Col. William Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (v. 1-4)

ToposText · Col. William Leake · 2,204 sections

:1.121
§ 1.121 June 15.—A descent of fifty minutes from Khierasovo through the forest of chestnuts, conducts us, at 7.5, nearly to the base of the mountain, where a torrent shaded by planes turns some mills, and flows down a valley opening into the plain of Vrakhori. At 7.40, just at the entrance of the plain, we pass a zevgalati. or hamlet, dependent on Khierasovo, and called Ston Gambo, or “at the plain” but which is sufficiently high to command a view over a great part of the extensive plains and lakes around Vrakhori, with the opposite mountains. This prospect is alone sufficient to identify Mount Zygos with Aracynthus; since, according to Dionysius the geographer, Mount Aracynthus bounded to the southward the great plain of the Aetolians. There are three lakes in this plain, one to the right of the river Aspro, or Achelous, the two others to the left of it; but the latter are separated only by a marshy and often inundated tract, full of large trees and underwood, through which is a causeway of stone, forming the only road from Vrakhori to Anatoliko, Mesolonghi, Bokhori, and the adjacent coast, whether by Khierasovo or by Klisura.
:1.122
§ 1.122 The latter route, after having crossed the causeway, turns to the right of the former, and passes by Papadhates, which stands on an extremity of Mount Zygos, not far from the borders of the middle lake; it then enters the pass of Klisura, which natural opening by avoiding the ascent and descent of the mountain, is often preferred as the road from Vrakhori to Mesolonghi, although circuitous. Above Papadhates are considerable remains of a Hellenic city, probably Lysimachia. Leaving Papadhates a few miles on the left, we enter on the causeway at 8.10, and ride through a most agreeable shade of oaks, wild olives, and planes, festooned with wild vines, and intermixed in the more marshy parts with large reeds. The causeway, which rests on a great number of arches, is said to be two hundred years old, and to have been built by a certain bey of Vrakhori, who probably took advantage of the foundations of a more ancient work. A gentle stream flows through the arches from right to left. We arrive at the end of the causeway at 8.30, cross the remainder of the plain, and, ascending the last slope of the heights which border it on the north, arrive at 9.45 at Vrakhori [Agrinio]. This town occupies a large space of ground, and contains about 500 Turkish, 100 Greek, and 40 Jewish families. It was entirely Turkish not many years ago, but the present Aga has encouraged the Greeks to reside. The Turkish houses have large gardens attached to them, with high stone walls to hide the windows of the harem, and they are built in a more antique Turkish taste than is commonly seen in Greece.
:1.123
§ 1.123 The Greek houses are small, and situated in the lower part of the town. In the afternoon I visit Yusuf Aga, the Musellim of Karlili, of which district Vrakhori is the chief town. Yusuf, who has resided here during the last seven years, with the exception of one, owes his promotion to his cousin of the same name, who is the powerful Valide Kiayassy, and, like his relative, a native of Khania in Crete. In consequence of the Musellim’s interest at court, Aly Pasha finds it necessary to treat him with respect; received him lately with great distinction at Nicopolis, and affects to place his Derveni troops under Yusuf’s orders, which is believed by many to be nothing less than a trap laid by the crafty Albanian to bring Yusuf into disgrace; for not long ago, a hasne, which the latter had forwarded from Kravari with 40 soldiers, in its way to Constantinople was attacked by the robbers at Makrinoro, which is not very likely to have happened without the Pasha’s connivance. ['Hasne' is applied to any portion, however small, of the imperial revenue. To rob the hasne by open violence is one of the most heinous of offenses in the eyes of the Turkish government; to do so by any other means, is the object and practice of every official man in Turkey.] The royal farms of the revenue in this part of Greece are divided as follows: Karlili, Mesolonghi,'Epacto, Kravari, Badrajik, (Neopatra), and Karpenisi.
:1.124
§ 1.124 Aly Pasha has Mesolonghi, to which is attached Magula, a village of 50 houses, and Neokhori of 150; chorographically these form part of Karlili, as well as Vonitza at its opposite extremity, which is separated from it politically, as being one of the ex-Venetian places. As the inferior branches of revenue in Turkey are often farmed separately from the miri, Yusuf has that of the kharatj in Badrajik, Karpenisi, Kravari, and Epakto. Karlili, besides the towns of Vrakhori, Mesolonghi, Anatoliko, and Vonitza, contains 140 villages of various sizes; many of these, situated in the plain of Vrakhori, are mere tjiftliks belonging to the Turks of this town. The kaza, which contains all Acarnania, and a great part of Aetolia, is divided into four parts: Vlokhos, and Zygos, to the left of the Aspro Valto and Xeromero, to the right. The two first are separated from one another by the northern bank of the middle lake, which is all included in Zygos, as the eastern lake is entirely in Apokuro, which district is bordered to the eastward by Kravari, as Zygos is by Venetiko, or the district of Epakto. Apokuro is included in the Turkish kaza of Karpenisi; but Kravari is considered a separate district, of which the chief town is Lumbotina. Vlokho borders, northward, on Agrafa, and Valto on the Arta kazasi; the latter includes the Makrinoro, and follows the course of the Aspro as far as a line drawn from the south-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Arta, until it meets the Aspro, about Anghelo-kastro.
:1.125
§ 1.125 All the country westward of that line between the Aspro and the Gulf of Arta, constitutes Xeromero, which thus corresponds nearly with the ancient Acarnania. Βάλτος, though the ordinary meaning of the word is marsh, is said to be so called, as being for the most part a woody desert. Xeromero seems to have derived its name from its deficiency in water, when compared with Zygos, Valto, aud Apokuro, and Zygos from the ridge of Aracynthus, though it contains also the level and lake at the foot of this mountain on either side. Apokuro, as I before hinted, appears to be an ancient name corrupted. The whole of Karlili, with the exception of the principal town, has suffered excessively from the wars carried on between the kleftes and the Dervent Aga, so that at present it does not contain, exclusively of the towns which I have named, a population of 20,000 souls. Anghelo-kastro, which is a conspicuous object from Vrakhori, is a ruined castle on the summit of a low peak at the north-western extremity of Mount Zygos, not far from the Aspro. At the foot of the height, towards the river, is a small village of the same name. There are said to be some Hellenic foundations on the hill, as well as in the plain below it, marking probably the site of Conope, afterwards called Arsinoe.
:1.126
§ 1.126 June 16.—A beautiful little bronze figure of Hercules, wanting an arm, which I observed yesterday in my lodging, and which my host stated to have been brought from Vlokho, a monastery on a lofty hill to the eastward of Vrakhori, where he described some extensive ruins, at once points out the probability of that place being the site of Thermus; which, at the time when Greek art was in perfection, was noted for its numerous statues. Setting out this morning, therefore, at 5.5, and riding through currant grounds and vineyards, among which, on the left, are a kiosk and gardens of Yusuf Aga, I cross, at 5.50, the river Ermitza, which issues from a ravine among the hills between Vrakhori and Vlokho; in winter it covers a wide gravelly bed, and even now is a respectable stream. The name is encouraging to a search for Thermus, as it seems to be a corruption of that word. Instead of ascending to Vlokho by the nearest way, we leave it on the left, and follow the plain towards the shore of the eastern lake, or lake of Apokuro, for the purpose of visiting another Paleo-kastro which has been described to me: pass through some fields of maize and corn, and numerous plane trees, and at 7.5 arrive at the remains of a Hellenic fortress, situated on a height one third of a mile distant from the edge of the lake, between which and the ruins stands a tjiftlik, or zevgalatia, called Kuvelo. The entire circuit of the ancient fortifications still subsists, surrounding a height which forms the last slope of Mount Viena. The circumference is about a mile.
:1.127
§ 1.127 On the summit are the ruins of an oval acropolis, ninety-five yards in length, flanked with towers on the exterior side, and towards the town defended by a double wall without towers. At the southern extremity of the oval, a semi-circular tower, twenty-three feet in diameter, looks down upon and enfilades the whole line of the southern walls, of which a great part of the towers and curtains are still standing. This semi-circular tower is nearly complete, and has three windows in the middle of the curve. At the northern end of the acropolis are two towers formed of small stones and mortar, raised upon the ruins of the ancient walls, (a repair probably of the time of the lower Greeks or Franks,) and adjacent to them, on the northern town-wall, three or four of the ancient towers, with the intermediate curtains: of the rest of that front, which follows in a curve line the crest of the height towards a narrow vale grown with corn, there is very little left, and still less of the western side towards Kuvelo and the lake. This fortress, standing on the foot of the mountain a little above the lake, was well placed to command the passage along the shore to the eastward or southward, or in other words, the ancient route from Thermus and every part of the great Aetolian plain, in the direction of the vale of the Evenus and Naupactus. Beyond the fortress, at the southeastern end of the lake, the mountains descend quite to the water, and leave only a difficult road along the margin. This is far the largest of all the lakes of Acarnania and Aetolia, and is so deep towards the extremity that it has the reputation of being unfathomable: it abounds in fish, but they are caught only in the shallows towards the causeway, by means of monoxyla, one of which is now lying near the shore at Kuvelo.
:1.128
§ 1.128 On the opposite shore of the lake, the slope of Mount Aracynthus is more gradual than it is on the shore of the western lake, or lake of Zygos, where, especially beyond Papadhates, the woody mountains extend to the water side. At the foot of the mountain, south-eastward of Ston Gambo, and opposite to Kuvelo, there is a cultivated tract containing the village of Gavala, or Kavala, and several tjiftliks. It is probably the territory of Trichonium, from which the lake took its ancient name. From Kuvelo, after returning for half an hour by the same road, we turn out of it to the right, and begin to ascend the mountain of Vlokho, which is very steep, and covered with a thick wood of oak, ilex, and holly-oak. The ilex affords the best timber; its stem resembles that of the holly-oak; the leaves are larger, (and not so prickly) smooth, small, and dark-coloured, oblong, pointed, and serrated, with serratures very long and close. Besides these trees, there are many ordinary shrubs, among which are wild olives, brambles, and wild vines, making the ride cool and agreeable, though the path is so bad that Philip and his army could hardly have taken more time to reach the summit than I do with a couple of Albanian soldiers.
:1.129
§ 1.129 At length we arrive at a small grassy level surrounded by woody heights, and crossed by a brook shaded with planes, which descends from the summit of the hill. From hence upwards to the village of Vlokho the path is still steeper than before, and is traced in a zigzag among corn-fields, olive plantations, and pear trees, bearing a small well-flavoured fruit now ripe: the wild pear also abounds. At the distance of an hour and a half from the kastro of Kuvelo we pass through Vlokho, where are the sources which supply the rivulet, and about ten inhabited houses, with a large one in ruins, dispersed among some large walnut-trees. Two or three hundred yards higher up the hill, is another collection of cottages, with a little garden ground. These villages and cultivated ground occupy a hollow under the summit of the mountain on the southern side, and stand about the centre of the site of the ancient city. At the upper village we find a monk belonging to the monastery which stands on the summit of the hill, and invite ourselves to dine there. He speedily procures a lamb, places it on the shoulders of one of the villagers, and thus accompanied we proceed to the monastery. From the upper huts of Vlokho the ascent is very steep. Half-way to the summit we arrive at a part of the ancient wall, which followed the crest of a, ridge descending from the citadel to the south-west. The wall was constructed of great masses of various shapes, accurately fitted to one another; higher up, near the foot of the acropolis, the stones are still larger.
:1.130
§ 1.130 One of them, a trapezium, measures ten feet by the largest diagonal, and is six feet four inches broad; another on the surface is equal to a square of seven feet and a half. Few are less than three or four feet. The acropolis and its rocks are still towering above our heads, but we reach at length, by a zigzag road, a narrow passage between two parallel walls, which was evidently the approach to the gate of the acropolis, and arrive at the monastery at the end of half an hour's ride from the upper Vlokho. This building, dedicated to the Virgin and called the Panaghia of Vlokhos, stands on an oval tabular level, bordered on all sides by steep rocks, but rather less difficult of approach on the western side, where we ascended. To the north-eastward the mountain slopes rapidly to a deep ravine between slopes cultivated with corn, on the opposite side of which rises the great mountain of Viena, or Kyria Evghenia; an appellation which, according to the kaloyeri of the convent, was derived from a βασιλοπούλα, or princess Eugenia, who concealed herself, when pursued by her enemies, in a cavern which the monks point out to me just under the highest summit of the mountain, and there died. Who these ladies, Eugenia and Irene, were, whose names remain attached to two of the mountains of Aetolia, it would be vain to conjecture with our scanty knowledge of the history of Aetolia under the Byzantine empire, for to that time the names are evidently to be referred.
