Col. William Leake, Travels in the Morea (v.1-3)

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§ 1.001 FIRST JOURNEY: CHAPTER I. ELEIA. On the 22d of February 1805 I sailed from the town of Zante with a strong northerly breeze, and in five hours arrived at the mouth of the Peneius, now called the river of Gastuni: landed and walked to Gastuni, not without some impediment from the marshy state of the plain; arrived there at sunset, and was politely received by Dr. Sessini, to whom I had letters. I then sent down horses for my baggage, which did not arrive till midnight.
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§ 1.002 Gastuni, like the other places in these maritime plains, is built of brick baked in the sun; and, as in Egypt where the same material is used, the excavations formed in digging out the bricks leave large stagnant pools of water. The exhalations from these ponds render Gastuni very unwholesome in summer. In Egypt the same bad effect does not occur, because there, in the dangerous season, the whole country is inundated. The unhealthy air of Gastuni has made all the three brothers Sessini physicians. One of them only is now here; another is with Seid Aga at Lalla. The town has one advantage at least — that of not being crowded; each house has a yard around it, or a garden planted with orange and cypress trees. Space indeed would be their last want, for the greater part of this plain of Elis, once so renowned for its fertility, is now a desert; a little cultivation around a few villages being all that its present possessors have done to assist the prodigality of nature. Buffalos, sheep, and oxen enjoy the rest of the plain. The two latter supply butcher's meat to Zante, where pasture is found only on the mountain. Gastuni contains about 500 houses; half of these belong to the Turkish proprietors of the lands, of which
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§ 1.003 those in cultivation are chiefly the property of the heirs of one Hassan Aga, who died lately at Constantinople; namely, his son Bekir Effendi, who is now at Gastuni, and a nephew, Shemseddin Bey, who is at Constantinople — to him Castel Tornese belongs. Ismail Effendi, the Voivoda, who has purchased the Dhekatia or tithe, and customs from the Porte for three years, in the usual manner, is said to be a cypher compared with Bekir Effendi. At Pyrgo all the inhabitants are Greeks, with the exception of those who are in the service of Mustafa Aga, who is Voivoda and chief landed proprietor, as well as farmer of the imperial revenue. He and his brother Seid Aga of Lalla, who as well as most of their followers are of Albanian race, can bring 500 or 600 men into the field. At Lalla all the inhabitants are Mussulmans, except a few shop-keepers. The hills which lie between the maritime plains and the districts of Lalla and Fanari produce among the pine-woods, which cover the greater part of them, wine and corn, a little oil and silk, and a considerable quantity of tar, extracted from the pines. The hills, though not high, are often steep; they consist for the most part of a light-coloured clay, and being cut into deep ravines by the torrents, and extremely varied in their forms, they present a very picturesque scenery, quite peculiar to this district. Olympia was situated in the midst of this beautiful country. The hills are intersected by many small streams, flowing to the Alpheius, which winds along a narrow lower valley very subject to inundation.
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§ 1.004 Feb. 23. — Elis stood on the edge of the plain where the Peneius issues from the hills, on the northern side of one of them, at a distance of about eight miles by the road from Gastuni. The hill of Elis is conspicuous above the others by its superior height, its peaked form, and by a ruined tower on the summit. Both the height and the tower are now called Kaloskopi; a name which the Venetians, having translated it into Belvedere, applied to one of the five districts into which they divided the Morea. But the most remarkable of all the natural features of this part of the Eleia, is the great insulated rock called the mountain of Portes or Sandameri, two villages which are situated in a narrow valley watered by a branch of the Peneius, which separates the mountain of Portes from the great heights of Olonos. The southern extremity of the rocky summit is about eight miles to the north-east of Kaloskopi.
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§ 1.005 Near the foot of Kaloskopi are two or three small villages, which, from their standing on the site of the ancient capital of this country are called by the common name of Paleopoli. In that which is nearest to the hill I find the men and girls singing and dancing the Romeika with the more diligence as tomorrow is the last day of Carnival, after which the fast of Lent begins. They break off as soon as I ride up, and in a few minutes bring me upwards of a hundred coins, one or two of which are Venetian and Dalmatian, the rest Greek, but for the most part in very bad preservation. They are found in ploughing the fields among the ruins. Strabo represents the Peneius as flowing through the city of Elis; at present there are no remains on the right bank, which is steep, and runs into the plain in the form of a long, even slope, easily recognized at a distance. It seems therefore that all the public monuments were on the left bank of the stream; and this is confirmed in great measure by Pausanias not having made any allusion to the river in the course of his description of Elis.
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§ 1.006 The ruins consist of several masses of Roman tile and mortar, with many wrought blocks of stone and fragments of sculpture scattered over a space of two or three miles in circumference. The most remarkable of the ruins is that of a square building of about twenty feet on the outside, which within is in the form of an octagon with niches. Like most of the other remains it is built of alternate strata of Roman tile and stone rubble. Strabo and Diodorus assert, that Elis did not exist as a city until after the Persian war, when, according to Strabo, seven other neighbouring towns were united to Elis. On the other hand, it was the opinion of Pausanias, and of the natives themselves, that Elis had been founded, on the return of the Heracleidae, by Oxylus the Aetolian; and Strabo himself admits, that it was the capital of the Epeii before the Trojan war. The probability is, that the town of Elis was at that time named Ephyra, and that it assumed under Oxylus, who enlarged it, the name which had before been applied to the district. This opinion is supported by a scholiast on the Odyssey, and it is conformable to Homer, who informs us that Ephyra was on the Selleeis; for that the Peneius was the Selleeis of the poet, there can be little doubt, as it is the only considerable river in this part of the country. Indeed, I think Strabo himself was of this opinion, though an opposite meaning is conveyed by his corrupted text.
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§ 1.007 When Ephyra was the chief town of the Eleia or κοίλη Ηλις, Buprasium was the capital of the Epeii, and when the latter people obtained possession of Elis, their king, Augeias, fixed his residence at Ephyra. Such seems to have been the state of affairs at the time of the Trojan armament.
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§ 1.008 Notwithstanding the care of Oxylus, Elis appears, in consequence of the peculiar government and manners of the people, to have again declined, until after the Olympiad of Coroebus, BC 776, when the Eleians having wrested from the Pisatae the possession of the Hierum of Jupiter Olympius, and having obtained the management of the quadrennial festival and contest, with all the power and influence annexed to that sacred charge, the city increased rapidly in importance. Herodotus informs us, that the Eleians sent an embassy to Psammis, king of Egypt, who lived about the year 600 BC Some of the earliest extant coins with the legend FΑΛΕΙΟΝ may be still more ancient; at least, they show the riches of Elis, as well as its connexion with Olympia, at a very early period. The brazen tablet, now in the British Museum, which records a treaty of alliance between the FΑΛEIOI and EΥFAΟΙΟΙ, may also be ascribed to the seventh century.
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§ 1.009 Gastuni is supplied with water for drinking from the Peneius; it is clear and good even in this season of rain, and my host, the Doctor, assures me that it is wholesome. The district, exclusive of Pyrgo, has three ports; that at which I disembarked at the mouth of the river, distant one hour; Glarantza, distant three hours; and Kunupeli, distant six hours.
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§ 1.010 Ecclesiastically the district belongs to the bishopric of Olenus, a diocese of the επαρχία, or province of the Metropolitan of Patra, which is bounded on the south by the Alpheius, where it borders on the province of Christianopolis or Arkadhia. Pyrgo is the usual residence of the Bishop of Olenus. The Vilayeti, or civil district, including Pyrgo, contains 140 villages, of which the largest next to Gastuni and Pyrgo are Lekhena and Andravidha. The name of Gastuni, otherwise Ghastuni, indicates a Frank origin: it was probably founded by some person of the name of Gaston, belonging to one of the French families, Champlite and Villehardouin, which, about the time of the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 established a principality in the north of the Morea. After the Turks had recovered the Morea from the Venetians in 1715, the Sultan gave the Mukata of the district of Gastuni as a malikhiane, or farm for life, to Khotman Oglu and his descendants,
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§ 1.011 the Greeks, by the imperial firmahn, remaining in possession of the lands. The most important part of the Mukata was the Dhekatia, or tithe of a seventh on the cultivated land, and the Gumruk, i.e. the customs on maritime commerce, levied at the seven ports of Kunupeli, Glarantza, Koraka or Potami, (the mouth of the Peneius,) Pyrghi, (between Potami and Cape Katakolo, below the convent of Skafidhia,) port Katakolo, Rufia, (the mouth of the Alpheius ) and Ai Isidhoro. The other articles of the Mukata were the fisheries of the four lagoons of Kotykhi, Palea Bukka, (or St. John near Pyrgo) Agulenitza, and Khaiaffa — the νόμιστρον, or tax of one asper a head on cattle, sheep, and goats — the γουρουνιατικον, or four paras a head on hogs — the μελισσιάτικον, or two paras a swarm on bees. Such was the imperial ordinance which, in rewarding the services of a Turkish officer, had in view the protection of the industry of the Greeks. Since that time, however, the execrable government of the Morea, added to local tyranny, has reduced the Greeks of Gastuni to such distress, that all the cultivated land is now in the hands of Turks, and the Greek population have become cattle feeders, or mere labourers for the Turkish possessors of the soil.
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§ 1.012 The Greeks finding more profit and safety in the former pursuit, the flocks increase, while the arable is constantly diminishing from a want of hands, as the Turk is too proud or lazy to work in the fields. The chief produce of the arable land of Gastuni is flax, wheat, and two kinds of Holcus, both called Kalambokki; namely, maize and the dhurra of Egypt, called, from the smallness of the grain, Small Kalambokki. For flax the land is once ploughed in the spring, and two or three times in the ensuing autumn with a pair of oxen, when the seed is thrown in and covered with the plough. The plant does not require and hardly admits of weeding, as it grows very thick. When ripe it is pulled up by the roots, and laid in bundles in the sun. It is then thrashed to separate the seed; the bundles are laid in the river for five days, then dried in the sun, and pressed in a wooden machine. Contrary to its ancient reputation, the flax of Gastuni is not very fine, which my informant ascribes to its being exposed to the cold and running water of the river, instead of being soaked in ponds;
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§ 1.013 it is chiefly used in the neighbouring islands by the peasants, who weave it into cloths for their own use. The wheat grown in the plain is the hard red wheat called Ghirinia. In the hills the white kind of Rusia is used. Land being plentiful, there is no regular succession of crops, and a fallow of two years is common. New land, or fallow is ploughed in the spring, and if there is rain, it is sown at the third ploughing with cotton, kalambokki, and sometimes with aniseed. Wheat, on secondary land, is sown in October, on the richest in November, December, and sometimes as late as the middle of January, if an excess of rain prevent its being done before. The proportion of seed is usually half a vatzeli, or measure of thirteen okes to a strema, or square of nineteen fathoms the side. A fall of rain in March, and another in April are reckoned sufficient; if there is more, thistles, tares, centauries, and golden thistles, gain head, and choke the corn.
