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

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§ 1.212 circumference of the place is less than three quarters of a mile. The town was divided into two separate parts by a wall, thus making, with the citadel, three interior divisions. On the acropolis there is a level space, which is separated from the remaining part of it by a little insulated rock, excavated for the foundations of a wall. I take this platform to have been the position of the temple of Minerva. On the site of the lower town, towards the sea front, there are two terrace walls, one of which is a perfect specimen of the second order of Hellenic masonry. Upon these terraces may have stood the temples of Venus and Aesculapius. There are, likewise, some remains of a modern town within the ancient inclosure, namely, houses, churches, and a tower of the lower ages. After mentioning the port of Jupiter Soter, Pausanias immediately adds, “below the city a promontory extends into the sea, called Minoa. The bay does not differ from other retired shores of the Laconice, but the beach affords pebbles more beautiful in form, and which are of every variety of colour.” The beach, in fact, consists of pebbles, and among them I find many colours; though I question whether as
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§ 1.213 varied a selection might not be made in many other parts of the Laconic coast. Of the harbour of Jupiter Soter, I cannot discover any remains; but this is not surprising, as upon such a shore it must have been artificial, and formed, as usual, by a mole projecting into the water, a work which might be easily covered, in the course of ages, by the accumulation of soil, or obliterated by the action of the sea, which, there is some reason to think, has gained upon this part of the Laconic coast. Ptolemy, by naming separately Minoa, the harbour of Jupiter Soter, and Epidaurus, in that order from south to north, would seem to place the harbour not exactly below the city, but rather more southward: there are no appearances, however, of a λιμήν in either place. It may be thought, perhaps, that this deficiency, added to the objection which may be made to Monemvasia as the ancient Minoa, because it is an island, and not an ακρα, or promontory, is an argument against the ruins being those of Epidaurus. It must also be admitted, that the distance of 300 stades, placed by Pausanias between Cape Malea and Epidaurus, is beyond the reality when applied to this position, even if we were to consider the 300 stades as a road distance; and moreover that the words κατα την πόλιν, by which Pausanias describes the position of Minoa relatively
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§ 1.214 to Epidaurus, are hardly such as apply to two places situated near four miles asunder. It seems evident, however, that if the ruins at Old Monemvasia were not those of Epidaurus, they must be ascribed to Epidelium, for the Epidaurii bordered on the Boeatae, who occupied the extremity of the peninsula, and the only place on the coast southward of Minoa was Epidelium. This is the same place which Strabo, citing Artemidorus, calls Delium, and which he agrees with both Ptolemy and Pausanias in shewing to have been on the coast between Minoa and Malea. According to Pausanias, it was situated within the Boeatice, at 100 stades from Malea, and 200 from Epidaurus. Epidelium, however, was nothing more than a sanctuary of Apollo, surrounded perhaps with a few habitations, and which did not exist until the Mithradatic war, when a wooden statue of the god was conveyed thither miraculously from Delos, on the occasion of that island having been taken and ravaged by Metrophanes, commander of the forces of Mithradates. It is very clear that the ruins at Old Monemvasia could not have belonged to such a place, being those of a polis of considerable magnitude and antiquity. As to the present insularity of Monemvasia, as inconsistent with the employment of the
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§ 1.215 word άκρα by Pausanias, it is to be observed, that Nicetas, in the twelfth century, when the present town was in existence, describes it by the same word. Perhaps, therefore, both these authors thought ακρα not improperly applied to a rock so very near the shore; or it is not impossible that the sea may have recently gained upon the shore, and, by covering a narrow neck of sand, have converted a promontory into an island; for we have an undoubted example of such a change in the neighbouring district of Boeae, where the promontory Onugnathus has now become an island, called Elafonisi. Though Minoa would seem, from the silence of Pausanias, not to have been occupied in his time, it was a fortress at an earlier period of the Roman empire, as appears by the word φρούριον, which is applied to it by Strabo. During the insecurity of the middle ages, it very naturally became, not only a fortress, but an important town. Upon the whole, therefore, I have no doubt that Palea Monemvasia is the site of Epidaurus Limera, and that Epidelium occupied the position of Cape Kamili, which being at about one third of the distance between Cape Malea and Old Monemvasia, agrees with the proportion, at least, of the numbers of Pausanias. Cape Kamili affords some shelter from the winds, and
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§ 1.216 is the only place on that part of the coast which is likely to have been chosen for a settlement. It would seem from Coronelli, that the name of Epidaurus was still attached, in his time, to its ruins; but I cannot now learn any other name for them than that of Old Monemvasia. If Coronelli is correct, we must suppose that the Christian town, which the existing ruins prove to have stood on this site, continued to preserve the ancient name, until the place ceased to be inhabited. From the ruins I descend, on the south side, into the ravine of a torrent, which is cultivated with corn, and bordered by low rocks. A sloping road, about 100 yards in length, conducts into it down the side of the hill; the road is cut out of the rock, is just wide enough for a car, and still preserves some traces of wheels. The valley seems to have contained the sepulchres of the Epidaurii, a catacomb of this form being still seen in the rock, near a ruined church of the Holy Ghost. [sketch] Not far from it there is a large cavern made into a mandhra, by a wall in front. Nearer the sea there is a marsh.
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§ 1.217 Proceeding from the valley towards the shore, I arrive at Khranapes, a tjiftlik and garden, below which, bordering the sea-beach, there is a deep pool of fresh water, surrounded with reeds, about 100 yards long and thirty broad. This seems to be the “Lake of Ino, small and deep”, which, according to Pausanias, “was two stades distant from a spot marked by some altars of Aesculapius, which were situated amidst wild olive trees, and were intended to commemorate the place where a serpent, brought from Epidaurus of Argolis by the first founders of Limera, disappeared in the ground, and thus furnished them with an omen decisive of the position of their future city.” The garden, which is about a third of a mile southward of the ruins of Epidaurus, is inclosed within low rocks, and contains, among a variety of fruittrees, a date, which is an uncommon production in Greece. The garden forms a pretty contrast with the rocky desert around, for in the surrounding country no cultivation is seen, except in a few places in the vale of the torrent of Epidaurus, as far up as the springs, which I passed, at 1.50, on the 26th. The sun having set when I return to the town, I find the gates shut, and am obliged to wait for the governor's order for their being opened.
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§ 1.218 March 29. — Cypresses are used at Monemvasia for making masts, they are procured from many parts of the district of Mistra, especially towards the eastern coast Fifty years ago, corn in this part of the Morea was three kilos a piastre; it is now from ten to thirteen piastres a kilo. Captain George Kondurioti has received from the Capitan Pasha the office of collector of the kharatj in Ydhra, Poro, and Eghina, which will give him great influence in Ydhra, and tend to preserve order there. A Spetziote has lately returned from America with a cargo of sugar, rum, and coffee, which was sold at a vast profit. This may lead to many similar speculations. Ydhra has now 100 square rigged ships: at the beginning of the French revolution it had only a few latine vessels and fishing boats. I ascend this forenoon to the kastro, or citadel. It is separated from the town by a perpendicular cliff, through which there is a zigzag ascent cut in the rock. Above the cliffs there is a considerable space of ground, not level, but sloping upwards, to the crest of the northern side, or back of the island. This space forms the castle, where ten or a dozen guns are mounted. There still exist some good cisterns and the remains of two or three hundred houses and magazines; among these is the ruin of a large church, which has been converted into a
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§ 1.219 mosque. The walls and batteries are in a most dilapidated state, and the place is entirely exposed to shells from the opposite mountain; some of those which were thrown by the Venetians are still lying on the ground. Beyond Cape Kremidhi there is a more eastern projection of the same great promontory, not seen from Monemvasia, which is known in the Argolic peninsula and on the surrounding coasts by the name of Cape Ieraka. Its name is derived from a small but well sheltered port on its north side, and is undoubtedly a corruption of Zarax, in the usual Romaic form of the accusative; Pausanias tells us, that Zarax had a good harbour, and was situated 100 stades from Epidaurus Limera. It belonged to the Eleuthero-Laconic confederacy, but had never recovered from the destruction it suffered from Cleonymus, son of Cleomenes, son of Agesipolis; in the time of Pausanias it contained only a temple of Apollo by the sea-side, with a statue of the god holding a guitar in his hand. The Italians, when in possession of this part of the Morea, found the position and the shelter of Port Ieraka so convenient to their galleys, that they fortified its entrance with a chain, in the fashion of those times, whence it became known to the Italians by the name of Porto Cadena, by which it is denoted in the Italian charts.
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§ 1.220 March 30. — Hassan's patron at Constantinople is Yusuf Effendi, formerly ambassador in England, and now Tersane-'Emini; — they have shared the mukata of the vilayeti between them. This day a Tjohadar and Tartar arrive from Constantinople, bringing Hassan the in. formation that the new voivoda of Mistra has been substituted for Yusuf in the farm for the present year, and requiring him to send the amount of his last year's contract to Constantinople. A servant of the new voivoda arrives also from Mistra, requesting Hassan's presence there. This man is a native of Edrene has been as far as Bagdad, and in almost every other part of Turkey, speaks a little Italian, and wishes to enter my service as janissary.
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§ 1.221 April 1. — After having waited two days for horses from Sykia, I set out this day at 11.05. At 11.25 turn out of the former road to the south, and follow the opening of the mountain, through which flows the torrent of Epidaurus. After passing for a quarter of an hour along the torrent bed, we cross over the lower part of the rocky mountain on the right hand into a little elevated and fertile hollow, inclosed by mountains, where, on the southern side of the north-eastern hill, stands the village of Velies, in a situation like that of a Hellenic town. Pausanias tells us that there was a temple of Diana Limnatis in the road from Boeae to Epidaurus, and within the Epidauria. This valley seems to agree with both those conditions. The undulated ground below the village is fertile, but cultivated only in part; there are many olivetrees round the village, and it contains several handsome pyrghi, but some of them are in ruins, and all are uninhabited. At a brook are the remains of gardens and fruit-trees. Both the towers and the gardens belong to Turks of Monemvasia, who, though half starved and clothed in rags, have inherited the notion, universal among the Musulmans of Greece, that it is the business of the rayah to cultivate the land, and have, therefore, let their estates go to ruin; the massacres and persecutions which followed the insurrection excited by Russia, having deprived this corner of the peninsula of its Greek inhabitants. At 1.40, in passing Velies, the rain coming on, I hasten forward towards my Konak, leaving the baggage to follow. The last two days there has been a strong gale from the north, very cold, and sometimes almost amounting to a tempest. This morning there was frost with a
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§ 1.222 clear sky, and much snow appeared on the adjacent mountains at the back of Epidaurus; but it soon changed to a sirocco, when the atmosphere immediately became charged with vapour. The road continues over undulated cultivable ground among the mountains for half an hour, in the same direction as before, that is, southwestward; it then turns north, through an opening leading into the plain of Finiki. At 2.40 we pass a kalyvia, pleasantly situated in the opening, and soon after look down into the plain, with the mountain of Beziane, and the villages Patissia and Molaos before us; then, leaving Finiki on the slope to the right, we descend into the plain to the kalyvia of Finiki, which is midway between the mountains of Finiki and Beziane, and about an equal distance from Kavo-Xyli: arrive at 3.30. The land is fertile, and produces corn, but near the villages only. As we approach the Finikiotika kalyvia, the inhabitants fly and hide themselves. I soon get admission, however, into the best cottage in the village, in which the first object that meets my eye is an inscribed marble. The house is constructed, in the usual manner, of mud, with a coating of plaster; the roof is thatched, which is not a very common mode of covering the cottages in Greece. There is a raised earthen semicircle at one end for the fire, without any chimney; towards the other, a low partition,
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§ 1.223 formed of the same material as the walls, separates the part of the building destined for the family from that which is occupied by the oxen and asses used on the farm, one door serving for both apartments. The usual articles of furniture of a Greek cottage are ranged, or hung around, namely, a loom, barrel-shaped wicker baskets, plastered with mud, for holding corn, a sieve, spindles, some copper cooking vessels, and two lyres. The floor is the bare earth covered, like the walls, with a coat of dried mud. An oven attached to the outside of the building, and in the garden some beans, artichokes, and a vine trailed over the roof, indicate a superior degree of affluence or industry. The inscribed marble is inserted in the wall on one side of the door, and turns out to be an interesting monument. It was erected in honour of Caius Julius Eurycles, who, in the time of Strabo, was governor of Laconia, and was so powerful that the island of Cythera was his private property. His name is inscribed on the Lacedaemonian coinage in brass, struck under his government. Strabo adds, that Eurycles abused the friendship of the Roman emperor so much as to excite an insurrection, which, however, soon ceased in consequence of his death. Pausanias tells us, that he built a magnificent bath at Corinth. On the present marble, unfortunately, the name of the dedicating city is not mentioned. The master of the cottage, when he returns home in the evening from his labour in the fields, tells me that he found the stone at Blitra, as they call some ruins near Kavo-Xyli, and that a Turk, who is now dead, advised him to convey it to his house: “But how do I know” he adds, “that it may not bring some mischief upon my house, having belonged perhaps to some church?” The Turk's reason for being unwilling to have any thing to do with the marble was because it had been a work of the infidels. The mischief contemplated by the Greek was my arrival with men and horses, which he thought would bring expense upon him, if nothing worse. While I was at dinner five oxen entered, and took up their abode for the night behind the low partition.
