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

§ 2.424 the circular cell of the Tholus, which shew that it was about twenty feet in diameter. I observed some pieces of it covered with defaced inscriptions, which probably contained records of the same kind as those upon the stelae mentioned by Pausanias, and which, according to Strabo, were repeated upon numerous tablets suspended in the temple, as occurred also at Cos and Tricca. But the most remarkable ruin at Iero is the theatre, and, from the renown of its architect, it may be considered as one of the most curious remains of antiquity in Greece. Although no traces of the proscenium remain, and many of the seats made of white marble are displaced by the bushes which have grown among them, it is in better preservation than any other theatre in Greece, except that which exists near Trametzus in Epirus, not far from Ioannina. Its details, nevertheless, cannot be ascertained with great accuracy on account of the ruined state of the upper part of the edifice, and the accumulation of earth and stones below; enough however remains to shew that the orchestra was about ninety feet in length, and the entire theatre about 370 feet in diameter: thirty-two rows of seats still appear above ground in a lower division, which is separated by a diazoma from an upper, consisting of twenty seats. Twenty-four scalae, or flights of steps, diverging in equidistant radii

§ 2.425 from the bottom to the top, formed the communications with the seats. The theatre, when complete, was capable of containing 12,000 spectators. Of the other remains of antiquity at Iero, I could recognize only those of the Stadium, and near it the ruins of two cisterns and a bath, which are evidently some of the works of Antoninus. Of the Stadium the circular end and a part of the adjacent sides remain, with parts of fifteen rows of seats. Coryphaeum I take to have been the mountain which rises above the theatre to the south-east, first, because the name seems most applicable to the highest of the summits which surround the valley; secondly, because it appears, from the observation of Pausanias on the olive-tree called Strepte, that the boundaries between the Epidaurii and Asinaei were in Mount Coryphaeum, and those boundaries could only have been in a southern direction from Epidaurus. Of the other two mountains named by Pausanias, the one which rises above Lessa I take to have been the Tittheium; for it seems probable that the temple of Apollo Maleatae, which stood upon Mount Cynortium, and which was repaired or added to by Antoninus, was in the more immediate vicinity of the Sacred Grove.

§ 2.426 The Hierum of Epidauria enjoyed its fame and riches for a great length of time. Near five centuries before the visit of Pausanias, Aesculapius of Epidaurus was in such repute, that a deputation was decreed at Rome to implore his aid in curing a pestilence which ravaged the city and surrounding country. A ship was soon afterwards sent to Epidaurus, and one of the sacred serpents carried back to Rome When L. Aemilius Paullus visited the Hierum after the conquest of Macedonia, it was rich in gifts presented by those who had here obtained relief from their diseases; in the time of Livy it had been plundered of many of those valuable offerings. Strabo, a contemporary of the Latin historian, describes the Epidaurian sanctuary as “a place renowned for the cure of all sorts of diseases, and always full of invalids” and he adds, “that the walls of the temple were covered with tablets

§ 2.427 descriptive of the cures, as in the temples of Cos and Tricca.” It is to the secluded situation of Iero that we are indebted for what still remains of the monuments of the grove of Aesculapius. When Anapli was the seat of government in the Morea, they suffered great injury from the Turks of that place, who often made use of the materials in the construction or reparation of their farms, mosks, houses, and fortifications. They are still subject to dilapidation, when the Turkish spahi of a neighbouring village erects a tower or a tjiftlik, or when the Greeks have purchased permission to build or repair one of their churches. It is to be hoped, however, that the retired position, the distance from the sea-coast, and the desolate state of the surrounding country, may long serve to protect these remains, which are equally valuable as works of art, and as furnishing the best preserved specimen of one of those detached hiera, furnished with all the appendages of Hellenic civilization, of which there were not many other examples in Greece. Those which most nearly resembled it were the Altis of Olympia, the Posidonium of the Isthmus, and the Hierum of Jupiter at Nemea; but these were not much frequented, except at the great periodical festivals whereas the temple of the Epidaurian Aesculapius,

§ 2.428 besides being a scene of agonistic exhibition in common with every other place in Greece which possessed a stadium and a theatre; and besides being the resort of sick persons, like the other temples of the healing god, far excelled them all in the number of the votaries who frequented it in every season. It was, in short, the most fashionable place of resort of Grecian invalids seeking relief from a change of air or of place, or of medical treatment. Hither they flocked from every part of the country, to commit themselves to the care of the servants of Aesculapius, who, equally dexterous as priests and as physicians, provided themselves with resources in either capacity, which they could turn to the benefit of their patients', infirmities and their own profit. If modern physicians, by means of the pretended virtues of medicinal waters, have often had the art to create a prejudice producing salutary effects on the bodily complaints of their patients, one cannot be surprised that the luxurious valetudinarians of Greece should have here derived ideal benefits of equal efficacy from the numen loci, assisted by the interesting diversions which the contests of the Asclepian Games afforded, or the other amusements of the theatre and stadium. On the score of natural advantages, however, the Epidaurian αλσος seems to have

§ 2.429 little to recommend it: it is difficult to believe that a narrow valley, supplied with water only from cisterns, occasional torrents, or distant springs, and closely surrounded with steep woody hills, concentrating an excessive heat in summer, could have been generally beneficial to those diseases which admit of mitigation or cure from a change of place and air. The sea breezes and delicious climate of Cos, the mountain air, the woods and fountains of Pellene and Titane, or even the wide spreading plains around the Thessalian Tricca, seem to have been preferable to this narrow valley of the Epidauria, of which the long continued reputation, without any mineral waters or other natural peculiarity to mark it for a place of curative influence, furnishes a most remarkable instance, of the power of faith among the ancients, and of the permanence of their manners. It was chiefly by its sacred grove and the reputation of Aesculapius for the cure of human infirmities, that the city, of Epidaurus was noted in the later ages of Greece. Its distance from the Hierum was reckoned at five Roman miles. Strabo has accurately described it as situated in a recess of the Saronic gulf, open to the north-east, and as backed by high mountains.

§ 2.430 In the time of the Peloponnesian war, it appears to have been strongly fortified; under Augustus its circuit was no more than fifteen stades, whence it appears that Epidaurus was already at that time reduced to the promontory where we now see, in many parts, the foundations of Hellenic walls along the edge of the cliffs. A small neighbouring village is still called Pidhavro, which is the ancient name with the same accent, and with the loss only of the initial short vowel, a common Romaic corruption. Around Pidhavro there is a small plain watered by a torrent, and chiefly cultivated with vines as it was in the time of Homer. The slope of the mountain which rises above the valley is covered with wild olives, the descendants of those which formerly surrounded the monument of Hyrnetho, daughter of Temenus and wife of Deiphontes, whose tragic story occupies the greater part of one of the chapters of Pausanias. The objects noticed at Epidaurus by the Greek traveller, were — in the acropolis, a remarkable wooden statue of Minerva surnamed Cissaea. In the city, an open temenus of

§ 2.431 Aesculapius containing statues, of Parian marble, of the god and his wife Epione; temples of Bacchus, of Diana, and of Venus, and on a cape at the harbour a temple of Juno. From Epidaurus Pausanias proceeds to Aegina, once a dependence of that city. Strabo describes Aegina with his usual elegance of expression, and with an accuracy for which he is not so often remarkable. “Why need we say,” exclaims the Geographer, “that Aegina is one of the most celebrated of islands — the native country of Aeacus and the Aeacidae, which once enjoyed the dominion of the seas, and contended with Athens itself for the prize of superior glory in the battle with the Persian fleet at Salamis? The circumference of the island is said to be 180 stades. The city, which bears the same name as the island, is on the south-western side. The island is surrounded by Attica, Megara, and the parts of Peloponnesus towards Epidaurus, and is distant about 100 stades from each. Its eastern and southern sides are washed by the Myrtoan and Cretan seas. Many small islands lie between it and the continent: towards the sea, Belbina only. Its land possesses a deep soil, but is stony on the surface, particularly in the plain; hence it is generally naked,

§ 2.432 [of trees] but sufficiently productive of barley. It was anciently called Oenone.” Pausanias justly remarks, that “The numerous rocks and shallows which surround Aegina, render it difficult and hazardous of approach.” They were fabled to have been provisions of Aeacus against the approach of pirates and enemies. The effect of industry excited by necessity, in raising to opulence places the least favoured by nature, has been exemplified in the islands of Greece in every age. The present commercial importance of Ydhra, Psara, and Petza, is not less surprising than that of Aegina in the early periods of Grecian history, though, as the wealth of states so situated, must in great measure be proportionate to that of the surrounding countries, the commercial islands of the modern Greeks are poor compared with the ancient Aegina, which rivalled the most opulent of the Hellenic republics. Before the Athenians had begun to coin a metallic medium of commercial exchange, and when their navy was in its infancy the Aeginetae possessed silver money, had acquired the command of the Grecian seas by their ships, and shaking off their ancient dependence upon Epidaurus, were sufficiently powerful to insult the

§ 2.433 neighbouring coasts, as well those of their late metropolis on the Peloponnesian side, as those of the people on the opposite shore of the Saronic Gulf, who were thereafter to be their masters. According to Thucydides, one of the most important events in Grecian history, the Peloponnesian war, originated in great measure in the impatience of the Aeginetae, under the alleged injustice of their neighbours of Athens, combined with the temptation to enter into a war with Athens, which was excited at Corinth and Sparta by the hope of assistance from the Aeginetan fleet. Like the majority of the islands of the Aegaean sea, Aegina preserves its ancient name unaltered. Its western half consists of a stony plain, well cultivated with corn. The remainder is mountainous, and may be divided into two parts; a very remarkable conical hill, now called the Oros, which occupies all the southern extremity, and the ridge of Panhellenium, on the north-eastern side. Between the latter and the plain there are some narrow cultivated slopes, lying amidst a cluster of irregular hills. It is among these heights, on a pointed hill towards the northern coast, that the modern town, or rather village, is situated.

§ 2.434 The following are the remarks of Pausanias upon the ports and city of Aegina: Near the port principally frequented by shipping, there was a temple of Venus, and in the most conspicuous part of the city the Aeaceium, a quadrangular inclosure built of white marble, containing some old olive trees: in the entrance stood statues of the deputies sent by the Greeks to Aeacus, to prevail upon him to sacrifice and pray for rain to Jupiter Panhellenius. Near the Aeaceium was the tomb of Phocus; it was a barrow surrounded with a circular basis, and was crowned with a rude stone; with this stone Phocus was said to have been killed by his half brother Peleus, whose own brother Telamon, afterwards entering the port called Secret by night, raised the tomb to Phocus. Not far from the Secret port there was a handsome theatre, greatly resembling that of the Epidaurii in magnitude and workmanship. Behind it was the Stadium, which, with one of its sides, supported the theatre. There were temples at no great distance from one another, dedicated to Apollo, to Diana, and to Bacchus. That of Apollo had a naked wooden statue, of Aeginetan workmanship, the Diana was draped, the Bacchus clothed and bearded. In a different part

§ 2.435 of the city was a temple of Aesculapius, with a seated statue of stone. But of all the deities worshipped by the Aeginetae, the greatest veneration was paid to Hecate. Her temple, which stood within a peribolus, contained a wooden statue by Myron, who had represented the goddess with a single head and body; the Athenians, in the opinion of Pausanias, were the first to give her a triple form, as Alcamenes had done in the Hecate Epipyrgidia, which stood near the temple of Victory without wings, in the acropolis of Athens. On the road towards the mountain of Jupiter Panhellenius there was a temple of Aphaea, to whom Pindar wrote a hymn for the Aeginetae. She was the same as Britomartis, and the Dictynna of the Cretans. Herodotus speaks of a temple of Minerva at Aegina, which has not been noticed by Pausanias. To the traveller who approaches Aegina from the westward, the position of the ancient city is indicated by a tumulus near the northwestern cape, not far to the southward of which rise two Doric columns, of the most elegant form, one wanting the capital and the upper part of the shaft, the other complete, with a part of the architrave. The column is twenty-five feet in height, including the capital,

§ 2.436 and three feet nine inches in diameter at the base. At the foot of the hill, to the southward of where these columns stand, is an oval port, sheltered by two ancient moles, which leave only a narrow passage in the middle between the remains of towers, which stood on either side of the entrance. Pursuing the same direction, we find another oval port, twice as large as the former. Its entrance is protected in the same manner by ancient walls or moles, fifteen or twenty feet thick, which, though now in many places below the surface of the water, still shelter these two little bays, and furnish a commodious protection to the small vessels which navigate the gulf. Between the two harbours there appear to have been a succession of small basins, separated from the sea by a wall, and communicating with the two harbours. On the northern side of the promontory, upon which stand the two columns, there was an open harbour or roadsted, protected to the north by a breakwater, on which there appears to have stood a wall, which formed a prolongation of the walls of the land-front of the city. There is no more remarkable example in Greece of the labour and expense bestowed by the ancients in forming and protecting their artificial harbours. The walls of the city are still traced through their whole extent on the land side.