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§ 1.014 The other plagues are a black winged insect called Vromusa, from its bad smell, and rain in May, which injures the blossom. Harvest begins about June 10th, in the plain, in the hills it does not finish generally till July 20th, or beginning of August, new style. The grain is trodden out on the threshing floor by horses, when the Mukatasi takes his tithe. Good land produces ten, and sometimes thirteen to one. The corn of Gastuni weighs about twenty-six okes, the kilo of Constantinople. The kalambokkia of both kinds may be either dry, or irrigated by art; the first mode produces the better grain, the latter the more plentiful crop. Both require the best land. After three or four ploughings in the spring, the seed is ploughed in about the end of April, in the proportion of one vatzeli to sixteen stremata. The land is then levelled with an instrument called the σβαρνα, This svarna is a piece of wood six feet long and one foot thick, which is fixed to the plough after the share is taken off, and is driven about the field while the
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§ 1.015 labourer stands upon it; it breaks the clods, and levels the ground. A very dry summer is injurious to the dry, and a very rainy August to both kinds of kalambokki. The harvest begins in the middle of September. The return of maize is thirty or forty to one. The stalk makes excellent fodder for cattle. The small kalambokki is used chiefly for feeding fowls; and the quantity raised is not very great. For cotton the best land is chosen, and that which can be easily irrigated. The seed is soaked in water two or three days, and then mixed and rubbed together with earth, that the grains may not cohere, but may be well scattered in sowing. The seed time is the same as that of kalambokki, namely, the end of April, or beginning of May, the proportion of seed, half a vatzeli to a strema: the seed is ploughed in, and the land levelled with the svarna; the harvest is in the beginning of September. In the lands of Gastuni the Greek metayer is at all the expenses, and receives two-thirds of the produce after the Mukatasi has taken a seventh for his dhekatia. A flock of sheep consists of 500, two-thirds of which are ewes: it is attended by three men
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§ 1.016 and a boy, and four or five dogs. Nothing is paid for pasture except one asper and a half a head to the Spahi of the village to which the pasture belongs. The tax to government is now one asper and a half a head per annum; besides a para a head on the fleece. Neither sheep nor goats are ever fed: the pasture is changed three or four times in the summer. The profits of a flock are derived from the lambs, the wethers, the milk, the fleece, and the skin. Four rams are sufficient for one hundred ewes. In warm situations near the sea, they are put together about July 20th, that the lambs may be dropt about December 20th. In colder places the rams are not admitted till August 6th that the ewes may lamb about January 6th. In two months the lambs are weaned, but for another month they are allowed to suck a little after the ewes are milked. A lamb that has been fed entirely upon milk for three months, will sell at Easter, when the great consumption of lambs takes place, for four, five or six piastres. In March the ewes are separated,
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§ 1.017 and for the three following months are milked twice a-day, then once a-day for a month, and in July once in two or three days. A good ewe gives at every milking a pound of milk, of which are made butter, cheese misithra, and yaourt. For butter the milk is left twenty-four hours to become sour, when it is beaten in a narrow cask with a stick until the butter swims at the top; the butter-milk is then mixed with an equal quantity of milk, and forms the tyrogalo, or milk for making cheese. Salted rennet is thrown into it when warmed. As soon as it is coagulated, it is beaten up until it resembles milk again, after which the cheese is allowed to separate, is then put into a form of cloth, or wood, or rushes, and squeezed dry by the hand. The remaining liquid is called nerogalo, milk-water. To make misithra. The nerogalo after the cheese has been extracted is placed upon the fire; about a tenth of milk is added to it, and after a short boiling the misithra is collected on the surface. Goat's milk makes the best misithra, even though the butter has been extracted from it. Yaourt, which seems to be a Tartar invention introduced into Greece by the Turks, is made
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§ 1.018 from the best milk of sheep or goats. To make the πητυα, or coagulum — take some leaven of bread, that is to say, flour and water turned sour, and squeeze a lemon upon it, dissolve it in boiling milk, and keep it twenty-four hours. To make the yaourt — boil some new milk till it foams, stirring it frequently, leave it till it is cool enough for the finger to bear the heat; then throw in the pitya, of which a Turkish coffee cup full is sufficient to make several quarts of yaourt. Then cover it that it may not cool too fast, and in three hours it is fit for use. On all future occasions a cup of the old yaourt is the best pitya for the new. The sheep-shearing takes place from April 20th to May 10th; no washing or preparation of any kind is thought necessary; it is performed with scissors. The ewes give about three, the males four pounds of wool, which now sells for about ten paras the pound. About three-fourths of the wool produced in the district is exported, the remainder is wrought at home into coarse cloaks, or into carpeting, or the furniture of beds and sofas. An ewe's or wether's skin, unshorn, is worth thirty or thirty-five paras; a ram's, forty or forty-five paras; a lamb's, ten. The curriers purchase them,
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§ 1.019 make some into leather at Gastuni, and send the rest to the islands. The flocks suffer occasionally from wolves and jackalls. The principal disease of the sheep is called the evloghia or plague; it carries off great numbers, but seldom occurs oftener than once in five or six years, and is not peculiar to any season. They have a practice of inoculating for this distemper, by taking a small quantity of matter from an ulcer of the diseased sheep, and rubbing the ear of the still healthy sheep with it; it is confessed, however, that little benefit is derived from this process. If the evloghia carries off half the ακέντρωτα, or uninoculated, perhaps sixty per cent, of the inoculated may live. Another disorder is called kholianitza which is supposed to proceed from unwholesome food. The vidhela is ascribed to feeding in marshy places in August and September, when it is imagined that an insect from the plant finds its way to the sheep's liver. From the middle of June till the autumn the sheep feed only in the night, and require water once a day. There are supposed to be about 300,000 sheep and goats in the Vilayeti of
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§ 1.020 Gastuni, besides which, 150,000 come from the mountainous parts of the neighbouring districts in the winter. These pay two aspers a-head to the Spahi, instead of one and a half. The proportion of goats to sheep is about a fourth. The uncultivated land serves for the pasture of cattle as well as sheep; the first year the calf is called μοσκάρι, the second παλεομόσκι, the third δαμάλι, afterwards βοΐδι, The herds of Gastuni supply Zakytho and the other islands with beef in considerable quantities. In the Morea, beef is little used; and they would rather give fifteen paras an oke for goat's flesh, or eighteen for mutton, than ten for beef. But there is a constant demand in the Morea for cattle for the plough, both oxen and buffalos. A good pair of oxen costs one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty piastres; a bull about thirty-five; a cow sixteen to twenty. When natural fodder is scarce, oxen are fed with wheaten straw, with the rovi [orobus], or with vetches and tares, which are sown for the purpose and plucked up by the roots; but poverty and oppression prevent the proprietor of oxen from cultivating this useful provision for his cattle, and in summer they are almost starved. Like the sheep, the ox is occasionally subject to a peculiar epidemical disorder. On these occasions there are some quacks of cow-leeches who administer a herb, which they pretend to bring from Filiatra, but, as may be supposed, without much effect. Ox-hides are exported to Zakytho; but there is a great internal consumption of them here also, as the shoes, both of the cultivators and shepherds, are made of ox-hide. Corinth is reckoned to possess the best race of cattle, and bulls have sometimes been brought from thence to Gastuni, to improve the breed; but the cattle of Elis are still inferior to those of the Corinthia.
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§ 1.021 Feb. 24. — At 9.15, that is to say, at 15 minutes past 9 o'clock, English time, I quit Gastuni for Pyrgo, leaving my baggage to follow the next day. The road is muddy and difficult from the quantity of rain that has fallen in the night. At a little village I observe some tall aloes in blossom, exactly of the same kind I have seen in Sicily and the West Indies: near this place, at 10.30, we cross a stream running towards the sea. At 11.40, on passing another small river, arrive at the foot of a low and long ridge, which, projecting from the Eleian hills, terminates in Cape Katakolo, and separates the district of Gastuni from that of Pyrgo. This height consists of a barren gravelly soil, covered with shrubs of various kinds: on all the uncultivated grounds the ranunculusa is just coming into blossom in great abundance. At 12.30, having passed the ridge, we enter the plain of Pyrgo. On the right are the villages of Myrtia, Pondiko-kastro, and Skuro-khori in that order. Pondiko-kastro stands upon a very conspicuous pointed hill, which exactly at the inner angle of the bay of Pyrgo forms an isthmus, uniting the promontory of Katakolo with the main. I can perceive with the telescope some remains of Hellenic work among the ruined walls. Below Pondiko-kastro, to the south, is the skala, or port, called Katakolo, where are some magazines; on the road from thence towards Pyrgo is the village of Aianni, where, some years ago, was found a large statue, and more recently a small head, now in the possession of Kyr Ghiorgaki of Pyrgo. Aianni is probably the site of Letrini. Near this place begins the lagoon which extends along the sea-coast as far as opposite to Pyrgo, or about half way to the mouth of the Alpheius. At 1.20 we arrive at a stream flowing from the hills, which is so swollen by the rains that, being unable to pass it we ascend the right bank for a mile to Djoia, there cross the river at a mill, and then, passing over a point of the hill, descend again into the plain, and arrive at Pyrgo at 3. Ride in the oriental style without ceremony into the hospitable gates of George Avgherino, more commonly called Kyr Ghiorgaki.
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§ 1.023 Feb. 25. — To Olympia: — For about half a mile we follow the Arkadhia road, parallel to the sea shore; and then turn to the left towards the hills — enter the valley of the Alpheius, now called the Ruféa or Rufiá, at the end of three miles and a half, and then pass for another mile and a half along the foot of the hills which close the valley on the north. On both sides they are clothed with large pine trees. In summer, when the banks of the Alpheius are rich with wheat and Indian corn, the scenery must be beautiful, though the river perhaps may be a finer object in the present season. It is now full and rapid, but turbid; in summer the stream, though much clearer, is scanty, and divided into several torrents running over a wide gravelly bed. The large sandy tracts in some parts of the valley show the effects of its occasional inundations. Indeed the Pyrghiotes do not speak with much reverence of the river god, who sometimes does great injury to their profitable kalambokki grounds on his banks. The valley is from half a mile to a mile in breadth, and at the end of two miles is narrowed by a projection of the northern hills, opposite to which, on the southern heights, stands the village of Volantza. Beyond this strait the valley suddenly expands into a plain surrounded by pine-clad hills. Having crossed the projecting height, we descend into this plain, and soon afterwards cross the river Lestenitza over a bridge. It is a large stream flowing from a narrow valley in the direction of Mount Olonos, and crosses the plain in a southerly direction. On the left is the village of Strefi, on the summit of a hill; it is a tjiftlik, or farm, belonging to Mustafa Aga. From the river the plain is three or four miles over to the village of Floka situated on the side of a range of hills, which form the eastern boundary of the plain, and which, advancing to the Alpheius, leave only a narrow passage for the river between these hills and the range which follows its left bank. This strait may be considered the division between the plain watered by the Lestenitza, which we have passed, and the valley of Pisa or Olympia. The common route passes through Floka, and over the hills, on the top of which are some huts called Bruma; it then descends by a fountain
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§ 1.025 into the valley of the Cladeus, crosses this stream at a mill, and from thence leads to the modern village Miraka. The ignorance of my conductor carries me to the right of Floka, close to the Rufea, from whence we cross the hill by a romantic rocky pass into the valley of Olympia, which lengthens the road by a mile. The pass is extremely beautiful, the sides of the hills being covered with pines in fine copses and clusters. On the opposite bank of the Alpheius there is a little village of thatched huts, with one stone house. The Cladeus comes down a narrow valley, running parallel to that of the Lestenitza: the road to Lalla ascends its left bank; it joins the Alpheius half a mile below the mill which I have mentioned as being in the direct road. This mill is attached to the remains of an ancient building of brick in the bed of the river, on the left bank of the actual stream. This ruin is the first vestige of Olympia that the traveller meets with on arriving from Lalla, or from Pyrgo; next occurs a shapeless ruin of tiles on the summit of the bank on the same side of that river. A little farther, just where the valley of the Cladeus opens into that of the Alpheius, there is a tumulus of an oval form, with a tree on the top of it, and near it, at the foot of the adjoining mountain, undoubtedly the ancient
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§ 1.026 Cronium, there is another fragment of the same description. From hence the vale of Olympia is well seen. To the eastward extends a level included between an irregular line of woody summits and the Alpheius. It is closed in that direction, at the distance of a mile, by a peaked hill, which rises from the river's bank, and which is separated only from the woody range on the north of the valley, by a pass leading to Miraka. This height, therefore, may be considered the eastern termination of the Pisaean valley, as that by which I came from Floka is the western. The length of the valley is about three miles, the greatest breadth less than one. About two hundred yards southward of the tumulus, I arrive at the foundation of a temple, which has been excavated by the Agas of Lalla for the sake of the materials, almost all of which have been carried away to Lalla or Miraka. The foundation stones are large quadrangular masses of a very friable limestone, composed of an aggregate of shells — it is the same kind of rock of which all the neighbouring mountains are formed, the επιχώριος πώρος of Pausanias. The blocks are put together in the best Greek style.
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§ 1.027 Among these foundations I find some pieces of fluted Doric columns of white marble, and a single fragment of a Doric shaft of poros, of each an enormous size as to leave little doubt that these poor remains are those of the celebrated temple of Jupiter. The only measurable dimension of the great column is the chord of the fluting, which exceeds a foot, and, according to the usual number of flutings in the Doric order, would require a shaft of at least seven feet in diameter. It may be inferred from this fact that the temple was a hexastyle: for Pausanias informs us, that it was ninety-five Greek feet broad, and two hundred and thirty long, or very nearly of the same size as the Parthenon; whereas, had it been an octastyle with such columns, its length and breadth must have been much greater. The same inference may be drawn from the temple having been sixty-eight feet high, or eight feet and a half higher than the Parthenon; for the columns, being larger, would, with the usual Doric proportions, be higher also than those of the Parthenon.
