31 | Early Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens ROBERT K. PITT Looking out over the modern city from the top of Mt. Lykabettos or Philopappos Hill, the topographer of today is faced with a blanket of concrete and asphalt stretching up to the mountainous sides of the bowl in which Athens lies. The picture even a hundred years ago was unimagin- ably different, but the twentieth century brought waves of migrants, fleeing ‘wars and driven from their homelands. As the population exploded and the capital expanded, the landscape of the ancient city was covered, save for the areas of major excavation and heritage sites around the center and the chance discoveries of rescue projects in more recent times. One result of this modern development for the field of topography is a reliance on the writings of the so-called early travelers who visited Athens from the last days of the Byzantine Empire up to the War of Independence and the foundation of the Greek State in the early nineteenth century, but are particularly well represented from the late seventeenth century on. They form a fascinating group of merchants, grand tourists, diplomats, scholars, artists, and relic hunters, each in search of traces of the physical remains of ‘Athens’ glorious past; they were almost exclusively Western Europeans, and most came armed with a classical education, Many left disappointed with the meager village they found clustered around the Akropolis, their progress impeded by what they saw as ignorant priests and corrupt Turks, but they ‘were captivated by the great marble monuments remaining from antiquity. The records of their journeys, published as well as kept in scattered archives, preserve a vital source for a lost world. In this chapter, we will explore some of the more important travelers for the topography of the ancient city in the order in which they arrived and will attempt to understand the motives and goals behind their labors and publications. Before the Ottoman Conquest During the Byzantine period, Christian pilgrims flocked to Athens, as its cathedral of the Theotokos Atheniotissa (the converted Parthenon) was one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the empire. A lively set of 437438 ROBERT K, PITT writings and correspondence survives for the final decades of this era in the works of the Metropolitan bishop of Athens, Michael Choniates. In office from 1182 to 1205, he wrote scathing appraisals of the city in his day from his residence atop the Akropolis. It alone was singled out for praise, seeming as it did “to bestride the very peak of heaven.”' But in 1204, the Fourth Crusade and the capture of Constantinople resulted in the dividing up of many Greek lands among the conquering knights, and within a year the unhappy lot fel to Choniates to deliver the city over to the Burgundian Otto de la Roche as the first ‘Duke of Athens.’ It was during the following two-and-a-half centuries of Frankish rule - as the various European rulers were called, in turn French, Catalan, and Italian - that our first Western travelers came to Athens. Perhaps the earliest to leave a systematic account was the Italian notary Niccold da Martoni, who took a tour of the city’s antiquities in 1395, writing a Latin account of his findings that includes the first eyewitness description of the Parthenon and the treasures housed within it since Pausanias. But the most influential traveler of the period was the indefatigable Cyriacus (or Cyriac) of Ancona (ca. 1391-ca. 1453), a merchant and scholar who took great pleasure in the monuments of antiquity during his many years of extensive travels around the eastern Mediterranean, Cyriacus was in Athens in 1436 and 1444, and although only a fraction of his manuscript letters and diaries has survived, his contribution has led him to be called ‘the father of classical archaeology’; he sketched and described the Olympieion (calling it Hadrian’s Palace, as many later trav- elers would also), the Hephaisteion (a Temple of Mars), the Parthenon and Propylaia, and the Tower of the Winds: “we revisited the octagonal temple of Aeolus, which has at the top of the walls eight winged figures of the winds” (trans, Stoneman 2010, 30). His particular interest was in epig raphy, and he is frequently the earliest source to record important inscrip- tions, such as the dedication from the Monopteros of Rome and Augustus on the Akropolis, and the Greek and Latin texts on the Philopappos Monument, two of which he alone preserved before they were destroyed. ‘A prime example of an Italian humanist and antiquarian, sponsored by cardinals and popes, Cyriacus at the very end of his life may even have been in the camp of Mehmet the Conqueror at the fall of Constantinople in 1453, witnessing that watershed moment in history. His writings preserve a unique snapshot of Athens just before the Frankish Dukes surrendered the city in 1456, after which the Ottoman conquest would throw a veil over " For Choniates at Athens, see Kaldellis 2009, 145-168.Early Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens Athens that very few outsiders would penetrate for the next 200 years; so much so that the German classicist Martin Crusius (Kraus) was moved in 1573 to enquire of Greek correspondents in Istanbul