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§ 1.224 April 2 — This morning at 7.15, sending away the baggage by the direct road to Turali, in the plain of Elos, I ride towards Kavo-Xyli, to see the ruins from which the marble was brought; — cross the plain, which is fertile, but little cultivated, and for the most part overgrown with bushes: a part of the land has been lately ploughed for sowing kalambokki and planting cotton, both which operations are performed in May. The grain is reaped in October. At half-way we cross a road which leads from the southward to Boza and Elos. At 8.15 arrive at Blitra, on the eastern side of Cape Xyli, which is a high rocky peninsula, terminating in alow tongue of land, which projects from the peninsula on the southern side; on the summit of the hill stands one of the line of towers which once served to protect this coast. Eastward of the peninsula there is a deep inlet of the sea and a good harbour, where, my conductor tells me, he has seen thirty-five ships lying; this being the safest anchorage in the gulf, though not so frequented as that of Marathonisi, on account of the want of commerce on this side. On the sea-shore, half a mile east of the peninsula, there are several quadrangular foundations cut in the rock, and extending into the water as far as I can see. Here also I find the remains of some public edifice, of which three or four courses of regular masonry remain, together with some large hewn blocks of white marble lying on the beach — a great quantity of pottery, two pieces of Doric columns of common stone, and eastward of the excavated foundations first mentioned,
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§ 1.226 part of a column, fluted half way down. In the same direction, half a mile distant from the ruins, there is a remarkable insulated peak of rock connected with the range of hills which border the coast to the southward. I cannot discover any remains of an acropolis. The ruins are called Blitra; they occupy a point separating two inlets of the bay, of which that on the right is now called Arasma, or the anchorage, that on the left, or east, Skotines. Comparing Strabo and Pausanias, I think there can be no doubt that Blitra is the site of Asopus, for Strabo thus describes the gulf to the eastward of Gythium: — first, “there is a marshy district with a town Helos, then a plain called Leuce, then a town with a harbour situated upon a chersonese, named Cyparissia, then Onugnathus, having also a harbour, then the city Boeae, then Malea, to which last there is a distance of 150 stades from Onugnathus. There is also a city in the Laconice called Asopus.” Pausanias tells us, that in the acropolis of Asopus there was a temple of Minerva Cyparissia, and at the foot of the acropolis the ruins of the city of the Achaei Paracyparissii. The fact, therefore, seems to have been, that Asopus, Cyparissia, and
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§ 1.227 the city of the Paracyparissii were all the same place, of which Strabo not having personally examined the coast, was ignorant. From what Pausanias says, it may be inferred that the summit of Kavo-Xyli was the acropolis of Asopus, though nothing ancient is now to be seen upon it. He states the distance between the Cape Onugnathus, now the island Elafonisi, and Asopus at 200 stades which is too much for a paraplus, as he seems to have meant, but about equal to the road distance. At about one fourth of the distance from Asopus, was Hyperteleatum, a place in the Asopian district sacred to Aesculapius. There was another temple of Aesculapius surnamed Philolaus, twelve stades inland from the city, for so I should interpret ανωτέρω της πόλεως. The only objects which the Greek traveller remarked in the city itself, were a temple of the Roman emperors and a gymnasium, in which were some bones of extraordinary size, which he supposed to have been human. From the ruins I mount to the summit of the northernmost point of the peninsula, an important geographical station. The name of Castro Rampani, given to this place in many charts, if it ever existed, is now obsolete. I can learn no
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§ 1.228 other name for the peninsula than that of Kavo-Xyli. At 9.50 we descend on the opposite side to Boza, where, at 10.10, in the ruins of a large church called the Metropolis, I find an inscribed marble of Christian time; others I am told have been carried away by the Maniates. Near the church there is a small subterranean chamber with two circular openings in the roof, each formed of a single stone pierced with a round hole. The walls of the chamber are of small stones: I suppose it to have been a granary. At 10.20, leaving Boza, we proceed along the sea-side, and over the roots of the Beziane hill, descending in some places upon the sea beach, to the Molaitiko Pyrgo, another of the chain of coast towers: at 12 pass another ruined tower, and, 9 minutes after, the ruined church mentioned March 26th, where we quitted this lower road, and began to ascend the mountain. Proceed under the cliffs and along the sea-beach till 12.35, when, not being well guided, I find myself obliged to make a movement, partly retrograde, towards the right, in order to get into the road to Priniko on the other side of the marsh, the eastern end of which extends quite to the foot of the mountain. Thus, obliged to turn inland, I determine to proceed still further to the summit of a hill above Afidhia, where some ruins are seen. Pass through the kalyvia
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§ 1.229 of Beziane, leave that village and many Velani oaks on the foot of the mountain to the right; mount the hill of Beziane, where are some tobacco grounds and gardens, and at length find the ruin on the hill, the object of my search, to be nothing more than one of the line of signal towers, and which was intended, apparently, to communicate on one side with the Castle of Mistra, which is in sight from it, and on the other with Cape Xyli and the coast. The village of Afidhia, of thirty houses, is beyond a hill on the right of our road, as we descend towards Priniko, and is not in sight. — -Cross a little cultivated valley, and there join the road from Afidhia to Priniko, — traverse some uncultivated hills, covered chiefly with wild olives and caroub trees — pass by Priniko, and enter the plain of Elos at 3. Thus I have failed in discovering any remains of Acriae, which a comparison of Strabo and Pausanias clearly shews to have been on the coast between the plain of Helos and that of Leuce; for Strabo observes, that the Eurotas joined the sea between Acriae and Gythium, and having thus noticed Acriae, he does not again mention it when naming the places along the coast, Helos, Leuce, and Cyparissia, in the passage I have already cited. Pausanias thus speaks of the topography of this region: — “To
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§ 1.230 the left of Gythium, thirty stades distant, are the walls of Trinasus on the main land, formerly, as it appears to me, a castle only, and not a city. I suppose that it takes its name from three islands which lie before it. Eighty stades beyond Trinasus are the ruins of Helos, and thirty stades farther is the city Acriae, upon the sea side.” He then describes the inland places above Acriae, after which he adds, that “towards the sea is the city Asopus, sixty stades from Acriae;” he then proceeds to describe Asopus, and the places to the southward of it. As it cannot be doubted that Leuce was the plain which contains Finiki, Patissia, &c., Acriae must have stood on a part of the heights which border the coast between the plains of Helos and Leuce, and which are an abrupt termination in the gulf of the last roots of the great range which borders all the eastern side of the Peloponnesus. From its position on these heights, the town probably received its name. The distance of eighty stades between Trinasus, now Trinisa, and Helos, places the latter towards the eastern side of the plain of Elos, probably at Priniko, which is now the principal place in Elos, and in some respects the most advantageously situated of its villages. The ninety stades between Helos and Asopus will thus agree extremely well with the
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§ 1.231 time distance between Priniko and Kavo-Xyli at the rate of thirty stades to the hour; and of this total, sixty stades, or two-thirds of the whole distance from Kavo-Xyli to Priniko, will exactly place Acriae at the ruined church, where, on March 26, I observed some fragments of ancient buildings and the base of a column, and which I reckoned at about three and a half miles from Priniko, thus according with the thirty stades of Pausanias between Helos and Acriae. I certainly expected to have found some more unequivocal remains of Acriae, where Pausanias has described a harbour, a fortification near it, a gymnasium, between the two last a monument of one of the citizens of Acriae who had been five times victor in the foot race in the Olympic Stadium, and a very ancient temple and statue of the Mother of the Gods; but the maritime situation has probably been the cause of the dis-appearance of all its ancient materials, which may have been carried away by the Maniates for their new buildings, or to repair the damages which their villages so often sustain in their intestine contests. We cross the plain of Elos in the direction of Trinisa, at a slow pace in consequence of the marshy ground, and at 4.40 arrive at Turali, or Durali. Here a Buyurdi of Hassan Bey, which I brought with me, procured me a konak in the house of the Hodja-Bashi, a cottage some degrees better than that of yesterday.
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§ 1.232 April 3. — We set out at 7.28, and in four minutes ford the Eurotas, which is not rapid nor deep, reaching only to the stirrups. At Limona a village of huts made of mud and wicker, and not so large as Turali, I stop ten minutes to examine the church, and to take a guide; then crossing the plain to the sea-beach, at our arrival upon it, pass a rivulet, and proceeding along the shore, arrive at 8.48 at the angle where the mountain advances to the sea: here are the ruins of a castle and a small stream. This is the boundary between Elos and Mani; at 9, passing round the head of a small creek, arrive at 9.05 at Trinisa. Here is a pyrgo and three or four houses, on a projection of the rocky shore opposite to three rocks, from which the place has in all ages derived its name. The village belongs to Anagnosti Kritira, who, in consequence of a letter sent to him by Hassan Bey, has come here from Marathonisi to meet me and offer refreshments: behind the houses are the ruins of one of the towers destroyed by the Turkish naval officers, Seremet and Hassan. At 9.17 we leave Trinisa: at 9.29 pass a mandhra in a small quarry, from whence seem to have been derived the materials of the walls of Trinasus, some remains of which are seen a little farther on.
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§ 1.233 The circuit of the place was not more than four or five hundred yards, which agrees with the remark of Pausanias, that Trinasus was rather a fortress than a town. Not only the lower parts of walls of the third order remain on every side, except towards the sea, but in the centre are the foundations also of some buildings of the same kind of masonry. Leaving the ruins at 9.48, we pass over a rugged mountain into a vale half a mile in breadth, where a marsh skirts the sea-beach. In the marsh are tamarisks; in the vale flax and corn; on the hills velani oaks, and a few caroubs. We arrive at the end of the marsh at 10.17 traverse another rocky shore, and at 10.45, descending again upon the sea-beach, cross a stream flowing from a marsh in the corner of a small valley: at the end of which we pass under steep cliffs, where, at the height of thirty feet, I observe strata of rock formed of an aggregate of sea muscles. Under the cliffs, at 10.55, a copious spring is received into a cistern, and flows from thence through a stone conduit, for a third of a mile, to a mill in a little valley on the sea side. Soon afterwards we cross the valley of Gythium, leaving its ruins on the right; then ascend the side of the bare rocky hill, on the foot of which is situated the town of Marathonisi, and arrive there at 11.20.
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§ 1.234 CHAPTER VII LACONIA. Marathonisi consists of 100 wretched houses of mud-brick, in the midst of which stands a large church, with the proud distinction of a spire and bell; higher up the hill they are building a tower for Andon, the present Bey of Mani, whose family residence being at Vathy, he has no house of his own at Marathonisi. Only two hours after my arrival, the Bey himself comes to anchor in his corvette belonging to the squadron of Seremet Bey, who is also expected shortly. As the Pyrgo on the hill is not yet finished, I am obliged, on the Bey's arrival, to remove from the lodging, which had been assigned to me in a house formerly belonging to Tzanet Bey, and the best in Marathonisi, into the house of Mr. W. of Buda, who practises medicine here, and has six piastres
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§ 1.235 a day to attend the Bey and his relations, together with some other persons of Marathonisi, who contribute to this stipend. His house consists of a ground floor, properly so called, being a floor upon the bare earth, over which there is an upper story divided into two apartments by a slender partition. Part of the sides and roof have been torn away by the shot which were fired by Seremet and Hassan when they besieged Tzanet Bey, and took from him the powder which the French had landed; it is now said that the Turks would not have reduced him, but for the influence of Andon's nephew, Demetrius Gligoraki, commonly called the Russian Knight, who joined him at Marathonisi with offers of assistance, and then induced him to capitulate. The bey is an old unhealthy looking Greek, of a weak character, easily made to change his purpose by those around him. His five nephews came to visit him on his arrival; all of them, except the Cavaliere, live in this part of Maina. The Cavaliere is the eldest; then Constantine, surnamed Tzingurio, residing at Skutari; Ianaki, called Katzano, usually resident at Skutari also, but who is commandant of Marathonisi in the bey's absence; and Ghiorghio and
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§ 1.236 Lambro, whose families are at Vathy. Tzingurio is a tall hard-featured man, with a pair of mustakia almost touching his shoulders, and a dagger and pistols of immense length in his girdle. He has made himself conspicuous in all the Maniate wars, and is looked upon as the greatest hero in Mani. Two sons-in-law of the bey also come to pay their court to him; Thodhoro Gligoraki, of Mavrovuni, a relation of the bey, and Constantine Zervo, a young man of Petrovuni. All these great characters honour me with visits. They are civil, but rather embarrassed in their manner, and deficient in that natural ease and politeness so remarkable in Turks, and generally also in Greeks. I am visited also by a cousin of the bey, Dhimitraki, of Mavrovuni. Andon Bey's real name is Antony Grigoraki, or Gligoraki; Aτωνιος, pronounced Andonios, being Turkified into Andon to fit the Turkish title of Bey, which he assumes as commander of a Turkish corvette, and the Capitan Pasha's deputy in the government of Mani. Tzanet, pronounced Djanet, is in like manner a corruption of Ianni, or Ίωάννης. Andon is the first cousin of Tzanet Bey, commonly called by the Turks Djanim Bey, who was expelled by the Turkish admiral for having corresponded with the French, and received gunpowder from them. Tzanet is now
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§ 1.237 living at Vakho, between Skutari and Tzimova. His son, Petro Bizande (a word corrupted from the Turkish Bey-Zaade), is the hope and admiration of all the opposite party. He has been three years in France, and when he returned was dressed a la Francoise. Even his opponents speak with respect of him. He has two brothers, Grigorio and Dhimitraki. The majority of the Maniates are said to wish for the restoration of the family of Tzanet Bey; but they are kept in submission to Andon by Seremet and his squadron. Even those captains who are Andon's known enemies obey his orders at present. These reside chiefly about Cape Matapan, and between Vitylo and Skardhamula. The latter have been lately brought into order by the Cavaliere, who governs at Kytries in the bey's absence, and, many say, equally so in his presence. An affair, which happened two months since at Vathy, shews the state of society in Mani. The son of a priest had by accident killed a boy, a relation of another priest. The latter papas declared war against the former, which is done in Mani in a formal manner, by crying out in the streets. The first papas went to his church to say mass with pistols in his girdle; such being a common custom in Mani; but, as is usual in such cases, he laid them behind the
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§ 1.238 altar, on assuming the robe in which the priest performs divine service. The other papas entered the church with some of his party, and the instant the office was concluded, walked up to his enemy, who was still in his robes, and fired a pistol at him, which flashed in the pan: the latter, then running behind the altar, seized his arms, shot his enemy and one of his adherents, and drove all the rest out of the church. The affair was then settled by the interposition of the bey himself, in whose village it had happened. A composition in money, for the balance of blood, is the only efficient mode of making peace in these cases. When one of a family is slain, the person who takes upon him to revenge the injury often vows not to change his clothes or shave or eat meat till his revenge is satisfied. Next to the captains, the priests are the chief men in the Maniate wars, both in council and field; and in the quarrels which so frequently occur between separate villages or families, they are generally the promoters and leaders of the strife. To pull down the adversary's house is generally the object and end of the war. The sufferer is then conquered, and seldom ventures to prosecute hostilities.