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§ 1.028 In front of these remains, proceeding towards the Alpheius, I find a fourth mass of brick ruin, and nearly in the opposite direction a fifth, which is the best preserved of these fragments. It stands on the edge of a bank where the upper level, on which stood the temple of Jupiter, falls suddenly into a lower level, extending to the river; the ruined wall supports the bank, and makes it more abrupt in that part; there are some remains of arches and chambers in this ruin. The similarity of workmanship in these remains and those of Elis, seems to shew, that in this province the kind of masonry which may properly be termed Hellenic, was not so much in use as in other parts of Greece; probably in consequence of stone not being so plentiful, or of its being of a very perishable consistency. The small bank which I have just noticed, and which is not so much as twenty feet high in any part, is one of the most remarkable features in the topography of Olympia; it is the boundary of two separate levels in the vale of Olympia, and forms an irregular curve round the lower level, beginning westward from the bank of the Alpheius, below the temple of Jupiter, and terminating eastward at the pass already
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§ 1.029 mentioned, which leads to Miraka. Though this bank is undoubtedly natural, it appears to have been in many places supported by art, and I suspect that it formed one of the boundaries of the Altis, of which the western limit was the Cladeus, as Xenophon distinctly indicatesa, and as may be inferred from Pausanias, who places on the west side of the Cladeus the sepulchre of the Arcadians who fell at the battle in the Altis, as well as a ruined building called the stable of Oenomaus, and the sepulchre of Oenomaus, which, according to Pindar, was near the Alpheius. Thus it appears that the temple of Jupiter stood in a central position on the upper level, nearly equidistant from the bank, from Mount Cronium, and from the Cladeus; the latter flows in a hollow bed, the depth of which is about equal to the height of the pavement of the temple of Jupiter above the lower level, or that of the Alpheius itself. One can hardly doubt that all the buildings of Olympia stood upon this upper level for the sake of security from the inundations, to which the lower plain must have been continually subject. The upper level is smooth, and covered with a fine turf for a considerable distance to the eastward
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§ 1.030 of the temple; its continuation to the westward of the Cladeus is more rugged, and is overgrown with bushes. The hills which close the Pisaean valley on the south are much higher than the range of Cronium, and rise almost immediately from the river's bank. Above them in front, bearing nearly south, is seen a peaked mountain near the modern village Smerna; and to its left, at about half the distance, appears a bare summit, the slope of which, in the direction of Olympia, terminates in one part in a lofty precipitous rock, distant about a quarter of a mile from the river; this precipice corresponds exactly to the Mount Typaeum of Pausanias, which was held out as an object of terror to prevent any women from attending the games, and those dwelling on the south side of the Alpheius from even crossing the river on forbidden days, it being a law, which however was never executed, that females so transgressing should be precipitated from the rock Typaeum. The Cladeus, on reaching within a few yards of the Alpheius, to the south-west of the temple of Jupiter, instead of joining that river, turns off to the west, forming a large peninsula, bordered on the opposite side by the Alpheius. Nearly opposite to the mouth of the Cladeus, but divided from it by islands, a small stream joins the Alpheius on
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§ 1.031 the left bank, flowing from a valley in which the village of Rasa is situated. This rivulet seems to be the ancient Selinus, and the vale that of Scillus. Eastward of the height which closes the plain of Olympia, there is another valley of the same kind, inclosed by wooded hills, and watered by a rivulet, probably the ancient Harpinnates, above the left bank of which, nearly a mile distant from the Alpheius, stands the little village of Miraka. The position of Olympia is now called Andilalo. It might be supposed that this word, meaning in modern Greek echo, was derived from some remarkable reverberation of sound caused by the ancient buildings, when their ruins were more considerable than they are at present, especially when we connect this supposition with the fact mentioned by Pausanias, that the Stoa Poecile was remarkable for repeating an echo seven or eight times. I am persuaded, however, that the word means nothing more than “opposite to Lalla,” the change of termination and accent being such as is common in modern Greek compound words, as in the instance of παλαιοΦάναρο, paleo-fanaro, in a single word, for παλαιον Φανάρι, old beacon, which is the name of a modern village near the
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§ 1.032 left bank of the Alpheius, above Miraka, where are said to be some Hellenic remains, probably those of Phrixa. I am told that Andilalo was a village standing on the side of the hill opposite to the mill in the Cladeus which I have noticed, and that the mill belonged to it; not a vestige of the village is now to be seen. At Olympia, as in many other celebrated places in Greece, the scenery and topography are at present much more interesting than the ancient remains. At a more advanced season of the year, when the plane trees in the lower valley near the bank of the river are in full foliage, the valley must be one of the most beautiful of this picturesque country. The hills which rise from the northern and eastern sides of the upper level where the ruins are situated, as well as those on the opposite side of the Alpheius, are of the wildest forms, carpeted with the finest turf, and shaded with the pine, wild olive, and a variety of shrubs. Some of the accidental clusters of pines dispersed on the sides and summits of these hills might serve as studies to the artist in landscape gardening. But the whole is little better than a beautiful desert; in the length of three miles, only a few spots of cultivation are seen, and not a single habitation. What a contrast to the spectacle which it presented during eleven or twelve centuries,
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§ 1.033 especially at the end of every four years, when it was the scene of the greatest of those periodical exercises of emulation which contributed so much to Grecian excellence both in arts and arms — when, adorned in the centre with the finest monuments of art, it was animated in every part with horses, chariots, and men in the highest state of excitement, or covered with the encampments of those who had resorted to the festival from every country which had felt the effects of Grecian civilization! It would be in vain to attempt to trace the description of Olympia by Pausanias without extensive excavations. The only monument of the position of which there is any certainty, is the temple of Jupiter; for I find it utterly impossible to verify M. Fauvel's discovery of a Hippodrome, Stadium, and theatre. As to the existence of a theatre at Olympia at any time, it rests upon a single expression of Xenophon. In describing the battle between the Arcadians and Eleians in the Altis, at the time of the celebration of the games of the 104th Olympiad, BC 364, he relates that the Eleians drove the enemy as far as the ground which lay between the council-house, the sanctuary of Vesta, and the adjoining theatre,
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§ 1.034 and even as far as the altar, meaning probably the great altar of Jupiter, which was in front of the temple of Jupiter and Juno, but nearer to the latter: but that the Eleians being assailed from the stoae and council-house, and the great temple, retreated with the loss of their leader. Now Pausanias, in making mention of the same buildings, (the sanctuary of Vesta he describes as a part of the Prytaneium ) says not a word of a theatre, which, even if it had been but of small dimensions, must have been a very important object in such a confined place as the Altis. Either there is some very extraordinary omission in Pausanias, or θεάτρου has been substituted for some other word in our copies of Xenophon. Like some other hiera in Greece at which athletic contests were celebrated, Olympia consisted only of a sacred grove, a stadium, and a hippodrome, but it was on a larger scale than any similar establishment. The Άλση, which most resembled it, were those of Nemea and the Isthmus.
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§ 1.035 The Altis appears, from Pausanias, to have been surrounded with a wall, and to have had at least four entrances: 1. That used for all sacred processions, hence called the Pompic. 2. That which led to the embolus, or starting place of the hippodrome. 3. A third, which is described only as being beyond or over against the gymnasium, and near the Prytaneium. 4. A fourth entrance of the Altis led to the Stadium. But there was also an entrance into the Stadium called the Secret, as being used only by the Hellanodicae and Agonistae. The way to it was from the Metroum, by the foot of Mount Cronium; and hence also it would seem to follow, that there must have been a fifth entrance into the Altis near the Metroum. The temples within the Altis were, 1. The temple of Jupiter, which contained the
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§ 1.036 celebrated chryselephantine seated colossus by Phidias, two colossal compositions in marble in the Aeti, two works in relief over the door of the cella and opisthodomus, and a few dedications in the cella and pronaos. 2. The temple of Juno, the most ancient building at Olympia and which preserved the memory of a still older temple of wood, by having one of the two columns of the opisthodomus made of that material. The temple was peripteral, and, according to the text of Pausanias, only sixty feet long, probably an error in the text, as such dimensions even if applied, as we can hardly suppose to have been the intention of Pausanias, to the interior of the cella, would have been incapable of containing the numerous objects described by him. This temple, in the time of Pausanias, seems, as being the oldest building at Olympia, to have been a receptacle for its antiquities, several of which had originally occupied other situations in the Altis. The object in it most particularly described by Pausanias was the box of Cypselus. 3. The Metroum, or temple of the Mother of the Gods, which is described
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§ 1.037 by Pausanias as a large Doric temple. It contained only statues of the Roman emperors, and appears to have been situated towards the foot of Mount Cronium. The Philippeium was a circular building of brick, surrounded with columns, and crowned with a dome, on the summit of which there was a brazen poppy serving as a key-stone. It was dedicated by Philip after the battle of Chaeroneia, and contained five chryselephantine statues of the royal family of Macedonia, by Leochares. It stood within the Altis, near the left hand of the exit, which was near the Prytaneium. The Theecaleon, the Stoa Poecile, and the Hippodamium were also edifices within the Altis; the latter, like the Pelopium, was only a sacred enclosure, surrounded with a low wall; the Pelopium was about half the length of the temple of Jupiter, and contained trees and statues. The Hippodamium comprehended a space of about a plethrum of ground, and seems therefore to have been nearly of the same size as the Pelopium: it stood near the Pompic entrance. There were two other remarkable objects
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§ 1.038 within the Altis; namely, a wooden column, said to have belonged to the house of Oenomaus, which was protected from the weather by a roof supported by four columns; it stood between the great altar of Jupiter and the temple of Jupiter, consequently in front of the Pelopium; the other was an olive tree, called Callistephanus, from which the olive crowns of the victorious athletae were gathered, it stood near the back of the temple of Jupiter. The remainder of the Altis was filled either with altars, statues of deities, and sacred dedications, or with those of athletes, the admission of which into the sacred place was one of the rewards of their victories. Of the altars the most considerable was the great altar of Jupiter, the outer foundation of which was 125 feet in circumference. On the outside of the Pompic entrance of the Altis was the Leonidaeum, divided from the Pompic way by a narrow passage called the Street: not far from the same position, on the outside also of the Altis, was the workshop of Phidias. On the foot of Mount Cronium, proceeding from the Metroum to the Stadium,
:1.039
§ 1.039 was a foundation of stone with steps; it supported Zanes, or statues of Jupiter, which had been erected from fines imposed upon those who had been guilty of fraud, or other irregularity, in the Olympic contests: the fifteenth and sixteenth of these statues of Jupiter are stated by Pausanias to have been on either side of the entrance into the Stadium, probably the entrance called Crypte, or the Secret. At the foot also of Mount Cronium, on the north side of the temple of Juno, there was another foundation, which supported ten treasuries erected by different Grecian states; they were constructions of the same kind as those which are described by Pausanias at Delphi, and contained statues and other curious or valuable dedications. Northward again of the treasuries, between them and the steep part of the mountain, were the double temple of Lucina and Sosipolis, and the ruins of a temple of Venus Urania. The situation of the Altis and Mount Cronium being determined, the next problem is the position of the Stadium, and the direction of its axis or length. According to Strabo, the Stadium was in front of the temple of Jupiter in a wood
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§ 1.040 of wild olives, which, as the temple fronted the east, places the Stadium on the continuation of the upper level eastward of the site of the Altis. In fact, unless it was on the plain towards the Alpheius, it must have been in this situation, since we have already seen, from Xenophon and Pausanias, that the Cladeus bounded the Altis on the west. Strabo, indeed, seems to denote the Alpheius as flowing by the Stadium, but I conceive him to have meant only that it flowed (generally speaking) by the site of Olympia: and this interpretation is confirmed by Pausanias, who mentions the river at the beginning of his description in the same general way, and never has occasion to speak of it in the course of his details; thus favouring the opinion that it did not immediately border either the Altis or the Stadium. As to the Hippodrome, the usual length of these monuments having been two stadia, there was not sufficient space for it anywhere but in the lower part of the plain, southeastward of the Altis, between it and the river; and I am inclined to think, that the side of the Hippodrome, which Pausanias describes as an artificial embankment, was parallel to the river,
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§ 1.041 and was raised for the purpose of securing the Hippodrome from its inundations. The mode in which the Stadium and Hippodrome were connected, could not, I think, have been very different from the representation of it by M. Barbie du Bocage in his otherwise very indefensible plan of Olympia. The place which formed the connexion was called the Hippaphesis, or starting place of the horses; in form it resembled the prow of a ship, the head, or Embolus, as it was thence called, being the entrance into the Hippodrome, and the opposite end being formed by the rectilinear extremity of the Stadium, along which there was a portico called the Stoa of Agaptus. On the two other sides of the Hippaphesis were ranges of apartments for containing horses and chariots; these sides were upwards of 400 feet long, converging towards the Embolus, or entrance of the Hippodrome, and probably slightly curved for the sake only of a more beautiful shape. At the Embolus there must have been space sufficient for the contending chariots to be drawn up abreast, after they had come out of the apartments on the two opposite sides of the Hippaphesis in regular order, beginning with the two chambers nearest to the Stoa of Agaptus, and ending with the two nearest to the Embolus.
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§ 1.042 It must follow, I think, from this arrangement of the Hippaphesis, that the axis of the Stadium was in a north and south direction, its circular end resting upon, and perhaps partly formed out of, the side of Mount Cronium, or rather of its prolongation eastward, and the rest formed, as Pausanias describes it, of an artificial embankment. The Stadium, thus placed upon ground rather higher than the Hippodrome, would command from every part of it a good view of all that passed in the latter. [Since these remarks have been written, Mr. J. Spencer Stanhope has published his work on the Topography of Olympia, accompanied by a plan of the site. I there find indicated two parallel banks of the precise length of a Stadium, with some appearances of a circular end abutting on the hills adjacent to Cronium on the east. It is very possible that these banks, which I did not observe when at Olympia, are remains of the artificial embankments of the Olympic Stadium, and it is curious that they lie exactly in the direction I had conceived from the description of Pausanias; and very nearly in the same position also, being only a little farther to the eastward than I had supposed. Having obtained permission from Mr. Stanhope to make use of his plan, which was executed by Mr. Allason, an architect, and was the result of a fortnight's residence at Olympia, I willingly reject the eye sketch I had prepared to accompany these remarks, though I find that in the main it differs little from Mr. Allason's. I have added to Mr. A.'s plan references to the positions of some of the ancient monuments, according to my conception of the description of Pausanias.] We read in Suetonius, that Nero, desirous of obliterating the memory of all his rivals in
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§ 1.043 agonistic glory, ordered the statues of the athletae at Olympia to be thrown into the common sewers. We are certain, however, from Pausanias, that no such orders were ever executed, at least to any extent; for it cannot be doubted from the accurate description of the Greek traveller, that almost as late as the third century, Olympia still preserved the most numerous and choicest collection of works of art that Greece could ever boast of; to deposit his works at this place being one of the highest honours that a great sculptor could obtain. It was with reason, therefore, that an excavation at Olympia was a favourite speculation of the celebrated Winckelmann. With the exception of the colossus by Phidias in ivory and gold in the temple of Jupiter, of twenty-two other chryselephantine figures by more ancient masters in the temple of Juno, and of those of the same kind in the Philippeium, works which cannot have escaped human spoliation, or the ravages of time; all the other productions of art at Olympia were of the durable materials of brass and marble. The Aeti alone of the temple of Jupiter contained forty or fifty colossal figures. Besides the works in the temples of Jupiter and Juno, Pausanias notices fifty-seven statues of the former deity, of which six were colossal; and he describes more than one hundred other sacred αναθέματα, some of which were composed of several figures representing the actions of deities or heroes. There were no less than 260 statues of athletae, several of which were accompanied by horses and chariots, in memory of victories in the Hippodrome. The far greater part of these works were in brass. In every instance in which Pausanias could obtain the information, he mentions the name of the celebrated artist who made the statue, as well as the occasion of its dedication, and he expressly informs us that he has not enumerated all the objects of inferior note. He describes eighty-four altars, a portion of which were in the Stadium, Hippaphesis, and Hippodrome; and we may infer, from what has already been discovered, that there must have been an infinity of smaller dedications of armour and of other votive offerings, as well as records of treaties and other inscribed documents on brass or marble: so that there is every reason to believe, that the most interesting discoveries in illustration of the arts, language, customs, and history of Greece, may yet be made by excavations at Olympia.