whether the city of Athens actually still existed. Academic curiosity for the history, monuments, and topography of Athens was not dulled by the lack of autopsy, and scholars in Western Europe continued to gather together information from ancient literature, none more so than the Dutch philologist Johannes Meursius (van Meurs) (1579-1639), whose collections of sources on Athens would prove essential reading material for travelers of later generations attempting to link the snippets of text with the remains on the ground.” Monks, Diplomats, and Scholars in the Seventeenth Century The isolation of Athens from the eastern pilgrimage trails and trade routes gradually relented during the course of the 1600s, in part because of improved French diplomatic and economic relations with the Ottoman empire under Louis XIV. The Turkish victory at the Siege of Candia (Crete) in 1669 ended a long war with Venice, and diplomatic missions ‘were soon thriving, such as that of the French ambassador to the Porte, the Marquis de Nointel. Possessed of a thirst for classical antiquity and a collecting zeal, he traveled widely around Turkey and Greece, visiting Athens in November 1674. His extensive entourage boasted researchers, antiquaries, stonemasons (with equipment for removing marbles), and artists, including one once identified (perhaps incorrectly) as Jacques Carrey, whose drawings of the Parthenon sculptures are an invaluable record of the monument before the great explosion of 1687, when Venetian cannon struck the powder stores held inside. A French order of Capuchin monks had established a mission at Athens in 1658 that provided hospitality to a great many travelers over the centuries, including Lord Byron, who took advantage of the reading room created inside the Lysikrates Monument that had been incorporated within the walls of the monastery (Web Fig, 31.1). The Capuchins were evidently keen antiquarians, sending information on the ancient remains to scholars in Paris and elsewhere, and preparing the first plan of the ruins of Athens, which they freely distributed; it would provide the basis for a number of published plans of the city. > J. Meurs, Atticarum Lectionum, Libri v, in quibus antiguitates plurimae, nunc primum in lucem ruta, profereuntur, Leiden 1617; Athenae Atticae. Sive, de praecipuis Athenarum Antiguitatibus, Libri 1, Leiden 1624. 439440 ROBERT K, PITT Diplomats stationed at Athens appear as important figures in travel litera ture well into the nineteenth century, acting as guides, hosts, interlocutors, and antiquities agents, such as the French (and later English) consul Jean Giraud in the late seventeenth century. He would be influential during the sojourn of two travelers whose works became the standard texts on the city’s remains for the next century, Spon and Wheler. The Lyonnais doctor and antiquary Jacob Spon (1647-1685) abandoned his medical practice and traveled to Rome in order to further his studies of the ancient world in 1674, the same year he had edited and seen through to publication Relation de l'état present de la ville d’Athenes, a work by Jacques-Paul Babin, a Jesuit missionary living in Turkey, that had been sent to him in Lyon, Babin had visited Athens five times, and his reflections on the state of the city’s tangible past would be one of the first such eyewitness accounts of its kind to be printed. It spurred Spon to travel and see for himself what remained of Athens. While in Rome, Spon was fortunate enough to meet a kindred spirit in George Wheler (1651-1724). They decided to travel together to Greece, initially with two further Englishmen, Giles Eastcourt and Francis Vernon, but they separated at Zakynthos and the latter pair did not fare well. Eastcourt died of a fever on the way to Delphi, and Vernon was murdered in Isfahan over an argument about a penknife, a reminder of the ever- present dangers of travel in the East. Whilst in Venice, Spon received a copy of a curious volume purportedly by a Frenchman well acquainted with the situation at Athens called La Guilleti@re, whose letters home were published by his brother Georges Guillet de Saint-George (1624-1705) as Athénes ancienne et nouvelle (Paris 1675), but this was in fact a fabrication of Guillet cobbled together from classical texts (from Meursius), corres- pondence with the Capuchin monks in Athens, and sheer flights of fancy. ‘The book, however, proved immensely popular, running in two years to three editions and an English translation, and encouraging Guillet to compose an equally spurious account of a journey to the Peloponnese, Lacedemone ancienne et nouvelle (Paris 1676). Spon and Wheler had the book with them during their explorations of Athens in 1676, and Spon would expend much energy and ink over the remainder of his short life in a heated and much-publicized polemic with Guillet, who adamantly stuck to his fantasy, even accusing Spon of never having stepped foot in Athens.