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

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§ 1.109 has become a dependency of a farm of an Asiatic barbarian. To the north of Mantineia rises the high conical insulated hill already alluded to, upon which stands the village of Gurtzuli. From the ruins I rode up to the tjiftlik, or ζευγαλατία, of Paleopoli, and afterwards to Gurtzuli, which consists of twelve or fifteen houses, together with the Pyrgo of the Aga who owns the village. On the summit of the hill there is a ruined church, shaded by some holly-oaks, from whence there is an extensive view of the plain and surrounding mountains. To the northeast is seen the village of Pikerni, or Pikernes, now the largest in the Mantinice. It is situated in a recess of the Artemisian range; a torrent running by the village receives the water of a fountain from the southern side of the valley, and then descends to Paleopoli, near which it is joined by a smaller rivulet from the southward. The united stream, as I have already remarked, then separates again, and after having encircled the ancient walls, again flows in a single body to the north-west, where it is joined by a larger rivulet which, descending from the part of Mount Artemisium near Tzipiana, passes along the plain to the westward of the ruins. The
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§ 1.110 united waters then stagnate in the plain, or when sufficiently copious find a subterraneous exit by a Katavothra, as the Moreites call those subterraneous channels which are frequent in the limestone mountains of the Peninsula. Indeed, so many of the valleys of Arcadia are surrounded on every side with mountains, that without such a provision of nature, they must be lakes, or at least uncultivable marshes. Even with the assistance of the Katavothra there are lakes or marshes in almost all the valleys. The Mantinic plain is so dead a level, that it is marshy during all the winter months and great part of the spring. At Gurtzuli we found none but women, the men being all at work in the fields. In reply to our request for refreshment, they protested that they had not anything eatable in the village; but as this assertion would not pass muster with Kyr Yanataki, they produced at length some eggs, wine, and wheaten bread for me, and for my companion some cold bean porridge of yesterday, which, being a solid mass, is sliced and eaten with salt and vinegar: during our meal
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§ 1.111 our hostesses bring me a great number of coins, and I procure several more on returning to the ruins from the men and boys of the Kalyvia, who plough the corn fields which now occupy all the space within the ancient walls. Some of these are just brought to light by the plough; the silver were all of Sicyon. They tell me that none find medals but those who work at Paleo-poli. The Hippodrome and Stadium of Mantineia as Pausanias informs us, were at the foot of Mount Alesium, at no great distance from the city, on the road to Tegea; Alesium is thus identified with the projection of the range of Artemisium, which closes the vale of Pikernes on the south; I could not however trace any remains either of the Hippodrome or Stadium. The latter must have been at least half a mile from the walls, for the temple of Neptune, near which it stood, was seven stades distant from them. On the mountain itself there was a grove of Ceres. I purchased from a peasant of Pikernes a curious little relique, which seems once to have been a dedication in the grove of Ceres. It is a small herm surmounted with a head of Ceres, or at least with an ideal female head, having a lock of hair hanging on either
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§ 1.112 shoulder, the usual indication of divinity; on the neck are the words ΧΡΙΩΝΙΣ ΔΑΜΑΤΡΙ — Chrionis to Ceres. Mount Maenalium, which forms a continued ridge along the western side of the plains of Tripolitza and Paleopoli, is now deeply covered with snow, amidst which appears a scattered forest of firs: the mountain for the most part is a bare white limestone. Mount Turniki, the ancient Artemisium, is of equal height, and also produces firs. Having passed the whole day at Gurtzuli, or at the ruins, employing the theodolite, sextant, and tape, I return by the same road to Tripolitza, where we arrive at sunset, having halted only a few minutes at the rocky point already mentioned, which projects from the Maenalian range — not because any thing is now to be seen here more than I before described, but because it seems quite clear to me that this was the place called Scope, where Epaminondas expired in the arms of victory, and near which his monument, erected on the spot where he fell, still remained in the time of Pausanias. “After proceeding”, says that careful observer, “thirty stades on the road from Mantineia to Pallantium, the grove called Pelagus is near the road; here the cavalry of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians fought against that of
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§ 1.113 the Boeotians, Epaminondas being wounded, was carried out of the battle. Holding his hand upon the wound, and in great pain, he continued to view the engagement from the place, which was afterwards called Scope, until seeing that the combat was at an end, he withdrew his hand and expired. He was buried where the action took place. Upon the tomb stands a column, bearing a shield, upon which a serpent is represented in relief; the serpent signifies that Epaminondas was of the race of the Sparti. There are pillars on the monument, one of which is ancient, and bears a Boeotian epigram, the other was raised by the Emperor Hadrian, who composed also the epigram which is upon it” There is no doubt that the rocky point in question was on the ancient road from Mantineia to Pallantium; for Pallantium, if not upon the site of Tripolitza, must have been exactly in that direction from Mantineia. The wood Pelagus occupied the middle of the plain; for the road from Mantineia to Tegea passed through it; and it is evident, from the passage just translated, that the wood extended westward nearly to the Pallantium road. The space between the foot of the mountain and the forest was the place therefore where the cavalry of the two armies fought. The narrow opening between the two opposite mountains formed a natural limit between the Mantinice and Tegeatice, and the evidence of Pausanias concurs in showing that here was the frontier of the two districts. He says, “Beyond the temple of Neptune,” (which, as I have already remarked, was seven stades from the walls on the road to Tegea ) “you arrive at a place full of oaks, called Pelagus, through which leads the road from Mantineia to Tegea: the boundary between the Mantinenses and Tegeatae is an altar in the road.”
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§ 1.114 March 14 and 15. — Frost and snow. I measure the column-shaft, from Tegea, which stands in the corner of the gallery of the second mosque; it tapers, is formed of a single block of white marble, and is eight feet two inches in height; there are twenty flutings, each three inches and three quarters in the chord; the diameter, therefore, is about two feet. I enter the mosque, but find nothing remarkable. The Greek bishop who resides at Tripolitza is called Bishop of Moukhla, and takes his title from a ruined town of the Lower Empire, which lies to the left of the road from Tripolitza to Argos over Mount Partheni, as the ancient Parthenium is still called. The Bishop is a suffragan of the metropolitan of Lacedaemon. It is supposed by the Greeks that Moukhla was a settlement from Amyclae of Laconia, and that it was one of the three places which were united to form Tripolitza, the other two being Tegea and Mantineia; an hypothesis preferable perhaps to that which supposes Pallantium, Tegea, and Mantineia to have been the three places; since, besides the authority of tradition in its favour, there is the consideration that even in the time of Pausanias Pallantium was chiefly supported by ancient recollections, and had probably ceased to exist long before the foundation of Tripolitza.
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§ 1.115 March 16. — I ride out in search of Pallantium; first making half the circuit of the walls of the town by going out at the Kalavryta gate, and then turning to the left and riding round to the Londari road, or that by which I arrived on the 5th. I then leave the Londari road to the left, and ascend over the rocky roots of Mount Maenalium, until I come to the aqueduct which supplies the castle of Tripolitza; this I follow among the gorges, until I arrive at the spring which supplies it; the source is very copious, and is situated in a little rocky hollow, resembling, on a small scale, the valley of the Tombs of the Kings of Thebes in Egypt, except that here a patch of corn covers the bottom. This, however, is not the only source
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§ 1.116 that feeds the aqueduct; it is joined by another conduit from a valley at the foot of Mount Kravari, or Boreium, on the left of the road to Londari. From the springs I ride directly up the side of one of the rocky hills, and having arrived at the summit, look down upon a small village situated among the mountains, called Sylimna, behind which, on the northern side, rises a peaked height: the fountains and rivulets around, all run into the river of David: which comes from the north through a narrow valley, dividing Mount Khrepa from the ranges which follow the eastern side of the plain of Megalopolis. The river of Davia is certainly the Helisson, one of the branches of the Alpheius; its principal sources are at Alonistena, a village in Mount Maenalium, on the way to Vitina. I descend to Sylimna; from whence, finding no vestiges of antiquity there, I continue the descent into the valley: then, leaving the village of Karteroli, and the Karitena road to the left, turn along the roots of Mount Khrepa, and arrive at a mill, supplied by a rivulet flowing directly from the southernmost summit, where, in a very lofty situation facing the south, is seen the monastery of the All-holy Virgin upon Khrepa. I follow the mill-stream into a little retired valley
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§ 1.117 at the foot of the Apano-Khrepa on the western side, and leaving a pyrgo, and some cottages belonging to a Turk, as well as another little Kalyvia on the left, fall into one of the roads which lead from the villages in the valley of the Helisson to Tripolitza, and which all join the Karitena road near a pass through the rocky height at the back of the city, which leads directly to the Karitena gate, or the first from the castle towards the north. I was told of a Paleokastro near Sylimna, but it proved to be nothing but a ruined church on the top of a rock. The retired valley at the western foot of Mount Khrepa could not, I think, have been very far from the site of Maenalus, though I could not hear of any remains of antiquity in that direction. As to Pallantium, it must clearly have been on the eastern side of the Maenalian ridge, for the Pallantic plain is certainly that which I traversed in its whole length, in the road from Frangovrysi, and which terminates at the castle of Tripolitza. Thana, a village standing on the ridge which bounds the Pallantic valley eastward, and situated between two and three miles southward of Tripolitza, is supposed by the Greeks of the city to have once been a considerable town, but there are
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§ 1.118 scarcely any indications of Hellenic antiquity at that place, and upon the whole I am inclined to think, that Pallantium occupied a part of Tripolitza itself; which would at once account for the want of any remains of Pallantium, all such having been lost in subsequent constructions. The castle-hill is perhaps that, which Pausanias describes as having once been the acropolis of Pallantium, and upon which there existed in his time a sanctuary of the gods, surnamed Cathari, or the Pure; for it is almost inconceivable that this height, which stands at the opening of the principal pass leading from the Mantinico-Tegeatic plain over the Maenalium range into the Megalopolitis, and in so commanding a position with regard to the two most important of the Arcadian plains, should not have been occupied by the ancients. Pallantium was one of the oldest cities in Arcadia, but it had dwindled to a small town when Antoninus Pius again raised it to the rank of a city, and bestowed upon it freedom and an immunity from tribute. These favours were conferred upon Pallantium, in consideration of its having been the metropolis from whence Evander brought a colony to Rome, and from which one of the hills of Rome received the name of Palatine. Virgil, however, it must be observed,
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§ 1.119 does not agree in this respect with Antoninus, as he supposes Evander to have come from Pheneus. Notwithstanding the emperor's patronage, Pallantium scarcely revived, as seems clear from the manner in which Pausanias, who visited the place soon after its restoration, speaks of the acropolis. In the town he remarked only a temple of Pallas, with statues of Pallas and Evander in marble, a temple of Ceres and Proserpine, and near it a statue of Polybius.
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§ 1.120 CHAPTER IV: ARCADIA. — LACONIA. March 17 — I leave Tripolitza at 9 for Mistra, with one of the Pasha's Tartars, by whose assistance I advance at the rate of four miles and a half an hour. After losing twenty minutes, we begin at 10.45 to ascend the ridge, which appears, from the words of Pausanias, to have been called Cresium; for after observing that Choma, which was on the northern side of Mount Boreium, was the boundary of the Megalopolitae towards Pallantium and Tegea, he adds, that in proceeding from thence to Tegea, Cresium was a small mountain on the right hand. The inundation called Taki is not far from us on the right; the plain around this lake appears, from another part of the passage of Pausanias just referred to, to have been the Manthuric, or plain of the demus Manthurenses; it is not so well
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§ 1.120 cultivated or inhabited, nor nearly so extensive as the part of the Tegeatic plain which remains on our left. The inundation terminates in a katavothra, or cavern, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff in Mount Kravari. There is a constant stream running into the mountain through the cavern, which is very conspicuous from our road, though inaccessible at this time of the year on account of the inundation. It is this cavern which gives the name of Taki to the inundation, from its arched form, the word being derived from the Persian tauk, an arch. The stream of the Taki has probably an outlet in the plain of Asea, the level of which seems to be between those of Tegea and Megalopolis. Having crossed the ridge of Cresium, we descend into the vale of the Saranda Potamo, a fine torrent running northward. It is joined by several streams from the steep sides of the great mountain which rises from the eastern side of the Tegeatic plain, and the snows of which are rapidly melting by the heat of this day's sun. The part of this mountain which was crossed on the road from Tegea to Argos was called Parthenium. Its prolongation southward forms a continuous ridge with the mountains on the eastern side of Laconia. The Saranda Potamo disappears under the rocks to our right, near the place we first came upon it From this
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§ 1.122 peculiarity it is evidently the Alpheius, for Pausanias thus describes the road I am following: “On the road from Tegea into the Laconice, at the distance of two stades from the city, there is an altar of Pan on the left of the road, and another of Jupiter Lycaeus; there are foundations also of the temples of those deities. Seven stades farther stands a temple of Diana Limnatis, with a statue of ebony, of the workmanship which the Greeks called Aeginaean. Ten stades from thence are the ruins of the temple of Diana Cnaceatis. The Alpheius forms the boundary between the Tegeatae and Lacedaemonians: its source is at Phylace, not far from which a stream rising from many small fountains flows into it, and gives to the place of junction the name of Σύμβολα, or the Confluence. The Alpheius differs very much in its nature from other rivers, for it often hides itself and appears again. Flowing from Phylace and the Symbola, it descends into the earth in the Tegeatice, then rising again in the Asaea,” &c.