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§ 1.239 A Maniate cannot fire without resting his musket, on account of its length, but he is an excellent marksman in his own manner. The Albanians are the same, and for this reason they cannot easily be disciplined without a change in their arms. Like the Albanians, the Maniates seldom venture to face their enemy in the field, but fire from behind houses, rocks, and trees. This must, in fact, be the case wherever no discipline exists, as no individual can depend upon the conduct of his neighbour; in short, their preference of a musket which has a long range, and their mode of fighting, are the reciprocating effect and cause of their state of society. The Maniates seem to be more addicted to assassination than the Albanians, though in Albania almost any mode of getting rid of an enemy is thought justifiable. The Maniates, however, shew great courage and obstinacy in their own way; and these qualities are held in the highest estimation among them. Even the women emulate the men in this respect. It is not long since a woman of Mount Taygetum stood a siege in her pyrgo, against a body of Turks; she fired upon them from the windows, and kept them employed on one side, while, at the back, she sent away in safety a female servant with two children. Though her ammunition was in reality all spent, the Turks
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§ 1.240 retired, fearing that she would blow up the tower if they assaulted it. A Frenchman named P. L. made his appearance here ten days ago, coming from Ydhra in a boat hired express. His inquiries were for Tzanet Bey, which induced the commandant to search his baggage for papers, when none being found, he was allowed to depart for Koroni, special care being taken that he should not see Tzanet Bey. Luckily for the Frenchman, none of those who were present at the search, except my host the Hungarian, observed a rouleau of money in his girdle. The principal inhabitants of Marathonisi are relations or agents of the chief Greeks of Mistra. Of these the first is P., whose brother I knew at Mistra. He has resided here ten years, has been at Leghorn, speaks Italian, and has enriched himself by advancing money, in small sums, to the peasants at an exorbitant interest. To those who gather the vallonea on the mountains he allows thirteen or fourteen piastres the milliaja (ten cwt.), in acquittance of their debts to him. As all the vallonea for exportation is monopolized by the Bey, at a price which is fixed this year at twenty piastres the milliaja, P. cannot obtain more from the Bey, by the sale, than the difference of six or seven; but as the involved state of
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§ 1.241 Andon's affairs, in consequence of the large sums he has paid the Porte, has rendered him dependent upon P., he is obliged to allow the latter to repurchase the vallonea from him at twenty-five, and to place the difference of five against the debt which he owes to P., who then sells the vallonea to the ships that carry it away, at about thirty-five. All the profit above twenty, the Bey, if he had a capital, might enjoy, as he possesses an acknowledged monopoly of the vallonea, which, as it requires no outlay for cultivation, and is subject to scarcely any natural injury, except from a fall of rain in August, would ensure to the Bey a large revenue, if he were able to avail himself of the advantages of his position. The greater part of the vallonea trade of Greece is in the hands of the house of Kyr E. of Ioannina, who has a brother settled at Leghorn, and another at this place. The latter has contracted for all the last year's crop, part at thirty, the rest at thirty-five. Three millions of pounds will be exported. The vallonea of Mani is generally one-third higher in price in the European market, than any other. A great part of it goes to England. Mani, in abundant years, produces 8000 or 10,000 barrels of oil, of 48 okes, the greater part of which is grown on the western side, between Vitylo and Kalamata. It is reckoned
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§ 1.242 better than that of Salona and Athens, and is carried to the Black Sea, Italy, and Trieste. Mani used formerly to produce 180,000 okes of cotton, but the civil wars and a want of industry, both of which have increased of late years, have reduced the produce, even in good years, to a third of that quantity; it is sent to the Archipelago and the Seven Islands. The produce of silk is 2000 okes, which goes to Mistra, to the Islands, and sometimes to Leghorn and Barbary. Mani and Bardhunia together produce 20,000 okes of galls. The other exports are honey, of which there are produced 10,000 okes, the greater part for Constantinople, Candia, and the Islands, the wax to Leghorn. There are two crops of honey, one in the winter, and another in the summer. Salted quails, put into bags of lamb-skin, are carried to Constantinople and the Islands. In abundant years, two shiploads of small horsebeans are exported to Italy; In such seasons the Maniates have corn and kalambokki sufficient for their support, and with industry and good management might almost always ensure it. At present they are in a wretched state, and have neither corn nor money. The Bey has the monopoly of oil as well as of vallonea. A price is fixed, which varies according to the demand, and to the price current in the market
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§ 1.243 to which the oil is destined; but from this privilege, likewise, the Bey's embarrassments prevent him from deriving much advantage. The kharatj of Mani amounts to 17,000 piastres, of which 15,000 go to the Porte, and 2,000 to the Capitan Pasha. The duties on exports are 3 per cent., but little is derived from the customs outward, as oil and vallonea pay nothing. A rough calculation of the value of the exports of Mani in ordinary years, gives about forty thousand pounds sterling. The Bey sells the collection of the customs, at each port, to the best bidder every year: for that of Marathonisi, he obtained this year 2,000 piastres. The Maniates reckon their population at 30,000, and their muskets at upwards of 10,000. In estimating the number of muskets, we may assume the largest possible proportion to the whole population, because scarcely any person passes from one village to another, if it be but to drive an ass loaded with wood, or for the labours of agriculture, without a musket slung behind him, or, at least, a dagger and pistols at his girdle — sometimes both. There are about 400 Maniate sailors serving in the ships of Ydhra; one small ship and about fifty coasting boats form the entire commercial marine of Mani. The villages are reckoned at 117 in number; few of them are very small, there are
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§ 1.244 none like the tjiftliks of the Turkish districts of Greece, and early marriages are common; so that an average of forty-five or fifty houses to a village, and of six persons to a family, which would nearly give the population just mentioned, does not seem excessive: and this is probably a tenth or twelfth of the whole population of the Morea. The remains of Gythium, called Paleopoli, are situated in a valley terminating in the sea, and enclosed by mountains prettily broken, partly cultivated and partly covered with Velani oaks. The town was situated on some low hills, in a small triangular plain, inclosed between them and the sea. On one side of the principal height flows a torrent. Ninety yards inland from the shore are the remains of a theatre, constructed of a semi-transparent kind of white marble, of a very coarse grain, and marked with broad parallel streaks of brown. There are several pieces of the displaced seats on the side of the hill which supported the theatre, and below, at one of the angles, a small part of the two lower rows is still in its place. The total diameter appears to have been about 150 feet. Behind, on the; eastern side of the principal height, I observe several remains of buildings in the Roman style, with tiles and mortar, and some with courses of rough stones between layers of mortar.
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§ 1.245 The most distant ruin inland is that of a long building divided longitudinally into two, each division having an arched roof, which has fallen. There are also the remains of some baths, one of which has several semidomes of tiles and mortar plastered within, in such a manner as to represent a great cockleshell. Other masses of Roman remains are seen towards the sea; and on a small projection of the coast line of the bay, just below the theatre, are some foundations of large buildings projecting into the water, which, it is said, may in calm weather be traced at the bottom for a considerable distance. A little within this ruin I found a cornice of the same kind of white marble of which the theatre was built. In the plain the ancient remains are intermixed with corn-fields and mulberry trees, and here coins and fragments of architecture and sculpture are often brought to light by the peasants. Marathonisi has been in great measure built of these materials; an architrave was found with a Latin inscription, not long since, lying between the theatre and the sea, which my conductor then saw, but now searches for unsuccessfully; it has been used perhaps in building the Bey's new pyrgo. One is not surprised at finding the remains of Gythium to consist in great part of Roman buildings, as it is evident, from what we
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§ 1.246 know of the Eleuthero-Laconic towns, of which Gythium was one, that Spartan tyranny had reduced them to misery before Augustus separated them from the government of Sparta, and that they chiefly flourished under the Roman emperors. Gythium, moreover, which more anciently had been the port of Sparta, continued under the Romans to be much employed as the principal navale in this sea. Strabo says, that it possessed an excavated port, of which I do not see any appearance. The geographer, however, by adding the expression ως φασι, shews that he had never visited the place himself. It is remarkable that none of the buildings now remaining excited the notice of Pausanias, and that he does not even mention the theatre. He describes only statues of Apollo, Hercules, and Bacchus, in the agora, and in another part of the town a statue of Apollo Carneius, a temple of Ammon, a roofless temple of Aesculapius containing his statue in brass, a well sacred to the same deity, a temple of Ceres, a statue of Neptune Gaeauchus, and another of Nereus, surnamed the old mand. Near the latter were gates called Castorides. In the acropolis there was a temple of Minerva containing a statue of the goddess.
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§ 1.248 Of the places near Gythium, Pausanias thus speaks, “Three stades distant from Gythium is the stone Argos, upon which Orestes, when seated, is said to have been relieved from his madness. Hence it is called in the Doric tongue, λευς καππωτας. Before Gythium lies the island Cranae. The adjacent part of the continent is called Migonium, from the union of Alexander and Helen, which, according to Homer, first took place in this island. There is a temple of Venus Migonitis in Migonium, built, it is said, by Alexander. Above Migonium rises a mountain, sacred to Bacchus, called Larysium, where, in the beginning of spring, they celebrate a festival of Bacchus, asserting, among other reasons for so doing, that they then find a ripe bunch of grapes upon the mountain.” Thirty stades from Gythium, according to the same author, on the left of the direct road to Sparta, were the remains of Aegiae, by Homer called Augeiae, where was a lake called the lake of Neptune, and on its shore a temple and statue of the god.” It is almost unnecessary to remark that the island Marathonisi is the ancient Cranae, that
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§ 1.248 the town Marathonisi, on the opposite shore, stands on the site of Migonium, and that the hill which rises above it, now called Kumaro, is the ancient Larysium. From the foot of this hill, between Marathonisi and the valley of Paleopoli, a copious stream of water issues into the sea; its taste is brackish, which may be partly occasioned by the waves washing into the cavern from which it issues. Above it, on the left of the road to Paleopoli, I find an inscription on the rock, in small and very ancient characters, and behind the latter, on the side of the mountain, a chair with a foot-step, hewn in the rock, and resembling the chairs at Athens, in the rocks near the Pnyx. This excavation, I take to mark the position of the Leus Cappotas, as the distance of three stades agrees very well with that of the chair from the ruins of Gythium. It seems very possible that Aegiae, written Aegaeae by Strabo, stood in the valley, about midway between Trinisa and Marathonisi, where a marsh along the shore seems to correspond to the Lake of Neptune. Supposing the road from Sparta to Gythium to have crossed the lower part of the Bardhunian hills, leaving the summits to the right, it may have reached the coast between Trinisa and this valley, and
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§ 1.249 thus, passing along the coast from thence by the same track which I followed, have left Aegiae on the right; and this direction of the road is the more probable, as the vale of Gythium is of difficult access, except along the coast, or by a narrow pass at the head of the valley, which leads, not towards the plain of Mistra, but southwestward, into that of Passava. Another place, on the road from Gythium to Sparta, remaining to be discovered is Croceae, where was a quarry of hard pebbles, very beautiful when wrought. It was probably the same quarry to which Strabo alludes, when he says, “There are some quarries of handsome marble [in Laconia ]; those of Taenarian stone, in Taenarus, are ancient; but a large mine has lately been opened in Taygetum by certain persons who have been prompted to it by the magnificence of the Romans”. Pausanias describes a figure of Jupiter Croceatas in marble, as standing before the town and brazen statues of the Dioscuri at the quarry. But he does not give us the distance of Croceae, either from Sparta or from Gythium. The hills above Gythium and Trinisa, as well as those of Laconia in general, abound, in all the uncultivated parts which are not shaded with forest-trees, with the holley-leaved oak shrub, from which is gathered the prinokokki, or scarlet dye,
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§ 1.250 exported from Marathonisi by the merchants of Mistra. [From the Arabic word for this production, el kermes, the Italian cramosino and our crimson are derived. The modern Greek word πρινοκόκκιον is exactly conformable to the description of the substance by Theophrastus (Hist. Plant. 1. 3. c. 8.). As it is formed by an animal of the same kind as that which produces the cochineal, gall, etc., naturalists have given the name of coccus to that genus. That the coccus was an animal formation was known to Pausanias, who, as well as Dioscorides, applies the word κόκκος to the shrub. Pausanias thus describes it (Phocic. 36.): “In the country of the Ambryssenses, there is an abundance of the thorn which the Ionians and other Greeks call coccus, but which the Gauls above Phrygia name υς [houx]. In size it equals the ράμνος, [according to Sibthorp the lycium Europaeum] the leaves are blacker and smoother than those of the lentisk, in other respects it resembles that plant: the fruit is like that of the night-shade στρυχνος but in size is equal to the vetch [όροβος]. On this there breeds a small insect, which, if it be left in the air till the fruit is ripe, becomes a fly resembling the gnat: the fruit of the coccus therefore is gathered before the fly is hatched, and its blood is then a dye for wool.” It is singular that Pausanias should not have observed, that the fruit of the shrub is an acorn; he is mistaken also, or at least expresses himself very negligently, in confining the animal to the fruit only, as it is found attached in greatest quantity to the leaves and small branches. Though the vermilion is far from being equally plentiful in all situations, the shrub is one of the most common on the uncultivated hills of Greece, and is generally found in company with the lentisk [σχίνος], which it somewhat resembles. Whence it appears that the comparison of Pausanias was peculiarly proper, and that those commentators are in the wrong who propose to substitute πρίνος for σχίνος in the preceding passage.] The prinari, or prinus of the ancient Greeks, is of every size, from a great forest tree to a low shrub: but it is only from the shrub, I believe, that the grain is gathered.