:1.131
§ 1.131 The other summits of Mount Viena, which from its magnitude and central situation I conceive to be the Panaetolium of Pliny, are distinguished by the names of the nearest villages, the whole being called Viena, which is probably nothing more than a Bulgarian corruption of Ευγένεια. The range terminates to the north in a peaked summit above the village of Arakhova, in the district of Karpenisi. Half way down from the retreat of the unfortunate princess, and immediately opposite to Vlokho, stood a village of fifteen houses, named Lykokhori, which about eight years ago fell down the side of the mountain, and disappeared with all the adjoining soil; the inhabitants fortunately had retired, having taken warning from the previous trembling and cracking of the earth. Aware of what was likely to happen, the monks watched the place, but it slipped off in the night, and they heard only the awful crash. While our dinner is preparing, one of the monks guides and assists me in climbing up the rocks of an upper summit, by a path known only to themselves. This height, which is named Ogla, is 200 yards long and 30 broad, similar in shape to the entire summit of which it constitutes about a fourth part; and thus forming a sort of keep to this natural castle; its precipices on the further side from the monastery are a continuation with an increased height of those on the eastern side of the entire hill.
:1.132
§ 1.132 The summit of Ogla is level and carpeted, like the larger summit, with a delicate herbage. This fine geographical station comprehends in its view to the southward Mount Khelmos beyond Kalavryta, and to the northward the vast serrated rock of Djumerka beyond Arta, points distant from each other more than 100 miles in a straight line. The mountains of Agrafa are seen to the right of the latter, and other points more distant to the east, which are probably a part of Othrys. Oeta and Parnassus are hid by Mount Viena. The summits near the head of the Gulf of Arta are visible to the left of Djumerka, then the mountain of Suli, the Acarnanian heights near V0nitza, Varnaka and Tragamesti, and then the range of Zygos, above which appear the great mountain of Kefalonia, and the rocks of Oxia and Kurtzolari. Above the lofty hills at the end of the lake of Apokuro appear the mountains Varassova and Kaki-skala, and that of Rigani, above Epakto, beyond which are the great Peloponnesian hills Olono, Voidhia, and Khelmos. The plain of Vrakhori is extended in front of the prospect, with its three lakes, and the broad white bed of the Achelous, from which the modern name, Aspro, was evidently derived. The nearer country, at the back of the hills of Vlokho and Vrakhori, is very rugged and mountainous as far as can be seen, nor do I perceive any cultivation, or a single village. Deep ravines surround the hill of Vlokho on every side excepting to the south. On the west a stream shaded with planes follows the foot of the hill, traverses half-way down a little cultivation round a metokhi of the monastery, and joins one of the lakes, near the causeway.
:1.133
§ 1.133 Farther westward is a narrow valley watered by the Ermitza, the sources of which are at a considerable distance to the north. The springs at Vlokho form a branch of the rivulet flowing along the ravine which separates the hill of Vlokho from the mountain of Kyria Evghenia. Their junction and subsequent discharge into the lake of Apokuro are not far westward of Kuvelo. It is curious that Vlokho, though of so little importance at present, not only stands on the site of the ancient capital, but still gives name to a great part of Aetolia, of which it is in fact the natural citadel. The modern name is Sclavonic, and seems to indicate, that when the barbarians of that race conquered this part of Greece, in the decline of the Byzantine empire, the advantages of the site caused it to be their principal fortress, and the chief place of a large district. When the French were at Prevyza, and an invasion was expected, the Turks of Vrakhori prepared to retire for security to Vlokho. The form and position of Thermus were such as the Greeks seem generally to have considered the most advantageous; namely, a triangle on the slope of a pyramidal hill, bordered on either side by a torrent flowing in a deep ravine, and having a summit convenient for an acropolis. The citadel was generally the apex of the triangle, and often itself, therefore, of a triangular form, but when the summit of the hill was level, the citadel was sometimes oval, such as I have already described at Kuvelo, and at the ruins of Phigaleia and Theisoa in the Morea.
:1.134
§ 1.134 But this was probably a very ancient manner of fortifying, which was seldom followed in the meridian ages of Greece, when square towers and straight curtains were the general method. In the instance of Vlokho the ground was formed by nature for an oval acropolis. The entire circumference of the city was about two miles and a half; the walls are in best preservation on the western side. Here the foundations, with some of the lower courses of masonry, are to be seen, following the entire crest of the ridge; in some places there are considerable pieces of the wall, all of polygonal masonry, though generally of smaller stones than those which I described below the acropolis. There were no towers, but only short flanks at intervals of 60 or 100 yards: on the eastern side I could not trace any remains of the wall between the citadel and a small level about half-way down the hill, which was not far from the south-eastern angle of the city. But the fall on this side being much steeper, there was not so much necessity for defence as on the other side, where the easier declivity not only required a stronger fortification, but has been the means of preserving it better than on the eastern side, where the materials as they have fallen may have rolled down the hill. To the south, the walls crossed some transverse ridges, on the borders of the hollow in which the two villages are situated, but considerably below the lower village. Little more than foundations are traceable on this side.
:1.135
§ 1.135 The only remains of a public edifice within the walls of this capital of one of the most influential people in Greece, and which, when it was taken by Philip, was noted for its riches, is a square pyramidal shapeless mass of stones, on a line with the cottages of upper Vlokho, near the western wall. I inquired in vain for medals, or other remains of antiquity. At a little before 5 we begin to descend from the monastery, which is soon afterwards occupied by some guests less welcome; namely, a body of armatoli, ranging the country, and living at the public expense. Turning at the upper huts of Vlokho, to the right of the road, by which we mounted the hill, we cross the western wall, and descend the ridge along the outside of it as far as the southwestern angle, where the southern wall of the town began to cross the valley. In the latter, a little beyond the angle, is a semi-circular retiring of the wall, about ten yards in diameter, with a plain unornamented opening in it which was evidently one of the principal gates of the city. The gate is not in the middle of the semi-circle, but a little to the left, and the whole construction furnishes an example of one of the many ingenious modes devised by the Greeks for strengthening their gates and the approaches to them. The semi-circle had the same intention as the square court which is sometimes found before the gates of Hellenic cities; in the present instance it not only admitted of a concentration of missiles, particularly on the right or unshielded side of the enemy, but exposed him, when he had reached the gate, to the reverse of the western wall.
:1.136
§ 1.136 [sketch of gate] Leaving this spot at 5.45, we descend by zigzag paths, among the hills, to the ravine on the western side of the city, and having crossed the stream which flows along it, enter soon afterwards the plain of Vrakhori; we then ride over a fine soil quite uncultivated, in a direction parallel to the foot of the mountain, enter the currant grounds and vineyards of Vrakhori, and at 7 cross the Ermitza at the mills where we passed it in the morning, following the same road from thence as before, and at halfpast 7 re-entering Vrakhori. June 17.—This morning, at a few minutes before 6, I proceed northward along the plain, in a direction parallel to the foot of the hills, and at 6.25 arrive at Zapandi, a village of 120 houses, two thirds of which are Turkish. After waiting a quarter of an hour for a guide, to ford the river, we begin to cross it at 7.20. In winter the passage is seldom attempted, the waters often filling the entire bed, which is not less than three quarters of a mile in width; but at present the river is divided into five or six rapid streams, two of which only are large, and require a guide: not so much on account of their depth as because the bottom is a loose gravel and sand, with many holes and quick-sands;
:1.137
§ 1.137 and the peramata or safe places for passing, shifting frequently, are well known only to those who reside on the spot. In the present season the afternoon’s storms in the mountains sometimes produce sudden floods which are dangerous, but in the forenoon the river is generally passable. The water is now not higher than a Turkish stirrup, and we find no inconvenience except from the round stones at the bottom, which make the horse stumble occasionally. But the guide who walks alongside on foot, and leads the horse, quickly raises him when he makes a false step, encouraging him by his voice, and recommending to the rider to look at the bank, that the current may not make him giddy. A little below the ford the bed is wider than where we cross it, and takes a turn to the westward. The dry part is covered with trunks of trees, the wintry spoils of the woods of Pindus. After a halt of half an hour on the right bank, we reach at 8.24 the ruins of a large Hellenic town, undoubtedly Stratus; for Stratus, according to the ancient authorities, stood on the right bank of the Achelous, in the same plain which contained the lake Trichonis, and at a distance of 200 stades from the sea, by the course of the river: all which accords perfectly with this place.
:1.138
§ 1.138 The eastern wall of the city followed the bank of the river, just at the point where it touches the last falls of the hills of Valto, which are here low, but rise gradually to the north-north-west, and extend to the head of the Gulf of Arta, where they terminate abruptly in the pass of Makrinoro: a parallel ridge rises gradually from the plain not far to the southwestward of Stratus, and ends at the Gulf of Arta in the hill called Sparto-vuni. Between these two ridges lies a long valley commencing at the ruins of Stratus, and at a village opposite to it called Lepenu, and terminating to the north-west in an easy pass, through which is a descent into the plain of Xerokambo, near the south-eastern corner of the Gulf of Arta. It is evident from this construction of the country, that Stratus was a military position of importance. Being situated at the point where the valley of Lepenu meets that of the Achelous, and where they both open into the great Aetolian plain, it commanded two of the principal approaches to that plain from the northward, at the same time that it was not far removed from a third, which I shall presently have occasion to mention. The first object in the ruins of Stratus that strikes the traveller after crossing the river, is a small door in the south-eastern angle of the town wall. Thirty yards below it, on the water side, are some foundations, whether those of the peribolus of a temple, or belonging to a wharf, it is impossible to say. The door has a semicircular top, not constructed on the principles of the arch, by hollowing the horizontal courses of stone into a semicircular form,, in the same manner as is seen in many places, both in Greece and Egypt.
:1.139
§ 1.139 The door is 10 feet high, and 5 feet 6 inches wide; the stones very large, and, as commonly occurs in Greek fortresses, larger than in the other parts of the wall. This door leads into an uneven space about a mile in circumference, surrounded on all sides by remains, more or less traceable, of the town walls, which are of the third kind of masonry, in some parts nearly approaching to the most regular species. Half way from the door, towards the highest part of the inclosure which is diagonally opposite to the gate, are the remains of a theatre, situated in a hollow, having its right side near the western wall of the above-mentioned enclosure, and fronting the south. Its interior diameter below is 105 feet, and there seem to have been about thirty rows of seats, all of which might probably be brought to light by excavation. But this inclosure towards the river, which contained the theatre, was not much more than a third of the whole city. The remainder stood on lower and more even ground, and the circuit of its walls, which are every where traceable, occupied the summits of several heights which border the valley of Lepenu, or follow the contour of the ridges uniting those heights. The wall which parted the two portions of the city terminates at the north-western summit before mentioned. Here seems to have been a small citadel, but it was scarcely higher than the adjoining part of the same ridge on the outside of the walls, and at the distance of two or three hundred yards was commanded, together with almost the entire site, by the external heights.
:1.140
§ 1.140 A gate remains in the partition wall, near the summit, a little beyond which, to the westward, are some ruined huts, and some fruit-trees, once belonging to the village of Sorovigli. In the northern wall of the greater or western inclosure, a little below the summit, are some towers and intervening curtains, which are almost perfect. The circumference of the western inclosure appears to be between two and three thousand yards, and the entire circuit of the city about two miles and a half. The arm of the Achelous (for the river is here divided into several streams), which flows at the foot of the eastern wall, although narrow, is rapid, deep, and difficult to pass, even at this season, so that the river was a considerable protection to the place. As a fortress, however, Stratus could not have been considered very strong when poliorcetics were in the state of improvement which they reached after the time of Alexander. The external ridge commanding the citadel illustrates one of the circumstances of the attempt made by Perseus to occupy Stratus, in the winter of the year B.C. 170—169. The king, who having undertaken the expedition at the request of the Epirotes, had marched through their country, was met on the frontiers of Aetolia by Archidamus, the strategus of Aetolia, who accompanied him to Stratus, then belonging to the Aetolian confederacy. But as usual in the states of Greece, there were two factions in Aetolia,
:1.141
§ 1.141 and while Archidamus was proceeding to meet Perseus, the opposite party had sent for Popillius, who was at Ambracia, and who entered the city with a thousand men, on the very night that Perseus encamped upon the Achelous, near Stratus. Dinarchus also, commander of the cavalry of Aetolia, who had come ostensibly to meet Perseus, joined the adverse side, and entered the city. The king, nevertheless, having with him an army of 10,000 men, and the chief magistrate of Aetolia, still hoped that the Aetolians in the town would come out and join him, and with this view presented himself on the heights above the city; but finding that instead of any advances to a communication he was threatened with missiles, he retired five miles to the river Petitarus, and from thence to Aperantia. The summit of the ruins commands a fine view of the Aspropotamo upwards, and of the hilly country near its banks, terminated by the mountains of Agrafa in the distance; the quantity of snow on which seems to show that the highest summits are nearly equal in height to Olono and Khelmos. At less than two hours above Surovigli, the river is joined, on the same side, by a tributary which originates to the eastward of Mount Makrinoro, and at an equal distance beyond the river are the ruins of another Hellenic city, at a village near the right bank, named Preventza. The river I take to be the Petitarus, if this name be correct in the text of Livy, and the ruins those of the town of Aperantia, of which Preventza may be a corruption.
