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

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§ 2.121 May 30. — I quit my lodging in a lofty new pyrgo belonging to the hodja-bashi of Nezera at 5.10, and, crossing over the heights adjacent to the ravine of the Petrus, leave it to the left and descend into a valley, watered by a branch of the same river. At 6.25 arrive at Lopesi, a village of twenty houses, where is a derveni, or guard-house, and some fine fountains from which a stream descends into the Peirus. We halt fifteen minutes, and at the end of another hour along the foot of the mountain, begin at 7.40 to mount the hills which are connected northward with Voidhia. I look down to the left upon Khalandritza, a village a mile distant, at the foot of the mountain, divided into two parts.
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§ 2.122 Though it now only contains thirty or forty families, there are several churches, more or less ruined, which shew that it was once a place of greater importance. A small stream descends through it, and joins the Peirus a mile below the village. Lalusi, or Lalusia is two miles farther in the same direction over the plain; a little behind Lalusi is Zoga, and a bridge over the Peirus called Polykhronia This river, in the upper part of its course, is now commonly called the Olono, or the river of Nezera; in the lower it is usually known by the name of Kamenitza, from a village upon its banks which ib situated towards the sea. At 8, having passed the ridge, we traverse a small elevated plain about a mile in length, which contains some cultivated land but no village, and begin to descend the north-western slope of the ridge, with the Gulf of Patra and Mount Paleovuni in Aetolia before us — leave a ruined castle of the lower empire called Sidherokastro, on a height to the left. The descent into the plain of Patra is stony and rugged: we enter it at 9.20 The land is prepared for kalambokki, and is watered by derivations from a torrent which is first collected from the southern face of Mount Voidhia, and afterwards turns westward along a narrow ravine which separates Voidhia from the ridge which we have
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§ 2.123 crossed: the ravine is called the Pass of Makellaria, the direct road from Patra to Kalavryta by Guzumistra leads through it. [This word, derived from the Italian, and analogous to the Greek Sphacteria, is said to have been derived from the frequent murders committed in the pass by the robbers, who often infest the surrounding mountains.] In the mountain to the southward of the pass is situated the monastery of Babioti, half an hour northward of which is another called Omblos; the latter is reckoned three hours from Patra. Our road now crosses the torrent-bed, which is not less than half a mile wide; it is strewed with large stones and shaded in many places by oleanders, myricae, Agnus-castus, and other philocharadrous shrubs. At in the midst of this stony little desert we pass the stream itself, which, though now scanty, is sometimes very formidable: it is certainly the ancient Glaucus, being still called by the corrupted form of Lefka, or Lafka. At 9.47 begin the currant plantations of Patra: at 10 we enter the town, and at 10.15 arrive at the house of Mr. Consul Strane. It would seem, from the present name of this city in use among the Franks, that the Hellenic Πάτραι first passed into the usual Romaic form of the accusative στας Πάτρας, and that from the word in that shape was derived the Italian Patrasso, and the English and French Patras: it
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§ 2.124 has now, however, become a neuter instead of a feminine plural, and is called Patra. It still preserves that pre-eminence over all the places of Achaea and the Peloponnesian coast, which it acquired after the battle of Actium, when the victorious Augustus, having resolved to establish two Roman colonies on the western coast of Greece, made choice of Nicopolis and Patrae for that purpose, granting lands in their vicinity to some of his followers, endowing the cities with the valuable privileges of Roman colonies, and augmenting their importance at the expense of the territory and population of all the declining townships in the neighbourhood. Nicopolis has again become the same desert place which it was before the time of Augustus; the changes which have occurred in navigation and ship-building, since that age, have rendered the situation unadapted to the maritime commerce of the present day: but Patrae still justifies the choice of Augustus. Its advantages consist in the great fertility of the plain and surrounding hills, but still more in the convenience of the situation for communication by sea with the adjacent islands, with the whole western coast of Greece, with Italy and the Adriatic, as well as with eastern Greece and the Aegaean Sea, by the Gulf of Corinth.
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§ 2.125 Of late years its prosperity has been, in great measure, the result of the cultivation of a fruit unknown to, or, at least, unnoticed by the ancients, and of its sale to nations who were then in a state of barbarism. The demand in Great Britain and other northern countries for the dwarf grapes, commonly called currants, has brought the greater part of the plain of Patra into a state of cultivation not exceeded in any part of Europe, while Corinth, from whence the fruit originally derived its name, has ceased to possess any of the vineyards which produce it. When Pausanias visited Patrae it was noted for its manufacture of cotton, which was abundantly grown in the Eleia, and was woven at Patrae into cloth and women's caps. The persons employed in the manufactures of Patrae were chiefly women, and so great was the number of them attracted to the place by this employment, that Pausanias states the female population to have been double that of the men, a circumstance which seems not to have been very favourable to the morals of the city. Before the time of Augustus the place had so much declined, having particularly suffered in the first invasion of Greece by the Gauls, when the Patrenses joined their old allies the
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§ 2.126 Aetolians, that the greater part of the residue had quitted Patrae and had resumed their ancient dwellings in Messatis and Antheia, occupying also the neighbouring villages of Boline, Argyra, and Arba. Messatis and Antheia were two very ancient places, the inhabitants of which had been withdrawn from thence into Patrae, when Patreus, soon after the Ionic migration into Asia, increased the circuit of Aroe and gave to the city the new name, which it still bears. We can hardly doubt, as well from this circumstance as from the name of Aroe having been often used by the ancients as synonymous with Patrae, that Aroe occupied the site of the acropolis of the city of Patreus. The objects described by Pausanias were in four different quarters. 1. The acropolis. — 2. The agora — 3. A quarter into which there was a gate from the agora.- 4. The quarter near the sea.
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§ 2.127 The chief object of veneration in the acropolis was the temple of Diana Laphria, containing a statue of the goddess, which had been, removed with the spoils of Calydon to Patras by Augustus, at the same time that he withdrew the population of the declining places of Aetolia and Acarnania to people Nicopolis, and conveyed thither the greater part of the statuea from the temples in those provinces. The statue of Diana Laphria was a very ancient work of ivory and gold, by two artists of Naupactos named Menoechrous and Soidas: it represented the goddess as a huntress. At her annual festival there was a magnificent procession, closed by the priestess in a chariot drawn by s&aga, The following day was devoted to a sacrifice, which was distinguished by a degree of cruelty very rare in the religious practices of the Greeks: wild hogs, stags, roebucks, and the cubs of wolves and bears were collected together, as well as fowls of those kinds which were the food of human, and every sort of cultivated fruit, and they were all burnt with dry wood upon th altar of the goddess, which had been previously surrounded with a strong inclosure of timber Pausanias tells us that he witnessed some of the animals, when endeavouring to escape, forcibly driven back, and thus roasted alive. Between the altar and the temple of Diana stood the
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§ 2.128 monument of Eurypylus Within the same peribolus which inclosed the temple of Diana, there was a temple of Minerva Panachais, of which the statue was chryselephantine, like the Laphria. Above the acropolis, near the gate leading to Messatis, stood a temple of Aesculapius; and on the descent from the citadel into the city, the temple of Dindymene and Attes, containing a statue of the former made of stone. In the agora there were temples of Jupiter Olympius and of Apollo: the statue of Jupiter Olympius was seated, Minerva standing by him; the Apollo was of brass, naked, with the exception of sandals on the feet, one foot rested on the skull of an ox, in allusion to his protection of cattle. Between this temple and that of Jupiter stood a statue of Juno. In the open part of the agora there was a statue of Minerva, and before it the sepulchre of Patreus. The Odeium adjoined the agora: it was the most magnificent of any in Greece, except the Odeium of Herodes at Athens, and it contained a very remarkable statue of Apollo, dedicated from the spoils of the Gauls, when the Patrenses alone of the Achaeans aided the Aetolians. On a gate which, near the temple of Apollo, led out of the agora, stood gilded statues of Patreus, Preugenes, and Atherion, represented as boys.
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§ 2.129 Not far beyond the gate there was a temenus of Diana, containing a temple of Diana Limnatis, and sanctuaries of Aesculapius and of Minerva, to which there were approaches through a stoa. The statue of Aesculapius was made of stone, except the drapery (of wood). The statue of Minerva was of ivory and gold. Before the sanctuary of Minerva was the monument of Preugenes, father of Patreus. In this quarter stood the theatre, and near it temples of Nemesis and Venus, containing statues of those deities in white marble, of colossal magnitude; — also a temple of Bacchus, surnamed Calydonius, because the statue was brought from Calydon; and the temenus of a native woman, containing three statues of Bacchus, with the surnames of Mesateus, Antheus, and Aroeus. These in the Dionysiac festival were carried to the temple of Bacchus Aesymnetes, which was situated on the right-hand side of the road leading from the agora to the maritime quarter of the city. Below the temple of Aesymnetes there was a temple and statue in stone of Soteria, (Safety) said to have been dedicated by Eurypylus. At the harbour stood an upright statue of Neptune, in stone, and near it two sanctuaries of Venus, each containing a statue of the goddess. Close to the harbour
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§ 2.130 were brazen statues of Mars and Apollo, and a temenus of Venus, in which there was an aerolithic statue of the goddess. [The words “acrolithic” and “chryselephantine”, which I have often used, are not employed by Pausanias, nor the latter by any of the ancient Greek writers; but they are convenient to describe in a single word two kinds of draped statues which were common among the Greeks: in the former, the naked part of the statue was in marble, the drapery, or other attributes, in painted or gilded wood: in the chryselephantine, the flesh was in ivory, the remaining part in the same material, coloured, and inlaid with gold in various parts of the dress.] On the sea-side there was a grove, containing places of exercise and shady walks, as well as temples of Apollo and Venus, in which were statues of those deities in stone Near the grove were two temples of Sarapis, one of which contained the monument of Aegyptus, son of Belus, and contiguous to the grove a temple of Ceres, containing upright statues of Ceres and Proserpine, and a sitting statue of Earth. In front of this temple there was a source of water, which was inclosed by a wall on the side towards the building, and had a descent to it on the opposite side. The well was consulted, as an oracle, which foretold the fate of sick persons; a mirror was suspended, so that the circumference touched the water; prayers were
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§ 2.131 then offered to Ceres and incense was burnt, after which there were certain appearances in the mirror indicating whether the sick person would live or die. The modern Patra occupies the same site as the Roman city. It stands upon a ridge about a mile long, which projects from the falls of Mount Voidhia in a southerly direction, and to the westward is separated from the sea by a level, increasing in breadth from north to south, from a quarter to more than half a mile. The height at the northern end of the ridge, now occupied by the castle of Patra, was the ancient acropolis, of which some pieces of the walls are intermixed with the modern masonry on the north-eastern side. In this direction the castle is strengthened by a hollow lying between it and the other heights, which form the connection with Mount Voidhia. Both these and the castle hill are of the most irregular forms, being cut into deep ravines by torrents, and broken into white precipices, like those which are seen in many parts of the northern coast of the Morea, as well as about Olympia, Elis, and in the Island of Zakytho. It is observable that all these
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§ 2.132 places, like Patra itself, are peculiarly subject to earthquakes. According to all I have experienced or can learn, Laconia is by no means so well shaken a country. The ancient town, like the modern, covered the slopes of the ridge which branches from the citadel to the south. The old Achaean city seems, like the modern town, not to have extended nearer to the sea than the foot of this ridge: for we learn from Plutarch, that Alcibiades recommended to the Patrenses to connect the town with the port by means of long walls: — on the contrary it may be inferred, as well from Pausanias as from many existing vestiges of Roman fabrics, that the Augustan colony spread over the plain towards the sea. It may easily be supposed, indeed, that Patrae has at no period been so large as under the Roman Emperors; and all the existing remains which I have seen bear the character of that time. Masses of masonry constructed of brick and mortar are found among the houses, gardens, ruined walls, and vacant intervals which occupy the ancient position: but none of them are in sufficient continuity or preservation to be ascribed to any particular building among those which Pausanias has described, although the situation of each of the quarters being evident,
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§ 2.133 and the general distribution of the buildings thus known, the position of each monument can be more nearly presumed than in most of the Greek traveller's descriptions. The agora seems to have been about the middle of the present town. Here I observed the remains of a small construction of brick upon a foundation of stone near a fountain; and in the house of the Imperial consul, there is part of a circular building of brick, which may possibly have belonged to the Odeium. As the maritime quarter of the city was towards the west, and as Pausanias descends from the acropolis to the agora, afterwards describing the quarter of the theatre which was entered from the agora by the Gate of the Heroes, and lastly descending from the agora to the Χΐμην, or harbour, it may be inferred that the quarter of the theatre was towards the southern end of the modern town. In order to search for the monuments on the road from the agora to the ancient harbour, and those around the port, it would be necessary to determine the exact position of the latter. This appears to me to be indicated by the form of the coast, and by some foundations of moles to the southward of the street of magazines, which now borders the sea-beach of the roadsted: indeed it is very possible that all the low marshy plain adjacent
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§ 2.134 to the magazines on the south, and which extends from thence towards the southern extremity of the ridge of the town, was anciently the harbour. I cannot conceive, however, that the modern Patrenses are correct in supposing that the port ever reached as far as a Roman wall which supports a terrace at that extremity, notwithstanding there are some holes in the wall, in which, as Mr. Strane tells me, he remembers to have seen rings and staples, supposed to have been those to which the Roman galleys were once attached. I suspect, however, that his memory deceives him; for upon looking into Wheler and Spon, I find that they describe the wall just as it is now, and that Wheler adds, that the consul, Sir Clement Harby, told him, “that many in the town remembered when there was an iron ring fastened to the wall, which they supposed was to tie vessels to;” whence it would seem that the story of the ring is nothing more than a fable, which has been repeated from one generation to another for several centuries. Wheler thought the wall in question had been part of the inclosure of the ancient city. “Under it,” he adds, “is a place that seemeth to have been a circus, or a stadium, or perhaps a naumachia, and not far from thence, near a ruined church of the Holy Apostles, a round temple of brick masoned together with a very hard cement.