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§ 1.251 April 7 — I am informed that ships at Marathonisi water generally at a well not far from the theatre at Paleopoli, which has the reputation of yielding the best water in the neighbourhood. This I did not see, which I regret, as it seems to be the well of Aesculapius, mentioned by Pausanias. Those who are not very nice, fill their casks at the mill mentioned April 3d, 10.55, where the water is nearer the shore, and more accessible. I walk this afternoon to Mavrovuni, a village situated on a promontory, one mile and a half to the southward of Marathonisi: it overlooks the plain of Passava, which extends for three or four miles along the shore, and to an equal distance in the interior. Both the plain and the hills around it are well cultivated, and have several pyrghi and small villages upon them. Further westward, a long root of Mount Taygetum stretches to the south, called Makryaraki, or Long-ridge; it is covered with a forest of the velani-oak, and is supposed to produce half the vallonea shipped at Marathonisi: behind this are seen other higher mountains, extending to the gulf of Koroni, which are connected northward with the great
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§ 1.252 summits of Mount Taygetum, of which the southernmost peaked one, probably the ancient Taletum, is the most remarkable object in view: it is known in Mani by the name of Makryno. At the foot of the peak, to the westward, stood Pigadhia, now ruined, the native village and retreat of the robber Zakharia, long the terror of the Morea. To the south, the peninsula of Cape Matapan is just seen, nearly hid by Cape Kremidhara, which forms the southern side of the bay of Vathy. On the northern side of the same bay is Cape Petali, situated a mile or two north of Vathy, from whence begins the sandy beach of the plain of Passava, which runs in an easterly direction to Mavrovuni. The mountains to the northward of Cape Matapan are seen very obliquely, their direction like the great root of Taygetum in the northern part of Mani, being nearly north and south; the southern part of this great promontory is entirely separated from the rest of the range of Taygetum by a hollow undulated country, lying between Skutari and Vitylo, where are situated the villages of Karyopoli, Vakho, and several others, some of which are in sight from Mavrovuni. The northern part of this southern division of Taygetum, which anciently must have had some separate name, is very high, and has now some snow upon it. It terminates to the north in a
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§ 1.253 remarkable cliff, near the southern side of Porto Vitylo, called Ai-Elia. The village of Mavrovuni is reckoned the largest on the eastern side of Mani, though it does not contain many more than 100 families. It was built by Tzanet Bey, and is hence sometimes called Tzanetupoli. It was Tzanet, also, who built the town of Marathonisi, on a site before called Melissi, naming it after the adjacent island, which forms the port. There are three or four pyrghi in Mavrovuni, and at the top of the hill stands the castle of Tzanet, now deserted. It has a flat roof with battlements, and stands in a court surrounded with a wall, defended by battlements and round towers; the rain which falls on the roof of the house and on some platforms in the area, supplies a cistern below it. There are rooms fitted a la Turque — a large kitchen, and apartments for the suite. P. tells me, that Tzanet Bey used to ring a bell at supper time, and give food to all those who came to him. Part of the house has been beaten down by his enemies, but little damage seems to have been done to the principal apartments. From hence I proceed to the pyrgo of Thodhoro, Andon's son-in-law, with a note, of introduction from the Bey. I am treated, as usual in Greek visits, with sweetmeats, cold water, pipes, and coffee, in that order. Thodhoro seems to be the most humanized of his family. The lady of the house is gone to Marathonisi to see her father; I meet her, on my return, riding on a mule with several attendants. Mavrovuni commands a fine view of all the coast from the island Cerigo to Trinisa. From the position, one should expect an ancient site; but I cannot perceive any indications of it: nor does Pausanias give any reason to look for one here.
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§ 1.254 April 8. — I set out to visit the ruins of Passava at 8.10, proceeding along the side of Larysium as far as Mavrovuni. The priests of Bacchus would find it difficult now to discover a bunch of grapes upon this mountain at any season, or any thing but a few stunted shrubs of lentisk and prinari. It is said, however, even in the memory of persons now living, to have produced some olives, which have been destroyed in the Maniate wars. I cannot now perceive even an arbutus to justify the modern name of Kumaro. At 8.38 Mavrovuni was a little on our left. Here some delay occurred, while the owner of a horse which I had hired, fetched his musket from the village. We then descend into the plain of Passava; at 8.52 lose fifteen minutes in searching for a fresh horse for one of the servants, at a mandhra. At 9 cross a deep torrent-bed in the middle of the eastern branch of the plain, and pass over the hills which divide the two branches of the plain, and which run directly up from the sea into Bardhunia; we then descend into the western branch, through which flows the river of Passava, deep and rapid, coming from the higher Taygetum. We cross this stream, where it is joined by a smaller river from the west, and in a quarter of an hour ascend another range of low hills, on which are several dispersed huts and pyrghi, all known by the name of Κατζιαουνιάνικα. At one of these, my conductor stops to drink wine. Soon after, we halt fifteen minutes at one of the hamlets, where is a pyrgo belonging to Lambro, son-in-law of one of the Bey's nephews, and then descend the hill into a little narrow valley, well-cultivated with corn, and watered by a stream called Turkovrysi, which joins the sea not far from Vathy. Its source is a pool midway between the fort of Passava and the village of Karvela, which latter stands one mile and a half west of Passava. After flowing through a narrow vale, which extends from Karvela to the foot of the hill of Passava, the stream passes through a gorge, which divides the hill of Passava from the Makryaraki, then turns south through the vale, where we cross it on the
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§ 1.256 eastern side of Passava, and reaches the sea between Cape Petali and Vathy. Towards the sea a ruined pyrgos of the Cavaliere is visible on a hill, and Vathy on an opposite cape. After passing the Turkovrysi at 10.28, I ascend on foot the hill of Passava, which resembles that of the castle of Mistra, but with less than half its dimensions. The summit is occupied by a ruined fortress, consisting of a battlemented wall, flanked with one or two towers, and without any ditch. Within are the remains of gardens and houses, and the ruins of one building of larger size. In the eastern wall, towards the southern end, I find a piece of Hellenic wall, about fifty paces in length, and two-thirds of the height of the modern wall. It is formed of large masses, some of four feet long and three broad, not accurately hewn as in the second order, nor quite rude as in the first, and requiring only here and there a small stone in the interstices. There are no stones so large as many of those at Tiryns and Mycenae. In a corn field, below the wall, I find a fragment of a large ancient vase, an inch and a half in thickness; it was a part of the edge of the vase's mouth; round it are the letters O I A I Θ Ν of a very ancient form. From these remains, slight as they are, it
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§ 1.257 cannot be doubted, I think, that Passava was the site of Las, distant, as Pausanias tells us, ten stades from the sea, and forty from Gythium, for these data agree very well with Passava, and it is satisfactory to find remains indicating a remote antiquity on the site of a city which contributed to the Trojan expedition, and which is connected with the earliest transactions of the Laconic mythology. The Dioscuri were called Lapersae from having besieged and taken Las. The Bey's secretary, indeed, who had heard of Las, or, as he called it, Laspolis, endeavoured to persuade me that it was situated at a place in Bardhunia, two hours and a half from Marathonisi, though he could not say whether there are any remains on the spot he mentioned. If there are, it was, perhaps, the site of Croceae. From the summit of Passava are seen, on the neighbouring mountains, the following villages, beginning from the right: Parakhora, Karvela, Skamnaki, Panitza. At Skamnaki, ancient coins and sepulchres are said to be found. These villages lie in a line between the n.w. andw. The district is called Malevri, it extends westward as far as that of Vitylo, and comprehends Kelefa, where is a ruined
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§ 1.258 Venetian fortress at the head of Porto Vitylo; southward it confines upon Tzimova, Vakho, and Skutari. Between south-west and south, proceeding in the same direction along the mountains, are Karyopoli, Khoriasi, Neokhori, Tzerova, Parasiro. On the side of the hill of Passava I perceive several of the plants in flower, of which the Bishop of Mistra gave me a dish one day at his table. Having stripped off the leaves, they dress the centre of the stalk, which is tender, and resembles asparagus; when the flower is formed, the season is past. The plant is called here πετζιγκιάγκον, but at Mistra maniates, as coming from the mountains of Mani. To botanize in search of esculent wild herbs in the spring and early summer, is a common occupation of the women of Greece, those herbs forming an important part of the food of the poor during the fasts of that season. In the summer they have no such resource, and in the long fast which precedes the feast of the Panaghia, on the 15th of August S. V., the patient has little but the gourd tribe to depend upon. The summer productions of the garden, however, which depend on irrigation, such as gourds, cucumbers, badrjans, water-melons, &c. are too dear for the poor, or rather are not to be had, as gardening,
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§ 1.259 the produce of which is so liable to be plundered, can never flourish in a country where property is so insecure as in Turkey. The chief food of the lower classes, therefore, in the summer fast is salted star-fish, olives, goat's cheese, and bread of maize, seasoned with a garlic or onion, and washed down perhaps with some sour wine. No wonder that the great summer's fast sometimes proves fatal, especially to women. The inconvenience is felt in its full force in Mani, where the greatest rigour is observed as to fasts. I was present at Dr. W.'s, when a son of the Cavaliere came for some remedy for his mother, who had a sore throat. The doctor recommended a gargle of milk, which the youth rejected with horror. He then applied to be blooded, though in perfect health, this being a common practice among them in the spring. The name of Passava is applied to all the coast between Mavrovuni and the end of the sandy beach, where begins the hill of Vathy, and inland as far as the end of the plain. Returning to Marathonisi, I take the road which leads by Paleopoli, instead of that by Mavrovuni: mounting my horse at 11.55 at the stream of Turkovrysi, near the ruins of a Turkish bath, I pass through the hills at the foot of the Makryaraki, and arrive at 12.24 at Petrovuni, a rocky height near the north end of the district of Passava, not far from the right bank of the river of Passava, or river of Arna, as it is often called, from a Bardhunian village of that name near its sources. Having crossed the river, I find, not far from the left bank, some ancient foundations, and a small unfluted column lately brought to light by the rain. Soon afterwards we enter the gorges between Mount Kumaro and the hills which border the vale of Gythium on the north, and at 1.22 descend into that valley. The pass is difficult, and there is no road practicable for a horse. In several places there remain ancient steps cut out of the rock: at a steep descent, where the side of the rock is cut down perpendicularly, there are fifteen steps quite perfect winding to the right. At the highest part of the pass, from whence both valleys are visible, there are remains of a signal tower. I search in vain for an ancient aqueduct which was described to me. At 1.49 leave the foot of the pass, and at 2.14 arrive at Marathonisi.
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§ 1.260 April 9. — The Bey introduces me to one of the leading men of Mesa Mani, a district more commonly known beyond its limits by the name of Κακαβουλία, or the land of Evil Counsel; so notorious are its inhabitants for plundering the unfortunate sailors who are cast on their tempestuous, rocky, and unsheltered coast, as well as for more active enterprises of robbery and piracy. This person engages to the Bey for my safety in every part of Mesa Mani, and undertakes to conduct me by land to some ruins at Kyparisso, which, by the description of the place, must be those of Taenarus, or the city of the Taenarii. Mani is divided into three parts; Outer, Lower, and Inner. The first contains the western coast between the frontier of Kalamata on the north, to Port Vitylo on the south, together with the interior as far as the summits of Taygetum. Its total number of towns and villages are about fifty, in the subdivisions of Zarnata, Andruvista, Milea or Milia, and Zygos, each of which is a bishopric. Zarnata borders on Kalamata, and lies between the sea-shore and the summits of Taygetum, extending as far south as Cape Kurtissa: the chief place is Stavropighi. Andruvista inland, and Skardhamula near the sea, are the chief towns of the bishopric of Andruvista. This division lies exactly at the foot of the Makryno, or highest summit of Taygetum; it extends southward along the coast to Zygos, and borders inland on Milea,
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§ 1.262 which occupies the interior ridges, and continues eastward upon Bardhunia. In its eastern part Kastanitza is the principal place. To the westward are the towns of Kastania, Arakhova, Milea, and Garbelea. Zygos contains the slope of the mountains adjacent to the coast, from Leftro inclusive to Port Vitylo, Its chief towns are Pyrgo to the northward, Platza in the middle, and Vitylo to the south. Vitylo, however, being separated naturally from the rest of Zygos by a projecting root of the central ridge, and being independent of the captain of Zygos, is often considered a separate district. 2 Mesa Mani comprehends the remainder of the western coast, as far as the peninsula of Cape Matapan, and extends inland to the summit of the mountain, which is separated from the rest of the great Laconic promontory by the pass of Karyopoli, or that opening which reaches from about Skutari on the eastern coast, to Porto Vitylo on the western. Mesa Mani is chiefly a kind of rugged elevated plain, from two to four miles in breadth, lying between the mountain and a range of lofty cliffs which border the coast. This division of Mani has about thirty-five villages, of which Tzimova, at the northern extremity, is the largest; though its in habitants, with those of five villages near it, are anxious to be considered separate from the
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§ 1.263 remainder of Inner Mani, which forms more particularly the Kakavulia, or land of Evil Counsel. 3. Kato Mani contains about forty-five villages, and includes the whole eastern coast, from Porto Kaio to the Plain of Elos. It borders upon Mesa Mani as far as the pass of Karyopoli, and upon Exo Mani to the northward of that opening. At the northern extremity it confines upon Bardhunia, which occupies, on the eastern side of Taygetum, the space corresponding to the northern part of Exo Mani on the western. The subdivisions of Kato Mani are Marathonisi, Skutari, Malevri, Vakho, Kolokythi, and Laghia. It will be found that the total number of towns and villages in Mani, according to the preceding estimate, is about 130, instead of 117, the number before mentioned. The latter I find to be the general statement, and it is exactly confirmed in a poetical enumeration of them which I possess, and in which every village is named. But whenever I inquire of a native of any particular district, he gives me a greater number of names than in the poetical catalogue. This is easily accounted for by the dispersed mode of building, and partly perhaps by new villages having arisen since the poem was written, which seems to have been at least ten years ago.