:1.142
§ 1.142 Livy indeed seems to allude to Aperantia only as a district; but Stephanus, in reference to the corresponding passage of Polybius, which is lost, shows the city also to have been named Απεράντεια. The general situation of the place accords with a transaction relating to Aperantia, which occurred twenty years before the expedition of Perseus, and which is recorded by Polybius and by Livy in nearly the same terms. When Amynander had recovered his kingdom of Athamania from Philip, the Aetolians who had assisted him thought the opportunity favourable for recovering Aperantia and Amphilochia for themselves. Nicandrus, the strategus, therefore, proceeding first into Amphilochia, probably because it was the more important of the two, although more distant from Aetolia, found the greater part of the people ready to receive him, and met with easy success; he then moved into Aperantia with the same result, and from thence proceeded into Dolopia, where the people, having never belonged to Aetolia, hesitated at first to receive him, but on learning the state of affairs, and that Philip had no farther hopes from their neighbours, the Athamanes, they joined the Aetolians. While I was seated in the theatre, a drove of 300 Wallachian oxen, every one of which was white, passed through the ruins to Tragamesti to be shipped for the Islands. Besides these, which are on their passage from Wallachia, large herds and flocks are brought to feed in the winter and spring in the plains of Acarnania and Aetolia from Agrafa, and the other mountainous districts around Thessaly. The oxen of the latter countries are generally dark coloured.
:1.143
§ 1.143 Leaving the ruins of Stratus at 10.15, we ascend the valley which branches from the plain to the north-westward, and arrive at 11 at Lepenu, or Lepenio village of forty families, on the side of the valley opposite to Surovigli. In the vale just below it, are some copious sources of water. Lepenu is one of the principal villages of Valto, but has much diminished in population, from the same causes which have annihilated Surovigli. Being quickly driven out of the house of the Proestos by the fleas, I remove to the gate of the court-yard, which having, as usual in this part of the country, a large tiled roof, affords sufficient shelter in this season. The Proestos confirms several Hellenic positions which I have heard of, but not yet seen. In Aetolia those of Anghelokastro, Papadhates, and St. George, seem to be the most remarkable; the last is reckoned three hours from Anghelokastro. Some monks of St. George, who came here lately, affirmed that the kastro at Surovigli is not to be compared to theirs, by which perhaps they meant only that the walls of the latter are in better preservation. A peasant, whom I encountered in the ruins at Surovigli, remarked that the city was the capital of the surrounding country. He judged merely from their extent; for probably not an individual in Acarnania or Aetolia has ever heard of the name or history of Stratus.
:1.144
§ 1.144 It is chiefly from the narrative given by Polybius of the capture of Thermus by Philip, son of Demetrius, that we obtain a knowledge of the ancient geography of the central part of Aetolia, or great inland plain now occupied by Vrakhori, from which the chief strength and opulence of this province of Greece has in all ages been derived. In the second year of the Social War B.C. 218, Philip, taking advantage of the absence of Dorimachus with half the Aetolian forces in Thessaly, raised the siege of Palaea in Cephallenia, and sailed to Leucas, from whence, after having caused his ships to be dragged across the Dioryctus, or sandy isthmus of Leucas, he entered the Ambracic Gulf, and reached Limnaea on the morning after his arrival at Leucas. Having been joined by all the forces of Acarnania, he moved from Limnaea towards the evening without baggage. At the end of sixty stades, he halted to allow his troops to repose and take their supper; and then, continuing his route all night, arrived at the break of day on the river Achelous, between Stratus and Conope. His treacherous counsellor, Leontius, wished to give time to the Aetolians to defend themselves; but the better advice of Aratus having prevailed, Philip gave orders for an immediate advance to Thermus, the Aetolian capital.
:1.145
§ 1.145 Crossing the river, therefore, and marching with all speed towards that city, he passed, on his left, Stratus, Agrinium, and Thestia, and, on his right, Conope, Lysimachia, Trichonium, and Phytaion and thus arrived at Metapa, situated sixty stades from Thermus, in the defile of the lake Trichoma, the passage along which was rendered very narrow and dangerous by the rugged woody mountains on its margin. The Aetolians having abandoned Metapa, he occupied it with five hundred men, to serve as a protection to him, as well in advancing as in returning through the straits. He then conducted his army in column, protecting his right by some light troops thrown out on that flank, while his left was defended by the lake for a distance of thirty stades. At the end of this distance from Metapa, he arrived at a town named Pamphium, and leaving a guard there, then ascended to Thermus by a road which was thirty stades in length, very steep, bordered by dangerous precipices on either side, and in some places very narrow.
:1.146
§ 1.146 Having arrived at Thermus considerably before the close of day, he gave permission to his army to plunder all the surrounding villages, to overrun the plain of the Thermii,. and to sack the city itself, which was well furnished with corn and other provisions, and abounded with riches of every kind, having long been the place of meeting of the national assemblies, the centre of the civil and religious as well as commercial affairs of Aetolia; and, from the strength of its situation, considered as the place of refuge and acropolis of all Aetolia. The temple of Apollo in particular, with its surrounding buildings, was full of valuable furniture and offerings. On the morning after their arrival, the Macedonians separated the part of the plunder which they intended to carry away, and burnt the remainder in heaps before their tents; in which manner they destroyed, among other things, an immense quantity of armour. They burnt, or razed to the ground, the temple, with its stoae, and threw down all the statues, breaking those which were not figures of the gods or inscribed with their names. The number of images thus demolished or subverted, was not less than two thousand.
:1.147
§ 1.147 Such an act of destruction and impiety was very repugnant to the manners of Greece, and is severely censured by Polybius, notwithstanding the provocation which Philip had recently received in the similar conduct of the Aetolians at Dium and Dodona; against the former of which places their vengeance had been particularly directed, as being a Macedonian city. But the young monarch was not sufficiently gifted with magnanimity to abstain from retaliation on so fair an opportunity; indeed, it seems to have been the great object of his expedition, and accordingly he inscribed upon the ruined wall of the temple, a senarian iambic, composed by a young poet who accompanied him, for the purpose of reminding the Aetolians that the shaft of vengeance came from Dium. Philip then began his retreat by the same road by which he came. Three thousand Aetolians, under Alexander of Trichonium, who were lying in wait for the purpose, attacked the rear, consisting of mercenaries and Acarnanians, as they began to move from the city, and had put them to flight, when a body of Illyrians, whom Philip, with a view to such a contingency, had placed behind a certain height, met them in the pursuit, and killed or made prisoners between two and three hundred of them. The rear then set fire to Pamphium, passed the defiles, and joined the Macedonians, who had already arrived at Metapa.
:1.148
§ 1.148 The next day the invaders, having destroyed Metapa, marched to Acrae, and on the following day to Conope, where they remained one day; they then followed the left bank of the river, as far as Stratus, crossed it near that city, and halted just without the reach of missiles from the walls, thereby offering battle to a body of three thousand Aetolians, who with some cavalry and Cretans had recently entered the place. But it was not until the Macedonians resumed their march that the enemy came forth. The rear then turned, drove back the Aetolians to the gates of the city, and killed one hundred of them; after which, Philip, prosecuting his march without further impediment, rejoined his vessels at Limnaea, and returned to Leucas. The preceding narrative, when compared with Strabo, will enable us with some confidence to affix the ancient names to the principal existing remains of the cities of the interior of Aetolia, notwithstanding that there is one part of it which I have found impossible to reconcile with an actual view of the country. From the south-eastern extremity of the Gulf of Arta, where it is evident that Limnaea was situated, there is a route for the most part level of about twenty-five miles, as far as the Achelous below Stratus, so that it was not very difficult for Philip, by performing about a third of the distance on the evening of his departure from Limnaea, to effect the other two thirds in the course of the night. The remaining distance of about fifteen miles to Thermus seems equally conformable to the proceedings of the army on the second day,
:1.149
§ 1.149 when we may easily conceive that the march to Metapa, which was not so rapid as to prevent Philip from burning and destroying the country, added to the preparations for the passage along the lake to Pamphium, and the usual loss of time in the course of such a march, may have consumed, together with the long and painful ascent to Thermus, all the forenoon and two hours of the afternoon, about which time the Macedonians seem to have arrived at the city. The difficulty in the narrative is, that Philip, in advancing from Metapa to Pamphium, should have marched with his left upon a lake; since, according to the present state of the country, there is no apparent reason why he should have approached either of the lakes, the route from the Aspro by Vrakhori to Vlokho, not passing within three miles of them. Or if we suppose that the woods noticed by Polybius then occupied so much of the plain below Vrakhori, as to force him to follow the margin of the lake, and that Metapa stood about the junction of the river Ermitza with the lake, the distance of that point from Vlokho being nearly equal to the sixty stades, which the historian assigns as that between Metapa and Thermus: still it is obvious that an army moving from thence to the foot of the mountain of Vlokho would have had its right and not its left towards the marshes. In order to have approached Vlokho with his left on one of the lakes, Philip must either have made the circuit of them both, along the foot of Mount Zygos, and then, after rounding the extremity of the lake of Apokuro,
:1.150
§ 1.150 and passing by the foot of Mount Viena along the steep and woody mountains which overhang the lake, have emerged into the plain again near Kuvelo, or he must have crossed between the lakes by the line of the modern causeway, and entered the plain between Vrakhori and Kuvelo. On the former supposition Metapa would have been near the eastern extremity of the lake of Apokuro. It was impossible, however, for the Macedonians, immediately after a forced march from Limnaea to the Achelous, to have performed even the shorter of these routes, which would have tripled the direct distance from the Achelous to Thermus; or certainly, if such a march were practicable, they could not have arrived at Thermus at the hour which the subsequent transactions of that day render necessary. Possibly it may be thought that the ruins at Kuvelο, although very short of 60 stades from Thermus, are those of Metapa, and that Philip, after having conducted his army directly from the Achelous across the plain of Vrakhori, occupied the fortress at Kuvelo, not with the view of retreating through the passes commanded by it, which lead along the lake in an easterly direction, but merely to protect his operation from any interruption on that side. The purpose seems useful, and the post well suited to it, and we might suppose that in consequence of his possession of it, the Aetolians were induced to attack his rear in a different place, just as it began to retire from Thermus. The deviation to Kuvelo would only have added another hour to his march, and in moving from Kuvelo to Vlokho the Macedonians might for a short distance have had their left on the lake.
:1.151
§ 1.151 But it is impossible to be satisfied with this explanation. The historian gives positive testimony that the στενα, or passes on the borders of the lake, were between Pamphium and Metapa, from the latter of which on his return he proceeded by Acrae to Conope: it seems inevitably to follow, therefore, that Metapa was at the western entrance of the passes, about eight miles to the south-westward of Thermus. The only conclusion seems to be, that the words right and left have, by some negligence either of the historian or his copyers, been substituted for each other in the text. Experience proves that such an error, notwithstanding its importance, is one of the most common that occurs. With this change every thing is clear, Metapa having stood near the lake immediately below Vrakhori, around which site there were probably woods making the passage difficult. As to Trichonis having been the eastern lake, whereas I suppose Philip to have marched chiefly along the western, that is easily reconciled by the fact that they are only divisions of the same lake, which communicate at the causeway, whence in common parlance the larger division may often have given name to the whole. I have not entertained the supposition that Thermus could have occupied any other site than that of Vlokho, the description of Polybius, but still more the magnitude of the ruins leaving scarcely a reasonable doubt on this head in the same manner as the extent of those at Surovigli are a strong confirmation of their being the remains of Stratus.
:1.152
§ 1.152 If we were to suppose Thermus to have stood on the southern side, or at the eastern end of the lake of Apokuro, in which case Philip might certainly have approached it, with his left defended by the lakes, it would in that case have been situated on Mount Aracynthus, or on the mountain which separates that lake from the valley of the Evenus, and would have been at no great distance from Calydon and the sea-coast, instead of having been far in the interior towards the great mountains of Aetolia and the centre of the province, as every evidence respecting Thermus seems clearly to indicate. Of the places which the Macedonian army left on either hand in their march towards Thermus, after having crossed the Achelous, namely, Conope, Lysimachia, Trichonium, and Phytaion on the right, and Agrinium and Thestia on the left, there can be little doubt that Conope stood at Anghelokastro; for, besides the testimony derived from Polybius in his narrative of the capture of Thermus, from which we learn that it was on the eastern side of the river at a considerable distance below Stratus, the same author in relating some movements of Philip in Acarnania, in the year preceding that of the capture of Thermus, indicates it as standing at about twenty stades from the Achelous, which perfectly agrees with the distance of Anghelokastro from the Aspro. Strabo, moreover, as well as Polybius, intimates that it was near one of the ordinary passages of the Achelous, which is now the case as to Anghelokastro, and arises in fact from permanent geographical causes.