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§ 2.135 ” I cannot find any remains of these monuments. The only position of the ancient Patrae, besides the acropolis, which seems to be perfectly identified, is that of the temple of Ceres, described by Pausanias as having adjoined a grove on the sea-side, serving as a public walk to the Patrenses; and as having had below it, in front, a source of water, to which there was a descent on the side opposite to the temple. It is evident from the latter circumstance, as well as from what Pausanias says of the oracle, that the source was a perennial well, the surface of which was below that of the adjacent ground; by which description the spring is easily recognized about three quarters of a mile from the town, near the sea-shore, to the southward of the magazines. And hence also it appears that the space between that spot and the magazines, was the situation of the grove which contained the public walks and the temples of Venus and Apollo. There is still a descent of four steps to the well, which is under a vault belonging to the remains of a church of St. Andrew, the patron saint of Patra, who, according to the Greeks, suffered martyrdom at this place, and to whom Ceres appears to have resigned her dwelling on the abolition of paganism. The
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§ 2.136 church was already a ruin in the time of Spon and Wheler, but there are still some remains of it, in which prayers are said and incense burnt, as formerly to Ceres; it is particularly resorted to by all the good Christians of Patra on the festival of St. Andrew, when they drink of the fountain which is an αγιασμα or holy water, of the Saint. According to Ducange, the metropolitan church of Patrae stood formerly in the citadel, and was destroyed by Guillaume de Villehardouin, when he obtained possession of Achaea after the Frank conquest of Constantinople in 1204. About 250 years afterwards the patron saint of Patrae suffered another indignity. Thomas, the Greek despot, finding himself under the necessity of retiring to Italy before the conquering arms of Mahomet the Second, could devise no more effectual mode of recommending himself to the Pope, than to carry off the head of St. Andrew from Patrae as a present to his holiness. The greater part of the existing castle of Patra is probably the work of Villehardouin, and he seems to have made liberal use of the remains of the ancient buildings of the acropolis in constructing it; for besides the pieces of Hellenic wall which I have
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§ 2.137 mentioned as remaining in their original position, there are several portions of Doric and Ionic fluted columns forming part of the modern masonry, as well as some pieces of architraves with triglyphs and metopes, one of which is adorned with a patera. As Pausanias says that the temple of Aesculapius stood above the acropolis near the gates leading to Messatis, it seems evident that Messatis occupied a situation on the ridge northward, or north-eastward of the citadel, and as Pausanias also tells us that Messatis was between Aroe, or the site of the acropolis, and Antheia, the latter must have been situated still further in the same direction. It is in fact very natural that such strong and lofty positions should have been the places of retirement of the inhabitants in those times of insecurity which preceded the foundation of Patreus, as well as when they again dispersed after the Gallic invasion of Greece. The ruins of the Roman aqueduct of brick, which supplied the town from the heights to the eastward, are still extant on that side of the castle hill. Wheler met with this aqueduct returning into town from the monastery of Ierokomio, which is situated on those heights
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§ 2.138 at a mile and a half to the eastward of Patra. He describes the aqueduct as a very high and stately structure, having two arches one above another, and pilasters propped on both sides with buttresses. He adds, that higher up the stream were two other (arches) better preserved, and that they all united two hills between which flowed a small stream. From the same source which filled the Roman aqueduct, the modern town is now furnished: but the aqueduct itself has suffered very much since the time of Wheler, only a few of the lower arches now remaining. Wheler supposed the stream in the ravine, which is crossed by the aqueduct, to have been the Meilichus; but in this he was mistaken, for it passes along the eastern side of the town, and thence into the sea to the southward, whereas the Meilichus joined the sea between Patrae and Rhium. I observed in the convent of Ierokomio a white marble, eight feet long and two feet and a half broad, upon which there is a Latin inscription in large characters in seven lines, but so much worn in consequence of the stone having served as a step to the church, that I was only able to copy a few of the letters. Mount Voidhia, one of the most conspicuous hills in Greece, and inferior in height only to a
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§ 2.139 few of the great summits, has been little noticed by ancient authors. It seems evidently, however, to be that Mount Panachaicum where, in the winter of the second year of the Social War BC. 219, 220, Pyrrhias the Aetolian established himself at the head of 3000 Aetolians and Eleians, after having made incursions upon the lands of Patrae, Dyme, and Pharae, and from whence he continued his devastations throughout the Patraea, as well as towards Aegium and Rhium. This mountain is, in fact, most conveniently placed, as the modern kleftes have discovered, for commanding all the western part of Achaea; being surrounded by the Achaean districts of Patrae, Aegium, and Tritaea, and being the only great mountain which belonged entirely to that province, it was very properly called ΠαναχαΧκον. The maritime cities of Achaea, to the eastward of Aegium, possessed only the northern slopes of mountains, the summits of which were in Arcadia. The Castle of Patra commands a most beautiful and interesting prospect. Nothing can be more perfect in its kind than the great sweep of the coast, forming that vast bay to the south-westward which is separated by the rich plain of Patra from Mount Panachaicum
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§ 2.140 and its branches, and which is backed in the view from the castle by the distant summits of Zacynthus and Cephallenia. Castle Tornese is seen in this direction, a little to the right of the summit of Mount Skopo in Zakytho. To the northward the great lake, for such is its appearance, which forms the outer division of the Corinthian gulf, is bounded by the mountains of Acarnania and Aetolia, and immediately in face of Patra by the two rocky hills which rise abruptly from the shore, between the lagunes of Mesolonghi and the straits of Rhium. In the latter direction the prospect is terminated by the town of'Epakto and the mountains above it, which to the right become blended with the slopes of Panachaicum. Patra is the most populous town in Greece southward of Ioannina. It contains about 10,000 inhabitants, of whom a third are Turks, the rest Greeks with a few Jews. There are some good Greek and Turkish houses in the town, but those of the European consuls are the most respectable in appearance. Every considerable house is surrounded with a garden of the orange tribe, mixed with pomegranates, figs, almonds, and pot-herbs, which give the place a very agreeable aspect, when seen at such a distance as does not betray the misery of the greater part of the habitations. The
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§ 2.141 convenience of the situation for European trade, the advantages arising from the residence of the consuls, and the export of currants, which are produced in the plain of Patra in greater quantity than in any part of continental Greece, have attracted to this point almost all the European commerce of the Morea, and of the western coast of Greece. The rising price of currants during the last three years, has led to an increased cultivation of them in the plain of Patra, which, beyond the gardens and olive plantations surrounding the outer houses, consists, for the distance of two or three miles from the town, of a continued vineyard of those dwarf grapes: they are now in blossom, and when the wind blows across the plain, their perfume is almost too powerful to be agreeable. The average production of currants at Zante, is stated to me by the consul to be eleven millions of pounds, of Kefalonia seven millions, of Patra five millions, of the southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, together with Mesolonghi and Vrakhori, in which last place they have been introduced only of late, four millions. In the time of Wheler, 1675, they were grown at Mesolonghi, and not at Patra. There is a bedaat, or extraordinary duty, of exportation of two paras the oke, which is commuted by Patra for 100 purses. Silk, the production of Patra,
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§ 2.142 next in importance to currants, pays a bedaat of nine piastres the oke, according to the last firmahn. The other articles exported from this district are wool, wax, leather, and κεδροκούκι, or juniper berries, which last are sent to England. The plain produces also cotton and tobacco. The increased cultivation of the plain of Patra is said to have improved the salubrity of the climate, but the excessive heat and the marshy tract to the southward and westward of the town, still create dangerous fevers and dysenteries in summer and autumn, so that with the exception perhaps of Anapli and Corinth, Patra is still the most unhealthy town in the Morea. It is the prevailing opinion that the fevers are chiefly owing to the wind from Mount Voidhia, which, say the people of Patra, is unwholesome, because it is heavy. A Corfiote practitioner of physic expressed to me the same opinion. The mountain may, perhaps, be partly in fault, though not, I suspect, as the Patrini and their doctor suppose. The land wind, which blows regularly all the summer in this climate, during the night and early morning, and which at Patra descends immediately from Mount Voidhia, forms by its coldness a dangerous contrast to the air of the town, still
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§ 2.143 heated by the effects of the preceding day: and hence it happens that a person exposing himself in summer to the night or morning air, without being well clothed, undergoes the greatest risk of laying the foundation of a fever. The violence and heat of the wind from the gulf, in July and August, is extremely disagreeable also; and it is a common custom to keep the shutters closed all the day to avoid its blast. Patra has proved fatal to a great number of new settlers, particularly to the French, who, about forty years ago, had several mercantile houses here: since the revolution they have not had any. The English consul's house is a large wooden building without much comfort, but well adapted by its timber framing to the frequent earthquakes which occur here. The extremes of lightness or solidity seem to be the best modes of construction in such a country. The ancients I believe adopted both, the former for their private, the latter for their public edifices. I had not been many hours at, Patra before I had the opportunity of hearing and feeling the effects of an earthquake in such a house as the consul's. The noise was tremendous, but there cannot be much danger in a structure of this kind, at least in any such concussions as usually occur in Greece. The house was built by a French merchant named Rosa.
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§ 2.144 By a miracle it escaped the plunder and destruction of the Albanians at the end of the Russian insurrection in 1770. General Rosa, who was made prisoner by Aly Pasha, and sent to Constantinople, where he died, was nephew of the merchant. The rugged hills behind the castle produce a red wine, which is very good when made with care; Mr. Strane gave me some which was not inferior to port. The Greeks chiefly employ it to give body to that which is made from the watery grapes produced in low and moist situations, after which, by adding a little resin from the pine-tree, the mixture will keep sound about a year. There are 130 villages in the district of Patra, which extends to the south-westward as far as the ancient boundaries of the Eleia. The plain of Patra and of the Peirus contains threefourths, of the villages, which, with the exception of about forty kefalo-khoria of from twenty to fifty houses, and three or four others of larger size, are all tjiftliks, containing from ten to twenty families, some of them even still smaller. The whole population of the district probably is not equal to that of the town. The terms of cultivation in corn-lands are the same as those in other parts of the Morea; the farmer is a metayer, and takes his portion
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§ 2.145 of the crop which is a third or a half, according to the portion of stock or instruments supplied by the proprietor. This mode of farming was very common anciently, both among the Greeks and Romans, as appears from the word μ0ρτίτη9, which was in use in the time of Solon, and from the Latin medietarius, from which metayer is derived. But Patra furnishes an example of the most expensive as well as of the poorest mode of agriculture. The currant vineyards are all cultivated by the owners by means of hired labourers, who receive sixty paras a day, without provisions. There are two principal operations, one in February, when the soil is hoed for the purpose of laying open the roots of the plants to the moisture of the spring, at which time the earth is raised into little conical heaps between the vines; and the second in May, when it is levelled again. In other kinds of field-work, the price of day-labour is forty paras, with wine. The labourers in the plain of Patra come chiefly from the district of Kalavryta, but in harvest there are many islanders employed, as well here as in other parts of Western Greece.
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§ 2.146 When a part of the English army of Egypt was ordered to Corfu and the other islands, in September, 1801, two thousand men were destined for Patra, and barracks were ordered to be built for them. The Consul had constructed one and Mehmet Aga, upon whose ground the temporary building was erected, built a kiosk, which still remains in a field near the Roman walls to the southward. In this field Mehmet's labourers found lately in digging, six ancient bottle-shaped cisterns of excellent workmanship, constructed of tiles; the Aga ordered stones to be placed over the mouths of them, and then covered them with earth. A large quantity of silver coins have been brought to me for sale, which have recently been found by a Zevgalates of Gastuni, I believe at Paleopoli ( Elis ). As the person who brought them wished to sell them all, and the greater part were either of the commonest sort, Chalcis, Sicyon, Boeotia, &c. or such as I already possessed in duplicate, I refused them, without reflecting that many persons would have been glad to give triple the price for which they were offered to me. There are three ancient statues in the walls of the castle. The largest is that of a female, complete from the chin downwards; half as large again as life. Its attitude was such that the left shoulder is much higher than the right.
