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

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§ 2.324 and probably on the northern or western side of that mountain. Tragomano or Andritzena appear to be the most probable situations. It would seem that Cynuraea was often considered a part of Parrhasia, for Pausanias in one place describes Theisoa of Mount Lycaeum, one of the towns of the Cynuraei, as being in Parrhasia. And Strabo, who describes the Eleia as extending to the Parrhasii, leads us to the same conclusion. Of the ancient Arcadian tribes, besides those stated in the passage of Pausanias above quoted, the Azanes are the only people who had a name separate from that of the principal town which they occupied. According to Stephanus, the Azanes had seventeen cities, and were subdivided into Parrhasii, Azanes, and Trapezuntii. It is probable that they possessed originally all the western part of Arcadia, since we find that the Psophidii and Clitorii to the north, and the Phigalenses to the south, were both considered as Azanes. When the chief Arcadian cities, Heraea, Thelpusa, Methydrium, Orchomenus, Pheneus, Mantineia, and Tegea, were strengthened or enlarged by the collection of their small surrounding communities, it was natural that
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§ 2.325 the original races of Arcadia should be lost in the names of the cities, and the more so as the territorial boundaries of the cities were so well defined by nature. Of the several places of the Megalopolitis, which had been ancient Arcadian cities, five only continued to be inhabited in the time of Pausanias, namely, Gortys, Theisoa near Methydrium, Methydrium, Teuthis, and Helisson all places situated in the most central, and mountainous, and poorest parts of the country. This fact, though it may not reflect much credit on the Roman government, as indicating a retreat of the population from the places chiefly occupied by the Romans, is in agreement, at least, with what we learn from Strabo, namely, that the plains of Arcadia, in his days, were no longer noted but for the pasture of cattle.
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§ 2.326 CHAPTER XIX: ARGEIA March 12. — leave Tripolitza at 1.36 by the Anapli gate, and proceed eastward by a paved road over the plain; the cultivated parts of it are now under the plough. At 2, Aio Sosti is a mile on the right. At 2.30, halt five minutes among the vineyards of Neokhori, which village is half a mile on the left, at the foot of a range of low hills, advancing into the plain from the foot of Mount Artemisium. As we proceed, Zevgalati, of the same size as Neokhori, is one mile on the left at the foot of the same hills. On the slope of the Parnon range, six or eight miles on the right, is Dhulianahave already remarked that the waters which descend into the plain of Tegea, from the surrounding mountains, take two opposite directions, both terminating in katavothra.
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§ 2.327 The Taki, or lake at the foot of Mount Boreium receives the watercourses to the southward of Aio Sosti, while a stream, which has its origin near Dhuliana, collects the waters from the western slope of the range of Parthenium and Parnon, as well as all those which descend into the part of the plain of Tripolitza which is included between the Scope of the Mantinice, and the rising grounds near Aio Sosti. The river thus formed enters an opening between Neokhori and a small rocky height opposite to it, follows the whole length of the branch of the Tegeatic plain lying to the eastward of that opening, and terminates in an inundation and katavothra, above which, to the southward, stands the village of Persova. The waters of the valley of Pallantium, and those from Mount Maenalium descend into the plain between Tripolitza and Mount Artemisium, where, joining similar supplies from the latter mountain, they render the plain marshy during a great part of the year. Their natural discharge is into the river of Dhuliana, but, on account of the very level nature of the plain, this discharge requires to be assisted by art: for the same reason the waters might, without much
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§ 2.328 difficulty, be diverted into the plain below Tegea, and thus carried to the katavothra of the Taki; for the part of the plain southward of Aio Sosti, towards the Taki, is lower than that in face of Tripolitza, and there is no ground between Aio Sosti and the entrance into the eastern branch of the Tegeatic plain, sufficiently high to make the operation difficult. These remarks, it will hereafter be seen, are important in reference to a passage in Thucydides. Having passed Zevgalati, we enter the κόλπος, or branch of the Tegeatic plain just mentioned, which leads towards Persova and the pass of Mount Parthenium. The village of Steno, situated on the point of the left hand hill, just within the opening, takes its name from its situation in the pass. The mountain which rises above the opposite side of the valley, and the summit of which is at a distance of two miles to the right, is called Kuma. Pass to the right of Steno at 2.46 — halt six minutes. At 3.10, Gheorghitika is on the side of the rugged hills to the left: 3.23, a paved road turns up a small valley branching to the left, then mounts the hills and passes over into a glen, by which it
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§ 2.329 descends into the plain of Akhladhokambo, where it again joins the beylik or dhimosia [Beylik is the Turkish word for a main road, δημοσιά the Greek; but the Greeks often use also the word Μπεϊλήτικο, adopted from the Turkish]; this byroad is called Ghyro from its being circuitous, but it avoids the rugged rocks of the pass of Parthenium on the beylik. I have already mentioned a third road from Tripolitza to Argos by Tzipiana, which is still more steep and rugged than either of these. At 3.34 we arrive at the end of the valley, and ascend the lower heights of Mount Roani, which close the valley. Two miles on the right, at the foot of the hills in that corner of the plain, stands the large village of Persova. At 3.50 arrive at the summit of the ridge of Roani; half a mile on the right, at the foot of the mountain, the river terminates in an inundation, through which I perceive the stream winding through the lake and entering the katavothra, like the Boeotian Cephissus, in Lake Copais, on a small scale. We now descend the eastern side of Mount Roani, leaving its summits to the right till 4.40, when we enter the plain of Akhladhokambo. This derveni, or pass, is still known by the ancient name Partheni. The road is paved all the way, and has been formed with great labour, the mountain
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§ 2.330 consisting entirely of pointed rocks. Half way down there is a kiosk and fountain, and here it is supposed by the Greeks that a church of the Aia Parthenos, or Holy Virgin, once stood, from which the mountain derived its present name. This, however, is undoubtedly an error, though a very natural one for Greek Christians ignorant of the ancient geography: ἡ παρθένος is scarcely ever applied by the Greeks as an appellation of the Θεοτόκος, or virgo deipara, but that of η παναγία. The modern name Partheni, is evidently the ancient Parthenium, which belonged probably to all the mountain now called Roani. The fountain at the kiosk seems to mark the position of a temple, which anciently stood upon Parthenium, and which was dedicated to a very different sort of personage from the modern saint, namely, the god Pan, upon whom a lying pezodrome of Athens, named Philippides, conferred immortal honour by reporting that he had had an interview with the goat-footed deity, on Parthenium, in returning from Sparta, whither he had gone to demand succours on the arrival of the Persians in Attica, when Pan promised to aid the Athenians in the battle of Marathon.
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§ 2.331 We met in the pass two bayraks of Albanians, or about 120 men, proceeding from Rumili to reinforce the Pasha. Having crossed the Akhladhokambo, or plain of Wild Pears, we ascend the side of a mountain on which the village of the same name is situated, immediately opposite to the peaked summit of Mount Roani: arrive there at 5.21. It must be at the pass of Steno, that the road from Tripolitza to Argos joins the ancient route from Tegea to Argos, which Pausanias describes in the following terms: — “The road leading to Argos may be used by wheel carriages, and is much frequented. The first object that occurs upon the road is a temple of Aesculapius with a statue; then, one stade to the left of the route, the ruins of a temple of Apollo Pythius.” “In the direct road there are many oaks, among which is situated a temple, called the temple of Ceres in the Corythenses; near it is a temple of Bacchus, surnamed Mysta. Here begins the mountain Parthenium, which contains the sacred portion of Telephus, where Telephus is said to have been nourished by a deer; and a little farther the temple of Pan, where the god is reported, both by the Athenians
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§ 2.332 and the Tegeatae, to have appeared to Philippides. Parthenium produces tortoises excellent for making lyres, but which the natives fear to take, nor will suffer strangers to do so, because they are considered sacred to Pan. After having passed over the mountain and descended again into the cultivated country, there occurs the boundary between the Tegeatae and Argives, near Hysiae of Argolis.” Another road, leading eastward from Tegea, conducted to the Thyreatis; it is the fifth of the roads described by Pausanias to or from Tegea; the other four being those of Argos, Sparta, Mantineia, and Megalopolis. He thus briefly speaks of it: — ” On the direct way to Thyrea and the towns in the Thyreatis, the first object worthy of mention is the sepulchre of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, from whence, the Tegeatae say, that a Spartan carried away his bones. This tomb is not now within the gates. The river Gareates flows near the road which leads to Thyrea. After having crossed it, and proceeded ten stades, there occurs a temple of Pan, and an oak sacred to the god.” On comparing these two passages, we may safely, I think,
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§ 2.333 conclude that the Gareates is the river of Dhuliana, since it was crossed on the road to Thyrea, and not on that to Argos, which exactly agrees with the course of this stream. The road to Thyrea, beyond the river, must have ascended the ridge to the eastward, which was a continuation of Mount Roani. Though Pausanias proceeds only as far as a temple of Pan, ten stades beyond the Gareates, the boundary of the Tegeatice and Thyreatis was probably much farther, namely, on the summit of the ridge which now separates the district of Tripolitza from that of Aios Petros; in the same manner, as, farther south, Hermaea, in Mount Parnon, marked the boundaries of Argos, Tegea, and Laconia. The river Gareates appears to have derived its name from one of the nine tribes into which the Tegeatae were divided, before the foundation of the city by Aleus. Garea, I should conceive therefore, was at Dhuliana, or somewhere below it on the banks of the river. The other demi named by Pausanias were the Phylacenses, Caryatae, Corythenses, Botachidae, Manthurenses, Echeuethenses, Aphidantes. The ninth were probably the Tegeatae or those
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§ 2.334 who occupied the site of the city of Tegea itself. The positions of Phylace and Manthurium have already been adverted to. That of the Corythenses is indicated by the temple of Ceres in the Corythenses on the road from Tegea to Argos, which having been near the ascent of Mount Parthenium shews that the branch of the Tegeatic plain eastward of Steno was the Corythic plain. In the time of Pausanias it appears to have been chiefly occupied by a forest of oaks. We have already seen that at the southern entrance of the Mantinic plain there was a similar forest. The observation of Pausanias upon the various kinds of oak which the latter contained, argues that the forest was large, as well as its name Pelagus, which seems to imply an extensive wilderness, such as the moderns express by the word λόγγος. It is very possible, therefore, that a forest occupied at that time all the central part of the plain of Tripolitza, together with the branch of it eastward of Steno. The village of Akhladhokambo consists of about eighty families and has a pretty appearance, hanging on the side of the hill among olives, prinaria, and fruit trees. It belongs to the vilayeti of Aios Petros, and, like all the
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§ 2.335 villages of that district, is a kefalokhori. As a derveni village, it has the expense of maintaining some guards for the care of the roads, but enjoys in consequence an exemption from lodging travellers. I see no vestiges of antiquity in the village, though the district was evidently that of the Argolic town Hysiae. The plain is entirely cultivated with corn: it is about two miles and a half long and one wide, running 20° S. 20° by compass; at the upper end of it are several gorges, which bring down torrents from Mount Artemisium; these unite in the plain, and, after receiving a small perennial stream, which runs through the village, proceed through mountainous ravines to the sea, a little to the southward of Lerna. A snowy summit of the Artemisian mountain is seen on this side of the principal peak of Turniki; it is known by the name of Buga. The ridge of Partheni is a zygos, or lower ridge, which unites Mount Buga with Roani, the peak of which opposite to Akhladhokambo, I take to be the true Parthenium. To the north-west of the village rise some snowy summits called ta Ktenia, (the Combs). Midway between them and Roani, a rocky summit surrounded with ravines is crowned with the ruins of Mukhla or Mokhli, which in the fifteenth
