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To get a sense of the relationship between karst geology and Greek settlement, we will look at examples from the Greek mainland, the islands of the Aegean, and Sicily. There is no attempt here to be comprehensive, as the necessary field work has not been done to make that possible, but rather these examples are selected to suggest the way that karst water potential played an important role in site selection and development. The major examples selected are Athens and Corinth for mainland Greece, Rhodes for the Aegean Islands, Assos and Priene for Ionia, and Syracuse and Akragas for Sicily. Other places will be cited briefly if the details from those sites are particularly illuminating. Karst phenomena, as we have seen, are found throughout the Greek world. Since Athens is perhaps the best documented Greek city, and has in addition a phenomenal karst system as its monumental focus, it receives here a section of its own, Chapter 18, The Well-Watered Acropolis. In Chapter 11, Planning Water Management, we discuss Corinth’s water system in comparison with that of her daughter city Syracuse. Here, however, we will consider the aspects of water at Corinth that derive from the karst geology of the area. This city is an excellent example of the adaptation of urban requirements to karst terrane, the siting of an ancient Greek city to take advantage of this natural resource. Ancient Corinth was built on gradually sloping terraces below the isolated protuberance of Acrocorinth, which acts as a reservoir, with the flow of waters through it resulting in springs (Fig. 8.1). That karst waters are to be found in perched nappes even at high altitudes accounts for the spring of Upper Peirene not far below the summit of Acrocorinth, as well as the two fountains half-way down the road from its citadel, and the fountain called Hadji Mustapha, at the immediate foot of the citadel (as reported by the late seventeenth century traveler, E. Celebi, cited in Mackay, 1967, 193–95.) The aquifers also supply the aqueduct (probably ancient) from Penteskouphia southwest of Acrocorinth.

A city is the locus of both sociocultural and physical-technical elements in a society. To begin to understand the importance of both kinds of factors, ancient cities are convenient examples to study, especially dead ones that do not “wiggle” under the microscope. By isolating one urban system (water management) we can begin to understand the complication and variability that characterize these early cities, and hence gain insight into the development of other urban systems, as well as the role that water management plays in the evolution of all cities. The received wisdom about the placement of cities usually rates defense as the primary factor, with access to arable land and concentration of trade activities being the other two important factors. A hill top, a protruding ridge, a peninsula or an isthmus between two rivers—all were sites easily defended by walls and hand weapons. Even a broad plain could be utilized if there were a slight rise that could be fortified, such as at the Mycenaean city of Tiryns in Greece. A city on a slight rise in the midst of broad fields of arable and irrigable soil was ideal. Such a formulation leaves out the possibility of deliberately choosing as a site a port city that tapped directly into grazing lands, or the importance of a balance of either fish or meat complementing cereals in the diet. It is more accurate to say that two kinds of food were necessary, either crops and fish or crops and meat. This concept broadens the number and kinds of “ideal” sites. Trade routes, the third factor, also are more complex in form and have more varied effects on urban location than early theories would admit. There are at least three kinds: 1. Overland routes (e.g., the Santa Fe Trail, with its two terminals at Independence, Mo., and Santa Fe., N.M., with Santa Fe being a crossroads where routes from Los Angeles and Mexico City also converged) 2. Land and water interchanges (the north-south land route through France crossing at Paris the east-west river route along the Seine) 3. Water-water interchanges such as New Orleans (Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi River) or Amsterdam (Rhine River and Atlantic Ocean)

The polity of Rhodes, with Cretan assistance, founded Gela on the south coast of Sicily in 688 B.C.E. (Herodotus, VII, 153) and assisted in the foundation of Akragas/ Agrigento farther northwest on the same coast in 580 B.C.E. Akragas’s foundation was part of the second wave of Greek city building in Sicily, about 150 years after the founding of Syracuse and other east coast settlements. Much of the Rhodian situation was replicated in the new cities. Settlers found familiar terrain like Gela, on a steep ridge facing the sea, surrounded by generous plains. At Gela, the acropolis at the east end is near the River Gelas, which waters the plains. Agrigento is bracketed by two rivers with plains to the south, and its lower ridge is visually equivalent to the site of Gela. An irrigation system of the Greek period like that known a little to the east at Camarina could have facilitated growing food in the alluvial soil between the two rivers, to the south of the temple ridge (Di Vita 1996: 294). If we notice geological similarities and extrapolate too freely from them to architectural similarities, we may introduce chronological fuzziness to our study. The island-wide Rhodian tradition of dealing with water resources was carried to Sicily by the colonists along with other aspects of the culture. Exchange of ideas continued during the centuries between the founding of Akragas and the synoecism of Rhodes City centuries later. For instance, the grottoes of the acropolis of the city of Rhodes are “cut into the bioclastic limestones of the Rhodes formation, with, in some cases, the floor cut down into clayey and marly units that correspond to a line of seepage” (E. Rice, personal communication). At Akragas as at Rhodes, the builders cut down through the stone to the impermeable clay and marl units, to tap the line of seepage. With similar geology, it is not surprising that many elements of the water system of the two places were similar, developed indepen dently from the old tradition. New concepts of water management were carried from place to place by expert builders, from the seventh through the fifth century B.C.E.