§ 2.437 They were about ten feet thick, and constructed with towers at intervals not always equal. There appear to have been three principal entrances, of which that near the middle of the land front, leading to the Panhellenium, was constructed apparently like the chief gate of the city of Plataea, with a retired wall between two round towers. To the southward the town walls abutted upon the mole of the great harbour, which formed a continuation of the city wall, in the same manner as I have just stated that wall to have terminated in the northern roadsted. This appears indeed to have been the usual mode among the Greeks of fortifying their maritime towns, as instanced at Athens, Eleusis, and many other places. The ports were thus κλειστοι λιμένες, were placed within the walls of the town, and might be closed by a chain. At the head of the larger port stand some modern houses and magazines; the rest of the ground inclosed within the ancient walls is uneven, and retains traces of buildings, though none of the remains, except the extant columns, can be referred to any of the buildings described by Pausanias. That no vestiges should be seen of the stadium and theatre, the latter of which was almost equal in size to that of Epidaurus, can only be accounted for by their proximity

§ 2.438 to the harbour, and the convenience of the wrought masses of the seats for modern constructions. It can hardly be doubted that the larger harbour is that which Pausanias describes as “the port chiefly frequented by ships” and near which stood the temple of Venus. The smaller, consequently, is in all probability the secret port, near which was the theatre, the stadium, and temples of Apollo, Diana, and Bacchus. The Aeaceium, situated in the most conspicuous part of the city, may have been upon the elevated level towards the plain. The temple to which the existing columns belonged was of such large dimensions, that we may infer from this circumstance alone, that it was the temple of Hecate, the principal deity of the Aeginetae. There are considerable remains of the peribolus, within which it stood; and these walls are prolonged beyond the temple so as to inclose all the cape, and form a kind of citadel. To judge by the many ruined churches upon the site of the city of Aegina, the place was once occupied by a Christian town of some importance; in later times it became an useful station to the ships of the Venetians, as we find by an inscription which still remained towards the close of the last century on a tower at

§ 2.439 the entrance of the great port which had been erected by Aloys Mocenigo, by order of the Doge, F. Morosini, a short time before his death, in the year 1693. After the Venetians had restored the Morea to the Turks in 1715, the maritime parts of Greece were again cruelly pillaged by the pirates of various nations, who have in all ages found the rocky coasts and islands of this country propitious to their lawless pursuits. It was probably the fear of these robbers, that drove the people of Aegina from the site of the ancient city into the present town. It does not appear from Pausanias on what part of the road from the ancient city to the Panhellenium the temple of Aphaea stood, nor do any remains of it exist to supply his deficiency. Its most probable position, I think, is that of the modern town itself. There was also in Aegina a temple or sanctuary, containing statues of Lamia and Auxesia in a kneeling posture, made of Athenian olivewood. The place was called Oea; it was twenty stades distant from the city, in the inland part of the island. Herodotus, who has given this description of Oea, confirms its inland position, by relating that the Aeginetae and Argives affirmed, that when the Athenians sent an expedition to Aegina to carry off the statues

§ 2.440 of Lamia and Auxesia, their retreat from Oia to the coast of the island was cut off by the Argive forces, who destroyed them all. Pausanias, alluding to this passage in the history of Herodotus, adds, that he himself sacrificed to the statues, and that the ceremony was similar to that of Eleusis. He agrees with Herodotus in shewing that the figures were made of olive-wood, but he does not mention their kneeling posture, although there was an absurd fable attached to this peculiarity of the statues, precisely of the kind in which Pausanias delighted. Of the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, Pausanias, as in the case of some others of the most important buildings in Greece, has told us scarcely any thing, having considered, perhaps, any particular description of such great edifices as not forming a part of the design of his work, and hence, by a natural consequence, being more brief than usual upon such subjects. He remarks only, that Mount Panhellenium contained nothing worthy of notice, except the temple which Aeacus was said to have erected to Jupiter. Without our experience of his brevity upon similar occasions, it would be difficult to imagine that by these few words he intended to refer to the great temple, of which the magnificent ruins will continue, as long as they

§ 2.441 exist, to attract persons of taste to Greece from every civilized nation of the globe. The temple is situated in the midst of a forest of pines upon the summit of a mountain, separated by a narrow valley from the hill upon which stands the modern town of Eghina. At the foot of the mountain there is a small port near the north-eastern cape of the island. The port, the cape, and a small neighbouring island, are all known by the name of Turla. The length of the temple upon the stylobate, or upper step of the κρηπις, is ninety-four feet, the breadth forty-five. The columns of the peristyle are three feet three inches in diameter at the base, and seventeen feet two inches high, including the capital. Of these columns there were thirty-two when the temple was complete: six at the ends, and twelve in the sides. The cell had a door at either end, opening into the pronaos and posticum, in each of which were two columns of three feet two inches in diameter between antae. Within the cell were columns, two feet four inches in diameter, standing in a double row. There are now standing twenty-one columns of the peristyle, with their architraves; six of the eastern front, five of the northern side, and three of the southern, are continuous without any interruption. The four columns of the pronaos and

§ 2.442 posticum are all standing, and the lower parts of five within the cell. The temple was erected upon a large paved platform or peribolus, and must, when complete, have been one of the most remarkable examples in Greece of the majesty and beauty of its sacred edifices, as well as of the admirable taste with which the Greeks enhanced those qualities by an attention to local situation and surrounding scenery. It is not only in itself one of the finest specimens of Grecian architecture, but is the more curious as being in all probability the most ancient example of the Doric order in Greece, with the exception of the columns at Corinth. The Troezenii bordered upon the Epidaurii to the south-east, and possessed all the eastern promontory of the Peloponnesus, together with the peninsula of Methana and the island of Calaureia, each of which incloses, between it and the main coast, a large and well sheltered bay. The most valuable part of the territory of Troezen was a fine maritime plain bounded to the southward by a chain of mountains, which separated the Troezenia from the district of Hermione. A city possessing a territory which

§ 2.443 combined so many advantages, was naturally of considerable importance. Its acropolis was on the summit of a rugged height, overlooking tire widest parts of the plain. The city occupied the slope and foot of the same hill, and appears to have been nearly three miles in circumference. It flourished at a very remote age. Like Athens, it was a fabled subject of contest between Neptune and Minerva, of each of whom the emblems, as Pausanias has remarked, and as we still see, were represented on its coins; before its original name of Poseidonia had been exchanged for that of Troezen, it sent forth one of the earliest colonies to Italy, and there founded Poseidonia, or Paestum, of which the magnificent ruins still subsist. The agora of Troezen contained a temple of Diana Soteira, founded by Theseus, in which were altars of the infernal gods. Behind the temple was the monument of Pittheus, surmounted by three chairs of white marble, in which Pittheus and two assessors were said to have given judgement. Not far from thence stood the Museium, or sanctuary of the Muses, and near it an altar on which the Troezenii sacrificed to the Muses and to Sleep, whom they considered the most friendly of all deities to the Muses.

§ 2.444 Near the Theatre was the temple of Diana Lyceia, built by Hippolytus. Before the temple there was a stone, called the Sacred, on which nine Troezenii were said to have expurgated Orestes for the murder of his mother; near it were altars of Bacchus Saotes, of the Themides, and of the Sun the Liberator. A stoa in the agora contained statues in stone of some of the Athenian women and children who were committed to the care of the Troezenii at the time of the Persian invasion. The temple of Apollo Thearius erected by Pittheus, was the most ancient temple which Pausanias knew. It contained a statue of Apollo and wooden statues of the Dioscuri, all the three by Hermon, a native artist. Before this temple stood a building, called the Tent of Orestes, in which Orestes took refuge before his expiation; before the building grew a bay tree. At the fountain Hippocrene stood a statue of Hermes Polygius, and a wild olive, reported to have been a regermination of the club of Hercules, which he cut from a tree at the marsh Saronis, and (after his labours) here dedicated. There

§ 2.445 was a temple of Jupiter Soter, said to have been erected by Aetius. But the most noted sanctuary at Troezen was the inclosure of Hippolytus, who was believed by the Troezenii not to have been dragged by his horses, and thus killed, but to have been deified, and to be the constellation called Auriga. The temenus contained a temple, and ancient statue of Hippolytus, and a temple of Apollo Epibaterius, all dedicated by Diomedes. Lamia and Auxesia were also worshipped here. On one side of the peribolus was the stadium of Hippolytus, above which was the temple of Venus Catascopia, so called, because from thence Phaedra beheld Hippolytus, as he exercised in the stadium. Here were a tomb of Phaedra, a monument of Hippolytus, a statue of Aesculapius, by Timotheus, and a myrtle, with punctures in the leaves, which were fabled to have been so formed by Phaedra, in the agony of her passion, by means of the needle of the clasp of her hair. There was a building, called the house of Hippolytus, before which was a fountain, surnamed the Herculean. In the acropolis was the temple of Minerva Polias, or Sthenias, with a wooden statue, by Callon of Aegina: on the

§ 2.446 descent from thence a temple of Pan Lyterius. Towards the plain stood a temple of Isis, built by the Halicarnassenses, who were a colony from Troezen; it contained a statue dedicated by the Troezenii. Above the temple of Isis was that of Venus Ascraea. Pausanias, without venturing to express any doubts as to the extraordinary antiquity ascribed to some of their buildings by the Troezenii, remarks only that they were a people more given to boast of their ancestral dignity, than any whom he knew. In fact, it is more probable that the monuments, of which they attributed the foundation to Pittheus, Theseus, Hippolytus, or Diomedes, were successors on the same site with the same names, than the original buildings themselves. Nothing now subsists of Troezen but pieces of wall of Hellenic masonry or of Roman brick-work, dispersed over the lower slope of the height, upon which stood the acropolis, and over the plain at its foot. There are, likewise, many ruined churches and chapels on the site, proving the former importance of Dhamala, which is still a bishopric of the Corinthian province. Chandler remarked the remains of the temple of Venus Catascopia overlooking the cavity formerly occupied by the Stadium, and he found among the ruins several

§ 2.447 inscriptions, which he published. Of the Troezenian rivers, Hylycus and Chrysorrhoas, one flows through the gorges on the eastern side of the height of the acropolis, the other on the west. As the latter is the larger, and turns some mills, we may infer that it was that Chrysorrhoas which, according to Pausanias, still flowed, when a nine years' scarcity of rain had dried up all the other waters. Another natural feature of the ancient site is the fountain Hippocrene, at the foot of the hill of the acropolis. By these indications of the topography, some guidance is afforded to the position of the agora, and of some of the buildings of the city. Near the acropolis, on the eastern side, where the road to Hermione left the city, there was a temple of Neptune Phytalmius near the walls, and not far from it that of Ceres Thesmophorus. At a little distance on the road was the rock, more anciently called the altar of Jupiter Sthenius, under which Theseus is fabled to have found the slippers and sword of Aegeus; from hence it was that he set out on his adventurous journey to Athens, and here he afterwards founded a temple to Venus Nymphas, when he espoused Helene. Here also was the source of the river Hylycus, more anciently called

§ 2.448 Taurius; the source was named Hyoessa. It is probably the same fountain alluded to by Euripides in the Hippolytus, as being near the towers of the city. One of the harbours of the Troezenia was called Celenderis. In descending to it from the city occurred Genethlium, a place so called because Theseus was said to have been born there: before it was a temple of Mars, in the place where Theseus conquered the Amazons. On the way to the part of the sea called Psiphaea there was a wild olive tree, named the crooked Rhachus; it was said that the branches of this tree having caught the reins of Hippolytus, caused his chariot to be overturned. Not far from the Rhachus was the temple of Diana Saronia. Of this building Pausanias had before said that it was founded by the king Saron, successor of Althepus, near a shallow muddy salt water lake (or part of the sea), called from

§ 2.449 the temple the lake Phoebaea, but which name was afterwards changed to that of Saronis, in consequence of Saron having been drowned there in the pursuit of a stag, and having been buried within the sacred peribolus. This description shews the Phoebaea to have been a lagoon, and identifies it, therefore, with that at the head of the bay of Methana, which receives the Chrysorrhoas, and several other streams, flowing from the western extremity of the mountain of Troezen. Some words of Euripides also, which allude to the Phoebaea, are exactly applicable to a maritime lagoon. As to Psiphaea, it may be suspected that Ψιφαίαν is a textual error for Φοιβαίαν, the Rhachus Streptus having been near the temple of Diana, which was on the shore of the Phoebaea; on the other hand it must be admitted, that, supposing the word to have been Psephaea, it would be well adapted, in contradistinction to the muddy lagoon, to any part of the shore, which is bold and covered with pebbles. Celenderis I take to have been the Hellenic fortress, which Chandler observed near the northern side of the bay of Troezen, and that the harbour of Celenderis was the western extremity of this great bay.