* » See G. de Saint-Georges, Lettres écrites sur une disertation d'un voyage de Grice publié par -M. Spon, Pars 1679; J Spon, Réponse a la critique publiée par M. Guilt sur le Voyage de Gréce de Jacob Spon, Lyon 1679,Early Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens Spon brought out his own account of his Greek travels in 1678, Voyage d'Italie, de Dalmatie, de Gréce et du Levant, a work of great integrity and learning that would place Athenian topographic research on firm scientific ground (Map 31.1). Spon was well acquainted with ancient literature, combining primary sources and observations of monuments and landscape with critiques of previous scholarship and including a great many inscrip- tions recorded by himself and others. His basic topographic methodology would be imitated by many who followed. Wheler’s own account of their travels, A Journey into Greece, was published in 1682. With the exception of observations on religion (he became an Anglican cleric) and botany (an interest of several early travelers), itis almost entirely taken from Spon, and yet rather unfairly remained a more popular work. However, it did include an important map of Attika that Wheler had created using a mariner's compass to take triangulations of the topography. Like Cyriacus, their timing was fortuitous, as the resumption of Venetian hostilities, with the invasion of the Morea by Morosini in 1685, would again make travel problematic in Greek lands. Military conquest did, however, bring with it further cartographic advances, as the defenses of Greek towns were mapped by Venetian engineers, whose plans would often accompany ‘Map 31.1 Plan of Athens in J. Spon, Voyage d'ltalie, de Dalmatie, de Gréce et du Levant (1678), Source: RK, Pitt 441442 ROBERT K, PITT volumes on the capture of Athens in 1687, The famous cartographer Vincenzo Coronelli was particularly successful in producing copious edi- tions of plans and maps of Greece, including two of Athens based on those of Spon and Guillet, although a more influential and accurate plan based on the work of Venetian engineers was included in Fanelli’s Atene Attica (Venice 1707) Towards Scientific Investigation: The Eighteenth Century Arguably the greatest single contribution of any mission for the topography and monuments of Athens was the work of James Stuart (1713-1788) and Nicholas Revett (1721-1804). This pair of architects and artists had met in Italy where, in mingling with the grand tourists and diplomats of the day, they were able to raise funds to extend their journey to Greece. Between 1751 and 1753, with professed aims of empirical truth and accuracy, they set about to record the standing architecture of Athens with a level of detail that had not previously been attempted, producing superb architectural plans of the principal remains as well as beautiful views of the city and aspects of contemporary life (by Stuart). Back in England, the Society of Dilettanti agreed to publish the results of their work, although the produc- tion would take a very long time, volume one of The Antiquities of Athens being published in 1762, the first of five magnificent folio volumes (Stuart would die before the second volume was produced in 1789, although with a title page dated to 1787, and the series was not completed until 1830). The influence of these volumes was profound and helped to fuel the Greek revival movement in Britain, with versions of Greek temples and copies of the Caryatid porch or Lysikrates Monument popping up in the architec- tural landscape of Britain, some built by Stuart and Revett themselves. The level of accuracy in their plans and detailed drawings exposed the beauty and quality of ancient Greek art and architecture to an eager public who previously had had access only to Roman types and copies. Their travels would also inspire the Society of Dilettanti, an aristocratic drinking club “for which the nominal qualification is having been in Italy, and the real one, being drunk,” as Horace Walpole would quip, to aim higher in its pursuit and dissemination of the knowledge of ancient Greece. Stuart and Revett were elected themselves in absentia in 1751. Stuart and Revett were beaten to publication by Julian-David Le Roy in 1758 with his volume Les Ruines des plus beaux Monumens de la Gréce, which depicts many of the same monuments as The Antiquities of AthensEarly Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens Fig. 31.1 The Temple of Artemis Agrotera above the Ilissos, from J. Stuart & N. Revett, ‘The Antiquities of Athens, Vol. 1, London 1762. Source: RK. Pitt but in a wholly different manner. Where Stuart and Revett aimed for accuracy, Le Roy cared more for the romance of the scene, adding numer- ous inaccuracies that would stir controversy and lead Stuart and other Dilettanti members to lengthy attacks against the work. Such disputes led travelers’ writings to become obsessed with correcting their predecessors, ina spirit of both national competition and a striving for true depictions of the monuments and sites of Greece Stuart and Revett’s mission has preserved for us several monuments that would later be damaged or lost entirely, such as the lonic Temple of ‘Artemis Agrotera above the Ilissos (Fig. 31.1). The building was in large part stil standing in the 1750s, having been converted into a church, but it was subsequently demolished for its building material, which was incorpor- ated into the last circuit wall of Athens constructed under the Ottoman Voivode Hadji Ali Haseki in 1778. This act of vandalism also claimed a bridge over the Iissos River opposite the