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§ 1.123 Were it not for the announcement of the road in the beginning of this passage, it might be doubtful which of the two subterraneous rivers of the Tegeatice (or rather of the southern part of the Tegeatice, for there is a third near the modern Persova, at the foot of Mount Parthenium ) was the true Alpheius, but Pausanias was following the direct road to Sparta, which, from the nature of the country, could have been no other than the modern route from Tripolitza to Mistra; and he had already spoken, in his route from Megalopolis by Asea to Tegea, of the Manthuric plain, the waters of which flow into the mountain at the Taki, though he has not noticed that subterraneous discharge. We follow up the ravine of the Saranda Potamo, closely confined between rocky hills, and frequently cross the river, till at 12.20 we arrive at a Khan which is named Krya Vrysis, cold spring, from a neighbouring copious source, the stream from which is joined by a river from the mountain to the eastward. The Krya Vrysis appears to be what Pausanias calls the source of the Alpheius, and the eastern branch that which he designates as originating in many small fountains. The confluence of the two was the Symbola. As Phylace was not far from the source of the Alpheius and the Symbola, it could not have been very distant from the modern Krya Vrysi, but I do not observe any remains of antiquity.
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§ 1.124 Phylace and the course of the eastern branch of the Alpheius, seem to have formed the frontier line of the Tegeatice and Laconice. Having halted ten minutes, we proceed along the ravine, with rocks on either side, but soon turn out of it to the east, and then, regaining the former direction, pass at 1.40 through a narrow strait called the Stenuri. Vervena, a village in the Vilayeti of Aios Petros is seen on the left, in a lofty situation under Mount Malevo, as the highest part of this range is called. It is in the vicinity of Vervena that the small streams have their origin, which unite to compose the eastern branch of the Alpheius. From the Stenuri we descend into a small plain, in which are many wild pear trees, and pass from thence through some narrow ravines and rocks, where two men could hardly march abreast, until, at 3.20, we arrive in the midst of this difficult country, at a Derveni, or guard-house, from whence appears on the left, on the southern slope of Mount Malevo, the village of Arakhova belonging to the Mistra Kazasi, or Vilayeti of Mistra.
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§ 1.125 At 4 we arrive at the Khan of Krevata, so called from a Greek family of Mistra, one of whom built it; below it, on the east, is a little stream, and a few Kalambokki grounds: the waters flow to the Eurotas. We halt twenty minutes at the Khan, and then proceed over the same kind of mountains till 5, when, at the rise of one of them, the magnificent range of Taygetum presents itself to view, and Mistra is seen on a steep height, under the middle of it. The view of the plain before Mistra, in which Sparta was situated, is intercepted by the lower roots of the northern part of Taygetum. We continue descending the long slope of the Malevo range, enjoying occasionally a view of Mistra, of Mount Taygetum, and of the continuation of that range to the northward of Mistra, on the face of which are seen the large villages of Longastra, Bordhonia, and Ghiorghitza. At 6.15 we enter the ravine of a winter torrent coming from the east, and at 6.20 cross the Kelafina, a wide, deep, and rapid stream, just above a small island; one of the loaded horses falls twice in the stream. Proceed along its left bank into the valley of the Iri, or Eurotas, cross that river at 6.35, and soon after enter among the roots of Taygetum, which, advancing to the eastward, terminate on the north side of Sparta, so nearly meeting the opposite range, of which we have been following the slopes, as to leave only a space for a narrow valley, in which the Kelafina joins the Iri, just above the site of Sparta. After passing for a short distance through the hills, we re-enter the plain, and arrive at Mistra at 7.35. The last hour and a half has not been performed at so quick a rate as the rest. The whole distance from Tripolitza is about forty-two miles by the road. The voivoda assigns me a lodging at the metropolitan bishop's.
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§ 1.126 March 18th. Mistra and Argos being an appanage of the sultan's sister, are under a voivoda sent from Constantinople, who accounts to the sultan for the revenue of the district, and is local governor, subject to the general government of the pasha. He has two Greek assessors, who arrange all details of the collection. The person at present residing here, is only Vekil, or deputy of the sultana's chief agent, who is shortly expected from Constantinople. I visit this morning the acting voivoda and the kadi. The latter says, “the people here like me so well, that they are going to build me a new house, and I shall therefore remain with them.” It seems they have lately built one for the voivoda, and that the kadi's speech was directed to a Greek, who, as being
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§ 1.127 agent of the English consul at Patra, had accompanied me in the visit, and who being also one of the chiefs of the Greek community, might have great influence in promoting the kadi's wish for a new house. I ride up to the Castle of Mistra, and pass the rest of the morning at that important geographical station. The castle seems never to have been very formidably fortified, though it is strong by its position and great height; it is about five hundred feet above the level of the plain; the hill on three sides is extremely steep; on the fourth, or southern side, it is perpendicular, and separated from another similar rock by the torrent Pandeleimona, so called from a monastery του Παντελεήμονος towards its sources. This stream divides the town into two parts, tumbling over a rocky bed, like the Hercina at Livadhia; a little below the town it joins another rivulet which rises to the northward, near the village of Varsova: the united stream joins the Eurotas, to the southward of Sparta. There are still the remains of some fine cisterns in the castle. The view from thence is of the utmost beauty and interest; the mountains to the north, east, and south, are spread before the spectator from Artemisium, on the confines of Argolis and Arcadia, to the island of Cythera inclusive, together with a small part of the Laconic gulf,
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§ 1.128 just within that island. All the plain of Sparta is in view, except the south-west corner near Bardhunia, which is concealed by a projection of Mount Taygetum. Towards the mountain the scene is equally grand, though of a different nature. A lofty summit of Taygetum, immediately behind the castle, three or four miles distant, is clothed with a forest of firs, and now deeply covered with snow; the nearer slopes of the mountain are variegated with the vineyards, corn-fields, and olive plantations belonging to the villages of Barsiniko, and Vlakhokhori situated on opposite sides of the ravine of the Pandeleimona, which winds from the southward in the direction of the highest summit of Taygetum. This remarkable peak is not much inferior in height to Olono, or any of the highest points of the Peloponnesus, and is more conspicuous than any, from its abrupt sharpness. I cannot learn at Mistra any modern name for it, except the very common one of Ai Elia, or Saint Elias, who, like Apollo of old, seems to delight in the protection of lofty summits. A cultivated tract of country, similar to that about Barseniko and Vlakhokhori, occupies the middle region of Taygetum through its whole length; it is concealed from the great plain by a chain of rocky heights which immediately
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§ 1.129 overhang the plain, and of which the Castle-hill of Mistra is one. Like that hill they terminate in steep slopes or in abrupt precipices, some of which are almost twice as high as the Castle of Mistra, though they appear insignificant when compared with the snowy peaks of Taygetum behind them. They are intersected and separated from one another by the rocky gorges of several torrents which have their origin in the great summits, and which, after crossing the upper cultivated region, issue through those gorges into the plain, and then traversing its whole breadth join the Eurotas flowing under the eastern hills. This abrupt termination of Taygetum, extending all the way from the Castle of Mistra, inclusive, to the extremity of the plain, forms the chief peculiarity in the scenery of Sparta and its vicinity. Whether seen in profile, contrasted with the richness of the plain, or in front with the majestic summits of Taygetum rising above it, this long gigantic bank presents a variety of the sublimest and most beautiful scenery, such as we hardly find equalled in any part of picturesque Greece itself. One of the most delightful spots in this scene is the village of Perori, a little to the southward of Mistra, where the mosque and houses interspersed amidst gardens are traversed by a rapid stream like the Pandeleimona, which issues from
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§ 1.130 a stupendous rocky opening behind the village. It would seem, that in the time of Coronelli this village was connected with Mistra, and formed a part of the southern quarter then called Exokhori. The southern part of the town is still named Misokhori; the part occupied by the Metropoli, under which name the cathedral and bishop's house are comprised, is Katokhori: the houses are so much dispersed, that the town occupies a mile and a half along the foot of the hill, though there are not altogether more than 1000 houses, of which about a fourth are Turkish. Katokhori alone, together with another quarter now deserted, called Kastro, on the north-eastern side of the castle above Katokhori, once contained an equal number, but they were destroyed during the insurrection of 1770, or after that event, and their ruins only are now left, occupying a space equal to that of the present inhabited town. When the Albanian army was destroyed or driven out of the Peninsula, there still remained the old Albanian colony of Bardhunia, the Maniates, and the hungry Pashas of the Morea, to plunder Mistra in succession; and it was not until the Turkish fleet had reduced Mani to terms, that the Porte had the power of affording the place any protection. The remains of the house of Krevata, once the richest family in the Morea, but which is now extinct, in consequence of having been tempted by the Russians to engage in the insurrection, are seen in Katokhori, between the Metropoli and the river Pandeleimona. The Krevata, who joined the insurrection, fled into Mani on its failure, and died there.
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§ 1.131 March 19. — I visit some of the chief Greeks, in company with the English agent. There are still some men of property both landed and commercial, and the place is at length recovering from the effects of the Russian insurrection; new buildings are rising in many parts of the town. Before the year 1770, Mistra often exported 50,000 okes of silk per annum; the export now amounts, in good years, to half that quantity, sent to Mothoni for Tunis, to Patra for Europe, or to Anapli for Khio and Constantinople. The olive plantations around the town of Mistra alone produce, in good years, 50,000 barrels of oil of forty-eight okes, of which from 5000 to 10,000 are exported; the rest is consumed in the Morea. The oil is said by the Mistriotes to be the best in the Peninsula; I saw some quite colourless: the merchants buy it from the planters at forty to fifty-five paras the Botza of twenty okes. In the alternate years, when the olive crop is generally deficient, the price is higher.