:1.153
§ 1.153 Conope having received considerable augmentation from Arsinoe, sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus, assumed her name instead of that of Conope. Polybius, however, in relating transactions which occurred thirty years after the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, still names it Conope. The neighbouring city which stood at Papadhates, near the lake of Zygos, seems clearly to have been Lysimachia, for Strabo describes the ruins of that city to have been between Pleuron and Arsinoe, on a lake then called Lysimachia, but more anciently Hyria, which agrees perfectly with the position of Papadhates, supposing Pleuron to have been at Kyria Irini, and Arsinoe at Anghelokastro. This position of Lysimachia accords also with the march of Antiochus from the Maliac Gulf in the year B.C. 191, when, having appointed Stratus,as the place for meeting the Aetolians, he marched thither by Naupactus, Calydon, and Lysimachia. We may infer from the name of this city, that it was founded by Lysimachus, when, as King of Macedonia, his dominion extended over the greater part of Greece. If the site was occupied more anciently, the name of the town may possibly have been Hyrie, in like manner as in later times both town and lake were named Lysimachia.
:1.154
§ 1.154 As Antoninus Liberalis, in relating the fable of the conversion of Cycnus into a swan, gives to the lake in which Cycnus destroyed himself the name of Conope. it is evident that the ancients considered the lake of Zygos as the scene of this fable, and it becomes probable, therefore, that Ovid, who in describing the same metamorphosis, couples the Cycneia Tempe with Hyrie, alluded by the former name to the Klisura of Zygos, which is precisely such a place as the Greeks denominated a Tempe. The river Cyathus, which, according to Polybius, as quoted by Athenaeus, flowed near Arsinoe, corresponds to the stream which, issuing from the lake of Zygos, joins the Achelous, not far from Anghelokastro. The principal sources which form both the lakes are at the foot of the steep mountain overhanging the eastern, or lake of Apokuro; a current flows from east to west through the two lakes: and the river of Anghelokastro, or Cyathus, is nothing more than a continuation of the same stream. Acre stood perhaps at the place where the river emerges from the lake, this being about midway between the positions which I have assigned to Metapa and Conope. Notwithstanding the opinion of the antiquaries of Strabo's time, who pointed out some ruins at the foot of Mount Aracynthus, near Pleuron, as those of the Homeric Olenus, there is difficulty in believing that Olenus and Pleuron were so near to each other. It seems more probable that Olenus occupied some advantageous site in the dominions of the Calydonian dynasty, such as that of Gavala, where Trichonium afterwards stood.
:1.155
§ 1.155 The notice taken of Trichonium by several ancient authors, as well as the circumstance of its having given name to the largest of the Aetolian lakes, shows it to have been the principal town of the plains, which, according to Strabo, extended from Trichonium to Stratus. The occurrence of its name after that of Lysimachia, among the cities on the right of Philip in his progress towards Thermus, places it beyond a doubt towards the south-eastern extremity of the plains, where Gavala, in a fertile district on the southern side of the Lake of Apokuro, seems perfectly to correspond to the data. Phytaion, having been the last town on the right of Philip’s line of march, answers to the ruined polis at Kuvelo, that being moreover the only place, besides Gavala, where any open country is left between the woody mountains and the shore of the lake. Agrinium and Thestia received their names from Agrius and Thestius, two Aetolian chiefs of the royal race of Calydon and Pleuron, who, in process of time, obtained possessions farther in the interior; for the Aetolians, who went with Thoas to the Trojan war, were all from the districts of Zygos and Apokuro.
:1.156
§ 1.156 It is evident that Agrinium was not far from the Achelous, as well from the march of Philip as from an occurrence of the year B.C. 314, related by Diodorus, when Agrinium was in alliance with Acarnania against the Aetolians, and when Cassander marched from Macedonia into Aetolia to assist the Acarnanes. By his advice the Acarnanes concentrated their forces, by withdrawing from their smaller fortresses into Stratus, Agrinium, and Ithoria. As soon as Cassander departed, after leaving a garrison in Agrinium, the Aetolians besieged it; and when the inhabitants marched out upon capitulation, treacherously fell upon them in the route, and massacred the greater part of them. It may be inferred from the two testimonies, that Agrinium was not far from Zapandi. Thestia was probably on the heights above Vrakhori, towards the sources of the Ermitza. The river Campylus, upon which the historian states that Cassander encamped, and held a council with the Acarnanes on his arrival in Aetolia, seems, from all the circumstances mentioned by the historian, to have been that great branch of the Achelous, which joins it between Tetarna and Surovigli, not far below the former.
:1.157
§ 1.157 CHAPTER IV ACARNANIA, EPIRUS. JUNE 18.—The direct route from Lepenu to Amvrakia passes along the foot of the hill of Lepenu, and leaving on the left the lake of Lygovitzi, which discharges its superfluous waters into the right side of the Achelous, enters a pass between the ridges of Makhala and Lepenu, and then follows the eastern bank of the lake of Valto to Amvrakia, which village by this road is seven hours distant. Wishing to explore a little more of the district of Valto than the direct road affords, I send the baggage that way; and taking with me two of the Albanian escort, which Yusuf Aga provided for me, follow up the valley of Lepenui. It soon becomes narrow and quite uncultivated. As we advance, the hills on either side become higher, and the bushes below thicker, until at 5.45 we enter a wood of small oaks, mixed with ilex and prinus, ascending gently by a pleasant shady path,
:1.158
§ 1.158 until having arrived at the summit of the pass we begin at 7 to descend, and at 7.15 arrive at the ruins of some Hellenic walls. One of them crosses the road; others are with difficulty traced among the trees. They are the outworks of a fortress which occupied a height to the left of the road, and was naturally strengthened on two sides by a deep ravine and torrent; thus placed, it commanded the access by this valley from Amphilochia to the great plain of the Achelous. Within the inclosure, a little to the left of the road, a circular excavation in the ground, thirty-four feet in diameter, is lined with regular masonry of nearly equal courses, one of the stones of which measures four feet six inches in length, and two feet eight inches in height. On one side of the circle there remain eight courses overgrown with trees and bushes, on the other the slope of the bank covers the masonry. Near the walls of the fortress, on the outside, there is an ordinary ancient sepulchre, which has never been opened. The ruins are called the Paleokastro of Kekhreniatza. The latter name is applied to the pass, and to a brook to which I descend in five minutes, after a halt of fifty minutes. The wall which crosses the road follows it afterwards for three minutes towards the brook. It has in some places six courses of masonry of the third kind, nearly approaching to the fourth, and very accurately joined, except where trees growing on the top have displaced the stones, with their roots. The brook of Kekhreniatza winds through a little uneven vale, ending in a small plain on the shore of the Ambracian Gulf, which is called Xerokambo, from its want of water;
:1.159
§ 1.159 for the brook is lost before it arrives there. It produces, however, corn and Kalambokki, and belongs to the village of Kekhrenia, situated on the side of the steep rocky mountain which borders the ravine of Kekhreniatza to our left, and which separates it from the valley and lake of Valto or Amvrakia. We now quit the road to Xerokambo, and turning to the left cross the ridge of Kekhrenia, passing about the middle of the ascent through that village, which contains thirty Greek families, some dwelling in good pyrghi. We left the brook at 8.18, halt ten minutes at Kekhrenia, and then, proceeding to climb its steep rocky ridge, arrive, at 9.40, at a church of St. Elias, on the summit which commands an extensive view of Xeromero and Valto. These districts are little cultivated or inhabited, but particularly the latter, which consists of woody mountains to the northward, and to the southward of steep ridges inclosing a valley, the greatest part of which is lake or marsh, according to the season. It is this valley which gives name to the sub-district. Having descended the western side of the ridge, on foot, through a wood of oaks not growing very thickly nor of large size, we arrive, at 10.50, five minutes beyond the foot of the mountain on the edge of the lake; then turning the northern end of it ascend to Amvrakia, which is one-third of the way up a ridge parallel to the one we have passed, and equally steep and rocky. We arrive at 11.30. Sparto is another village on the same mountain, one hour northward of Amvrakia towards the sea.
:1.160
§ 1.160 Stanu is a third, of the same size as Amvrakia, and situated at the same height above the lake, three quarters of an hour to the southward. The part of the Valto, or lake, below Amvrakia, is a narrow shallow creek, about three miles long, branching out of the deeper part of it which is under Papalates and the monastery of Agrilio. Amvrakia, or more vulgarly Amvrakia, contains about forty houses, and as many more in ruins. The Amvrakiotes, to avoid further decay, are about to move their situation higher up the mountain, where they will be less exposed to Turkish passengers, to thieves, and to the hostilities of some of their neighbours, which have caused a part of the vale, on the side of the lake, to be at length quite uncultivated. Their new village is to be called Plato, the position being level, though lofty, and already, my host the Proestos, has spent, he tells me, twenty purses in building a house there. In the evening I descend the mountain of Amvrakia, in 40 minutes, to its Skala, from whence are exported planks, velanidhi, grain, and cattle. It is called Kervasara l, and is situated in a valley at the head of a long bay which forms the southeastern extremity of the gulf of Arta. To the eastward of the valley rises the mountain named Spartovuni, a lower continuation of which extends to the entrance of the bay, and falls on the eastern side to Xerokambo.
:1.161
§ 1.161 The latter valley terminates at Armyro, where is a skala and shallow harbour, separated from the sea on the west by a low coast, which appears from Kervasara projecting to the left of the cape of Spartovuni. To the westward of the bay of Kervasara rises the continuation of the ridge of Amvrakia, on which stands the village of Sparto, once perhaps situated on the opposite mountain which now bears that name, for, as we have seen in the instance of Amvrakia, villages have a locomotive faculty in this country. At the inner point of the bay, south-east of the magazines of Kervasara, are the walls of a large Hellenic town, occupying a height which rises from the right bank of a torrent, and reaches to the sea side. The place was fortified like Stratus, that is to say, there is no appearance of an acropolis of the usual kind, but the inclosed space was divided by a transverse wall into two parts, which are here more equal than at Stratus: many towers remain on the land-fronts. The masonry is of various ages; some parts are entirely polygonal, others consist of regular and equal courses. But the greater part of the work is of the third order, or of a kind between the two former. There are remains also of repairs with mortar, of a much later period. Doubtless the post has always been one of importance, as commanding the most easy and natural access into Acarnania from Epirus, both by sea and land. The inclosed space is overgrown with the kharub, oak, wild olive, and a great variety of shrubs, which often give shelter to deer, and other wild animals abounding in the adjacent woods.
:1.162
§ 1.162 Beyond Xero-kambo is the plain of Vlikha, where at the foot of the mountains are the remains of a Hellenic city, described as being of larger compass than those at Kervasara, but not so well preserved. It is probably the ancient Argos of Amphilochia. Beyond the plain of Vlikha begins the Makrinoro, a mountain covered with a forest of oaks, and falling steeply to the shore of the gulf. The road along its declivity, which is reckoned three hours in length, forms a pass resembling that of the Gates of Syria, at the head of the gulf of Skanderun. Returning to Amvrakia, some παλαιά μνήματα occur on the road-side. They are ancient sepulchres of the most ordinary kind, or formed of four slabs set edgewise in the ground, and covered with other slabs. The existence of the name Άμβρακία attached to a modern village in this part of the country has a great tendency to confuse the ancient geography, as leading to the belief that the ruins at Kervasara are those of the ancient Ambracia. But Ambracia was certainly on the northern side of the gulf, at some distance from the sea. The fact is, that Amvrakia is a village of recent construction, to which the founders gave that name in consequence of a prevalent opinion, that the ruins at Kervasara are those of Ambracia. That the error is of long standing, we learn from Meletius, who himself fell into it, and who, having been Bishop of Arta, was probably the false luminary which led the founders of Amvrakia to give their village that name. I have little doubt that the ruins at Kervasara are those of Limnaea, from whence Philip began his march to Thermus.