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§ 1.044 Feb. 26. — Pyrgo and nine other Greek villages were separated from the Kazasi of Gastuni, on occasion of the death of one Ahmet Pasha, who had built a tower [πύργος] at the principal village of the ten, and had made it his residence, governing the district so well, that Pyrgo became the most commercial place in the west of the Morea. As soon as the Greeks of Pyrgo were deprived of his protection, the Turks of Gastuni began grievously to oppress them: they complained to the Porte, when the Sultan, as heir of the deceased Pasha, (according to the maxim that all the property of his servants belongs to him) made over the revenues of the ten villages of Pyrgo, with the customs of the Skales of Katakolo and Rufia, (mouth of the Alpheius ) and the fisheries of the lagoons of Agulenitza and St. John, to the Kaaba (pronounced by the Turks Keabe) of Mekka, as Vakuf, or church property, appointing, as usual, a Voivoda for the separate government of the district, and the collection of the revenue. The family of Khotman Oglu, however, still enjoys an interest derived from the original grant, and the Voivoda is obliged to allow its representative a certain sum for the farm.
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§ 1.046 In consequence of the increasing commerce of the two ports of Pyrgo, from whence all the grain, cheese, butter, wool, and honey of the surrounding country is exported, successive Voivodas have increased the revenues to fifty purses a year. The military power acquired however by the Albanians of Lalla, has obliged the Porte to acquiesce in the appointment of one of their chieftains to the Voivodilik, and Mustafa Aga is now governor of Pyrgo. Mustafa gives the Khotman seven purses for the two fisheries, and sells them to Greek farmers for twelve, to whom they are worth twenty-four or thirty. In like manner he hires of the Khotman the customs of the ports of Pyrgo, together with those of Pyrghi and Koraka, for seven purses, and sells them for twelve to Greeks, who collect twenty-five purses. The Khotman sells the customs of the other two ports of the district of Gastuni, namely, Glarantza and Kunupeli, with the fishery of Kotykhi, to Greeks of Lekhena and Gastuni for thirty-six purses. Besides the old customs, of which the Malekiane belongs to the family of Khotman, there is a bedaat, or new tax on the export of cheese, corn, and kalambokki; this is purchased directly from the Porte by the Aga, for about twelve purses, and is sold to the Greeks for about twenty.
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§ 1.047 Corn embarked for the use of government pays only half bedaat. The commerce in all these articles is in the hands of the Greeks, who ship from hence about 4000 modhia of wheat, 5000 or 6000 modhia of kalambokki, and 3000 cwt. of cheese, importing in return European manufactures and colonial produce. The alikes, or salt manufactory, at the mouth of the Rufia, is the property of the crown, and is let for six purses. I purchased at Pyrgo a small votive helmet, three inches long and two inches and a half high, terminating at the top in a flat circular appendage, pierced in the middle for the reception of a single upright bunch of feathers, or other similar ornament. At the back of this apex there is the figure of a fish; on either cheek of the helmet a boar and a serpent. There are two holes for the eyes, and a mouth and chin are represented in the usual opening left for that part of the face. On the edge of the cranium, in front, are the following letters: QΟΙΟΣΜΑΓΟΕΣΗΟΝ The person who sold me this interesting little relick said, that it was found at the
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§ 1.048 Paleo-kastro of Khaiaffa; but I have some doubts of the truth of this assertion, and think that it may very possibly have come from Olympia, the fertile mine of such remains: it happened that the owner of it was present when I was making inquiries concerning the ruins at Khaiaffa, and he thought perhaps I should attach a greater value to it, if he asserted it came from thence.
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§ 1.049 CHAPTER II. TRIPHYLIA. Feb. 27. — Leave Pyrgo for Arkadhia. There being no post at Pyrgo, I am obliged to travel with the Agoi, each hired horse or two being accompanied by the owner on foot. Our pace is consequently that of a pedestrian, but which, unless where the roads are level and very good, is nearly the same as that of horses loaded with baggage. We cross the Alpheius at a spot a little above the magazines of the Skala of the Rufea, about half a mile from the sea. The ferry boat carries three horses and as many men, besides the boatmen. The river is rapid, and forty or fifty yards wide, but no part of the Perama is so much as five feet in depth, as I perceive by the poles with which the boatmen pushed over. After the passage the road regains the foot of the hills, a little short of Agulenitza, a village standing on the side of a
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§ 1.050 pointed summit, where the hills begin to be separated only by a narrow plain from a large lagoon, which extends from hence along the shore nearly as far as Khaiaffa. The house of the Aga of Agulenitza is built, like that of Mustafa at Pyrgo, in the form of a tower, with an entrance over a draw-bridge, and a high flight of steps leading up to it. This kind of house is known to the Greeks by the word pyrgo, tower, in Turkish kule. The towers of the Morea are, in general, better constructed than those of Albania. I observed near the village as we passed, a peasant girl in the fields, who was a perfect model of Greek beauty, both in face and figure. These instances are rare, and of course more rare in the female than the male sex in a country where poverty and oppression accustom the great bulk of the people to hard living from their cradles, which the males can better bear. Even when female beauty does occur, it soon declines for the same reasons. Agulenitza is surrounded with vineyards, and the hills beyond it, as far as the point of Khaiaffa, are beautifully diversified with broken ground and woods of pine. Two miles beyond the village a road turns to the left through the hills to Fanari, six hours distant. Farther on I see several horses loaded with deal planks descending the hills; the planks are deposited on the
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§ 1.051 side of the lagoon, and carried away by sea. A narrow sandy ridge covered with a wood of pines divides the lake from the sea; as we advance, this ridge is wider and the woods thicken, occupying large islands in the middle of the lake, which becomes narrower, and more like a marsh. In some parts the space between the lake and the hills is not above 200 yards in width, and in no part so much as half a mile; so that the ruggedness and woody nature of the hills on one side, and the marsh on the other, would make the whole passage from Agulenitza to Khaiaffa difficult in face of an opponent. A mile and a half short of Khaiaffa we cross a river, descending from the summit of the mountain of Smerna, and flowing by Vrina. The road to Fanari passes through a part of this valley, and along the north eastern face of the mountain of Smerna. We were one hour and a half in reaching Agulenitza from Pyrgo, including some loss of time at the ferry, and three hours and a half more to Khaiaffa. — Χαϊάππα, as it is properly written, or Khaiaffa, as it is more commonly pronounced, is nothing but a Derveny, or guarded pass, at the foot of a steep rocky point, projecting to the sea from the mountain of Smerna, and separated from the sea-beach only by a continuation of the
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§ 1.052 sand-bank and wood above-mentioned, which is here a quarter of a mile in breadth. By this woody sand-bank the southern extremity of the Agulenitza Lake, or Rufea fishery, as it is commonly called, is separated from the northern extremity of another lake of the same kind, which washes the foot of the Smerna mountain nearly as far as Sakari. Between the extremities of the two lakes there is a narrow causeway, and a bridge in the middle of it over an occasional inundation, that unites the two lakes. Before entering upon the causeway the road passes between two hillocks of rock, on one of which is the Derveni, or guard-house of the pass. Near this point I turn a little out of the road, to the left, to visit the Paleo-kastro of Khaiaffa. It is situated on the north-west side of the projection just mentioned of the Smerna mountain; the ruined walls of a Hellenic city surround the upper part of the hill, the slope of which is clothed with chestnuts, walnuts, and other large trees, mixed with the usual maritime shrubs of Greece. The ancient wall is six feet thick, and about one mile and a half in circumference; it follows the contour of the hill on three sides, with projecting and re-entering
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§ 1.053 angles without towers, in a manner that indicates a remote period of art; on the side towards the sea, it is defended by some square towers, which are probably the addition of a later age. The walls, in general, afford a beautiful specimen of the second order of Hellenic masonry; I see no stone of more than six sides. [The first or most ancient manner, as exemplified in the walls of Tiryns, consists in the accumulation of large masses of stone rudely hewn, the intervals of which are filled with smaller stones of the same kind. In the second order, no less than in the first, the stones were of various shapes, but the sides were all right lines, and so accurately fitted to one another by previous labour, that no interval remained between the large masses to be filled up with small stones, so that the whole wall may be said to form a single course of masonry. There were various degrees between this species of masonry, and that in which the courses were all horizontal and equal in height, and the stones all rectangular. The last mode was more particularly used in sacred and domestic architecture, and is seldom found in works of defence unmixed with the other orders.] The hill slopes towards the north-west, and is divided at the back by a shallow ravine from the rest of the mountain. The road, after passing the Derveni and bridge, sends off a branch to the left to Sakari and Biskini, leaving the lake on the left at the foot of the mountain. A little beyond the causeway, I observe two large caves in the rocks
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§ 1.054 to the left: they are accessible only by a boat, being immediately above the surface of the lake, which is here of a different kind from the shallow lagoons we have passed. These are in great part formed by the sea beating over the sand-ridge in winter, whereas the lake is apparently very deep, and derived chiefly from subterraneous sources at the foot of the precipitous hill. After passing for a mile along the sandy ridge between the lake and the shore, we cross a stream flowing out of the lake into the sea. When the winds are violent, the surf and the sand thrown up by it reject the waters of the river, and assist very much in increasing the lake. This fact, which is remarked both by Strabo and Pausanias, added to other particulars in conformity with those authors, leaves no doubt of the river being the Anigrus. It enters the lake a mile or two to the eastward of the Derveni, and is called Mavro-potamo [Black River], its exact origin I cannot learn. In summer the marsh is said to be very fetid, and the air extremely unwholesome, as one may easily conceive, the place being closely overhung by the precipices which here terminate the mountain. The road now winds among pine woods, sand-hills, and marshes for five miles, till it arrives at the Khan of Ai Sidhoro, or St. Isidore near the mouth of a small river flowing from an opening between the mountains of Smerna and Alvena; where, on the summit of one of the last falls of the former, is seen a tjiftlik of Seid Aga of Lalla, near a small village of thatched huts, called Sakari. Below it the plain is of considerable dimensions, filling up a large angle left by the retreating of the mountain of Smerna. Southward of the Khan of St. Isidore the plain narrows again very rapidly, some lower hills at the foot of the mountain of Alvena leaving only a narrow maritime level between them and a chain of sand-hills on the shore. We halt for the night at the Khan an hour before sunset. The Bishop of Arkadhia having taken possession of the Khan, we lodge in a long stable below, being in number sixteen; — myself, two servants, six agoyates, and seven horses. These agoyates, instead of walking quietly by the side of their horses, were singing and dancing all the way; nor are they the less lively and noisy all the evening.