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§ 2.147 The waist is bound with a thong tied in a bow: the drapery of the finest execution. This fragment stands in a tower which is already cracked, and will probably fall with the first strong earthquake. The two other statues are very inferior in merit: one is of a female and below the human size; the face is destroyed, but in other respects the statue is perfect. The third is of a man, wanting the head and shoulders and feet; it is naked except a fold of garment just under the neck. Besides these there is a colossal head and shoulders of a female, at a fountain just below the castle on the north-eastern side. It is double the human size; the face quite demolished: locks of hair hang down on either shoulder, and each breast is pierced with a round hole. It forms part of a ruined wall belonging to some building of Roman or Byzantine times. At a mile or two to the southward of the town stands the great cypress tree mentioned by Wheler, who states its girth to have been twenty-one feet, at the height of a foot from the ground: it is now more than twenty-three in the same place. I rode one afternoon to the castle of the Morea, as the Turkish fortress on Cape Rhium is called.
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§ 2.148 Like the castles of the Dardanelles, it contains an interior work which overlooks the outer. The inner is a circular fort with embrasures in the parapet, and appears much older than the exterior inclosure, which is quadrangular and fortified with ravelins on the two land fronts. If the inner castle originally stood on the shore, the sea has retired about 250 yards since it was built; at present there is a broad level between the shore and the outer wall, where boats might land and escalade the fortress. The reality of a gradual retreat of the sea is affirmed by the natives, and appears very probable, if we admit the testimony of the ancient authors as to that great accumulation of soil at the mouths of the Evenus and Achelous, which is so strongly confirmed by the appearance of the coast near Mesolonghi and by the shallows opposite to Cape Papa. At the strait of the castles the alluvial increase may have been further assisted by the numerous streams descending from Mount Voidhia, as well as by the great river Morno to the eastward of'Epakto. At the opposite point of Antirrhium I am told that the retreat of the sea is not so rapid. The breadth of the strait appears to me to be little, if at all, short of a mile and a half, a distance which it becomes still more difficult to reconcile with
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§ 2.149 the seven stades of Thucydides if we admit the reality of the progressive narrowing of the strait. Strabo, in stating the width at five stades, is more at variance with the present dimensions than Thucydides. Pliny who says that the opening was nearly a mile, appears to have taken his distance from the Greek historian. One cannot but conclude, that here, as at Navarin, there is some error either in the text or in the information of the accurate Athenian. The castle of the Morea is surrounded by marshes intermixed with a few plantations of currants, and the land-front is protected by a wet ditch communicating from sea to sea. The Yenitjeir Aga, who commands the fortress, assures me that the air is not unhealthy, but the complexion of the inhabitants seems to declare the contrary. He chiefly complains of the violent winds which blow through the strait in winter, and which make it necessary to build the houses very low and sheltered under the walls. Very few of the inhabitants have the appearance of soldiers. In short, it is a little Turkish fortified town, with a Greek suburb, situated, as usual, on the outside of the walls; I observed in the fortress several good English
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§ 2.150 brass ordnance of the time of the Stuarts — others of Venetian origin. Anciently each cape was occupied by a temple of Neptune and within land, at the foot of the nearest heights, there was on either side a small town of which the temple was a dependency. The town on the Aetolian side was named Molycria, whence Antirrhium was also called Rhium Molycricum. On the Peloponnesian side stood Argyra, situated on the river Selemnus, which joins the sea a little to the eastward of the castle.
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§ 2.151 CHAPTER XV, SECOND JOURNEY. ACHAIA. ELEIA. Feb. 16, 1806. I embark at Epakto on the outside of the town; one boat carries myself and horse, another my baggage: the wind being contrary, we consume several hours in working up to the Morea Castle — disembark at the village behind the castle, and, having procured some horses there, arrive at Patra about 2 p. m.
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§ 2.152 Feb. 17 Ahmet Aga, brother of the Valide Kiayassy, and long time voivoda of Patra, but absent for the last two years, returns here today, having, contrary to the expectation or wish of the Patrini, been reinstated in the government. The Valide died last summer, but Yusuf still continues in the superintendence of her property, which devolves to the Sultan, her son. Patra was one of the best of her appanages, and for this reason Yusuf appointed his brother to the government; for though it does not produce much in direct profit to the administrator on the spot, there is a good deal to be gained in the way of plunder, in which Ahmet has always shewn himself expert, by engrossing all the lucrative part of the several powers of Kadi, Dizdar, Bolukbashi, and Hodja-bashi. During his absence the place was governed by a servant of Yusuf. Ahmet is received on the sea-side by all the principal inhabitants, and is saluted with the cannon of the fort, and with discharges of musketry, while the consuls hoist their colours. A new Musellim of Karlili comes in company with Ahmet Aga. As soon as the former Musellim had been dismissed, the robbers again made their appearance in Aetolia, or were said to have done so, whence Aly Pasha had an excuse for sending his negro minister Yusuf, with a body of Albanians, to overrun the country, and lay the villages under contribution. Repeated oppressions of this kind have very much diminished the population of Kravari and Apokuro, whole families and even the entire population of some of the villages having passed over into the Morea, particularly to Patra and the vicinity.
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§ 2.153 Feb. 18. The Pasha of the Morea has succeeded in taking many of the robbers who have long infested the Peninsula, and who have been increasing in numbers for the last year. He has killed one of the Kolotronis. Feb. 22. A strong north-easterly wind set in, four days ago, and still continues blowing out of the gulf with such fury, as to prevent all arrivals from the westward. I set out this forenoon at 10 for Gastuni, and follow the seashore of that noble curve, which forms so beautiful an object from Patra, trending seven or eight miles to the south-west, before it turns westward, towards Dyme and Cape Araxus. The shore consists of a shingle, abounding in round pebbles; it was by practising with these that the slingers of Patrae and Dyme acquired the skill in slinging, for which they were renowned, and by means of which Livy adds, that they performed notable service to the Romans, under the Consul Fulvius, at the siege of Samos, in Cephallenia. The left of our road is bordered by currant plantations. This plant succeeds better in a plain than upon hills, whence it happens that the wine made at Patra is better than in many other places, where the hills are equally well adapted to the growth of the vine, but where its cultivators, more anxious about the quantity than the quality of their produce, have preferred the plains for their vineyards: at Patra, on the contrary, the greater part of the plain being occupied by currants, the Greeks have been contented to plant their vines on the rugged hills behind the castle. A stremma of currant plantation, (i.e. a square of 114 Greek feet the side) when the plants are in their prime, or from ten to twenty years old, is worth 800 or 900 piastres. According to this valuation, even supposing half the currant grounds in the plain to be new, and not worth more than 500 piastres the stremma, the value of the plain will not be less than half a million sterling. At 10.54 I cross the mouth of the Lefka, anciently Glaucus, a torrent which descends directly from the highest parts of Mount Voidhia, crosses the plain in a broad gravelly bed, and retains little or no water in the summer. At 11.30 arrive at the end of the plain, where low hills, the continuation of the range of Panachaicum, meet the sea. These hills are not rocky, but, like those at the back of Patra, they are rugged and precipitous; and they would probably produce good wine, but cultivation ends with the plain of Patra, and a desert begins, which comprehends all Western Achaea and the northern part of the Eleia; throughout which tract, with the exception of the banks of the Peirus, and the vicinity of a few villages, all is forest or pasture. Our
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§ 2.155 road leads along a narrow level, between the low hills and the sea, until we approach the Peirus. This river is now called Kamenitza, in the lower part of its course, from a village, of that name on its bank, which Wheler erroneously writes Mammenitza, and which he describes as situated on both banks of the river, at a distance of two or three miles from the sea. After emerging from the ravine of Nezera, the river bends towards Mount Movri, which is a great root of Mount Olono, projecting from the central summit of the mountain into the Eletan plain. After having skirted the foot of the mountain, the river turns towards the sea, which it joins at the Akhaies, two villages belonging to Seid Aga, chief Ayan of Patra, and the greatest territorial proprietor there. The lands of these two villages lying on the banks of the Kamenitza, and which are irrigated by its waters, produce rice, cotton, arabostari, and small kalambokki; the remainder of the arable bears wheat and barley. The river is wide and deep, although no rain has fallen for some weeks. I cross it at 1.25, and soon afterwards, turning out of the straight road to the left, ascend a small height, on which is the village of Kato, or Palea, Akhaia, containing twenty or thirty families. The word Kato distinguishes it from
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§ 2.156 another village, higher up the river; the Palea it derives from some remains of antiquity, which exist in the surrounding fields. In the village I find a fragment of inscription, containing the name of Pharae, a most puzzling document, as it formed part of a monument raised by that city, in commemoration of the merits of some individual, and was not likely therefore to have been erected anywhere but in the city itself. On the other hand, we have the strongest testimony of Strabo and Pausanias that this was the situation, not of Pharae, but of Olenus; Pausanias adding, that Pharae was seventy stades distant from the sea. We must suppose, therefore, that the stone, which is not large, and forms part of a modern building, has, upon some occasion, been transported hither from the site of Pharae. Five or six yards behind the village there is a ridge in the plain, which seems to have been formed by the ruins of Olenus. There are traces also of its walls in the adjacent fields, and two or three pieces of Roman masonry. The vestiges extend over a considerable space of ground, and are the more remarkable, as Pausanias tells us that Olenus was never a large city, and as neither he nor Strabo speak of it but as a ruin. The temple of Aesculapius, which is
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§ 2.157 mentioned by Strabo, seems, by the silence of Pausanias, no longer to have existed in his time. The abandonment of the site may be dated from the time of the Roman wars in Greece; for when the Achaic league was revived after its temporary dissolution by the power of the Macedonian kings, the Olenii refused to join it, whence it may be inferred, that Olenus was still at that, time a place of some importance. On deserting their city, the Olenii settled in the neighbouring towns of Dyme, Peirae, and Euryteiae. Peirae, it may be presumed from the name, stood upon the river Peirus, in the plain between Olenus and Pharae; this position below Pharae is probable, as well from the vicinity to Olenus, implied in the fact of the emigration of the Olenii thither, as from the name having been written Πεῖραι, for Pausanias tells us, that the river which at the sea was named Πεῖρος was at Pharae called Πίερος. Whence it would seem that Peirae was nearer to the sea than Pharae. The main stream is joined in the plain by another from the southward, which answers to the Teutheas of Strabo. Apano Akhaia, which stands on the right bank of this tributary, one hour distant from the lower Akhaia, may be
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§ 2.158 the site of the town called Teuthea, near which there was a temple of Diana Nemidia. [Mr. Pouqueville seems, without knowing it, to have discovered some remains of this temple one mile to the south-east of Apano Akhaia at the foot of Mount Movri, where is a tjiftlik which receives its name Kolonnes, from the ruins of a temple.] The river Teutheas is stated by Strabo to have been joined by another called Caucon. I am informed that some vestiges of an ancient site are found on or near the left bank of the Kamenitza, between Preveso and Ysari: as this position corresponds tolerably well with the distance of Pharae from Patrae, and from the mouth of the Peirus, namely 150 stades from the former and seventy stades from the latter, one can hardly doubt that the vestiges are those of Pharae. Pharae, like Tritaea and Dyme, was made a dependency of Patrae by Augustus. In the time of Pausanias there remained a spacious agora of the ancient fashion, containing a bearded Hermes Agoraeus in marble, of no great size, which was oracular, and a fountain called Hama, which, as well as the fish contained in it, was sacred to the same deity. Near the statue there were thirty quadrangular stones, to each of which the name of a deity was attached, according to the most ancient practice of the Greeks. Near the river Pierus there was