§ 2.450 The Troezenii had another port on the shore, immediately below the city, where still exist the remains of a mole, and other foundations. Strabo says of Troezen, “that it was formerly called Poseidonia, that it lay fifteen stades above the sea, and that in face of its harbour called Pogon, lay the island Calaureia, which was thirty stades in circuit, and separated from the continent by a strait of four stades.” He adds, that “there was a temple of Neptune in Calaureia, enjoying the right of asylum, and formerly the seat of a kind of Amphictyonic council from seven cities, which had charge of the sacrifices in common. These cities were Hermione, Epidaurus, Aegina, Athens, Prasias, Nauplia, and Orchomenus of Boeotia. For the Nauplienses the Argives contributed, and for the Prasienses the Lacedaemonians.” In these passages we perceive that Strabo alludes only to one Troezenian island: from Pausanias, however, we learn, that there was a second island named “Hiera, containing a temple of Minerva Apaturia, and a monument of Sphaerus, said to have been charioteer of Pelops, from whence the island was called Sphaeria, a name afterwards changed to Hiera.” He observes likewise, that “the strait between Hiera

§ 2.451 and the main land was narrow, and so shallow that there was a passage over it on foot”; “that Calaureia had been anciently sacred to Apollo, and Delphi to Neptune; but that the two gods having interchanged them, the worship of Neptune was instituted at Calaureia, and a temple built there, and that within the peribolus of the temple there was a monument of Demosthenes, who received honours from the inhabitants of Calaureia as well as in other parts of Greece.” There is now only one island on the Troezenian coast; but as it consists of two hilly peninsulas united together by a narrow sand-bank, it can hardly be doubted, on a reference to Pausanias, that this bank is of recent formation, and that what is now called the island of Poro comprehends what was formerly the two islands of Hiera and Calaureia, the latter having been the greater, and the former the smaller peninsula. The circumference of the smaller is about equal to what Strabo assigns to Calaureia, namely, thirty stades: it consists of a rocky height, on the southern face of which stands the modern town of Poro. The strait is in general of the breadth which Strabo indicates, and it is fordable, as Pausanias remarks, a circumstance which has given rise to the modern name of the town. The circumference assigned

§ 2.452 by Strabo to Calaureia can hardly be supposed an error in the text, as he twice mentions the same number, and describes the island as a νησίδιον. It would seem, therefore, that he had never seen the places himself, and had adopted some erroneous information concerning them. In regard to the distance between Troezen and the sea (fifteen stades), the geographer is more correct; this, in fact, is about the distance of Dhamala from the nearest part of the shore. We learn from Herodotus as well as from Strabo, that the Troezenian bay was called Pogon. It was the place of assembly of a part of the Greek fleet before the battle of Salamis. The remains of the town of Calaureia and of the celebrated temple of Neptune, to which Demosthenes fled from the agents of Antipater, and where the orator destroyed himself by poison when he found that the asylum would not be respected by his enemy, were discovered by Dr. Chandler in 1765, near the middle of the island. He found here a small Doric temple reduced to a heap of ruins, and copied an inscription from the pedestal of a statue which had been erected by the Calaureitae to Eumenes, King of Pergamum. The vicinity of the populous modern towns of Ydhra, Petza,

§ 2.453 and Poro, has been detrimental to the preservation of these ruins, as well as those of Troezen, Hermione, and the other places on the neighbouring coasts. When Chandler visited Calaureia, it was particularly resorted to, notwithstanding its lofty situation and the rugged ascent to it from the sea-coast, by the masons of Ydhra, who employed the ready wrought stones of the ancient building in the construction of a new convent in their native island. The name Methana appears to have been the Doric form of Methone which latter Thucydides uses, writing in the Attic dialect. The Doric name, however, has prevailed to the present day, exactly the same form in which Strabo and Pausanias employ it, that is to say, as a neuter plural. Pausanias describes Methana as “an isthmus of the Peloponnesus extending far into the sea, in which there was a small maritime city called Methana. The agora contained a temple of Isis, and statues of Mercury and Hercules. Thirty stades from the city were hot baths, said to have first appeared in the reign of Antigonus, son of Demetrius.”

§ 2.454 “It is reported”, he adds, “that the water did not immediately shew itself, but that fire came out of the earth in great quantities, and that when the fire ceased, the water issued, which still continues to flow, and which is hot and extremely salt”: he then remarks, that “there is no cold water for the use of the bather, nor can he with safety immerge himself in the sea, as it abounds with sea-dogs and other monsters.” Strabo, without quoting any authority, says, that a hill seven stades in height, and a mound of rocks as large as towers were thrown up; that the place was inaccessible from the heat and sulphureous smell; and that the sea, to an extent of eight stades, was heated and rendered turbid. Some lines also in Ovid, beginning “Est prope Pittheam tumulus Troezena”, appear to be an exaggerated and poetical description of the same volcanic eruption. The remark of Pausanias, that the bathers who frequented the hot springs had no cold water for their use, would seem to shew that the Greeks were in the habit of using immersion in cold water after the hot bath, as now practised by some of the northern nations of Europe and Asia. Methana is lofty and rugged, like the neighbouring islands of Aegina and Calaureia, and is

§ 2.455 little cultivated, except around the foot of the mountain, and in a small valley facing the middle of the bay of Methana, where are considerable ruins of the acropolis, and town walls of the ancient Methana, near a small modern village of the same name. In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians, by fortifying the isthmus which connects Methana with the mainland, were enabled to make use of the peninsula as a military post, from whence they could carry their incursions at pleasure into the the districts of Troezen, Haliae, and Epidaurus. As Pausanias remarks that the islands of Pelops, which were near the coast of Methana, were nine in number, those which lie between Epidaurus and Aegina must have been included under this denomination. The principal are named Moni, Metopi, Anghistri, and Kyra; of which Anghistri is much the largest, and, being chiefly covered with wild pines, answers in this respect, as well as in its distance from the continent, to the Pityonnesus, which Pliny places in face of Epidaurus. Kyra, being nearer to Epidaurus, corresponds equally well with Cecryphalos. It is probably the same as the

§ 2.456 Cecryphaleia, where the Athenians, in the year BC 459, obtained an important victory over the Peloponnesian fleet, which was speedily followed by another over the Aeginetans at Aegina. Near the entrance of the Gulf of Methana, on the coast of the main land, are the ruins of a Hellenic fortress, in a small valley to the northward of the village of Fanari; it may possibly be the Aegina which Strabo places in the Epidauria. At the back of the hills which border this entire coast, rising either immediately from the shore, or at no great distance from it, there is a succession of small elevated valleys, through which passes a road from Dhamala to Piadha, near Pidhavro, and thence by similar valleys almost as far as Corinth. Vestiges of small Hellenic towns or fortresses are seen at several points in these valleys; the most remarkable is at Trakhya, in a small valley, to the eastward of Fanari. As the name is well adapted to the rugged region in which the place is situated, one cannot but suspect that it indicates the situation of a dependent fortress of Epidaurus, called Trachye, not noticed by any author, and the name of which may have been preserved, either quite

§ 2.457 unaltered, or only with a customary Romaic change of termination. We have already witnessed two other examples, in this part of the country, of the existence of Hellenic names of places, of which there is no mention in ancient history. I mean those of Πάλαμηδι and Κορωνι. The road from Troezen to Hermione passed, according to Pausanias by the rock of Theseus already noticed, then “through the mountains, in which was a temple of Apollo Platanistius, to the place called Eilei, which possessed temples of Ceres and of Proserpine. On the sea-side, on the frontier of the Hermionis and Troezenia, stood a temple of Ceres Thermesia, distant about eighty stades from the cape which received the name Scyllaeum from the daughter of Nisus. In sailing from Scyllaeum towards Hermione there occurred another promontory, called Bucephala, and off it certain islands: the first, named Haliusa, afforded a convenient harbour for ships; the next was Pityusa, the third Aristera. Beyond these there was another promontory, named Colyergeia, then the island Tricrana, and a mountain projecting from Peloponnesus, called Buporthmus, which contained two temples, one sacred to Ceres and her

§ 2.458 daughter, the other to Minerva, surnamed Promachorma. Before Buporthmus lay the island Aperopia, and not far from it another called Hydrea. Beyond this there was a curved shore on the main land, and near it a peninsula, beginning eastward from the open sea, and extending to the west. This peninsula, which was the site of the ancient Hermione, and contained certain ports, was seven stades in length, and three in breadth, in the widest part. On the cape stood a temple of Neptune, from which the place was named Poseidium; higher up from the shore were a temple of Minerva, and the foundations of a stadium; there was also another smaller temple of Minerva wanting the roof, a temple of the Sun, a grove of the Graces, a temple of Sarapis and Isis, and a peribolus of rough stones, within which were performed sacrifices to Ceres.” The city of the time of Pausanias stood at a distance of four stades from Poseidium, in a plain rising gradually to the hill called Pron. It was entirely surrounded with walls. The deity held in chief veneration by the Hermionenses was Ceres, to whom there were three temples in the Hermionis. Two of these were dedicated to the goddess with the

§ 2.459 epithet of Thermesia; one on the borders of the Troezenia already noticed, the other within the city. The third on Mount Pron was sacred to Ceres Chthonia, and was the chief place of worship of the people of Hermione. It was said to have been founded by Chthonia, daughter of Phoroneus, and Clymenus, her brother, to whom there was a temple opposite to that of Chthonia. In front of the latter stood the statues of some of the priestesses; the temple of Clymenus was surrounded with statues of men; near it was a temple of Mars, containing his statue. To the right of the temple of Chthonia was the stoa of Echo, which repeated the voice three times; behind the same temple were three places, surrounded with stone fences, one named the sanctuary of Clymenus, the second that of Pluto, the third was called the lake Acherusia. In the sanctuary of Clymenus there was an opening in the earth, through which, according to the Hermionenses, Hercules led out the Dog of Hell.

§ 2.460 “In the city there were two temples of Venus, of which that of Venus Pontia, or Limenia, contained an admirable colossal statue of the goddess in white marble. Near the temple of Ceres Thermesia stood that of Bacchus Melanaegis.” The other temples were: that of Diana Iphigeneia, in which was a brazen Neptune with his foot on a dolphin; the sacred place of Vestacontaining an altar of Vesta; and three temples of Apollo, each containing a statue, one called Pythaeus, a second Orius, the third had no surname. The temple of Fortune was the most recent of all the public buildings, and contained a colossal statue of Parian marble. There were two public fountains, one very ancient, which afforded, though not a copious, a never-failing supply; of the other, which had been constructed in the time of Pausanias, the water was derived from a place called Leimon (the Meadow). At the gate leading to Mases there was a temple of Lucina within the walls, with a statue, which the priestesses only were allowed to behold. “In the road from Hermione to Mases, there was a turning to the left, at the end of seven stades, leading between Mounts Pron and Thornax, otherwise called Coccygium, to Halice.

§ 2.461 On the summit of the latter mountain there was a temple of Jupiter, on that of Pron a temple of Juno. The road to Mases passed by an extremity of Coccygium, upon which stood a temple of Apollo, without doors, or roof, or statue. In the time of Pausanias, Halice was deserted, and Mases, which is enumerated among the Argive cities by Homer, was only a haven of the Hermionenses. From Mases there was a road to the right to the promontory Struthus, from whence there was a distance of 250 stades by the heights to Philanorium and to the Bolei, which were heaps of rude stones. The place called Didymi was twenty stades distant from thence. It contained temples of Apollo, Neptune, and Ceres, with upright statues of white marble. Beyond this were the ruins on the sea-side of Asine, formerly a city of the Argives, among which there still remained a temple of Apollo Pythaeus.” The position of Hermione is now called Kastri, a modern name often found attached to Hellenic sites. Its situation near the sea, and not far from some islands of recent populousness, has been very unfavourable to the preservation of its remains of antiquity; but there are

§ 2.462 still found upon the site many foundations and fragments of Hellenic buildings, and its ancient importance leads to the belief, that many more may be still concealed beneath the surface. The ancient names have been better preserved at this extremity of the Argolic peninsula than the ruins of the places themselves. Cape Scyllaeum is now called Skyli, the island of Hydrea, Ydhra, Eilei, Ilio, and the site of the temple of Ceres Thermesia, eighty stades westward of Cape Scyllaeum, Thermisi. This temple appears, from the words of Pausanias, to have been just within the boundary line of the Hermionis, which was marked probably by the course of a river falling into the sea a little eastward of Thermisi. In the other direction the Hermionis comprehended Halice and Mases, and all the south-eastern extremity of the Argolic peninsula as far as the Asinaea. Pausanias says that he could find no proof of the former existence of Halice as a town, except in one of the medical pillars at the Epidaurian Asclepieium: it is evidently, however, the same place as the Haliae of Thucydides and Diodorus, of which the natives, though called Halici by

§ 2.463 Pausanias, are named Halienses by Xenophon and Strabo. Its desertion was not recent in the time of Pausanias, for Strabo describes the Halienses as seafaring men, inhabiting a part of the Hermionis. I think it may be deduced from the account which Pausanias has given of the places beyond Hermione, that Halice was on one of the harbours eastward of Cape Kosma, which is the southern extremity of the Argolic peninsula opposite to the island of Petza, — that Mases occupied the position of the modern Kiladhia, a village on the side of a harbour one hour below Kranidhi, which is at present the chief place in all this district, and that Struthus was the cape on the northern side of the port of Kiladhia, now I believe called Koraka. These questions, however, cannot be well determined without the discovery of some remains of the places themselves, because the Greek traveller has not furnished us with the distances between Hermione, Halice, and Mases. If that of 250 stades from Cape Struthus to Philanorium be correct in his text, it will almost of necessity follow that Asine was situated at Port Tolo. The position agrees with