:1.163
§ 1.163 June 19.—At 5 we begin to climb the steep rugged mountain at the back of Amvrakia. At 5.40, arrive at the summit which forms the separation between Xeromero and Valto, and begin to descend. It is observable that this mountain, as well as the two parallel ranges, and the same may be said of many others in this part of Greece, are bare on the eastern side, and well clothed with trees on the western. As we descend, Katuna, a village of Xeromero, pleasantly situated on a hill, with a cultivated valley below it, is on the left, and rather behind us: beyond it towards the sea, distant 10 or 12 miles, rises a high ridge, on which stands Zavitza, not in sight. To the right of Katuna appears the bold round mountain called Bumisto, and more in front of us a lofty ridge with a peaked summit, named Varnaka, from a village on it towards the sea. On this side of it there is a fine vale, which extends to Katuna, and is well cultivated with com. Towards the Gulf of Arta appears a valley and a green marsh, overgrown with shrubs and timber trees. The mountain beyond it is covered with a thick forest. Having descended on foot through the wood, and arrived in the vale at 6.20, we leave, after a halt of ten minutes, the marsh to the left, and pass through a wood on the side of it. Cattle are feeding round it, and towards the southern end there are a few fields of wheat now falling under the sickle. At 7.20, near the head of the Bay of Lutraki, leaving to the right the road to the monastery of Kendromata, and to Vlikha, Makrinoro, and Arta, we ascend a height,
:1.164
§ 1.164 and at 7.25 look down to the right, on the head of the Bay of Lutraki. The beach is covered with firewood, piled in stacks for embarkation; and farther on are some magazines, near which a polacca brig is at anchor, loading the wood. At 7.53 the road crosses a bridge over a torrent, which is shaded with planes, and bordered by slopes clothed with oaks and planes, festooned with wild vines, and where the kharub and the paliuri, covered with a profusion of blossoms, are mixed with the aromatic shrubs with which Greece so eminently abounds, and peopled with nightingales singing in the deep shade. After a halt of 12 minutes we pursue our route along the side of the forest of oak, which covers the mountain, with the gulf at a short distance on the right, and then pass through a narrow tract between the sea and the forest, where are a few fields of maize, watered by rivulets from the mountain. At 8.35 occurs a tjiftlik belonging to Aly Pasha, named Balim Bey, situated half a mile from the sea. Here the French consul, Lasalle, about the year 1788, embarked the greatest part of the timber which he cut down in the neighbouring mountain, for the use of the naval yard at Toulon. There still remain however some very large trees, the finest I have yet seen in Greece. Soon afterwards we enter the thickest part of the forest, leaving the village of Nisi half an hour to the right. The road to Lefkadha turns off to the left about three quarters of an hour beyond Balim Bey.
:1.165
§ 1.165 We lose our way in the wood, and are 40 minutes in recovering it. At 10.15 having gained the summit of a ridge, which terminates in a cape called Gheladha, on the eastern side of the Bay of Vonitza, this town opens to view, and to the left of it the lake called Vulkaria, with a woody and marshy tract on this side of it, around which is a little cultivation. Here the oaks are generally small, but there is an abundance of fine trees towards Lefkadha, in which direction the mountain of Plaghia intercepts the view to the Strait of Leucas, but admits a sight of the highest part of the island over it. The ridge to our left is continued as far as the western coast near Zaverdha, and rises in that interval to a lofty summit named Pergandi. Exactly in the spot where this view opens are some Hellenic foundations by the roadside, and some others in a neighbouring corn-field. From hence to Vonitza the land is well cultivated with com. Leaving on our right a monastery, beautifully situated below a grove of oaks on the side of the mountain, we descend into the plain, and crossing it diagonally, arrive at Vonitza at 12.10. In the entrance of the town are the remains of a square redoubt and detached ravelin, which are recent works of the French.
:1.166
§ 1.166 The district of Vonitza extends 4 or 5 miles round the town, including the slopes of the mountains on the eastern and western sides of the valley, and the valley itself in the direction of the Lake Vulkaria, nearly as far as Konidhari; a tjiftlik belonging to Aly Pasha, whose property now extends as far as the channel of Lefkadha, though in consequence of its exposure to the robbers, who take refuge in the islands, he derives little profit from it. Konidhari stands on a low ridge which connects the heights on the west of Vonitza with Mount Pergandi, and thus separates the plain of Vonitza from the Lake Vulkaria, as well as from another plain which reaches to the Bay of Zaverdha. Beyond the ridge, at the eastern extremity of the Vulkaria, are some thick woods, the abode of deer and wild hogs, and often the retreat of the robbers in those expeditions from the islands which have almost depopulated Acarnania. The house in which I am lodged at Vonitza, that of the Greek primate Khalikiopulo, commonly called Logotheti, from his ecclesiastical office, stands on the shore, on the side of a strait about 200 yards in width, which communicates from the Bay of Vonitza to the Limni, a shallow harbour which widens to half a mile, and is about two miles long. Vonitza contains 450 houses, divided into three separate quarters: namely, Recinto, which lies on the south-west, and is so called as being inclosed within two walls which descend to the shore of the shallow harbour from the summit of a conical hill, crowned with a ruinous and ill-constructed Venetian castle; secondly, Borgo, which is a suburb on the western side of the hill;
:1.167
§ 1.167 and thirdly, Boccale, which is divided from Borgo by gardens, and stretches eastward along the shore of the Bay. The greater part of the houses of Vonitza are wretched cottages, constructed of mud and thatched. In Recinto are the ruins of a large church, having a Latin inscription over the door, placed there by the Venetians. A marshy tract extending towards the head of the limeni is occupied by gardens, and several private houses in an unhealthy situation. Immediately opposite to M. Logotheti’s house, on the opposite or northern point of the harbour’s mouth, is a small suburb consisting of a few houses upon the extreme point, together with a monastery prettily situated among olive trees. Both the monastery and suburb are known by the name of Myrtari. Beyond Myrtari lies the great peninsula, formed by the Bay of Vonitza, the limeni of Vonitza, and the Gulf of Prevyza, and which terminates to the north-east in a high rocky point, separated from a similar cape by the strait which forms the entrance from the small ante-gulf of Prevyza into the main Gulf of Arta. The Bay of Vonitza is a very large semi-circular basin, opening into the gulf between the eastern side of the peninsula above-mentioned, and Cape Gheladha to the eastward. It is indented with several beautiful harbours, and has considerable depth quite to the shore of Vonitza. The commerce of this place consists chiefly in the exchange of grain, cattle, and firewood, for the articles of furniture and domestic use for which Greece is indebted to Europe, or Constantinople.
:1.168
§ 1.168 As to government, it is in the same condition with Prevyza and Parga. The treaty of 1800, which formed the Septinsular republic, assigned these Venetian dependencies to the Porte, on the condition that they were to be governed by their own municipal laws, and to be exempt from the kharatj, but to pay the land tax and customs to an officer appointed by the Porte to receive them. The Aga charged with this office has a guard of five or six men. He complains much of his solitary situation, without a single Turk to speak to, even the soldiers of the garrison being Christians. “But I serve,” he says, “for the glory of my sovereign, and with the hopes of promotion.” In the meantime, he is in great dread of offending Aly Pasha, whose design of obtaining complete possession of the Ex-Venetian places is sufficiently evident. The poor Aga has recently been much alarmed at the conduct of his principal at Prevyza, who has openly shown his suspicions of the Pasha by not waiting upon him when he was lately at Mytika, on the borders of the district of Prevyza. Nor is he free from apprehensions from the chief Greeks at this place, whom he suspects of having been gained over by Αly to solicit his protection. Whatever may be the Pasha’s designs, the Turk is totally unable to prevent them, and will find it very difficult, therefore, to avoid falling into disgrace with his own superiors. “If the Greeks of Vonitza,” he observes, “abandon me, and I am left alone to oppose Aly’s wishes, I am certainly a lost man.” There seems to be too much reason for these fears,
:1.169
§ 1.169 for already those among the Greeks, who were inclined to support him and his cause against Aly, have thought it prudent to quit the place; and the opposite party, convinced of the inutility of resistance, have joined the Vezir in some mercantile speculations, by which all the advantage they are likely to gain, is that of being the last devoured. His Highness derives great assistance in his designs from the robbers, who furnish him with a constant pretext for having a body of troops in the Ex-Venetian territories. Soon after the Turkish resident's visit, he sends me a present of a lamb and some lemons, — June 20, and this morning accompanies me to the castle which commands a fine view of the western part of the Ambracic Gulf, bounded by the hills of Suli and Ioannina. The castle has a double inclosure, a ruined church on the summit, a good cistern, and a house built by Aly Pasha for the Albanian garrison, which he placed here after he had taken Vonitza from the French, and when he probably expected to have been left in quiet possession of it by the Porte. It is armed only with three small cannon on the southern side. The ruinous condition of the churches here, and in the Recinto, is said to have been caused by the Venetians having destroyed them to sell the materials when they evacuated the place. The advantages of Vonitza are its fine bay for ships, its harbour at Myrtari for small vessels, its forests abounding in excellent timber and pasture for cattle; a fertile valley, an easy communication with Lefkadha,
:1.170
§ 1.170 and a fortress in a position which commands the access into Acarnania and Aetolia from Epirus by the way of Prevyza, and which would be of the greatest importance if the strong Pass of Makrinoro, the only entrance by land, were closed, and the water communication in the hands of the defenders of Acarnania. On the other hand, Vonitza, in common with the other places in the gulf, partakes of the inconvenience of the shallowness of the Strait of Prevyza, and which is the more sensibly felt as the exterior coast, for a great distance both to the north and south of the entrance, affords no secure anchorage. Dhemata, at the northern extremity of the Strait of Leucas, is the best; but the entrance is commanded by the Castle of Santa Maura. Another disadvantage of Vonitza is its deficiency of fresh water, which is supplied by a canal derived from a stream at some distance in the valley; nor is the place exempt from malaria in the summer and autumn, caused by the stagnant waters at the head of the harbour, as well as by the land breezes which blow from the marshes near the Lake of Vulkaria. The land of Vonitza belongs chiefly to nobles of Zante, Cefalonia, and Corfu, who became possessed of it under the Venetian government, and whose cultivators send the proprietors a fourth of the produce, being themselves subject to all the expences, including the land tax paid to the Porte. The Greeks of Vonitza have lately cleared tracts of land on the hills, which they are sowing on their own account. In the woods around, they are allowed to cut firewood and plank, but not for exportation, the woods being the property of the Sultan, and no persons being allowed to fell large timber without permission from the Porte.
:1.171
§ 1.171 In the plain, a mile and a half S.E. of the town, and three quarters of a mile from the sea, rises a small conical height, called Magula, and behind it a similar one, but larger; both overgrown with bushes. On the summit of the smaller, a space of about three acres, now grown with corn, is surrounded by the remains of a Hellenic wall. On the northern side, the masonry is of the third order; and on the east there is a beautiful specimen of the fourth, or most regular kind. There is said to be another small castle of the same kind at Ruga, an inlet of the coast a little on this side of Nisi. The latter was probably a maritime dependency of a larger place, of which there are remains at Aio Vasili, on the side of the mountain above it, three hours from Vonitza. I have searched in vain for any vestiges of antiquity in the Castle of Vonitza, or on any part of the hill, though the situation could hardly have been, neglected by the ancients. In fact, ancient sepulchres are often found in the suburb of Boccale, and fragments in other places, sufficient to show that it was an ancient site. June 21.—This morning, at 5.10, having sent my baggage off at midnight in a boat, I proceed by land from Vonitza to Prevyza, follow the southv era shore of the shallow harbour until 5.30, then leaving the direct road, which continues along the harbour at the foot of the mountain, turn to the left, and in eighteen minutes gain a summit which commands a fine view of the great Acarnanian peninsula, lying to the westward of the bays of Vonitza and Zaverdha.
:1.172
§ 1.172 To the eastward of the isthmus, which, with the exception of the small ridge of Konidhari, is a level from the one bay to the other, rises the parallel mountain, of which the summit is named Pergandi. The middle of the peninsula is composed of low land, surrounding the lagoon of Vulkaria, and extending to Prevyza, and to the coast between it and Aia Mavra. All the southern part of the peninsula consists of a lofty mountain, on the slope of which, opposite to Lefkadha, stands the village Plaghia, and at its southern extremity another named Bogonia. Opposite to the latter, at the foot of the ridge of Pergandi, is Zaverdha. Both these places are at no great distance from the bay, which is usually named after the latter. The intermediate plain, and indeed the whole isthmus, is fertile, but little cultivated. The peninsula is for the most part a forest, which, especially on the southern and eastern side of the lagoon, and on the mountain of Plaghia, abounds in large oaks well adapted to naval construction. The lagoon, including the marshes on its edge, is four or five miles long, and as much broad. It communicates by a narrow stream with the head of Port Dhemata, on the southern side of which is the entrance of the canal of Lefkadha and the Castle of Aia Mavra.
:1.173
§ 1.173 At the south-eastern end of Vulkaria, on a height rising amidst thick woods, is the Paleo-kastro of Kekhropula, so called from a small village no longer inhabited. To the left of Kekhropula the view comprehends Meganisi,'Atoko, and a part of Kalamo, the remainder of which is hid by the Acarnanian coast. To the northward are seen Paxii and the coast from Parga to Salaghora, with all the northern side of the Gulf of Arta. Though it is difficult with confidence to adapt the names to the ancient positions in this part of Acarnania, there can be little doubt that the Vulkaria is the ancient Myrtuntium, being precisely as Strabo describes Myrtuntium. “a λιμνοθάλαττα, (or salt-water lagoon,) situated between Leucas and the Ambracic Gulf.” At 7.15, descending from the mountain, and leaving the extremity of the limeni of Vonitza on the right, as well as a road to Aghios Petros, a harbour on the shore of the Gulf of Prevyza, where are some vestiges of a Hellenic polis, probably Anactorium, we proceed through woods and bushes, and arrive, at 7.50, on the margin of a beautiful little fresh-water lake, named Linovrokhi, on one side of which is a hanging forest of oaks. A peasant here describes to me a subterraneous stream which emerges from a cavity in the forest, near the Lake of Vulkaria.