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§ 2.336 century was one of the chief fortresses in the Morea. It was taken by Mahomet II in the summer of the year 1458, when he marched as far as the Tegeatice, and from thence, after the capture of Mokhii, proceeded to take Corinth and Athens. Chalcocondylas, who writes the name Μουχλη, describes it as a city of the Tegaea, standing upon a very strong hill, but supplied with water from a place without the fortress; this having been taken possession of by the Turks, and their ladders applied to the walls, the garrison capitulated. It is believed among the learned of Tripolitza that Mokhii is a colony from Amyclae in Laconia, and they adduce as a proof of it that the bishop of Amyclae, who is a diocesan of the metropolitan of Lacedaemonia, and who now resides at Tripolitza, formerly resided at Mokhii. They assert also that Tripolitza was so named from the junction of Mokhii, Tegea, and Mantineia, which in some measure agrees with the fact of Tripolitza not being mentioned in the Byzantine history, whence it seems probable, that Tripolitza was not built until after Mokhii declined. At Akladhokambo the Greeks have some of their usual absurd stories concerning Palea Mokhli, such as that there are 366 churches in the ruins. Mokhii lies
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§ 2.337 between the roads Beylik and Ghyros, but nearer to the latter. The ridge which rises immediately above the village of Akhladho-kambo, branching from Ktenia and running north-west and south-east is called Paravunaki. Roani is connected by a long snowy ridge with Mount Malevo, ( Parnon ) of which the firs, deep snows, and pointed summit are seen to the south. March 13. — This morning at twelve minutes beyond the village, on the right of the road to Argos, I observe some remains of Hysiae. The town occupied a height, on which now stands a church of the Panaghia. The summit is naturally defended towards the plain by a brow of cliffs; in the opposite direction there is a small hollow between the hill and the slope of Mount Paravunaki; here the fields are covered with broken pottery; I find as I ride over them an ancient weight for spinning and some other trifles of antiquity; some pieces of wall of the second order are traced around the summit. We leave this spot at 8.05 and ascending the mountain obliquely to the southward, arrive, at 8.40, at a khan, where the road to Anapli branches off to the right. Our track continues to cross naked barren mountains till 9.23, when we halt three minutes at a copious fountain and the ruins of a khan called
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§ 2.338 Sta Nera (the Waters); a little farther on there are two other sources from the rocks. This perhaps is the site of Trochus. The streams, after passing through the gorges of the mountains, unite towards the plain of Argos, and join the sea between the Erasinus and Lerne, a position which shews the river to be the ancient Cheimarrhus; if the conjecture, therefore, as to Trochus is correct, that place stood at the sources of the Cheimarrhus. As we proceed, the shore and plain about Anapli are at intervals in sight. At 9.55 begin to descend towards the plain. The mountains are all of the same barren rugged character as before; the summits of Mount Artemisium on our left are of the same description. At 11, having reached the foot of the mountain, we ride down a gradual slope which succeeds it, but do not enter the plain itself until we arrive at the mills of Kefalari. At 11.20, the village of Skafidhaki is seen a mile and a half on the right, and, three quarters of a mile beyond it, in the same direction, a peaked hill crowned with a ruined castle, undoubtedly the ancient Mount Pontinus. I here turn out of the road five hundred yards to the left to visit the ruins of an ancient pyramid containing a sepulchral
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§ 2.339 chamber; it stands on the right side of the road [sketch] which leads from Tripolitza to Argos by Tzipiana, and which joins that from Akhladhokambo at the mills. The walls are formed of rubble and mortar faced with large polygonal stones, which for the most part are united together with mortar, a rare occurrence in Hellenic masonry, and perhaps the consequence of a repair after some earthquake or other violence. There are some other foundations about the pyramid, and broken pottery in the fields around. I observe also the foundations of a tower thirty-four feet and a half square, built with masonry of the third order; it stood half way between our
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§ 2.340 road from Akhladho-kambo and the pyramid; there are other foundations on one side of it. From hence we continue to descend the slope to the “Mills of Argos ”, and arrive there at 11.35. These mills, so called to distinguish them from the “Mills of Anapli” which are at Lerne, are turned by the Kefalari, (anciently the Erasinus ) just below the place where it issues in several large streams from the foot of the rocks of Mount Chaon. These at first form a small deep pool, from which several artificial channels are drawn for the mills; the channels reuniting compose a river, which flows directly across the plain to the sea: there are many mulberry trees about the mills. Mount Chaon is a mass of rocky precipices overhanging the sources of the Kefalari. Just above the great source there is a fine lofty cavern with a roof like an acute Gothic arch, and extending sixty-five yards into the mountain. Towards the inner extremity it has a branch, which has an opening on the surface of the mountain above it; another branch, at fifteen yards from the entrance, leads to the left so far in, that I could not ascertain the depth on account of the darkness. A third branch to the right communicates with another cavern which has an opening near the great entrance.
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§ 2.341 Water drops from the roofs of them all, and the earth in them yields saltpetre in abundance. Pausanias has not noticed these remarkable excavations of nature, but he states that Pan and Bacchus were worshipped at the source of the Erasinus, and we know that caverns were generally sacred to Pan. A wall in the large cavern separates a part of it from the remainder and forms a church. Leaving the mills at 1.03 we cross the opening of a branch of the plain which is bounded by a peaked mountain on our left — the ancient Lycone. 1.22 cross a small brook flowing from between that mountain and the hills near the castle-hill of Argos; it is probably the ancient Phrixus: beyond it there is a fragment of an ancient building of brick. At 1,30 are some Hellenic foundations in the road; at 1.42 I pass the metropolitan church at the entrance of Argos, and take up my quarters in the house of Kyr V — in the middle of the town. Pausanias thus describes the road from Argos to Hysiae in the contrary direction to that which I followed. “To the right of the road to Tegea is Mount Lycone, on which there are some very fine cypresses. On the summit of the mountain there is a temple of Diana Orthia, in which are statues in white marble of
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§ 2.342 Apollo, Latona, and Diana, said to be the works of Polycleitus. After descending from the mountain, there is another temple of Diana, on the left of the highway, and not far beyond it, on the right, the mountain called Chaon, the lower parts of which are clothed with fruit trees. Here issue forth the copious sources of the Erasinus, which flows from Stymphalus of Arcadia (and has a subterraneous course) like that of the Rheiti from the Euripus to Eleusis, where those salt streams again join the sea. At the place where the waters of the Erasmus emerge, sacrifices are offered to Bacchus and Pan; the festival of the former is called Tyrbe. Proceeding on the road to Tegea, there is a village, Cenchreae, to the right of the place called Trochus; Cenchreae apparently receives its name from Cenchreus son of Peirene. Here is the Polyandrium of the Argives who were victorious over the Lacedaemonians at Hysiae. On the descent into the plain, are seen the ruins of Hysiae: here it was that the Lacedaemonians are said to have been beaten.” Although ancient and modern Greeks agree in opinion
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§ 2.343 that the Erasinus, or Kefalari, is the emissory of the lake of Stymphalus, it cannot be said that the opinion receives much confirmation from the preceding passage of Pausanias, in so for as he compares its subterraneous course to that of the Rheiti, which certainly is imaginary, and shews that no constant reliance can be placed upon the ancient traditions on these subjects. But the fable of the Rheiti is of Athenian growth, and as the Athenians had no real katavothra in their country, they may have been more apt to fall into fiction upon that subject than the Peloponnesians, who, being familiar with these provisions of nature, may have been more disposed to inquire into the real subterraneous courses of the streams with a view to practical utility, and may thus have been truly informed respecting them. There seems little doubt that the Erasinus is really the same river as the Stymphalus. The only other point, on this route of Pausanias, requiring any observation, is Cenchreae, where stood the Polyandrium of the Argives. The ruined pyramid, a mile to the south-west of the Erasinus, might very well have been a Polyandrium, and I should have been well pleased to have imagined it the tomb of the Argives; but it is impossible to deny, that according to the words of Pausanias, Cenchreae was situated much nearer to Hysiae,
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§ 2.344 and that it stood to the right of the road, in some part of the mountain which I crossed in coming from thence. The mountain appears from Strabo to have been called Creopolus, and was the same perhaps as the Creium of Callimachus. The pyramid therefore was probably only the sepulchre of some illustrious Argive, or Argive family, and has not been noticed by Pausanias. The Baratlis and Fermahnlis of the Morea are much alarmed at the conduct of the Pasha with regard to them; he has taken a list of their effects and property, has summoned them before him, and ordered them, in the name of the Porte, to reside with their consuls. The Porte, it seems, is endeavouring to put an end to the system of European protections, which has become so extensive of late, (particularly that of Russia) as to give them serious and wellfounded alarm. At Argos the measure is supposed to be chiefly aimed at the islands, particularly Ydhra and Petza though it has not yet been executed within the Capitan Pasha's government, of which these islands form a part. Half the opulent men there have now Russian
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§ 2.345 protections, under which flag they carry corn to the Mediterranean, and wine and colonial produce, &c., in return. About two months ago, a body of the non-protected Greeks of the same islands, envious of the lower duties and other commercial advantages which their protected countrymen partake with Frank traders, and provoked at their insolence, carried a complaint to the Porte: the present order is undoubtedly connected with that complaint. The late Capitan Pasha, Hussein, desirous pf encouraging the Aegaean seamen, but particularly those of Ydhra, Petza, and Psara, because they supply the Turkish fleet with its best seamen, and wishing to place the inhabitants as much as possible on an equal footing, issued forty firmahns for navigating the Black Sea, in favour of some of the islanders who did not enjoy foreign protection, but on his death, the present Capitan Pasha immediately revoked them. The islanders of Ydhra and Petza are an Albanian colony, who probably occupied the islands about the same time as the peasants of Attica and the Argolis, who have the same origin. The period is no doubt distant in both instances, as I cannot learn, either here or at Athens, of any tradition regarding it. We know from history that the Peninsula was full of Albanians before the Turkish conquest.
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§ 2.346 The higher classes of Moreites pretend to hold the people of Ydhra in contempt, as a gross, ignorant, Albanian race, good sailors and keen traffickers, but who spend all their money in building and drinking at Ydhra, where they are continually quarrelling among themselves. I am told that most of the robbers were killed and taken by the Greeks of the villages, while the Turkish troops either remained idle or behaved still worse. V. and his brothers argue, that if the Greeks of the villages of the Morea, particularly those about Mistra, &c., which are most suspected, were attached to the French, and in any intelligence with them, they would not have assisted in destroying those persons who would be the most useful in an insurrection. To get rid of the Turkish troops by removing the cause which brought them, seems to have been the only motive of the Greek villagers, who certainly would not rashly join a foreign invader, or without the strongest prospect of success. I was informed at Akhladho-kambo that the Turkish troops destroyed many innocent persons in the thief-chase, and made others prisoners, particularly at Vervena. The present Pasha of the Morea is said to have paid the Porte 400 purses for his
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§ 2.347 appointment for one year, and he will probably squeeze 1000 out of the poor province. Vanli Pasha, who was removed last year to Candia, paid 600 purses for two years, and greatly enriched himself. The Morea has the character of being the most profitable pashalik in the empire, of those at least which the Porte has the power of selling annually. The vilayeti of Argos is an appanage of the Mariem Sultana, and was for a long time exempted in consequence from the burthen of lodging travellers, so that even pashas coming from the northward were obliged to pass outside the town and change their horses without entering it. For the sake of this advantage many persons settled here from other parts of the Morea, and among others the family of V, which is of Mistra. No respect being now paid to these exemptions, the town suffers excessively from the inconvenience of being in the great road from the northward to Tripolitza, but still more from the insolence of the lawless Turks of Anapli. The Greeks of Argos particularly complain of the havoc which those Nauplians make among their grapes about the time of the vintage. The town of Argos contains 1200 families, and the houses standing far apart, it occupies a large space of ground. There are sixty or eighty Turkish families, all the rest are Greek.