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§ 1.132 A new tax of a para an oke has lately been laid upon oil. Every large house has a cistern attached to it for holding the oil, where it is kept until sold. Velanidhi and prinokokki are gathered in large quantities on Mount Taygetum; the former is found entirely within the government of the Bey of Mani, and he enjoys a monopoly of it. The prinokokki is purchased from the peasants at fifteen to twenty piastres the oke, and is shipped at Marathonisi for Tunis and Leghorn; at Tunis it is chiefly used in dyeing the Feshes, or red skull caps, which in every part of Turkey are worn under the turban, or head shawl. The other productions of the Mistra Kazasi are similar to those of the other parts of the Peninsula. The Greeks complain of the weight of the kharatj, or capitation, and of the avarisi, or tax on moveable property; both of which being exacted as if there were 8500 persons liable to them, whereas there are only 3000, each person pays in the proportion of 2 and 5/6ths. Mr. V. D. our agent, tells me that he pays 500 piastres a year for imposts of all kinds. He was lately subjected to an avania of 1000 piastres, the Pasha having been informed that he was shipping grain at Marathonisi contrary to the order of the Porte, which itself monopolizes the grain of this district According to a recent firmahn, the Greeks of Mistra are allowed to repair their churches on condition of paying 300 piastres for each to a mosque at Constantinople
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§ 1.133 March 20. — Having heard of some antiquities at Sklavokhori, which the learned of Mistra consider the site of the ancient Amyclae, I set out for that place at 9.25. At 9.40 pass Perori, and at 10 ride through Aianni, which, like Perori, has a picturesque mosque, a fine stream running through it, and some good gardens. It stands nearer to the precipices than Perori, and the river does not come through an opening in the rocks from the upper Taygetum, but rises in the village itself. At 10.30 cross another stream which flows through a rocky gorge from the elevated hollow included between the summits of Taygetum and the heights which border the plain. At 11.10 cross another rivulet flowing from another opening in the precipitous heights; and at 11.20 arrive in the village of Sklavokhori, which is situated half a mile from
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§ 1.134 the foot of the mountain midway between two openings. Eight or nine ruined churches shew the former importance of Sklavokhori; of houses there are not at present more than thirty, much dispersed. In a church dedicated to the sleep (i.e. the death) of the Virgin I find three columns with Doric capitals, one of which is of grey granite; one of the capitals is of the spreading kind, with an echinus forming a very acute angle with the plinth, like the Doric capitals of Sicily and Paestum — those of the others are much more obtuse; on the outside of the church there is a broken column with an inscription. In other chapels I find some Ionic capitals of white marble, and some fragments of inscriptions, one of which contains the letters ΑΜΥΚΛ, which seem to have belonged to the word Amyclae, though I do not think the position of Sklavokhori will agree with the idea given of that of Amyclae by Polybius and Pausanias, according to whom that place was much nearer to the Eurotas and to Sparta. A chapel of St. Elias contains two curious marbles, representing in relief, in a hollow compartment various articles of female apparel and ornament;
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§ 1.135 slippers, bonnets, combs, mirrors, &c. In the centre of each there is an inscription, as follows: ΛΑΥ ΑΓΗΤΑ ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ ΙΕΡΕΙΑ, ΑΝΘΟΥΣΗ ΔΑΜΑΙΝΕΤΟΥ ΥΠΟΣΤΑΤΡΙΑ. The forms of the characters in the first inscription would seem to indicate a greater antiquity than those in the latter, which is confirmed by the dialectic difference between them. Mr. V. D. has constructed a car, for the purpose of conveying this stone to the coast, for Lord A. Mistra is the only place I have yet seen in Greece where cars are used; they serve chiefly for transporting the barrels of oil. They are merely a rough frame-work upon two solid trucks, and closely resemble those in use in several of the plains of Asia Minor. From Sklavokhori I ride to Aia Kyriaki, St. Sunday, a church standing on a height half a mile from the Eurotas, nearly in the centre of the plain as to its length. I here perceive that the heights, at the north-eastern extremity of the plain upon which Sparta stood, are a part of a chain of low hills following the course of the Eurotas through the whole length of the plain of Mistra, and separating the latter from the lower level of the vale of the Eurotas, leaving openings only for the streams which descend
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§ 1.136 from Mount Taygetum into the Eurotas. Aia Kyriaki and another summit farther south are the only eminences of any considerable height in this little chain, which is not readily distinguishable from the opposite side of the plain. Nothing is now to be seen at Aia Kyriaki but two imperfect inscriptions, in one of which are the letters AMY following the name Δεξιμαχου and leaving little doubt, that the incomplete word was ΑΜΥΚΛΑΙΟΥ. As far as this evidence goes, therefore, St. Kyriaki has as good pretensions to be considered the site of Amyclae as Sklavokhori. The numerous churches still existing at the latter place either entire or in ruins, shew that it was once a Christian town of considerable importance, and its name appears to indicate that it was the principal settlement of the Slavonic colonists of the Laconice in the middle ages; it is very probable, therefore, that at the time when Sklavokhori was populous, the fragments of antiquity now found in the churches were brought thither from Sparta, or the other ancient sites in the neighbourhood; for although the modern Greek masons are great destroyers of the remains of
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§ 1.137 antiquity, the more lettered classes, who have some respect for the ancient fame of the nation, are in the habit of preserving inscribed or sculptured stones by depositing them in the churches or private houses. Aia Kyriaki commands a fine view of the plain and surrounding heights. From near the opposite side of the Eurotas, rises a steep bank surmounted at the height of 500 or 600 feet by a plain or table-land, beyond which there is an uneven country, intersected with ravines and rivers, which rises gradually to Mount Parnon and the other great summits of the eastern range; it contains large tracts of cultivated land and many villages, of which I had a good view from the castle of Mistra. This steep bank or bluff termination of the eastern range above the left bank of the Eurotas is another remarkable feature in the scenery of the country around Sparta; though inferior in height to some of the magnificent precipices which form a similar termination of Mount Taygetum, it shews, when taken together with them, the propriety of the term κοίλη Λακεδαίμων applied by Homer to the plain of Sparta, and to the city itself, which is well described also by Strabo as situated εν κοιλοτερω χωρίω. In most parts there is a level space between the great eastern bank and the Eurotas, but in one spot, a little south
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§ 1.138 of the southern extremity of Sparta, it is washed by the river. It was upon this part of the height that stood the suburb of Sparta called Menelaium. The situation as well of Amyclae and Menelaium as of Sparta itself, is nowhere so well described as in the narrative by Polybius of the expedition of Philip, son of Demetrius, in conjunction with Aratus and the Achaeans, against Sparta in the Social War, BC 218. Philip having overrun Aetolia, and retaliated upon its capital, Thermus, for the barbarous hostilities of the Aetolians against Dium and Dodona, moved at first northward to the extremity of the Ambracian Gulf, from whence he sailed in the course of a night to Leucas. From Leucas he sailed to Corinth; whence, after despatching messengers to summon his Peloponnesian allies to meet him with their forces at Tegea, he marched on the first day to Argos, and on the second to Tegea, where he was joined by Aratus and the Achaean troops. From Tegea he made a circuitous march through the mountains on the north-east of Laconia, and on the fourth day from Corinth and the seventh from Aetolia, suddenly made his appearance, to the astonished Spartans, on the hills which overlook their city. Leaving Mount Menelaium on his right hand,
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§ 1.139 he moved forwards, and encamped at Amyclae. “ Amyclae ”, adds the historian, “is a place in the Laconice, remarkable for the abundance of its trees and its fertility; it is distant about twenty stades from Lacedaemon on the side towards the sea.” Philip then proceeded to overrun the whole country to the southward, penetrating even as far as the extreme points of Asine, Taenarus, and Boeae, from which last he returned to Amyclae. Lycurgus, the king of Sparta, had meantime obtained an advantage over the Messenians, who, unable to reach Tegea before the king had passed through that place, had endeavoured to join him by marching through the Argeia into the Laconice, when, having been suddenly attacked by Lycurgus at the Glympeis, on the frontier of the two provinces, they fled with the loss of their baggage, and retired home again through the country of Argos. Lycurgus, on his return from this excursion, occupied Menelaium and its vicinity with 2000 men, and gave orders to the remaining forces in the city to be ready upon a given signal, to march out and draw up along the bank of the Eurotas, in the narrow space between the river and the city. Polybius then describes the situation of Sparta as follows: “Although Sparta,” he says,
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§ 1.140 “considered in its general appearance is of a circular form, and situated in a plain, yet within it contains several rising grounds and hills. On the eastern side flows the Eurotas, which for the greater part of the year is so large as not to be fordable. To the south-east of the city are the hills upon which stands Menelaium. They are rough, lofty, and difficult of ascent, and they command entirely all the ground between the river and the city; for the river takes its course along the very border of these heights, and the whole space from the foot of the hills to Sparta does not exceed a stade and a half in breadth. Such was the defile along which Philip, as he returned (northward), must be forced to pass, having on his left hand the city. The Lacedaemonians had moreover, by diverting the river above the straits, inundated the ground between the city and the hills, with the view that neither the cavalry nor infantry of the enemy should find a secure footing there, but that being obliged to march close under the mountain in a long file, and unable to afford each other assistance, they should thus be exposed to the Lacedaemonians. Philip, upon perceiving this arrangement,
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§ 1.141 determined upon driving Lycurgus from Menelaium, for which purpose, taking with him the mercenaries, the peltastae, and the Illyrians, he crossed the river (from Amyclae ). Lycurgus prepared to receive him (on Menelaium), and at the same time sent orders to his forces in the city to be ready on seeing the signal to march out, and deploy under the walls with the cavalry on the right. The success of Philip was complete; he killed 100 of the enemy, and forced all the remainder to take refuge in the city, except a small number in company with Lycurgus, who, after a circuitous route, entered Sparta in the following night. Philip then left his Illyrians in possession of the heights of Menelaium, and was returning to his camp with the light-armed and peltastae, when Aratus having in the mean time advanced from Amyclae with the phalanx (along the left bank of the river) nearly to the city, Philip crossed to the right bank with the light-armed, the peltastae, and cavalry, to observe the enemy, and effect a diversion until the phalanx should have passed through the defile (at the foot of Menelaium). An action took place, the peltastae particularly distinguished themselves, and the Lacedaemonian horse was driven back to the gates: after
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§ 1.142 which, Philip recrossed the Eurotas without impediment, and covered the rear-guard of the phalanx. Night then coming on, he halted near the (northern) opening of the pass. No position (observes Polybius) could be more advantageous than this for a hostile attempt against Laconia from Tegea, or from any other part of the interior of Peloponnesus; for it is not only the key of the passes leading into Laconia, but, though situated close to the river, and only two stades distant from the city, it is well protected on that side by an inaccessible mountain, above which there is a level, fertile, and well watered country, affording great facilities to an army either for access or retreat. Philip, however, declined remaining here: but next day, after sending forward his baggage, he drew out his army in the plain, and having remained a short time in sight of the city, then moved by his right towards Sellasia. Here he halted for the night, and the next morning, after having viewed the scene of action at Sellasia between the hills Eva and Olympus, where Cleomenes and Antigonus had fought, he proceeded towards Tegea, taking care to have a strong rear-guard. At Tegea he ordered the plunder from Laconia to be sold, and then returned through Argos to Corinth.”
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§ 1.143 From this narrative of Polybius it clearly appears, that Amyclae stood about two miles and a half from Sparta, near the right bank of the Eurotas, a situation in perfect agreement with what Xenophon says of Amyclae in describing the invasion of Laconia by Epaminondas, after the battle of Leuctra, on that memorable occasion when Agesilaus lived to see his former proud saying confuted, that no Spartan woman had ever seen the smoke of an enemy's fire. In this instance, the Thebans and their Peloponnesian allies descended from Sellasia into the plain immediately opposite to Sparta (the same narrow level on the left bank of the Eurotas in which Philip drew out his army as a challenge to the Lacedaemonians before he retired). Epaminondas perceiving a large body of the enemy at the Sanctuary of Minerva Alea on the opposite side of the Eurotas, did not pass over the bridge, but withdrawing his forces marched forward with the river on his right hand, burning and destroying, until he arrived near Amyclae, when he crossed the river, and encamped. Here the Thebans strengthened their position by felling trees and laying them before their ranks, a precaution which their Arcadian allies neglected. On the third or fourth day all the cavalry
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§ 1.144 advanced to the Hippodrome and Temple of Neptune Gaeouchus, where they were met by the Lacedaemonian horse supported by 300 infantry, who had been placed in a concealed position at the sanctuary of the Tyndaridae. The manoeuvre was successful, and the Thebans were forced to retreat to their camp. From thence they undertook a march of spoliation against Helos and Gythium, soon after which a movement of the Athenians in aid of the Lacedaemonians, the defection of some of the allies, a want of provisions, and the approach of winter, obliged Epaminondas to retire out of Laconia.” I think it must be evident from these two extracts, that Amyclae was not far from Aia Kyriaki. That hill indeed is more distant from what appears to have been the southern extremity of Sparta than the words of Polybius warrant; but as we find that there were some buildings or other places to the south of Sparta which must have occupied a considerable space of ground, such as the Hippodrome, the Phoebaeum, and the temples of Gaeaouchus and the Tyndaridae; and on the other hand, as Amyclae seems, from the description of it by Polybius, to have been dispersed among gardens and plantations, it may easily be conceived that, at the time treated of by Polybius, the distance between the nearest points of the southern suburb
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§ 1.145 of Sparta and of Amyclae may not have been greater than two miles and a half I think, therefore, that notwithstanding its distance, the hill of Aia Kyriaki, being such a commanding position as the early Greeks usually chose for their towns, may have been the site of the more ancient Amyclae, which, though it became a mere dependency of Sparta in after ages, was one of the cities of the Laconice at the time of the Trojan war, and until the Doric conquest. Pausaniasa describes Amyclae as a κώμη, or small town. He adds, that the Tiasa, so called from a daughter of Eurotas, flowed between Sparta and Amyclae. Midway between the southern extremity of the site of Sparta and Aia Kyriaki, a river formed from the junction of the streams of Mistra, Perori, Ai Ianni, and another, falls into the Eurotas, and not only corresponds perfectly to the Tiasa of Pausanias, but explains also the cause of that fertility and luxuriance of vegetation about Amyclae which Polybius has noticed. Polybius describes the temple of Apollo at Amyclae as not inferior in celebrity to any in Laconia. On the way thither from Sparta, Pausanias observed, on the bank of the Tiasa, a
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§ 1.146 temple of the Graces, named Phaenna and Cleta. At Amyclae, near the temple of Apollo, there was a figure, upon a pillar, of Aenetus, who died in the moment of being crowned for a pentathlic victory at Olympia, and five brazen tripods, of which the three most ancient were said to have been dedicated from the tenth of the spoils of Messenia; the others, which were of larger size, from those of the victory at Aegospotami. To the lower part of each tripod was affixed a statue. Two of the ancient tripods, with the statues of Venus and Diana attached to them, were the work of Gitiadas; the third, with the statue of Proserpine, was by Callon of Aegina. On the fourth tripod was represented Sparta with a lyre in her hand, by Aristandrus. On the fifth was a Venus, by Polycleitus. The statue of Apollo Amyclaeus was a work of the rudest and most ancient kind, and resembled, with the exception of the face, hands, and feet, a column of brass between forty and fifty feet high. It had a helmet on the head, and in the hands a spear and a bow. The pedestal of the statue was formed like an altar, and was supposed to be the tomb of Hyacinthus; both this and the
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§ 1.147 throne were adorned with a profusion of works in relief, but the latter was by far the more remarkable monument, and was the work of Bathycles, who had himself dedicated two statues of Graces in the temple, and another of Diana Leucophryene, the patroness of his native city, Magnesia on the Maeander. Besides the temple of Apollo, Amyclae contained a temple of Alexandra, daughter of Priam, in which were statues of Alexandra, of Clytaemnestra, and of Agamemnon. At Aia Kyriaki I met with a peasant of Riviotissa, a small village in the plain, who gave me the following information. The reputed owner of the land which he cultivates as zevgalates or metayer, is Stathi, Protosyngelo of the bishopric, who resides at the Metropoli as one of the bishop's officers. Out of a crop of twenty-one kilos, he pays three to the voivoda for dhekatia, six to Stathi for rent, and reserves the rest to himself; he is at all the expense of stock and labour: the same manner of farming the land occurs in the culture of every kind of
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§ 1.148 grain, whether wheat, barley, maize, or spring wheat (dhiminio). The greater part of the land on the banks of the Eurotas is cultivated in dhiminio, for which they are now ploughing and sowing; it is watered artificially by canals from the Eurotas, or by means of the streams which descend from Mount Taygetum. Wheat, in the common way, is sown in November and December. In the Kefalokhoria in the mountains near the sources of the streams, the dhiminio ripens without irrigation on account of the coolness of the climate, the greater quantity of rain in summer, and the superior quality of the land, but of course it is not reaped so early as in the plain; there also they have spring barley, which they have not in the plain. The soil of the plain is described to me, as being in general a poor mixture of white clay and stones, difficult to plough, and better suited to olives than corn; and such it appeared to me, except near Mistra and on the banks of the Eurotas. Thus it answers exactly to the words of Euripides, who, contrasting Laconia with Messenia, describes the former as a poor land in
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§ 1.149 which there is much arable, but difficult to work. The women of Mistra and the plain are taller and more robust than the other Greeks, have more colour in general, and look healthier; which agrees also with Homer's Λακεδαίμονα καλλιγύναικα.