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§ 2.159 a grove of plane trees, some of which were hollow, and so large that persons dined and slept in them. Fifteen stades from the city there was a grove of bay trees sacred to the Dioscuri, whose statues had been carried to Rome. From the village of Lower Akhaia there is an interval of 8 minutes to the khan of Seid Aga, which stands in the direct road at a small distance from the sea-side. It was lately built by the proprietor of the two Akhaies to save the inhabitants from the expense of Konaks. Here begins a forest of oaks, which extends to the Mavra Vuna, or Black Hills, and nearly to Cape Papa. I leave the khan at 3, and immediately enter the forest. The oaks are crooked, and none of them are handsome trees, though some are of a considerable size. The sea is at a small distance to the right, to the left is the great level which extends as far as the hills near Cape Katakolo. The soil is excellent but quite uncultivated; there are large flocks of sheep, but, from the khan of Seid Aga to Karavostasi, where we arrive at 4.35, I see no signs of inhabitants, except a few huts made of mud and wicker for the shepherds. Karavostasi is a metokhi
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§ 2.160 belonging to one of the convents of Nezera. It is situated between a woody cape and the Mavra Vuna, which are similarly clothed, but it is nearer to the former. The Mavra Vuna terminate to the northward in Cape Papa, between which and Karavostasi there is a large lagoon: a mile beyond the village a narrow opening in the hills leads from the village to the lake. The fishery is worth seven or eight purses a year; boats enter it from the sea through a boghaz, or opening. Papa, pronounced by the Turks Baba, is a low round peninsular height crowned with a chapel, separated from the Mavra Vuna by the lake and by the adjacent low ground. Near Karavostasi, on the eastern side, I find several remains of Hellenic masonry, others below the village towards the lagoon; and in all the fields around the village fragments of wrought stones and broken pottery, enough, in short, to shew that some Hellenic town occupied this site. Both Strabo and Pausanias place Dyme at forty stades from Olenus, and Olenus at eighty stades from Patrae. My time distance to the Peirus from Patra was 3 hours 25 minutes, and 1 hour 43 minutes from thence to Karavostasi — the proportion between these
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§ 2.161 numbers is precisely the same as that between the eighty stades and forty; but the time distance, compared with the stades, would indicate a slower movement than usual, which I was not sensible of. I have little doubt that Strabo and Pausanias have underrated the distances, as my construction will not give less than sixteen geographical miles in direct distance from Patra to Cape Papa. The distance of Karavostasi from Cape Papa agrees with Strabo's sixty stades between Dyme and Cape Araxus; nor is his remark as to Dyme having been harbourless opposed to the inference which might be drawn from the modern name Karavostasi, signifying a station for ships, for the latter has a reference only to modern navigation, for the purposes of which Cape Papa furnishes a very convenient shelter, when a southerly wind prevents vessels from proceeding in that direction; to the ancients, on the contrary, the lagoon, the ridge which separates it from the sea, and the long sandy beach were not favourable to the construction of those artificial moles or of the cothons, or basins, which were customary among them. The decline of Dyme is to be dated, like that of so many other Grecian cities, from the first Roman
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§ 2.162 wars in Greece; in consequence of its having been favoured by Philip, son of Demetrius, it was plundered by the Romans; and was already in a half deserted state when a colony of the Cilician pirates, who had been subdued by Pompey, was sent here. Augustus attached Dyme, together with Pharae and Tritaea, to the Roman colony of Patrae: in the time of the Antonines it preserved little more than a temple and very ancient statue of Minerva; a sanctuary of Dindymene and Attes, and monuments of its ancient heroes Sostratus and Oibotas; the former of these was a companion of Hercules; the latter was the first of the Achaeans who gained a victory at Olympia': the distich upon his statue in the Altis, which Pausanias has preserved, shews that before the Ionic migration the city was called Paleia. The name of Dyme, it is natural to suppose, was derived from its westerly position with respect to the rest of Achaea, though Pausanias, following as usual local tradition, which generally preferred a heroic etymon, ascribed it to a woman Dyme, or to Dymes, son of Aegimius. What connexion the Phrygian Dindymene and her priest Attes had with Dyme, Pausanias could not discover. Karavostasi commands a fine view of the coast and mountains of Aetolia, as well as of the roadstead of Mesolonghi, with the coast as far as Oxia and Kurtzolari, two conspicuous rocky peaks, anciently called the Oxeiae, a name which is correctly descriptive of them. Strabo, however, was mistaken in supposing them both to be islands, unless we imagine the sea to have retreated from this coast more rapidly than I think possible. Kurtzolari is a mountain of the main land opposite to the island still called Oxia or Oxia. In the opposite direction, or inland from Karavostasi, is seen the whole ridge of Olono. In a lofty situation, upon Mount Movri, stands the monastery of Filokali, and at the foot of the same mountain, towards the south-western end, the village of Oriolos.
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§ 2.163 Feb. 23. — I leave Karavostasi this morning at 8, and in forty minutes arrive at the Castle of Kallogria, situated on the last height of the Mavra Vuna towards the south, at the northern extremity of a chain of lagoons similar to that of Cape Papa, which extend almost as far as Glarentza, the ancient Cyllene. Kallogria occupies a rocky hill about 100 yards in length, the entire summit of which is enclosed by a massy wall faced with large shapeless masses of stone, put together without cement, but filled within with small fragments and mortar. There exist also some remains of walls and towers constructed entirely of small stones, the repairs apparently of a later age. Although the masonry of the more ancient part of these ruins is not in the usual Hellenic style, the thickness of the walls, and the massy facing, are of a kind which has not been employed in this country since the time of the Roman Empire. I cannot hesitate therefore in believing that they are the ruins of Teichus, a castle of the Dymoei, which was taken from them in the Social War, B.C. 219, by Euripidas, the Aetolian who commanded the Eleians, and which was retaken in the following year by Philip for Teichus is described by Polybius as a fortress only a stade and a half in circuit, with walls thirty cubits high, and as having been situated towards the frontier of the Dymaea. That the frontier on which Teichus stood was towards Elis, may be inferred as well from the general position of the Dymaea, as from the tradition noticed by the same historian, that the castle had been first built by Hercules, when he made war on the Eleians.
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§ 2.165 It is true that Polybius further remarks, that Teichus was near Araxus, whereas, in fact, Kallogria is nearer to Karavostasi, the site of Dyme, than to Cape Papa; but perhaps all the hills which form so conspicuous a geographical feature in the western extremity of Achaea were called Araxus, as well as the cape itself. No other name at least is to be found for them in ancient history. The lake below Kallogria has an opening to the sea, and a fishery, which lets for 600 piastres a year. It is separated from the sea by a sandy strip of land which is covered with a thick forest of strofilia, the species of pine which produces the esculent seed eaten like almonds, and often used as a substitute for them in Greek cookery. The greater part of the pine nuts of this forest is sent to the opposite islands. The wood is much esteemed for ship building, but that of the common πεύκος, or pinus maritima, is more in use for that purpose, the tree being more common. We quit the castle at 9.07, and in little more than half an hour have a metokhi of Megaspilio on the right, on the edge of the lake. At 10.06 cross a river flowing from Mount Movri in the neighbourhood of Oriolos. It does not
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§ 2.166 fail in summer, and after rains in winter often does mischief: it is now of considerable width, but not deep. This being the largest stream in the Eleia, north of the Peneius, must, I think, be the ancient Larissus, which divided Achaea from Eleia, though its distance from Dyme is only fifty stades, instead of the 300 or the 400 which are found in the MSS. of Pausanias, and which, it is almost unnecessary to add, must be erroneous, as the Alpheius itself is not so far from Dyme. In another place Pausanias states the distance from the city Elis to the Larissus at 157 stades, which, as it gives a correct rate to the stade measured on the map, confirms the identity of the Larissus with the river of Oriolos. At the river we regain the great road from Patra to Gastuni, which we had left at Akhaia. From Karavostasi our road has continued to pass among oak-trees as before we arrived at that place, but beyond the Larissus the trees are not so thickly planted except at intervals. At 10.40 we arrive at Aly Tjeleby, a village so called from a Turk who built a large pyrgo here, and owned the village, but who afterwards disposed of it to the monastery of Megaspilio, of which it is now a metokhi. A considerable quantity of flax is still grown, as in former ages, in the plains of Achaea and Elis, for which the rivers furnish the means of irrigation. At Aly Tjeleby a small rill runs towards a large lagoon which takes
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§ 2.167 its name from this village: the lagoon is separated from the lake of Kallogria by a narrow branch of the plain, through which there is a stream of communication, flowing, if I am not misinformed, out of the northern into the southern lake; whence it would seem that the discharge of the Larissus into the sea, is not directly through the lake of Kallogria, but at the place where the lake of Aly Tjeleby opens into the sea. There is some reason to think that all these lagoons are comparatively of recent formation, as I suppose that at Old Navarin to have been; for there is no mention in ancient history of any but that of Letrini, near the modern town of Pyrgo. The plain now becomes more open, but is still uncultivated, except around the villages, which however are more frequent. At 11.30 arrive at Monoladha, a metokhi of the Convent of St. Taxiarches which is situated three hours above Vostitza. Monoladha is a village of twenty or thirty families, with a large pyrgo, entered by a high flight of steps and a drawbridge like that of Aly Tjeleby. Leaving it at 12.50, we cross, at 12.58, a small stream called Verga (rod), running towards the lakes. The neighbouring lands produce rice, flax, and maize. At 1.42 cross another small stream. The plain is in some places marshy and overgrown with
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§ 2.168 mastic bushes and squills, in others, it is clothed only with grass, furnishing pasture for sheep. At 2.25 we have on the right the beginning of another great lagoon, which extends for several miles along the shore towards Lekhena and Glarentza; it is called Kotykhi: its fishery is said to be less valuable than that of Papa, where the largest fish are caught. Kunupeli is a little rocky height and cape on the coast, nearly in a line with the Spiliotiko metokhi, which we passed at 9.40. There is a ruined tower at Kunupeli, and a magazine, a source of hot salt water, a few vestiges of antiquity, and a port which affords good shelter from easterly winds; a ship is now lying there. The ancient name of the place I cannot discover. At 2.25 we have the small village of Mazi half a mile on the left: at 2.41 Retuni, a large village, is at the same distance on the right; soon afterwards, leaving the straight road to Gastuni to the left, we proceed directly towards Lekhena and Khlemutzi, and halt at the former at 3.42. I observe many broken marbles and other symptoms of ancient buildings in this part of the plain. Lekhena is the most considerable place in the district of Gastuni. It has a large bazar, a mosque in ruins, and about 200 families. As at Gastuni, the houses are dispersed, and each of
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§ 2.169 them surrounded with a mulberry ground or fruit garden. In a large church I find many ancient squared blocks: others also in the wall surrounding the churchyard. The gallery or portico of the church is supported by four columns of gray granite, which, according to the tradition of the place, were brought many years ago from Kionia, a place near Mazi. The name of Kionia seems to shew that it was an ancient site, though I am informed that little, or nothing, is to be seen there at present. Its position corresponds with that of Myrtuntium the Homeric Myrsinus, which Strabo places in the road from Elis to Dyme, at seventy stades from the former. Strabo adds, indeed, that Myrtuntium was upon the sea; but this must either be an error in the text, or in the geographer's information; for it is obvious that no part of the road from Elis to Dyme could have passed near the sea. Entering Lekhena, I found all the shops shut, and the people either ranged on seats before the doors of the houses, or dancing, singing, roaring, and, for the most part, drunk, men, women, and children, this being the last day of Carnival. The road from Lekhena to Gastuni passes by Andravidha, where are said to be many fragments of ancient architecture in the churches and houses; and by Kavasula on the right bank of the Peneius, between which and Gastuni the road crosses the river.