Panathenaic Stadium, and the facade of the Nymphaeum of Hadrian on Mt. Lykabettos. They would also document for the first time traces of polychromy on the ancient architec- ture they studied. Stuart followed Spon in meticulously researching the ancient literary sources for the buildings he measured, and improved several identifications such as the Temple of Olympian Zeus (which others 443444 ROBERT K, PITT had taken for the Pantheon or Palace of Hadrian), although the Library was still a mystery (a Stoa of Hadrian), and the Odeion of Herodes Atticus was erroneously published as the Theater of Dionysos. The success of Stuart and Revett’s work led the Dilettanti to raise funds for a sponsored expedition on behalf of the Society principally to record the antiquities on the west coast of Asia Minor and in Greece. The Society drew up a brief for the travelers, who were “to make exact plans and measure- ments, to make accurate drawings of the bas-reliefs and ornaments copying all the inscriptions you shall meet with, and keeping minute diaries,” although they were instructed not to interfere with the continuing publication of The Antiquities of Athens. This Ionian Mission became the first such sponsored enterprise with the specific aim of recording the state of the ancient remains, and the Dilettanti placed at its head Richard Chandler (1738-1810), a talented classicist and epigraphist who had been chosen on the basis of his excellent publication of the antiquities of the University of Oxford (Marmora Oxoniensia, Oxford 1763). Chandler was joined by Revett and the painter William Pars (1742-1782); the group set out for the east on their two-year mission in 1764, spending longer in Athens than planned when a plague broke out in Smyrna. It was at Athens that Chandler increased his remit from observing to collecting, purchasing specimens of architecture, sculpture, and inscriptions that included two pieces of the Parthenon frieze and an important building account of the Erechtheion (the ‘Chandler stele’). On his return to London, Chandler deposited these marbles (eventually donated to the British Museum) along with the notebooks and drawings of the expedition with the Society of Dilettanti, who then allowed him to publish first the inscriptions he recorded (Inscriptiones Antiquae, Oxford 1774) and his travel diaries (Travels in Asia Minor, Oxford 1775; Travels in Greece, Oxford 1776), before editing the results of the expedition along with Revett and Pars as the first two parts of Ionian Antiquities (London 1769-1797). As with The Antiquities of Athens, the series continued for some time, encompassing in Volumes 11 to v a further Ionian mission undertaken by the Dilettanti, whose members were William Gell, Francis Bedford, and John Gandy, and for Attika one particularly important book of their architectural plans of Eleusis, Rhamnous, Sounion, and Thorikos (The Unedited Antiquities of Attica, London 1817). The most influential of Chandler’s works was undoubtedly the Travels, which would run to several editions and translations, demonstrating a wide public interest in classical lands; they would act as guidebooks for Asia Minor and Greece for almost a century. The approach was logical andEarly Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens scientific, if not exactly page-turning. Chandler moves from the literary texts to the notices of early travelers, before expounding on the present state of the ruins, often accompanied by lengthy passages of Pausanias or an inscription in translation to help flesh out a reconstruction of the locale, His use of inscriptions is particularly noteworthy: he identifies monument types and groups them into categories, such as the choregic dedications, and attempts to date them by the presence of archon names or by their alphabets and letter shapes. The Early Nineteenth Century The two decades leading up to the War of Independence witnessed an explosion of travel to Greece. Fueled by romantic ideas about the West’s classical heritage, poets, painters, and tourists poured into Athens, a great many publishing their travel diaries. Most would differ fundamentally in outlook from their eighteenth-century predecessors, such as Chandler, who seems dry and scholarly in comparison to the new wave of travelers in search of the beauty and inspiration that Hellenic lands and ideals had to offer. Some stand out, however, for their contributions to Athenian topog- raphy, such as Edward Dodwell, whose superb detailed views of Athens preserve a uniquely accurate account of the contemporary city. Perhaps the most remarkable of the early foreign topographers was Colonel William Martin Leake (1777-1860), whose travels around the eastern Mediterranean as soldier, diplomat, prisoner, and antiquarian provided the basis for several volumes on ancient Greek lands, which with military precision corrected the errors of previous travelogues. His work on Athens remained a foundational text for the topography of the ancient city up to the studies of Walther Judeich (1859-1942).