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§ 2.348 The difference of climate between the plains of Tripolitza and Argos is very remarkable. There we had frost and snow, and here the heat is that of an English summer; but this is just the time when the spring most rapidly advances on the sea-coasts of Greece. The dryer parts of the plain of Argos are covered with corn: where the moisture is greater, cotton and vines are grown: and in the marshy parts, towards the sea, rice and kalambokki. The voivoda, judging that plantations of rice are injurious to health, has lately forbidden the increase of them in the district of Argos. In that of Nauplia many new ones have lately been established. Only one person has ventured to plant currants in this plain, and as yet he is a loser, on account of the time it takes to bring the plant to perfection. The soil is said to be too moist. V., rather than risk a plantation here, is at the expense of an epitropos at Corinth, who constantly resides there. A milliara the strema is a moderate produce, but it cannot be expected under the first seven years. Seid Aga, at Patra, has had two milliaras the strema, but it is spoken of as the greatest produce in Greece. All the plantations in Achaea within the Gulf of Corinth are subject to a rule established by Notara of Trikkala, the largest proprietor, and agreed to by the rest,
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§ 2.349 that all the produce shall be sold together: the consequence of which is, that V has all his last year's crop of currants still lying in his magazines. The regulation is said to have been made for the benefit of the smaller proprietors. Patra seems to be the favourite soil of this plant; there almost all the plantations belong to Turks. The vineyards of the plain of Argos are, as usual, for the most part in low moist situations, and the wine, without an addition of resin, would be sour in the spring; indeed it generally is so, long before that of the new vintage is ready for use. The men now employed in hoeing the vineyards are paid forty paras (about 15d. sterling) a day with provisions. March 15. — From Argos to Anapli. Leave the house of Kyr V at 1.51; at 2.03, the last houses of the town; — 2.11, cross the river Banitza; — 2.31, pass through Delamanara, where, in a ruined church, are several ancient squared blocks and other remnants of antiquity, and by the side of a well the shaft of a small Doric column, hollowed to serve as a trough for cattle. Hereabouts stood a pyramidal monument, which was the common sepulchre of the Argives who were slain on either side in a drawn battle between Proetus and Acrisius. It was adorned with representations of Argolic shields, in memory of the tradition that on that
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§ 2.350 occasion the two kings and their followers were for the first time armed with shields. At 3.01 I arrive at Paleo-Anapli, as the ruins of Tiryns are called. They occupy the lowest and flattest of several rocky hills which rise like islands out of the level plain. The length of the summit of that of Tiryns is about 250 yards, the breadth from forty to eighty, the height above the plain from twenty to fifty feet, the direction nearly north and south. There still remains the entire circuit of the walls, more or less preserved. Some of the masses of stone are shaped by art, some of them are even rectangular, but these are probably repairs, and not a part of the original work, which consisted, as Pausanias has described it, of rude masses piled upon one another, with small stones fitted in between the larger. The great masses he calls and describes them as so large that a yoke of mules could not move the smallest of them: the λιθάι, or smaller stones, served to fill up the intervals and complete the work. The finest specimens of this Cyclopean masonry, for it is the work of the Cyclopes,” are near the remains of the eastern gate, where a ramp, supported by a wall of the same kind, leads up to the gate.
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§ 2.351 The ramp is twenty feet wide, the gate fifteen. The ruined wall of the fortress still exists to the height of twenty-five feet above the top of the ramp: this is the only part in which the walls rise to any considerable height above the table summit of the hill within the fortress. On one side of this gateway I measured a stone of 10.6 by 3.9 by 3.6; here the wall is twenty-four and a half feet in thickness, in other parts from twenty to twenty-three. But the principal entrance was not here, I think, but on the southern side, adjacent to the southeastern angle of the fortress, where a sloping approach from the plain is still to be seen, leading to an opening in the walls. In its general design the fortress appears to have consisted of an upper and lower inclosure, of nearly equal dimensions, with an intermediate platform, which may have served for the defence of the upper castle against an enemy in possession of the lower. The southern entrance led by an ascent to the left into the upper inclosure, and by a direct passage between the upper inclosure and the eastern wall of the fortress into the lower inclosure, having also a branch to the left into the middle platform, the entrance into which last was nearly opposite to the eastern gate already described. Besides the two principal gates, there was a postern in the western side. On
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§ 2.352 either side of the great southern entrance, that is to say, in the eastern as well as in the southern wall, there were galleries in the body of the wall of singular construction. In the eastern wall, where they are better preserved, there are two parallel passages, of which the outer has six recesses or niches in the exterior wall. These niches were probably intended to serve for the protracted defence of the gallery itself, and the galleries for covered communications leading to towers or places of arms at the extremity of them. One of these places of arms still exists at the south-western angle of the fortress, and there may have been others on either side of the great southern entrance. The passage which led directly from the southern entrance, between the upper inclosure and the eastern wall into the lower division of the fortress, was about twelve feet broad. About midway there still exists an immense door-post with a hole in it for a bolt, shewing that the passage might be closed upon occasion. In these various contrivances for the progressive defence of the interior, we find a great resemblance, not only to Mycenae, which was built by the same school of engineers, but to several other Grecian fortresses of remote antiquity. A deficiency of flank defence is another point in which we find that Tiryns resembles those
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§ 2.353 fortresses; it is only on the western side, towards the south, that this essential mode of protection seems to have been provided. On that side, besides the place of arms at the southwestern angle, there are the foundations of another of a semicircular form, projecting from the same wall fifty yards farther to the north; and at an equal distance still farther in the same direction, there is a retirement in the wall, which serves in aid of the semicircular bastion in covering the approach to the postern of the lower inclosure. This latter division of the fortress was of an oval shape, about 100 yards long, and 40 broad; its walls formed an acute angle to the north, and several obtuse angles on the east and west. Of the upper inclosure of the fortress very little remains: there is some appearance of a wall of separation, dividing the highest part of all from that next to the southern entrance, thus forming four interior divisions besides the passages. The postern gate, the gallery of the eastern wall, and the recesses in the same wall are all angular in the upper part; the angle having been formed by merely sloping the courses of masonry. [sketch] This appears, from many other examples in
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§ 2.354 Greece, to have been a common mode of construction at a remote period of Greek military architecture. The fortress being only one third of a mile in circumference, could not have been any thing more than the citadel of the Tirynthii, which appears from Strabo to have been named Lycimna, probably from Licymnius, son of Electryon, who was slain at Tiryns by Tleptolemus, son of Hercules. There was ample room for the town on the south-western side, where a plain, two or three hundred yards in breadth, separates the ruins from a marsh which extends a mile farther to the sea. Homer, in using the words shews that the walls which Pausanias regarded with so much wonder, were equally an object of curiosity in the time of the poet — no bad proof of their remote and genuine antiquity. It is remarkable, that Euripides, who so often alludes to the works of the Cyclopes at Mycenae, has not mentioned Tiryns. According to the ancient history of Argolis,
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§ 2.355 Tiryns was founded by Proetus about 1400 years BC and Mycenae, a generation later, by Perseus. Tiryns is said to have been ceded by Megapenthes, son of Proetus, to Perseus, and to have become a fortress dependent upon Mycenae, until the return of the Heracleidae, when Mycenae itself, as well as Tiryns, Mideia, Hysiae, and other places, contributed to increase the population of Argos, and were thenceforth reduced to the condition of dependent towns or castles. The existing ruins of Tiryns, however, indicate by the variety in the style of architecture, or rather of masonry, that it was more than once employed as a fortress in the subsequent ages of Greece. At other times it was probably a deserted place, to which the retiring of the sea from this part of the coast may have contributed. The rudeness of the Cyclopian work, the magnitude of the masses, and the firmness with which their weight keeps them together, have preserved the ruins from the hands of the barbarous masons of modern Greece, who have found more manageable materials in Hellenic constructions of a later date. As Pausanias gives us no description whatever of the chambers of the daughters of Proetus, which he places between Tiryns and the. sea, we can only conjecture that they were
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§ 2.356 subterraneous buildings, like the thalamus of Danae at Argos, or the thesauri of Mycenae. From the ruins of Tiryns I ride to another insulated rocky height standing to the northeast of it, passing on the right, at half way, a third, much larger and loftier than either, and the pointed summit of which is crowned with a small church. In a line between this and Anapli, there is a fourth insulated hill, similar to the last. On none of these are there any Hellenic remains. I return to Tiryns; leave it at 4.47, and at 5.27 enter the gate of Anapli. A pleasant kiosk, belonging to an aga of Anapli, is curiously situated on the side of the rock to the left entering the fortress. A little beyond it is a cavern, which was, perhaps, one of those mentioned by Strabo as containing works of the Cyclopes. Nauplia seems never to have attained, in ancient times, an importance equal to that which it acquired during the Byzantine empire, and which was even augmented when it became the chief town of the Morea under the Venetians and the Turks. As its name is not mentioned by Homer, and very rarely occurs in the history of Greece, it was probably never any thing more than the naval fortress or arsenal of Argos. This was its condition in the time of Strabo; in that of Pausanias the place was deserted. He
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§ 2.357 remarked only the ruins of the walls, a temple of Neptune, the source of water called Canathus, and certain ports, by which he meant, probably, such artificial basins as the ancients were in the habit of employing. He observed also the figure of an ass upon a rock, which had been placed there in memory of the origin of the pruning of vines: — a vine which had been cropped by an ass having been found to produce grapes much more plentifully than any others. During the time of the Greek empire, the name η Ναύπλια assumed the form το Ναύπλιον or το Ανάπλιον or the same words in the plural number. The bishop of Argos is still entitled bishop of Anaplia and Argos. The modern town stands upon the northeastern side of a height, with a tabular summit, which projects from a steep ridge at the southeastern angle of the bay of Argos. This height, naturally a peninsula, was made an island by the Venetians when they excavated a wet ditch for the fortifications which they constructed for the defence of the land-front. There are still some remains of the Hellenic fortifications of Nauplia to be seen on the brow of the table-summit, which forms the south-western portion of the peninsula; towards its eastern
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§ 2.358 end the modern ramparts are in part composed of the ancient walls, which are constructed very much like those of the citadel of Argos, and appear to be of equal antiquity. There is a large piece of Hellenic wall, also, towards the north-western end of the same height, and another smaller, not far from the middle. But the most curious relic of antiquity at Nauplia, perhaps, is the name Palamidhi attached to the steep and lofty mountain which rises from it to the south-east; for Palamedes having been a native hero, the reputed son of Nauplius, who was son of Neptune and Amymone, the name is so connected with the ancient local history of the place, whether true or fabulous, that we cannot but infer that Palamedium has been applied to this hill from a very early period, although no ancient author has had occasion to notice it Before the year 1790, the Pasha of the Morea resided at Anapli, which brought the agas to Anapli and the Greek primates to Argos, and made the former town the Turkish, and the latter the Greek capital of the Peninsula; many Greeks were attracted also to Argos, as I have already said, by the privileges which the place then enjoyed. Much of the commerce of the Morea then centered at Anapli, and there were several French mercantile houses. The
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§ 2.359 moving of the seat of government to Tripolitza in 1790, was followed in 1791 by a plague, which lasted for three years with little intermission; it prevailed in almost every part of the Morea, but was particularly fatal in Anapli. Since that time the town has not prospered; it is now only inhabited by the agas who possess lands in the Argolis, by the soldiers of the garrison amounting to about 200, commanded by a Janissary aga, who resides in the fort of Palamidhi, and by some Greek shopkeepers and artisans. The governor is a mirmiran, or pasha of two tails, whose authority does not extend beyond the walls of the fortress; but there is also resident here a voivoda for the vilayeti, a kadi, or judge, and a gumruktji, or collector of the Customs, which last office is generally united with that of voivoda. The houses are, many of them, in ruins, and falling into the streets; the French consulate, a large house like the Okkals at Alexandria, is turned into a khan. The port is filled up with mud and rubbish, and capable only of admitting small polaccas, and to complete this picture of the effects of Turkish domination, the air is rendered unhealthy on one side by the putrid mud caused by the increasing shallowness of the bay, and on the other by the
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§ 2.360 uncultivated marshy lands along the head of the gulf. In the midst of these miseries, however, the fortifications and store-houses of the Venetians still exhibit a substantial grandeur never seen in a town entirely Turkish, and testify the former importance of the place. March 16. — It is pretended at Anapli that the women are generally handsome, and those of Argos the contrary, and it is ascribed to the water, which, at Argos, is drawn entirely from wells, and at Anapli from a fine source in one of the rocky heights near Tiryns, which is conveyed to the town by an aqueduct This tale is derived, perhaps, from the relating to the Nauplian spring called Canathus, by washing in which Juno was said to have renewed her virginity every year. I inquired in vain, however, for any natural source of water in Anapli; and could only find an artificial fountain, now dry in consequence of neglect, near the Latin church by the Custom-house: but this source having been supplied from the aqueduct which I have mentioned, could not have been the Canathus which Pausanias describes as a πηγή or natural spring. Notwithstanding a buyurdi of the Pasha of the Morea, which I bring with me, as well as a general firmahn of the Porte, I find some
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§ 2.361 difficulty in obtaining permission to see the fortress of Palamidhi. Before the Pasha had read the order, and the kadi had summoned the ayans to take it into consideration, all the forenoon had passed. But at length an order is issued, and in the afternoon I ride up, by a circuitous route, to the southern extremity of the castle, and entering by the gate on that side, find the Janissary aga and his staff waiting for me at the gate; he accompanies me round the fortress. It is of a remarkable construction: the interior part consists of three cavaliers, or high redoubts, entirely detached from one another, and surrounded by an outer and lower inclosure. There are many brass-guns mounted on the ramparts, some of which carry stone-balls of a foot and a half in diameter. The outer wall is low on the side towards the sea and the rock, though very precipitous on that side, is not inaccessible to a surprise: the profile of these outer works is low also towards the heights on the south, and they have no ditch; but there is an advanced work adjoining the rocks at the southern extremity, the salient angle of which is as high as that of the principal cavalier. Under the sea-face, at the foot of the precipice, there is a road leading along the shore. The rock on the sides towards the town and the plain is nearly as
:2.362
§ 2.362 precipitous as towards the sea, and more difficult to ascend: from the town there is a covered passage of steps up to the fort, and on one side of it an open flight, mounting in zigzag, the latter for common use, the former for security in war. From the south-eastward only is the hill easily accessible. There are nine cisterns of water in the fort about thirty feet long, six wide, and six deep. There is a better provision of powder and artillery here than is usual in Turkish fortresses. The body of the ramparts, both of Palamidhi and of Indje Kalesi, as the Turks call the lower fortress, are built of stone, with merlons of brick. The table-height surrounded with cliffs, forming the summit of the peninsula of Anapli, and around which are the remains of the Hellenic; fortress, is unoccupied with houses, and is fortified towards the sea only with a low wall, the steepness of the cliffs furnishing a protection on that side of the peninsula. These cliffs are covered with cactus, from whence, perhaps, has been derived the name of Indje Kalesi, in allusion to the fig-like fruit of that plant. The small island of St. Nicolas, three or four hundred yards off the north-western point of the peninsula, is occupied by a castle; a little within this the anchorage is deepest. In returning to Argos, we move from Anapli
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§ 2.363 at 5.10, and soon afterwards, in order to avoid the rugged pavement of the kalderim, or stone causeway of the high road, pass through the shallow water of the bay, and then follow a hard sandy beach till 5.44, when, being at the inner curve of the gulf, we quit the shore and cross the plain directly to Argos. This is precisely the line which the Long Walls of Argos should have followed, but I see no traces of any; nor do I believe, although the distance is not greater than that between Athens and the Peiraeeus, that Argos ever had Long Walls, except in the fifteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, when they were erected to ensure a communication with Athens, but were destroyed by the Lacedaemonians in the following winter. I arrive at the house of V at 6.45. The rate of travelling from Tripolitza has been that of the menzil, with a deduction for mountains where they occur.