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§ 2.170 Feb. 24. Move from Lekhena at 8, and ride direct for the castle of Khlemutzi: at 8.18 Andravidha is one mile and a half on the left, next to Lekhena, the most considerable town in the district: traverse a plain tolerably well cultivated, principally with flax: 8.36 pass through Suliman-aga, a small village. At 9.02 through Neo Khori, belonging to Shemseddin Bey, of Gastuni, who has a handsome pyrgo here: 9.06 the road to Glarentza turns to the right. As we are now nearly opposite to Paleopoli, ( Elis ) and have travelled about five hours from the river of Oriolo, that stream is evidently the Larissus; for the 157 stades which Pausanias places between Elis and the Larissus will answer exactly to the five hours. We now begin to ascend the long ridge of Khlemutzi, which forms so remarkable a feature of this part of the Peloponnesus, both by sea and land. It consists of rough hills, apparently well adapted to vines, but which are uncultivated except in some little intersecting valleys, which are now green in most parts with corn. At 10.10 we arrive at Khlemutzi, a considerable village situated
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§ 2.171 under a round height which crowns the ridge, and upon the western side of which height looking towards Zakytho and Kefalonia, stands the ruined castle called Kastro Tornese. The name of Khlemutzi is evidently derived from the Romaic word χλεμός, or χλομός or χελμός, which we often find attached in Greece to hills of a regular form. The gardens attached to the cottages of the village have fences made of the American aloe, two or three of which are in blossom. They are much smaller than the same plant in Sicily, and not above half the size of the agave Americana in the West Indies. According to the people of Khlemutzi, the plant bears a flower once in two years, and never dies, whence they call it athanatos. This undoubtedly is an erroneous idea, though it is a very natural one, as the reproduction is from a shoot of the old plant, which dies soon after it has flowered. Kastro Tornese standing on a height surrounded by plains or by the sea, and hence easily recognized at a great distance, is one of the finest geographical stations in Greece. It commands a magnificent view of Elis, western Achaea, and the coast of Aetolia, with the islands Zacynthus, Cephallenia, Ithaca, the Echinades, and Oxeiae. From its commanding position, with
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§ 2.172 regard to the channels of Zakytho and Kefalonia, as well as towards the plains of the Eleia, it would be an important military station in any other hands than those of the Turks. Though in ruins, and neither guarded nor armed with cannon, it is still one of the most respectable fortresses in Greece, and might easily be made defensible, being small with a double inclosure, and in a very repairable state. The keep is a long irregular hexagon without any towers: the long sides of the hexagon are two thick parallel walls, about thirty feet asunder, between which there were two stories of apartments built upon arches. There are large windows looking towards the interior of the castle, and smaller looking outwards. The fortress, which was probably built in the thirteenth century, seems afterwards to have been converted into a monastery; for I perceive the remains of the paintings of a Greek church in one part, and such is the tradition of the inhabitants of the village. We are told by Phranza that Khlomutza was taken by Mahomet the Second, in 1460, after he had reduced Arcadia, Laconia, and Messenia; the Beglerbegs, as he calls those who had possessed the place, having previously retreated to Corfu. It seems clear that by Khlomutza he meant this fortress, and that the
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§ 2.173 Beglerbegs were Albanian chieftains; for Chalcocondylas relates, that the Turks took Sandamerio and other places in this part of the Morea, from the Albanians, though he does not name Khlomutza. Coronelli has given a view of the fortress, which I think could never have had any resemblance to the reality. We may infer, however, from the minaret which he represents in one angle, that before the Venetians took the place in the year 1685, the Turks had converted some part of the castle into a mosque. At Gastuni I was told that the name of Tornese was derived from the Lire Tornesi, or livres Tournois, which were coined here by the Frank princes of the country before the Turkish conquest; and that the castle was built by Count Τζεντεφρές (so my informant wrote the name), who possessed the country soon after the conquest of Constantinople by the French. At the foot of the hill of Khlemutzi, two miles in direct distance, and bearing N 14° E. by compass from Castle Tornese, is the port of Glarentza, or Glarantza, and the remains of a ruined castle apparently of the same date as Tornese. Glarentza, softened by the Italians into Chiarenza, once gave name to a Venetian duchy, but it appears from Coronelli to have retained nothing, in the time of the last Venetian conquest of the Morea, 1685, but
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§ 2.174 ditches and other slight traces of its former importance: it is now only a desert harbour, where some rocks furnish a retreat for boats. There can be no doubt that Glarentza is the ancient Cyllene, as there is no other harbour on this coast, except that of Kunupeli, which is too far to the north to have been the port of Elis; whereas Glarentza, in its distance from Paleopoli, agrees exactly to the 120 stades which Strabo and Pausanias agree in stating to have been the interval between Elis and Cyllene. In the time of Pausanias, Cyllene still possessed temples of Aesculapius and Venus; but the deity held in the greatest veneration among them was Hermes, who was represented by his symbol, upon a basis. Pausanias is silent as to the ivory statue of Aesculapius, by Colotae, of which Strabo speaks in terms of admiration. We may suppose, therefore, that it had been removed, in the long interval which elapsed between the times of the two authors, having perhaps, by its proximity to the sea, proved too tempting a prize to some Roman collector. The convenient harbour which
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§ 2.175 Pausanias describes, must have been chiefly indebted to art for its advantages. Below Kastro Tornese, to the left of the village, there are the remains of a wall similar, in its construction, to that of the castle. It is called the Englishman's Wall, and is said to be the remains of the palace of an English governor. The most projecting point of the heights of Khlemutzi towards the sea, is to the S.W. of Castle Tornese: this point is opposite to Cape Vasiliko, in Zakytho, and here the channel is narrowest. A little on the right of the projection, a rivulet called Linzi joins the sea: It rises at the foot of the castle-hill, and flows through a little cultivated vale, in which it is joined by two or three other rivulets from similar smaller, valleys. Below Khlemutzi, and not far from the Cape of Glarentza there is a small island called Kavkalidha, and some rocky shoals, which, together, correspond exactly to the νησίον και βραχέα mentioned by Strabo, as having been near Cape Chelonatas, which promontory he places to the southward of Cyllene.
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§ 2.176 According to Pliny, Chelonatas was two miles distant from Cyllene, which, as it agrees with the statement of Strabo, identifies the cape as that now called Cape Glarentza. It appears from Strabo, that the name of Ormina, or Hyrmina, was applied, at the time he wrote, to the whole hill or peninsula of Khlemutzi, for he describes it as a hilly promontory near Cyllene. I conceive the fact to have been, that originally the name Chelonatas was given to the whole peninsula, now called Khlemutzi, from its supposed resemblance to a tortoise, and that the Homeric Hyrmine occupied the central and commanding position of Kastro Tornese; that, in process of time, the name of the town, which had ceased to exist, was applied to the whole promontory, and that of Chelonatas to the particular cape, on the western side of the bay of Cyllene. At 1.45 I begin to descend through the hills along a narrow cultivated valley, and at 2.45 re-enter the plain at the little hamlet of Makho. At 3.30 cross the Peneius, which is here some what larger and deeper than the Peirus at its
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§ 2.177 mouth, and, after crossing a peninsular level, again arrive upon its margin, where it makes a great turn eastward, just below Gastuni: we follow the left bank for a short space, and enter Gastuni at 3.55, where I again lodge in the house of Dr.S. S. complains to me, that in the Morea it is becoming daily more rare among the rich Greeks to give their children any education, and this want of encouragement to schoolmasters makes it difficult to find any good ones. The proesti, he observes, are the ruin of the nation in this, as in every thing else. In the Morea, where so many Greeks have authority, they naturally become, under the Ottoman system, a sort of Christian Turks, with the usual ill qualities of slaves who have obtained power. The chief proofs among them of a good birth and genteel education, are dissimulation and the art of lying with a good grace; which they seem often to exercise rather with a view of shewing their ability in this way, than with any settled design. When I have taxed a Greek with falsehood on some occasion, the answer has been — “Why you know I must say something.” The other day, at St. Luke's, I complained to the Igumenos of the false account of the distance which his brother abbot at Dobo had given
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§ 2.178 me: “That was nothing,” he replied, “he knew very well your Excellency was determined to go to that village, and therefore told you the distance was shorter than the reality, not to alarm you.” In other words, he wished to get rid of me, which was natural enough, as he had found, by experience, that such casual guests were both troublesome and costly, and had never before seen any travellers who are in the habit of defraying their expenses. Though it is impossible not to be disgusted with these things, one can hardly blame the Greeks for them; for what other arms have they against their oppressors? Under such a cruel tyranny, deceitfulness unavoidably becomes a national characteristic: a Greek will often answer the simplest question by a falsehood, for the mere purpose of gaining time to reflect on the most advantageous mode of answering it, or to unriddle the inquirer's motive for asking. They will afterwards, perhaps, speak the truth, if, as it appears to them, there is nothing to be lost in so doing; and thus it is only by cross questioning and by repeating inquiries to different people, that any certain information can be obtained in this country. I believe the want of this caution leads travellers into many errors.
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§ 2.179 CHAPTER XVI: ELEIA. The ancient geography of the Eleia is more obscure and difficult to trace than that of any other part of the Peloponnesus: the following are the causes of this difficulty. The city of Elis after it had obtained the entire management of the Olympian festival, rapidly absorbed the wealth and population of the ancient cities Eleia and Triphylia, so that the chief monuments of the province were collected at Olympia and Elis, and few of those remains of antiquity which elsewhere constitute the evidence of an ancient site are here to be found. Secondly, the soil of Eleia being either sandy, or argillaceous, or a rich mould, and stone being found only in the mountains, the public works
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§ 2.180 were seldom of so solid a construction as in other parts of Greece, where the ancient walls are almost as lasting as the rocks on which they are so often found to stand. The scarcity of stone rendering the remains of such of the ancient buildings as were formed of that material so much the more valuable for the use of modern constructions, has caused them to be more frequently removed for that purpose, than in any other part of Greece. They are also more readily hidden under a soil which is extremely subject to alluvial changes. A third cause of the deficiency of Hellenic remains in the Eleia arises from the ancient sanctity of the Eleian territory, which, with a few remarkable exceptions, was respected throughout the history both of independent and Roman Greece; the people therefore were negligent of military architecture, which furnishes so large a proportion of the proofs of ancient locality in other parts of the country. Instead of inhabiting fortified places, like the Greeks in general, and like the Eleians themselves before the sanctity and security of their territory were established, they were attached to a country life, and had but one city of any great note and importance, which was itself unfortified.
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§ 2.181 In consequence of these peculiarities, our faithful guide Pausanias finding little to gratify his favourite pursuit of mythology, except at Elis and Olympia, bestows his attention almost exclusively upon those two places, especially the latter; making mention only of two or three others, and treating even these haud secus ac notas, or as if their situation was well known to his reader. Strabo, on the contrary, being throughout Greece a commentator on the Homeric geography, which in this province furnished matter in abundance for research and controversy, has been more ample on the Eleia than any other part of the Peloponnesus; and as under the Roman empire, the Eleia comprehended all the maritime country, lying between the Larissus and Neda, and extended inland as far as the Azanes and Parrhasii of Arcadia, the extent of the country to which his enquiries were here directed was very considerable. In the time of the Trojan war, the territory bordering upon the western shore of the Peloponnesus, from Cape Araxus inclusive to the foot of Mount Taygetum, was divided between the Epeii and the Pylii; their line of separation towards the sea appears to have been the cape
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§ 2.182 opposite to the southern extremity of Zakytho, now called Katakolo, the ancient Icthys; thus including to the north of the Alpheius the Pisatis, and the district of the modern Pyrgo. That such was the extent of 380225PPel, or the dominion of Nestor northward, is shewn, as I have before had occasion to remark by Homer having described the Alpheius as flowing through the land of the Pylii, and it is confirmed by the definition given by the poet of the country of the Epeii in the catalogue, as well as by the proportion between the ships of the Pylii and Epeii in the Trojan expedition. None of the towns of the Epeii were near the Alpheius, and the ninety ships of the Pylii, compared with the forty of the Epeii, shew that the former people possessed by much the larger territory of the two, especially on the seacoast. The towns of the Epeii, according to Homer, were, Elis their capital, Buprasium their ancient capital, where King Amarynceus was buried, Hyrmine, Myrsinus, 380225PPel Olenia, and Aleisium. Among these Homeric towns of the Epeii, occupying the country which was
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§ 2.183 afterwards the Eleia, exclusive of the Pisatis, I have already alluded to the position of Hyrmine and Myrsinus. Buprasium no longer existed in the time of Strabo, though its name was still attached to a district on the Larissus, which river appears from Stephanus to have been hence known by the name of Buprasius. Pausanias tells us, that the Larissus was 157 stades from the city of Elis. The road from Elis to Dyme, therefore, seems to have led as follows: to Myrtuntium, seventy stades, to Buprasium, on the Larissus, eighty-seven stades, to Dyme, about fifty stades. As to the 380225PPel Olenia, Strabo thought it was the same rocky hill, called Scollis in his time; — “the river Larissus ”, he says, “has its sources in Scollis, which is a rocky mountain, common to the Dymaei, Tritaeenses, and Eleians; contiguous to the Arcadian mountain Lampeia, distant 130 stades from Elis, and 100 from each of the Achaean cities, Tritaea and Dyme.” In another place, he adds, that 380225PPel of Elis, which we know from Pausanias to have been at no great distance eastward from Elis, was towards Scollis. It happens, unfortunately, that no other
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§ 2.184 author mentions Scollis, except Stephanus who calls it a town of Achaea; but this testimony is not at variance with that of Strabo, since it is not improbable that there was a town Scollis, homonymous with the mountain, and as Strabo places the mountain partly within the Achaean districts of Dyme and Tritaea. The circumstance of Mount Scollis having confined on Lampeia, which was a part of Erymanthus, added to that of its having been only 100 stades distant from Tritaea, to which it partly belonged, tends to place it considerably to the eastward of the Eleian plain; while its distance of 100 stades from Dyme would oblige us to include the summit now called Movri within the denomination of Scollis. It would seem therefore that Strabo, whose knowledge of the places was evidently but slight, comprehended, in his idea of Mount Scollis, all the northern parts of Mount Olonos, including the summit now called Movri, and Sandameriotiko. We cannot doubt that these ridges, though appendages of the great mass of Olonos, had specific names, or at least one specific name; and hence it becomes highly probable, that the hill of Sandameri was the summit particularly called Scollis, being in form and position the most remarkable of the minor summits on this side of the Peloponnesus.