* Travelers had for centuries taken information about Athens from long- term residents, whether from the Capuchin monks or the English and French diplomats stationed in the city, and none would be more influential for the study and collecting of Athenian antiquities than Louis-Frangois- Sébastien Fauvel (1753-1838). Fauvel had traveled extensively in the east- ern Mediterranean, partly as a member of the scientific and artist entourage of the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, French ambassador at Istanbul. He ‘would eventually secure a diplomatic mission himself, and * W.M. Leake, The Topography of Athens: With Some Remarks on Its Antiguitis, London 1821 (2nd edn. 1841); W. Judeich, Topographic von Athen, Munich 1931 445446 ROBERT K, PITT Athens was an essential call for the travelers of the day, hosting visitors among paintings of Athens and the antiquities he had excavated and collected (Web Fig. 32.2). Fauvel acted as a guide to the monuments of the city, and funded much of his activities as a wily dealer in antiquities for his foreign clients, Many of his detailed notes on the monuments and inscriptions of Athens were lost, and the remainder (in the Bibliothéque nationale in Paris) he did not manage to publish, but his influence is principally to be seen in the plan of Athens he produced around 1787 or later, copies of which were circulated and eventually published (Map 31.2). His detailed records of the city’s surviving remains provide crucial docu- mentation before much of the city was destroyed in the ensuing War of Independence, During the hostilities between Greeks and Ottomans, the urban fabric was bombarded, resulting in many deaths and the almost total devastation of the lower town, Fauvel’s house, and its ancient contents. Fauvel, in fact, forms a link between the world of the travelers and the succeeding generations of professional archaeologists of the new Greek PLAN ne 44 Prue pARUENES. Map 31.2 Plan of Athens by Fauvel published in G.-A. Olivier, Atlas pour servir au voyage dans !'Emipire othoman, l'Egypte et la Perse, Paris 1807, pl. 49. Source: RK. PittEarly Travelers and the Rediscovery of Athens State in his tutoring of the young Kyriakos Pittakis (1798-1863), who had fought in the war against the Ottomans. Pittakis went on to become one of Greece's first archaeological overseers, organizing restoration efforts on the Akropolis, setting up the earliest public collections of marbles, and playing an instrumental role in the founding of the Archaeological Society at Athens in 1837. (See also Costaki, Chapter 33 in this volume.) With the creation of archaeological bodies to rescue and protect the monuments of Athens, and dedicated men such as Pittakis to record the discoveries being made, studies of the topography and history of the ancient city were placed on a solid footing, and the publications and pillaging of travelers gave way to systematic and salvage excavations and an accompanying academic dialogue that continues unabated up to the present. Further Reading For Athenian monuments and sources in the Byzantine period, see Kaldellis 2009 and Bouras 2017. For detailed bibliographic information of the publications of the early travelers to Greece, see Paton 1951, Weber 1952 and 1953, Navari 1989, and for a collection of images from these works, Tsigakou 2007. The story of travels to ‘Athens is told by Laborde 1854, and travelers within their intellectual and cultural context are discussed in Tsigakou 1981, Stoneman 2010, and Constantine 2011 Accounts of individual travels and missions include: for Cyriacus of Ancona, Bodnar 1960 and Chatzidakis 2017; for the Dilettanti Society, Kelly 2009; for Stuart and Revett, Weber Soros 2006; for Dodwell, Camp 2013; and for Fauvel, Zambon 2014. Bibliography Bodnar, E.W. 1960. Cyriacus of Ancona and Athens. Brussels. Bouras, C. 2017. Byzantine Athens: 10th-12th Centuries. London. Camp, J.M. 2013. In Search of Greece: Catalogue of an Exhibit of Drawings at the British Museum by Edward Dodwell and Simone Pomardi. Los Altos, CA. Chatzidakis, M. 2017. Ciriaco d’Ancona und die Wiederentdeckung Griechenlands im 15. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden. Constantine, D. 2011. In the Footsteps of the Gods: Travellers to Greece and the Quest for the Hellenic Ideal. London. Kaldellis, A. 2009. The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. Cambridge. Kelly, J.M. 2009. The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment, New Haven, gon de, 1854. Athénes aux XV", XVI et XVIF siécles. Paris. Laborde, le comte 447448, ROBERT K, PITT Navari, L. 1989. Greece and the Levant: The Catalogue of the Henry Myron Blackmer Collection of Books and Manuscripts. London. Paton, J. M. 1951. Chapters on Mediaeval and Renaissance Visitors to Greek Lands. Princeton. Stoneman, R. 2010. Land of Lost Gods: The Search for Classical Greece. London. Tsigakou, F.-M. 1981. The Rediscovery of Greece. London. 2007. Athens through the Eyes of Artists-Travelers 16th-19th Centuries. Athens. Weber, SH. 1952. Voyages and Travels in the Near East Made During the XIX Century. Princeton. 1953. Voyages and Travels in Greece, the Near East and Adjacent Regions Made Previous to the Year 1801. Princeton. Weber Soros, S., ed. 2006. James “Athenian” Stuart: The Rediscovery of Antiquity. New Haven. Zambon, A. 2014. Aux origines de Varchéologie en Gréce: Fauvel et sa méthode. Paris. Additional resources to accompany this chapter can be found at: www.cambridge -org/NeilsRogers