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§ 1.264 Mani contains seven bishoprics, Zarnata, Andruvista, Milea, Platza, Maini, Kolokythi and Karyopoli. Maini includes the whole of Mesa Mani; Kolokythi comprehends the country from Porto-Kaio to the bay of Skutari; and Karyopoli contains all the northern part of Kato Mani. The first and last of these bishoprics belong to the ecclesiastical province of Lacedaemonia, the rest to that of Monembasia. I have not been able to learn exactly the date of the Albanian colonization of Bardhunia, though it is certainly within the last century. The district derives its name from a fortress similar to those of Passava, Maini, Kelefa, and Zarnata in Mani. They were all, I believe, originally constructed by the Byzantine princes, to keep these mountaineers in order, and were for the last time repaired, about 100 years ago, by the Venetians, when they were in possession of the Morea. The remains of the fortress of Bardhuni are near Arna. Bardhunia comprehends all the southern face and roots of the great Taygetum, to within a short distance of the coast above Trinasus and Gythium. Its villages are, Arna, situated near the sources of the river of Passava; this village contains five pyrghi, and ninety houses of Turks, one pyrgo, and thirty houses of Greeks: — Strotza, three pyrghi, and seventy houses, all Turkish: — Kurtzuna, two pyrghi, and forty houses, all Turkish: — Tzeria, two pyrghi, and thirty houses, all Turkish. The other villages are Britza, Apano Britza, the residence of Hussein Aga, Tarapsa, the residence of Zalum-Osman Aga, Vigla, Dhafni, Paleo Dhafni, Trizu, Potamia, Alevetzova, Asimini, Petrina, Rozova, Gulianika. Some of the latter border on the northern part of Milea; and being in that bishopric, it may be doubtful whether to include them in Mani or in Bardhunia, as sometimes the Musulmans and sometimes the Christians, supported by the Maniates, have the upper hand. The Musulmans fight among one another like the Maniates, but at present the power of Amus Aga keeps affairs tolerably quiet. Fort Bardhuni is reckoned three or four hours from Kurtzuna, and as much from Goranus, a village of the Mistra Vilayeti, from whence there is a road along the upper region of Taygetum, as follows: — from Goranus to Kumusta one hour, Boliana one hour, Dhipotamo half an hour, Dhoriza half an hour, Sotira half an hour, Sokha two hours, Anavryti an hour and a half, Barsiniko one hour.
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§ 1.265 April 10. — I leave Marathonisi at 8.43, and at 9.03, leaving Mavrovuni on the left, descend into the plain of Passava: at 10.02 arrive at the foot of the hills which bound the plain on the western side, and terminate in Cape Petali. The best part of the plain belongs to Tzanet Bey; particularly a large tract of vineyards, which my conductor describes as a krasivrysi, or fountain of wine. Corn and kalambokki cover the rest of the plain; the latter grows in the lower parts, as admitting of irrigation from the river of Passava, which joins the sea at half a mile short of Cape Petali. We cross the hills, of which this promontory is the termination, and which are covered with the yellow-flowered sage-leaved plant called sfaka, and with broom, now in the utmost luxuriance of blossom, and at 10.35 enter a little plain on the sea-side, where I see men at the plough preparing the ground for cotton, with a dagger and pistols at their girdles. This, it seems, is the ordinary armour of the cultivator, when there is no particular suspicion of danger; the shepherd is almost always armed with a musket. At 10.47 cross the mouth of a stream coming from a marsh, and some mills on the right; and at 10.57 that of the Turkovrysi river, whose pellucid waters seem to correspond better than those of the Passava river, with the description of the Smenus by Pausanias. At the end of the beach ascend the cape to Vathy, a village of twenty houses; arrive at 11.19.
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§ 1.267 Here I find George, one of the Bey's nephews, living in a miserable house near the Bey's pyrgo, which is much inferior to that of Tzanet at Mavrovuni. Ghiorghio conducts me to some ruins at the foot of the hill of Vathy, on the south-western side, a quarter of an hour from the village; they consist of the remains of a large building, strongly constructed with stones and Roman tiles; a semicircular extremity, with five windows in it, is still standing entire: the diameter is upwards of twenty yards. There is a similar semicircular ruin close by, and farther up the valley a long arched subterraneous structure, which looks like a Roman cloaca. These, I think, must be remains of Hypsus, or Hypsi. Farther up the country are the modern villages of Karyopoli, Kafki, Neokhori and Panitza, or Banitza. The last is three quarters of an hour from Karvela. At 12.27, proceeding from Vathy across the plain, we pass, at 12.30, a stream flowing from Karyopoli, and leave a rocky height with the ruins of a windmill on the sea-side, to the left. Sepulchres, with skeletons in them, have been found here by the peasants digging in the fields, as well as other vestiges of an ancient site. The place is called Dhikova, which name is applied also to the river and the valley. The hills around are well cultivated. We arrive at
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§ 1.268 the end of the plain at 12.45, and ascending a low height which connects Cape Kremidhara with the inland hills, come in sight of Skutari. It is a large village, situated on a steep height overlooking the sea, at the bottom of an extensive bay. The whole extent of Cerigo is seen in face of this bay. At 1.20 I arrive at Skutari, and lodge in the pyrgo of Katzano, for whom the Bey has supplied me with a recommendatory letter. He is a man of a plain modest manner, civil, and perfectly ready to answer any questions about his country, a readiness indeed which I have observed among all the Maniates with whom I have conversed. A greater share of candour and veracity is a natural consequence of their independence, rendering falsehood and dissimulation less necessary than they are to the other Greeks, who have no other arms of defence against their oppressors. The pyrgo, garrisoned at present by fifteen soldiers, whom Katzano keeps in pay, is constructed in the usual Maniate fashion. The lower story is occupied by the garrison, the upper consists of two rooms, or rather of one long room, divided by a slight wooden partition; at one end is the fire-place and the kitchen furniture, at the other a
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§ 1.269 mattrass for a sofa. Mattrasses and blankets are piled up in one corner of the room; all the rest of the family furniture is hung about the walls, or stowed away in wooden boxes, ranged around; the floor consists of loose boards, and, never undergoing ablution, harbours myriads of fleas in winter, and bugs in summer. Katzano has twenty-five persons in his family, of whom nine are his children; he married at the age of nineteen, his wife was fourteen; they have had fifteen children. The hills around Skutari are cultivated in little terraces covered with wheat and barley, the latter of which is now in ear. The town is full of the ruins of pyrghi, which have been destroyed in the Maniate wars; one belonging to the Cavaliere was ruined by the artillery of Hussein, the Capitan Pasha. In the course of conversation, Katzano informs me that formerly all the Gligoraki family lived at Skutari, but that John and Antony, alias Zanim and Andon, the heads of the two houses falling out, and all the branches taking part with one side or the other, a dispersion ensued, and Katzano, with his brother Tzingurio, are now the only two of the name in Skutari. Here, as in Khimara, which enjoys nearly the same degree of independence as Mani, the most ordinary state of hostility between two families,
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§ 1.270 is that of non-intercourse and mutual observation, without any overt act. While the two branches of the Gligorakis were living here in that state, Katzano being then young, he, with his brother and another were sitting on the outside of a house, when thirteen of the opposite party passed by. Katzano and his friends saluted them; the others returned the salute in an offensive manner, or such at least as Katzano and his friends, who had been drinking, thought proper to interpret as such, and who, without another word, rose and fired upon their opponents. The fire was returned, and both the brothers were dangerously wounded. Andon then sallied out of his house with a band of followers, seized eleven of the enemy, and shut them up in a pyrgo, until his nephew's wounds were healed, intending to have had blood for blood if they had died. Many of the Maniate women value themselves on their skill with the musket. Katzano's wife said to me, (as I was inquiring on this subject) pointing to a place about 100 yards distant, “set up your hat there, and see if I cannot put a musket ball through it.” I had too much regard for my only hat to trust her, for she has had two wounds in battle, and affects to consider her husband as no braver than he should be.
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§ 1.271 Lambro, a son-in-law of Lambro, the bey's nephew, arrives at Skutari in the evening, with a train of friends, to request the interference of Katzano on the following occasion. Lambro lives at the Katjaunianika, the place which I passed through near the Castle of Passava. A Kakavuliote, whose brother had been killed by Lambro, thwarted in all his attempts to revenge himself like a man of honour, that is to say, by murdering Lambro, and perhaps rather fearful even of success, on account of Lambro's connexion with the government, resolved at least to have the satisfaction of making depredations on his property. This day, in sight of Lambro and his friends, who even fired at the Kakavuliote without effect, he stole a mare belonging to Lambro, and rode off with her. The object of the embassy was to request Katzano's interference to have the mare restored, and to prevent hostilities, and there seems every reason to believe it will be effected. This shews the good effect of the influence and authority which the Captain Pasha has lately obtained over Mani, as enabling the inferiors in command to check the lawless system of retaliation which in their present uneducated state is the consequence of the independence of this people; and it leads me to believe, that the best thing that could happen to the Greeks would be for the Turks in every
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§ 1.272 part of the country to have a similar authority, in such a manner that the Greeks, governing themselves in that sort of municipal form natural to this country, should at the same time be under a control sufficient to save them from the pernicious effects of the spirit of party, to which their character, arising from the same natural causes, irresistibly impels them. If the pashas and other officers in command could maintain discipline among their troops when out of their sight, such a system might be possible in the islands, and perhaps even throughout the Morea; but I fear that Turkish anarchy, bigotry, greediness of gain, and cruelty, render it impracticable. I am informed by Katzano, that beyond the hill which terminates in Cape Stavri, (so the promontory is called, which bounds the bay of Skutari on the south, as Kremidhara does on the north) there are some ruins called Skopa or Skopopoli, about two hours distant from hence; they are in the district of Vatas, and near the sea, and consist of arched brick fabrics, like those of Hypsus but not so well preserved. They are probably the remains of Teuthrone. My host adds, with a grave face, and his assertion is confirmed by all around, that the sound of persons tossing over heaps of gold is sometimes to be heard there. Southward of
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§ 1.273 this place the coast is difficult to debarkation, rising steeply to the summit of the Taygetic ridge. There are however several small villages along the face of the mountain, of which Laghia is the largest. It is from Pausanias alone that we derive any detailed information on the ancient topography of the coast of Laconia southward of Gythium, or, as he expresses himself, to the right of Gythium, whence it seems that he very naturally considered a maritime town as facing the sea; and his expression therefore is worthy of observation, as it may serve to explain his meaning on other occasions, when it might otherwise be ambiguous. His description of the places is as follows: “To the right of Gythium is Las, ten stades distant from the sea, and forty from Gythium. The place, which is now inhabited, lies between the mountains Ilium, Asia, and Cnacadium: anciently the city stood on the summit of Mount Asia, where its ruins are still seen, and before the walls a statue of Hercules, and a trophy for a victory gained over some Macedonians, who, having separated themselves from the army of Philip, when he invaded the Laconice, were ravaging the maritime parts of the country. The ruins contain also a temple of Minerva Asia, said to have been founded by
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§ 1.274 Castor and Pollux on their returning in safety from the Colchi, to whom they went with the fleet of Jason; for according to the Lacedaemonians the Colchi worship Minerva Asia. Near the present city of Las there is a fountain called Cagaco, from the colour of the water, and near it a gymnasium and an ancient statue of Hermes. Upon Mount Ilium there is a temple of Bacchus, and on the highest summit of the same mountain a temple of Aesculapius. On Cnacadium there is a temple of Apollo Carneius. About thirty stades from the Carneium there is a place within the territories of the Spartans, called Hypsi, where are temples of Aesculapius and of Diana, surnamed Daphnaea. On a promontory by the sea-side stands the temple of Diana Dictynna, to whom they celebrate a yearly festival. On the left hand of this promontory the river Smenus falls into the sea, inferior to none in the sweetness of its water; its sources are in the mountain Taygetum. Five stades distant from the city, in the place called Arainus, is a tomb of Las, upon which there is
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§ 1.275 a statue They say that this Las was the founder of the city, and that he was slain by Achilles. On proceeding from the tomb of Las, occurs the mouth of the river, which is called Scyras, because Pyrrhus the son of Achilles entered the river, which was before nameless, with his ships, when he sailed from Scyrus to marry Hermione. Beyond the river there is an altar of Jupiter, and a little further an ancient temple of that deity. Pyrrhichus is situated forty stades from the river, in the interior. There is a well in the agora of this city, said to be the gift of Silenus, which, if it should fail, the inhabitants would be in want of water. In their district there is a temple of Diana, surnamed Astrateia, because here the Amazones terminated their progress, there is also a temple of Apollo Amazonius; the wooden statue in each temple is said to have been dedicated by those women of the Thermodon. On descending to the sea-side from Pyrrhichus, occurs Teuthrone, reported by the inhabitants to have been founded by the Athenian Teuthras; they worship above all deities Diana Issoria: they have a fountain called Naia. One hundred and fifty stades
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§ 1.276 distant from Teuthrone, is the promontory Taenarum, &c.” The positions in the preceding extract depend chiefly upon the strong evidence which the Hellenic wall, and other marks of antiquity at Passava afford of that hill being the Mount Asia upon which the Homeric Las was situated. Which of the adjacent hills was Ilium, and which Cnacadium, is not so clear. We can hardly doubt that the source of the Turkovrysi was the fountain Cagaco. It has been supposed by some of the commentators, from the name Cnacadium, that the fountain was called not Cagaco but Cnaco; and I think the probability is increased by the similarity of the name to that of the Cnacion at Sparta; the water of which stream, moreover, is pellucid like the Turkovrysi: if the emendation be allowed, the neighbouring height is probably the Cnacadium. In any case the distance of thirty stades from Cnacadium to Hypsi agrees sufficiently with that of Passava from Vathy, to leave little or no doubt of the ruins near the latter place being those of Hypsi. The promontory on which stood the Dictynnaeum seems, therefore, to be that called Petali, which bounds the bay of Vathy on the north-east; and the more so, as, taking the
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§ 1.277 meaning of the words right and left from the instances of Las and Trinasus, in regard to Gythium, we have the river of Passava for the Smenus, a little to the left of the promontory, as Pausanias has placed it. Its sources, as he remarks, are in Mount Taygetum, a description which will hardly agree with any other stream on this part of the coast. His river Scyras accords exactly also with that called the river of Dhikova, and not less so, the vestiges of antiquity which are found near the right side of its mouth, at the place called Dhikova, with the site of the temple and altar of Jupiter. The remains found at Skamnaki are probably those of Pyrrhichus, its distance from the shore, near Dhikova, agreeing with the forty stades of Pausanias. It seems to follow, that the ruins at Skopopoli are those of Teuthrone, the distance of that place, moreover, from the peninsula of Cape Matapan, agreeing perfectly with the 150 stades of Pausanias between Teuthrone and Cape Taenarum. His observation, however, that Hypsi was within the boundary of the Spartans seems to require some explanation. It appears that when Augustus relieved the Laconic towns distant from Sparta from their dependence on that
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§ 1.278 city, and made them autonomous, under the name of the community of the Eleuthero-Lacones, there were twenty-four of these πολεις; but that about 180 years afterwards, when Pausanias travelled, there were only eighteen in that condition, the remainder then paying their taxes at Sparta, and forming a part of that government, probably because they had fallen into poverty and depopulation. Pausanias has given us a list of the eighteen Eleuthero-Laconic towns of his time; he hints, also, that he has had occasion to mention the other six places in the course of his narrative, but he has not specified their names. I conceive, therefore, that the words εν οροις ήδη Σπαρτιατών indicate that Hypsi was in the district of one of the six towns which had ceased to be autonomous, and were then under the government of Sparta. I suspect that town to have been Aegila, for Pausanias has mentioned Aegila incidentally, as a city of Laconia, and, if we may trust Pliny, it was in this gulf. He says, after naming several places in the interior of Laconia and on its western coast, “Mons Taygetus, amnis Eurotas, sinus Aegilodes, oppidum Psamathus, sinus Gytheates ab oppido. Omnes enim Maleae promontorio includuntur.” Whence it should seem that Aegila stood on one of the principal bays in the Laconic gulf. There
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§ 1.279 is none so remarkable as that of Skutari, which town occupies a site not likely to have been overlooked by the ancients. Its having been deserted before the time of Pausanias may perhaps have been the reason why it is not noticed by him in his progress along this coast. Hypsi, in this case, would fall on the frontiers of Aegila and Las. Of the other towns which had ceased to enjoy the Eleuthero-Laconic autonomy, we know from Strabo that Helos was one; Cyphanta, Leucae, Psamathus, and Hippola may possibly have been four others. In our copies of Strabo, a town of Asine is placed upon the western coast of the Laconic Gulf, and Stephanus, probably copying from Strabo, names a Laconic Asine as different from the Messenian. But there can be little doubt that the text of Strabo, or his information, is erroneous, and that there was no other Asine in the southern part of the Peloponnesus than that which, according to several authorities, stood near Cape Acritas in Messenia, and which Strabo himself tells us gave the epithet of Asinaean to a part at least of the Gulf of Messenia. Pyrrhichus appears to have been the same place as the Pyrrhi Charax, taken by Philip son of Demetrius, when he overran this country, and when, as we learn from Pausanias alone, a party of his Macedonians were cut off and defeated. [TO BE ERASED PER L: Nor can it be doubted that Pyrrhi Charax was the same place which Livy calls Pyrrhi Castra in relating the movements of Philopoemen and Nabis twenty-six years afterwards.]