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§ 2.185 I cannot however conceive that Strabo is right in his opinion, that Scollis was the same as the Πέτρη Ωλενίη of Homer. Hesiod, who from his antiquity must have understood by the Petra Olenia the same place as Homer, adds that it was on the bank of the Peirus, and he seems clearly, like Homer himself, to have had a town in view, not a mere rock, as Strabo describes the Scollis. Petra therefore seems to have been a town on the bank of the Peirus, distinguished by the epithet of Olenia, because it was situated at the foot of the mountain Olenus; for I cannot but regard those two very early authorities, coupled with the modern name Ώλονος, varying from the ancient only in what is a common dialectic difference both in the ancient and modern language of Greece, as a proof that the name Olenus, or Olonus, has in all ages been attached to this great mountain collectively, and perhaps specifically in ancient times to its north-western part, while other summits were distinguished by the names of Scollis, Pholoe, Erymanthus, Lampeia. Aleisium, which in the time of the geographer was called Alesiaeum, stood upon a height in the road across the hills from Elis to Olympia,
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§ 2.186 but in what part of that road does not appear from the geographer. Artemisium and Dioscurium were two unfortified places in the plains of Coele Elis. These and other similar names, which often occur in ancient history, such as Heraeum, Aphrodisium, Dionysium, &c., were undoubtedly common names of villages in every part of the Peloponnesus, in the time of its greatest populousness, receiving those appellations from their place of worship, like the St. Johns, St. Thomases, and St. Marys, of Christendom. I shall now proceed to offer a few remarks upon the ancient geography of the two other divisions of the Eleia, as it was defined in the time of the Romans, namely, Pisatis and Triphylia. Had Strabo been better acquainted with Greece, he would hardly have hesitated in preferring the opinion which fixed the northern boundary of the coast of Pisatis at the Cape Ichthys, now Katakolo, to that which placed it at or near Chelonatas. Southward, the Pisatis was considered to extend to the Macistia, or northern district of Triphylia, and eastward, to the Erymanthus. Letrini, the nearest place to the western extremity of Pisatis, seems to
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§ 2.187 have been almost deserted in the time of the Roman Empire. Strabo does not name it: Pausanias says that only a few habitations remained there. It stood on the road from Olympia to Elis, through the plains, at a distance of 120 stades from Olympia, and 180 from Elis. It is evident that the road by the plains must have descended the vale of the Alpheius, into the plain of Pyrgo, and from thence have led along the foot of the hills to Elis. The distance is three or four miles greater than across the hills, which agrees tolerably with Strabo, inasmuch as, speaking of the same hi 11-road from Olympia to Elis, he says that it was under 300 stades, and 300 stades is exactly the sum of the two distances on the road by the plain, as stated by Pausanias. It seems manifest, therefore, that the plain of Pyrgo was the Letrinaea, and this is confirmed by the mention of Letrini, which occurs in the narrative by Xenophon of the march of Agis and the Lacedaemonians into the Eleia (BC 400); the respective distances of ISO stades from Olympia, and of 180 stades from Elis, shew moreover that Letrini was not far from Pyrgo itself; and we may with some confidence
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§ 2.188 therefore place it at the village and monastery of St. John, between Pyrgo and the port of Katakolo, where, among many fragments of antiquity, a part of a large statue was found some years ago. The remark of Pausanias that there was a permanent lake of three stades in diameter, at a distance of six stades from Letrini, does not I think invalidate the conclusion; for, though, instead of a small lake of perennial water, there is now a long salt water lagoon, extending from near Katakolo to the mouth of the river of Pyrgo, this lagoon is very probably of recent formation, like several others on the western coast of the Peloponnesus. The permanent fresh water lake may now be enveloped in the lagoon. Strabo states the distance between the port of Pheia and Olympia to have been 120 stades, τω εγγυτάτω. If we suppose these words to mean direct distance, it accords very well with the 120 stades of road distance given by Pausanias between Letrini and Olympia, Letrini lying in the road from Pheia to Olympia. In the time of Pausanias there were only a few houses left at Letrini, with a temple of Diana Alpheiaea containing a statue of the goddess.
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§ 2.189 It is not impossible that this may have been the same statue which stood in the temple of Diana Alpheiusa, or Alpheionia, mentioned by Demetrius Scepsius and Strabo, and that it may have been removed to Letrini in consequence of the ruin of the temple which stood on the borders of the Letrinaea, near the mouth of the Alpheius, at a distance of eighty stades from Olympia. In the time of Strabo, there was an annual festival of the goddess at Olympia; and the temple was celebrated for its pictures by Cleanthes and Aregon of Corinth, in one of which Neptune was offering a tunny to Jupiter when in the pains of bringing forth Minerva; in two others were represented the taking of Troy, and Diana mounted upon a griffin. It is difficult to believe that Pausanias would have omitted to describe such a temple, had it existed in his time. Pausanias is equally silent on the subject of Pheia, which was a place of very ancient date, if the received version of Homer is correct, for it is there mentioned as one of the scenes of the youthful exploits of Nestor.
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§ 2.190 Strabo, however, states some reasonable doubts as to the accuracy of the poet's text in this place, and suggests that the words Pheia and Celadon should be Chaa and Acidon, thus placing them with the river Jardanus in Lepreatis. That the Jardanus was in that part of the country, and that it was held to be the same as the Acidas, we learn from Pausanias; thereabouts, consequently, the battle was fought between Nestor and the Arcadians. It is indeed much more probable that the parties should have met on the frontiers of Pylia and Arcadia, than on the sea-shore of Pisatis. Near Pheia was the cape called Ichthys, the southernmost of the three great promontories on the north-western coast of Peloponnesus. This description of Ichthys, derived from the concurring testimonies of Thucydides, Xenophon, Agathemerus, Mela, and Ptolemy, leave no doubt of its identity with the remarkable promontory now called the Cape of Katakolo. Nevertheless Strabo, whose inaccuracy, or that of his text, is in this instance at once shewn by the map, speaks of two capes upon this part of
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§ 2.191 the coast; of which the northern was called Pheia from the name of the neighbouring town; of the southern he has not given the name. The small river near Pheia of which he speaks, and which was supposed to be the Jardanus by those who thought that Homer spoke of Pheia and not of Chaa, may possibly be the river of Tzoia. Ichthys is a long rocky promontory, or peninsula, united to the main land by an isthmus from which rises a very conspicuous peaked height, crowned by the ruins of a castle of the middle ages, raised upon some remains of Hellenic walls. These walls are undoubtedly those of Pheia. The ruined castle is called Pondikokastro. Below it, to the south-east, is a harbour well sheltered by Cape Katakolo, and much frequented: this, however, was too open and extensive for ancient navigation. The port of Pheia was a small creek at the foot of the hill of Pondikokastro, on the western side; a position clearly indicated by Thucydides who tells us that in the first year of the
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§ 2.192 Peloponnesian war the Athenian fleet sailing from Methone attacked and took Pheia, but that rough weather coming on, they sailed round the promontory Ichthys into the port of Pheia. Opposite to its entrance there is a small island, which is mentioned by Polybius under the name of Pheias. The other towns of Pisatis mentioned by Strabo are Marganeae, Salmone, Heracleia, Harpinna, Cycesium, Dyspontium, Oenoe, or Boenoa, and Epitalium. Of these Pausanias names only Harpinna and Heracleia, the only two perhaps which existed in his time. Of the position of Harpinna I have already spoken. Heracleia was situated on the river Cytherus at a distance of fifty stades or forty according to Strabo, from Olympia. Salmone stood not far from Heracleia at the sources of another branch of the Alpheius called Enipeus, or Barnichius. Two tributaries of the Alpheius, rising in the woody heights to the northward of Olympia, join the right bank of the Alpheius in the plain where now stand the little villages of Strefi and Floka. The river of Strefi I take to be the ancient Cytherus, that nearer to Floka the Enipeus. Strefi, which stands on a height on the
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§ 2.193 edge of the plain, corresponds, by its distance from Olympia, with the site of Heracleia. In the time of Strabo, the greater part of the inhabitants of Dyspontium had emigrated to Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. The town appears, from the words of the geographer, to have been, as well as Cycesium, in the northern part of Pisatis, towards Elis. As it lay on the road by the plain from Elis to Olympia, its situation seems to have been at the foot of the hills between Paleopoli ( Elis ) and the ridge (ending in Cape Ichthys ) which separates the plain of Gastuni from that of Pyrgo. If the text of Strabo is correct where he adverts to the position of Oenoe, that place, as I have already remarked, must have been very near the mouth of the Peneius, or river of Gastuni. Regarding Marganeae, Xenophon relates, that in the second year of the war between the Arcadians and Eleians, the latter having marched out of their city against Pylus, which was then in the hands of the Arcadians, and of a party of fugitives from Elis, met the Pylii returning from an unsuccessful expedition against Thalamae, a town in a lofty situation in the adjacent mountains, and that the Eleians having completely defeated their opponents,
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§ 2.194 followed up their victory by taking both Pylus and Marganeae. The latter, therefore, seems to have been the nearest city of the Pisatis to Pylus of Elis, which is known to have been near the Peneius about ten miles above Elis. Strabo places Marganeae in the Amphidolia, and describes it as a place not strong by natural position. From Xenophon and Stephanus, Amphidolia appears to have received its name from a town named Amphidoli. This place probably stood about the middle of that broad stripe of land which lies between the Erymanthus and the plain of Elis. I say the middle, because we have seen that near Olympia were Heracleia and Salmone, and towards Elis, Pylus, Cycesium, and Dyspontium. Along the tract of land just mentioned, there is a longitudinal ridge, beginning near the bank of the Erymanthus above Lalla, following a course parallel to the Alpheius as far as Pyrgo, and then trending northward towards Paleopoli ( Elis ). It separates the course of the tributaries of the Alpheius from those of the Peneius. We have the positive testimony of Pausanias, that these heights were the ancient Pholoe, so celebrated in Grecian poetry and mythology, for he says that the
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§ 2.195 Leucyanias, one of the feeders, just alluded to, of the Alpheius, had its sources in Mount Pholoethus agreeing with Xenophon, who testifies to the proximity of Pholoe to Scillus, though they were on opposite sides of the Alpheius. Pholoe, however, must sometimes have had a much more extensive signification than this ridge, for Strabo, though he strongly confirms the proximity of a part of Pholoe to Olympia, also informs us that the Peneius, and another river which flowed into the Eleia, and which he calls the Scarthon, had their rise in Mount Pholoe, shewing, as well in this as in other places, that he considered Pholoe to have formed a considerable part of those great summits which are now conjointly known by the name of Olono. He even describes Pholoe, in one of the passages just referred to, as an Arcadian mountain, of which the lower parts were in Pisatis. I conceive, therefore, that all the southwestern part of the summits of Mount Olono were comprised under the name of Pholoe, and that in common estimation it comprehended likewise all the slopes in that direction as far as the plain of Elis, including the secondary ridge extending from Elis to Lalla.
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§ 2.196 The remark of Pausanias, that the river Erymanthus rising in Mount Lampeia, which was a part of Mount Erymanthus, passed through Arcadia, leaving Mount Pholoe on the right, and the Thelpusia on the left, will agree with both these suppositions. According to Pliny, there was a town of Pholoe, but his testimony is not confirmed by any other author. Epitalium was situated on the left bank of the Alpheius, as may be deduced from a comparison of the words of Strabo, relative to this place, with those of Xenophon, in describing the events of the war between the Lacedaemonians and Eleians. Agis, king of Sparta, entered the Eleia, at the river Larissus; but an earthquake happening, he regarded it as a divine omen, and retreated. The next year (400) he entered from the southward through the Aulon of Messenia and the Lepreatis. Immediately the Lepreatae, revolting from the Eleians, joined him, and forthwith the Macistii also, and their neighbours the Epitalii. When he had crossed the Alpheius, the people of Letrini, Amphidoli, and Marganeae came over to him. Proceeding to Olympia, he there sacrificed to Jupiter Olympius, nobody attempting to hinder him.