§ 2.464 Homer's description of Asine as occupying a deep bay, and it agrees also with the expression of Strabo, as to the proximity of Asine to Nauplia, It is impossible, however, for me to advance any confident opinion on this subject without a better and more detailed knowledge than I possess of the real topography of this part of the Argolis. It might be supposed, that by means of the preservation of the ancient names Scyilaeum, Thermesia, and Hydrea, the capes and islands on this coast named by Pausanias would have been easily recognized, but his description is found to be so vague on comparing it with the actual geography, that one cannot but suspect some imperfection in the text. The only writer besides Pausanias, who names these islands, is Pliny. “In the Argolic sea,” he says, “are Pityusa, Irine, and Ephyre, and over against the territory of Hermione are Tiparenus, Eperopia, Colonis, Aristera.” The three islands which he places in the Argolic Gulf correspond very well with Dhaskalio, Platya, and Psyli, and the ancient name of the second Irine seems to have some connection with that of Iri, a modern

§ 2.465 place on the coast opposite to Platya, and which, from this coincidence, we may Suspect to be an ancient name preserved. Aperopia, by its connexion in the passage of Pausanias with Hydrea and Posidium, seems to correspond to the island now called Dhoko. In regard to the other capes and islands, I shall offer but one conjecture, namely, that the word Tiparenus, which has no appearance of a Greek name, is an error for Tricarenus, and that the island was the same as the Tricrana of Pausanias, and the modern Trikhiri. This at least is as probable, as that the modern Petza was called Tiparenus, the only argument for which is the occurrence of the name in Pliny as that of the first of the islands of the Hermionis, following the names of those in the Argolic Gulf. It is to be regretted that we are thus left in ignorance as to the ancient appellation of an island, which is of some importance in the modern history of Greece. Of all the towns under the government of Agamemnon and Diomedes, Heionae is the only one of which, in the time of the Roman Empire, the situation was uncertain. Nothing seems to have been known of it to the geographers of those ages, except that, after the expedition to Troy, its inhabitants had been expelled by the Mycenaei, and that it then dwindled into a port dependent upon Mycenae.

§ 2.466 Although this fact is quite indecisive of the situation of Heionae, Mycenae having been the capital of so large a portion of the north-eastern part of the Peloponnesus, it may safely be inferred from the Catalogue, that it occupied some part of the coast of the Argolic peninsula, but whether between Troezen and Epidaurus, as Homer places it in his verse, or on the south-western shore, where a great space of coast between Mases and Asine remains unoccupied on the map by any ancient city, I shall not pretend to decide. As well from the name as from the remark of Strabo, to which I have just referred, it may be presumed that Heionae was a maritime position. ADDITIONAL NOTE: Late discoveries have shewn, that the Aeti of the Panhellenium of Aegina were filled with statues, which at both ends represented the same subject, and with some slight variation in exactly the same manner. In the centre stood a Minerva, at whose feet lay a dying hero. On either side of this central group stood a warrior, ready to strike his opponent; behind the warrior, to the left of the Minerva, there was an unarmed figure, stooping down, and stretching forward

§ 2.467 his hands across the warrior, to lay hold of the dying figure. The remainder of the pediment was filled up on either side with a kneeling figure drawing a bow, another protruding a spear, and a third, in the angle of the pediment, dying of his wounds. For further information regarding these fine and indubitable specimens of the Aeginetan school of sculpture, I must refer the reader to the remarks of Mr. Cockerell, one of the discoverers of them, in the Journal of Science, No. 13. I shall here subjoin a note of my own, written in reply to his request, that I would give him an opinion on the subject of the composition: it was printed with his paper. “I am inclined to think that the following noble lines of the Iliad not only explain the subject of the composition, but indicate the exact moment chosen by the sculptor.” [Then again over Patroclus was strained taut the mighty conflict, dread and fraught with tears, and Athene roused the strife, being come down from heaven; for Zeus, whose voice is borne afar, had sent her to urge on the Danaans, for lo, his mind was turned. Iliad 17.543] “The κνημίδες observed on all the figures to the right of Minerva, together with the absence of these Grecian articles of dress in the other division of the work, as well as the Phrygian bonnet upon one of the figures of the latter, seem strongly to mark that the subject is taken from the war of Troy. In the midst of the contest for the body of Patroclus, Jupiter sends Minerva to give new courage to the Greeks. On the western pediment she seems to have just descended from the skies; on the eastern, she has raised her arm against the Trojans, and the contest is decided. [This is the only remarkable difference in the two pediments.] It may be objected perhaps, that this is not quite conformable to Homer, who represents Minerva as assuming the shape of Phoenix, and Jupiter as again changing his mind, and once more giving the superiority to the Trojans before the body was finally carried off by the Greeks. But every thing that we know of the productions

§ 2.468 of the ancients in the arts of design, shows that they were never servile imitators of the poets; in other words, that a sculptor who had chosen a subject treated of by Homer would represent it in his own manner. Phidias may have been indebted to Homer for a first conception of his Olympian Jupiter, but every thing else about it was his own. It must be remembered also, that in pictures and compositions of statuary, the artist had to pursue a very different route from the poet. The latter had to narrate a succession of events, the sculptor to embody the action of a moment. If it should be thought that the death of Patroclus had little reference to Jupiter, the deity of the Aeginetan temple, or to Aeacus, its founder, it is to be observed, that it had fully as much reference to local history as the capture of Troy at the Heraeum of Argos, or the hunting of the Calydonian boar, and the battle of Telephus and Achilles, in the temple of Minerva Alea, at Tegea, or the contests of the Centaurs and Lapithe, and of Oenomaus and Pelops, in the temple of Jupiter at Olympia. In all these cases, the artist had to choose from among the mythological actions which were in any manner connected with the worship of the temple, that which in his judgement would produce the finest composition of sculpture, and give the greatest scope to his genius. The defence of the body of Patroclus is represented by Homer as the most conspicuous among the exploits of Ajax, and in the estimation of the Aeginetans, Ajax must have been the first of the Aeacidae, superior even to Achilles himself.”

§ 2.469 CHAPTER XXII: ARGEIA. LACONIA. March 18. — A pezodhromo brought me a letter today at noon, which had been written at Tripolitza in the morning, a direct distance of more than twenty-four British miles. Another sent by M. V. to Mr. Consul Strane, at Patra, was six days absent, and remained an entire day and night at Patra; the road distance from hence to Patra to a pedestrian, is about ninety British miles. This afternoon I quit Argos for Mistra, by the way of Tzakonia. The road to the mills of Anapli, by reason of the neglected state of the plain, and its consequent marshiness at this

§ 2.470 season, instead of coinciding with the ancient route across the plain to Lerna, follows that to Tegea, as far as the Kefalari, or sources of the Erasinus. At 2.35 I quit the theatre of Argos. At 3.16 cross the Erasinus, just below the mills of Kefalari, from whence the road, leaving that of Tripolitza on the right, traverses the plain in a direct line to the other mills, at the north-eastern angle of the gulf, which are called the Afendiki Myli: 3.41, Skafidhaki, a small village, is on the foot of the hills to the right, a little beyond the torrent which I have already mentioned as descending from the opening in Mount Creopolus, through which passes the road from Anapli to Akhladho-kambo, with a branch to Tzipiana. This torrent, as I have already remarked, appears to be the Cheimarrhus of Pausanias, who thus describes the route from Argos to Lerna. “The sea-shore at Lerna is not more than forty stades distant from Argos. In descending to it, the road first arrives at the Erasinus, which falls into the Phrixus, and the Phrixus into the sea, between Temenium and Lerna. On turning from the Erasinus, about eight stades to the left, there is a temple of the Anactes Dioscuri; their statues are of wood, and made after the same fashion as those in the city. Returning into the high road, you will cross the Erasinus, and arrive at

§ 2.471 the Cheimarrhus, near which there is an inclosure of stones, where it is said that Pluto, having seized upon the daughter of Ceres, carried her to the kingdom which is supposed to exist under the earth. Lerna, as I have already said, is on the sea-side. Here the ceremony in honour of Ceres, called the Lernaea, is celebrated. The sacred grove, which consists chiefly of plane trees, begins from the mountain Pontinus, and extends to the sea; it is bounded on one side by the river Pontinus, which flows from the mountain, and on the other by the river Amymone, which received its name from the daughter of Danaus. On the summit of Mount Pontinus are the ruins of a temple of Minerva Saitis, said to have been founded by Danaus, and the foundations of the house of Hippomedon, who went to Thebes in aid of Polynices, son of Oidipus. The grove of Lerna contains two temples; in one of these there are three statues of stone, of which two are [upright] statues of Ceres Prosymne, and Bacchus; the third, small and seated, represents Ceres. In the other temple is a seated statue in wood of Bacchus Saotes. On the sea-side there is a Venus in stone, which is said to have been dedicated by the daughters of Danaus.” “The Lernaea are reported to have been instituted by Philammon. Between Lerna and

§ 2.472 Temenium the river Phrixus joins the sea. In Temenium there is a temple of Neptune, another of Venus, and a tomb of Temenus, held in veneration by the Dorians of Argos; Nauplia, now deserted, is distant from Temenium, as it appears to me, fifty stades.” As to the Phrixus, the name of which occurs, I believe, no where but in this passage of Pausanias, it can be no other than the brook which issues from the opening between Mounts Lycone and Chaon, and which is so much smaller than the Erasinus, that it would have been more correct to have said that it fell into the Erasinus, than the latter into it. At 4.07 we arrive at three copious sources which form a stream running to turn the northern Afendiki Myli, or mills of Anapli, to which town they belong. The sources issue from the foot of a rocky hill of a conical form, which terminates the plain of Argos in this corner. The hill and stream are evidently those which were anciently called Pontinus; the river has only a course of a few hundred yards before it joins the sea. The ruins of a castle, made of small stones and mortar, now occupy the summit of the hill, and consequently stand on the site of the house of Hippomedon and of the temple of Minerva, whose epithet Saitis indicates that her worship

§ 2.473 was introduced here from Egypt, and thus agrees with the reputed foundation of the temple by Danaus. At Sais, we know that Neith, the Greek Athene, was held in great honour. Continuing along the foot of Mount Pontinus, we arrive, at 4.15, at some copious sources on the road-side much larger than those of the Pontinus; they issue from under the rocks, and immediately enter a deep marsh and a lake, which extends to the sea-beach. They correspond exactly in position to the Amymone of Pausanias. A stream running out of the lake turns the southern mills, which stand close to the sea-side, and to a small wharf where vessels load or disembark their cargoes. A ship from Smyrna is now in the anchorage, discharging a cargo of iron. There is a range of magazines stretching from the mills along the beach to the northward; the rest of the distance, as far as the northern mills and the river Pontinus, is occupied by a large garden, which extends in breadth from the sea-beach to the road, and occupies a part at least of the site of the ancient Lernaean grove. The lake Alcyonia I conceive to have been the lower part of the marsh above mentioned, towards the southern mills. According to the millers, this part is very deep, abounds in springs, and contains many eels:

§ 2.474 and all around it there are reeds, mixed with a great variety of aquatic plants growing luxuriantly. Pausanias remarks, that grass and rushes grew on the margin of the Alcyonia, that its depth was unfathomable, and that Nero had let down several stades of rope loaded with lead without finding a bottom. Another fable he relates of it was, that although the water appeared tranquil, those who attempted to swim in it were drawn to the bottom, a belief which may have arisen from some persons having been drowned here, in consequence of their having been paralysed by the coldness of the water, an accident not uncommon in similar pools. The station of the celebrated hydra was said to have been under a plane-tree, at the source of the Amymone; “in my opinion”, adds Pausanias, “this serpent had only one head, but I believe that it was much larger than any watersnake, and that it was extremely venomous, as appears by the arms of Hercules having been poisoned with the serpent's gall. As to the numerous heads of the serpent, the poet Peisandrus, of Camira, invented them to make the beast more terrible, and his own verses more dignified.” Pausanias, by calling Amymone a river, seems to indicate that it did not mix with the

§ 2.475 Lake Alcyonia, but flowed to the sea in a separate channel: in fact this would still be the case were there not a stone-dam extending along the sea-beach for 250 yards to the south of the mills, and confining the water of the lake, which is chiefly formed by deep subterraneous sources. This dam, and two shorter walls, built at right angles to the shore on either side of the lake, for the purposes of a mill-head, make the lake much larger and deeper than it would naturally be, or than it was in the time of Pausanias, who describes it as only a third of a stade in circuit. At present the marsh which surrounds the lake almost fills up the space between the shore and the road near Amymone, so that the marsh and lake together are not less than half a mile in circumference. The enlargement of the lake may, perhaps, explain why the fountain of Amphiaraus can no longer be identified, as it may now be enveloped in the lake, or at least in the marsh. The gardens formerly belonged to the Capitan Pasha, but are now the property of a Bey of Anapli. They contain a great quantity of orange and other fruit trees, and would be delightful if kept in order; at present they are in as ruinous a state as the Pyrgo which stands in the midst of them.