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§ 1.150 CHAPTER V LACONIA March 21. — Set out at 7.55 for Sparta, riding directly down the hill from the Metropoli to the left bank of the river of Pandeleimona. At 8.08 begin to follow its left bank; at 8.10 the road to Longastra turns off to the left; at 8.15 join the Tripolitza road; at 8.22 cross the stream from Varsova and Kyparissia, where it joins the former; at 8.25 leave the Tripolitza road to the left; at 8.38 cross a bridge over the river of Trypi. Half a mile below the bridge stands a church of St. Irene, in the wall of which there is the trunk of a statue, and within the church an inscription in honour of a pancratiast. Near it is a ruined casino of Krevata. At the bridge, where I halted five minutes, I was overtaken by the voivoda, going to keep order at the paneghyri, or fair, which is held today at Magula, as the ruins of Sparta are called. He tells me that last year two boys were murdered at this bridge by drunken Turks returning from the fair. At 9 I arrive at the aqueduct of Sparta, where
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§ 1.151 a road towards Tzakonia turns off to the left. The remains of the aqueduct are traced across the valley which separates the heights of Sparta from the branch, or long counterfort, of Mount Taygetum, which I mentioned in our approach to Mistra; a small rivulet from an opening in the mountain flows along the valley into the Eurotas: the aqueduct is again traceable farther up the valley; it appears to be contemporary with the walls which inclose the largest of the heights upon which Sparta stood. There is another monument, apparently of the same date as the walls and aqueduct on the slope towards the Eurotas. This is a circus, the smallest perhaps in existence, being only twenty-three yards in diameter within. But when Sparta was reduced to the hill which is now surrounded with the Roman wall, this circus may have been quite large enough for the diminished population. The wall of the circus is sixteen feet thick, and was supported by large buttresses on the outside at small distances from one another, a construction which seems to have been intended for a considerable height of wall, as well as for a great weight within, though not a vestige of seats is now to be seen. The entrance to the circus was on the side towards the river. Below the circus are some remains of a bridge over the Eurotas.
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§ 1.152 The hills alluded to by Polybius, upon which Sparta was built, formed towards the Eurotas an irregular line of a mile and a half from the valley on the north, which separated them from the above-mentioned branch of Taygetum, to the south-eastern extremity of the site where the Eurotas is joined by a brisk little stream, which is now called Trypiotiko, from its origin near Trypi a large village in the Taygetan range, to the northward of Mistra. These hills present a very varied outline from the river, and are divided into four separate heights. First, beginning from the north, there is a small insulated hill with a flat summit, as high, if not higher, than any other part of the site; it stands between the north-east end of the large height and the junction of the northern rivulet with the Eurotas. Secondly, the principal height; it is entirely surrounded with the ruins of Roman walls, except the western extremity, which is occupied by the theatre; at the opposite or eastern extremity of this height, stands the ruined circus, at about one-third of the distance from the northern rivulet to the southern, or Trypiotiko. This largest hill of Sparta has a very broken outline and several summits, but the basis of them all is an irregular level, which is elevated forty or fifty feet above the marshy plain on the side of
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§ 1.153 the Eurotas, and presents a bank of that elevation towards the river. The third and fourth of the Spartan hills lie between the circus and the village of Psykhiko, which stands at the foot of the last height on the south side, and not very far from the Trypiotiko. These two summits rest on the same table-land already mentioned; for the last half mile, towards the junction of the Trypiotiko, they terminate north-eastward, in a precipice of about thirty feet high. In consequence of the difference of level, between the plateau of Sparta, upon which the several summits just mentioned are based, and the plain on the bank of the Eurotas, as well as by means of a general slope towards the west and south, the hills of Sparta present a higher profile towards the river than in any other direction. The level between the heights and the Eurotas is narrowest at the south-eastern extremity of the site, where it is about fifty yards wide; it is narrowed also, though not so much, below the circus, above and below which it swells into a plain of a quarter of a mile in breadth, inclosed between the hills and the right bank of the river. The only villages on the site of Sparta are Magula and Psykhiko.. Magula is a tjiftlik belonging to a Turk of Mistra, and contains a small pyrgo, with three or four huts situated amidst gardens.
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§ 1.154 Magula is a Greek name often applied to a height with ruins, especially when they are in a plain: it is hence given generally to the site of Sparta, though specifically to the tjiftlik. Psykhiko has fourteen or fifteen cottages, including a kalyvia or dependent hamlet, which is situated about 300 yards to the northeastward of Psykhiko, on the edge of the cliff just mentioned, immediately above a source of water, which, issuing from under the cliff, follows its foot for some distance, and then crosses the level and joins the Eurotas about 300 yards above the junction of the Trypiotiko. Thus, above that junction there is a low meadow surrounded on three sides by a running stream, and on the fourth by the cliffs at the southeastern extremity of the table-land of Sparta. The inclosed space is planted with mulberries, growing among fields of dhiminio, or spring corn. This is probably the position of the Platanistas, which both Pausanias and Lucian describe as a place surrounded by water. All the level parts of the site of Sparta are cultivated with corn. The only considerable relics of Hellenic workmanship are, 1. The theatre, the remains of which are daily decreasing, as it serves for a stone quarry to Mistra and the surrounding country.
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§ 1.155 In the cavea I perceived only a few fragments of seats; but the enormous masses of masonry which supported the two extremities of the cavea still subsist; they are built of quadrangular stones, which are not so large as those usually employed by the Greeks in similar constructions, and seem to indicate, that although the theatre may have existed from an early period, the exterior work now apparent is not older than the Roman empire. That the Spartans had a theatre from early times, there is no doubt, not for dramatic exhibitions, which were forbidden by the Lycurgan institutions, but for gymnastic exercises and public assemblies. Under such circumstances, a scene like that of the theatre of Athens would hardly be wanted, and accordingly the remains of the scene of the theatre of Sparta are chiefly of brick, and seem to show that it was an addition of Roman times. The centre of the building was excavated in the hill, but the ground affords little advantage compared with what occurred in some other Greek theatres, and the wings of the cavea were entirely artificial from the foundation to the very summit of the theatre. The interior diameter, or length of the orchestra, it is impossible to ascertain without excavation; the breadth of
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§ 1.156 each wing appears to have been about 115 feet; the total diameter about 450 feet, which was probably greater than the diameter of any theatre in Greece Proper, except that of Athens, unless it shall be found that Pausanias is correct in saying that the theatre of Megalopolis was the greatest in Greece. In front of the theatre, and not far from it, there is a sepulchral chamber carefully constructed of large quadrangular stones. 2. A little more than half way from the theatre to the circus, I found two opposite doors, each formed of three stones, and buried almost to the soffit, thus: [figure] On one side of these doors there is some appearance of seats, as if the building had been a place of public assembly; I found also a fragment of the drapery of a statue of white marble, executed in a manner which modern artists cannot, or at least do not imitate. 3. Four other doors constructed like the two just mentioned, and buried in the ground to a similar height. They are found standing in a line in the middle of a corn field, in the way
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§ 1.157 from the theatre to the junction of the Trypiotiko and Eurotas. Here are some foundations also of a wall of later construction. 4. In the modern road from Magula and Psykhiko towards Sklavokhori, there is an ancient bridge over the Trypiotiko, which is still in use. Its arch has a rise of about one-third of the span, and is constructed of large single blocks of stone, reaching from side to side: a part of the ancient causeway remains at either end of the bridge, of the same solid construction. A quarter of a mile beyond the bridge to the south-west, is the little village of Kalagonia. Every part of the site of Sparta is covered with fragments of wrought stones, among which, especially near the ruin 3, are found pieces of Doric columns of white marble, together with other fragments of architecture of different orders and dimensions. Similar remains have formed the principal materials of the Roman walls, now almost entirely ruined, which surround the principal height. The depth, in the ground, of the door frames in ruins 2 and 3, shew the height to which the ruins of the city have raised the present above the ancient surface, and leave great reason to believe that some of the works of art existing in the time of Pausanias may be found amidst the accumulated
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§ 1.158 soil, whenever a complete search can be made with safety. Meantime the large supply of building materials which exists above ground in the ruined walls of the citadel, and particularly in the vast mass of the theatre, may long serve as a protection from the hands of the masons to what may remain below the surface. It is not only by carrying away the wrought stones of the ancient buildings that those persons destroy the remains of antiquity in every part of Greece, but they often break the large wrought masses into smaller pieces, rather than resort to the natural quarry, if the ancient site happens to be nearer, or otherwise more conveniently situated for moving the materials. Those whose only idea of the Spartans, is that of a people inimical to the elegant arts, as connected with luxury, may not expect to find many valuable monuments of art among the remains of their capital. But, in fact, the institutions of Lycurgus, which formed the Spartan discipline, had already ceased to have their entire effect, before the arts attained their acme in Greece; it is evident, moreover, from the remote date of some of the monuments of Sparta described by Pausanias and other authors, that in every age those religious feelings which were founded on the common belief and customs of all Greece,
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§ 1.159 and which were gratified by the dedication of splendid edifices and works of sculpture, were as strong at Sparta as in any part of the country. Without a firm basis of religion, or superstition, the Lycurgan discipline could not have long endured. Artists, therefore, though not enjoying at Sparta all the benefits of that passion for the decoration of their city which distinguished the Athenians, could never have been without encouragement, and they would be equally inspired by that consciousness that they were forming a dedication to the gods and an object of adoration, which was, perhaps, the chief cause of the excellence of the Greeks in sculpture, as it may have been of the painters of Europe after the revival of the arts. It is a remark of Thucydides that, “If Lacedaemon were demolished, and nothing remained but its sacred buildings and foundations, men of a distant age would find a difficulty in believing the existence of its former power, or that it had possessed two of the five divisions of Peloponnesus, or that it had commanded the whole country, as well as many allies beyond the Peninsula -- so inferior was the appearance of the city to its fame, being neither adorned with temples and splendid edifices, nor built in contiguity, but in separate quarters, in the ancient method.