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§ 1.280 April 11. — At 12.37 I set out from Skutari, having waited until that hour for the arrival of mules from Tzimova with one of the Mavromikhali family, to whose care I am recommended by the Bey. On the western side of Skutari there are plantations of mulberry trees, and a deep gorge on the south, which separates the hills of Skutari from the commencement of the heights of Mount Sanghia, as the northern part of the southern division of the great Taygetic promontory is called. At 1.05, having crossed the hills of Skutari, we enter the Vale of Dhikova at the distance of a mile from the sea: at 1.15 cross the river of Dhikova, half a mile south of Karyopoli, and again crossing and recrossing it several times, pass under the hill of Karyopoli, and at 1.37 enter a ravine leading to the south-west. Through this opening comes the river of Dhikova; on either side are steep rocks forming a very strong pass.
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§ 1.281 At 1.50, emerging from the glen, we enter a mountainous cultivated region, where, in a lofty situation on the mountain, on the left hand, is a monastery of Panaghia Spiliotissa, pleasantly situated in the midst of gardens and cultivated terraces. We continue to follow the river, crossing it and ascending the hills, first on its left bank and then on its right, till 2.35, when we leave it, now only a small torrent coming through a rocky gorge on the right. I observed in the vale, near a mill, some of the bee-hives which produce the celebrated Maniate honey. The hives are made of four slates set up on the edges, with other pieces for the roofs and floors. In some of the stands there are eight or ten hives in a row, and two or three stories of hives, so that at a distance the structure looks like a wall built of very large stones: the junction of the slates is cemented with plaster. We now enter a little stony barren plain belonging to the village of Vakho, which is situated to the southward on the steepest part of Mount Sanghia. Zanim Bey lives at Vakho, which consists of about thirty miserable huts. Beyond the plain we enter a narrow pass at 3, with Vakho half a mile on the left. After ascending a very rugged road for half an hour, we come in sight of the Port of Vitylo, as well as of the town of that name, situated on the mountain
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§ 1.282 which rises from the northern side of the port. Then passing at 3.40 under the rocky precipice of St. Elias, which I have already mentioned as forming a termination of the range of Sanghia conspicuous from the eastern shore of Mani, we leave on the left Kuskuni, in a very elevated situation on the western side of the mountain of St. Elias. Near the foot of the cliff I observe several wheel-tracks of ancient cars in parts of the rock, which are now so rugged as to be impassable even to a mule. From this spot we descend in thirty-seven minutes to Tzimova a large village situated half a mile inland from the brow of the lofty cliffs, of which all the coast to the southward of Porto Vitylo consists. Gika Mavromikhali, a stout active Maniate, about sixty years of age, who came from hence on a mule in the morning, and walked back all the way from Skutari, conducts me to his house, where I am soon afterwards visited by Peter Mavromikhali, commonly called Kyr Petruni, who lives at the harbour of Tzimova, half an hour northward of the town, at the foot of the mountain. Petruni, though he does not assume the title of kapitano, enjoys the influence of one over the whole of Mesa Mani. I find also at Tzimova, Poliko Tubakic of Babaka, the
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§ 1.283 Kakavuliote chieftain who has been ordered by the bey to conduct me through the district. One of the first things Tubaki said to my servant was, “If the bey had not given such precise orders concerning you, how nicely we should have stripped you of all your baggage.” These persons tell me they never heard of the plague having been in Mani. The wind is their plague, they say: it often destroys their crops of grain, and has done much damage this year. On this side of the peninsula it is the Greco and Levante rushing through the ravines of the mountain, on the shore of the Laconic gulf it is the Garbioo that does the mischief. Another curse is the want of rain in the month of April, which dries up the ear before there is any substance in it.
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§ 1.284 CHAPTER VIII, LACONIA. APRIL 12. — This morning at 7.20, I leave Tzimova, vulgarly pronounced Djimova, accompanied by a relation of the bey from Skutari, by Gika Mavromikhali, by Tubaki, who has a nephew with him, and by one of the bey's attendants from Marathonisi, who was sent hither to prepare mules for me. Most of these persons are mounted at my expense, and they are all armed with Albanian muskets, that is to say, with muskets mounted in Albania, the barrels being made in the north of Italy. There is, besides, a guard of twelve men, headed by Kyr Petruni, who accompany me a quarter of a mile out of the town, and then return. At 8.27 we descend into a deep ravine, which rises to a gorge in the mountain, a mile on the left, and on the right ends in a small inlet, or bay, which forms a break in the line of cliffs, and is called Dhikho. This ravine separates the sub-district of Tzimova from the rest of Mesa Mani. Having passed it, we leave Kharia a little on the right at 8.50. At 9.07 Pyrgos is on the right on the edge of the cliff, which overhangs the sea: this place, my attendants say, is hostile to the English, on account of the capture at Delos not long ago by Capt. Donnelly of the navy, and the subsequent imprisonment at Constantinople of twenty-five sailors of a pirate tratta, who were all natives of this village, except the captain, a Cretan. At 9.20 halt at an old church of Aia Marina on the road side, not far from Pyrgos. I here find an inscribed stone in the wall of the church. At 9.40 proceed along the stony level, or rather slope, included between the rocky sides of Mount Sanghia and the cliffs on the sea-side. At 10.30 we are in line with another inlet of the sea, but smaller than that of Dhikho, and more exposed to the westward. At 11, the village of Atja, one of six, (formerly five) which, from their number, were called the Pendadha, is half a mile on the left, under a remarkable little peaked rock. South of it stands Babaka, or Pabaka, one of the Pendadha, and the village of my conductor Poliko. All this country, though stony,
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§ 1.286 and in appearance poor in soil, is covered with fields of wheat, barley, beans, and fasulia, separated by fences of loose stones; with more rain and less wind, it would be a fertile district. The road passes between two parallel walls, over the bare rugged rock, where it requires the utmost caution of the mule to secure a footing. At 11.40, we halt at a single house in the fields, opposite to the northern extremity of the great projection of the coast, called Kavo Grosso. Half-way between that extremity and the line of coast which we have been following, is a promontory, called Tigani, with a small bay on either side of it. That to the eastward, which is much the more secure, is called the Port of Mezapo; it is said to be the best harbour on the western coast of Mani. The promontory of Tigani is not high, its flat summit is surrounded with the remains of an Italian fortification, and it is connected with the great peninsula of Kavo Grosso by a low isthmus. This is evidently the situation of the port and Homeric town of Messa for, independently of the modern name Mezapo, and the description of Pausanias, the epithet which Homer applies to Messa, is confirmed by my guides, who say that the caverns in the cliffs of Cape Grosso abound with wild pigeons.
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§ 1.287 The words of Strabo, regarding Messa, seem clearly to shew, that he had not himself visited this part of Greece. “It is said,” he remarks, “that Messe is not to be found; some affirming that it was Messoa, one of the quarters of Sparta, like Limnaeum, others, that it was an abbreviation of Messene.” But Pausanias, who was an αυτόπτης, knew better, and has exactly described Messa in this spot. I found an inscription at Mistra, containing the name of a man with the adjunct Messios which we learn from Stephanus to have been the gentile adjective of Messa, and shews that the man was a citizen of this place. In the central and highest part of the peninsula of Kavo Grosso, there is a conical height which appears artificial, and marks probably the site of Hippola. Between the spot where we halt and the Port of Mezapo, stands a church of Aia Varvara, near a ruined village. Having moved again at 12.48, we leave, at 1.07, the villages of Karina and Mina on the left, in a retired level at the foot of the mountain. At 1.14 cross a bed of a torrent, which flowing from the latter village joins the sea three quarters of a mile on our right, at a pyrgo on the shore of the harbour of Mezapo. At 2.08 pass between the villages of Nomia on the right, and Gita on the left; these are situated on a ridge
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§ 1.288 which unites the height of Cape Grosso with the mountains, and commands a view of all the elevated paralia in one direction beyond Tzimova, and in the other nearly as far as Alika. The peninsula of Cape Grosso is about six miles in circumference; it terminates all round towards the sea in a high precipice, like that of the coast northward as far as Vitylo. The ground rises in great natural steps from the neighbourhood of Nomia to the centre of the peninsula of Cape Grosso, which seems to be all either a mere rock, or covered with a scanty layer of soil, cultivated only in a few places. From the foot of the steeps of the great ridge eastward, to the western extremity of the cliffs of the peninsula, there is a distance of three miles in a straight line. The village of Gita has no less than twenty-two pyrghi. In the poetical list of villages which I have already alluded to, the epithet νολντυξγος is applied to it. It contains eighty or a hundred families. None of the villages we have passed today seem to have less than twenty or thirty. At 3 we are opposite the southern cape of Kavo Grosso, within which is a curve, or bay, exposed to the south-west from thence, southward to Kyparisso, and almost as far as the peninsula of Cape Matapan, the aspect of the coast changes; instead of lofty cliffs, the slope is continued
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§ 1.289 from the steep part of the mountain, quite to the sea-shore. Consequently out road, though continuing at the same elevation above the sea, passes along a steeper slope, and being likewise more stony, becomes, at length, nothing more than a narrow terrace of loose round stones, over which it is impossible to move forward but at the slowest pace: the same kind of road occurred in some places before arriving at Gita. The fences which surround the fields are built of rocks, broken up into cubical masses, and put together without cement. The stone is a coarse-grained white marble, similar to that which was employed at Gythium, and in all the ancient remains which I have seen to the southward of that place. That of which the buildings of Sparta were constructed, is of a much finer quality. At 8.59 we pass under the village of Alika, which stands upon the foot of the mountain. In the middle of the village the rock is cut perpendicularly to the length of about 150 paces: it seems to have been an ancient quarry. Between Gita and Alika we met upwards of 200 asses, laden with brushwood from Porto Kaio, for the use of the villages to the northward. Each train of asses obliged us to halt a minute or two. This great importation of wood is for Easter, when every hearth is employed in roasting lambs. During Lent so strict is the fast that there is little need of fire.
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§ 1.290 No people are more rigorous in the observances of the Greek Church than the Maniates. A Kakavuliote, who would make a merit of hiding himself behind the wall of a ruined chapel, for the purpose of avenging the loss of a relative upon some member of the offending family, would think it a crime to pass the same ruin, be it ever so small a relict of the original building, without crossing himself seven, or at least three, times. Having descended from Alika into the bed of a torrent, we enter, at 4.20, the fences of Kyparisso, once a considerable village, but now reduced to one pyrgo, a chapel, and a house for the priest. My companion of the Gligoraki family says, that his ancestors, as well as those of the Mavromikhali, came originally from hence. The old priest, whose only costume is a jacket with a pair of wide trowsers of coarse blanketing of Maniate manufacture, receives me with an air of cheerfulness and hospitality; from a consciousness, perhaps, that he has nothing to give us, and that he is more likely to be entertained at our expense, than we at his. His house, which adjoins the church, offers, indeed, little hope of supply to the traveller. He points, however, without hesitation, to the only fowl he possesses, as he desires us to “take off its head”, imitating the action of a Pasha ordering an execution.