§ 2.476 Just below the fountain Amymone is a khan; beyond which a road to Akhladho-kambo branches off to the right: it passes near a ruined khan, in the plain of Akhladho-kambo. Pausanias describes two roads from Lerna; one by Temenium to Nauplia, the other to Thyrea. That to Nauplia, concerning which I have cited his words, followed nearly the shore of the bay. As Tiryns was about twenty stades distant from Nauplia, Temenium must have been thirty stades to the westward of Tiryns, between that place and the mouth of the Erasinus, or nearly opposite to Argos, at a distance, according to Strabo, of twenty-six stades from thence. The position of Temenium is thus most exactly indicated, but so marshy is that part of the plain of Argos at present, that I have been unable to explore the site. I now proceed to follow the second route from Lerna described by Pausanias. Leaving the Amymone at 5.12, we cross a small, but fertile plain on the sea-side, where, at 5.25, I pass, on my right, a hamlet of six or eight houses, called Kiveri, situated on the point of a rocky hill, advancing towards the sea. A road here turns away to the right, to Velanidhia, a village situated higher up the valley, and not in sight. At 5.40, just after having crossed a

§ 2.477 small, deep, rapid river, I arrive at another, Kiveri, which, though the larger of the two, has only ten families, with a tower belonging to the Spahi, where I am well lodged. The stream at Kiveri is evidently that which is collected from the surrounding mountains in the plain of Akhladho-kambo. It is joined by some copious sources at Andritzena. Near the mouth of the river there is a mill, said to have been built in the time of the Venetians. Either here or at the rocky projection below the northern Kiveri, the Genesium of Pausanias seems to have stood; for here begin the difficult mountains which extend to the Bay of Astro, or Thyreate gulf, and the rugged road which was anciently called Anigraea. It may be convenient to the reader to cite the words of Pausanias, which give these positions; and as I am about to follow his route still farther, I shall continue the extract to the end of the chapter which concludes his Argolics. “There is another road”, he says, “from Lerna, which leads, by the sea-side, to a place called Genesium. Here, on the shore, is a small temple of Neptune Genesius, contiguous to which is Apobathmi, so called because Danaus and his children are said to have here first landed in Argolis. Beyond

§ 2.478 Apobathmi, after having passed the Anigraea, which is a narrow and difficult road, there is a tract of land on the left, which extends to the sea, and is fertile in trees, particularly olives. Ascending inland from thence, occurs the place called Thyrea, where 800 select men of Argos fought for the country against an equal number of chosen Spartans, when all were slain, except one Spartan and two Argives: tombs were erected to the slain on the spot. Afterwards the Lacedaemonians, having beaten the Argives in a general action, obtained possession of the land and cultivated it, and subsequently gave it to the Aeginetae, when the latter were expelled from their island by the Athenians. But now the Argives possess the Thyreatis, and assert that it has been assigned to them by arbitration. Proceeding forward from the Polyandria, there is a road to Athene [or Anthene ] which was formerly inhabited by the Aeginetae, and another town, Neris, and a third, Eva, which is the largest of the three, and contains a temple of Polemocrates, son of Machaon. Above these towns rises the mountain Parnon,

§ 2.479 which contains the boundaries of the Lacedaemonians towards the Argives and Tegeatae: the boundary is marked by Hermae in marble, which give name to the place where they stand. The Tanus is the only river which flows from Parnon through the Argeia; it falls into the Thyreate gulf.” March 19. — I set out at 6.50, and immediately mount the hills which fall steeply to the sea on our left; the road leads along the face of them, and then descends upon a small beach, where a torrent, now dry, discharges itself. Not long afterwards, at 8.45, we arrive again upon the sea-beach at Xeropigadho, where, at the bottom of a retreating curve of the coast, the slope of the hill above it is less steep than in the other parts, and is cultivated with corn and olives. Here I find two boats loading wood for Anapli: the port is a dependency of the town of Ai Ianni, or St. John. On the beach there is a well, not dry as the name indicates, together with a cistern lately built. This may possibly be the position of Pyramia of the Thyreatis, near which Plutarch says that Danaus landed. Our path continues to follow the side of the rugged mountain, and, after having passed another cape, at 9.25 arrives opposite to the Anavolo.

§ 2.480 This is a copious source of fresh water rising in the sea, at a quarter of a mile from a narrow beach under the cliffs. The body of fresh water appears to be not less than fifty feet in diameter. The weather being very calm this morning, I perceive that it rises with such force as to form a convex surface, and it disturbs the sea for several hundred feet around. In short, it is evidently the exit of a subterraneous river of some magnitude, and thus corresponds with the Deine of Pausanias, who remarks in the Arcadics, that the waters of the plain in the Mantinice, called Αργον, or the Inert, flow towards a chasm, and that, after a subterraneous course, they reappear at the Deine, towards the place in the Argolis called Genethlium; “here sweet water”, he adds, “rises out of the sea in the same manner as near Cheimerium in Thesprotis. Anciently the Argives threw bridled horses into the Deine as a sacrifice to Neptune.” It can hardly be doubted, that the Genethlium here mentioned is the same place which Pausanias, in the Argolice, notices by the synonym Genesium, or

§ 2.481 the temple of Neptune Genesius, and which, as I have before observed, was probably situated at the modern Kiveri. It is obvious that the only chasm or zerethra, through which any waters could have passed from any part of the Mantinic plain in their way towards the Argolic gulf, are the katavothra near Persova. The word Dine or Deine seems perfectly descriptive of the Anavolo, and its situation is exactly in the direction in which, from the position of the Zerethra just mentioned, and the previous course of the river Goreates, from Steno to the chasm, we might suppose that its emissory would be found. It must certainly be admitted that “towards Genethlium” is an extremely vague and inaccurate description of the position of Deine, if we place the former at Kiveri, and the latter at Anavolo. Nevertheless the phaenomenon itself is of too singular a kind, and answers too exactly to the words of Pausanias, to allow of any reasonable doubt of the identity. At 9.35 we arrive at the brow of the cliffs above the extreme corner of the beach of the bay of Astro, and at 9.40 descend into the plain. All the Anigraea is a very rugged bad

§ 2.482 road, and our pace was slow. Except in the few spots which I have mentioned, the sea is bordered throughout by perpendicular cliffs. The side of the mountain is chiefly covered with lentisks and wild olives, in the intervals of which there is at this season a fine pasture for numerous flocks of sheep and goats. Having descended into the plain, which is no longer clothed with olives and other trees, as in the time of Pausanias, we leave on the right the road to the Aianitika Kalyvia, and pursue the sea-beach or the fields at a small distance from it, as far as Astro, having crossed at 9.50 a small stream coming from some marshes at the foot of Mount Zavitza. This is the mountain which, extending from the plain of Astro along the shore to Kiveri, forms at its maritime foot the pass of Anigraea: towards the plain of Astro it is still more abrupt. At 10.25 we arrive at Astro; the name, though applied to all the bay and adjacent plain, belongs specifically to a skala on the southern side of a rocky peninsula, which is conspicuous from Argos and Anapli, and which advances into the sea from the middle of a plain of about four miles in length. At the skala there are a cistern, a khan, a tower inhabited by a sub-collector of customs, and two or three small magazines. The customs are farmed, together with those of the mills of Anapli, by

§ 2.483 the person who holds those of the town of Anapli, and who has paid this year ninety purses for the whole. In the plain are kalyvia belonging to the towns of Ai Ianni, Meligu, Korakovuni, and Prasto, which are situated on the mountains to the west and South. Three of these kalyvia are large villages; here the inhabitants of the towns to which they belong reside in the winter, and here the best part of the territory of those towns is situated, the plain around the kalyvia having a fertile soil, and being well cultivated with corn and olives. To the north of the promontory Astro, the beach runs in a line nearly west and east. To the south the direction is about SSW for some distance, after which it turns eastward. Ships seldom anchor in the northern bay; and the southern is too much exposed to south-easterly gales to be much in use, except in summer for embarking the grain, oil, and vallonea of the neighbouring district. When threatened with a gale, vessels generally run over to Port Tolo. The south-westerly direction of the shore of the Southern bay causes the inner part of it to approach the mountains, from which it is separated only by a large marshy lake called Mosto, the waters of which are discharged into the sea by a small river. The stream and lake thus form a natural division

§ 2.484 of the plain into two parts, and in fact they are considered as the separation of Tzakonia from the vilayeti of Aios Petros. All the plain to the northward of the river and lake of Mosto is called Astro, and all to the southward Ai Andhrea. The Aianitika and Melighiotika kalyvia are in the former, and the Korakovunitika and Prastiotika in the latter; they lie, in the order just stated, from north-west to southeast, the two first are in the level, the two last on the foot of the mountains. Ai Andhrea takes its name from an old church of St. Andrew, on a height at the south-eastern corner of the southern bay of Astro, near the foot of a rocky mountain which bounds the plain on that side. At St. Andrew there are some remains of Hellenic antiquity, which indicate the site of Brasiae, or Prasiae, the frontier town of Laconia; the boundaries of which province seem to have been the same as those of the modern Tzakonia, namely, the lake and river of Mosto. Towards the western end of the promontory of Astro, I found a piece of Hellenic wall of the second order, without towers, sufficient to shew that the peninsula was once the position of an ancient town or fortress. On the highest point of the promontory, which is towards the south, and immediately over the skala, are the remains of a more modern castle, which commands an

§ 2.485 admirable view of all the opposite coast of the Argolic peninsula, from the Isle of Petza to Anapli, together with the plain of Argos and its surrounding mountains. Astro is an ancient name, retained without any corruption. Ptolemy is the only author who mentions it, but, by placing the Laco-Argive boundary between Astrum and Prasiae, he confirms the position of Prasiae at St. Andrew, as well as that the ancient boundaries were those natural ones which I have just mentioned. Astro I conceive to have been the situation of the maritime fortress, in the building of which the Aeginetae were interrupted by the Athenians in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war. On being attacked here by the Athenians, they retreated into the city of Thyrea, and were followed thither by the Athenians, when, having been abandoned by their Lacedaemonian auxiliaries, who retired into the mountains, the Athenians took Thyrea, and indulged their ancient hatred of Aegina, by murdering the inhabitants and burning the town. Leaving the Skala of Astro at 1.45, I cross the plain in the direction of the

§ 2.486 Aianitika Kalyvia, and at 2.05 pass a small river which rises in the mountains near Aios Petros, and which, leaving the monastery of Luku a mile on the right, crosses the plain in a direction from west to east, and joins the sea in the southern bay of Astro a little to the northward of the mouth of the stream which issues from the Lake of Mosto. This river of Luku is nearly dry in summer, but in winter it is sometimes very large, being formed from many torrents in the mountains. We enter the Kalyvia of Ai Ianni at 2.15. The plain around is well clothed with olives, which for the most part are young trees; they are intermixed with cornfields and vine yards. The Kalyvia consist of good cottages, many of which have two stories, and they are prettily dispersed among the field and olive woods. At 2.33 I arrive at the end of the Kalyvia, where, at the foot of the mountain which borders the plain on the SW, stands a Metokhi of the monastery of Luku: there is another at Ai Ianni, and a third on the southern side of Mount Zavitza to the left of the river nearly opposite to Luku. I now proceed to Luku, having obtained some information which gives me the assurance that I shall there meet with some remains of Thyrea. Passing along the foot of the mountain in a westerly direction, we leave the river of

§ 2.487 Luku at the distance of a mile on the right, flowing in a deep bed between the sloping and woody bases of the two mountains which inclose its valley — arrive at the monastery at 8.10. It is situated on a tabular hill covered with shrubs and small trees, and having a gentle descent towards the river. On the eastern side, the height is bounded by a deep rocky ravine, at the bottom of which runs a small branch of the river. This rivulet, I am told, does not entirely fail in summer, though the greater part of its waters is turned to supply a small conduit which passes by the Metokhi of Luku to the Aianitika Kalyvia. On its left bank, on one side of the garden of the monastery, are seen some remains of ancient walls formed of large squared stones mixed with tiles and mortar. These were evidently the city walls on the eastern side, where the ravine furnished a natural protection. The chief part of the town was below the monastery, from whence, as the monks inform me, many sculptured marbles have been removed, some for embarkation, others for the construction or repair of houses in the neighbouring villages or for the use of the convent itself. By the guidance of the monks, I find among the bushes which cover all the site, and among foundations and other remains of masonry, the following fragments of Hellenic

§ 2.488 sculpture: A statue in white marble of a woman, the head wanting; some masons at work in the monastery have within these few days beaten off a part of the knee and the feet, which before were perfect. I perceive also the fragments of one arm on the ground near the statue. It was naked; the other arm, which is the left, has a piece of loose drapery wound about it and rests upon the hip, the body being much bent towards the right side. The statue is naked to the hips, the rest of the body is covered with a loose garment in many folds. The garment covers all the back in broad even plaits coarsely executed, as if intended to be set up against a wall, as indeed the form of the pedestal shews. The pedestal and statue are of one stone. The fragment from the sole of the foot to the top of the hip three feet five inches. When the Kaloyeri invited me to go and see this statue, they called it a γυναίκα μαρμαραίνια, a marble woman. The next thing I observe is two fragments of a colossal group, which seems to have represented a man carrying the dead corpse of another, with the face upwards, upon his shoulders. The latter figure is much smaller than the other, and is perfect from the neck to the thighs. The body is curved backwards, as a dead body would naturally hang. The hand of the figure which was represented carrying the dead body remains