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§ 1.055 Feb. 28. — At 7 we set out from the Khan of Ai Sidhoro. After crossing the river, the road continues for some distance along the sand-hills, and then, descending into the plain, soon arrives at the foot of the heights which border it to the left. Above them rises the very remarkable round summit, called Mount Vunuka, or the Mountain of Alvena, from a village which I see in a very lofty situation under the summit. At 7.50, before arriving at the hills, we cross a stream — at 9 cross a larger, called the Tholo, or Turbid, which issues from a narrow valley, and after traversing the maritime plain, which is here less than half a mile in breadth, falls into the sea at a place where boats anchor in fine weather. This anchorage is the Skala of Strovitzi, a small town, situated in the valley of the Tholo, one hour and a half above the entrance of the glen, at which entrance stands a magazine belonging to the Skaloma. At Strovitzi are the ruined walls of a Hellenic town of some magnitude, probably Lepreum. The hills are finely clothed with pines; at their foot are some pleasant copses and woods of the usual wild shrubs, such as mastic, myrtle, bay, paliuri, &c. This narrow maritime plain exactly answers to Strabo's description of that of Pylus Triphyliacus, or Lepreaticus, which, he says, extended along the shore from Samicum to the Neda. At 9.35 are some remnants of ancient
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§ 1.057 architecture on the road — large squared stones and a piece of architrave of white marble: a sand-hill continues to skirt the sea-beach. At 9.45 we arrive in the valley of a river, which, as well as a neighbouring village, is called Buzi. It is undoubtedly the Neda; it rises in Mount Tetrazi, a snow-topped mountain which appears on the left: half way thither, on the right bank of the river, are said to be some extensive ruins at the village of Pavlitza, probably those of Phigaleia. Such being the position of the Neda and Phigaleia, I can hardly doubt that the remains which I passed at 9.35 mark the site of Pyrgi. At 9.55 we cross the Buzi over a high narrow bridge, in a ruinous condition, called the bridge of Andriopulo, from the person at whose expense it was built. The river is wide and rapid: we halt on the bank till 10.40. At 11 begins a wood, consisting chiefly of wild olives, holly-oak, ilex, and underwood; it occupies all the space between the hills and the sea, which is about a quarter of a mile in width. In the midst of the wood, at 11.25, we arrive at a ruined chapel of St. John, where are two fine springs of water; and at one of them the remains of an ancient circular basin. A little farther a narrow but copious stream issues from the foot of the hill. A few minutes after 12 we
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§ 1.058 pass along a deep sand, under a projection of the mountain, which is bordered northward by the valley of the Neda. Here was formerly a Derveni, called Klidhi [key], a word not uncommonly applied to a pass; — that of Khaiaffa is often known by the same name. We now enter the plain of Arkadhia; the soil is gravelly, and covered with wild shrubs. At 12.45 cross a large stream, called the river of Arkadhia, and a mile short of the town, in the middle of the olive plantations, another more clear and rapid, but much smaller. At 2 we arrive in the town. Strabo has been so unusually copious in his remarks on the places in the line of my route from Pyrgo to Arkadhia, that I shall here insert the most important part of what he has written on the subject, omitting little more than the passages where his text is so obviously corrupt, or where the author's meaning is rendered so doubtful by the various readings, as to afford no intelligible information. “Near the mouth of the Alpheius, (says the geographer) is the sacred Grove of Diana Alpheionia, or Alpheiusa, distant from Olympia eighty stades; proceeding southward from thence, there occurs a mountain which separates Macistia from Pisatis, then a river Chalcis, the
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§ 1.059 fountain Cruni, and the town of Chalcis, next to which is Samicum, and a most venerated temple of Neptune Samius, situated in a wood of wild olives; though all the Triphylii contribute to its support, it is administered by the Macistii. Beyond the temple at a distance of thirty stades, or a little more from the sea, is Pylus Triphyliacus, or Lepreaticus. Near Pylus, to the eastward, rises the mountain called Minthe, where is a sacred inclosure of Hades, and a grove of Ceres, situated above the Pyliac plain. This plain is fertile, and in the maritime part extends from Samicum as far as the Neda. The coast is narrow, and bordered by sand-hills, from which circumstance it may perhaps be thought that Pylus was called Ημαθόεις. Towards the north, bordering on Pylus, there were two small towns of Triphylia called Hypana and Typaneae; one of which has been incorporated into the community of Elis; the other still exists. In the neighbourhood flow two rivers, the Dalion and Acheron; the latter so called because it has some reference to Hades, for in these places they have a great veneration for Ceres, Proserpine, and Hades. To the south of Pylus stands Lepreum, situated at forty stades from the sea. Between Lepreum and the Anigrus is the temple of Neptune Samius, distant 100 stades from each.
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§ 1.060 Here it is that the poet represents Telemachus to have found the Pylii employed in offering sacrifices to the god. The Lepreatae possessed a fertile district, bordering upon that of the Cyparissii; both of them, together with Macistus, were anciently occupied by the Caucones. Macistus is also called Platanistus; both the district and town being known by this name. It is said that in the Lepreatis there is a monument of Caucon, who was either some national leader, or otherwise bore the name of that people. Another tribe, called the Paroreatae, occupied, near Macistus and Lepreum, the mountains of Triphylia, which terminate on the sea near the temple of Neptune Samius. Below these Paroreatae there are two caverns, one sacred to the nymphs Anigriades, the other noted for the story of the Atlantides and the birth of Dardanus. Here also are the groves called Endymionaeum and Eurycydium. Samicum, which is now a fortress, was formerly a city called Samos, perhaps because it is situated on a hill, for σάμος formerly signified'heights.' It was probably the acropolis of Arene, of which Homer speaks in the Catalogue, Οι δε Πύλον τ' ενέμοντο και Αρήνην ερατεινήν: for the poet says, that the river Minyeius, now called Anigrus, fell into the sea
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§ 1.061 near Arene, whence it is supposed that Arene stood at the mouth of the Anigrus. The Minyeius received its name from the Minyae, who, driven out from Lemnos, went to Laconia, and passing from thence into Triphylia, established themselves near Arene, in the canton now named Hypaesia. Near the cavern of the Anigriades there is a source of water which renders all the district below it marshy and full of mud. The greater part of its waters is received by the Anigrus, which being deep and sluggish, and checked in its course by the action of the sea, forms a lake, whose water emits a very bad smell, and renders the fish unfit to be eaten. The shore is bordered by a sandy ridge. It is said that the Centaurs washed their wounds in the waters of the Anigrus, which possess the virtue of curing cutaneous disorders. Between the Anigrus and the mountain from whence flows the Jardanes, there is a meadow and a remarkable sepulchre, and some precipitous rocks of the same mountain, called the Achaean rocks, upon which the aforesaid city Samos was built. This place seems not to have been
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§ 1.062 noticed by the writers of the Peripli, either from its being destroyed, or from its not being in a conspicuous situation. The Poseidium is a grove, as I have said, on the sea side. Above it rises a lofty hill, which advances in front of Samicum, where Samos formerly stood, so that the latter position is not seen from the sea. From Pylus and Lepreum there is a distance of about 400 stades to Pylus of Messenia and Coryphasium, which are fortresses on the sea side adjacent to the island Sphagia, distant 750 stades from the Alpheius, and from Chelonatas 1030. In the interval is the temple of Hercules Macistius, and the river Acidon which flows by the tomb of Jardanus and Chaa, a town formerly existing near Lepreum, where also is the plain Aepasium. Cyparissia is on the Triphyliae sea, as well as Pyrgi and the rivers Acidon and Neda. But at present Triphylia is separated from Messenia by the course of the Neda. This rapid river rises in Lycaeum, a mountain of Arcadia, from a fountain, which is said to have been caused to flow by Rhea when she brought forth Jupiter. The river passes by Phigalia, and
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§ 1.063 falls into the sea where the Pyrgitae, who are the last people of Triphylia, confine upon the Cyparissii, the first of Messenia.” This is all the geographical matter respecting the coast of Triphylia that I have been able to extract from Strabo. Pausanias speaks of the same places in the following terms: “Quitting Eleia,” he says, “you come to a place near the sea called Samicum. Above it to the right is Triphylia, and in Triphylia the city Lepreus. The Lepreatae wish to be considered a part of the Arcadians; but they appear from the beginning to have been subject to the Eleians; for those who conquered in the Olympic games were proclaimed by the herald as Eleians from Lepreus, and Aristophanes, the poet, calls Lepreus a city of the Eleians. There is a road to Lepreus from Samicum, leaving the Anigrus on the left, another from Olympia, and a third from Elis: the longest of them is a day's journey. Not far from the city of the Lepreatae there is a fountain called Arene; it is said that the name was given to it from the wife of Aphareus. Returning to Samicum, on the
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§ 1.064 direct road, occurs the place where the river Anigrus falls into the sea. The stream of this river is often repelled by the violence of the winds, which, bringing the sand of the sea into it, impedes the flowing of the water; when therefore the sand becomes wetted both by the sea and the river, it is dangerous for yoked cattle to enter it, and still more for a man on foot. The Anigrus descends from the Arcadian mountain Lapithus, and from its very fountains sends forth water of an extremely disagreeable smell. Before it receives the Acidas it does not contain fish, and those fish which descend into the Anigrus with the water of the Acidas are not eatable by men, though eatable before they entered it. In Samicum, not far from the river, there is a cavern called the cavern of the Nymphs Anigrides. If a person who is afflicted with a cutaneous disorder, having first prayed to the nymphs, and promised a certain sacrifice, rubs the diseased parts of the body with the water, when he has passed through the river he will leave the malady in the water, and come out himself healthy and with a clear skin. In the direct road to Olympia, soon after having passed the Anigrus, there is above Samicum a hill, which is the site of the city Samia.
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§ 1.065 They say that Polysperchon the Aetolian made use of this place as a fortress against the Arcadians. As to the ruins of Arene no one, either of the Messenians or Eleians, could with certainty point them out to me; and there are different opinions upon this subject; but those persons appear to me to speak with the greatest probability, who say that Samicum itself was called Arene in the heroic times, for they quote the words of the Iliad: έστι δε τις ποταμος Μινυήιος εις αλα βάλλων Έγγύθεν Αρήνης. Now these ruins (of Sarnia, or Samicum ) are very near the Anigrus, and although it is doubted by the Arcadians that Samicum was called Arene, they confess that Minyeius was the ancient name of the river Anigrus.” It seems unnecessary to add many observations on these two extracts. A reference to the Itinerary will be sufficient, I think, to leave little doubt as to the principal points. The hill which separated Macistia from Pisatis was probably not far to the southward of the modern Agulenitza, which, as I shall have occasion to show hereafter, stands upon the site of Epitalium, or the Homeric Thryoessa. For the existence of a Chalcis between this position and Khaiaffa we have, I believe, no
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§ 1.066 other authority than the line of Homer, upon which Strabo here comments, and which is of doubtful authenticity. There is a river, however, as I have remarked in the Itinerary, which descends from the mountain of Smerna into the lagoon a mile or two northward of Khaiaffa. It is possible that the ancient name of this stream may have been Chalcis. In the neighbourhood of Khaiaffa we find the ruins of Sarnia or Samicum, the caverns, the marsh, the Anigrus, the Achaean rocks, as well as some other particulars in conformity with the ancient authors, as I have remarked in the Itinerary. The fetid smell of the marsh and its unwholesome fish, which Pausanias, a lover of fable, ascribes to a peculiar quality of the river Anigrus, is rationally accounted for by the more philosophic Strabo, as the effect of the repulsion of the sand by the surf, and the consequent stagnation of the waters. It is observable that Pausanias states, that the Anigrus rises in Lapithus, an Arcadian mountain; I am not informed of the exact course of the river, but its origin is certainly in the mountain of Smerna, which terminates westward at Khaiaffa, for the next stream to the southward, or that which joins the sea at St. Isidore, flows from a valley which separates the mountain of Smerna from Mount Vunuka, receiving contributions
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§ 1.067 from the adjacent slopes of both mountains. The sources of the Anigrus, therefore, as well as those of the Acidas, which, according to Pausanias, was a branch of the Anigrus, must be in the mountain of Smerna, which thus becomes identified with the ancient Lapithus. This was the mountain inhabited by the Paroreatae, who, as well as the Caucones-Pylii, were driven out of their country by the Minyae, when the latter founded the six towns of Macistus, Phrixa, Lepreum, Pyrgi, Epium, and Nudium; and who consequently appear to have occupied the whole country, which was afterwards called Triphylia, from its being inhabited by the three tribes of Epeii, Eleii, and Minyae. As to its being called by Pausanias an Arcadian mountain, one is not much surprised at this, as Arcadia was sometimes supposed to border on this part of the coast for the length of 100 stades, whence the Pylus, here situated, was known by the epithet of Arcadic as well as Triphyliae; though it is certain that in the time of the Roman empire the mountain of Smerna, and all the country as far as the Alpheius, constituted a part of Triphylia, and consequently belonged to the Eleia.
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§ 1.068 If Pausanias has determined the ancient name of the mountain of Smerna to have been Lapithus, it is no less certain from Strabo that Mount Vunuka was the ancient Minthe. What the geographer says of the Acidon, or Jardanes, seems to agree very well with the testimony of Pausanias as to the same river, which he calls Acidas, and which, as I have already hinted, appears to have been a stream flowing from the mountain of Smerna into the lake of Khaiaffa, in which it joined the Anigrus. The river of St. Isidore I conceive to be that which Strabo calls Mamaus, or Pamisus, or Arcadicus: as to his two temples of Neptune, one of them appears to have stood under Samicum, at or near the present Derveni of Khaiaffa, the other on the shore about midway between it and Lepreum. The latter was that at which Strabo supposes Telemachus to have landed; the former he sufficiently distinguishes by the words “the most venerated”. His distance of 200 stades, however, between the Anigrus and Lepreum is too much by a third. On arriving at Arkadhia I proceed to the house of the consular agent, M. Pasqualego, who soon afterwards accompanies me to the castle. This fortress, the acropolis of the
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§ 1.069 ancient Cyparissiae, is situated at about a mile in direct distance from the sea, on the narrow summit of a rock, connected with and immediately overlooked by a high mountain called Aia Paraskevi or St. Friday. The castle looks down upon the houses of the town, which cover the flanks of the ridge on both sides; beyond them it commands a view in either direction of the beautiful slope which descends from the mountain of Paraskevi to the sea. Near the town are plantations of olives mixed with corn fields, but beyond these the plain on both sides is covered with wild shrubs, and scarcely a village is seen. There are said to be 600 houses in the town, one-third of which are Greek. None of the latter have so good an appearance as some of those at Gastuni and Pyrgo, though the collection of the taxes and most of the other offices are here in the hands of the Greeks. The Turk who farms the revenue of the Porte is Seid Ahmet Aga, who is likewise Kadi: he pays forty purses for the town and district, which contains between eighty and ninety villages. The number of χαρτιά, or Kharatjes,
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§ 1.070 is 4216: — 500 of thirteen piastres, 1500 of seven, the rest of three. The nominal sums are eleven, five, and two and a half, but the real sums taken are as above. [b The acquittance for the Kharatj, or annual capitation tax, is called by the Greeks το χαρτί, the paper, from its importance, as no Rayah can venture beyond his district unprovided with this document, without being liable to pay the tax a second time; nor will this caution always save him.] On the shore below the town, two or three magazines, behind a projection of rock, indicate the Skala of Arkadhia, but it seldom happens that ships venture to remain long in the roadstead, and during the winter hardly a boat appears. The island of Proti, by the Italians called Prodano, is, in fact, the port of Arkadhia, and all the export produce is conveyed there. [I touched at Proti in 1802, sailing from Tzerigo to Zakytho, and found a sheltered cove bordered by steep rocks, the convenience and frequent use of which is attested by numerous Greek scribblings of all ages on the rocks.] This consists, in common years, of 15,000 barrels of oil, 50,000 kilos of wheat, together with hogs, barley, vallonea, honey, cotton, cheese, butter, hides. The oil is carried to the Adriatic, the rest chiefly to the Seven Islands. It is thought that at two months' notice Malta might procure from hence 500 oxen and 2000 sheep. The roadstead of Arkadhia, though bad, seems to be the best on this coast northward of Navarino, with the wind to the south or south-east, for I observe today (the wind being in that quarter) that the beach
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§ 1.071 here is smooth, while breakers whiten all the shore of Triphylia and Elis. A little south of the Skala, close to the seaside, a fine stream rushes out of the rock, and runs into the sea; close by there is a bason with a spring of water, bubbling up at the bottom; around it are some stones, which once belonged to some ancient structure, and are now used by the washerwomen to beat their linen upon. A little southward of this spot, on the top of the bank overlooking the sea beach, there is a building in a wood of olives, erected for the fair, which is held here on the 8th September, O.S., together with some sheds for selling cattle. Immediately below the castle, half way from thence to the sea side, in a garden surrounded with a hedge of bay, and containing some fig-trees and pot-herbs, I find, in a church of St. George, a fragment of a fluted column, and two or three others in the garden, one of which is in its original situation, and seems to indicate this place as the site of a temple. I found also a large hollowed block of stone in the neighbouring hedge. At the entrance of the castle, as well as in different parts of its walls, are seen some pieces of Hellenic wall of the third order of masonry, or that which is neither altogether polygonal nor quite regular.