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§ 1.291 He makes no difficulty in telling me his history; he is a Cretan, his monastic name Macarius. After having passed several years as a kaloiero at Mount Sinai, which he says is infinitely worse than Kakavulia, he was sent into Egypt to collect charity for the convent. The temptation was too great; instead of returning with the money into the desert, he came to hide himself in Mani, and has now, for thirty years, been officiating as the priest of Kyparisso. He hopes to obtain pardon, he says, by his daily prayers, for the crime he has committed, and shews me a sepulchre which he has built for himself behind the church. He then conducts me to something better worth seeing, namely, a small ruined church dedicated to Aio Sotiri, or Saint Saviour; of which the door-posts are two inscribed quadrangular στηλαι decorated with mouldings above and below. One of the inscriptions is by the city of the Taenarii, in honour of one of its citizens: the other is a dedication of the community of the Eleuthero-Lacones to Caius Julius Laco, son of Eurycles. From these it is clear that this place was the site of Taenarum, called, in the time of Pausanias, Caenepolis, and as it would seem, from the second inscription, the chief place of the Eleuthero-Laconic federation.
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§ 1.292 The Laco mentioned in this inscription is probably the same son of Eurycles who appears from Strabo to have been unable long to maintain himself in power, after his father's death. Lying in front of the same church, there is a broken pedestal formed like the others, and inscribed in honour of one of the citizens of Taenarum. The church occupies, perhaps, the site of the temple of Ceres, mentioned by Pausanias; it stands on the summit of a height of about a mile in circumference, which is bounded to the west and south-west by perpendicular cliffs about forty feet high, washed by the sea; to the north and west by the torrent we crossed in arriving; and on the eastern side by a valley covered with corn-fields, which beyond it rise in terraces as high up as the rocky mountain supplies any soil for cultivation. On the north, the torrent bed ends in a little inlet of the sea, among the cliffs: to the south, there is a small harbour at the extremity of the valley. Here, probably, stood the temple of Venus. Kyparisso stands about five miles from the isthmus of the peninsula of Cape Matapan. Towards the sea the hill consists of bare rock; in the opposite direction the slope is partitioned into very small inclosures by walls of a slaty, kind of stone, different from that which I observed on
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§ 1.293 the road hither, and piled up, apparently in this place more for the purpose of clearing the land of the ruins, than for that of dividing the fields, which are small inclosures of corn or vines, by no means requiring so many divisions. In this labyrinth of fences and ruined buildings, by the guidance of the priest and a young son of his, (another little irregularity of Papa Makario) I find dedications to Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Gordian, and among other fragments of inscriptions, one which appears originally to have consisted of twenty-six Iambic verses. In none of the inscriptions could I perceive the name Caenepolis. In some the Doric form A ΠΟΛΙΣ is used, in others it is H ΠΟΛΙΣ. The magistrates are entitled Ephori and Ephori Aurelii, and one of them, was Strategus. There are several shafts of small columns among the ruins, and two large ones of the finest red granite of Syene, exactly like that of the Column of Diocletian at Alexandria. These are lying on the ground; but there are also two or three pieces of smaller columns still in their original places, which formed, apparently, part of a large church in the early ages of Christianity, when the appellation of Taenarum was probably obsolete, and the place flourished under its present name of Cyparissus. I could not find any capital of a column, except some very bad specimens in the church. The priest's hut being insufficient to contain our numbers, he resigns his church of the Panaghia to us, where I take up my abode for the night. The eating of a meat supper in the church during the most rigid of Greek fasts, seems to shock the liberal Macarius himself and we are duly punished by myriads of fleas, which prevent all possibility of sleeping. The whole of our party was strewn upon the floor of the church, and there was only just space sufficient to contain them.
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§ 1.294 April 13. After another search this morning for remains of antiquity, I quit Kyparisso at 7.50 for Cape Matapan, taking the road to Vathia, a village placed on the summit of a peaked height, half a mile from the sea, and a mile in a straight line from Kyparisso. The road to the cape quits that of Vathia in a torrent bed near the sea, at the ascent of the hill on which the village stands. This torrent forms the separation between Inner and Lower Mani, Vathia and its περιχωρα, consisting of three adjacent villages, being included in Kato Mani, according to the poetical list. My Mesa Maniate companions, however, do not admit of this arrangement, and include every thing on the western side of the promontory in their own division of Mani. At 8.30 the sea is near us on the right hand, and the village half a mile on our left. We halt five minutes, to allow time to Gika and Poliko to answer the inquiries of a party of armed men from Vathia, who meet us on the road. This village, my guides say, has been divided into two parties for the last forty years, in which time they reckon that about 100 men have been killed. We pursue the summit of the cliffs overhanging the sea, along the side of a very steep mountain, where are some difficult passes, one in particular formed by a wilderness of immense masses of rock, which seem to have fallen from the brow of the mountain. Every spot of earth on its side which is covered with a little soil, is cultivated in terraces of corn. At 9.38, having arrived opposite the head of Porto Marmari, a dangerous creek in the steep coast, we cross over a part of the neck of land which separates Marmari from Porto Kaio, and which constitutes the isthmus of the peninsula of Cape Matapan. Here we quit the road to Porto Kaio, which leads also by a branch to a monastery oh the mountain, above the northern side of that harbour, and turn to the right into the peninsula of Matapan. On the ascent of the hill which forms the isthmus, and which is barely half a mile across in a straight line, I
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§ 1.296 have a fine view of Porto Kaio with its monastery, surrounded by corn fields in terraces. Proceeding in a south-east direction, we arrive, at 9.55, upon the summit of a ridge, where are some small remains of a Hellenic wall: not above a dozen stones remain in their places. The spot commands to the north a view of Porto Kaio, and to the south-east looks down upon the Port of Vathy; the latter is a long narrow inlet of the sea open to the south-east, towards which all the intermediate space is covered with terraces of corn. The western side of the peninsula is entirely occupied by the high rocky land of Cape Matapan, which is cultivated in every spot capable of cultivation. Two small kalyvia stand on the eastern face of the mountain; the western side falls more steeply to the sea, and is not seen from our road. A lower ridge extends along the eastern side of the peninsula from Vathy to Porto Kaio. All the cultivated tract between the two ridges, as well as the two kalyvia, is known by the name of Asomato, which is properly that of a ruined church, near the shore of a small harbour close to Cape Matapan on the eastern side; to this place our path now leads, after leaving another on the left which conducts to the port of Vathy. After passing the division of the roads, we proceed along the side
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§ 1.297 of the western mountain, by one of the kalyvia, and then descend to Asomato, where we arrive at 10.30. Asomato, like many other dilapidated churches in Greece, has been repaired in such a manner as to be covered with a roof at the holy table, while the remaining walls are in a state of ruin. This altar-end is formed in part of Hellenic masonry, not quite regular; the stones, though very large, being not all quadrangular. At the end of this piece of Hellenic wall near the altar a narrow ancient door remains, which is not apparent from within, having been immured in converting the temple into a church. Several other parts of the church walls are formed of ancient wrought blocks, but that which is to the right of the altar only is original in its construction and site. This piece of ancient work is from four to seven feet high, and fifteen yards long. I did not complete the measurement of the church, which I had begun, not choosing to offend the prejudices of my guides, who cried κρίμα! when I entered the sanctuary, and partly because the measurement could not have given the exact dimensions of the ancient building, as the Hellenic wall formed a part of one side only, and no traces are to be seen of the opposite wall. The church, instead of facing to the east as Greek churches usually
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§ 1.298 do, faces south-eastward, towards the head of the port, which is likely to have been the aspect of the temple. There can be little or no doubt that it was the celebrated temple of the Taenarian Neptune. I could not find any remains of columns. A little farther inland from the ruined church, are several ancient bottle-shaped cisterns cut in the rock. I find the women of the kalyvia washing their linen with the water taken from them. The largest of the cisterns is ornamented round the edge with a mosaic of tiles. The rock near the cisterns has been levelled in some parts, and made perpendicular in others for the reception of ancient buildings, and in several places there remain steps cut in the rocks. On the north-eastern side of the chapel, a few paces distant, there is a large grotto in the rock, probably that from which Hercules is fabled to have dragged the dog Cerberus; nor is it any objection to this supposition, that no interior cavity or semblance of subterranean descent is to be seen within the cavern, for Pausanias remarks the same circumstance. The only ancient monument which I could find near this famous entrance of the Infernal Regions, was a large broken square stele on the shore of the harbour, piously inscribed by some fair Taenarian in honour of her father. A quarter of a
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§ 1.299 mile southward of the inner extremity of the port, a low point of rock projects into the sea from the foot of the mountain: this, the natives of the peninsula say, is the real Kavo Matapan, the southernmost point of Greece and of all Europe. Eastward of it there is a rock connected with the shore, in which is seen a great cleft, and opposite the point itself, a rocky islet called Katergaki. A more remarkable point than Matapan itself, is that to the south-east, which divides Asomato from Vathy, and shelters the latter harbour towards the south; it is more separated from the rest of the peninsula, but is not so high and steep as the land above Cape Matapan. Pausanias thus describes the Taenarian district: “One hundred and fifty stades distant from Teuthrone is the promontory Toenarum, and the ports Psamathus and Achilleius $ at the Cape there is a temple resembling a cavern b, and before it a statue of Neptune. Some of the Greek poets have feigned that Hercules here led forth the dog of hell, though there is no passage through the cave into the earth, nor, indeed, is it probable that there exists any subterraneous dominion of the gods where souls are collected.
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§ 1.300 Among other dedications at Taenarum, there is an Arion in brass playing on the guitar and seated on a dolphin. There is also a source of water at Taenarum. From Taenarum to Caenepolis the distance by sea is forty stades. The ancient name of this city was Taenarum. It contains a temple of Ceres and on the sea side a temple of Venus with an upright statue of stone: on proceeding forward thirty stades, there occurs a promontory called Thyrides. Here are ruins of the city Hippola, among which is a temple of Minerva Hippolaitis. A little beyond is the city Messa, and a harbour, from whence to Oitylus there is a distance of 150 stades.” It is difficult to reconcile what Pausanias says of the temple of Neptune with present appearances, which clearly shew that the cavern and or temple, were at some little distance apart, though they may have been included within the same peribolus. The description of Strabo seems more correct; he says, “that the promontory Taenarum was in the bend of the sea shore, and that it had a temple of Neptune built in a grove, and near it a cavern,
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§ 1.301 through which it was fabled that Cerberus was dragged out of hell by Hercules.” 1 am surprised to find that the Taenarian promontory has not been well described, either in ancient history or in any modern book or map, in short, that there is nothing to indicate that Taenarum is in fact a peninsula of circular form about seven miles in circumference, connected with the end of the great Taygetic promontory by an isthmus which is about half a mile wide in direct distance. It was not until I saw its real conformation, that I could understand why Pausanias, coasting the Laconic Gulf from the northward names Psamathus and Achilleius after the promontory Taenarum. It is evident that the whole peninsula was considered as the promontory; in fact, it is only in this manner that his distance of forty stades between Caenepolis and the promontory can be justified, that is to say, by measuring it to the nearest part of the peninsula. The word ακτη applied to Taenarum by Strabo, seems to allude also to the peninsula, for ακτη was strictly applicable to a coast of this description, and was employed with the same import in the instances of Attica and of the Thracian Acte which contained Mount Athos. The word Matapan I take to be exactly, or very nearly, the Laco-Doric, or
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§ 1.302 perhaps the still more ancient local form and pronunciation of the word Μέταπον. The accents indeed differ, but the dialects differed sometimes from the common Hellenic in accents as well as in vowels. It is probable that the whole peninsula was known by the name of Ταίναρον ακρα or ακτη, and its extreme promontory by that of το Mαταμάν, while the small harbour of Asomato, the temple of Neptune, and the habitations around it, may have been distinguished by the name of Posidonium. The remark of Strabo, that Amathus occurs next to Cape Taenarum in entering the Laconic gulf, leaves little doubt as to the situation of Psamathus at Porto Kaio, for here are some remains of an ancient town, and it is not credible that Strabo should have noticed Vathy to the exclusion of the more important harbour, Porto Kaio. It will follow that Vathy was the Achilleius of Pausanias. Thyrides is another point on this coast of which it required an actual inspection, in order to understand the ancient allusions or remarks concerning it. Strabo describes it as a ροωδης κρημνος, “a precipitous cape beaten by the waves”; Pausanias, as a promontory situated thirty stades to the northward of Caenepolis, and 150 stades distant from Oitylus. Though
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§ 1.303 these descriptions agree in every respect with Cape Grosso, they omit to give any idea of the dimensions of that remarkable promontory, which is a large peninsula like the Taenarian, nearly of the same dimensions, but of a more oval shape, and connected with the continent by a much wider isthmus. Another difficulty in regard to the topography of this coast, is the remark of Strabo, that Thyrides was the boundary of the Messeniac gulf. But this also is at once explained by an examination of the places, for we find that the latitude of Thyrides and of the Taenarian Cape is so nearly the same, that Thyrides conceals the view of the Taenarian promontory from every part of the Messeniac gulf, except the immediate vicinity of its south-western promontory, Cape Acritas. All the Taenaria, therefore, between Capes Grosso and Matapan was a coast not belonging to either gulf. Homer seems to have correctly understood the extent of the Taenarian district, which, as we have seen, comprehended all the coast between the peninsulas Thyrides and Taenarum, including all the
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§ 1.304 latter peninsula, with the exception of the part near Psamathus. From other authors we do not learn much as to the topography of this extremity of the Peloponnesus. It appears from Thucydides, that the temple of Neptune was a sanctuary in his time, and was held in peculiar veneration by all Greece. I have inquired in vain for the Taenarian quarries of sumptuous marble mentioned by Strabo. Several ancient quarries, indeed, I have remarked, and particularly that at Alika, but they appear to have been all of coarse white marble or limestone. Nor have I been able to hear anything, on the Laconic coast, of the shell-fish which produced a purple inferior only to the Tyriane. At 11.22 we leave Asomato, and return by a road to the eastward of that by which we came. At 11.41 the head of Vathy is below us, to the right. At 11.54, leaving the Kyparisso road to the left, we proceed along the summit of the
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§ 1.305 Isthmus, and then, winding round the side of the mountain which overhangs Porto Kaio, arrive, at 12.27, at the monastery called the Virgin of Porto Kaio, which furnishes by far the most agreeable lodging I have met with in Mani. On the eastern side a spring issues from the side of the hill, and falls over several terraces of garden ground on the side of the mountain, which are grown with olives, caroubs, and cypresses, mixed with a few orange-trees. The garden furnishes me with a salad for dinner, and the stores of the convent some of the choicest Maniate honey — my companions, meantime, regaling upon bean-soup and salted olives. During their repast an old man incessantly accuses Gika Mavromikhali of having killed his brother, or, at least, of being of the family of the murderer. Gika admits the latter, but urges in defence that the deed was done in an honourable way, in the course of a war between the two houses. Only sixteen days ago, Gika tells me, he destroyed a pyrgo of one of his enemies in his own village of Tzimova. Porto Kaio, he informs me, was anciently called Ψαμαθία. When I ask him how he acquired this information, he does not recollect, but admits that the name is known only to those who are a little tinctured with letters.