§ 2.489 on the side of the body; a part of the other figure, covered with drapery, is also attached to the corpse and forms part of the same stone. Lying close by this fragment is another representing the body from the neck to the waist, of a man having a loose garment thrown over his left shoulder, and bound by a thong passing over the right; there is a girdle of the same kind and size round his waist, but partly hidden under the loose folds of the garment which hang over the left shoulder. All the breast and right side are naked, and are of very good design and execution. The muscles seem exerted; probably this was a part of the figure which was represented as carrying the other on his shoulders. It measures two feet two inches from one shoulder to the other. The hand on the side of the corpse is six inches and one tenth across the knuckles of the four fingers. These two fragments lie close together and are partly covered by the lentisk bushes growing by them, but they are still better secured perhaps from the destructive hands of the masons by the unfit shape of the blocks and by the colour, which, though the stone is white marble, has become brown with the weather and incrusted with a minute moss. Not far from these statues, the Igumeno conducts me to a spot from which he

§ 2.490 says that ancient materials have at different times been carried away, and where appears to have been a large quadrangular building, which he supposed to have been the principal naos or temple. But that edifice, or at least one of the great temples, seems to have existed to the eastward of this spot, near where lies the female statue; for some very massive foundations are there seen, and some ruins of a semicircular niche are still standing, built, like all the other remaining walls at this place, of large squared stones joined with mortar and mixed with tiles. Close by the niche lie five fragments of shafts of grey granite two feet five and a half inches in diameter, together with two Corinthian capitals of a coarse kind of white marble, of which I find many pieces lying about these ruins; it seems to be of the same kind which was used at Sparta, Gythium, &c. The monks describe to me a mountain of this kind of stone near Vervena. In the church of the monastery there are four shafts of streaked white marble thirteen feet high and five feet three inches and a half in circumference. I observed among the ruins a single column nearly of the same size, and of a dark brown marble; as well as many fragments and broken slabs of white, of veined, and of green marble, and some of porphyry. The other remains of antiquity consist only of masses of mortar and fragments of stones, dispersed

§ 2.491 among the bushes which cover the slope towards the river. The Kaloyeri inform me they have found and removed to the convent at various times fragments of small marble statues, two of which I find in the convent; others, they say, have been carried by sea to Anapli, or embarked in vessels casually anchoring at Astro. They have excavated also several sepulchres in the loose soil just behind the monastery, and others at the foot of some cliffs, which seem to have formed the lower termination of the ancient site, but they found only coarse broken vases and bones. The only inscriptions I could find were three letters Ω K A in large handsome character, on a fragment of marble in the church of the convent, and a sepulchral stone of much later date in the same place in honour of a woman named Marciane, with the word ζησης misspelt. ΖΗΣΙΣ ΜΑΡΚΙΑΝΗ. In the same church I observed an Ionic cornice; and an Ionic capital on the outside of the gate of the monastery. An uncultivated level extends from the back of the table height of the convent to the steeps of Mount Parnon; in front, in the opposite

§ 2.492 direction, is the more abruptly rising, though much smaller and lower mountain called Zavitza; the latter is separated only from the site of Thyrea by the valley of the river, which is covered with bushes and small trees, like the ancient site. The ruins of Thyrea being still so considerable, one is surprised that Pausanias should have been so brief in his description of it. Instead of designating Thyrea as a city, as from history we know it to have been, and a city of some importance too, he applies only the word χωρίον to it, and notices nothing whatever but the Polyandria, or sepulchral monuments (apparently two in number) of the Spartans and Argives. Perhaps it was a complete ruin in his time, and almost in the same state of desolation which it now presents. Thucydides is deficient in his usual accuracy when he states Thyrea to be only ten stades from the sea, for it is at least three times that distance. A road passes from the convent of Luku up the gorge of the small stream which bounds the eastern side of the ancient site and leads to Ai Ianni, three hours distant; and from thence in one hour to Aios Petros. This road leaves on the left a Hellenic fortress which I saw from the plain of Astro, situated two miles above the Aianitika Kalyvia; it then enters the cultivated level of Xerokambi near Ai Ianni.

§ 2.493 On the left of the road, from the latter place to St. Peter's, there is another larger Hellenic castle on a hill. As Pausanias, leaving the sepulchres of Thyrea, arrives soon after at Anthene, this seems to have been the first mentioned Kastro; the ruin between St. John's and St. Peter's may have been Neris. Eva, the largest of the towns of Mount Parnon, was probably farther to the southward. These places, together with the Thyreatis, and before the time of the Roman empire, perhaps the Prasiatis also, formed a country called Cynuria; which was of great military importance, as lying between the Argolis and Laconia, and as commanding the passes which separated them. Plutarch tells us, that when Cleomenes was in possession of Corinth he found himself obliged suddenly to evacuate it in consequence of a counter-revolution at Argos, which he feared would place these passes in the hands of his enemies and cut off his retreat to Sparta. The Roman government perfectly understood the importance of the Cynuria when they gave it to Argos, as this alone was sufficient to keep Sparta in order. It is probably to this determination of the Romans that Pausanias alludes when he says, that the

§ 2.494 Argives possessed Thyreatis in his time, δίκη νικήσαντες, by adjudication. March 20. — Leaving the convent of Luku at 8 this morning, I return by the same road to the Metokhi near the Aianitika Kalyvia; a small aqueduct which conducts water from a mill above the convent, follows the road side as far as the Kalyvia; this is the diverticulum from the torrent of Luku, which I before noticed. At 8.45, towards the end of the Kalyvia, we have the ancient fortress, which I suppose to have been Anthene, two miles on the right on the summit of a high peak, it is called στο ελληνικό. The summit of the hill is surrounded with a wall of polygonal masonry, flanked with towers. As I stood inquiring the modern name of this ruin, an ill-dressed man issued out of one of the houses and exclaimed: “That is Mount Temenium which contained the tomb of Temenus and the lake before you is that which produced the seven-headed water snake slain by Hercules.” It seems, that he is dhaskalo of the village, and has been reading Meletius, who makes these mistakes as to Lerna and Temenium. 8.55, pass the Melighiotika Kalyvia, or Huts of Melegu, which village stands on the mountain above then. The Kalyvia is a small village situated on the right bank of a torrent. At 9.05, the road

§ 2.495 passes at the foot of a rocky height projecting from the mountain. On the summit of this height there is a Metokhi of the convent of Aia Triadha (St. Trinity), which is described to me situated an hour below Meligu and one hour and a half above the Metokhi. 9.17 arrive at the beginning of the marsh of Mosto, which here reaches to the foot of the mountain and extends to our left almost to the sea; two minutes farther I observe a copious spring of water issuing from the foot of the mountain, two minutes beyond it are some other sources still larger flowing from the foot of the rock, above which the road passes. This is the lake which Meletius mistook for the Alcyonia. It occupies the centre of the marsh, and is about a mile and a quarter in circumference. It is deep, abounds in fish, and is now covered with wild ducks. The marsh is about three miles in circumference, and the sea-beach one mile direct from the foot of the mountain. We mow enter the plain of Ai Andhrea, halt seven minutes at 9.49, and then leaving the straight road to Prasto, which passes by the Korakovunitika Kalyvia, we turn to the left to the Prastiotika Kalyvia, more commonly called, by the people of Prasto, Ai Andhrea, or Sto Ialo (at the Sea). These Kalyvia form a large village on the foot of the mountain in the southern corner of the plain.

§ 2.496 Here I lodge in the house of Kyr Thodhoro Guleli, Proestos of Prasto, with whom I find the Bishop of Prasto. The bishop, whose undress official title is o Ρεόντος και Πραστου, is making a tour of his diocese for the purpose of collecting ten piastres from every Kaloiero and Papas, in obedience to an order from the Patriarch of Constantinople. This extraordinary levy is for the purpose of supporting a school, at Constantinople, for orphans, who are to be taught Hellenic, φιλοσοφία, whatever that may be, and some of the European languages. A large house has already been bought for the purpose at Tarapia on the Bosphorus. The people of Prasto, whose town stands in a cold and lofty situation, migrate in the winter to Lenidhi, where the bishop has a house, or to the two villages of Melano and Dero, near it, or to this place. Dero is six hours from hence; thence to Melano is one hour, and thence to Lenidhi one hour and a half, the villages lying on the cultivated slopes of the mountain in the order mentioned, from northwest to southeast. By sea, the direct navigation from St. Andrew to the shore below Lenidhi is about two fifths of the distance to Cape Ieraka, or only twelve geographical miles, so mountainous and circuitous is the road by land. The slopes of the mountain above Lenidhi are, as I have said,

§ 2.497 cultivated, but there is neither plain nor harbour. Fakhino is a bad port without any village, two hours under Kunupia. Kyparissia is a better harbour, four hours under Kremasti, a large village inhabited by a colony of Albanians, who speak that language. It appears, by the description of my host, that Fakhino and Kyparissia form nearly equal intervals between Lenidhi and Ieraka. In the afternoon I visit the Hellenic ruin at St. Andrew. The height on which it is situated branches from the mountains on the south-eastern side of the plain, and forms a projection of the coast, to the westward of which are a magazine and custom-house; the Skala is known by the name of Ai Andhrea. The walls of the Paleokastro surround the promontory along the edge of cliffs, which encircle its table summit: some of the lower courses of the walls remain, and towers are traced at intervals; there was a small keep or inner inclosure, 110 yards in circumference, at the SSW or highest point, upon which stands a ruined church of St. Andrew. The slope and plain towards the modern buildings were anciently comprehended within a third inclosure, which extended as far as those buildings. The circuit of the walls on the hill, exclusive of the latter inclosure, is a walk of twenty minutes: the

§ 2.498 masonry is of the second order; there is a fine specimen of it belonging to the outer inclosure a little inland from the magazines. On the hill of the acropolis there are many foundations of large stones, together with some cisterns roughly cut in the rock and coated with plaster. The masons have opened them for the sake of taking away the stones which covered them; the Venetians also are accused of having plundered these ruins when they built the Palamidhi. Just beyond the magazines the river from Mount Malevo ( Parnon ), which enters the plain near the Kalyvia of Prasto, joins the sea. It is called Kani, and is evidently the ancient Tanus; it does not flow in the summer, nor does that from the mountain of St. Peter's, which passes by Luku. Brasiae, or Prasiae, as the town is called by every author who mentions it, except Pausanias, is thus introduced by him: “ Brasiae is the last of the maritime cities of the Eleuthero-Lacones in this direction: the passage by sea from Cyphanta is 200 stades in distance. The Brasiatae shew the cave where Ino nursed Bacchus, and they call their plain the Garden of Bacchus. They have temples of Aesculapius and Achilles, and they celebrate a yearly festival in honour of Achilles. In Brasiae there is a small summit

§ 2.499 projecting a little into the sea, upon which stand four brazen statues not more than a foot in height; three of these have hats on their heads; whether they are considered Dioscuri or Corybantes, I know not — the fourth is a statue of Minerva.” The rocky mountain which rises to the southward of the ruins of Prasiae, is called Lagovuni: at the foot of the cliffs which border the highest summit, on the side looking towards the sea, there is a fine cavern with a small entrance, the same probably as that shewn by the Prasiatae to Pausanias as the grotto in which Ino nursed Bacchus A mile north-westward of the Paleokastro a small rocky height projects into the sea, and divides the southern bay of Astro, which receives the river of Luku, from the small curve of St. Andrew, into which the river Kani discharges itself. This seems to be the promontory upon which stood the four brazen statues. I return in half an hour to the Prastiotika, the distance being about two miles and a half, and pass the evening in obtaining some information from Guleli and the bishop respecting the peculiar dialect of modern Greek which is spoken in this part of the country. They tell me that Prasto has lately engaged in the commerce of Spetzia, has become rich, and now owns many ships.