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§ 1.160 Whereas, if Athens,” adds the historian, “were reduced to a similar state, it would be supposed that her power had been twice as great as the reality.” The arts of architecture and sculpture, however, received a great developement in Greece from increasing riches and emulation after the time of Thucydides, the monuments multiplied more rapidly than in earlier ages, and Sparta, relaxing in the severity of its manners, partook in the general taste. There seems no reason, therefore, to suppose that the site of Sparta, favourable by its own peculiarities to the preservation of remains of antiquity, would be a more unpromising field for research than at least the second-rate cities of Greece, especially as it appears from Pausanias to have preserved its monuments at the end of the second century of our era, in a more entire and uninjured state than almost any city except Athens. Before I attempt to render intelligible any observations on the ancient topography of the city, I shall give an abstract of the description of Sparta by Pausanias; in which, by attempting a division of it under several heads, we shall be enabled perhaps to discover a greater degree of method in his description, than is at first apparent. 1st. The first place he notices is the agora. Here
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§ 1.161 were, the council-house of the elders (senate) and the offices of the Ephori, Nomophylaces, and Bidiaei. The most remarkable building was the Persian Stoa, first erected from the spoils of the Medes, and afterwards enlarged and decorated: on the columns were figures of Persians in white marble, and among them that of Mardonius; also that of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus. The agora contained likewise temples of Julius Caesar, and of Augustus; in the latter there was a brazen statue of Agias, a Spartan prophet. In the place called Chorus were statues of Apollo Pythaeus, Diana, and Latona, and near it were temples of Earth, of Jupiter Agoraeus, of Minerva Agoraea, of Apollo, of Juno, and of Neptune Asphalius. There was a colossal statue in the agora representing the people of Sparta, and a temple of the Fates, adjacent to which was the tomb of Orestes, and near the latter a statue of Polydorus, with statues of Jupiter Xenius and Minerva Xenia. There was also a Hermes Agoraeus bearing Bacchus as a child, and the old Ephoreia, a
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§ 1.162 building in which were the monuments of Epimenides of Crete, and of Aphareus. Secondly. In proceeding from the agora along the street Aphetae or Aphetais, there first occurred the Booneta, formerly the house of King Polydorus; beyond the office of the Bidiaei was the temple of Minerva, surnamed Celeutheia, with a statue dedicated by Ulysses, who erected three sanctuaries of Celeutheia in different places. In proceeding along the Aphetais, occurred the heroa of Iops, Amphiaraus, and Lelex — the temenus of Neptune Taenarius — a statue of Minerva, dedicated by the Tarentini — the place called Hellenium — the monument of Talthybius — the altar of Apollo Acritas — Gaseptum, a structure sacred to Earth, near which there was a statue of Apollo Maleates: and at the extremity of the Aphetais, very near the wall (of the city) the temple of Dictynna and the royal sepulchres of the Eurypontidae. Near the Hellenium was the temple of Arsinoe, who was sister of the wives of Castor and Pollux. Near the Barriers was a temple of Diana, and a little farther a tomb of the Eleian prophets,
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§ 1.163 called the Iamidae — a temple of Maro and Alpheius, who fell at Thermopylae — the temple of Jupiter Tropaeus, built by the Dorians on conquering the Achaei of Laconice, and the Amyclaei — the temple of the Mother of the Gods — the heroa of Hippolytus and Aulon. Thirdly. The street of Scias. This street was so called from an ancient place of assembly, said to have been built by Theodorus of Samos near which was a round structure, said to have been founded by Epimenides, containing statues of Jupiter and Venus Olympii; near these buildings were the tomb of Cynortas, the temple and monument of Castor, the tomb of Idas and Lynceus, and the temple of Proserpine the Saviour b. Near the temple of Apollo Carneius, called the Domestic stood a statue of Apollo Aphetaeus. A quadrangular place surrounded with stoae was anciently used for selling secondhand wares. Near it there was an altar sacred to Jupiter, Minerva, and the Dioscuri, all surnamed Ambulii — opposite to which were the place called Colona and the temple of Bacchus Colonatas, and the temenus of the hero who conducted Bacchus to Sparta. Not far from the Dionysium of Colona was the temple of Jupiter
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§ 1.164 Euanemus, on the right of which was the heroum of Pleuron. Near the latter was the temple of Juno Argeia, standing on a hill — the temple of Juno Hypercheiria contained an ancient wooden statue of Aphrodite Hera. [ξόανον αρχαΐον. The word ξόανον, used by Strabo in reference to statues of every material, is always applied by Pausanias to those in wood. In the Arcadics (c. 17) he informs us, that the ancient ξόανά were made of oak and cedar (juniper) of various kinds, of ebony, cypress, box, and λώτος, (the Celtis australis according to Sibthorp). It appears also from Pausanias, or from other authors, that the Greeks employed occasionally the olive, myrtle, ivy, vine, agnus castus, and some other woods.] In the road which led to the right of the hill there was a statue of Hetoemocles. Fourthly. The next division of the description of Pausanias was to the west of the agora. Here was the Cenotaph of Brasidas, and near the latter a magnificent theatre of white marble, opposite to which were the monuments of Pausanias and of Leonidas: at the latter there was a pillar bearing the names of the men who fell at Thermopylae, with those of their fathers. Fifthly. In the place called Theomelida, were the royal sepulchres of the Agidae, and near them the Lesche of the Crotani, who were a portion of the Pitanatae, and near the Lesche a temple of Aesculapius. Proceeding from thence
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§ 1.165 were the monument of Taenarus and the temples of Neptune Hippocurius and of Diana Aeginaea. Returning to the Lesche, occurred the temple of Diana Issoria, otherwise called Limnaea. Very near the tombs of the Agidae there was a pillar, recording the victories gained by Anchionis at Olympia and elsewhere. Pausanias then describes the temples of Thetis, of Ceres Chthonia, of Sarapis, and of Jupiter Olympius. In going to the Dromus from the tombs of the Agidae, the monument of Eumedes was on the left. There was an ancient statue of Hercules, to which the Σφαιρεις, or Ephebi, rising to man's estate, offered sacrifice, and near it, without the Dromus, was a house, anciently that of Menelaus. The Dromus contained two gymnasia; “it is the place”, adds Pausanias, “where young men are exercised in running, to this day.” Proceeding from thence there occurred temples of the Dioscuri, of the Graces, of Lucina, of Apollo Carneius, and of Diana Hegemache; on the right of the Dromus stood a trophy, erected by Pollux for his victory over Lynceus, near a temple of Aesculapius, surnamed Agnitas, because his statue was made of the wood of the agnus; at the beginning of the Dromus there were statues of the Dioscuri Apheterii,
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§ 1.166 and a little farther the heroum of Alcon, and the temple of Neptune Domatites. The place Platanistas received that name from its plane-trees, which were lofty and thickly planted. It was an island surrounded with a running water; two bridges led into it, on each of which there was a statue of Hercules at one end, and of Lycurgus at the other. The night before the contest, each division of the Ephebi sacrificed a young dog in the Phoebaeum without the city, near Therapne, and drew lots as to the bridge by which either party was to enter the Platanistas. Near midday they crossed the bridges. The opponents contended with their hands, and, by kicking, biting, and poking the eyes of the adversaries endeavoured to drive them into the water. At the Platanistas were the heroum of Cynisca and a stoa, behind which were heroa of Alcimus and Enaraephorus, a little farther that of Dorceus, from whom the
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§ 1.167 neighbouring fountain was called Dorceia, and that of Sebrus, from which the place was named Sebrium. On the right of Sebrium was the monument of the poet Alcman, near which there was a temple of Helene; very near the wall (of the city), were a temple of Hercules, with a statue representing the god in armour, and the monument of Oionus. Eastward of the Dromus there was a turning to the right to a temple of Minerva Axiopoenus, and to the left to another temple of Minerva, founded by Theras, near which was a temple of Hippoethenes, and opposite to it an ancient wooden Statue of Enyalius in fetters. Sixthly. That which appears to form a sixth division in the description of Pausanias begins abruptly as follows. “In Sparta there is a Lesche called Poecile, where are heroa of Cadmus, Oeolycus, Aegeus, and Amphilochus. The Lacedaemonians are the only people who give Juno the epithet of Aegophagus, and sacrifice goats to the goddess; her temple was said to have been founded by Hercules.” Near the theatre stood a temple of Neptune Genethlius, and heroa of Cleodaeus and Oebalus. The most celebrated of the temples of Aesculapius in Sparta was near the Booneta; to its left was the
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§ 1.168 heroum of Teleclus; on proceeding, there was a small height, on which stood an ancient temple of Venus with a wooden statue of the goddess armed; this building was singular, as having an upper story sacred to Morpho, a name of Venus, and which contained a statue in cedar of the goddess veiled and fettered. Near it there was a temple of Hilaeira and Phoebe containing their statues, and an egg suspended from the roof, said to have been that of Leda. Chiton was a house in which the priestesses of the same temple wove every year the garment for the statue of Apollo at Amyclae. Near it was the house of Phormion, and on the way from Chiton towards the city gates the heroa of Chilon and Athenaeus. Seventhly. The Lacedaemonians had a temple of Lycurgus; behind it were the tomb of Eucosmus his son, and an altar of Lathria and Anaxandra; opposite the temple were monuments of Theopompus and Eurybiades, and the heroum of Astrabacus. Eighthly. In the place called Limnaeum were temples of Diana Orthia and Latona. The statue of the former was small, and made of wood. Ninthly. The Lacedaemonians, says
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§ 1.169 Pausanias, have not a citadel in a high place like the Cadmeia at Thebes, or the Larissa at Argos; but the highest of the hills in the city, they call the acropolis. It contained the temple of Minerva Poliuchus, or Chalcioecus, which was begun by Tyndareus. Long afterwards the Lacedaemonians caused both the temple and the statue to be made of brass by Gitiadas, a Spartan, who composed Doric poems and a hymn to the goddess. Many of the actions of Hercules, and some of those of the Dioscuri, were figured on the brass in relief, together with other representations, of which the largest and most admirable were the birth of Minerva, and figures of Neptune and Amphitrite. There was a separate sanctuary of Minerva Ergane. Adjacent to the southern stoa of the Chalcioecus stood a temple of Jupiter Cosmetas, before which was the monument of Tyndareus. The western stoa of the temple of Chalcioecus contained two eagles bearing two Victories, dedicated by Lysander for his victories at Ephesus and Aegospotami. To the left of the temple there was a sanctuary of the Muses, and behind it a temple of Venus containing some very ancient statues of wood. To the right of the Chalcioecus stood a most ancient brazen statue of Jupiter, by Learchus of Rhegium, formed of
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§ 1.170 several hammered pieces united with nails. Near the Σκήνωμα there was a statue of Euryleonis. Near the altar of Chalcioecus stood two statues of Pausanias, together with those of Venus Abologerta, and of the brothers Sleep and Death. In the way to the Alpium there was a temple of Minerva Ophthalmitis, said to have been founded by Lycurgus. On proceeding from thence, occurred a temple of Ammon. Pausanias then ends with some remarks upon the name of Diana Cnagia, which seem to shew that there was a temple of that deity near the acropolis, with a statue said to have been brought by Cnageus from Crete. The theatre is the only point in the preceding description which can be identified with absolute certainty. But it is a point which throws great light on the whole description of Pausanias. Between the western side of the agora and the theatre, he mentions only one monument, the tomb of Brasidas. We have the situation, therefore, of the agora in the hollow of the great height behind the theatre. Thus placed, the eastern extremity of the agora would be not far removed from an opening, partly natural and partly artificial, which is still observable
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§ 1.171 towards the middle of that bank of hills which overlooks the valley of the Eurotas, and forms the front of Sparta to the northeast. This opening, it is further remarkable, is immediately opposite to the remains of a bridge over the Eurotas. Here therefore it would seem that the roads from all the eastern side of Laconia centered and crossed the river into the city, and having entered it, terminated in the agora. Pausanias has described two main streets leading from the agora to the walls of Sparta, in each of which there was a succession of remarkable objects — the one named Aphetae, the other Scias. The Scias passed by two heights, and terminated not far beyond that upon which the temple of Juno Argeia was situated. Pausanias does not indeed describe the first mentioned of the two heights by the word λόφος, as he does that of Juno Argeia, but he says the place was called Κολώνα, and that the temple of Bacchus which stood there had the epithet of Colonatas, which seems sufficient to shew that it stood upon a height. These particulars, therefore, answer so well to the two heights north-westward of Psykhiko, that it may fairly be presumed that the street Scias led in this direction; that the height nearest to the agora was the Colona, surmounted by the Dionysium,
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§ 1.172 and that the temple of Juno Argeia stood on the height nearest to Psykhiko. It may be observed, also, that the ancient bridge over the Trypiotiko, lying nearly in a line with the two hills, appears to mark the former existence of a street in that direction, and so far tends to confirm what has just been advanced. — The street called Aphetae, or Aphetais, traversed the city to the Dictynneium and the tombs of the kings of the race of Eurypon; it departed from the agora at the Booneta near which building stood a temple of Aesculapius, from whence there appears to have been another street leading to the walls, for though Pausanias does not specifically describe a Street, or give a name to it, he continues to mention a Succession of objects from the Asclepieium, terminating in the city gates. If the supposed direction of the Scias is right, it seems evident that the Aphetae and the street proceeding from the Asclepieium, must both be drawn' from the agora to the walls, in the interval between the Street of Scias and the theatre. It is difficult to say whether the Aphetais, or the street beginning at the Asclepieium, was the more westerly of the two. I should be disposed to think the latter, because Pausanias describes the Scias immediately after the Aphetais. It seems not improbable, that the modern name Kalagonia may
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§ 1.173 be a corruption of Heptagonia, which, from Livy's narrative of the attempt of T. Quinctius Flamininus to take Sparta, just before his treaty with Nabis, seems to have been a building in the circumference of the city, and probably on the side towards Amyclae, because the Romans advanced from thence and retired thither after their failure. It appears from the historian, that Quinctius, having 50,000 men, threatened the city on every side, but reserved his real attack for the three points of the Dictynneium, Heptagonia, and Phoebaeum, because Nabis, whose walls were incomplete, had reserved for the last those parts where the defence might be partly supplied by the strength of the exterior buildings themselves. For the rest of the topography of Sparta the most important point to determine is the acropolis. Pausanias says it was the highest of the hills of Sparta. This is rather a doubtful description, as there is little or no apparent difference between the height of the great hill and of that at the northern extremity of the site. Upon farther examination, however, it is seen that the only part of the great hill equal in height to the other is the back of the theatre, which could not have been the acropolis.