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§ 2.364 CHAPTER XX: ARGEIA. March 17. From Argos to Mycenae. At 11.20 quitting the outside of the town of Argos, and turning the point of the rocky height which projects from the Larissa, or rock of Argos, north-eastward, I soon after cross the Rema, or torrent of Argos, which joins the Banitza between the crossing and Delamanara. The Rema, when it contains any water, flows over a wide gravelly bed, which it sometimes, though rarely fills, and thus it corresponds to the ancient Charadrus, as well in the kind of stream indicated by that name, as it does in its position with regard to Argos. The Argives had a custom of holding a military court at the Charadrus on the return of their armies from abroad, before the troops were permitted to enter the city. At 11.45 we pass the Banitza, which has no water in this place, though it had where I crossed it in the road
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§ 2.365 to Tiryns; it is evidently the ancient Inachus. At 12.38 arrive at Kharvati, a village of fifteen or twenty Greek houses, with a tower for the Spahi. Pausanias is our only ancient guide at Mycenae, and his account, though short, is highly curious and satisfactory by its conformity with actual appearances. Quitting, at Cleonae, the road which led from Corinth to Argos, he turned to the right to Nemea, and from thence rejoined the road to Argos in the pass of the Tretus. “Proceeding”, he then says, “from the Tretus on the road to Argos, you have the ruins of Mycenae on the left hand. Among other parts of the inclosure of Mycenae there remains the gate upon which lions stand. These are said to be the works of the Cyclopes, who built also the fortress of Tiryns for Proetus. Among the ruins of the city are the fountain called Perseia, and the subterraneous buildings of Atreus and his sons, in which their treasures were deposited. There are likewise the tombs
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§ 2.366 of Atreus, of Agamemnon, of his charioteer Eurymedon, of Electra, who was given in marriage to Pylades by Orestes, and a sepulchre in common of Teledamus and Pelops, who are said to have been twin sons of Cassandra, and to have been slain at the tomb of their parents by Aegisthus. There is a monument of Cassandra, concerning which the Amyclaei dispute. But Clytemnestra and Aegisthus were interred at a little distance from the walls, being thought unworthy of burial where Agamemnon lay, and those who were slain together with him.” Mycenae was built upon a rugged height situated in a recess between two commanding summits of the range of mountains which border the eastern side of the Argolic plain. This retired position, near the upper extremity of the plain, Homer describes by the words μύχω Αργεος, using the word Argos as Euripides does in all his dramas relating to the Perseidae and Atreidae, that is to say, in the same sense as Αργεία and Αργoλις were afterwards employed. It would seem from Aristotle, that the situation was chosen because the lower part of the plain of Argos was then so marshy as to be unproductive, whereas in his own time, or about eight
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§ 2.367 centuries afterwards, the plain of Mycenae had become dry and barren, and that of Argos well drained and fertile. At present the Argolic plain suffers under both inconveniencies; the upper part is unproductive from a deficiency of moisture, and a great part of the lower from a want of drainage. As to the doubts raised by Strabo upon the meaning of Homer's epithet of πολυδίψιον applied to Argos, they can only be ascribed to his ignorance of the country, of which indeed he gives a sufficient proof, when he says, that there was not a vestige of Mycenae extant in his time. Pausanias, who evidently assented to the common interpretation of πολυδίψιον, relates a μύθος or fable, in allusion to this dryness of Argos. A dispute having arisen between Neptune and Juno on the subject of the Argolis, Phoroneus, son of the river Inachus, was appointed, together with the rivers Cephissus, Asterion, and Inachus, to decide the difference. They adjudged the country to Juno, upon which Neptune caused all the water to disappear. It is for this reason, adds Pausanias, that the Inachus, as well as the other rivers, have no other supply than such as falls
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§ 2.368 occasionally in showers, and that in summer, all the waters of the Argolis are dried up, except those of Lerne. It was, probably, this part of the Argolic mythology which particularly suggested the epithet πολυδίψιον to Homer, who generally took care to flatter his readers, or rather hearers, by an allusion to their local fables. The acropolis of Mycenae resembled many other fortresses in Greece, in its situation on the summit of a steep hill between two torrents, and below a higher mountain. Its length is not much less than 400 yards, its breadth about half as much. Within the walls the ground rises considerably, and there appear to have been several interior inclosures, indicating a mode of fortifying similar to that of Tiryns. On the summit I found several subterraneous cisterns, or granaries, built of large stones of irregular shapes, lined with plaster. The entire circuit of the citadel still subsists, and in some places the ruined walls are fifteen or twenty feet high. There are found among them specimens of Hellenic masonry of various ages. The most ancient parts, although not so massive as the wall of Tiryns, are built exactly in the same manner: there are pieces also of the second order of the most accurate kind, and others which appear to be of a still later date. We know from history, that Mycenae and
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§ 2.369 Tiryns in conjunction sent 400 men to the battle of Plataea, and that Mycenae was not deserted until the first year of the seventy-eighth Olympiad, BC 468.) when the place having been taken and destroyed by the Argives, more than half the inhabitants took refuge in Macedonia, and the remainder in Ceryneia and Cleonae. The later reparations of the walls may easily be recognized; with this exception, every thing left at Mycenae dates from the heroic ages; and notwithstanding this remote antiquity, the description of Pausanias shews that Mycenae has undergone less change since he travelled, than any place in Greece. The citadel had a great gate at the NW angle, and a postern towards the NE. The great gate stands at right angles to the adjoining wall of the fortress, and is approached by a passage fifty feet long, and thirty wide, formed by that wall and by another exterior wall parallel to it, which, as it seems to have had no other purpose than the defence of the passage, we may suppose to have been a place of arms, and not a mere wall, especially as it commanded the right or unshielded side of those who approached. The opening of the gateway or door-case widens from the top downwards; two-thirds of its
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§ 2.370 height, or perhaps more, are now buried in the ruins. The width at the top of the door is nine feet and a half. It was formed of two massy uprights, covered with a third block, fifteen feet long, four feet wide, and six feet seven inches high in the middle, but diminishing at the two ends. Upon this soffit stands a triangular stone, twelve feet long, ten high, and two thick, upon the face of which are represented in low relief two lions, standing on their hind legs, on either side of a round pillar or altar, upon which they rest their fore-paws; the column becomes broader towards the top, and is surmounted with a capital, formed of a row of four circles, inclosed between two parallel fillets. Thus we have an illustration of the brief and otherwise obscure description of Pausanias, as well as an example of the difficulty which often occurs in understanding him, without a view of the objects described. As he remarks only that the sculpture was the work of the Cyclopes, without adding any suggestion as to its meaning, we are left to our own conjectures on this question. The most probable appears to be that it related to the solar worship, which was the most common in Greece at that distant period. Unfortunately, the sculptural
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§ 2.371 representation is not complete; the upper angle of the stone which contained the heads of the lions is deficient, and between the heads there was probably some object on the summit of the pillar, or altar”, which might have explained the whole. The largest stone I could find in the wall adjoining to the Gate of Lions measured seven feet three inches, by four feet seven inches; the thickness I could not ascertain. The gate led into the lower acropolis, which was separated from the upper by a wall parallel to the outer southern wall, and which appears to have had its communication with the upper acropolis, at the further extremity from the Gate of Lions, evidently with the view of increasing the length and difficulty of the approach to the summit. The small gate or postern on the northern side of the acropolis is constructed of three great stones, like the Gate of Lions; and its approach was fortified like that leading to the latter gate. It is five feet four inches wide at the top, and six feet at the bottom; but what is now visible is not more than a third of the original height. From the acropolis a ridge stretches to the south, which to the right falls gradually into the great plain, and to the left more steeply into a deep ravine, watered by a stream,
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§ 2.372 the source of which is nearly a quarter of a mile beyond the upper or eastern end of the citadel, in an opening between the southern extremity of Mount Tretus, and the northern end of the peaked rocky mountain, which rises with great steepness from the left bank of the ravine. Along the crest of the aforesaid ridge, below the citadel, an excavation in the rock may be traced, intended apparently for the foundation of a wall, which was connected with the acropolis at one end, near the Gate of Lions; apart of the wall itself, in a line with the excavated foundation, is to be seen a little below the Gate of Lions: at the opposite or southern extremity this wall appears to have been united with a bridge or wall crossing the torrent: the foundations of which, twenty feet in breadth or thickness, are still in existence. The vein of water flowing from the fountain above the acropolis, instead of being allowed to take its natural course down the ravine, and under the bridge or wall just mentioned, and from thence into the plain to the south-west of Kharvati, is conveyed by a conduit round the northern side of the acropolis to that village, and to a garden near it. Between the acropolis and the village it passes exactly over the upper stone of the Spilia, as the natives call the ancient building, which is evidently one of those described by Pausanias,
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§ 2.373 as the subterraneous treasuries of the Atreidae. The rill formerly supplied a Turkish tjisme, or artificial fountain, at a khan, eight minutes below Kharvati, on the post road from Corinth to Argos. But the fountain is now dry, the water being all consumed in or near the village. The fountain Perseia which Pausanias remarked in the ruins, is no longer to be found; it was probably no more than the discharge of an artificial conduit from the natural source above the citadel; for Pausanias applies to it the word κρηνη, which is constantly employed by him with that meaning, in contradistinction to the πηγή, or natural spring. The Spilia or treasury, is exactly in the same state as when I saw it before. There only wants a little more labour to complete Lord Elgin's excavation, and to shew the depth and nature of the bottom of the monument within. I believe this has been done, but it is now filled up again. The building was entirely subterraneous, and was constructed under the slope of the hill, towards the Rema, or ravine of the torrent. An approach twenty feet in breadth led through the slope to the door of the building, between two well constructed walls. As these are now ruined, and for the most part buried beneath
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§ 2.374 the earth which they served to support, the length of the passage can no longer be exactly determined. The doorway in which it terminated was eight feet six inches wide at the top, widening a little from thence to the bottom. On the outside before each door-post stood a semi-column, having a base and capital not unlike the Tuscan order in profile, but enriched with a very elegant sculptured ornament, chiefly in a zigzag form, which was continued in vertical compartments over the whole shaft. These ornaments have not the smallest resemblance to any thing else found in Greece, but they bear some similitude to the Persepolitan style of sculpture. On my former visit to Mycenae there were several large fragments of these semi-columns lying on the ground: I can now find only one or two very small pieces. They are formed of a kind of green basalt. The same stone was employed for the sculpture over the Gate of the Lions. The treasury contains two chambers; that into which the great door conducts, and a small interior apartment. The great chamber is of a conical form, but with curved instead of straight sides. The diameter is forty-five feet at the fourth
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§ 2.375 course from the base, at the base near fifty: the chord of the side is about the same length, its versed sine five feet. The vertical section therefore may be described as an equilateral triangle, with two of its sides curved. Above the door there is a window in the form of an equilateral triangle, of which the side is about ten feet This window is constructed in the same manner as the gallery and its recesses at Tiryns; that is to say, the courses of masonry are shaped to the form of the window. The doorway is eighteen feet long, and about the same height. The soffit is formed of two enormous slabs, of which the inner is much the larger; it measures seventeen feet and a half on its lower surface, nineteen on its upper, and is three feet nine inches in thickness. In consequence of the form of the building, this stone presents within the building a surface curved both horizontally and vertically. The edge is a curve, of which the chord is twenty eight feet and a half, or about a fifth of the whole circumference of the building, at the height of the top of the door. The stone has consequently ten feet engaged in the wall on either side of the door-way. On the right side on entering, at one quarter of the circumference from the great door is the entrance to the inner chamber.