:1.174
§ 1.174 The road continues through an uncultivated country over grown with thorns and shrubs, and at 8.40 emerges on the beach of the Gulf of Prevyza, where lies some ship timber, principally knees, ready cut and prepared for an armed vessel which Aly Pasha is about to build at Salaghora. The builder calculates that it will pass the bar of Prevyza with the guns in, and have half a foot water to spare. After following the beach for half a mile, we cross a low point for the most part covered with myrtle, at the northern extremity of the Strait of Prevyza, and at 9.10 arrive at the Tjiftlik of Punta. Here are a few fields of maize surrounding a quadrangular building, with towers at the angles, which contains the dwellings of the peasants who cultivate the fields and tend the flocks on this farm of Aly. Here also is a kula, or modern tower, and several remains of ancient buildings of Roman construction. At a projection to the southward of the tjiftlik, where the Strait is narrowest, and immediately opposite to the castle of Prevyza, the Vezir has constructed a serai and small fortress. There is every probability that the Roman ruins are remains of some of the buildings of Actium, established by Augustus, for the breadth of the Strait answers perfectly to the “less than 5 stades” of Polybius, or the “something more than four” of Strabo, or the “four” of Scylax, or the “500 Roman paces” of Pliny.
:1.175
§ 1.175 Punta, it is to be observed, is the Italian translation of Ακρη, or Άκρον, which is the Greek name of this promontory, though in consequence of Prevyza having so long been a Venetian dependency, the word Punta is very commonly used by the Greeks themselves. But Akri, as well as Punta, is nothing more than the modern representative of Άκτη, a word descriptive, like Akri, of such a peninsula as that opposite to Prevyza, and from which the Apollo here worshipped was surnamed Actius, and his temple Actium. Besides the authors who have just been cited, we may refer to Thucydides and to Dio, in proof of Akri being the site of Actium. Strabo alone has left an expression which is not easily reconciled with actual appearances, in saying that the temple stood on a height. June 22.—Prevyza, or Prevesa, for it is now written in both ways in Greek, though the latter form is probably Italian, contained 2,000 families, when the French arrived in 1798, but has now not more than 1200. When the Venetians took it in 1684, there are said to have been only 70; the rapid increase after that time is easily accounted for, by the commercial advantages of the position, and by the importance of this place, as well as of Parga and Vutzintro, to the safety of Corfu and its canal, which induced the Venetian government not only to protect the people against their Musulman neighbours, but to be vigilant in preventing their own proveditori and other officers from indulging in their accustomed rapacity.
:1.176
§ 1.176 The houses are dispersed over a large space, each having a garden or small plot of ground attached to it, containing fig, walnut, and apricot trees, with a few culinary herbs. But the greater part of the dwellings are wretched huts, made of wattled branches plastered with mud. All the best houses, some of which, built in the Venetian style, show the former opulence of the place, are now in ruins. Prevyza is still, however, one of the best towns in Greece, and has an agreeable appearance, from the abundance of gardens, and from the olive plantations which cover the peninsula beyond them. The low point on which the town stands enjoys the sea-breeze in summer in perfection, but the gulf wind at night, and early in the morning, is reckoned unwholesome; that the situation, however, is not so, generally speaking, the robust constitution of the men, and the good complexion of the women sufficiently indicate, notwithstanding, that the latter, besides performing all the household drudgery, labour in the fields during the harvest of corn and olives, while the men are employed in the fisheries of the gulf, or in the trade and coasting navigation of Epirus, Acarnania, and the islands, or in smoking their pipes in idleness at home. One of the severest labours of the women is that of carrying large jars of water on their heads from the fountains, which being at the extremity of a very straggling town, are a mile distant from some parts of it.
:1.177
§ 1.177 The water, which is excellent, rushes plentifully from the foot of a rocky cliff on the edge of the sea beach. Wherever a channel is made in this place, a stream immediately issues, and it can hardly be doubted, that if the Prevyzans were to dig wells, they would find water every where. The principal source is fitted up in the Turkish style. Another employment of the women, but which is at once profitable and easy, is that of raising silkworms; they are now winding off the silk. The place produces annually 1500 pounds of raw silk, now sold at 10 piastres the pound. The grain of the territory, consisting of maize, wheat, barley, and oats, is about equal to the consumption of the place, sometimes insufficient, but sometimes so productive as to admit of the exchange of a portion of it for the wine of Lefkadha, or Thiaki. Of oil, which is of the best quality, superior even, according to the Prevyzans, to that of Corfu, or any other island, there is an annual average exportation of 10,000 tzukalia, or jars, of seven litres each, besides the consumption of the place: the present price is two dollars the jar. The Turkish Bey, or resident of the Sultan, receives the tithe on land, which is let every year to the Greeks in lots, and the maritime customs, which are four per cent, on exports, and two per cent, on imports, as under the Venetians. The Bey commands a garrison of thirty-six soldiers, but takes all his directions for the management of the police from the Greek magistrates, who still preserve the Maggior Consiglio and other Venetian courts.
:1.178
§ 1.178 The Consiglio consists of nobles, some of whom, as in the Seven Islands, may be found digging in their olive grounds. A body of forty of these elect the magistrates. Culprits are imprisoned on the requisition of the Proestos, and are tried by the proper tribunal, which, as under the Venetians, admits of an appeal to the primary court, at either of the two other ex-Venetian towns, Parga and Vonitza. The Prevyzans express themselves very grateful to Russia, whose consul takes care that no encroachments are made on these privileges, either by Aly Pasha or by the Bey. Hence, Prevyza at present is one of the happiest towns in Rumili, though with such a neighbour as Aly there is no saying how long this condition may last. The territory extends only an hour’s distance inland. Mytika. and the further part of the ruins of Nicopolis, are in Aly Pasha’s dominions: the nearer ruins, and the lagoon called Mazoma, belong to Prevyza. The situation in the entrance of this noble Gulf, surrounded by some of the most productive lands in Greece, at a point of ready communication with the islands and with Italy, would ensure to it some of those advantages which the same causes gave to its predecessor Nicopolis, if Greece were again to become a civilized country; though perhaps not to the same degree, in consequence of the shallow channel, less suited to modern than it was to ancient navigation. Nevertheless, it is probable that in every age Patrae and Nicopolis will prove the wisdom of Augustus in selecting these two places for the Roman colonies of the western coast of Greece.
:1.179
§ 1.179 The soil of the peninsula is excellent. Barley is sown in November, wheat in December, and oats in January. Maize, as requiring plentiful irrigation, which is not to be obtained here, sometimes fails when the spring rains are not sufficiently abundant. It is generally grown among the plantations of young olives, is sown in April and reaped in August. The best oil is made from olives gathered by hand, though these do not yield half so much in quantity as the fruit which falls from the tree. It is not customary to sow under the full-grown olive-trees, which is common in many parts of Greece, oil being the most valuable production of Prevyza, and the opinion prevailing that the corn exhausts the soil and injures the crop of olives. Vines are supposed not to have the same effect, and are sometimes planted among the trees. Where no tillage occurs the grass is fed short, and the ground about the roots is opened. In many parts of the peninsula the land is covered with fern, which grows here rather too luxuriantly. It is cut down and put into holes at the roots of the trees, where some think it beneficial as manure, and the ground is then ploughed. One of the reasons for this treatment is to obviate accidents from fire in the summer, when the least spark among the dried vegetables, then abounding in uncultivated lands, creates a conflagration. Prevyza is said to have once lost one-third of its trees in this manner; and a similar accident, though not so destructive, occurred when the Vezir’s Albanians were here.
:1.180
§ 1.180 These troops, when en bivouac, are in the habit of lighting fires, for the purpose, among others, να ψήσουν ταις φθείραις, that operation which is the Albanian substitute for washing the shirt. The hill of Mikhalitzi, at the foot of which are the ruins of Nicopolis, although now uncultivated on this side, bears the marks in its artificial terraces of a different state when it belonged to the monastery of Zalongo; the Vezir, having appropriated it to himself, has built a house and some labourers cottages on the summit of the hill. His farmers furnish seed, cattle, labour, and farming utensils, and deliver to him the tenth of the gross produce as miri, and a third of the remainder. In new tjiftliks, or those which are of uncertain tenure, such as many of his were during the Suliote war, he was generally contented with a fourth of the produce. When to this obligation is added the kharatj, and the demands of Albanian troops, there seldom remains more for the peasant than is necessary to support life upon maize, salt fish, cheese, and garlic. The channel between Prevyza and Akri is not only shallow and narrow, but the entrance is rendered dangerous by a long sandy shoal, which projects southward from the cape of Prevyza, and leaves only a narrow passage of twelve feet in depth between it and another shoal on the Acarnanian shore. Towards the northern, or interior extremity of the strait, and immediately opposite to the town, the strait widens, and forms the harbour of Prevyza.
:1.181
§ 1.181 Half a mile beyond the springs, at the northern extremity of the town, is Vathy, a small bay, where the water is as deep as in the harbour of Prevyza, and where an armed brig of the Vezir, formerly an English sloop, is now lying. A creek branches from Vathy, which has a double termination; the western branch touches a part of the site of Nicopolis, and the eastern approaches the coast of the Gulf of Arta. On the shore of Vathy are ruins of the magazines of Lasalle, which formed a quadrangle and had two stories; the upper intended for grain, the lower for timber. In the inclosed court Lasalle built vessels on his own account, besides which he had a contract to deliver at the arsenal of Toulon, for five franks the cubic foot, oak timber, to be marked in the woods by persons appointed by the French government. He bargained with the Greeks οχ Albanians to bring the trees down to the waterside: the ambassador at the Porte procured permission from the Sultan, and Aly was paid forty or fifty purses yearly to cover his own claims as Dervent Aga, or for the Spahilik, where it existed. One year he extorted seventy purses from the French, on the pretence that he had received an order from the Porte to prevent the embarkation. Lasalle had the contract for five years, when it was renewed for five more; but at the end of two the French Revolution put an end to the contract, and an assassin to his life. The Suliotes brought a considerable quantity for him down the river of Luro.
:1.182
§ 1.182 In the forest of Manina, in Acarnania, the oaks are chiefly of the veloni kind, which is seldom so large as the common oak, nor is the timber so good. Those of Makrinoro, Suli, and Vonitza, are the best in this part of Greece. Djumerka produces some fine firs. It is reckoned that near four hundred Prevyzan families gain a subsistence by the fisheries of their own town, or by those of Arta and Acarnania, which are now farmed from the Porte by Aly Pasha. In the territory of Prevyza, shell-fish, eels, and grey mullet, are caught—the two latter in the Mazoma, or lagoon of Nicopolis. Of shellfish there is an inexhaustible supply in the shallows around the strait and near the town; a great quantity of these is sent to the islands in the time of Lent. Occasionally also an immense number of eels from the lagoons of Arta, suddenly make their appearance in the harbour of Prevyza. This happens always in tempestuous weather, and probably occurs only when in migrating to the sea from their breeding-places in the rivers and lagoons of the Gulf, they meet with a storm in passing out of the strait, which drives them back upon Prevyfca. The fisheries of Arta and Acarnania are conducted by the more opulent Prevyzans, who form societies, each of which hires a share of the fishery, and employs Prevyzan labourers, for whom they find nets and other necessaries. While the sale of fish is going forward, the money is laid by in a common purse, which, when the mukitesi has been paid, is equally divided between the merchants and the fishermen. This, and other modes of giving an interest in profits to all the individuals employed in any speculation, are common in the mercantile and even in the agricultural undertakings of the Greeks.
:1.183
§ 1.183 The greater part of the maritime commerce and carrying trade is managed upon the same principle; and it often happens that every sailor is in part owner of the ship as well as of the cargo. Such customs are at once an effect and a support of the republican spirit which it is curious to find pervading a people subject to such a despot as the Sultan. In its origin it is to be attributed to the geographical construction of the country, naturally dividing the people into communities, which have little dependence upon one another; its preservation since the conquest may be attributed, in great measure, to the bigotry, and exclusiveness of the Turkish system, which, neither admits the Christians to the rights of the governing people, nor interferes with the internal arrangements of the communities, unless by the effects of its universal oppression. It cannot be denied, that the Greek method of conducting affairs stimulates mental and bodily exertion, but it promotes also that undisciplined, intractable, envious, and contentious spirit, which is sure to break out whenever this people has sufficient liberty to display it. Greek customs prevail at Prevyza in all their force, as in other places where by any accident the people enjoy a considerable degree of independence; among others, they observe strictly the forbidden degrees in regard to marriage;—cannot take a wife more than three times;—the priests more than once.