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§ 1.174 There is some reason to think also that the natural height of this hill has been increased by the theatre itself and its ruins, so that the expression of Pausanias may still have been just, as applied to the northern hill, which, moreover, being separated from the rest, and at one angle of the site, was better adapted for an acropolis than any other. As to the Dromus, if we suppose the Platanistas to have occupied the low ground above the junction of the Trypiotiko and Iri, and this seems the only place that will suit the descriptions of Lucian and Pausanias, it will almost necessarily follow, that the Dromus was the plain which lies along the bank of the Eurotas to the north-westward of that point; for that it was near the Platanistas, and consequently to the river, is evident from its having been employed in the exercises of the Spartan youth, as well as from the tenor of the narrative of Pausanias. Nor is this opinion invalidated by the passage of Xenophon in which he relates that the cavalry of Epaminondas, whose camp was at Amyclae, advanced, in approaching the city, as far as the Hippodrome and temple of Neptune Gaeauchus; for it seems evident that the Hippodrome was not the same place as the Dromus; first, because the Dromus is described by Pausanias as containing two gymnasia, and
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§ 1.175 as being a place, not for the running of horses, but of men, like the stadium in other Greek cities. Secondly, because Pausanias mentions the Gaeauchus in a very different part of his narrative from that in which the Dromus occurs, and apparently as being to the southward of the city. The Lesche Poecile seems to have been not far from the theatre, possibly to the westward, where some ancient foundations are now seen near Magula. I am inclined to believe that the temple of Lycurgus was in the same pert of the site. In front of the theatre, as I have already remarked, there is an ancient sepulchre still existing. It is highly probable that a monument so situated was that of some illustrious person; we have seen that Pausanias describes the tombs of the kings Leonidas and Pausanias exactly in this situation; the existing sepulchre, therefore, has some claim to be that of the two celebrated Spartans, who, in this case, were buried in a very different part of the city from the rest of the Agidae. Some idea may be formed from the ancient authorities of the situation of the five tribes of Sparta; namely, the Pitanatae, Limnatae, Messoatae, Aegidae, and Cynosurenses.
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§ 1.176 1. Pitanatae; — Herodotus shews that the theatre was in the quarter of Pitane; Plutarch mentions it as being the most desirable and fashionable quarter of Sparta, like the Colyttus at Athens, and the Craneium at Corinth; and Pindar describes Pitane as being at the ford of the Eurotas. These authorities seem to indicate that the Pitanatae inhabited all the part of Sparta adjacent to the agora, and extended to the river about the centre of its course in front of Sparta, for here was probably in all times its most frequented passage. The Pitanatae thus placed in the middle part of the eastern side of the city, will throw some light on the position of the royal sepulchres of the race of Agis, which stood near the Lesche of the Crotani, who were a division of the Pitanatae. If the tombs of the Agidae stood, like those of the Eurypontidae, on the skirts of the town, we may suppose that they were not far distant, from the natural opening in the eastern bank of the site of Sparta near the ruined Circus. They will thus be placed at no great distance from the Dromus, as they really appear to have been from the description of Pausanias.
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§ 1.177 2. The Limnatae; there can be no doubt that this tribe inhabited a part of the city near the Eurotas, the name having been derived from the marshes, which once existed there. As the Dromus occupied a great part of the lower level towards the southern extremity, we cannot hesitate in supposing the Limnatae to have occupied the northern; and this part of the site being in the neighbourhood of the acropolis, accounts for Pausanias having passed immediately from the mention of the Limnaeum to that of acropolis. The Issorium appears to have been in this vicinity, for Plutarch and Polyaenus, in relating a stratagem of Agesilaus for defeating a conspiracy which was formed in the city, at the moment when Epaminondas threatened it from the opposite side of the Eurotas, indicate the Issorium as a strong height, near Pitane. The Issorium was a temple of Diana, sumamed Issoria, or Pitanatis, or Limnaea; from this last epithet, added to the other data, it is probable that the Issorium was that part of the great summit which advances into the level of the Eurotas, a little above the ruined circus. 3. The Messoatae seem to have occupied the south-eastern part of the town, for the tomb of
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§ 1.178 Alcman, one of the most eminent characters of this tribe, was not far from the Platanistas. 4. The Aegidae, for a similar reason, appear to have been in the north-western part of the city; for the tomb of Aegeus, who gave name to them, was near the Lesche Poecile. 5. If the foregoing arrangement of the four tribes is well founded, the fifth, or Cynosurenses, were the occupants of the south-western part of the city. Barthelemy, however, has supposed that they inhabited the part adjacent to the branch of Taygetum, which overlooks Sparta to the north-west, such rocky projections according to him, having been called Cynosurae. Polybius has very clearly defined the limit of Sparta to the eastward, at the time of the invasion of Philip (BC 218), by saying there was a distance of a stade and a half between the foot of the cliffs of Mount Menelaium and the nearest part of the city. The narrowness of the interval is strongly described also by Livy, in relating the expedition of Quinctius against Nabis, which occurred twenty-three years afterwards; and again in that of Philopoemen, three years later, against the same Spartan tyrant; It
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§ 1.179 clearly appears, therefore, that the city then extended to the cliffs at the south-eastern extremity of the plateau, or tableland, and that only the meadow, which I suppose to have been the Platanistas, was excluded. Though Polybius says, that Sparta had no walls when Philip threatened the place, it appears from Pausanias that some fortifications had been hastily thrown up in the earliest attempt of the Macedonians under Demetrius Poliorcetes, and again when Pyrrhus overran Laconia. Nabis undertook to raise a more solid work around the city, and to protect it by a ditch though, as we have already seen, the operation was not completed when Quinctius attacked Sparta. Livy, in relating the subsequent attack of Sparta by Philopoemen, alludes to two of the city gates, one of which led to Mount Barbosthenes, the other to Pherae. After the death of Nabis, Philopoemen demolished all the defences of Sparta; but, at length, the Spartans having been taken into favour by Rome, the City was surrounded with walls by order of Appius, the Roman legate. In this state it probably remained, with little other change than that of its progress to decay, for the
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§ 1.180 ensuing 250 years, at the end of which time Pausanias visited Sparta, and mentions both walls and gates. Not a vestige of them, however, can now be traced. Polybius describes the form of Sparta as circular, and its circumference as forty-eight stades, which, at the valuation of the stade by Polybius himself, is six Roman miles. As the side towards the Eurotas measured about two miles with the windings of the outline, the computation of Polybius sufficiently agrees with actual appearances, though the form of the city seems rather to have been semicircular than circular. It is singular that neither Pausanias nor any other ancient authority has made mention of that lively, bright, perennial rivulet now called the river of Trypi, which skirts the site of Sparta on the south. An allusion to it, however, appears to have been made by the Oracle of Delphi in its answer to Lycurgus, as reported by Plutarch. The oracle is said to have directed the Spartan legislator to erect temples to Jupiter and Minerva, and to fix the seat of the senate and kings between the Babyca and Cnacion These two names were obsolete long before the time of Plutarch; one of them he supposed to be the same as the river Oenus, now the Kelefina: as to the other, it is difficult to discover
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§ 1.181 what he thought, owing, perhaps, to a defect in his text. In the opinion of Aristotle, as reported in the same passage of Plutarch, the Babyca was the bridge over the Eurotas, and the Cnacion a river. Whence it seems that Aristotle considered the river Trypiotiko to have been the Cnacion; for though the buildings alluded to by Plutarch did not lie exactly between that stream and the bridge over the Eurotas (supposing it to have been in the same central situation where its remains are now traced); there is no other river to which the interpretation of Aristotle can be applicable. If we suppose the Trypiotiko to have been the Cnacion, and the CEnus, or modern Kelefina, to have been the same as the Babyca, the oracle is then perfectly intelligible and correctly applicable to the locality; for the agora of Sparta lay about midway between the mouth of the Kelefina and the Trypiotiko. The following is the only information we find in ancient history as to Therapne, and it is so obscure, that I cannot but suspect some defect in the text of Pausanias. After having described Sparta, and then Amyclae, he says, “another road leads to Therapne, upon which there is a statue of Minerva Alea; before crossing the Eurotas, a little above the bank, there is a
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§ 1.182 temple of Jupiter Plusius; on the opposite bank there is a temple of Aesculapius Cotyleus, built by Hercules. The most ancient monument on this road is the temple of Mars surnamed Thereitas, in which there is a statue of the god said to have been brought by the Dioscuri from Colchi: it is on the left of the road. Therapne contains a temple of Menelaus, where are said to be the tombs of Menelaus and Helen, and a fountain called Messeis. On the right hand of the road to Therapne there is another fountain, Polydeuceia, and a temple of Pollux. Near Therapne is the Phoebaeum. Here is a temple of the Dioscuri; and here the Ephebi sacrifice to Enyalius. Not far from hence is the temple of Neptune, surnamed Gaeouchus, from whence, proceeding towards Taygetum, occurs the place called Alesiae, where is the heroum of Lacedaemon, son of Taygete From thence, after having crossed the river Phellia, near Amyclae, and proceeded in the direction of the sea, occurs Pharis ”, &c. In this description Pausanias receives some illustration from a passage in Xenophon already referred to. The
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§ 1.183 historian states, in relating the expedition of the Thebans and their allies against Sparta, after the battle of Leuctra, that Epaminondas marched from Sellasia to the bridge over the Eurotas, when seeing a body of hoplitae prepared to oppose him in the sanctuary of Minerva Alea, he drew off his forces, and marched along the left bank of the Eurotas, until he arrived opposite to Amyclae, where he crossed the river. Now the statue described, in the passage just cited, as standing between the city and a temple of Jupiter, near the right bank of the Eurotas, just before crossing it on the way to Therapne, is the only Minerva Alea at Sparta, mentioned by Pausanias. Here, therefore, the two authors perfectly agree, if we suppose the road to Therapne to have crossed the bridge of the Eurotas: and as there was a difference of five or six centuries between the visit of Epaminondas and that of Pausanias, it is not surprising that there should have been a temple and defensible post at the sanctuary of Minerva Alea at the former period of time, and a statue only at the latter. And hence it becomes highly probable that the present ford in the road from the vicinity of Magula to the eastward, which is central in reference to the eastern side of the site of Sparta, and where vestiges of a bridge are still apparent, was in all ages the situation of the bridge, the existence
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§ 1.184 of which, as we have seen, is attested by Plutarch and Aristotle, as well as by Xenophon. In the time of Pausanias it is probable that the city, instead of extending nearly to the bridge as in that of Xenophon, terminated at the heights, and left the whole level towards the bank of the river unoccupied; and that hence the passage across the level, which in the earlier period was a street nearly as far as the bridge, is described by Pausanias as the road to Therapne. As to the position of Therapne itself, there seems no other inference to be drawn from the words of Pausanias, than that the Phoebaeum and Therapne, though very near to each other, were on opposite banks of the Eurotas, Therapne on the left and the Phoebaeum on the right, and that Pausanias has omitted to notice that the river lay between them: for he proceeds, as we have seen, immediately from the Phoebaeum, to describe the places in the plain, without any mention of the Eurotas. It may be added, that this position of the Phoebaeum on the right bank of the Eurotas, agrees thoroughly with what may be inferred from the passage of Livy before cited, where he states that Quinctius, who was encamped on the right bank of the Eurotas near Amyclae, directed one
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§ 1.185 of his columns of attack against the part of the city adjoining to the Ephebeium, of which word Phoebaeum was the local form. I have already suggested that the walls which surround the great height, or second from the north, are of a late period of the Roman empire, and that they probably then defended all that remained of the population of Sparta. The fact is sufficiently apparent from the construction of the walls themselves, formed almost entirely of ancient fragments, and thus indicating an advanced state of ruin in the city itself. It is no less evident from the reduced space inclosed by them, comprehending only the principal height, and excluding the cavea of the theatre, the exterior wall of which was a part of the new inclosure. The circus, as I have already remarked, seems, both from its construction and dimensions, to have been of the same period as the town walls. As it must have been intended for the spectacles and customs of heathen Greece, all these constructions may be attributed to a period prior, though probably not by many years, to the establishment of Christianity in the Peloponnesus. Perhaps they were the work of Julian in his endeavours to restore the declining cities of Greece, and to reanimate expiring Polytheism. The invasion of the Goths in the fourth century, and the
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§ 1.186 irruption of the Slavonic tribes in the subsequent ages of barbarism, must have contributed to the further depopulation of Sparta; but at what time it was totally abandoned, or at what exact period Mistra became the chief place of the Κοίλη Λακεδαίμων, or Lacedaemonian valley, it is impossible to determine. We may presume that the advantages of the stronger position of Mistra, were felt and employed very soon after Constantinople ceased to be able to afford protection to its distant provinces. The name of Mistra first occurs in the form of Myzithra, which is still sometimes used, together with Morea for Peloponnesus, and other modern appellations, after the partial revival of letters in the twelfth century, when the Byzantine writers resumed the thread of Grecian history, and revealed at the same time the progress of barbarism Pachymer, speaking of an occurrence of the year 1269 names Monemvasia, Maini, Ieraki, and Myzithraa, as the chief places in the south of the Peloponnesus. It is true, that Nicephorus Gregoras, relating the same event, makes mention of Sparta as if it still existed; but it is probable, that Nicephorus merely preferred the ancient to the modern name, from a desire to shew his knowledge of antiquity, and to allude to the former glories of his country; and that, in reality, by Sparta he meant Mistra. The absence of any remains of churches at Sparta, and the antiquity of some of those at Mistra, prove that the Episcopal See was at a very early period of Christianity established at the latter place. The title of the bishop residing at Mistra is Metropolitan of Lacedaemonia, the same which we constantly find subscribed to the acts of the Councils.