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§ 2.376 This door is similar in construction to the great entrance, that is to say, there is a large soffit stone, with a triangular window above it; but the slab is little more in length than double the width of the door. The opening is four feet and a half wide, and leads, by a passage eight feet four inches in length, into a square chamber of about twenty-three feet, which, as well as a great part of the passage towards the interior, is not constructed in masonry, but rudely excavated in the natural rock, with an arch-shaped roof. That it was originally constructed in this rough manner may be doubted, for the rock, though apparently of the same kind of breccia which has been employed in all the existing remains of Mycenae, and which is very hard, as well in the buildings as in the natural external surface, as I remarked near the village of Kharvati, is here soft and crumbling, and was perhaps faced with stones of a harder quality. There were about forty courses of masonry in the whole building; of these the lower are about one foot ten inches in height, and composed of stones from four to seven feet long: above the great window the courses are narrower than in the lower part of the building. The whole structure being subterraneous, I found it impossible to
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§ 2.377 examine its masonry outwardly, though it well deserves a minute inspection, this being the only complete specimen remaining, of a mode of construction peculiar to the early Greeks, and which was not uncommon among them. [Mr. Cockerell has since made an excavation here, and has discovered that the joints of the stones towards the interior, are nicely fitted together for about three inches, leaving outwards a wedgeshaped opening, into which small stones were tightly driven, a favorite method, it should seem, among the Cyclopian masons. The annexed horizontal section near the apex, may serve to give an idea of the mode of construction.] [sketch] Its principle is that of a wall resisting a superincumbent weight, and deriving strength and coherence from the weight itself, which in fact seems to be no other than the principle of the arch. The same motive which suggested the circular form to the Cyclopian architect, or
:2.378
§ 2.378 other inventor of this kind of subterraneous building, induced him also to curve the sides vertically, as they derived from that form an additional power of resistance to the lateral pressure. The upper stone of the building has been removed, and lies in fragments on one side of the aperture, made by its removal, which admits a view of the chamber, from the surface of the ground above the treasury. This upper stone, which is hollowed below to form the apex of the parabolic curve of the chamber, was laid upon the upper course, like that course upon the next. In this part of the construction, therefore, the treasury seems to have been built upon a principle different from that of the treasury of Minyas at the Boeotian Orchomenus, of which there are remains sufficient to shew that there was a great resemblance between the two buildings, as might be presumed from their having been nearly of the same age, and intended for the same purpose. Pausanias describes the treasury of Minyas as a circular edifice of stone, having a summit not very pointed; and he adds that the upper stone of all was said to hold together the whole structure; for that such was his meaning in the passage cited below,
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§ 2.379 may be deduced I think from his employment of the word on other occasions, to which I have more than once alluded. The first part of his description appears to me to indicate that the Orchomenian building was not subterraneous, the second part that it was terminated above in a key-stone; the latter peculiarity being perhaps a consequence of the former, and the building differing in both from the subterraneous treasury at Mycenae, where the heavy external pressure was met by a lateral as well as a horizontal arch, and where the upper stone was simply superimposed and kept in its place by the earth which lay upon it. It would seem, from the words of Pausanias, that the treasury at Orchomenus was a more obtuse cone than that of Mycenae, and his comparison of it to the pyramids of Egypt would lead us to suppose that it was a larger building, though its remains do not give that idea. An excavation will some day determine this question. [The circular buildings called Tholi, which were common in Greece in a later age, appear to have been constructed nearly on the same principle as the treasury of Minyas. Pausanias (Eliac. prior, c. 20.) describes the Philippeium of Olympia as terminating in a brazen poppy, which united together all the beams of the roof (συνδεσμος τοις δοκοις). The Odeium of Sparta, called Scias, from the resemblance of its roof to a σχίαδιον, or umbrella, seems to have had a similar construction (Etymol. Mag. in Scias.) The Scias was built by Theodorus of Samus, who first cast statues in iron, (Pausan. Lacon. c. 12.) and who lived about 700 BC. If the architects of Greece executed buildings on the principle of the arch at such a distant period, and even in the time of Minyas, three or four generations before the Trojan war, it is difficult to conceive that their successors, who brought architecture to perfection, should have been ignorant of the mode of applying the arch to the formation of openings in walls. It seems much more probable, that the arch is not found in temples and other great public edifices, because their characteristics having been solidity and a majestic simplicity, the necessity or expediency for employing it never occurred in such buildings, although it may often have been used in the same ages, in the formation of bridges, subterraneous passages, gates, and other similar constructions. Its more general use among the later Greeks and the Romans may be ascribed to the increase of population, wealth, and luxury, and to that ostentation which attended less to solidity than to a speedy result. The arch economized time, labour, and materials; by its means the scale of buildings was enlarged, works were finished more rapidly, and magnificent edifices, both public and private, were multiplied, although generally with the sacrifice of good taste and durability.]
:2.380
§ 2.380 In the middle of the great doorway I perceive the holes made in the stone for the bolts and hinges of the doors, and in the same line with them a row of smaller holes, which were occupied by small brazen nails; most of these have been taken out, evidently not without difficulty, such was the firmness with which they were originally inserted into the hard breccia of the building. Although the stone has been broken away to obtain the nails, the
:2.381
§ 2.381 points of many have remained, formed of a metal of a deep yellow colour, and of great hardness. I remark many nails of the same kind in the great soffit stone of the door. Within the building there are remains of some much larger nails of the same material; and which appear to have been at least as numerous in the upper as in the lower part of the walls. These nails also have been broken off, and carried away, so that few of them now remain. Near the apex of the building, however, where they are less accessible, I observe several still projecting from the surface of the stones: they were square, with a broad head, and were driven into the middle of the stones, and not into the joints. It is difficult to conceive for what purpose they could have been intended, except that of attaching some lining to the whole inside of the building, for those near the vertex could not have served for hanging up armour or other moveables; and it is observable, that traces of the nails, both holes for their reception, and points of the nails themselves, are to be found in every part of the interior surface: it is evident, moreover, from the highly ornamented semi-columns at the entrance, and the numerous small nails in the door-way, that the structure was finished originally in a most elaborate manner. I am entirely of opinion, therefore, that
:2.382
§ 2.382 there were brazen plates nailed to the stones throughout the interior surface, and it is the more credible, as ancient authorities shew that it was customary among the Greeks in early times to finish their constructions in this manner; there seems no other mode of explaining the brazen chambers of which we find mention in the poetry and early history of Greece, particularly that in which Danae was confined at Argos, by Acrisius, and which, according to the sacred guides of that city, was in a subterraneous building still existing in the time of Pausanias, and described by him almost in the same words which he applies to the treasuries at Mycenae. The small nails about the door-way served probably to attach some delicate ornaments of metal, with which the entrance was decorated. While I was examining the inner chamber, my attendants thought proper to light a great fire in the middle of the building. The fine figures, the strong contrasts of light, the singularity of the edifice, and the recollections connected with the place, all conspired to produce a picture of the highest effect and interest. On the slope of the hill just without the line of the town wall, near the Gate of Lions, I find the remains of a second treasury. The door still exists, though nearly buried in the ruins of
:2.383
§ 2.383 the treasury, or of the soil and rubbish of other ancient buildings, washed down from the hill above. The soffit was made of three stones; the dimensions of the door and of a small part of the circular wall shew that it was not so large as the still entire treasury; the courses of masonry forming the sides were narrower and formed of smaller stones. The length of the three stones forming the soffit was seventeen feet ten inches, the width of the passage, seven feet eight inches. The entrance was on the opposite side to the acropolis, as might have been expected, the hill rising towards the citadel. Descending from hence, westward, in the direction of the valley which conducts to the pass of Tretus, I arrive, half way down, at the entrance of a third building of the same kind. It is smaller than the last; the soffit is of three stones, measuring fifteen feet eight inches for the length of the doorway: part of the circumference of this treasury remains above ground, sufficient to shew that its diameter was about twenty-five feet towards the top of the door, and probably about thirty at the bottom. The great treasury, as I have said, was about fifty at the bottom. All this part of the slope of the hill, which is now ploughed land, is strewed
:2.384
§ 2.384 with ancient pottery, and seems to indicate that the town of Mycenae covered the slope towards the plain. But in this case the great treasury being to the eastward of the wall on the ridge, must have been without the town, which is not very probable. On the other hand, if both the great Spilia and the treasuries on the western slope were within the ancient town, it is difficult to understand the purpose of the wall along the ridge. Ascending from the third treasury just described, towards the Spilia, I come to a wall intended apparently for the support of the terrace of a building, and proceeding from thence in the same direction as before, I arrive, a little short of the crest of the ridge, at the ruin of a fourth circular building of the same kind as the others; this last I had observed on my former visit to Mycenae. The second and third I had not seen. Of this fourth the door-way only remains, and the whole is so much ruined that there is no proof on which side of the door the building stood, though it may be presumed, from the direction in which the hill rises, that the door was on the same side as in the second and third treasuries. The soffit was formed of five stones, forming together a length of entrance of about twenty feet, which is greater
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§ 2.385 than in the second and third treasuries, whereas the breadth of the passage is smaller than in either of them, being only five feet two inches. The peasants call these buildings the Furni (ovens). Their plurality illustrates the plural number in the words υπόγαια οικοδομήματα in Pausanias. As to their having been the treasuries of the Atreidae, it was at least a tradition which had descended to Pausanias in an unbroken series; and as there is no reason to doubt that they were built for the purpose which the Greek name implies, it is no more than consistent with the history of Mycenae, to believe that the largest, or that which is nearly complete, was the treasury of Atreus himself; for Agamemnon having been much engaged in war, and having passed a great part of his reign abroad, was much less likely to have accomplished such a structure. It is by no means, improbable that one or two of these edifices may have been more ancient than Atreus and works of the Perseidae. Nothing can more strongly shew the extreme antiquity of the remains at Mycenae, and that they really belong to the remote ages to which they are ascribed by Pausanias, than the singularity of some parts of them, and their general dissimilarity to other Hellenic remains. We
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§ 2.386 find nothing in Greece resembling the lions or the columns before the gate of the great thesaurus or the treasuries themselves, which being nothing more than fabrications in masonry on the barbarous principle of securing treasures by burying them in the ground, seem to argue, from this consideration alone, an early state of society. In the military part of the architecture there is not so remarkable a difference between the Cyclopean ruins and the other most ancient works remaining in Greece, some of which may perhaps be as remote in date as Tiryns and Mycenae. The greater part of them, even of those which afford the most finished examples of the polygonal kind, appear to me to have been originally built, like Mycenae, without towers, which, wherever they exist, are probably additions of a later age. To compensate for their neglect or ignorance of this mode of protecting the walls of fortresses, which became universal in the meridian ages of Grecian civilization, the early engineers seem to have bestowed greater labour than their successors on the approach to the gates, and to have devised various modes of protracting the defence of the interior by numerous inclosures and an intricacy of communication. At a distance of two miles from Mycenae, in
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§ 2.387 a small hollow branching from the Derveni or pass of Tretus, there is the lower part of an ancient tower, which I visited on a former occasion, and which I now recognize from the summit of the citadel of Mycenae, from whence it bears N 50°W. by compass. I am informed there are no other ruins near it. The peasants call it στο ελληνικόν. It appears to have been a guard tower for the pass of Tretus, in several other parts of which I remember to have seen foundations of buildings. Having returned to Kharvati I descend to the khan, and from thence follow the post road from Corinth to Anapli for about two miles in search of the Heraeum, which, according to Pausanias, was situated exactly in the direction of this route at the foot of the hills, at a distance of fifteen stades from Mycenae. Not finding any traces of the temple, I cross the plain obliquely to Kutzopodhi, a cluster of detached hamlets near the foot of a hill which projects into the plain between the Tretus and the left bank of the Inachus. In the middle of the ploughed land in the plain I arrive at two small ruined churches, in the wall of one of which I observe a part of a Doric column of such a large diameter, that I have little doubt of its having been brought from the ruins of the Heraeum;
