Acropolis
uh-KROP-uh-lis
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe high city of Athens. Herodotus describes the Persians taking it in 480, the few defenders who trusted the wooden wall of the oracle barricading themselves behind timber, and the citadel burned.
He also records that the olive burned with everything else, and that when the Athenians went up to sacrifice the next day they found a shoot a cubit long already grown from the stump. He reports it as what was said, and leaves it there.
That olive is Athena's, from the contest with Poseidon, and the salt sea he struck stood beside it.
Sources
- Hdt. 8.51-53
- Hdt. 8.55
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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