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§ 1.187 March 23. — Ride to the village of Sinan-bey near Sklavokhori, in search of the site of Bryseae which the description of Pausanias, and some information given me by a peasant at Sparta, induce me to think was near that village. To the west of it, at the foot of the mountain, I find a fine source of water and several antique fragments in a ruined chapel; among others, on a piece of white marble that appears to have been part of a frize, is a wolf pursuing a deer, in a spirited style, in very low relief. In the village I find also a sculptured marble which had been described to me by the same informant. It was lying near a chapel, with the wrought side downwards. It represents in relief, a battle of women on horseback, armed with bipennes, against men on foot, in. scaly armour, armed with short swords. The subject was probably the death of Penthesilea;
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§ 1.188 the date that of the Roman Empire. The design is good, but the execution rough and unfinished; so much so, indeed, that an Ionic cornice at the top, which shews it to have belonged to a frize, is wrought in part only, the rest being simply smoothed and shaped out for the ornament. The stone was dug up three or four years ago, as I am told, in an adjoining field. [The marble is now in my possession.] Through the gorge behind Sklavokhori, at the entrance of which stands a tower, on the summit of a perpendicular rock there is a road to Sokha, a village in the upper cultivated region of Taygetum, where are said to be some remains of antiquity, possibly those of the temple of Ceres Eleusinia, which was near the great summits, anciently called Taletum and Evoras. Sinanbey I take to be the site of Bryseae. The marbles representing female, ornaments, and recording the names of the priestesses, Laoagete and Anthuse, which are now lying at the neighbouring village of Sklavokhori, probably belonged to the temple of Bacchus at Bryseae, into which women alone were admitted, and of which they performed the secret rites. The name of Bryseae may have been derived from the source at the chapel. I return to Mistra through Aianni.
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§ 1.189 #hapter VI LACONIA. March 25. — This morning I bid adieu to my host the bishop, and leave Mistra for Monemvasia. His Holiness appears to be a kind-hearted man, and a favourite with his flock, but as ignorant a Kaloieros as I have chanced to meet. In the course of conversation, when I stated that Britain is seven or eight hundred (Greek) miles long; — “then it must be as large”, he said, “as the Morea,” which is about one fourth as long. When I told him it was an island, he cried, “Lord have mercy upon me.” He had taken his idea of islands from those of the Aegaean. At Aianni I visit Amus Aga of Bardhunia,
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§ 1.190 who is living upon the villages of the plain. He receives 500 piastres from the town of Mistra, not to disturb them; the villages, therefore, are the principal sufferers. I was the bearer of a letter to him from the voivoda, requesting him to supply me with an escort and orders for the Dervenis on the frontiers of Bardhunia, of which these Bardhuniotes have made themselves the guardians. I find him in a miserable cottage in Aianni, surrounded with his followers in Albanian dresses, and himself clothed like a chieftain of the same people, in a waistcoat and cloak covered with gold lace: he appears about forty years of age. His manner is frank and civil, like that of the generality of his race, and he immediately supplies me with two men on foot to accompany me. Some of the Bardhuniotes possess tjiftliks in the plain of Mistra. The brother of Amus Aga, called Dervish Bey, had a large pyrgo in the town of Mistra, which is now in ruins: he was put to death twelve years ago by the then voivoda, by order of the Porte. I leave St. John at 7.57, and cross the plain in the direction of the opening through which the Eurotas issues from the Spartan valley into the plain of Elos. This gorge, which is noticed by Strabo, separates the eastern range from a
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§ 1.191 long and lofty counterfort of Mount Taygetum called Lykovuni, which bounds the plain of Mistra on the south, as the parallel root, which terminates at the site of Sparta, does on the north. At 8.57 the tjiftlik of Mohammed Bey is on the left, half a mile, and a little farther that of Dervish Bey on the right, at the same distance. Under St. Elias, or the highest peak of Taygetum, half way down, appears the village of Polovitza. At 9.12 we pass a river called Takhurti which rises above Sokha, and then, having crossed the low ridge which I have already described as a continuation of the heights on which Sparta stood, we descend into the lower vale on the banks of the Eurotas, where, at 9.32, we pass another stream at a mill just under the village of Kakari, opposite to which, on the other side of the Eurotas, is the tjiftlik of Skura. At 9.39 arrive on the bank of the Eurotas, which is here wide, sandy, and rapid; on the opposite side of the river stands a pyrgo and zeugalatia, or tjiftlik called Babas, At 10.20 pass a mill under the heights, lose five minutes, and at 10.35 begin to cross the extremity of Lykovfini.. — The Eurotas remains on our left, flowing eastward through a rocky ravine lying between the height we cross and the great bank on the opposite side of the river, which is a continuation of Mount Menelaium.
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§ 1.192 After having passed the extremity of Lykovuni, we enter a valley, through which a large stream flows into the Eurotas called Rasina, or Erasina; it descends from Potamia, a town of Bardhunia on the right. Though I find no mention in ancient history of a river Erasinus in this part of the country, the similarity of the modern name, and the frequent occurrence of Erasinus in ancient geography as the appellation of a river, leave great reason to suspect that Rasina is a corruption of Erasinus. Here the Eurotas resumes a more southerly course. On the hills to the right is seen Kurtzuna, two miles south of Potamia, and to the right of the latter the monastery of Garbitza, on the south side of the St. Elias, or highest summit of Taygetum, for which I can learn no other name here than the Mountain of Mani. At 10.53 we arrive at the Vasilo-Perama, or ford of the Vasili Potamo, as the Eurotas is here called, and cross it a quarter of a mile above the junction of the Potamia river, immediately opposite to which is a pyrgo and tjiftlik belonging to Dervish Bey, a young man whom I met at Amus Aga's. At 11.30 we are in the midst of low rugged heights with the Eurotas running through a gorge on the right, at the foot of Lykovuni.
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§ 1.193 At 11.50 descend upon its bank. At 12.17, after having taken some armed men from a guard-house, we pass through the Derveni of Mavrokurla, a hollow road resembling a great ditch, among some rugged heights. At 12.35 we again meet the bank of the Vasili Potamo, and at 12.45 enter a vale at first barren, but afterwards of good soil and green with wheat, more forward than in the plain of Mistra, and with sekali, or rye, already in ear: at 12.52 the pyrgo and tjiftlik of Abdul Kerim is on the right bank of the Eurotas, and the village of Finika somewhere near, but not in sight. At 2, on an ascent, which on the other side slopes to the plain of Elos, I halt for dinner on the edge of the hill, at the ruins of a chapel by the road side. I find these meridian halts, which are generally determined by the occurrence of a spring of water, to be the most acceptable arrangement for both men and cattle. From hence the village of Ieraki is seen on the side of the southernmost division of the eastern range, at the distance of three miles in a strait line. Behind it I perceive the ruins of a former town on the top of a hill. Among them there are said to be some remains of Hellenic walls. The gorge of the Eurotas at the foot of Lykovuni is now half a mile on our right: to the south
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§ 1.194 and south-east appears the gulf of Kolokythia with a part of the plain of Elos near the sea, and the island of Cerigo terminating the prospect. To the eastward the eastern Laconic range ends in a peaked hill, which forms a remarkable object from the castle of Mistra, and on the side of which is the village of Beziane. At 2.37 I pursue my journey, and descend gradually a barren tract, rocky and covered with bushes of mastic, holly-oak, and wild olive. At 3.08 arrive at a spot where the modern road passes over a flat surface of rock, in which the ruts of chariot wheels are still remaining for the distance of thirty or forty paces, they are four feet two inches asunder, and two inches deep; in one spot there is a semicircular excavation on one side, intended apparently for the purpose of allowing a car to turn out of the road to make room for another to pass. At 3.16, at a descent, I again see similar tracks of wheels, vestiges probably of the ancient carriage road which led from Sparta to Helos, and to the towns on the Laconic gulf. It here winds in curves first to the right, and then to the left, for the purpose of easing the descent; in some places there are marks of two or three ruts close together. Hereabout terminates the long narrow vale of the Eurotas, between the plains of Sparta and Helos, which Strabo has
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§ 1.195 so well described by the words αυλων μακρος. At 3.26 ascending a hill to Tzasione of the villages of Elos, I meet again with the ancient road indicated by the same kind of wheel tracks to the extent of not less than 100 paces. Here it would seem that the ancient carriage road to Trinasus and Gythium, separated from that which led through Helos to Asopus, Epidaurus Limera, and Boeae. Leaving one of the villages of Elos on the right, we pass at 3.50 through Tzasi, and descend into the maritime plain, and then turn to the left along the foot of some low hills, upon which are two or three more villages of the same district; to the right the plain extends to the sea, and a lagoon is seen at its south-eastern extremity. All the land towards the shore, being marshy, is in pasture, the rest is covered with corn now two feet high; and the forwardest I have yet seen. A few old mulberry and olive trees show that the plain once produced oil and silk. At 5 we arrive at Priniko, the last of the villages of Elos to the south-eastward. The plain and sub-district of Elos extends from the mountain of Beziane to the foot of the hills of Bardhunia and to the frontier of Mani, which begins at Trinisa, the ancient Trinasus. The villages of Elos are eleven in
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§ 1.196 number, none containing more than twenty houses; most of them are situated on the low hills which encircle the plain, but some are in the plain itself. Skala, which stands on the bank of the Eurotas, an hour above its mouth, is so called from being the place of embarkation of the district. Though Elos is almost entirely separated from the other parts of the district of Mistra by parts of Bardhunia and Monemvasia, its villages are all enrolled in that Kazasi. The dhekatia of cotton is one tenth, that of corn one seventh, a third of the remainder goes to the proprietor of the land, the rest to the zevgalates. The mukata of the three principal villages, Priniko, Tzasi, and Turali, was sold last year for twentyfour purses, and the purchasers are supposed to have been gainers in consequence of the high price of corn this year. Wheat is now twelve piastres a kilo in Mistra and Monemvasia. [The exchange with England was then about fifteen pence to the piastre.] The three villages just named produce corn, besides 4000 okes of cotton; and the fishery of the lagoon belongs to the same mukata. The chief produce of fish is in summer; in the winter the fish are disturbed by the violence of the wind and by the salt water, which is blown by it into the lake over the sandy beach which separates it from the sea.
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§ 1.197 Cattle are sent in winter to Elos for pasture from the plain of Tripolitza. There are a few buffaloes used for labour in the plain. Elos, Anapli, Gastuni, and Nisi are, I believe, the only places in the Morea where these animals are seen. At the sight of the high black cap of the voivoda's Dehli who accompanies me, the inhabitants of Priniko fled and hid themselves, and some time elapsed before I could procure admittance into one of the cottages. The Helote who owned it, when forced at length to make his appearance, bestowed the most ridiculous flattery on the ragged Turkish soldier. When told that the new voivoda was arrived at Anapli, on his way from Constantinople, and was daily expected at Mistra, “A thousand and a thousand times welcome”, he exclaimed, with a profusion of benedictions which the Turk received with a grave face, though perfectly understanding the value of these compliments to his master, and that the Greek knew as well as himself that the arrival of a new governor could make no other difference to the poor Helotes than the imposition of some extraordinary gratuity, and consequently that he meant nothing but curses in his heart. At dinner the Turkish soldier did ample justice to the Helote's fare, who not then knowing that I should
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§ 1.198 remunerate him for the damage, must have considered the effect of the Dehli's teeth as all clear loss to him. He pretended nevertheless to lament that the Dehli ate very little, and after many pressing invitations, when at length he saw the Turk fairly a-ground, ended with the reflection, οι μεγάλοι άνθρωποι δεν τρώγουν “great men never eat much.” One of the cottagers told me of two or three miracles that had happened to him last year. On one occasion a wine barrel that had been long lying empty he found full of good wine. It has always been part of the Greek character to believe in θαύματα: when the traveller tells them that such wonders never occur in his own country, they reply that it is a proof of their being the especial favourites of Heaven, though they admit that at present they are suffering severe punishment for their sins. The boluk bashi, who superintends the affairs of the mukatasi of Tzasi, and the two other villages, said to me, This land of Elos is good and rich, but we are obliged to squeeze the peasants too much, otherwise it would produce a great deal more.” Thus it often happens, that Turks possessing local power are well inclined to exercise it with moderation for their own sakes, but the vicious system beginning from the head, and passing through all the gradations of the Turkish government, irresistibly impels them to a contrary course. Priniko stands about a mile from the sea side; opposite to it begins the lagoon which extends for a mile along the shore, and then becomes a marsh as far as the south-eastern extremity of the plain, where the beach ceases, and the hills end in cliffs over-hanging the sea. The lake is about half a mile broad in the widest part. I can neither see nor learn any thing decisive of the exact position of that maritime city Helos, which supplied some of the ships of Menelaus in the Trojan expedition, and after the return of the Heracleidae partook of the fate of the other Laconic cities, which were reduced to insignificance by the Doric conquerors for the sake of Sparta, that of Helos becoming at length so peculiarly the victim of their aristocratical oppression, that the name of the people was applied to all the servile class of the Lacedaemonian state, whether natives of Laconia or of Messenia.