:1.184
§ 1.184 Cousins cannot marry nearer than the seventh degree, nor can the god-son be united to the daughter of his god-father. This is a part of the custom of Κουμπαρια, which gives an alliance equal to relationship by blood to two men of different families who have been sponsors to the same child at the baptismal font. The Greek word formed from the Italian compare, and originally from the Latin compater, shows the origin of the custom. It may be doubted whether it gives the Greeks any advantages against their great enemy the Turk, and rather seems to be a proof only of barbarism and insecurity, and both cause and effect of their spirit of hostility and rivalship. Mr. North, afterwards Earl of Guildford, gave five hundred piastres towards the establishment of a school, by means of which and other donations a small house was built at the gate of the principal church. It has since been converted into a court of justice; but there is a school in which writing is taught, with a sufficiency of ancient Greek to read the Testament. Many of the women of Suli have taken refuge at Prevyza, since the capture of their mountain by Aly, and are employed as servants. A Σουλιώησσα, or Suliote girl, ten years of age, in the Vice-Consul’s family, has hired herself for twenty years, at the end of which she is to have one hundred and fifty piastres for a marriage portion. Of the three other ex-Venetian places given up to the Porte, under conditions, by the treaty of 1800, we have seen the state to which Vonitza is now reduced.
:1.185
§ 1.185 Parga is protected from Aly at present by a resident agent of the Porte, under whom the people enjoy their old municipal government unchanged. Vutzintro is entirely in the hands of Aly. At the instigation of the Russians, the Porte has sent the Pasha repeated orders for its evacuation; but he avoids them, affecting to believe that the Russians mean to make use of the place for the purpose of their designs against himself and the empire. He moreover alleges that he has purchased the farm of the fisheries from the Sultan for three years, and that he has not yet been paid his expenses in expelling the French. June 24.—Strabo, who wrote soon after the foundation of Nicopolis, has thus described it: “Beyond port Glycys are two other harbours; the first and smaller is Comarus, which at Nicopolis the city founded by Augustus Caesar is separated by an isthmus of sixty stades from the Ambracic Gulf: the farther, and larger, and better port, is near the mouth of the gulf, about twelve stades distant from Nicopolis.
:1.186
§ 1.186 Augustus founded this place because he saw that the neighbouring cities were much depopulated; and he gave it the name of Nicopolis in honour of the naval victory which he gained before the mouth of the gulf over Antony and Cleopatra, who was herself present. A sacred inclosure for the use of the quinquennial contest has been constructed in the suburb in a grove containing a gymnasium and stadium; there is another sanctuary on the sacred hill of Apollo, which rises above the grove. The Lacedaemonians have the superintendence of the games which are named Actia, as being sacred to Apollo Actius, and which have been declared Olympian. All the surrounding towns are now subordinate to Nicopolis.” The ruins of Nicopolis are now called Paleoprevyza. The road thither leads for two miles through the olive plantations and vineyards, which occupy all the south-western part of the peninsula of Prevyza, and for another mile over a shrubby uncultivated plain. The first ruins that occur are some small arched buildings of brick, probably sepulchral; a little beyond which are the remains of a strong wall following the crest of a height which falls to the lagoon called Mazoma. The situation and direction of this wall, and the position of the sepulchres on the outside of it, seem to show that it was a part of the southern inclosure of the city.
:1.187
§ 1.187 The Mazoma, which occupies about half the breadth of the isthmus, is separated only from the Gulf of Arta by a narrow ράμμα, or thread of land, which is a mile long and one hundred yards wide, and has two openings, where the fish are caught in great numbers as they enter the lagoon in the winter, and quit it in the summer. At the southern extremity of the narrow bank stands a tower, from whence, following the southern shore of the Mazoma, we arrive at a church of the Άνάληψις, or Ascension; two or three hundred yards beyond which are the ruins called the Paleokastro. [map of Nicopolis ]
:1.188
§ 1.188 This is an extensive inclosure of irregular form, flanked with towers, and composed in great part of the materials of former ruins: courses of large squared blocks of stone, which seem to have belonged to Hellenic walls, alternate with thick strata of Roman tiles cemented with an abundance of mortar. The western side of the inclosure is the most perfect, and here was the principal gate, situated near the south-western angle between two semi-circular towers. The other towers are quadrangular. All of them internally have flights of steps supported upon arches, for the purpose of ascending to battlements on the summit of the walls. Although these works are lofty and solid, they do not resemble those of the Augustan age; indeed the variety of marble fragments, and even remains of inscriptions, of the time of the Roman empire, inserted in the masonry, prove the whole to have been a repair, though upon the exact site perhaps of the original citadel, and restored so as to form an inclosure sufficiently large for the diminished population of the place. It may not improbably be the work of Justinian, who, we know from Procopius, repaired Nicopolis. A cross over a small gate called η πόρτα Άράβη seems contemporary with the rest of the work.
:1.189
§ 1.189 In the middle of the Paleokastro is a pool of fresh water now called Vaieni, which appears to have been covered with a large arched building. A rivulet issues from it, and is consumed in some adjacent gardens. Not far from the spring to the north-west, a ruined building, called the Metropolis, is supposed to have been the episcopal church of the extinct see of Nicopolis. If so, it may be the oldest church in Greece, for the intention of St. Paul to winter here, expressed in his letter to Titus, would seem to indicate that he had a congregation at Nicopolis. Leaving the Paleokastro by the great gate, and proceeding in the direction of Mytika, where stands upon a cape of the western coast a small village of that name and a serai of the Vezir, the first remarkable object that occurs is a theatre, so overgrown with vegetation in the lower part that it is not easily examined. It appears to be about 200 feet in diameter: 15 or 20 rows of seats and the proscenium still remain. Being built on level ground, the back or highest part is entirely supported upon an arched corridor, 18 feet high, and 8 feet 6 inches wide, lighted by openings in the wall which slope outwards, and supporting the entire superstructure, which contains the seats, formed of tiles and mortar. The building is now called the Skotini, from its dark passages. The next ruins towards Mytika is named Bughis, and seems to have been a palace, as it has numerous apartments with many niches in the walls for statues, and some remains of a stone pavement.
:1.190
§ 1.190 It stands just within an aqueduct supported upon arches, which enters the valley of Nicopolis on the western side of the hill of Mikhalitzi, and may be traced beyond the Skotini: in most parts the piers alone remain. Between the aqueduct and Mytika are remains of a building similar to that within the aqueduct, but of a more regular plan, and of smaller dimensions. On the side of the last falls of the hill of Mikhalitzi stands the greater theatre, sufficiently elevated above the other remains of Nicopolis to be a very conspicuous object. In approaching it from Bughi, the remains of a solid wall occur, resembling that above the Analipsis, and which seems, when complete, to have stretched across the isthmus from the north-western angle of the fortress. Beyond it is a second source of water, which, with that in the Paleokastro, would seem to have been sufficient, by the aid of wells, for the supply of the city; but here, as at Corinth, another Roman colony, where local springs are still more abundant, the colonists were not satisfied with the water, either because it lay too low, or did not suit their taste, and constructed an aqueduct thirty miles in length. Near the fountain are the ruins of a building called Kalpetzaki, of the annexed form, and probably a bath. It stands on the lowest and narrowest part of the isthmus. A little above it are some other remains on the foot of Mount Mikhalitzi, from whence the stones of a pavement, and a statue of white marble, are said to have been transported lately to Prevyza.
:1.191
§ 1.191 Both these and the baths belonged perhaps to the gymnasium; for the gymnasium, according to Strabo, was near the stadium, and the remains of the stadium occur immediately above the last-mentioned ruin, in a north-eastern direction, having its eastern extremity situated just below the south-western angle of the great theatre. The stadium, by the peasants called το Καράβι, (the ship) is circular at both ends, unlike all the other stadia of Greece, but similar to several in Asia Minor, which have been constructed or repaired by the Romans. The length of the course, however, seems to have been the same as in the other stadia of Greece, namely, 600 Greek feet; for I measured 670 feet in the clear between the two curved extremities of the seats, which are now mere ruins overgrown with bushes. In winter the inclosed space is a pool of water. The ruins of the seats occupy a breadth of about 75 feet, but the total length of the construction was probably not more than 750 feet; underneath the seats are a range of arched chambers, intended apparently for no other purpose than to diminish the mass of masonry. The great theatre was partly excavated in the side of the hill; but all the superstructure, with the appurtenances of the scene, and a vomitory on either side of the stage, was constructed of large flat Roman bricks, united with a great quantity of mortar, and was faced with stone. Although the corridor above the cavea has fallen in, and the stone seats have been removed, it is still one of the best preserved Roman theatres in existence, and well deserves to be accurately measured and delineated by an architect.
:1.192
§ 1.192 The total diameter is about 300 feet, but the earth, which has been washed from the superincumbent hill during the fourteen centuries which have elapsed since the decease of Pagan civilization, renders an exact measurement unattainable without excavation; in the present season a dense vegetation is a farther impediment, and, in particular, a forest of gigantic thistles, now in the full strength of their growth, mixed with other plants, which are equally troublesome from being already pulverized by the heat, especially the Sfaka, or Verbascum, which at the least touch throws out a cloud of acrid dust. The scene had three doors and a large square apartment at either end, but the stone door-cases not having been spared any more than the seats of the cavea, the building is deprived of all its external decoration, and the inferiority of the Roman brick and mortar to the beauty and solidity of Greek masonry is shown in all its nakedness. The scene is 120 feet long, and 30 in depth. It was decorated with a range of statues of deities facing the cavea, as appears by some blocks below, on which are remains of the names of Venus and Minerva: ΑΦΡΩ, —ΘΗΝΑΙ. From the back of the theatre, the hill of Mikhalitzi rises steeply to the summit, which is about 500 feet above the theatre. As Strabo describes the sacred grove, stadium and gymnasium, to have been in the προαστειον, or suburb, it is probable that the wall to the south-ward of Kalpetzaki was a part of the inclosure of the city on the northern side.
:1.193
§ 1.193 Of the two τεμένη, or sanctuaries, the άλσος, or sacred grove, in which the Actia were celebrated, is sufficiently identified by the theatre and stadium, the former for the use of the music, the latter for that of the gymnastic contests. The second temenus, which was above the former, on the mountain of Apollo, is shown by Dio to have been exactly on the summit of the hill, where Mikhalitzi now stands. The historian relates that Octavianus, on arriving, previously to the battle of Actium, at the place where Nicopolis afterwards stood, encamped upon a height, from whence he could see both the Ambracic Gulf and the outer sea towards Paxi, as well as the ports before Nicopolis; he not only fortified the camp, but built walls from it to the outer port, Comarus; and after the battle, having surrounded the place where his tent was pitched with squared stones, he adorned it with the beaks of the captured ships, and built within the inclosure a sanctuary of Apollo, open to the sky. Such a view as Dio here describes, Augustus could not have obtained from the isthmus of Nicopolis, or from any spot in the immediate vicinity, except Mikhalitzi, from whence all the objects stated may be seen.
:1.194
§ 1.194 The tent of Augustus therefore was placed on the summit of the mountain, his camp occupying the slope and the foot of the hill, from whence the communication with the port Comarus was probably secured from interruption by μακρά τείχη, or parallel walls, which comprehended the harbour between their extremities. Although the words of Strabo, combined with the extant stadium, show that it was at Nicopolis, and not at Actium, that the games called Actia were held during the long period of their celebration, there is reason to believe from Dio, that until the city was completed, and the buildings for the use of the games constructed, the meeting took place at Actium, where a στεψανίτης αγών, or contest for a crown, had long been instituted by the surrounding cities. This ancient celebration was converted by Augustus, immediately after the victory, and at the same time that he enlarged the Temple of Apollo Actius, into an exhibition of music and gymnastic rivalship, accompanied with horse-races, and was declared a sacred contest; by which it was made equal in dignity to the four great games of Greece, and was accompanied by a sacrifice and festival, at which the hieronicse were entertained at the public expence. Dio expressly adds, that it was not until some time afterward that Nicopolis was colonized and completed, and that the hypaethrium was constructed on the site of the tent of Augustus.
:1.195
§ 1.195 Here, besides other dedications, were placed the brazen statues of an ass and his driver, in commemoration of a favourable omen, which had probably been prepared for the occasion on the morning of the battle. On the foundation of Constantinople these statues were removed to the hippodrome of that city, where in 1204 they fell into the hands of the barbarous Latins, who melted them with many other monuments of Grecian art still more valuable. It is remarkable that the wide bay lying between Mytika and Kastroskia is now called Gomaro; Comarus, however, which Dio agrees with Strabo in showing to be the harbour of Nicopolis in the exterior sea, was certainly not such a gulf as that to which the modern name is attached, but a port such as the ancients used, whence it was probably that of Mytika.