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§ 1.072 Such are the poor remains of Cyparissiae. Pausanias is very brief in his description of this place. “On approaching Cyparissiae,” he says, “from Pylus, [old Navarino,] there is a source of water below the city near the sea; it is said to have been produced by Bacchus, who here struck the earth with his thyrsus; hence the fountain is called Dionysias. In Cyparissiae there is a temple of Apollo and another of Minerva Cyparissia. In the place called Aulon there is a temple of Aesculapius Aulonius. Near Aulon the river Neda separates Messenia from Eleia.” It is evident from these words, that the fountain situated to the southward of the Skala of Arkadhia is the ancient Dionysias. St. George seems to have fixed his abode in the temple of Apollo. Minerva, as usual with this deity, probably inhabited the acropolis or modern castle of Arkadhia. Aulon having been near the mouth of the Neda, and situated, if we may judge from its name, in a pass, probably occupied the Klidhi, where the church of St. John, which I passed yesterday at 11.25, in a position recommended by some fine sources of water, may, perhaps, stand on the site of the temple of Aesculapius.
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§ 1.073 The Kazasi or Vilayeti of Arkadhia is divided into four Κόλια. 1. The Koli of Zurtza, which extends from Aisidhoro to the plain of Arkadhia. 2. Kambos, or the plain of Arkadhia. 3. Kondovuni, which contains the mountains south-eastward of the town towards the Vilayeti of Andrussa. 4. Sulima, which comprehends the mountains to the north-eastward towards Karitena, and reaches to near the Columns as the ruins of the Phigaleian temple are called. 1. The chief places in Zurtza are, Zurtza, Strovitzi, Glatza, Sarona, Alvena, Buzi, Pavlitza, Bartzeli. All these lie among the fertile hills at the foot of the mountain of Alvena, which are bounded to the south by the Neda, and are separated from the sea by the narrow maritime plain between that river and Ai Sidhoro. The country produces corn and oil. 2. Kambo contains not only the plain watered by the river of Arkadhia northward of the town, but all the country to the southward of Arkadhia which lies at the foot of the mountain of Aia, and extends to the shore, above which it is considerably elevated. The plain northward of the town is very fertile, and produces corn, wine, and oil, but all the villages are small: to the southward of Arkadhia, the principal places
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§ 1.074 are, Filiatra, three hours from Arkadhia, containing 50 houses, and Gargaliano, of 150 houses, three hours farther; they are both similarly situated on an elevated plain, at a short distance from the coast, and cultivate wine, oil, and silk. At Filiatra the chief production is oil, of which the annual produce is 6000 barrels: Gargaliano annually produces 7000 barrels of wine. Ligudhista is a village of 40 houses, and of similar produce. The boundary of this Koli southward is the river Vrysomilo, an hour beyond Gargaliano, where the Vilayeti of Navarino begins, at three hours distance from Neokastro. 3. Kondovuni contains the mountains between Kambo and the Vilayeti of Andrussa; it has twenty-five villages, of which the largest, Varibopi, has only fifty houses. In the midst of this district is the town of Aia, which gives name to the mountain above Filiatra and Gargaliano. Aetos is another large village in the same mountain, towards Arkadhia. Both these places pay their dues separately, and are not considered as belonging to the Vilayeti of Arkadhia. 4. Sulima contains the mountains from the plain of Arkadhia north-eastward, nearly as far as the Columns. Sulima, the chief village, situated near the sources of the river which flows to Nisi,
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§ 1.075 contains eighty houses. The other principal villages are Lapi, Sidherokastro, Klisura, Psari, Platania, Karamustafa, Kuvala, Mavromati. This Koli produces a little oil, but its chief produce is vallonea, butter, cheese, honey, sheep, and cattle. The metropolitan Bishop of Arkadhia, or Christianopolis as it is called in the ecclesiastical books, has no suffragans. [His proper see is said to be a village in the Koli of Kambo, still called Christianu] His diocese includes the districts of Fanari, Karitena, Londari, and all the western coast between the rivers Rufeas and Longovardho; the latter joins the sea between Filiatra and Gargaliano. This district suffered greatly in the insurrection of 1770, as is testified by the ruins of two or three churches at Arkadhia, upon which the Turks wreaked their vengeance after the affair was over.
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§ 1.076 CHAPTER III, MESSENIA. — ARCADIA. March 4. At 7.40 I leave Arkadhia for Tripolitza, passing under the northern side of the Castle, and entering some low hills at the foot of Mount Paraskevi, on the side of which, one mile and a half east of the town, stands the village Vryses so called, because a fine stream here gushes out of the hill, and after turning several mills, and watering gardens, joins the sea a little below the place where we crossed it on approaching the town. Soon after having passed the olive plantations, the foot of the Cyparissian mountain meets that which, branching from Lycaeum, fills up the space between the Neda and the river of Arkadhia. The latter, before it enters the plain of Arkadhia, flows in a ravine between the two mountains. We cross over an uncultivated tract, overgrown for the most part with lentisk, oleander, and arbutus, of which last the fruit is now
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§ 1.077 almost ripe: it is gathered, and serves, they tell me, to make brandy. We cross the river at 10.15, and at 10.45 two of its branches coming from the northern range, on the side of which are seen the villages of Marmaro, towards the sea, and of Sidherokastro, under a lofty summit, where are some ruins of a castle, which by the description is not Hellenic. The direction of this mountain is nearly east and west, that on the Messenian, or southern side of the valley, runs about north-west and south-east, the Paraskevi, or summit above the town of Arkadhia, forming the north-western end of the range, where a turn to the west terminates in the castle of Arkadhia. After having passed the Paraskevi, the district called Kondovuni lies on our right, and consists of mountains which, as the name indicates, are of no great height, and which extend to the confines of Andrussa and Navarino. The highest summit of the Lycaean range, called Tetrazi, is seen occasionally to the north-east. As we advance, the hollow is overgrown with oaks, which cover also a great part of the hills on the right. The forest begins at 10.40, and continues as far as the opening into the plain of Messene, where we arrive at 2.20. In this interval we halt for a few minutes in the midst of the forest at 11.30, where, on the left, are seen the villages of Agrielea and Klisura, and on the right Varibopi, Vidhisova, and Botia.
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§ 1.078 At 1, make another short halt at the guard house of the Kokhla Derveni, as this pass is called, and pay some paras to the poor guards in Albanian dresses who are stationed here. The summit, called Makryplai covered with snow, now makes its appearance in front, a little to the left of our direction. At 2.10 the village of Mila is a mile distant, on the side of the right hand range; at half that distance are the ruins of an old castle on a rock, of the construction of the middle ages. The ridges of Kondovuni here terminate in Mount Ithome, an insulated lofty hill, to the south-eastward of which, when we have passed out into the plain, I perceive another hill of the same height, of a conical form and still more remarkable. It seems to be that called Evan by Pausanias. Between these two summits, on their eastern slope, stands the monastery of Vurkano, which now gives name to Mount Ithome. A little beyond the southern hill is the town of Andrussa. After emerging from the pass we skirt the roots of Mount Lycaeum in a north-east direction. To the south appear in the plain the villages of Alituri and Meligala on the north-west side of the heights of Mila.
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§ 1.079 We now cross the head of the plain in the direction of the Makryplai summit. On the foot of the range of hills which terminate the Messenian plains, and connect Mount Lycaeum with Makryplai, are several small hamlets, consisting chiefly of huts with thatched roofs. In the middle of the plain, by the side of our road, is a little grove of the finest plane-trees; not a single leaf is to be seen either on these or on the oaks. A river, now dry, passes near the grove, and winding towards the height of Mila there unites with some others. At 4.30 we arrive at an opening in the mountains, from whence one of these rivers issues, the ruined castle of Mila bearing WSW. Leaving the ravine on the left, we ascend the Makryplai, and cross it about two miles to the left of the summit. At 5.30 we fall into the road from Tripolitza to Andrussa, a little below a Khan near the summit of the pass, where I had intended to pass the night; but finding it filled by a Voivoda and his suite, we pass on half a mile to the guard-house of the Derveni of Makryplai, where I obtain a decent apartment belonging to an old Greek who farms the Derveni from the Voivoda of Londari: the revenue is derived from a small contribution paid by all passengers. Another room in the house is occupied by a Turk from Anapli, who visits me to learn the news, having heard that the French fleet is out. The Turks of the Morea, conscious of their weakness, are excessively alarmed lest the French should endeavour to excite an insurrection of the Greeks, and make a landing for that purpose in the Peninsula; and this fear acting on their cruel disposition renders them capable of committing any excesses against the Greeks, who are therefore as much alarmed at such reports as the Turks themselves. From the highest point of the ascent of Makryplai I had a fine view of the great Messenian plains, bounded by Lycaeum, Ithome, Evan, and the range which stretches from Andrussa to the low point of Koroni, the fortifications of which were visible with the glass.
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§ 1.080 March 5. — Between the Derveni and the summit of Makryplai, but nearer the latter and not in sight from either, I am told there is an ancient ruin in the middle of the ερημία, or forest, between the villages of Velanidhia and Keratries. It is called the castle of Xuria, a name often applied to such remains. All the offers that I can make to the Greek of the Derveni will not induce him to show me the road to this Paleokastro. He asserts that it is the headquarters of the robbers, who not long since murdered two travellers in the mountains above Londari. If there be any robbers here, my host is probably on good terms with them, as indeed with his small force it is prudent for him to be. Leaving the Derveni at a little after 7, on a bright frosty morning, we descend along a paved road through a forest of oaks, which covers this part of the mountain, till at 8.30 we arrive at the foot of the mountain: the oaks are some of the finest I have yet seen in Greece; those of the Kokhla Derveni were crooked, and few of them of any great size; but the greater part of these are straight as well as large. Even these, however, are not to be compared to the hedge-row oaks of England, and not one of them has a perfectly handsome head. The forest is four or five miles in circumference, and belongs to the district of Londari. At 9, we arrive at the fountain of the Pasha as it is called, on the edge of the great plain of the Alpheius, but our road, instead of entering the plain, leaves it on the left, and after crossing a tributary of that river, traverses some low heights, the last roots of a mountain which separates the valleys of the two extreme branches of the Alpheius, and thus passes between Londari and Sinanu. At the latter place there are some remains of Megalopolis, by the natives called the ruins of Palea Arkadhia, the provincial
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§ 1.082 name having become that of its ruined capital, by a sort of process analogous to that conversion of particulars into generals, and the reverse, of which there are so many instances in the transition of Hellenic into Romaic. The Palea now serves to distinguish Megalopolis from Arkhadhia, which name may, perhaps, have been substituted for Cyparissiae by some colony from Megalopolis, during the decline of the Roman empire. We now approach the range which bounds the plain of the Alpheius on the east, as Lycaeum does on the west. This eastern range extends from Dhimitzana, which is seen in a lofty situation to the north, twelve or fifteen miles from our road, as far as Mount Khelmos, which lies eight or ten miles to the right. To the north of Khelmos there is another high summit, rising immediately opposite to Londari and Mount Makryplai; it is called Tzimbaru. At 10, we cross the river of Londari, and soon after another stream, which issues from the foot of the mountain near Rapsomati, a little village to our right. About three miles farther on the right, is another village, Gardhiki. We now ascend the pass, and look down to the left upon a rocky gorge, through which flows a torrent, called Gdhani.