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§ 2.197 Thence he marched to the city of Elis, destroying and burning the country and carrying away cattle and prisoners in great numbers. Many of the Arcadians and Achaeans came willingly to join his army for the sake of partaking in the plunder, so that the expedition became a foraging party for all Peloponnesus. When he arrived at Elis he destroyed the suburbs and the beautiful Gymnasia; as to the city itself, which was unfortified, it was thought that he was more unwilling than unable to take it.” Agis then encamped near Cyllene, when an insurrection of the partizans of Sparta in Elis against the popular party having failed of success, he marched back by the same route, by which he came. When he had repassed the Alpheius, he left a garrison in Epitalium near the river, under Lysippus, the leader of those of the Spartan faction who had fled from Elis, after which, having dismissed his allies, he returned home. During the remainder of the summer and the ensuing winter, the country of the Eleians was exposed to the ravages of Lysippus and his men. In the next summer Thrasidaeus, who was leader of the popular party in Elis, sent agents to Sparta, who, for the sake of relieving the Eleia from the annoyance caused by the fugitives at Epitalium, were authorized to agree to the destruction of the fortifications of that place, and
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§ 2.198 to promise liberty as well to that as to some other cities which had been in subjection to Elis, namely, Letrini, Amphidoli, Marganeae, and Phrixa — also to Cyllene, to the Acroreii, and to Lasion, which was claimed by the Arcadians. The Eleians endeavoured to retain Epeiura, which lay between Heraea and Macistus, affirming they had bought the district from the owners for thirty talents, and had paid the money. “But the Lacedaemonians, who considered a compulsory purchase from a weaker party as equivalent to a deprivation by violence, obliged them also to set Epeium at liberty. They did not, however, expel the Eleians from the guardianship of the temple of Jupiter Olympius, conceiving those who claimed it to be peasants, and unfit for so important a charge. These things having been agreed upon, there ensued peace and alliance between the Eleians and Lacedaemonians.” Epitalium, according to Strabo, stood on the site of the Homeric “ Thryon at the ford of the Alpheius:” which the poet in another place calls Thryoessa, and describes as a city upon a lofty hill near the Alpheius. The latter description of the place occurs in the narrative by
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§ 2.199 Nestor, of the contest between the Pylii and Epeii, when his father Neleus ruled over the former, and Augeias over the latter, and when Nestor performed the earliest of his youthful exploits in arms. The Pylii having been reduced to a state of great weakness by Hercules, the Epeii took a neighbourly advantage of it; among other injuries, their king Augeias detained a chariot and four horses belonging to Neleus, which had been sent to contend for the prize of the tripod in the Epeian games, in return for which Neleus made a most successful βοηλασία in the enemy's territory, as I have had occasion more particularly to remark in a former chapter. The Epeii then collected an army, and invested Thryoessa, a frontier town of the Pylii, situated at the passage of the Alpheius. The Pylii moved to its relief, and having assembled their forces at the river Minyeius, halted the cavalry all night, while the infantry marched forward, so that all the army arrived at the Alpheius the following noon. They employed the remainder of the day in repose, or in sacrificing to Neptune, Minerva, and Alpheius. On the ensuing morning they attacked and routed the Epeii, whom they pursued with their cavalry as far as Buprasium, Petra Olenia, and Alesium, the
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§ 2.200 infantry apparently not having crossed the river. Thus it appears that Thryoessa, like Epitalium, was on the left bank of the Alpheius, near the usual passage of the river, and therefore in all probability upon the identical site of Epitalium; since the same local conveniences would in all ages cause the river to be crossed nearly in the same place, and the same strong position in the neighbourhood to be occupied by a fortress the more so, as the road from the southward must always have led along the narrow level included between the shore and the woody hills, which, beginning at Khaiaffa, end at the height of Agulenitza, below which to this day is the usual ferry of the Alpheius, not far from its mouth. We may conclude therefore that Thryum, or Thryoessa, afterwards Epitalium, occupied the hill of Agulenitza. It may be thought perhaps that this hill hardly corresponds by its height to the αιπεία κολωνη of the Iliad, or to θρύον αϊπύ of the Hymn to Apollo, but being surrounded for a considerable distance by much lower ground, it is very conspicuous, and sufficiently in agreement therefore with the words of the poet. Lasion was a city of considerable strength and importance in or very near the Pisatis;
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§ 2.201 Diodorus ascribes it in one place to Eleia, and in another to Triphylia: but as it is not included among the Triphylian cities by Herodotus or Polybius, both of whom evidently confined Triphylia to the southern side of the Alpheius, it was probably to the northward of that river. Xenophon distinguishes the people of Lasion from those of Triphylia and Acroreia; and we learn from him that, as well at the time of the invasion of Agis, as at the beginning of the quarrel between the Arcadians and the Eleians, Lasion was an Arcadian city, though anciently it had belonged to the Eleia. One hundred and forty-five years after the latter event, Lasion, as we are informed by Polybius, was again a fortress of the Eleians. The natural inference from these several authorities seems to be, that Lasion was situated to the westward of the Erymanthus, the natural boundary of the two provinces, but not very far from that river. Lasion appears also to have been not far from the district of Psophis, for Polybius relates in the place just referred to, that the Eleian garrison deserted Lasion in great haste, upon hearing of the capture of Psophis by Philip. These premises suit no place so well as Lalla, of which the
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§ 2.202 commanding position, at the head of a fine slope falling to the Alpheius and Erymanthus, insured to it such a degree of importance as Lasion appears to have possessed. It will be found also, that the situation accords exactly with the circumstance of Lasion having been taken by the Lacedaemonians marching from Arcadia, previously to their occupying the towns of the Acroreii, in their way to Elis. This expedition occurred in the third year of the ninety-fourth Olympiad. Pausanias, king of Sparta, after having taken Lasion, and the four towns of the Acroreii, named Thraustus, Alium, Eupagium, and Opus, occupied Pylus, and thence marched to Elis. Having been repulsed at Elis, the king left garrisons in different parts of the country, and moved into winter quarters at Dyme. It is remarkable that Xenophon makes no mention of this incursion of the Lacedaemonians, related by Diodorus, though it accords with their invasion in the following year under the command of Agis, who, it seems, had in the interval superseded Pausanias, and though it explains also how it happened that the Spartans then entered the Eleia from the northward. The war, therefore, if Diodorus is correct, lasted four years, and there were three
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§ 2.203 invasions, one from the Heraeitis, the second from the Dymaea, the third through the Aulon of Messenia, and along the coast of Triphylia. Mention of Acroreia again occurs in Xenophon's account of the beginning of the war between the Eleians and Arcadians, which in the following year interrupted the celebration of the 104th Olympic festival (364). The Arcadians, having beaten the Eleians near Lasion, inarched into Acroreia, and after having taken all the towns of that district except Thraustus, moved to Olympia, and occupied Mount Croneium, which they surrounded with a pallisading. These are the only two occasions, upon which Acroreia is noticed in ancient history, but they are sufficient to place the district between the Erymanthus and Pylus on the slopes of Mount Pholoe. The towns of the Acroreii were probably on the banks of the Upper Peneius, and of its great branch, the Ladon, which runs nearly parallel to the former, and joins it near Pylus. That situation agrees perfectly with the name Acroreii, which implies mountaineers, or, rather, the inhabitants of the skirts of mountains. As to the position of the several towns of Acroreia, the order of names in Diodorus is the only datum. Upon this authority, Thraustus was the nearest to the Arcadian frontier; it appears also from
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§ 2.204 Xenophon, in the last passage cited from him, to have been the most capable of resistance. I am inclined therefore to place it at Dhomoko, upon the right bank of the Erymanthus, where exist some remains of Hellenic antiquity, in a strong situation. Opus, which received its name from the same Epeian hero, whose daughter Protogeneia, married to Locrus, caused the name of Opus to be given to the Locrian capital, might perhaps be discovered by means of its river, of which mention is made by the scholiast of Pindar. Thalamae was another fortress in the mountainous parts of Eleia. When Philip, son of Demetrius, in the second year of the 140th Olympiad, invaded and plundered Eleia, great numbers of the people retired with their property and flocks to Thalamae, which is described by Polybius as a strong fortress in an unfrequented situation, defended by narrow passes. It was, however, under the necessity, at last, of surrendering to Philip. Thalamae is mentioned also in Xenophon's account of an action in the second year of the war between the Arcadians and Eleians, which has already been alluded to in speaking of Marganeae. The Eleians, as I have stated, met the Pylii on this occasion returning home from an unsuccessful attempt upon Thalamae.
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§ 2.205 This place seems therefore to have been in the mountains just above Pylus, either in Scollis or in the adjacent part of Pholoe. I have had occasion, in a former chapter, to advert to the position of some of the Triphylian towns. Herodotus names six towns in Triphylia: — Lepreum, Macistus, Phrixa, Pyrgus, Epeium, and Nudium. Polybius omits Macistus and Nudium, and adds Samicum, Hypana, Typaneae, Bolax, and Styllangium. Macistus was once the rival of Lepreum, for to a late period all the northern part of Triphylia was called Macistia, as the southern was called Lepreatis, though the town of Macistus, mentioned by Xenophon, was deserted before the time of Strabo, which may be the reason why it is not named among the Triphylian towns by Polybius. In the time of Strabo it was partially revived, under the new name of Platanistus which leads, as I have already hinted, to the conjecture, that it was not far from the modern Khaiaffa, for this being the only promontory between Ichthys and Cyparissiae, appears to have been the cape which Pliny calls Platanodes, having probably confounded it by the similarity
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§ 2.206 of name with the Platamodes which Strabo places between Cyparissiae and Coryphasium, at a distance of 120 stades from the latter. Another reason, as I have before remarked, for supposing that Macistus was not far from Khaiaffa is the remark of Strabo, that the temple of Neptune Samius, near Samicum, was in the custody of the Macistii. The northern boundary of Macistia, according to Strabo, was a mountain which separated it from the district of Epitalium, (Agulenitza) which he included in Pisatis. According to these data, the site of Macistus might best be sought for near the banks of a stream, possibly the ancient Chalcis, which descends into the maritime level at about three miles to the north of Khaiaffa. We are told by Xenophon that Epeium, or Aepeium, another Triphylian town, stood between Macistus and Heraea. We can hardly doubt that it was the same as the Homeric Aepy. If Macistus was in the place just de scribed, Epeium was probably on the high peaked mountain which lies between the villages of Vrina and Smerna, about six miles in direct distance from Olympia; from whence it forms a very conspicuous object, for on that hill there are said to be some remains of a Hellenic city,
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§ 2.207 and the lofty situation agrees with the name of Aepy. Strabo remarks, that a position justifying the appellation by its nature, was pointed out in his time as the site of Aepy. He perhaps meant the very place I have just indicated; though it is proper to remark that there was another place in the Macistia the name of which indicates a lofty site: it was called Hypsoeis in the time of Strabo, who supposed it to have been the site of the Homeric Amphigeneia. I have already observed, that some remains of Pyrgi still exist near the right bank of the Neda, not far from its mouth, and I have offered some conjectures also upon the positions of Hypana and Typaneae. If we might be allowed to judge from similarity of name alone, unsupported by any other evidence, Bolaae might be placed at Volantza, a village on the left bank of the Alpheius, about four miles above its mouth. As to Styllangium, I am unable to offer any conjecture. The exact situation of Phrixa is known from the following passage of Pausanias; where, upon finishing the description of Olympia, he
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§ 2.208 most abruptly resumes the route from Heraea to Olympia, which, in his Arcadics, he had carried forward from Heraea as far as the Erymanthus and the boundary of the two provinces. “The frontiers of the land”, he says, “towards the Arcadians, belong at present to the Eleians, but formerly were those of the Pisaei. Having passed the river Erymanthus, as far as the ridge called the hill of Saurus, there is a sepulchre of Saurus and a temple of Hercules, both of which are now in a state of ruin. It is said that Saurus infested both travellers and the natives, before he was punished by Hercules. Near the hill which receives its name from this robber, a river flows from the south into the Alpheius, nearly opposite to the Erymanthus. It separates Pisaea from the Arcadians: its name is Diagon. Forty stades from the hill of Saurus there occurs a ruined temple of Aesculapius, surnamed Damaenetus from the name of the founder; it was built upon a height near the Alpheius. Not far from hence is the temple of Bacchus Leucyanitas, and near it the river Leucyanias, which descends from the mountain Pholoe and falls into the Alpheius. When you have crossed the Alpheius from thence, you will be in the Pisaean land, not far from a hill with a peaked summit. Here are ruins of the city Phrixa, and a temple
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§ 2.209 of Minerva Cydonia, which is now only a place of sacrifice. Farther on, at the river Parthenia, is the tomb of the Horses of Marmax. There is also another stream called Harpinnates, and not far from that river some ruins of the city Harpinna, consisting chiefly of altars; it is said that Oenomaus built the city and named it after his mother Harpinna. Proceeding a little further you come to a high mound of earth, the tomb of the Suitors of Hippodameia. They say that Pelops, when he ruled over the Pisaei, performed funeral rites every year at this tomb. One stade further on are vestiges of the temple of Diana, sumamed Cordax. Not far from the temple there is a small building, and in it a brazen chest which preserves the bones of Pelops; nothing remains either of the walls or of any of the other buildings of Pisa, but vineyards are planted over all the place where the city formerly stood.” In the preceding passage we may observe a material omission of a kind not uncommon with Pausanias. The Leucyanias joined the
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§ 2.210 Alpheius on its right bank, and Phrixa stood on the opposite bank. So far he is clear. — But he omits to mention that he re-crosses the Alpheius; for it cannot admit of a question that the Parthenius, and Harpinnates, and Harpinna, and Pisa were all on the right bank of the Alpheius, and that the Scilluntia occupied the country adjacent to the left bank. The position of Phrixa is determined by a pointed hill, rising from the left bank of the Alpheius, upon the summit of which are the remains of Hellenic walls. It is now called Paleofanaro, and is a conspicuous object, as well from the country around Olympia, as from the side of Heraea. It will follow, that a small stream, which descends from the woody heights of Lalla, nearly opposite to Paleofanaro, was the Leucyanias. I have said that Harpinna and the Scilluntia were on opposite sides of the Alpheius, the former on the right bank, the latter on the left. That Scillus was to the left of the Alpheius, is manifest from Pausanias, who arrives at Scillus from Samicum, and then crosses the Alpheius to Olympia.