§ 2.500 Phranza, in relating an unimportant transaction in which he was engaged in the year 1435, makes mention of the place under the name of Προάστειον. In either form I take the word to be a corruption of Prasiae, whose inhabitants having retired to the mountains when piracy and bad government had made the maritime position at St. Andrew untenable, probably then carried with them the name, which, in the subsequent ages of barbarism, assumed the form of Proastio, or Prasto. It has been seen, in the passage above cited from Pausanias, that in the coast southward of Prasiae there was a place called Cyphanta. It was one of the Eleuthero-Laconic towns, and in the time of Pausanias was in ruins, but there was still a temple of Aesculapius containing a marble statue; and he observed a fountain issuing from a rock, which, it was reported, had been produced by a blow of the lance of Atalanta, when hunting and thirsty. Pausanias adds, that the place was ten stades inland from a part of the coast which was six stades from Zarax. It may be suspected, however, that there is some error in the latter distance, such a proximity of two cities being scarcely

§ 2.501 conceivable in a country of slender resources, where the other places were widely distant from one another. It is probable that the modern Kyparissia was the port which Ptolemy and Pliny call Cyphanta; that the town of Cyphanta stood at a distance of ten stades from it, and that Pausanias wrote έξηκοντα instead of εξ as the number of stades between Zarax and the shore below Cyphanta: the total, 260 stades, will then correspond very well with the real distance from Port Ieraka to the ruins of Brasiaet the direct distance from St. Andrew to Port Ieraka being about thirty geographic miles. Taking the distance from St. Andrew to Lenidhi at two-fifths, or twelve geographic miles, and Kyparissia at two-thirds of the remainder, there will remain six geographic miles direct between that place and the position of Zarax at Ieraka, which is not very different from the sixty stades, which I suppose Pausanias to have written instead of six. Of course this is only a conjecture, the correctness of which remains to be ascertained by a personal examination of the places. March 21. — At 7.04 I move from the Prastiotika Kalyvia, and proceeding up the valley by a road not far from the right bank of the Kani, or river of Ai Andhrea, at 7.35 enter the mountains at the opening through which it issues into the plain. The road ascends the heights,

§ 2.502 which overhang the right bank of the river, and becomes very rugged and difficult. At 7.56, a piece of Hellenic wall is on the right, upon a level bounded by cliffs, which overhang the river; they are the remains perhaps of a small fortress for the defence of this pass: soon afterwards we lose twenty-four minutes in replacing baggage, one of our horses having fallen in the rugged ascent, with the baggage under him and his legs in the air. A little beyond, a road ascends to the left to the convent of Orthokosta, one hour distant, and the largest of the numerous monasteries of these mountains. 9.49, on the side of the opposite mountain, across the river, stands that of Saroma. The hills which we pass over are covered with cornfields, and olive-trees cultivated in terraces belonging to Prasto. At 10, an opening in the mountains appears on the right, through which descends a small branch of the Kani between two cultivated declivities. Above its right bank, in the midst of a slope covered with gardens and olive grounds, stands Platanos, a large village belonging to the vilayeti of St. Peter's. Its principal produce is figs, which are dried and sold all over the Morea, strung upon rushes. The elevated situation of Platanos, however, is too cold and moist for this fruit, and the figs of Platanos are of an inferior kind, having tough

§ 2.503 thick skins, and not much saccharine matter. The village is distant from our road about three miles in a straight line. Its valley ascends to the north-west at right angles to the ravine of the main river. Our road now turns more westward towards Kastanitza, which is seen in a lofty situation just under the woods of Mount Malevo. The branch of the river which comes from thence joins that of Platanos at the point which was under us at 10 o'clock. Ten minutes after changing the direction of our road, we have Sitena, a village of 100 houses on the opposite side of the ravine, and a mile and a half from us in direct distance. It is immediately under one of the highest and steepest summits of Mount Malevo. A road leads along the side of that mountain from Sitena to Kastanitza, a distance of one hour. Soon after passing Sitena we begin to descend by a rugged zig-zag path, and at 10.30 arrive at the bottom, at a rill which comes from the open country about Prasto. That town is not in sight, but I perceive the cultivated hills about it. Leaving this opening on our left, we ascend towards Kastanitza, along the side of a deep glen on the right bank of the stream, which flows in a rocky channel below. On the opposite side of the ravine, not far above the river

§ 2.504 side, is an άσκητάριον, or hermitage, but which has not been inhabited for many years. It is a great cavern, in front of which a wall has been built, forming two stories, with a door and windows. We continue to mount, leaving many cultivated terraces on our right, on the opposite side of the ravine, and at 11.40 enter Kastanitza. This was once a town of some importance, but is now reduced to 100 families; many of the houses are empty, the inhabitants having migrated to Ydhra, Spetzia, or Constantinople; Prasto, which now absorbs all the wealth and population of the neighbourhood, was once so inferior, say the people of Kastanitza, to their own town, as to look like its Kalyvia. Their houses are spacious, well built, and well furnished; those of the largest size consist of three stories, of which the lowest is the stable, the middle a kind of magazine for the furniture of show and value, as well as the arms, with which these mountaineers are well provided; the upper story consists of two chambers, the inner having a chimney and hearth, and the outer a divan, as being the room of reception. I am lodged at an old priest's house, one of the best in the place. Ten of the Palikaria of the village, after having been out several weeks, have lately returned from the pursuit of the thieves, who would never

§ 2.505 have been caught, if the Pasha had not adopted the mode of making the villages adjacent to their haunts responsible for their suppression. The Kastanitziotes are a well-made, active, clever race, but jealous, to a degree of malignity, of the prosperity of their neighbours of Prasto. Kastanitza, Sitena, and Prasto, together with the villages on the sea-side dependent on the latter, viz. Lenidhi, Melano, Dero, and the Kalyvia of St. Andrew, form the district of Tzakonia, vulgarly pronounced Tjakonia. The monasteries of Tzakonia are Kondolina, in the district of Kastanitza, and Orthokosta, Rondino, Karya, Klisura, Sinza, and Elona, in the district of Prasto. It is only in these villages and convents that the Tzakonic is spoken, a dialect which is believed by the Greeks to preserve many ancient Doric forms of speech. It appears doubtful, however, whether the pretended Dorisms are not in many instances an effect of the imagination of the διδασκαλοι or other half-educated persons, in their anxiety to discover some remains of the Doric in a district where they know it to have been anciently spoken,

§ 2.505 and where the peasantry still preserve a peculiar patois. Thus I was told that άμερα (day) was ancient Tzakonic, not known to the vulgar, which means nothing more, as I remarked to the Bishop of Prasto, than that it is an ancient Doric form. It is certain, however, that there are some Doric words in actual use; νεμά for pasture (in Romaic βοσκη), and tamborian i.e. ταν πορείαν, for “the road,” are apparently real Dorisms, and they induce me to believe that others might be found, though certainly my informants have not stated any, which, to my conviction, were undoubted instances. The dialect of Tzakonia appears to be more remarkable for having preserved words of common Hellenic in greater number than are to be found in any of the other unfrequented parts of Greece, in all of which the traveller may observe some Hellenisms which are not generally employed by the modern Greeks. The following Hellenisms are in common use in Tzakonia: όρα, sec, νομείς, shepherds, ερίφια, kids, ηνέγκατε, or εωράκατε, τον εριφον; have you brought, or seen, the goat? παρήτε, come ye. In some of the following may be discerned traces of Hellenism, if not of Dorism; others seem mere barbarous corruptions of Hellenic: προύατα, sheep, τζουα, oaks, ιον, water, βότζια, grapes; άτζαπο, used at Prasto for άνθρωπος, I find is not acknowledged at Kastanitza; βρέχου, it rains, πι έσσα εκιού; where art thou? ογί, here, έα όρ' όγί, come hither quickly, ογί εμέ εζού, here I am, νιλείετε, speak ye, δράνιτζε, run ye, τζάχετε, walk on, απο κιά εσπαριού; from whence come ye? εγγουντερέμε ταν τζέαν, let us go home. At Kastanitza, instead of τζέα, for house, they use κέλα, which is a Romaic form, derived from the Latin. That some of the reputed Dorisms of the Tzakonic are the invention of schoolmasters, I was convinced, on the Bishop of Frasto repeating to me a Tzakonic couplet, upon an eclipse of the sun, composed by a λογιωτατος διδάσκάλος of Prasto, but which was nothing more than an attempt to write two bad lines in Doric: Άμερα Παρασκευα, φθινύσθη αλιος ποτι τάς Σελάνας Έπιλυγαζόμενος εν διαστήματι ωρας μιάς. In short, as the real Tzakonic is seldom or never written, as the common Romaic is used in all transactions which require writing, as it is generally understood by the people, and

§ 2.508 spoken by all lettered and travelled persons, it can hardly be doubted, that the peculiarities of speech of this small district will soon be forgotten, while the words of common Hellenic which it preserves will become universal with the progress of literature in Greece. Nevertheless, a more exact inquiry into this dialect, in the places where it is spoken, than my time will allow, would, undoubtedly, be interesting; and the more so, as the Cynurii were one of the people of Peloponnesus, who, according to Herodotus, were aboriginal inhabitants. Villoison, it appears, made some inquiries concerning the Tzakonic dialect when he was in Greece; but, as he did not visit this district, his information on the subject was very scanty. Some of the examples which he adduces are found in every part of Greece, as οχθρος for έχθρος, &c. As it is generally imagined that Tzakonia includes all the range of mountains which rise from the eastern coast of the ancient Laconia, I was particular in my inquiries on this head, and was assured that it contains only the places which I have already mentioned. It may easily be conceived, however, that the name, being a corruption of Laconia, may have formerly

§ 2.509 had a more extensive chorographical signification, and that its borders may have been contracted as the dialect which distinguished the original people was gradually displaced by that of settlers from Albania, Bulgaria, the islands, or Greece beyond the Isthmus. The soil of Kastanitza produces neither oil, nor wheat, nor barley; nothing but apples, chestnuts, vines, and rye. The last is grown in some of the highest parts of the mountain, where they reap the grain in August, and sow immediately. The village now possesses only eight Zevgaria; formerly it had between three and four hundred. The inhabitants gain their livelihood (in a manner similar to that of the Vlakhiotes of Mount Pindus, &c.) by keeping shops in Mistra, Anapli, Tripolitza, Spetzia, Constantinople; some traffic as far as Russia, while others are engaged in Spetziote ships, as sailors. The firwoods of Mount Parnon they make no use of. The ruined place, from which the bishop takes his title, του Ρέοντος, is near the monastery of Karya, in the way from Prasto to Korakovuni, on the summit of a high hill above the monastery, two hours from Prasto and one from Korakovuni. The circuit of the walls is described as greater than that of the castle between Ai Ianni and Aios Petros, which is small, like Anthene, but preserves both walls

§ 2.510 and towers; whereas at Reonda, or Paleo Korakovuni, as it is sometimes called, the foundations only remain. The air of these mountains is as pure and healthy in summer, as that of the plain of Astro and St. Andrew is pernicious. The plain, in that season, is quite uninhabited. Prasto is reckoned one hour and a half distant from Kastanitza. A high ridge divides the valleys, and shuts out the view of the one from the other. Thus, at least, the people of Kastanitza have the advantage of being spared the pain of a constant view of their neighbours prosperity. I cannot discover any Hellenic remains at Kastanitza; nor do I think that any ancient town stood upon this site, for the route described by Pausanias having undoubtedly led through the pass of Kastanitza, if any town had existed here, it would assuredly have been mentioned by him. The fertile slopes around it formed, perhaps, together with those of Sitena and Platano, the district of Eua, which stood under Mount Parnon, and which we may suppose to have comprehended its more southern part; because, as I have already observed, there is reason to believe that Neris and Anthene, the two other towns of Parnon, possessed the cultivable districts now occupied by St. Peter's, St. John's, and Meligu.

§ 2.511 March 22. — At 7.55 I set out, and ascend the great steeps of Mount Malevo. The ridge immediately above Kastanitza is covered with a forest of chestnut trees, mixed with a few oaks. Our road is very rugged, and has been furrowed by the melting of the snow, which fell here to a great depth when I was at Tripolitza, but was all dissolved by the subsequent mild weather, except among the forests of firs, on the summit of the mountain, where the thaw has not yet penetrated. In three quarters of an hour we arrive among the firs, and, at 8.55, enter a narrow ravine between two steep heights covered with those trees. This is the principal bed of the waters which form the stream of Kastanitza, and the most distant of the chief tributaries of the Kani. As the high mountain which gives rise as well to this as to the other branches of the river which flow by Sitena, Platano, &c., is certainly the proper Parnon, and as Pausanias seems to connect the Tanus with the boundaries of Laconia, on the road we are following, we have sufficient, I think, to identify the Kani with the Tanus; notwithstanding that he describes the Tanus as flowing through the Argeia into the Thyreate gulf, which, at first sight, seems to answer better to the river of Luku. But though the maritime

§ 2.512 country, as far north as the marsh of Mosto, may have been ascribed in his time to the Prasiatis, and consequently to Eleuthero- Laconia, it appears, from the position of the Hermae, relatively to Sellasia and Sparta, as mentioned by Pausanias, in the tenth chapter of the Laconics, that all the road we have been following was in Cynuria, which, though more often in the power of Sparta than of Argos, was always geographically considered as belonging to the Argeia, and was actually a part of it in the time of the Roman empire. Euripides, I believe, is the only other author who mentions the Tanus. It was the river, according to the dramatist, upon which the father of Electra fed his flocks. According to the scholiast, it divided Argolis from the Spartiatic land; a definition not very objectionable, inasmuch as a part of its course may have been the boundary between Cynuria Proper and the Prasiatis. It is not impossible that Kani may be a dialectic form of the word Tanus, at least as far as the initial letter is concerned. There are several examples of the occasional preference of κ to r in the Aeolic or Doric dialects, as in οτε and its derivatives, which were written οκα, ποκα, άλλοκα. The termination of ι for ος is a common Romaic conversion.