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§ 1.199 March 26, This morning, at a quarter of an hour beyond Priniko, I meet with an inscribed column, which was uncovered by the plough not long since in a field at the foot of the heights on the left of our road. The inscription contains the names of the Emperors Constantine, Valentinian, Valens, and Constans. The marsh is at a little distance on the right. Leaving this spot, at 6.15 we arrive, at the end of three miles, at the foot of the hill of Beziane, where some low cliffs overhang a narrow beach. The lower part of the hill, as well as the adjacent plain, is covered with the Velani oak, the leaves of which are just beginning to appear. We pass under the cliffs, and arrive, in five minutes, at a ruined chapel, where are some fragments of antiquity, and the base of a column of the time of the lower empire; — then ascend the mountain of Beziane, moving in the direction of the northernmost and highest peak; the road very rugged and overgrown with bushes. Just under the peak we pass a cave, in which saltpetre is made by simply boiling the earth: this is a common production of the caverns of the Morea. Sulphur being easily supplied from Milo and Crete, gunpowder is made in many parts of the Peninsula. A little under the cave I see some tracks of ancient wheels in the rock, of the same dimensions as those I measured yesterday. Having passed the higher peak to the left, and proceeded in the direction of the lower and southernmost peak, I halt under the latter for ten minutes, to take some observations of the eastern coast of Mani, which, as well as the greater
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§ 1.201 part of the gulf, is here displayed before us, bounded eastward by the hills behind Cape Xyli, and the mountains of Monemvasia. We now descend by a paved zig-zag road into the plain of Finiki, and enter the plain at the Turkish village of Patsha opposite to it is Finiki, standing on the side of the mountain which borders the plain on the south. Having passed at 10.30 through Patissia, we cross the plain from thence, and at 11.40 enter the hills which close the plain on the east, and upon which stand the villages of Sykia and St. Theodore. We leave, on the left in the plain, another village called Katavothra, and behind us, at the distance of a mile, that of Melaos, or Molaghos, situated eastward of Patissia, under the southeastern side of the high peak of the hill of Beziane. There are some fine fountains and gardens at Melaos, and two or three large pyrghi, which, as well as those of Patissia, are of a more solid construction than the ordinary Turkish towers. Melaos, some of the Greeks say, is properly Menelaos, and has something to do, though they know not what, with the history of Menelaus and Helen. The plain of Finiki answers precisely to that called Leuce by Strabo; it has thus changed its denomination from white to red; but I do not perceive that either of
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§ 1.202 them is appropriate as a descriptive name. The plain is partly grown with corn just springing up, but the greater part of it is in natural pasture. Having passed, at 12, between Sykia and Aio Thodhoro, the vulgar pronunciation of “Aγιος Θεώδορος”, we enter among low heights and narrow barren vales, where the ground is in many places covered with wild lavender in blossom, and ascend the mountains, which are steep, rugged, lofty rocks, offering no possibility of cultivation. At 12.50, in the highest part of this wilderness, I halt on the slope of one of the mountains, and dine with a rock for my table, near an opening in the range, which admits of a partial view on either side. To the northwest is seen the hill of Beziane, and to the eastward the sea near Monemvasia; directly before us is a rocky precipice, terminating a mountain, which trends to the south-eastward, and is separated by a ravine from the mountain immediately in face of Monemvasia. At 1.20 we begin to descend into this ravine, and skirt the foot of the precipitous summit, over rocky barren ground, in the midst of which, at 1.50, are a fountain, a garden, and the ruins of a village from whence, descending towards the sea, we arrive, at 2.30, in front of the northern side of the island of Monemvasia, which is a bare precipice like the back of Gibraltar. We now move southward along the rocks on the shore at a very slow pace, the road being bad, and our wretched Agoyatic horses nearly at the extent of their powers. At 3.30 cross the bridge, and enter the gate of Monemvasia. My Dehli Bashiy Mehmet Aga, for these high titles are freely assumed by a Turk of the lowest rank when on a journey or absent from his superiors, conducts me without ceremony to the house of Hassan Bey, the governor, who is absent, and to whom he despatches a letter of recommendation which he brought from the voivoda of Mistra; in the mean time we take possession of the governor's house, which is pleasantly situated close to the sea. I receive a visit soon afterwards from the kadi and some of the other Turks.
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§ 1.203 March 27. — The name of Mονεμβασία is derived from its singular situation, which admits only of one approach and entrance on the land side, over the bridge which connects the western extremity of the hill with the main land. The island is about half a mile in length, and one-third as much in breadth, its length forming a right angle to the direction of the main shore. The town is divided into two parts, the castle on the summit of the hill, and the town, which is built on the southern face of the island, occupying one-third of it towards the eastern end. The town is inclosed between two walls descending directly from the castle to the sea; the houses are piled upon one another, and intersected by narrow intricate streets. Many of the buildings are of Venetian construction; there are about 300 houses in the town, and 50 in the castle: all, except about six, are Turkish. Before the Russian invasion of the Morea there were 150 Greek families, but they, as well as the Greek inhabitants of the villages of this district, fled after that event to Asia, or to Petza, Ydhra, and the other islands. Some of them returned, after Hassan, the Capitan Pasha, had expelled the Albanians, who had marched into the Morea against the Russo-Greeks; but the Vilayeti has never recovered its Christian population, and does not now contain more than 500 Greeks; its cultivation has of course diminished, and now produces little more of the necessaries of life, than are sufficient for its own consumption. Before the insurrection, corn and kalambokki were exported: the only exports now are about 500 kantars of oil to Trieste, (the total quantity produced in the district being about 800 kantars) together with some figs, onions, and cheese. The whole district is rocky and mountainous, except the plain of Finiki. The town is
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§ 1.205 supplied with fruit and vegetables from Velies, a village on the hills, an hour west of Monemvasia, where are also a few vineyards, which produce a strong wine. That which gave rise to the name of Malmseya has long been extinct here. All the coast in sight from the town is an uncultivable rock. To the south, the coast line is terminated by Cape Kamili, a low narrow promontory, with a hummock upon it, supposed to resemble the back of a camel; Cape Malea, or Malia, rises above Cape Kamili, being exactly in the same line from Monemvasia. To the north, the coast in sight is terminated by Cape Kremidhi, the extreme point of the bay of Palea Monemvasia. I visit a large monastery in the town, said to have been founded by the Emperor Andronicus Comnenus, which would make it a work of the twelfth century. The church is one of the largest in Greece, but is maintained in a state fit for the church service towards the altar only; of the rest of the building nothing is left but the bare walls; at the end opposite to the altar are the remains of two thrones, which were destroyed by the Turks after the Russian invasion. My ciceroni say they were the thrones of a king and queen, whose names they cannot tell me. It does not appear from Nicetas, that Andronicus passed his exile in this part of the empire. There are some fragments of white marble lying in different parts of the church; one has two peacocks on it, with their tails spread; — below, an ox's head and a serpent, upon which one of the peacocks is treading. It is a work of the lower ages, probably of the same date as the church. There is one monk belonging to the monastery, and a small apartment for the bishop, who, though a metropolitan of high rank in the eastern church, is obliged, in consequence of the wretched state of this place, and the insult and extortion to which he would be exposed here from the Turks, to reside at Kalamata, except at Easter, when he comes here to officiate at the festival. In virtue of an edict of the Emperor Andronicus, he assumes the place of the Patriarch of Jerusalem in the synod, when the latter happens to be absent, and then sits above the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. His suffragan bishoprics are, Andrussa, Andruvista, Platza, Milea, Maini, Kolokythia, and Elos; all but the first and last are in Mani.
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§ 1.206 March 28. — Hassan Bey is not only governor of the fortress and voivoda of the district, but captain also of the Sultan's galley, stationed here to clear the coast of pirates, and more particularly intended to preserve Mani in its present orderly state. He is not a little proud of his exploits against the Maniates. He has not left them, he says, a single tratta to carry on their depredations by sea. Two of their captured galleys, similar in construction to his own, but much smaller, are now lying here, drawn up on the beach just within the bridge. He affirms, that since he has been entrusted with this command he has blown up eighteen Maniate castles, and destroyed almost as many villages; only a few months since he took Marathonisi, after firing a prodigious number of shot into it, when he also captured 90 kantars of powder, in barrels of 400 okes, and 40 kantars of shot, which had been landed from a French brig of war. The same brig sailed from Mani to Crete, where another cargo was landed for the use of the Sfakhiotes, but which was also seized by the governor of Khania. Hassan receives from the Sultan for the maintenance of his galley 12,000 piastres a year, 100 kantars of biscuit, and 10 kantars of powder: the vessel mounts twelve guns, and has fifteen pair of oars. His services in this quarter are of ancient date; when the Capitan Pasha Hassan was sent to settle the affairs of the Morea, after the Russian invasion, Hassan Bey marched from Marathonisi, which had been taken by the Pasha, across the Taygetum to Kitries, where
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§ 1.208 he shut up several of the Kapitanei in a tower, and forced them to a capitulation. The Greeks, who rose in consequence of Orlov's proceedings, are stated by Hassan to have committed the greatest cruelties against the Turks, and it is well known that the expedition of Dolgorouki against Mothoni failed in consequence of their disorderly, or cowardly, conduct. The Albanians, who entered the Morea on this occasion, amounted, according to Hassan, to 15,000, who themselves, alarmed at the great number of their countrymen that were following to share in the plunder, and supported by the government in their determination to admit no more, stationed parties at the isthmus, with orders to prevent any more Albanians from entering the peninsula. When the insurrection had been quelled, and peace made with Russia, the Albanians, who had committed and were continuing to commit the greatest excesses, were ordered to return home; but repeated firmahns having failed in producing obedience to this order, Hassan Bey accompanied the Capitan Pasha in his expedition against them, when they were totally defeated, and a pyramid of their heads was made near Tripolitza: of the survivors, some joined the old colonies of their countrymen at Lalla and Bardhunia, others entered into the service of the Pasha; only a few returned to Albania. Hassan speaks highly of
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§ 1.209 the services of the interpreter of the fleet, Mavroyeni, upon this occasion, particularly in the pacification of Mani: he was afterwards voivoda of Moldavia, and was beheaded by a Grand Vezir Hassan, for which the vezir himself lost his head. Hassan Bey's account of his wars in Mani is very amusing. It seldom happened, he says, that when he wished to destroy a village, he could not find some neighbouring village to assist him in the work, and generally under the guidance of a priest, upon condition of his having the stones of the ruins for a perquisite. Their own civil wars, Hassan says, are seldom very bloody, and months may pass without a single man being killed on either side. The women carry ammunition for their husbands or brothers, and it is a point of honour not to fire at them. To shew the respect in which Hassan's name is held in Mani, he shews me a poetical effusion which he has just received from thence, and in which he is described as gifted with every possible virtue. Poetry and piracy seem to be indigenous plants that will never be eradicated from Greece. The Albanian dress is daily becoming more customary, both in the Morea and in the rest of Greece: in the latter, from the great increase of the Albanian power; in the Morea, probably
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§ 1.210 in consequence of the prosperity of Ydhra, which is an Albanian colony, and of the settlements of Albanian peasantry that have been made in some parts of the Morea, particularly Argolis, as well as in the neighbouring provinces of Attica and Boeotia. The dress is lighter and more manageable than the Turkish or Greek. It is common for the Turks of Greece to dress their children as Albanians, though it would not comport with their own dignity and prejudices to adopt it themselves. Hassan's son is dressed a l'Albanoise; — himself as a galionji, or Turkish seaman. I ride out this afternoon to Palea Monemvasia, upon a handsome Egyptian horse, with which the governor provides me. The bridge is 536 feet in length; we cross it at 1.25, and proceeding northward along the shore, at 2.25 pass the ruins of a small Hellenic city, situated on the cliffs immediately above the beach; the place is called Old Monemvasia. I have little doubt that the ruins are those of the ancient Epidaurus Limera, and that Monemvasia is the Minoa of Pausanias. I proceed twenty minutes farther to some ruined magazines, situated under a peninsula, which forms a harbour on either side of it: that on the
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§ 1.211 south-west side is called the Port of Palea Monemvasia, and that on the north, the harbour of Kremidhi; the latter is included between the peninsula and the great promontory of Kremidhi already mentioned. Monemvasia itself has no harbour; the galleys and boats are hauled up on the beach. At the magazines of Old Monemvasia there now lies the wreck of an Ydhriote ship, which was burnt by lightning two or three years ago. I ascend the peninsula, it is crowned with a tower, and terminates to the NNE in a perpendicular precipice. Returning, I examine the ruins of Epidaurus, of which Pausanias says only, that “the town was situated on a height not far from the sea; and that the remarkable objects in it were sanctuaries of Venus and Aesculapius, the latter containing an upright statue of marble; a temple of Minerva, in the acropolis, and another of Jupiter Soter, in face of the harbour”. The walls, both of the acropolis and town, are traceable all round; and in some places, particularly towards the sea, they remain to more than half their original height. The town formed a sort of semicircle on the southern side of the citadel. The towers are some of the smallest I have ever seen in Hellenic fortresses; the faces ten feet, the flanks twelve: the whole

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