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§ 1.083 At 11.45, having arrived at the summit of the rocky ascent, I have a fine view of Karitena and its castle, situated at the northern or lower extremity of the same plain of Megalopolis, or of the upper Alpheius, which we have just been skirting at its southern extremity. Karitena is situated in a strong pass, defended by its castle, which stands on a very remarkable table-height. In the opposite direction are seen the peaked summits of Mount Taygetum, covered with snow. The mountain we pass is not very high or difficult. It was here that the two travellers are said to have been murdered by the robbers. We now descend into a marshy valley, opening into a plain, the middle of which, on the right, is occupied by a lake. The plain is three or four miles in diameter, surrounded with bare rocky hills without any cultivation, except round two or three small villages, one of which, to the south-west, is called Papari I observe some flocks of sheep and goats, and a great quantity of starlings. Having crossed the northern end of this plain in an ENE direction, we arrive, at 1.30, at the remains of a Paleokastro, consisting of a piece of wall of the third order, following the slope of a rocky flat-topped hill, which rises to the height of about fifty feet above the plain. The wall of the acropolis is traceable round the summit.
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§ 1.084 These are probably the remains of Asea. A quarter of an hour farther, a fine source of water issues from the foot of the same height: it is called Frangovrysi, Frank-spring, and gives name to a Khan, which stands near the fountain, and is reckoned two hours and a half from Tripolitza. Towards the opposite side of the valley, at no great distance, there is another copious source. The road afterwards crosses a marshy tract, and then ascends a rocky height, which divides the vale of Frangovrysi from that of Tripolitza. It is called Kravari, and seems to be the ancient Boreium. The road is paved both over the marsh and the mountain, which it crosses in a north north east direction, bending from thence to Tripolitza more northerly. From the summit of the hill, the castle of Tripolitza is visible, but not the town. The scenery is most dismal, and reminds me of the first view of the plain of Argyrokastro, which it resembles, in being an uniform, marshy level, of great extent, inclosed within lofty, rugged mountains of limestone. But both these plains present a very different aspect in the spring, and are in fact very fertile districts if properly managed. An inundation called Taki appears in the corner to our right.
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§ 1.085 The great elevation of the plain above the level of the sea is immediately evident from the comparative height of the mountains, which appear much lower here than they do from the side of Argos or of Megalopolis. Having descended into the plain, the road ceases to be paved, and at the end of four miles we arrive at the gates of the capital, of which nothing is seen but a small part of the walls, until we are close upon it. On the highest point of a hill at the southern end of the city, a large tower serves for a citadel; the rest of the fortification consists of a poor Turkish wall, with small towers, which are rather more respectable than the wall, but are situated at great distances apart. The walls inclose within them several vacant spaces, where the rugged rock is seen in many places projecting above the soil. The houses are built of mud bricks like the other towns of the Morea, the streets are no less filthy and ill-paved, and the habitations in general equally wretched. In the principal Mosque, among the barbarous columns of the portico, there is a fine Doric fluted shaft of white marble brought from the ruins of Tegea. There is another of the same material and dimensions in a smaller mosque near the Palace. The latter building surrounds a large square court not far from the great Mosque, and is a good specimen of the miserable magnificence of Turkey.
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§ 1.086 March 6. — This forenoon I visit Mehmet Pasha, surnamed Vanli, as being a native of Van near the frontiers of Persia; my reception was marked with the ceremony and civility that no Turkish governor now dares refuse to an Englishman, but without the smallest appearance of cordiality, and I am told that the Vanli is considered as leaning to the French. He has fed his adherents at Constantinople so well, that he hopes to remain in his government another year. His most active partizan there is Dhimitri Paparagopulo, a Tripolitziote. This man began by carrying on a small business as a serraf, or broker, in which capacity he served Aly Effendi, a Turk of Tripolitza, who was ambassador at Paris. Dhimitri, having discovered that the Sultan was fond of French manufactures and wines, advised Aly to send him some as presents, and thus obtained favour for his patron, who in return procured the French protection for Dhimitri. Aly on his return to Constantinople was appointed Tersane-Tefterdar, or treasurer of the navy, an office intended as a check upon the Capitan Pasha, and Dhimitri rose so rapidly in his business of serraf, that he is now courted by a Pasha of Three Tails. Papadhopulo of Aios Petros, or St. Peter's, and Barbopulo of Tripolitza are of the same party, and under the favour of Vanli find their interest in oppressing all their fellow Christians who are in their power. So much do they resemble Turks, that X hear them called Papasoglu and Barboglu; and they are said to delight in giving their names this Turkish form.
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§ 1.087 March 10. Τριπολιτζά, vulgarly pronounced Tripolitja, and called by the Turks Tarabolusa, is the chief town of a Kaza, bounded by those of Argos, Mistra, Londari, Karitena, and Kalavryta. St. Peter's properly belongs to it, but being inhabited entirely by Christians, it has been formed into a separate Vilayeti, under the government of a Greek Hodja-bashi, immediately responsible to the Pasha, who has found this the best mode of ensuring order, and collecting the revenue, in the difficult mountains which form that district. The Vilayeti of Tripolitza contains sixty villages, including those of St. Peter's. The town contains 2,500 houses, of which 1,000 are Greek. The walls were built about sixteen years ago, probably at the same time as those of Athens, which they much resemble in their paltry construction. The grass on the plain of Tripolitza is of a very fine quality, and so plentiful and long that there is a regular hay harvest. The climate differs from that of the maritime plains almost as much as the south of England from the south of France. In the winter the snow often lies very thick upon the plain for several days. It has now been raining, with little intermission, for five days, and there has been much thunder; the mountains around are covered with snow. Mount Khrepa, or Apanokrepa as it is generally called, which is the highest summit of Mount Maenalium, lies between Tripolitza and Mantineia, but nearer the former. Of the opposite, or eastern range, the summit is called Turniki, from a village of that name in one of the roads to Argos. Mount Malevo, in the direction of Aios Petros, and seen over the part of the range which bounds the plain of Tegea, is higher than either of these, to judge by the quantity of snow which crowns it. Its height is probably about 5,000 feet.
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§ 1.088 March 11. — A sharp frost this morning. I ride out with Kyr Yanataki, agent of the English consul at Patra, to Paleo Episkopi, a ruined church on the site of Tegea, about three miles and a half on the road to Aios Petros. The position, though so near to Tripolitza, is not seen from it, the view being interrupted by a rising ground upon which stands a church of Aio Sosti (St. Saviour). This height is the summit of a low ridge which crosses from Mount Maenalium to the eastern range, and separates the course of the waters flowing to the Taki, from those which flow to another inundation near the village of Persova on the road which leads to Argos, over Mount Parthenium. Paleo Episkopi, or the old episcopal church, stands on a small height in the middle of the fields, on the right hand side of the road to St. Peter's, and is surrounded at a small distance by the remains of a wall apparently of the same date as the church, which is built of brick mixed with fragments of ancient architecture of white marble, together with plain wrought blocks and mutilated inscriptions of the same material. One of the latter I find very interesting, though consisting merely of names, as a part of these names are classed under the four φυλαί, or tribes of the citizens of Tegea mentioned by Pausanias. They are ranged under the four heads of ΙΠΠΟΘΟΙΤΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΑΙ ΕΠ ΑΘΑΝΑΙΑΝ ΠΟΛΙΤΑΙ ΚΡΑΡΙΩΤΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΑΙ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΙΑTAI after which follows a long list of METOIKOI, or sojourners. In our copies of Pausanias the names are written ιπποθοίτις, Αθανεάτις, Κλαρεώτις, and Άνολλωνίάτίς. I measured here a piece of architrave of which the metope was one foot in breadth, the length of the glyphs of the triglyph one foot eight inches. I found also, lying on the ground, the trunk of a white marble statue, measuring ten inches and a half from the hip-bone to the arm-pit. The form is elegant, but no part, except the back, preserves its surface. After passing an hour here we ride to the little village of Akhuria, close to which my companion possesses a farm. The priest whose house we enter sets before us a menestra, or soup made of rice and salted star-fish, with a dish of boiled wild onions, cold and without oil, nothing but salt, pepper, and vinegar being allowed in Lent; afterwards, on finding that I do not keep fast, he produces some eggs and better wine than I got in the city, though as light in body as in colour, and deriving its flavour entirely from the turpentine with which it is fortified to prevent its turning sour in the spring. The Plain of Tegea, which lies on a lower level than that of Tripolitza, presents a very different aspect, being almost entirely cultivated with corn and vines. It produces excellent wheat and barley.
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§ 1.091 Kalambokki is chiefly grown in the lowest part, near the Taki, where a great part of the ground now inundated is dry in the summer. The slope of the land, though scarcely perceptible, is such that the upper part of the plain of Tegea is well drained into this lake. In many parts the soil appears stony and light, in others it is a rich black loam. From Akhuria we ride to Piali a village belonging to Yanataki, where, in the church, which is in ruins and without a roof, I find many fragments of the ancient Tegea, such as pieces of fluted columns of white marble, and a fragment of architrave, with a caput bovis for the metope; but the most remarkable remains at Piali are the foundations of an ancient building near the church, formed of fine squared stones, among which are two pieces of some large columns of white marble. They are so much buried in the ground, that the only dimension I could obtain was the chord of the fluting, measuring eight inches; the fluting Doric, whereas some of those in the columns in the church appeared to be Ionic. The small marble Doric columns in the mosques of Tripolitza are known to have been brought ten years ago from Piali, where they were dug out of a pond near the church, on the side of which some lofty white poplars are now growing.
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§ 1.092 The Papas says that fifteen of the small columns were then taken out, but he cannot inform me what became of them all. It is said that some steps of marble, deeply worn by use, were found in the same pond. The excavation, where the fragments of the great columns are still lying, is more recent, and has been made for the purpose of obtaining building materials. The great columns must be broken, before they can be of any use to modern workmen, and I cannot learn that any of them have yet been so treated; so that perhaps the masons, finding these great cylinders of hard marble too intractable, may resort to some new excavation, or be satisfied with the foundation stones, which are of a stone less hard. Though the proximity of so large a modern town as Tripolitza must have been injurious to the preservation of the remains of Tegea, the deep alluvial soil of its site, on the other hand, is favourable to the concealment of such treasures, and may still contain some of the works of Grecian art, which remained there at the end of the second century. The principal objects then observed by Pausanias were, a stadium near the Temple of Minerva Alea, formed entirely of embankments
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§ 1.093 of earth, without any seats of stone; here were celebrated two gymnastic contests, called Alaea and Halotia. On the northern side of the temple was the fountain Auge, and three stades distant from it the Temple of Hermes Aepytus. There were temples also of Minerva Poliatis and of Diana Hegemone. The agora contained a temple of Venus, surnamed εν πλίνθω, or “Venus in the tile”, from the shape of the agora; the statue of the goddess was of marble. There were two στήλαι, or pillars, upon one of which were represented in high relief four Tegeate legislators; on another a citizen of Tegea, who had been victorious at Olympia. On a third pillar, the figure of Mars Gynaecothaenas was wrought in low relief. The agora contained likewise, an altar of Jupiter Teleius, with a quadrangular statue, “a form in which,” adds Pausanias, “the Arcadians seem to me greatly to delight;” also, monuments of Tegeatas, son of Lycaon, and his wife, Maera, daughter of Atlas; — a temple and statue of Lucina, surnamed εγ γόνασι, or “on the knees,” near which was an altar of the Earth; — and two pillars of white marble, bearing
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§ 1.094 in relief the figures of Polybius and of Elatus, son of Areas. Near the agora was the theatre containing the pedestals of some brazen statues, which had been removed; one of the pedestals had supported a statue of Philopoemen, and was inscribed with an elegy of eight lines in his honour. In other parts of Tegea Pausanias remarked “statues erected by each of the four tribes of the Tegeatae, to Apollo Agyieus — a temple of Ceres and Proserpine, surnamed the Fruit-bearers, and near it a temple of Venus Paphia — two temples of Bacchus — an altar of Proserpine — a temple of Apollo, containing a gilded statue by Cheirisophus of Crete, by which stood a statue of Cheirisophus himself in marble — the Common Hearth of the Arcadians-, containing a statue of Hercules, with a wound in the thigh — the house of Aleus — and the monument of Echemus, with a pillar on which was represented in relief the battle of Echemus and Hyllus.” But of all the buildings or monuments at Tegea the most remarkable was “the temple of Minerva Alea, originally built by Aleus, the founder of the city, and renewed afterwards in a magnificent manner by the Tegeatae.”
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§ 1.095 The second temple having been burnt in the last year of the 96th Olympiad, (BC 395) the Tegeatae employed Scopas, of Paros, to build a third, “a man,” adds Pausanias, “who has made many statues as well in Greece as in Ionia and Caria.” The Aeti, or pediments of the temple, were adorned with works of entire statuary. In the front Aetus was represented the hunting of the boar of Calydon. The centre was occupied by the boar, on one side of which were Atalante, Meleager, Theseus, Telamon, Peleus, Pollux, Iolaus, Prothous, Cometes; on the other side were Epochus supporting Ancaeus, who was represented as wounded and dropping his axe, then Castor and Amphiaraus, Hippothous, and lastly Peirithous. The Aetus at the back of the temple contained the contest of Telephus and Achilles in the plain of the Caicus. After the battle of Actium, Augustus, displeased with the Tegeatae for having espoused the cause of Antonius in conjunction with all the other Arcadians except the Mantinenses, carried away from Tegea an ancient ivory statue of Minerva Alea by Endoeus, together with the teeth of the Calydonian boar, leaving the skin, which, with some other dedications more remarkable for curiosity than beauty, still remained in the temple at Tegea in the time of Pausanias. The statue of Minerva was placed in the entrance of
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§ 1.096 the forum of Augustus at Rome, and one of the teeth in the temple of Bacchus in Caesar's gardens; the other was said to have been broken. The statue of Minerva which Pausanias found in the temple of Alea had been brought from the demus of the Manthurenses, where it was called the statue of Minerva Hippia. Aesculapius and Hygieia, made of Pentelic marble by Scopas, stood on either side of the goddess. Her altar was of high antiquity, and rich with works in relief. The temple of Minerva Alea,” adds Pausanias, “far excels all the temples in Peloponnesus, both in magnitude and in the other particulars of its construction. The columns are of three orders, first, Doric, then Corinthian, and on the outside of the temple Ionic.” The same testimony as to the superior magnificence of the temple of Minerva Alea is repeated by him in speaking of that of Apollo at Bassae, near Phigaleia, which he describes as “inferior to none of the temples of Peloponnesus, except that of Tegea, either in the beauty of its material or the harmony of its construction.”