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§ 1.306 It is not improbable that Psamathus, converted into Psamathia, was used until the Morea was overrun by the Franks, who, particularly the Venetians, seem to have done more than the Turks in destroying the vestiges of antiquity in Greece; and who having called this harbour Porto delle Quaglie, from the great number of quails which frequent the neighbourhood in the autumn, this name, in the course of time, has been assumed by the Greeks in the form of Porto Kaio, for there are many Italian words adopted in the dialect of the islands and southern coasts of Greece, in the same manner as Turkish words have been adopted in the northern and continental dialect. Thus, Kavo Grosso, the only modern name for Cape Thyrides, and accurately descriptive of it, is formed of two Italian words. Kavo and Porto, however, are used for Cape and Harbour in every part of Greece, having been introduced by the seafaring men, who are more than any other class familiar with the Italian language. Porto Kaio is a beautiful circular harbour with a narrow entrance, a fine sandy bottom, and depth of water for large ships, except at a shoal which lies midway between the southern point of the entrance and the shore, which is immediately under the monastery. This point shelters the harbour from the S. and S. E. Upon its extremity I perceive
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§ 1.307 the remains of a battery which was erected by the insurgent Major Lambro, when Porto Kaio was the strong hold of that person in the year 1773. Beyond the ravine of the garden of the monastery, to the eastward, another root of the mountain, similar to that on which the monastery stands, slopes into the sea. On its summit stands the ruin of a square fortress, apparently of the same period as that of Passava, but more respectable. Coronelli has given a description of it under the name of the fort of Maina. Its Greek name is Μαΐνη; it was a town in the thirteenth century, as we learn from Pachymer and Nicephorus Gregoras. It would seem, indeed, from the mention made of it by those historians, to have been then one of the chief places in the southern part of the peninsula, for Nicephorus names it as such, together with Sparta, meaning probably Myzithra, and Monemvasia. He is not far from the truth in describing Maini as being the place called by the ancients the Taenarian promontory but he most incorrectly places it near Leuctra. Perhaps he mistook the ruins at Kyparisso for those of Leuctra. Maini is still nominally one of the suffragan dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Monemvasia.
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§ 1.308 The Italians translated the word into Maina, and thence called the whole of the great Taygetic promontory, Braccio di Maina. From the same word the Greek chorographical appellation Μάνη is derived. From the fortress of Maini begins the district of Laghia, belonging to Kato Mani. Laghia is the largest place between Porto Kaio and Skutari. Next to it is Vatas, the chief place of the bishopric of Kolokythi. We quit the monastery at 8; at 4.55 leave Kyparisso on the left, and at 5 arrive at Alika, where I procure a lodging in a hut of a friend of Poliko. The misery of these Kakavuliotes is extreme. To the inquiries of my servants for the commonest articles of provisions, the answer constantly is, “where are we to find oil, or vinegar, or wine, or bread?” as if such things were luxuries in which they never indulged. The scarcity at present is undoubtedly very pressing in consequence of the insufficient harvest of last year; and to these occasional dearths, perhaps, may be chiefly ascribed the habitual penury and avarice of the people. But my Tzimova companions say, that even when the Kakavuliotes had numerous pirate boats and trattas in the
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§ 1.309 Archipelago, and brought home a great deal of plunder, they still continued to live in the same miserable manner. The chief instrument of household furniture is the handmill in which the kalambokki is ground. This is the employment of the women at night, who generally accompany the work with a song in lamentation of some deceased relation who has been killed perhaps by a hostile house; and it is their custom to continue these songs during the whole period of mourning, and the men let their beards grow on the same occasions. The χειρόμυλον is a lineal descendant of the ancient hand-mill, as the songs which accompany the grinding are of the ωδαι επιμυλίοι. Except on the great feasts, none but the richest of the Kakavuliotes kill mutton or poultry: an old ox no longer fit for the plough, or a sheep or fowl already at the point of death, they sometimes indulge in. Cheese, garlic, and bread of maize, are the principal food; wine and oil, as their district produces none, they seldom use. A boy even of fifteen has a wrinkled, weatherworn appearance; but diseases are rare, they live to a great age, and their chief evil is a population disproportioned to the natural resources of the country. In soil and aspect, it resembles many of the islands, such as Kefalonia,
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§ 1.310 Tzerigo, Naxia, Zia, &c. where, as in Mani, all the productions, though excellent of the kind, are seldom plentiful. My companions, however, who are some of the first characters on the western coast, do not complain: on the contrary, they boast of the sweetness of their mutton, that they send corn, in good years, to Cerigo, that they occasionally supply the Morea with cattle, and that when the seasons favour them, they want nothing from abroad but wine and cheese. This may be true with regard to the whole of the western coast taken together; but there seems to be a great difference between the country to the south, and to the north of Port Vitylo. The latter produces some wine, and a considerable quantity of oil, and it is not so subject to the drought which destroys the hopes of the cultivator in Outer Mani, nor to those gales which both by sea and land are most mischievous in the immediate vicinity of Capes Matapan and Malea.
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§ 1.311 April 14. — At 6.30 I leave Alika: at 7.35 pass between the villages called Ano Borali and Kato Borali. At 8 pass again between Nomia and Gita the polypyrgous. At 8.35 cross the torrent of Mezapo. At the hut where I halted to dine on the 12th, we again stop twenty minutes. Leaving the direct road along the bottom of the hollow of Pendadha, we turn to the right through its villages, and halt, at 10.15, at Babaka, where I dine in the house of Poliko Tubaki, who has a pyrgo hard by. Proceed at 11, leaving Atza above us on the right; pass, at 11.25, through Paleokhora, and then falling again into the road by which we came, at 2.20 we arrive at Tzimova. Thus terminates my journey in the land of Evil Counsel, without accident or any loss, except that of a double-barrelled pistol, which was stolen out of my holster on the 12th, at the hut near Kavo Grosso, perhaps by one of my companions, for they made a most suspicious show of halting to search for it at the same place on our return. At Tzimova I am again received into the house, or rather cottage, of Gika Mavromikhali, who, to make room for me, sends all his females into the pyrgo. At night fifty sheep and twelve oxen are driven into the yard of the cottage. The Maniates are seldom in such a state of security as to leave their cattle abroad in the fields at night Not many years ago a Frenchman came to Tzimova, flying probably from justice; he set up for a physician, and resided here several years. He could cure those who believed in him, by giving them a pinch out of his snuffbox, and at length obtained such credit among the Maniates as to predict futurity. But he did not foresee his own fate. Some Kakavuliotes lay in wait for him, as he was returning one day from Koroni by sea, and murdered him, by which they gained only a few piastres.
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§ 1.312 April 15. This morning I walk down to Limeni, or the port of Tzimova, a distance of two miles; the latter mile down the side of a steep mountain, a road fit only for a Maniate or his mule. The rest of the day I remain in the house of Kyr Petro Mavromikhali, near the seaside. A person brings me for sale an inscribed slab of marble, found at Skopa, and which, though not containing the name of any city, is, from the mere circumstance of its having been found there, a strong confirmation of Skopa being the site of Teuthrone. The inscription is a mere fragment, though in excellent preservation: it appears to be of the age of Tiberius. As the Eleuthero-Laconic cities flourished chiefly in the time of the Roman Empire, it is not surprising that we find little else than ruins of that period in Mani, or that the inscriptions are all of the same date. Limeni consists of five or six magazines and two pyrghi, and to the north of that of Peter Mavromikhali there is a monastery with a little garden about it. Farther north the harbour branches to the eastward as far as the foot of the hill, on which stands the ruined fort of Kelefa.
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§ 1.313 It is said to be of Venetian construction, but could only have been a repair or reconstruction of the original fortress, as both Kelefa and Zarnata existed before the Venetian conquest, and were taken by them from the Turks in the year 1685. Northward of the eastern branch of the harbour, on the brow of a steep hill, which descends to the northern shore of that branch, stands the town of Vitylo, said to contain 250 houses. The mountain of Vitylo is separated from the hill of Kelefa by a deep glen, along which a torrent flows to the head of the eastern branch of the harbour. The sides of the mountain around Vitylo, and particularly below the town, are green with terraces of corn. The Vityliotes being opposed to the present bey, I am unable to visit the place where I believe some remains of the ancient Oetylus are still to be seen. [Mr. Morritt, of Rokeby, visited Vitylo in the year 1795, and observed many remains of Hellenic walls among the modern houses. (Mem. on Turkey, ed. by Walpole, p. 54.) At the church he found “a beautiful fluted Ionic column supporting a beam at one end of the aisle, three or four Ionic capitals in the wall of the church, and on the outside of the church the foundations of a temple.” This was probably the temple of Sarapis, mentioned by Pausanias, and which, perhaps, having been converted into a church on the establishment of Christianity, has remained in that state to the present day.]
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§ 1.314 Porto Vitylo resembles exactly one of the creeks which I have described on the precipitous coast to the southward, but on a much larger scale; the narrow entrance, bold rocky shores, depth of water, and extent inwards, are of the same character. It is said to be a bad harbour with a westerly wind. The northern side, as well as the eastern branch, belongs to Vitylo, the southern side to Tzimova. The name of Porto Vitylo is applied to the whole. One hundred and fifty years ago, about fifty families emigrated from Vitylo into Corsica. The Vityliotes say, that one of these families, named Καλόμερος, translated the name to Buonaparte, and were the ancestors of the Great Napoleon. This the Tzimovites affect to disbelieve — not the fact of the colony, which is undoubted, but of the origin of Napoleon. Without attending to one side or the other, for the people of Vitylo probably support what they think an honour, while those of Tzimova deny it, because they hate their neighbours, it must be confessed that the story is more than doubtful, Buonaparte being certainly an Italian name older than the date of the colony. Kyr Petruni is a smart looking man of between thirty and forty, dressed in green velvet, and the genteelest Maniate I have yet seen. [This person was afterwards promoted to be Bey of Mani, in which situation the Greek revolution found him.]
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§ 1.315 His father, he tells me, recovered an English ship in a most resolute and enterprising manner in the year 1792; the ship belonged to Smith and St. Barbe, of London. The vessel had been driven into the gulf by a gale which, after it had subsided into a calm, left the ship near Pyrgos, with a tremendous sea setting on the shore. The crew had given themselves up for lost, and had ceased to make any exertions, when Mavromikhali put off from Port Vitylo with a small vessel to their assistance and piloted them in. The Maniates immediately collected for the purpose of plundering the vessel, but Mavromikhali, by keeping a large body of his adherents on the watch, both by sea and land, prevented the attack. The ship remained nineteen days in the harbour, the captain's name was Brown. The following is the account given to me by Kyr Petro of the captaincies of Mani. The kapitani are, at present, no more than seven in number. 1. Ghiorghio Kapitanaki, who lives at Stavropighi of Zarnata, and governs all Zarnata, containing about 790 houses. 2. Panaghioti Trupaki, of Andruvista, who governs that district, containing about 700 houses. 3. Khristodhulo Khristea, of Leftro, governs Platza and the district of Zygos, having 1000 houses under him. 4. Konstantino Nikoraki, captain of the
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§ 1.316 single village of Kastania, one of the largest in Mani, and situated about midway between Marathonisi and Kitries. 5. Ghiorghio Kyvelaki, governor of Milea and its dependencies, containing 200 houses. 6. Anagnosti Venitzanaki, who has the single village of Kastanitza. 7. Dhimitrio Gligoraki, of Mavrovuni, who has no command. To this list of the chieftains may be added Petro Mavromikhali himself, of the Limeni of Tzimova, who, being at present deputy governor of Mesa Mani, has more power and influence than any of the above, though he has not the title of captain. Petruni's father married the present Bey's sister. Before the year 1770, the date of the vain and cruel attempt of the Russians to revolutionize the Morea with a force of 600 men, the Maniates were subject to a nominal tribute of fifteen purses, which they never paid. When the insurrection was quelled, the Kapitan-Pasha Hassan proceeded against Mani, and obliged the Maniates to submit to the terms of being governed by a Bey of their own choosing, approved of by the Porte, and of paying a yearly tribute of thirty purses to the Porte and five to the Kapitan-Pasha. John Kutufari, of Zarnata, who made the treaty, was appointed Bey: he died a natural death at the end of three years. Michael Trupaki, of Skardhamula, succeeded
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§ 1.317 him, but being accused of possessing a tratta which, before he had succeeded to the beyship, had made depredations upon some European vessels — an ambassador at Constantinople having countenanced the complaint, and Michael having no money to prevent the effects of it, the Captain Pasha came to Mani, took him on board his ship, and decapitated him at Mytilini. John Gligoraki, his successor, commonly called Tzanet, or Zanim-bey, was in office fifteen years, when, being accused of too much friendship with the revolutionary French, about the time when the latter first became formidable to the Porte, he was succeeded by Komunduro, of Kitries, his accuser, who had generally maintained a good understanding with the Turks, and with whom Tzanet had constantly been at war during his beyship. Komunduro, after a reign of seven years, was two or three years ago deposed and sent to Constantinople, where he died in the Bagnio: he also had been accused, by the Internuncio, of having shared in the plunder of an Imperial ship which had been seized upon by a brother of Peter Mavromikhali, who having taken his passage from Leghorn to Maina on board the Imperial ship, together with all the Maniate crew of a vessel of his own, which had been lost in going from Mani to that port, rose upon the Austrian seamen and carried the ship into Mani.

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