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§ 2.211 Lucian informs us that Harpinna was twenty stades from the Hippodrome of Olympia, on the road leading eastward to Heraea, and from Xenophon we learn that Scillus also was twenty stades from Olympia. It is clear, therefore, that the two places were at equal distances from Olympia, on opposite sides of the Alpheius. As Harpinna was on the road along the Alpheius to Heraea, and Lucian measures a distance of twenty stades from the Hippodrome, which was the part of Olympia nearest to the river, it may be presumed that Harpinna was not far from the bank of the Alpheius, on the ridge which stretches from thence to the modern village Miraka. The rivulet which flows on the eastern side of that ridge appears to be the Parthenius, and that to the west the Harpinnates. It might indeed be inferred from Strabo, who says that the Parthenius flowed by Harpinna, that the Parthenius and Harpinnates were one and the same; but they are both so near the hill of Miraka, that it may fairly be said that Harpinna was situated on either of them. As Pisa appears from Pausanias to have occupied a position between Harpinna and Olympia, which were only twenty stades asunder, its situation could hardly have been any other than
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§ 2.212 that of the projecting ridge which terminates the vale of Olympia to the eastward, and between which and the continuation of Mount Cronium is the pass leading from Andilalo to Miraka. This proximity of Pisa to Olympia is confirmed by Herodotus, who, in an accurate statement of distance, refers to Pisa and the temple of Jupiter as one and the same point. Pindar also and other Greek poets employ the words Pisa and Olympia indifferently and with the same meaning. The ruin of Pisa occurred at so remote a period, that the testimony of such ancient authors as Herodotus and Pindar is the more important in shewing its locality. In the earlier Olympiads the Pisatae had sometimes the honour of presiding at the Olympic contest, to the exclusion of the Eleians; but the alliance of Elis and Sparta, the two richest nations of the Peloponnesus, was too powerful for the Pisatae, with only the Messenians and Triphylii for their natural allies. A tacit agreement of the Lacedaemonians and Eleians to share between them the maritime country which separated their possessions, seems to have cemented the alliance of Spartar with Elis, and to have actuated the policy of the two states. The
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§ 2.213 resistance of the Pisatae appears to have ceased as far back as the forty-eighth Olympiad, when an unsuccessful revolt brought destruction upon Pisa, Scillus, Macistus, and Dyspontium, and annexed all Triphylia to Elis, as great part of Messenia had already been annexed to Laconia. The Arcadians did indeed endeavour afterwards to make use of the name of the Pisatae in celebrating the games of the 104th Olympiad, which were interrupted by a battle in the Altis between the contending forces of Elis and Arcadia $ but Pisa did not then exist as a town, for we have already seen, that in the ninety-fifth Olympiad, when the Lacedaemonians under Agis invaded the Eleia and occupied Olympia, they would not take away the charge of the games from the Eleians, because the Pisatae were mere peasants unfit for so great a charge. Such being the antiquity of the ruin of Pisa, it is not surprising that Pausanias found the site converted into a vineyard, or that it should now be impossible to find any evidences of its position except in ancient history. Nearly opposite to the mouth of the Cladeus the Alpheius is joined by a stream issuing from a woody vale, in which stands a small village called Rasa. It cannot be doubted, upon comparing Xenophon and Pausanias, that this river
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§ 2.214 was the Selinus, and that Scillus was situated in its valley. The woody hills, abounding with beasts of chase, still agree with the description of both those authors, though it must be confessed, that without the aid of Xenophon, neither the exact situation of Scillus, nor the road by which Pausanias arrived at it from Samicum and the Anigrus, would have been intelligible. Scillus seems to have remained desolate from its destruction in the 48th Olympiad, until the 96th, when the Lacedaemonians, who had recently obliged Elis to give liberty to the surrounding cities, colonized Scillus, and bestowed it upon Xenophon, then an exile from Athens. Xenophon describes Scillus as situated at a distance of twenty stades from the Hierum of Olympia, on the road to Sparta, amidst woods and meadows and mountains covered with trees, and he adds that the district, not only afforded an abundant pasture to hogs, goats, sheep, oxen, and horses, but was even capable of supplying sufficient refreshment to the beasts of draught belonging to those who frequented the festival of Diana: for Xenophon had devoted to the goddess a part of his share of the spoil, acquired in the Asiatic
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§ 2.215 expedition of the Ten Thousand, and with it had built at Scillus a small temple of Diana, resembling that of Ephesus, ώς μικρος μεγάλω, with an altar and a statue in cypress-wood similar in form to the golden statue at Ephesus. He erected also a pillar near the temple, bearing the following inscription. “This land is sacred to Diana. Whoever possesses it and its fruits, shall consecrate a tenth of them, and from the remainder shall keep the temple in repair. If he neglects to do this, he will be answerable to the Goddess.” “It happens,” adds Xenophon, “that the river which flows through Scillus is called Selinus, like that which flows by the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and like that, also, it furnishes fish and shell-fish. The country around abounds in beasts of chase of various kinds. Those who attend the festival are supplied at the expense of the goddess with flour, bread, and sweet-meats, with animals for sacrifice from the sacred pastures, and with wild hogs, roebucks and stags, which have been procured in Mount Pholoe, or in the Scilluntia by the sons of Xenophon, and of the other citizens,
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§ 2.216 who are accompanied to the chase by all persons disposed to join them.” Pausanias thus mentions Scillus. “After crossing the river Anigrus, on the direct road to Olympia, there is a high place on the right of the road called Samicum, upon which stood the city Sarnia. Proceeding still further beyond the Anigrus, through a country covered for the most part with sand and wild pine-trees, the traveller will see the ruins of Scillus, behind on the left hand. Scillus was formerly a city of Triphylia, but the Scilluntii having openly assisted the Pisatae against the Eleii, the latter destroyed the place. Afterwards the Lacedaemonians having separated Scillus from the Eleia, gave it to Xenophon, son of Gryllus, who was a fugitive at Sparta, because he had taken part with Cyrus against the king of the Persians, who was a friend of the Athenians. Xenophon resided in Scillus, and built a sanctuary and temple to Diana Ephesia. Scillus affords a chase of wild hogs and stags. Not far from the temple of Diana a tomb is shewn with a statue upon it, made of stone from the quarries of Pentele, which the inhabitants say is the statue of Xenophon. On proceeding from
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§ 2.217 Scillus, on the road to Olympia, there occurs, before the crossing of the Alpheius, a mountain precipitous with lofty rocks; it is called Typaeum, and there is a law among the Eleians, that any woman who is present at the Olympian contention, or who even crosses the Alpheius on the forbidden days, shall be thrown headlong from that summit.” As the Alpheius was not passable when I visited Olympia, I could not explore the valley of Scillus; it is not very probable, however, that any important remains of antiquity should be found there, unless it be some vestiges of the temple of Diana, as Scillus seems never to have attained any great importance after its restoration by Sparta; nor would it probably have been again mentioned in history, had it not been the residence of the illustrious Athenian, and immortalized by his writings. The route of Pausanias from Samicum appears to have been along the maritime level, for there alone could he have passed through a country which chiefly consisted of sand and pine-trees. Had he moved in the direct line towards Olympia from Samicum, he must very soon have quitted the sand and pine-trees, and have passed to the right of them. It is probable that the lagoons did not then exist. It seems, that after having traversed about half the distance
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§ 2.218 from Khaiaffa to Agulenitza, he then crossed the hills to the ferry of the Alpheius opposite to Olympia, leaving the site of Scillus on the left, and Mount Typaeum on the right. This precipitous hill I have already described as being at a small distance from the left bank of the Alpheius, opposite to the eastern end of the site of Olympia, and consequently higher up the stream than the vale of Scillus and the ancient ferry of the Alpheius. As Xenophon describes Scillus to have been on the road from Olympia to Sparta, it appears that besides the more level route which led along the right bank of the Alpheius to Heraea, there was another more direct, by passing over the ferry of the Alpheius, ascending the valley of Scillus, and then crossing the hills beyond it; this road probably recrossed the Alpheius at the bridge of Heraea, mentioned by Polybius, where it joined the other road, and from thence followed the ordinary route to Sparta by Megalopolis.
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§ 2.219 CHAPTER XVII: ELEIA ARCADIA February 26. Set out, at 11.10, from Gastuni for Paleopoli, by a more direct road than that which I passed last year. A large portion of the plain is uncultivated. At 12.25 the village of Toshki is half a mile on the right, just before which we pass by a large tract of currant grounds in excellent order this is the most perfect kind of agriculture to be found in Greece: 12.36 Bukhioti is on the right. At 1.02 arrive at the village of Paleopoli, which is situated on the slope of the hills. I again visit, in the little plain between the village and the Peneius, the few dispersed and shapeless fragments of brick walls which are now the only visible remains of the great Elis. If the traveller is disappointed at the little of antiquity that remains either here or at
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§ 2.220 Olympia, or indeed upon any of the Hellenic sites of this province, it may be some consolation to him to consider, that a soil, subject like that of the Eleia, to alluvial changes, was the best adapted speedily to conceal, and may still therefore preserve some of the works of art which survived the fury of the persecutors of idolatry, whether Christian or Mahometan, and that if there is less above ground in the Eleia than in any of the provinces of Greece, there may be more below the surface. Enjoying the same sacred protection as Olympia, Elis retained its respectability as long as the Olympic festival existed, and there was scarcely any city in Greece which Pausanias found in a state of better preservation. It was remarkable for the magnitude of its Gymnasium and agora; that of the former was caused by its being the place of ordination and preparation for the athletae of the Olympic Games, that of the latter by its antiquity; such having been the ancient method, as Pausanias remarks, in speaking of the agora of Pharae. Strabo tells
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§ 2.221 us that the Gymnasium stood on the river-side; there seems no doubt, therefore, as to its exact position, and we may suppose that the Gymnasium and agora together occupied the greater part of the space included between the river and the hill of Kallaskopi, upon which stood the acropolis. The Gymnasium was surrounded with a wall within which were walks (δρόμοι) shaded by plane trees, and called collectively the Xystus; one of the dromi was destined to the use of the runners and pentathli, another was named the Sacred. The Gymnasium contained likewise three subdivisions, called Plethrium, Tetragonum, and Malco; the first so named from its dimensions, the second from its shape, the last from the softness of its soil, which was prepared in that manner for the use of the Ephebi, who were admitted into it during the whole period of the Games. The Plethrium contained altars of Hercules Parastatus, of Eros, of Anteros, of Ceres, of Proserpine, and a cenotaph of Achilles. In the Tetragonum, which was contiguous to the Plethrium, but smaller than that inclosure, there was a brazen statue of Jupiter, which, together with another, (in the Altis of Olympia ) had been the produce of a fine
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§ 2.222 levied upon two men of Elis and Smyrna, for collusion in the Games. On either side of the entrance of the Altis stood a statue of a young pugilist, said to have been Serapion of Alexandria, who, coming to the Games, brought with him corn from Egypt when there was a scarcity in Elis. In one angle of the Malco there was a head and shoulders of Hercules, with a representation, in low relief, of Eros and Anteros, the former holding a palm-branch in his hand, the latter endeavouring to wrest it from him. The Malco contained the Lalichmium, a building so called from its founder: it was adorned within with a range of shields, and served for the meeting of the councils of the Eleians, as well as for the exhibition of literary compositions. There were two passages leading out of the Gymnasium, one by the street of Silence and the temple of Diana Philomeirax to the Baths; the other above the cenotaph of Achilles to the Hellanodicaeon and the agora. The agora, which was called the Hippodrome because it served for the exercise of horses, had several stoae intersected with streets. The southern Stoa consisted of a triple row of Doric columns. Here the Hellanodicae, or prefects of the Games, passed the day. The Hellanodicaeon stood at its extremity, to the left: it was a building

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