§ 2.513 In ascending, we meet with a great quantity of snow in some parts of the narrow glen of the river, and there is a still greater depth upon the sides of the hills. We arrive at the end of the ravine at 9.22, and then ascend the upper heights through the fir forests. “It is all torch-wood”! exclaimed one of our postillions in admiration, and added, “How rich I should soon be by selling it at Mistra!” At 9.45 we attain the summit of the pass, and immediately begin to descend. Here, and for a quarter of a mile below, the snow is four or five feet deep in the road, and the loaded horses with great difficulty get through it, falling repeatedly. The suridjis grow mutinous, complain that the snow is a boui in depth, [a rough measurement, meaning about the height of a man] and assert that it is impossible to proceed: we persevere, however, and soon come into a path clear of snow, but which the torrents have made very rugged: our pace is consequently slow; through the whole passage of the mountain not more than that of mules. We left the highest summit of the mountain, now called St. Elias of Malevo, two miles on the left, much higher than the part we crossed, bare of trees, and in many parts without snow: it is in the district of Kastanitza. At the

§ 2.514 bottom of the descent, we enter a broad torrent bed, like that by which we approached the ascent, on the opposite side of the mountain it is bordered by heights covered with large firs. After proceeding a quarter of an hour down this ravine, we turn out of it to the left; its waters run to Verria, and, after uniting with the river of Tzitzina, receive the northern branch from Arakhova below the monastery of the Forty Saints, after which the united river assumes the name of Kelefina, and joins the Iri, or Eurotas, a little above Sparta, We mount a ridge on the left of the ravine, and, at 10.55, arrive on the summit, where a road from Tzitzina to Babaku turns off to the right. In this spot are the foundations of an ancient Greek edifice; many large wrought stones, entire or broken, and all much corroded by the effect of the exposed and humid situation, are lying on the ground. I search in vain for any remains of architectural ornament or of statuary. On the brow of a peak, to the left of this spot, there is said to be a large cavern or quarry; but the mist and rain conceal every thing above us. Below, in the direction of Mistra, I perceive two cultivated ravines, meeting at a rocky gorge, through which the united stream from the two ravines finds its way towards the Kelefina.

§ 2.515 In the valley of the northern branch, to our right, is the village of Verria, an ancient Greek name; towards the sources of that which lies to our left, is Tzitzina, a word of Bulgarian origin, and vulgarly pronounced Tjidjina. There is not a single representative hereabouts of the forest of oaks, called Scotita, which existed in the time of Pausanias; but the Hellenic ruins, which now give to the place the name of Marmara, correspond to those of the temple of Jupiter Scotitas, which stood in the forest. Leaving the road to Verria on our right, we continue along the side of the fir-clad mountain to the southward, and, crossing a barren ridge or two, descend into a narrow valley, at the head of which stands Tzitzina, under a rocky summit of Mount Malevo. We arrive at 12.20. The sides of the hills below and around the village are covered with vines in narrow terraces. Along the bottom runs a

§ 2.516 small river, descending directly from the mountain behind the village; it is joined by another from a ravine which branches from the valley of Tzitzina to the southward. Tzitzina contains eighty families, who possess a considerable quantity of land, grown with wheat, barley, rye, and vines; they have also some lands and a kalyvia near Sparta, and many flocks, which are now feeding on the winter pastures in the low lands, particularly in the plain of Elos; from the milk of these flocks they make cheese, and carry on a considerable traffic in this article. In Bardunia and the north-eastern part of Mani, they cut plank and timber from the oak and poplar of Mount Taygetum, and they procure deal plank in their own mountains. Their contributions of every sort amount to 13,000 piastres a year. Seven armed palikaria were lately sent from hence to join those of the other villages against the robbers, and assisted in taking some prisoners at the Marmara. March 23. — At 7.30, having sent the baggage by the direct road to the monastery of the Forty Saints, I quit Tzitzina, and following its torrent in the direction of the branch which descends through the ravine on the southern side of the village, mount soon afterwards the hill to the left of it, which is covered with

§ 2.517 firs mixed with a few pines; on the summit there is some cultivated ground, and the trees are burnt to prepare the ground for sowing. These woodlands are said to have been more cultivated in former times, when Tzitzina was a much larger village. According to the information which our guide gives me, as we ride along, there are not many deer in the forests of Mount Malevo; one he saw at the Marmara last year, about as large as a calf of a year old. There are wolves and rabbits in the woods, but no roebucks, or bears or wild hogs. The last are plentiful in Taygetum, the others are found in many of the forests of Greece, but whether they exist in any part of the Taygetic range, I have not ascertained. At the monastery of Luku I saw a wolf trap, made exactly like that called man trap in England. Wild strawberries are found plentifully in the eastern Laconic mountains. The ορνια or vulture, is often seen soaring about the cliffs; it is common in all very high situations in Greece, much more so than the αετός, or eagle, which, though smaller, is said to be more bold and powerful. The shepherds are more afraid of the eagle than of the ornia, by both of which their young lambs are some times carried off. At 8.15 we begin to descend, and soon afterwards leave the forest, and, turning to the left, descend a ravine to the village of Agriana, a Kefalokhori of thirty houses. At 9.15 quit it and halt fifteen minutes, and soon after enter the dry bed of a torrent leading to the westward, which we follow until 9.49, when we ascend some rocky heights on its left bank, leaving on the right a road conducting to the monastery of St. Prodromus of Sidjafi and to the left another leading to Perpeni, the fields of which appear on the slope towards the foot of the mountain. Below Perpeni, which is, perhaps, an ancient name, are the remains of a tower, which, by the description, is Hellenic. Our road is very rocky; we are accompanied by a boy on foot: the guide is upon a mule. A little before 11 arrive at the summit of a ridge above Khrysafa, from whence I see all the head of the Laconic gulf, the plain of Elos, the mountain of Beziane, the peninsula of Cape Xyli, and beyond it the Island of Elafonisi; farther westward appears all the western side of the plain of Mistra, and behind it Bardunia,

§ 2.519 the north-eastern part of Mani, the peaks of Taygetum, and the majestic rocks of the same mountain, which border the plain of Mistra. The northern continuation of the Taygetic range is visible also as far as its termination towards Londari, to the right of which position is seen Mount Tzimbaru and a long pointed summit, crowned with a single tree near the village of Kolina, which is a conspicuous object from all the surrounding country, and has often served me for a point of measurement. Descend and arrive at Khrysafa at 11.20. The village is situated in an uneven cultivated hollow, among the rocky mountains which form the lower part of the Malevo range towards Sparta. It was once a place of importance, as the ruins still attest, but has never recovered the effects of the last Russian insurrection, when it was burnt by the Albanians. A few huts among the ruins are sufficient to contain the present inhabitants. There are two large churches and some smaller still standing. In one of the former I observe an ancient tile one foot ten inches square, and in the other a fluted stele of this form [sketch], with fragments of another. These were the only Hellenic remains I could find. Some parts of the walls, which support

§ 2.520 terraces formerly cultivated on the hills round the village, have almost the solidity of Hellenic works, and the situation of the place, a projecting ridge between two ravines crowned with a peaked height, has very much the air of an ancient site. We leave Khrysafa at 12.43, and, descending through some old olive trees and terraces of corn fields, continue to pass over rugged hills intersected with terrace walls, the vestiges of former cultivation, until, at 1.15, we arrive at a church on the side of a pool formed by a fine source of fresh water; it is situated in a ravine which we follow upwards, until we reach some heights surrounding a little cultivated hollow near the left bank of the river of Tzitzina, in which stands the monastery of Aghion Saranda, or the Forty Saints: we arrive at 2. From the opposite side of the river rises a steep rocky mountain. The convent was originally founded by the Emperor Andronicus Paleologus, in a lower situation than that of the present house, very near the river, and completely surrounded with precipitous rocks, abounding in caverns which were formed into ascetic cells by the addition of walls in front of them; all these are now deserted. The river of Tzitzina joins that from Arakhova, one mile and a half below the convent, at a mill

§ 2.521 belonging to it, hence commonly called Καλογιέρικος Μύλος, the Monkish Mill. On the slope of the mountain which rises from the right bank of the Arakhova river, and from the right bank of the united river or Kelefina, there is much cultivation, and the ruins of two large villages, Potamia considerably above the junction, and Khitorissa half a mile below it. The hollow around the monastery of Aghion Saranda is well cultivated with corn and olives, but the steep rocky mountains which surround it prevent a free circulation of air, and make the place, though considerably elevated above the plain of Sparta, unhealthy in summer. The situation, nevertheless, is greatly preferable to that which Andronicus chose. About a mile and a half above the monastery there is a great rocky gorge, through which descends the united river from Verria and from Tzitzina: it is the same ravine which I observed from Sta Marmara; the common route to the Forty Saints from the northward and eastward passes through it; the hermitages are chiefly in the rocks on the right side of this ravine. The only Hellenic remains I can find at the Forty Saints are two fragments of inscriptions, one in the Doric dialect, in very ancient characters, much defaced, the other of Roman times, in common Greek.

§ 2.522 March 24. — We leave the convent of Aghion Saranda at 8.10, and immediately begin to descend the last falls of Mount Malevo, which are here uneven, and intersected by torrents. The soil is good and well adapted to vines, but entirely uncultivated. It is a part of the country above Menelaeum, which is described by Polybius as level and covered with soil and well watered. The level, however, will apply only to the part immediately above Menelaeum. At 9.06 we halt for thirty-seven minutes at a ruined church not far short of the river Iri, and immediately opposite to the heights of Sparta; then crossing the river at 9.50, a very little below its junction with the Kelefina, I enter the low hills upon which that city stood. Pausanias describes, in the following terms, the route to Sparta from the Hermae, which marked the borders of Laconia and Argeia. “In advancing from the Hermae, the country is full of oaks; the place is called Scotita; at a distance of ten stades to the left of the road stands a temple of Jupiter Scotitas: a little farther along the direct route there is a statue of Hercules to the left of the road, together with a trophy said to have been erected by Hercules, when he slew Hippocoon and his sons. A third

§ 2.523 turning from the direct road leads on the right to Caryae and the temple of Diana. The place is sacred to Diana and the Nymphs: here is a statue of Diana Caryatis in the open air, and here the Lacedaemonian virgins have annual dances, and a dance also peculiar to the place. Having returned into the high road, and proceeded onwards, there occur the ruins of Sellasia, which was taken by the Achaeans, when they defeated the Lacedaemonians under Cleomenes, son of Leonidas. The next place in advance is Thornax, which contains a statue of Jupiter Pythaeus, made like the statue of Apollo at Amyclae; beyond Thornax is the city Sparta.” The pass of Kastanitza being the natural passage of the ridge of Parnon, and the direct route between the Thyreatis and Sparta, I think there can be no doubt that the line of my route is the same as that of Pausanias, particularly as he terminates his account of the Thyreatis, or Cynuria, at the end of the second book, by describing the course and sources of the Tanus, which may be said to originate in the pass of Kastanitza. The Hermae probably stood at the partition of the waters which I passed yesterday at 9.45.

§ 2.524 It is no objection to this conclusion, that Pausanias says in the same passage, that the Hermae, in Mount Parnon, were the Lacedaemonian boundary towards the Tegeatice, as well as the Argeia. A Hermaeum in the pass of Kastanitza could not indeed have separated Laconia from the Tegeatice, but there may have been another Hermaeum on the Tegeatic frontier, towards Vervena and the sources of the Alpheius; on the ridge between Vervena and St. Peter's, there may even have been a common boundary of all the three districts. As the ruin called Sta Marmara appears to have been that of a solitary building, such as a temple, and as I turned out of the direct road to the left towards Tzitzina, after descending for some distance along the torrent bed before I reached the Marmara, its position agrees exactly with that of the temple of Jupiter Scotitas. The forest Scotita, no remains of which are now to be seen in the place, described by Pausanias, seems to have been obliterated by a process of gradual diminution, during the two or three centuries which preceded his visit to the country. It is evident from Polybius, that in his time it covered a much larger portion of the country around Sellasia; for he describes it as lying between Sparta and Tegea. On one occasion Philopoemen concealed himself

§ 2.525 with a body of Achaeans in Scotita, whither he had marched suddenly from Tegea, while he sent another body to plunder the country about Sellasia, with orders to retreat into the Scotita if they should be attacked. Some mercenaries of Nabis moved against them from Pellana, (a town on the Eurotas, about ten miles above Sparta ) and having pursued them into the Scotita, there fell an easy sacrifice to Philopoemen. On another occasion, Philopoemen, marched from Tegea, by Caryae, to Mount Barbosthenes, which was ten miles distant from Sparta, and defeated Nabis between that place and a strong post nearer to Sparta, called Pyrrhi Castra. Livy, who relates this transaction, copying from Polybius, adds, that the troops of the tyrant suffered greatly from the enemy in the defiles of the forest, through which they were under the necessity of retreating to Sparta. The historian shews also that one of the gates of Sparta led to Barbosthenes and a second to Pherae; and it is dear, from the circumstances, that both the roads conducting from them were different from that of Sellasia. There can be little doubt, therefore, that Pherae was the same place as the modern Verria, the difference between the two names being only dialectic.