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§ 2.388 in the other ruined church there are some square blocks of stone of ancient fabric. Soon afterwards I cross the dry bed of the stream which flows from the Derveni, or ravine of Tretus, and a quarter of an hour beyond arrive at the nearest of three or four hamlets, which all bear the name of Kutzopodhi. Here, in a church, I find a piece of a small Ionic cornice and some wrought stones; there are others about the walls of the village. A man of Kutzopodhi found, two or three years ago, in the fields, after a fall of rain, a statue, an arm of another, and many silver medals, seven of which, all Roman, were brought to me at Argos. Returning from Kutzopodhi to Argos, I soon cross the Banitza and then the Rema of Argos, and enter the town across the ridge which projects north-eastward from the foot of Larissa. Here are some sepulchral chambers cut in the rock. The gate of Deiras probably stood exactly where the modern path crosses the ridge. The road by which I went to Mycenae seems to be nearly the same as that by which Pausanias approaches Argos from thence. The road by which I returned was that leading to Argos from Lyrceia. The Argolic Heraeum, or temple of Juno Argeia, was one of the most celebrated of the sacred edifices of Greece; and though Pausanias supposes it to have been possessed by Proetus
:2.389
§ 2.389 before Perseus founded Mycenae, its situation near the latter city seems to shew that it was the chief place of worship of the surrounding country when Mycenae was the capital, according to a common practice among the Greeks of placing temples of great resort at a short distance without the city walls. The old Heraeum was burnt in the ninth year of the Peloponnesian war by the negligence of a priestess, after which accident Eupolemus, of Argos, was employed to erect the temple described by Pausanias. « Above the columns were represented the birth of Jupiter, the Gigantomachia, the war of Troy, and the capture of Ilium. Before the entrance were statues of all the priestesses of the temple, and others of heroes, among which was that of Orestes, inscribed with the name of Augustus. In the pronaos, to the left, were ancient statues of the Graces, to the right, the couch of Juno and the shield which Menelaus took from Euphorbus at Troy. The cella contained one of the most celebrated chryselephantine works in
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§ 2.390 Greece, the colossal statue of Juno, by Polycleitus. The goddess was seated on a throne with a pomegranate in one hand, and in the other a sceptre bearing a cuckoo; on her crown were sculptured the Hours and Graces. A statue of Hebe, in ivory and gold, by Naucydes, which once stood by that of Juno, had been removed between the time of Strabo and that of Pausaniasbut there still remained an ancient Juno upon a column, and a still more ancient seated figure of the Goddess, not large, and made of the wood of the wild pear, it had been brought from Tiryns when the Argives destroyed that place: the cell of the Heraeum contained also a silver altar, adorned with figures representing the marriage of Hercules and Hebe, a peacock of gold and jewels presented by Hadrian, and a golden crown, and purple robe, the gifts of Nero. The foundations of the burnt temple were seen above the other, and before
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§ 2.391 them the statue of the priestess Chrysis, by whose negligence it had been destroyed.” As Strabo and Pausanias differ by five stades in regard to the distance of the Heraeum from Mycenae, it is difficult to ascertain its position, or to know exactly where an excavation might be made, in search of any remains of the building, which may be still concealed beneath the soil. That it stood to the southward of Mycenae, at the foot of the hills, seems manifest; for Pausanias shews that it was not in the direct road from Mycenae to Argos, in which he describes some other monuments; on the other hand, it could not have been very far from the road, since Herodotus says, that its distance from Argos was forty-five stades; and Strabo, who tells us that there was an interval of less than fifty stades between Mycenae and Argos, adds in another place, that the Heraeum was ten stades from Mycenae and forty from Argos. Pausanias thus describes the direct road from Mycenae to Argos, and the situation of the Heraeum. “In going from Argos to Mycenae the heroum of Perseus is by the road side, then the tomb of Thyestes called
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§ 2.392'the Rams' from the figure of a ram upon it in stone, then on the left of the road the place named Mysia, from a temple of Ceres Mysia, now roofless, but containing within it a temple made of tiles, in which are wooden statues of Proserpine and Pluto. Beyond Mysia is the river Inachus, having passed which there is an altar of the Sun, and then the Gate [of Argos ], which, from a neighbouring temple, is called the Gate of Lucina.” “The Heraeum is on the left hand of Mycenae, at the distance of fifteen stades; along the road leading thither flows the water Eleutherium, which is used by the priestesses for the purgations and secret sacrifices. The temple stands in the lower part of Mount Euboea, for this mountain they call Euboea, adding, that Euboea, Prosymna, and Acraea, were daughters of the river Asterion, and that they were the nurses of Juno. From Acraea the mountain opposite to the Heraeum receives its name, from Euboea the part about the temple, and the region which is below the Heraeum from Prosymna. The Asterion flows under the Heraeum and disappears in a chasm. A herb called Asterion which grows on the banks of the stream is
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§ 2.393 presented to Juno, and chaplets are formed of its leaves twined together.” As Prosymna lay below the Heraeum, we may infer that the temple did not stand exactly in the plain; the word χθαμαλωτέρω, on the other hand, shews that it was not on very high ground. It seems clear, moreover, in coupling the words “to the left of Mycenae ” with the distances given by Herodotus and Strabo, that Pausanias meant the left hand of a person looking westward from the hill of Mycenae. Upon the whole, therefore, one cannot but conclude that, unless there is some error in the ancient authorities, one of the eminences bordering the plain southward of Mycenae, at about a fourth of the distance from Kharvati to Argos, was the position of the temple. I say a fourth, and not a fifth, as I think the joint testimonies of Herodotus and Pausanias are to be preferred to that of Strabo. It is hereabouts that the torrent of Mycenae is lost in the plain, though not in a katavothra, as Pausanias would seem to imply. As to the words “opposite to the Heraeum ”, by which Pausanias describes the situation of Acraea, it is impossible to apply them without knowing exactly the situation of the temple: but the rocky peak which rises from the southeastern side of the site of Mycenae, being the highest and most remarkable summit of the
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§ 2.394 range, seems the best adapted to the name Acraea. The water Eleutherium may, perhaps, have been the torrent from Tretus, carried artificially in the direction above stated, which is not very different from its natural course; though it is now lost for the most part in the low grounds below Kutzopodhi. In the extract from Pausanias just cited, it has been seen that he crosses the Inachus before he enters Argos by the Gate of Lucina, but makes no mention of the Charadrus, whereas the modern road, which cannot possibly be very different in direction from the ancient, crosses both streams, and leaves their confluence at a considerable distance to the southward, instead of which, unless there is an omission in Pausanias, the ancient junction was to the northward of the road. There is nothing improbable in this change. The earth brought down in the course of ages by the two rivers would naturally have the effect of altering their course, and might carry their point of union nearer to the sea. March 18. — The description of Argos by Strabo, shews that in his time it occupied the same position as the modern town, though the latter is so much reduced as to be situated not το πλέον, or, for the most part, as he says, but
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§ 2.395 wholly in the plain: it is evident from still existing remains of the ancient walls, that all the south-eastern side of the mountain anciently called Larissa was included within the ancient city. A ruined castle of lower Greek or Frank construction, which occupies the summit of this rocky hill, still preserves, amidst the rude masonry of its crumbling walls, some remains of those of the famed acropolis of Argos. They are of various dates; some parts approach to the Tirynthian style of building, others are of the most accurate polygonal kind, and there are some remains of towers which appear to have been a late addition to the original Larissa, which was probably constructed without towers. The modern castle consists of an outer inclosure and a keep, and in both of these a part of the walls consists of Hellenic work, thus shewing that the modern construction preserves very nearly the form of the ancient fortress, and that the Larissa had a complete castle within the outer inclosure. The masonry of the interior work is a fine specimen of the second order, being without any horizontal courses; and the stones are accurately joined and smoothed on the outside; in the latter particular it differs from a piece of the exterior Hellenic wall, observable on the north-western side of the outer inclosure of the modern castle, where the stones,
:2.396
§ 2.396 though not less irregular in shape, and joined with equal accuracy, are rough on the outside, and are also of larger dimensions. The interior Larissa was equal to a square of about 200 feet. From either end of the outer fortification, the city walls may be traced on the descent of the hill; but their remains are most apparent on the south-western slope, along a projecting crest, which terminates a little beyond the theatre. The middle part of the theatre was excavated in the rock at the southern foot of the mountain; its two ends were formed of large masses of rude stones and mortar, faced with regular masonry: these are now mere shapeless heaps of rubbish. The excavated part of the theatre preserves the remains of sixty-seven rows of seats, in three divisions, separated by diazomata: in the upper division are nineteen rows, in the middle sixteen, and in the lower thirty-two, and there may, perhaps, be some more at the bottom concealed under the earth. The width of the seats, as usual in Greek theatres, was about two feet and a half. The upper division was not prolonged to the extremities of the cavea, but occupied only the excavated part in the centre. These extra seats, which the form of the hill rendered of easy construction, seem to have been intended for particular
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§ 2.397 occasions, when the throng was excessive, or, perhaps, for some of the less privileged spectators. As well as may be judged in the present ruinous state of the wings, or ends of the cavea, the theatre was about 450 feet in diameter, that of the orchestra 200 feet. The complete rows of seats, reckoning them at 50, would contain near 18,000 spectators, giving a breadth of seat of two feet to each person, or nearly 17,000 if only one foot and a half were allowed: this is on a supposition that the theatre was a semicircle; but we know from Vitruvius, confirmed by existing remains, that the Greek theatre was generally more than half a circle. If 3000 be added for this difference and for the persons seated on the nineteen or twenty incomplete seats above the centre, the audience in the theatre of Argos may have amounted to 20,000, a multitude still very short of the three myriads and more which appear from Plato to have been sometimes assembled in the Dionysiac theatre at Athens. Contiguous to the south-western angle of the theatre, on the extreme foot of the mountain, are twenty-one rows of seats excavated in the rock. These rows are rectilinear, forming a line which is nearly that of the orchestra of the theatre produced: the seats, therefore, must have belonged to some separate place
:2.398
§ 2.398 of spectacle, as they could not have commanded a view of any part of the interior of the theatre. Their position clearly proves that the upper division of the excavated seats of the theatre was not prolonged to the wings. There are foundations of walls inclosing a level space below the rectilinear seats, and steps in the rocks leading up to them in the manner of the scalae of Greek theatres. I should have supposed they might have belonged to the Stadium, did it not clearly appear from Pausanias that the Stadium was upon the ridge which projects from the opposite end of Mount Larissa. In front of the western wing of the theatre, there is a ruin of Roman tiles and mortar, with a semi-circular niche at one end, and arched recesses in one of the side walls; the other walls are quite ruined. On the side of the hill to the eastward of the theatre, and nearly on the same level with it, there is a similar but much smaller building before the mouth of a cavern, the lower part excavated in the rock, and the upper built with tiles and mortar. At the extremity there is a semi-circular niche, below it a semicircular platform cut in the rock, and behind the niche a narrow passage of brick, forming a communication from without at the eastern corner of the building. It was apparently some secret contrivance of the priests. This ruin,
:2.399
§ 2.399 though formed of brick, appears to have been the reparation of some ancient temple, as it stands on a terrace supported by a Hellenic polygonal wall, affording a fine specimen of that kind of work. At the south-western end of the hill of Larissa there are some remains of a conduit of water made of stone, which seems not to have been long out of use, though apparently of ancient construction. I am informed that the aqueduct is traceable to the village of Belish, about five miles from Argos to the north-westward. On the south-eastern side of the hill which projects from Mount Larissa in a northeastern direction, there are some remains of subterraneous passages, constructed with an angular roof, like the galleries at Tiryns. The only other vestiges of ancient Argos consist of foundations of walls, inscribed stones, and fragments of sculpture and architecture dispersed in the plain or in the churches and houses of the modern town, particularly at and near the episcopal church which stands on the outside of the modern town to the southward. The north-eastern projection of the mountain of Larissa, which I have already had occasion to notice, forms a conspicuous feature of Argos, though it rises only to one third of the height of the mountain.
