Europe (c.1400-1458)

11. Attica

Attica 107 11 ATTICA 50. NEXT comes Hellas, which our countrymen call Greece. The ancients called it Acte, which means “coast”; then, through an alteration of the name, they called it Attica.204 Homer referred to all the inhabitants of Attica as Athenians, since Megara had not yet been built. However, the part of it which is called the Megarid makes Attica stretch from Boeotia all the way to the Isthmus of Corinth. Near the Isthmus, in fact, was a column, which contained the following inscription on the side facing the Peloponnese: “This is the Peloponnese, but not Ionia.” And on the side looking toward Megara : “This is not the Peloponnese, but Ionia.”205 For the people of Attica and the Ionians were the same. Having frequently quarreled with the Peloponnesians over their borders, they finally reached a consensus and had this column erected. Although Attica is rocky and barren, most writers have praised it extravagantly, calling it the abode of the gods, who occupied these parts, and the ancestral heroes . In Attica, the city of Athens once enjoyed great distinction and needed no words of commendation: such was its surpassing fame. In our time, the same place looks like a small town. However, on the rock where the ancient temple of Minerva206 stood is a citadel celebrated through all of Greece for its massive size and impregnability . A certain Florentine surrendered this to Mehmed after begging for reinforcements from the Latins and finding no one to help him. In reward for this, he was given a country estate on which to live out his life in ignominy.207 204. Strabo, Geography, 9.1.3 205. Strabo, Geography, 9.1.6. 206. The Parthenon (completed in 438 BCE). 207. After withstanding a siege of two years by one of Mehmed’s generals, the last Florentine duke of Athens, Franco Acciaiuoli, surrendered the Acropolis in June 1458 and retired to Boeotia as a vassal of Mehmed; he was murdered four years later on Mehmed’s orders; see Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 159–60, 178. ...