was smaller than that which he received from his father, while he brought up into the Acropolis eig …

Looking back at the Acropolis and the temple of Zeus the Savior and Athena the Protectress, which he had betrayed, he had no fear, though he will presently call upon these gods to save him from danger.

Then, as they did not secure his person to answer for the crime, they took down his statue from the Acropolis and, melting it down, made a pillar of it, on which they decreed that the names of sinners and traitors should be inscribed.

There was a house south of the Acropolis, a suburban estate at Sphettus, another piece of land at Alopeke, and besides there were nine or ten slaves who were skilled shoemakers, each of whom paid him a fee of two obols a day, and the superintendent of the shop three obols.

As you are all aware, I imagine, this peace enabled us to deposit seven thousand talents of coined silver on the Acropolis and to acquire over three hundred ships:

it rendered it so powerful that during the years after we gained peace we first of all deposited a thousand talents on the Acropolis and passed a law which set them apart as a state reserve;

I took my friends’ advice, and was formally reconciled to them on the Acropolis in the presence of witnesses, who performed the ceremony near the temple of Athena.

For there stands on the Acropolis a statue of Diphilus, on which is inscribed:

Having got the so-called club-bearers, he rose with them against the people and seized the Acropolis, in the thirty-second year after the laying-down of the laws, in the archonship of Comeas.

But when the Council resisted and the multitude gathered, Cleomenes and Isagoras and all their party fled for refuge to the Acropolis, and the people, sitting before it for two days, besieged them, and on the third let Cleomenes and all with him go under truce, and sent for Cleisthenes and the other exiles.

he fixed things with Ctesicles, the speech-writer, who was acting in the matter for his opponents, in such a way that he should neither pay the damages nor be listed on the acropolis as a debtor to the state.

I fancy, however, that they will try to maintain that criminal informations may not be lodged against those who are not registered on the Acropolis, and that it is not right to consider those as debtors whose names no one has given over to the collectors, just as though you were unaware of the law which declares a man a debtor from the day on which the penalty has been imposed or on which he has t …

Their sacrilege differs from other forms of sacrilege to this extent,—that they never even paid the money into the Acropolis as they ought.

Was it not he who, being appointed treasurer at the Acropolis, stole from that place those prizes of victory which our ancestors carried off from the barbarians, the throne with silver feet, and Mardonius’s scimitar, which weighed three hundred darics?

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, take, please, the award that was made in the Acropolis, and the deposition of those who were present, when Apollodorus, on receiving this money, gave a release from all claims.

and by requiring further that the names of those who had passed the scrutiny should be inscribed upon a pillar of marble and should be set up in the Acropolis near the temple of the goddess, to the end that the favor granted to them should be preserved for their descendants and that each one of these might be in a position to prove his relationship to one of those receiving the grant.

more than ten thousand talents did they accumulate in our Acropolis;

For they possess as a far more august and excellent offering the scimitar of Mardonius and the shields of the Laconians once captured at Pylos, than the propylaea of the Acropolis and the Olympieum, built at a cost of more than ten thousand talents.

the safest course for the city was to guard the money and the person of Harpalus, and to take up all the money, with which Harpalus had entered Attica, to the Acropolis on the following day, while Harpalus himself should announce then and there how much money there was.

I do not intend to waste words before coming to the point, and shall therefore proceed to the actual defence, after praying the gods to help me and bring me safely through the present trial and requesting you, gentlemen of the jury, first either the betrayal of dockyards, the burning of public buildings, or the seizure of the Acropolis

You have never even transported to the Acropolis the dedications upon which Menexenus (I.

Furthermore, by dedicating on the Acropolis the first-fruits of their wealth, they have adorned the shrine with bronze and marble statues, numerous, indeed, to have been provided out of a private fortune.

Thus, no one would praise our city either because she was once mistress of the sea, or because she extorted such huge sums of money from her allies and carried them up into the Acropolis, nor yet, surely, because she obtained power over many cities—power to devastate them, or aggrandize them, or manage them according to her pleasure (for all these things it was possible for her to do);

And when we had come to the Acropolis, he covered his head and wept, saying that he had been compelled to deny the debt because of lack of funds, but that he would try to repay me in a short time.

When he had drawn up this agreement in writing we brought to the Acropolis Pyron, of Pherae, who frequently sailed to the Pontus, and placed the agreement in his custody, stipulating that if we should come to a satisfactory settlement with each other, he should burn the memorandum;

Two days later we met again and solemnly pledged each other to keep the affair secret, a pledge which he failed to keep, as you yourselves will learn as my story proceeds, and he agreed to sail with me to the Pontus and there pay me back the gold, in order that he might settle our contract at as great a distance as possible from Athens, and that no one here might know the nature of our settlement, …

On summit of Acropolis, beside

Fane of Tritonian Pallas bountiful,

And so you believe that there was really war between the gods, and fearful enmities and battles and other things of the sort, such as are told of by the poets and represented in varied designs by the great artists in our sacred places and especially on the robe which is carried up to the Acropolis at the great Panathenaea?

while there were still at that time in the Acropolis 6000 talents of coined silver;

And they resolved to take out and set apart a thousand talents from the money in the Acropolis, and not to spend them, but to carry on the war with their other resources;