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§ 2.400 It appears to be the hill by Pausanias called Deirasa word which though better suited to the neck uniting this hill with the Larissa, we may easily conceive to have had a more comprehensive meaning, and to have been applied to the entire projection. The proofs of the identity of Deiras are: first, that the ascent to the acropolis was by Deiras, and the ridge in question furnishes the only easy ascent to the summit of the mountain; secondly, that the gate of Deiras led to the river Charadrus, to Oenoe, to the sources of the Inachus, and to Lyrceia, Orneae, and Phlious, all places to which the road from Argos would naturally lead out of the city across this ridge. The ancient walls of Argos may be traced along the crest of the neck which unites the projection with the mountain, and I observed an opening in the line of the ancient walls, which I conceive to mark precisely the position of the gate of Deiras. It has been conjectured that the eastern extremity of the projecting height in question was the site of the original settlement by Phoroneus, son of Inachus, and hence called the Asty Phoronicum. But assuredly the same motive of security which induced the founder of Argos to make choice of the hill,
:2.401
§ 2.401 would lead him to prefer its highest summit. αστύ Φορωνικον I conceive to have been nothing more than an expression allusive to the story of Phoroneus having been the first to collect inhabitants in this place: it signified the city of Argos in its infancy, when it occupied the situation which became the acropolis of subsequent ages like the Cadmeia at Thebes and the Cecropia at Athens. In later times the eastern extremity of Deiras was probably the position of that second citadel which is alluded to by Livy: the height and magnitude as well as the situation of this steep rock would naturally, in the progress of military science, suggest to the Argives the utility of occupying it with an inclosed work By the aid of the ascertained positions of Larissa, Deiras, the theatre, and the temple of Lucina, which last stood, as appears from the words of Pausanias already cited, near the gate leading to Mycenae, we are enabled to throw some light on the topography of the ancient city as described by the Greek traveller. Of the sacred buildings within the city, the first in sanctity and grandeur was the temple of Apollo Lyceius, the most celebrated temple of
:2.402
§ 2.402 Apollo in Greece next to that of Delphi. It was supposed to have been originally founded by Danaus. The surname of Lyceius was derived from the same fable which gave rise to the type of the wolf's head upon the money of Argos. The image of Apollo Lyceius which Pausanias found in the temple had been made by Attalus of Athens. The temple contained the throne of Danaus and the following statues: Mercury about to make a lyre from a tortoise's shell, Ladas, who was remarkable for his swiftness, Biton carrying a bull for sacrifice on his back, and figures in wood of Mercury and Venus. Before the temple stood a pedestal on which was represented, in low relief a contest between a wolf and a bull, and Diana throwing a stone at the bull. This alluded to the contest of Gelanor and Danaus for the sovereignty,
:2.403
§ 2.403 and was said to have been dedicated by Danaus, as were two neighbouring columns supporting wooden statues of Jupiter and Diana. The exact position of the temple of Apollo Lyceius is not clearly shewn but as Pausanias speaks of it immediately after mentioning the Gate of Lucina, and as he proceeds from thence to the theatre, thus apparently continuing to skirt the mountain, the temple would seem from this circumstance to have stood in the northern part of the modern town, not far from the foot of the mountain. On the other hand it may be inferred from a comparison of a part of the preceding extract with a passage in the life of Pyrrhus by Plutarch, that the Lyceium stood on one side of the agora. He says, that when Pyrrhus advanced into the agora, he observed the figure of a wolf fighting with a bull, which seems clearly to have been the same work mentioned by Pausanias as standing in front of the temple of Apollo. The same inference may be drawn from Sophocles in the Electra, who calls the agora “the Lyceian agora of the wolf-slaying god.” And the same seems clear also from a
:2.404
§ 2.404 single word of Pausanias, who, after mentioning the theatre, returns again to the agora. The following objects were near the temple of Apollo — the tombs of Linus and of Psamathe — a statue of Apollo Agyeius — an altar of Jupiter Pluvius — the monument of Prometheus — a statue of Creugas the pugilist — a trophy for a victory over the Corinthians — a statue of Jupiter Meilichius of white marble, by Polycleitus, — and a group in stone of Biton and his brother Cleobis drawing their mother in a car to the Heraeum; the last of these was in front of a temple of Jupiter Nemeius, which contained an upright statue in brass by Lysippus. Between this temple and the theatre, Pausanias describes the tomb of Phoroneus, - a very ancient temple of Fortune — the monument of Choreia, one of the Moenades — a temple of the Hours — statues of the Seven Leaders against Thebes as named by Aeschylus, with those of the Eleven who took Thebes — the monument of Danaus — a common cenotaph in honour of the Argives who fell at Troy or in returning from thence — a temple of Jupiter Soterr-a building in which the Argive women lamented Adonis — and a
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§ 2.405 temple of Cephissus, under which it was believed that the water of that Argive river continued to flow after Neptune had deprived it of water above ground. Here was a head of Medusa in marble, said to have been made by the Cyclopes. Behind the temple of Cephissus was a place still called Criterium, because Hypermnestra was here said to have been condemned by Danaus. The temple of Cephissus was near the theatre. The theatre, among other things worthy of notice, contained a statue of the Argive Perilaus slaying the Spartan Othryades. Above the theatre stood a temple of Venus, before which there was a figure in relief, on a pillar, of Telesilla, the composer of hymns. She was represented with books at her feet, and as about to place a helmet on her head. Pausanias now descends again to the agora. Between the temple of Venus and the agora he describes the monument of Cerdo, wife of Phoroneus, temples of Aesculapius and of Diana Peitho, a brazen statue of Aeneias, a place called Delta, an altar of Jupiter Phyxius, monuments of the two Hypermnestrae, that of the daughter of Danaus being also the tomb of Lynceus — the sepulchre
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§ 2.406 of Talaus, son of Bias, and a temple of Minerva Salpinx, before which was the tomb of Epimenides. In the middle of the agora was the monument of Pyrrhus, a building of white marble, on which were represented various objects relating to his wars, and among them elephants. “This monument”, adds Pausanias, “was erected on the spot where his body was burnt, and it is considered a trophy by the Argives, but his bones are in the neighbouring temple of Ceres, where he breathed his last, and where his brazen shield is affixed above the door.” The other monuments in the agora were a tumulus said to contain the head of Medusa — the tomb of Gorgophone — a trophy raised for the victory over the Lacedaemonians under the Argive Laphaes — a temple of Latona, containing a statue by Praxiteles, with that of Chloris daughter of Niobe, standing by it — a temple of Juno Antheia, before which was a tomb of the women called Haliae — a temple of Ceres Pelasgis — the tomb of Pelasgus — a brazen basis of no great size which supported ancient statues of Diana, Jupiter, and Minerva — a temple of
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§ 2.407 Neptune Prosclystius — the tomb of Argus — a temple of the Dioscuri, which contained statues by Dipoenus and Scyllis of the Dioscuri, of their sons Anaxis and Mnasinous, and of the mothers of the latter Hilaeira and Phoebe; these works were of ebony, with the exception of a small part of the horses, which was in ivory. There were likewise in the agora a temple of Lucina dedicated by Helene, — a temple of Hecate, containing an image of the goddess in stone by Scopas, and two others in brass by Polycleitus and Naucydes. The third part of the description of Argos by Pausanias comprehends his route from the agora to the Cylarabis. The Cylarabis was a gymnasium named from its founder the son of Sthenelus. It contained a statue of Minerva Pania, and tombs of Sthenelus and Cylarabus. Near it was a polyandrium of the Argives who fell in the Athenian expedition to Sicily. Like most of the gymnasia and places of public exercise, the Cylarabis stood a little without the city-walls. Livy says it was less than 300 paces distant from the city. The gate which led to it appears from Plutarch to have been called Diampares: a little without the gate, according to Pausanias, was the tomb of Sacadas. Pyrrhus, in the attack upon Argos which terminated his restless career, having marched by
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§ 2.408 night from Nauplia, entered the city by the gate Diampares. His death and the destruction of a great part of his army was occasioned, according to Plutarch, by a mistake in the execution of his orders, by which two divisions of his army moving in opposite directions were brought into contact in a narrow street between the Cylarabis and the agora. The king fell near the sepulchre of Licymnius, the only monument mentioned by Pausanias between the agora and the Gymnasium. From the Cylarabis, Pausanias proceeds to Larissa. The monuments which he first describes appear to have been for the most part in or near a street called Coele. They were as follows: — a temple of Bacchus with a statue, brought from Caphareus by the Argives who had been wrecked there on their return from Troy — the house of Adrastus — a temple of Amphiaraus — the monument of Eriphyle — a temenus of Aesculapius — a temple of Baton. Ascending from Coele was the tomb of Hyrnetho — a temple of Aesculapius, the principal sanctuary of that deity in Argos — a sanctuary
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§ 2.409 of Diana Pheraea — a temple of Bacchus Cresius and a temple of Venus Urania. The statue of Aesculapius in his temple was of white marble; he was represented seated, with Hygieia standing beside him: they were the works of Xenophilus and Straton, of whom there were sitting figures in the same place. Adjacent to the Cresium there was a subterraneous building, which, according to the Argive antiquaries, once contained the brazen θαλαμος, or bedchamber, in which Danae was confined by her father, Acrisius. As the words which Pausanias applies to this building are very nearly the same as those employed by him in describing the treasuries of Mycenae, one cannot but suspect that the building at Argos was of the same kind, and as the side of a hill was necessary to the formation of such a structure, there is reason to presume that it stood at the foot of the Deiras, the more so as Pausanias, after indicating that the monument of Crotopus and the temples of Bacchus Cresius and of Venus Urania were near the subterraneous building, then immediately ascends by the Deiras to Larissa.
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§ 2.410 On the ascent to Larissa were the temples of Juno Acraea, and of Apollo Deiradiotes, the latter so called, because the place in which it stood was called Deiras. It contained a brazen upright statue of the god. To this the temple of Minerva Oxyderces was contiguous, and the Stadium to the latter building. In the way from thence to the acropolis, were monuments of the sons of Aegyptus. On the summit of Larissa there were temples of Jupiter Larissaeus and of Minerva. The roof of the former no longer existed, and a wooden statue of Jupiter was removed from its pedestal. But the temple of Minerva was still in good preservation, and worthy of being seen: it contained, besides other offerings, a wooden statue of Jupiter, which had a third eye in the middle of the forehead; it was said to have been brought by Sthenelus from Troy. Plutarch, on more than one occasion, gives the name of Aspis to the citadel of Argos. Cleomenes took it by first entering, in the night, the quarter between the Aspis and the theatre, which the biographer justly describes as rugged and difficult to pass over. Afterwards, when
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§ 2.411 his garrison was defending itself against the Achaeans who were in possession of the city, Cleomenes forced his way into the Aspis by breaking down certain vaults which were under it. As no remains of the city-walls are, I believe, traceable in the plain, it is difficult to form an estimate of the dimensions of the ancient Argos; but supposing it to have formed nearly a semicircle, of which the still existing vestiges of the ancient walls across the ridges of Larissa and Deiras were the diameter, the whole periphery could not have been less than five miles. The principal gates appear to have been 1. That of Deiras, leading to Mantineia, Lyrceia, Orneae, and Phlious. 2. The gate of Lucina, leading to the Heraeum, Mycenae, and Corinth, 8. The gate Diampares, leading to Nauplia and Epidaurus. 4. The gate of Temenium and Lerna, leading into Laconia by the. Thyreatis. 5. The gate leading to the sources of the Erasinus, Hysiae, and Tegea. It is not improbable that there was a sixth gate, between the gates of Lucina and Diampares, leading to Mideia and the central parts of the plain of Argos. The second, third, and fifth of these routes I have already travelled, and have added to my itinerary some remarks on their ancient topography.