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§ 1.097 I have already observed, that the material of the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, was a soft conchite limestone; that of Phigaleia, if I am not misinformed, is of an ordinary, though very hard, kind of limestone. It seems to follow, therefore, from the words of Pausanias alone, that the temple of Minerva Alea was of white marble; and hence it is highly probable that the large columns which I saw at Piali belonged to that building. Those columns are about five feet in diameter. Now, unless the temple of Alea was decastyle, these dimensions are too small to have belonged to the outer peristyle, since Pausanias gives us to understand that the temple of Alea was larger than the Olympian temple, which was nearly of the same size as the Parthenon. In the Olympian, which was a hexastyle, the columns were more than seven feet in diameter: in the Athenian, which was an octastyle, they were upwards of six. It is clear, moreover, from Pausanias, that the outer peristyle of the temple of Minerva Alea was not Doric, but Ionic; for his words, εκτός του ναού are precisely those which he makes use of in describing the peristyle of the temple of Jupiter at Olympia. One can only infer, therefore, that the Doric columns formed an order within the cell, though for what reason Pausanias could have described this order as πρωτος, or the first, it seems difficult to understand; by
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§ 1.098 the words επί τούτω, “above this order,” he probably meant an upper range of small columns supporting the roof, like those still existing at Paestum. Perhaps future excavations will bring to light some Ionic columns of still larger dimensions than the great Doric columns at Piali. The smaller Doric columns, which have been removed from Tegea to the mosques of Tripolitza, may have belonged to one of the other temples mentioned by Pausanias, and not to the temple of Minerva Alea; or possibly to a colonnade round the pond, which seems, by the steps I have mentioned, to have once belonged to the hierum of Minerva Alea. There are a few plantations of mulberries about Piali; neither in these nor any of the few other trees which are seen on the site of Tegea is there any appearance of spring. The corn is just above ground. The part of the plain to the south of the height of Aio Sosti is about ten miles in circumference, and contains fifteen or twenty villages. Tegea stood at the northern end of it, and it seems not improbable, that the height upon which the church of Aio Sosti stands was the χώριον ύψηλον, or high place, mentioned by Pausanias as sacred to Jupiter Clarius, on which there were many altars, and where an εορτή, or festival, was celebrated. I am assured at Piali that walls can be traced from a little
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§ 1.099 village on the eastern side of this height, round by Paleo-Episkopi to Piali, which is one mile and a half from Aio Sosti. This would make Tegea three or four miles in circumference. I did not procure a single coin at Piali, whereas at Ibrahim Effendi, a little hamlet a mile to the north-west, where we rode afterwards, the peasants brought me fifty in the course of a few minutes, all found in ploughing near Paleo-Episkopi. Some of these are of Arcadia, and one or two of Tegea itself, but the greater part are of the Lower Empire, at which period it is probable that Tegea was reduced to a small town round the church, which is certainly of a remote period of Christianity, and, from its present name, appears to have been once the cathedral of a bishopric. All the wells which I saw about the villages on the site of Tegea are formed of ancient materials, chiefly of white marble. These wells yield excellent water. In our way back to Tripolitza we ride up to the village and church of Aio Sosti. It commands a fine view of the whole plain of Tegea, with the surrounding mountains, Cresium, Boreium, Maenalium, Parthenium; to the north is seen the plain of Tripolitza, together with the south-eastern part of that of Mantinia inclosed between the parallel ridges of Maenalium and Artemisium. The remainder of the Mantineian plain is shut out by an eastern projection of the heights of Mount Khrepa. To the westward of Aio Sosti the country swells into gentle risings, reaching as far as the low ridge which runs to Tripolitza from Mount Boreium. This ridge forms a natural separation between the valley of Pallantium and that of Tegea. The road from Frangovrysi to the capital traverses the whole length of the former. In returning to Tripolitza we overtake Kyr Anagnosti Papasoglu, the Greek governor of Aios Petros, with pistols at his girdle, and preceded by three Albanian soldiers, going on a visit to the Pasha. He generally travels with twenty or thirty armed Albanians, but does not venture to make his appearance before the Turkish court with more than his present escort.
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§ 1.100 March 12. — I ride with Kyr Yanataki to Paleopoli, as the site of Mantineia is now called; set out at 9.30, a cold foggy morning. Arrive there in little more than an hour, the distance about eight miles. The road, which in some places is muddy, passes along the foot of Mount Khrepa to a projecting point, where a low ridge of rocks extends for some distance into the plain, opposite to a projection of the eastern mountains, and thus forms a natural division in it. By the road side I saw the foundations of a Hellenic wall. Proceeding we soon find ourselves opposite to the monastery and small village of Tzipiana, in the road which leads from Tripolitza to Argos by Turniki, over the highest part of the mountain anciently called Artemisium. There are said to be twenty monks in the convent, which stands on the side of a rock at a considerable elevation above the plain. Our road turns afterwards to the north, and then crosses the plain of Mantineia diagonally, leaving to the left the Kalavryta road, which continues to the northern extremity of the plain, where it ascends a ridge which forms a natural separation between the Mantinice and Orchomenia. The plain of Mantineia is not much cultivated. The corn-fields are just beginning to look green; in other parts the labourers are ploughing the ground which is to lie fallow this year. In the vineyards they are cutting down the last year's shoots, and hoeing the ground into little hillocks; this seems to be the severest kind of labour. I saw a very young girl and a boy still younger at the plough in a field by the roadside as I passed by in the morning, and when I returned in the evening they were still at work. The only supper after a day of such fatigue in this season of fast, is probably a lump of bread made of maize.
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§ 1.102 It is not surprising that the women all look old at thirty. The men bear want and hard labour better; but though strong, they have a wrinkled weatherbeaten countenance before they are full grown. When sick they have no physician but nature. The vineyards in this plain have a square vat of masoniy built in the field for treading the grapes, after which operation the juice, in skins, is carried into the villages Kalambokki in the plains of Tegea and Mantineia is sown in the end of April and beginning of May, when the inundated parts are clear of water; the grain is reaped in September. Among the scenes of desolation which Greece presents in every part, there is none more striking to the traveller who has read Pausanias, than the Mantinice. Instead of the large fortified city, and the objects which dignified the approach from Tegea, namely, the Stadium, Hippodrome, Temple of Neptune, and other monuments, the landscape now presents only rocky ridges, inclosing a still more naked plain, where not a single tree can be found to represent the wood of oaks and cork-trees, called Pelagus, or the groves and gardens which we may suppose to have been maintained in constant verdure in such a temperate climate as that of this elevated plain, by its copious supply of water. Mantineia, like Tegea, was situated entirely
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§ 1.103 in the plain, and nearly in its lowest part, as appears by the course of the waters. It bad not even the advantage of such a rising ground as that of Aio Sosti at Tegea, at the same time that the insulated rocky height of Gurtzuli seems to have been inconveniently near, when not forming a part of the defences. In the existing ruins I could not discover any citadel, or interior inclosure of any kind. The circuit of the walls is entire, with the exception of a space of four or five towers on the eastern side; in no place are there more than three courses of masonry existing above the ground, and this height is so uniform that one cannot but believe that the remainder of the works was constructed in sun-baked brick, as it appears to have been when Agesipolis, by means of the little river Ophis, which flowed through the city, made an inundation which submerged the foundations, and effected a breach in the superstructure. As it is difficult to conceive the possibility of forming from the rivulets of the Mantinice an inundation, sufficiently deep to cover the existing remains, it is probable that when Mantineia was again fortified, soon after the battle of Leuctra, a repetition of the former disaster was guarded against, by giving a greater height
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§ 1.104 to the foundations, which, in such a marshy level, must always have been of stone, and thus the fortification, according to the ideas of Pausanias, answered every purpose; “for walls,” he observes, “made of crude brick are the best against military engines, but when exposed to the action of water they dissolve like wax before the sun.” The masonry approaches the most regular kind, but the courses are not always equal and horizontal, nor the stones always rectangular; and there are also some perfect specimens of the polygonal, or second order, which may be parts of the more ancient work. As in the generality of Hellenic walls, the facing only of the work is constructed with large wrought stones put together without cement; the middle being filled up with a rubble of broken stones mixed with mortar: the inner facing was two feet thick, the outer four feet, the rubble four feet, total ten feet. The form of the city was slightly elliptical, and about equal to a circle of 1250 yards in diameter, or two miles and a quarter in circumference. The number of towers, if I reckoned right, is 118, the curtains are generally about eighty feet long, the towers twenty-three feet in the face, and thirteen in the flanks. There were ten gates, the approach to which was carefully defended; the mode varies in almost all of them, and furnishes a
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§ 1.105 curious illustration of Greek military architecture. The following figure will give an idea of one of them. The entire circuit of the walls is protected by a wet ditch, formed by a small stream, which flows in from the east, and, embracing the city so as to make it an island, flows westward from the opposite extremity. Though formed by a running stream, the ditch is almost stagnant. I found a great number of serpents sleeping in the sun on the edge of the ditch, under the walls. Manlineia, being more distant than Tegea from Tripolitza, has probably not been so much disturbed by masonic depredations. Indeed, I should think an excavation would give nearly a complete plan of the town; for the foundations of the houses and the line of the streets are in some places apparent. When Pausanias visited Mantineia, it had recently received great favours from the Emperor Hadrian, chiefly for the sake of his favourite, Antinous, who was a native of Bithyneium on the Sangarius, which was a colony of Mantineia. Hadrian directed a temple of Antinous to be
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§ 1.106 built at Mantineia, a τελετή, or annual ceremony, to be celebrated in honour of him, and games every fifth year in the Stadium, at the same time that the ancient name Mantineia was restored to the city, in place of that of Antigoneia, which had been attached to it in honour of Antigonus Gonatas, King of Macedonia. The following were the monuments which Pausanias observed within the city. First, “a double temple, divided in the middle by a wall, and containing in one part a statue of Aesculapius by Alcamenes, in the other statues of Latona and her children, by Praxiteles. On the pedestal which supported the latter a muse was represented in relief, with Marsyas playing on the pipe. Here were also a figure of Polybius in relief on a pillar, and temples of Jupiter Soter, of Jupiter Epidotus, and of the Dioscuri;” in a different part of the town there was a temple of Ceres, and Proserpine, in which a perpetual fire was maintained. Near the theatre stood a temple of Juno, containing three statues, by Praxiteles, namely, Juno seated on a throne, with her daughter Hebe and Minerva standing by her. Near the altar of Juno was the tomb of Areas, which, by command
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§ 1.107 of the oracle of Delphi, was brought hither from Triodi in Mount Maenalium. Not far from the theatre there were two monuments; that called the Common Hearth, was circular, and was said to be the tomb of Autonoe; on the other was a pillar, upon which Gryllus, son of Xenophon, was represented in relief, mounted on a horse. Behind the theatre were the ruins of the temple of Venus Symmachia, which had been erected in commemoration of the alliance of the Romans and Mantinenses, in the seafight at Actium. The statue had been removed, but an epigram on the basis, shewed that it had been dedicated by Nicippe. There were also a temple and statue of Minerva Alea, a temple of Antinous, and a house in the Gymnasium, which, besides containing statues of Antinous, was remarkable for its marbles and pictures, of which the greater part were portraits of Antinous in the character of Bacchus. “I never saw this man” adds Pausanias, “while he was living, but I have seen many statues and pictures of him.” The same building contained an imitation of a picture of the battle of Mantineia
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§ 1.108 which was in the Cerameicus at Athens. In the agora of Mantineia there was a brazen statue of Deomeneia, and the heroum of Podares, who distinguished himself in the battle of Mantineia, next to Gryllus and Cephisodorus; but the designation of another Podares, a descendant of the former, had been substituted upon the monument, three generations before the time of Pausanias, in place of that of the hero himself. The theatre of Mantineia still exists in part; it stood towards the north side of the inclosure, about midway between the centre of the city and the walls. Its diameter was about 240 feet. A part of the circular wall which supported the cavea remains, and is of polygonal masonry. On the north-eastern side of the city, just within the walls, are the Kalyvia of Paleopoli, where two huts now contain all the inhabitants of Mantineia. [Τα Καλυβια, the Huts, is commonly applied in Greece to a hamlet inhabited by the labourers of a village or convent, which may be too distant to be a convenient residence for them.] They form part of a tjiftlik belonging to a Turk of Tripolitza, who has lately built on the side of the neighbouring hill eight or ten houses, which having also been called Paleopoli, the huts within the ancient walls have become a Kalyvia, or dependent hamlet; and thus the proud city, one of the eyes of Arcadia,

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