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§ 2.412 The fourth I propose to follow on leaving Argos. I shall now offer a few remarks on the topography of that which quitted Argos at the gate of Deiras. Two roads issued from, this gate, one leading to the left to Mantineia, the other to Lyrceia and Orneae. Of the first of these, there seems to have been a bifurcation towards the mountains, which contained the common frontier of Argolis and Arcadia; for though in the Argolics Pausanias mentions only one road to Mantineia, in the Arcadics he describes two, both leading from Argos to that place, but approaching the city on different sides; and, as in the Argolics, he describes the single road as far only as the boundaries of the Argeia, so, in the Arcadics, he describes the two roads to Mantineia from the borders only of the Mantinice. On the road from Argos to the frontier of the Argeia, “there stood a double temple, of which one of the entrances was to the east, the other to the west; in the eastern was a wooden statue of Venus, in the western a similar statue of Mars; they were said to have been dedicated by Polyneices. After passing the torrent Charadrus, the traveller arrived at the place called Oenoe, above which was the mountain Artemisium, and a temple of Diana on the summit of the mountain.
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§ 2.413 ” From these words it appears that Oenoe stood on or near the left bank of the Rema of Argos, at the foot of Mount Malevo, otherwise called the mountain of Karya, or of Turniki, which names are those of two villages upon it, and that the ancient road approached the mountain between the two rivers now called the Rema of Argos and the Banitza. About Belissi, towards which place, perhaps, some remains of Oenoe may be found, the division of the two roads probably took place, the southern anciently called Prinus, leading by Turniki, the northern called Climax, by Kapareli and Pikernes. I shall have occasion to refer to these two ancient routes more particularly hereafter. The northernmost of the two roads which proceeded from the gate of Deiras, being that which led to Lyrceia and Orneae is thus described by Pausanias: “The other road from the gates at Deiras leads to Lyrceia. It is said that Lynceus, the only one of the fifty brothers, sons of Danaus, who was saved, escaped to this place, and that he raised a torch from hence as a signal of his safety, it having been agreed upon between him and Hypermnestra, that when he had escaped the snares of Danaus he should shew a torch, and that she should do the like from Larissa.
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§ 2.414 In memory of the event the Argives celebrate the festival of torches. The city was formerly called Lynceia, but when Lyrcus, the bastard son of Abas, got possession of the place, it received the name of Lyrceia. In the ruins there is nothing remarkable, except the statue of Lyrcus upon a pillar. To this place from Argos there is a distance of about sixty stades, and as many more from Lyrceia to Orneae. Lyrceia having been already deserted in the time of the expedition to Ilium, Homer has made no mention of it in the Catalogue, but the name of Orneae occurs as that of an inhabited place of the Argeia, before those of Phlious and Sicyon. The Orneatae were afterwards expelled from their town by the Argives, and became a part of the Argive community. In Orneae there is a temple of Diana, containing an upright statue made of wood, and another temple in common to all the gods. Beyond Orneae are the Sicyonia and the Phliasia.” Strabo describes Orneae as an uninhabited place situated above the plain of the Sicyonia upon a river, which was also called Orneae. Thucydides more accurately defines Orneae as lying between Argolis and Phliasia. And as the road thither was intermediate between the
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§ 2.415 Climax, or northern road into the Mantinice, and the pass of Tretus leading to Nemea, it is obvious that Orneae must have stood nearly in a line from Argos to Phlious, at a distance of 120 stades from the former; Lyrceia, it appears from Pausanias, was half way thither in a position visible from the Larissa of Argos. The passes over Mount Lyrceium and the adjoining hills, seem to have been the direction followed by Agis in the fourteenth year of the Peloponnesian war, when he selected this more rugged road from the Phliasia into the plain of Argos in order to avoid the Argives, who were waiting for him on the road from Nemea by the Tretus. Saminthus, which Agis destroyed after descending into the plain, may possibly have been at Kutzopodhi, where, as I have already remarked, remains of antiquity are sometimes found.
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§ 2.416 CHAPTER XXI: Argolic Peninsula For the purpose of justifying the comparative geography of the Argolic peninsula as indicated on the map, and at the same time of completing that summary view of the state of the Peloponnesus at the end of the second century of the Christian aera, which has been an incidental object throughout this work, I shall here adjoin some observations on that part of the second book of Pausanias which is comprehended between the middle of the twenty-fifth and the middle of the thirty-sixth chapters. These remarks are partly the result of a former tour in Greece, in which I followed the route of Pausanias from Argos to Epidaurus and to Aegina: with regard to Troezen, Hermione, Mases, and Asine I am indebted either to other travellers, or to oral information which I obtained in the neighbouring districts. The road to Epidaurus issued from Argos, as
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§ 2.417 I have already shewn at the gate Diampares. It left the ruins of Tiryns a little on the right, and passed between Nauplia, and Mideia, of which latter “nothing remained but the site. Lessa was a town on the road to Epidaurus; it contained a temple of Minerva and a statue not at all different from that in the acropolis of Argos [i.e. a wooden statue of Jupiter with three eyes]. Above Lessa rose the mountain Arachnaeum, which before the reign of Inachus was called Sapyselaton. It contained altars of Jupiter and Juno, at which there were sacrifices in times of drought. Near Lessa the district of the Epidaurii bordered upon the Argeia, but the road passed by the temple of Aesculapius before it arrived at the city of Epidaurus. The sacred grove was surrounded on every side by mountains. One of them was called Tittheium and the other Cynortium; on the latter stood a temple of Apollo Maleatas. On the ascent to Mount Coryphaeum there was an olive tree by the road side called Strepte [twisted]; which was said to have been bent into that form by Hercules. Whether he assigned it for a boundary to the Asinaei,” adds Pausanias, “I am not informed, since the country being now desolate, it is not easy to ascertain its boundaries in any part.”
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§ 2.418 Upon the summit of the mountain was a temple of Minerva Coryphaea, which was mentioned in a poem of Telesilla. On the descent to the city of the Epidaurii there was a place grown with wild olives called Hyrnethium, and not far from the city a sepulchre of Melissa, wife of Periander, the son of Cypselus. The exact situation of Mideia I was unable to determine, which is not surprising, as nothing but vestiges of it remained in the time of Pausanias. It is clear, however, as well from this passage as from an expression of Strabo indicating the vicinity of Mideia to Tiryns and to Prosymna, which last, as we have seen, was near the Heraeum, that Mideia stood on the foot of the hills which border the Argolic plain, and about eastward of Tiryns. The road to Epidaurus, after passing these places, leads through a succession of narrow valleys traversed by streams which flow from Mount Arachnaeum towards the Argolic Gulf. At three places between Anapli ( Nauplia ) and Lykurio ( Lessa ), I observed vestiges of Hellenic walls, besides the ruins of two castles on the right of the road at the entrance of valleys conducting to the sea. These were all probably works of defence, and as such may
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§ 2.419 have been passed over in silence by Pausanias, because they contained nothing interesting to his favorite objects of inquiry. The further of the two castles, which stands at about two thirds of the distance between Nauplia and Lessa, is, from its state of preservation, one of the best specimens I know of a Hellenic fortress; and it appears to be of a time when the military architecture of the Greeks was in its perfection. In approaching the site of Lessa the valley, becomes wider and more cultivable, and is altogether four or five miles in length, ending eastward at the villages of Lykurio and Koroni: beyond these it is separated from the vale of Iero by a ridge of heights, in which there is a narrow opening leading into that valley; the opening was anciently fortified by two towers of which the foundations still exist; they mark the common boundary of the Argeia and Epidauria alluded to by Pausanias. The valley of Lessa is inclosed between Mount Arachnaeum and a lower ridge, through a rocky opening in which the waters of the vale of Lessa, after uniting into a single stream, find their way to the sea-coast of the Asinaea. The foundations of the walls of Lessa inclose a hill upon the foot of which stands the village of Lykurio. This hill is a last slope or projection of the range of Arachnaeum; I take it to be the ancient Mount Tittheium.
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§ 2.420 On the outside of the walls of Lessa near the foot of the mountain, I found the remains of an ancient pyramid near a church, which contains some Ionic columns. The lower part only of the pyramid remains, it was faced with masonry of the polygonal kind and had a base of near forty feet square. The name Koroni attached to the village south-eastward of Lykurio is curious, as having evidently been derived from Coronis the reputed mother of Aesculapius, and consequently as having, like the name Palamidhi at Anapli, existed here from the earliest times, although no mention of it occurs in ancient authors. The temple of Aesculapius and the sacred αλσος, or grove of the Epidaurii, one of the most renowned places in Greece for its sanctity, riches, and the splendour of the sacred offerings which adorned it, was situated at the upper end of a valley, there terminated by a semicircle of steep hills, from which several torrents descend and unite at the south-western extremity of the valley, from whence the stream passes through an opening in the mountains, and joins, I believe, the river of Lessa. The place is now called Sto Iero, that is to say, “the temple or sacred place”, probably the name by which it
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§ 2.421 was always distinguished in common discourse by the Epidaurii, whose city was several miles distant. The buildings described by Pausanias are: first, the temple of Aesculapius, containing a chryselephantine statue of the god, inscribed as the work of Thrasymedes of Parus, and half the size of the Jupiter, by Phidias, at Olympia. Aesculapius was seated on a throne, holding a staff in one hand, resting the other on the head of a serpent, a dog lying at his feet. Upon [the sides of] the throne were represented Chimaera destroyed by Bellerophontes, and Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa. On one side of the temple was a place where the suppliants of the god slept, and sought relief from their complaints by means of the interpretation which was given to their dreams by the priests. Near the temple stood the Tholus, a circular building of white marble, built by Polycleitus of Argos, and containing two pictures by Pausias, one of Love laying aside his bow and assuming the lyre, the other of Methe, or Intoxication, represented by a woman drinking out of a glass, through which her face was seen. The sacred peribolus had formerly contained many pillars, bearing inscriptions which
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§ 2.422 recorded the names of persons who had been cured here, together with their diseases and the mode of treatment: but six of them only remained in the time of Pausanias; the inscriptions were in the Doric dialect. Apart from the other columns was one of great antiquity, which commemorated the dedication of twenty horses by Hippolytus. Of the theatre, Pausanias speaks in the following terms: “The Epidaurii have a theatre in their sacred place, which appears to me particularly well worthy of examination: the theatres of the Romans, indeed, excel all others in ornament, and surpass in size even that of Megalopolis in Arcadia, but in harmony and beauty of workmanship what artist can come into competition with Polycleitus, who constructed both the theatre and the tholus of the Epidaurii?” The other objects in the sacred grove, were temples of Venus, of Themis, and of Diana, a statue of Epione, wife of Aesculapius — a κρηνη, or artificial fountain, covered with a roof and handsomely adorned — a stadium, which, as usual among the Greeks, was constructed of earth, and the following works erected by Antoninus Pius before he was emperor; namely, a bath, called the Bath of Aesculapius, a temple of the Epidotae, a temple dedicated to Hygieia, and to
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§ 2.423 Aesculapius, and Apollo surnamed the Egyptian, and a building erected beyond the sacred precincts for the reception of the dying and of women in labour, because it was unlawful to be born or to die within the inclosure. Antoninus repaired also the stoa of Cotys, which was an edifice of unburnt bricks, and he added a receptacle for water to the ancient temple of Apollo Maleatas upon Mount Cynortium. The sacred peribolus is less than a mile in circumference; it was confined on two sides by steep hills, and on the other two by a wall, which appears to have formed a right angle in the lowest and most level part of the valley, and is still traceable in several places. Of some of the buildings described by Pausanias, there are considerable remains, but of the temple which was situated, as might be expected, about the middle of the peribolus, only a part of the foundations are to be seen above ground; by an excavation, not only its dimensions, but many other particulars of its construction would probably be ascertained. There exists also a part of the foundations, and some remains of

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