:1.196
§ 1.196 The port which Strabo describes as the greater, would seem by the order of his text, to have been between Comarus and the strait of Prevyza, and consequently on the outside of the gulf; but the nature of the western coast of the Peninsula shows that he cannot have expressed himself accurately. It is evident from Dio, who distinguishes Comarus as the outer port of Nicopolis, that the second harbour intended by Strabo was within the gulf. Here, in fact, his distance of 12 stades corresponds perfectly to Vathy, where some Roman ruins a little within and on the eastern shore of the creek, seem to indicate the exact situation of the λιμην. These ruins consist of two square masses from 20 to 30 feet the side, with a third ruin, 48 feet in length, having a curved extremity. The walls are formed of strata of Roman tiles between masses of rough stones and mortar, and in some places subsist to the height of 12 or 15 feet. The breadth of 60 stades, which Strabo ascribes to the isthmus of Nicopolis, is obviously incorrect; the broadest part of the site from the tower of the Mazoma to Mytika not being more than three miles. An opinion prevails at Prevyza, founded I believe on a supposed measurement by the French, when they entrenched the isthmus, that the shortest line from the Mazoma to the Gulf of Gomaro is no more than 800 οργυιαις, or 4000 Greek feet. I cannot conceive, however, that it is less than 2000 yards in the narrowest part.
:1.197
§ 1.197 After having measured the stadium, which is not exactly on the isthmus, it appeared to me, from a rising ground, that there is a distance equal to two stadia between the end of that monument and the Mazoma, four between the other end of the stadium and the aqueduct, and three more to the sea. The great quantity of fish taken by the Prevyzans in the Mazoma, and neighbouring sea, illustrates the remark of an anonymous geographer of the fourth century, who says that fish was so plentiful at Nicopolis as to be almost disgusting. Most of the other towns near the gulf having been abandoned, the Nicopolites probably had all the fisheries in their hands. Nicopolis was considered the capital of Southern Epirus and Acarnania during the three first centuries of the Roman Empire; but before the close of this period, it had so far declined as to cease to strike its own money, of which there exist great numbers in copper, either autonomous or of the emperors prior to Galerian. The coins of this prince and his wife Salonina are the latest. The ruin of paganism, by depriving the Actian games of their importance, was the first great blow inflicted upon the prosperity of Nicopolis. Julian restored both its edifices and its games; but the effect was momentary, and the decline of the imperial authority at sea having been followed by piracy, the inevitable consequence in the Grecian seas of the want of a controlling naval power, Nicopolis lost the maritime commerce which had been its main support.
:1.198
§ 1.198 At the beginning of the fifth century, the Goths of Alaric retreating before Stilico in the Peloponnesus, spread desolation over Epirus, and soon afterwards the Huns of Totila ravaged this coast, on which occasion Nicopolis particularly suffered. It was chiefly perhaps on these occasions that its buildings sustained the injuries which called for the repairs bestowed upon the city by Justinian. It continued to be the capital of southern Epirus, either as the chief town of a ducal province, according to the arrangement of the earlier ages of the Byzantine Empire, or as that of a Theme in the tenth century. Cedrenus relates, that in the eleventh century all the Theme of Nicopolis, except Naupactus, joined a revolt of the Bulgarians against the Emperor Michael the Paphlagonian, which had been caused by the extortion of his lieutenant, John Cutzomytes (wrynose). The name of Nicopolis occurs also in the history of Venice, in reference to the transactions following the capture of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204: and from Nicetas we learn that the territory of Nicopolis was a part of the dominions which then became the Despotate of the West, under Michael Angelus Comnenus.
:1.199
§ 1.199 But the town had long been reduced to misery, if we may trust to ecclesiastical history, which, during the Byzantine empire, furnishes the best indication of the relative importance of places. Although Nicopolis was still a bishop’s see at the end of the ninth century, and had then been recently transferred from the patriarchy of Rome to that of Constantinople, the ravages of the Bulgarians, fifty years afterwards, put an end to the bishopric, the last prelate having then been removed to Ancyra in Asia. Ioannina, which was already a bishopric under the metropolitan of Naupactus then succeeded to Nicopolis as the seat of ecclesiastical, authority in the south of Epirus, and was raised to the dignity of a metropolis in the thirteenth century; about a century before which Arta became a bishopric of Naupactus. When the imperial name was no longer a protection to the distant subjects of the empire, it was natural that Ambracia and other ancient sites near the Gulf, which Nicopolis had depopulated under the first emperors of Rome, should again become preferable from the same motives of security which had caused them to be occupied by the early Greeks. The new town of Prevyza, built nearer to the Nicopolitan harbours than the ancient city, in a more defensible position, in a more fertile part of the plain, and where water was equally plentiful, then absorbed probably all the remaining inhabitants of the old city.
:1.200
§ 1.200 June 25.—A north-westerly breeze carries me this afternoon, in an hour and a half, to Salaghora, the port of Arta. Just beyond the strait which separates the Gulf of Prevyza from that of Arta, are two small islands: that to the left named Gaidharonisi, that to the right Kefalo. These, and the other islands in the Gulf, like all the desert grounds in Greece, are clothed with a luxuriant vegetation in the spring, when they furnish pasture for cattle. Between Gaidharonisi and the neighbouring cape of the peninsula of Skafidhaki, we found one of Aly Pasha’s gun-boats lying, a small vessel with two little guns in the bow. He has two or three of these in the Gulf, and at Salaghora a new brig corvette. When he lately visited Salaghora he ordered the shrubs to be cleared away, and a town to be laid out; but only five or six magazines have been built, with a chamber for the collector of the customs at the foot of a rocky height which here projects from the northern shore of the Gulf. The hill seems formerly to have been an island, being almost surrounded by the sea to the south, where the depth of water is more than sufficient for any ship capable of crossing the bar of Prevyza,
:1.201
§ 1.201 and by shallow lagoons to the north, the connexion with the main land being by means of three narrow low banks branching from it to the east, the west, and the north: the two former of these are mere threads of land, such as generally separate lagoons from the sea; the last is wider, but so low as often to be inundated; a causeway, which even in this season is washed by the water of the lagoon, forms the only road into the plain of Arta. The summit of the hill of Salaghora commands an excellent view of the Gulf. In the rammata, which separate the lagoons from the sea, are seen the openings where the fish are caught, as at the Mazoma of Prevyza, and where are houses for the use of the fishery. The thread to the east joins at the end of three miles a woody peninsula projecting into the Gulf, on which is a metokhi of the Panaghia, and off it three or four small islands connected together by mud-banks, and called the Korakonisia: midway to the Acarnanian shore, is Vuvala, the largest island in the Gulf. Beyond the peninsula of Panaghia the ramma is continued two or three miles farther eastward, to Palea-Bukka: so called from the belief that here was anciently the mouth of the river of Arta, now three miles to the eastward, which is not devoid of probability, as in almost every instance of an increase of land at the mouth of rivers, their lower course has assumed a new direction. Near the eastern side of the muddy and shallow bay of Palea-Bukka, is an island in the lagoon, covered with the ruins of a castle called Fidhokastro (Serpent-castle), built of small stones and mortar, mixed with Hellenic work towards the foundations. The lagoon on the western side of Salaghora, which extends to the river of Luro, is named Tzukalia, that to the eastward Logani.
:1.202
§ 1.202 June 26. — Quitting Salaghora for Arta this morning at 5.45, we pass round the western end of the hill, and follow the causeway for half a mile across the lagoon; then enter upon the plain which, though now dry, is so marshy during the greater part of the year, as to be left uncultivated. But we soon arrive upon a somewhat higher level, where are a few fields of corn among desert tracts covered with camomile; pass through Anazi and Postikius, both villages belonging to Mukhtar Pasha, the latter at 7.35, and from thence pass through a continuance of tillage as far as Arta. At 8.15 we cross the river of Arta, which is here about 200 yards wide—deep, winding, and rapid— by a handsome bridge, said to have been built by one of the Palaeologi. From thence, having traversed gardens and scattered houses, we pass close to the left of the ruined church of Parioritza, properly Parigoritissa, at 8.20, leave the castle of Arta on the right at 8.28, and at 8.30 arrive at the Metropolis. The baggage was three hours and three quarters on the road.
:1.203
§ 1.203 The bishop Ignatius receives me with great politeness; he is a prelate of a most prepossessing person and address, well informed and sensible in his conversation, but spoiled by his situation, which, instead of allowing him to cultivate his mind, or to enjoy that civilized society of which he is naturally formed to be an ornament, places him in a perpetual state of fear for his own safety, and reduces him, against his inclination and conscience, to execute the cruel orders of a selfish unprincipled tyrant. While another Greek is the Pasha’s agent for the management of the police and finances of the town and district of Arta, the bishop superintends the more important political concerns of all the surrounding country; and when the Pasha has occasion to send a mission to the Septinsular republic or elsewhere, Ignatius is the person generally employed. At Salaghora his signature was affixed to the tariff of imports in the custom-house. At home he assumes a considerable degree of oriental grandeur, more perhaps than any Musulman can venture upon in the Vezir's dominions. Were it not for the absence of all arms, of which the Turks delight in making a display, and the plain monastic habit which is in contrast to the showy dresses of the Ottomans, the Metropolitan palace might be mistaken for the house of a rich Aga. The Vezir encourages these appearances of authority in the Greek prelates, as it assists them in the exactions and political objects of which they are the instruments, without saving them from the occasional demands which none of his subjects, but especially the more opulent, ever escape.
:1.204
§ 1.204 Thus circumstanced, it is not very surprising that bishop Ignatius should be better acquainted with modern politics than with the ancient history and geography of Greece; upon which subjects he is satisfied with the opinions, often erroneous, received among his countrymen, who seldom give themselves the trouble of referring to the original sources of information. Meletius, one of the predecessors of Ignatius in the see of Arta, whose judgment was not equal to his diligence and learning, has been a great cause of the prevalence and permanence of these errors, as the Greeks seldom or ever venture to dispute his authority. In the evening the άγιος Αρτενός, or Artinian Holy (such is the most polite mode of naming a bishop), accompanies me in a ride round the town. We proceed first to the church of Parigoritissa, a lofty building constructed chiefly of brick, nearly cubical on the outside, but within surrounded with vestibules and galleries, so as to leave in the middle a katholiko, which is more than twice as high as it is square at bottom, and is surmounted by a dome around which are six smaller domes over the aisles. The following is an inscription in two lines round the semi-circular arch of the great door of the church in the inside:—Κομνηνο Δουκας Δεσποτης...
:1.205
§ 1.205 The bishop states, that the church was built by the Comnenus Ducas here recorded, that his name was Michael, and that in two MSS., one of which is preserved in Lefkadha, the other in the convent of Myrtari at Vonitza, he is entituled Despot of Arta, Count of Leucas, and Duke of Cephalonia and Zacynthus. He was probably the same Michael Angelus Comnenus who, under the title of Despot of Aetolia, or of Epirus, governed all Western Greece at the time of the Frank conquest of Constantinople in 1204, and who appears to have been the most powerful of the despots of the West. This would make the date of the building not long posterior to the time when Arta became a bishopric of the province of Naupactus. In the sixteenth century it was made a metropolis, and the see of Naupactus having been transferred hither, the prelate received the title of Bishop of Naupactus and Arta, which he still retains. From Parigoritissa we ascended the height which commands Arta to the eastward, and returned to the Metropolis by the modern castle, visiting several remains of Hellenic antiquity in the way. Though not considerable, they are sufficient to show that Arta was the site of a very large Greek city. Towards the north and west it was half encompassed by the river which issues from an opening at no great distance to the north-eastward between Mount Gelberini, a high rocky summit, which rises in face of the town to the northward, and the hill of Peta, a village standing on the last falls of a range of mountains, which follows the left bank of the river of Arta almost to its sources.
:1.206
§ 1.206 Beyond Peta, southward, the hills border the plain of Arta as far as Makrinoro, which is a continuation of them terminating abruptly in the gulf. [map of Arta] The height on the eastern side of the town is the extremity of a long rocky hill, which is embraced by the river on its northern and western sides, and falls to the plain on the two others.
:1.207
§ 1.207 Some foundations of an acropolis are traceable on the summit, from whence the town wall descended in a northerly direction, so as to exclude a monastery dedicated to ‘the Virgin brought to light,’ and from thence to a projection of the height which here overhangs the river. It then followed a direction parallel to the river towards the modern castle, where in one place the Hellenic wall forms part of some cottages, otherwise of the slightest and rudest construction, and which remind me of the Egyptian huts standing on the ruins of Luxor or Edfu. Beyond these the ancient wall is again seen in the lower part of the structure of the castle towards the river, and here it is most remarkable, consisting of courses nearly regular, and not less remarkable for the close and finished junction of the stones, than for their magnitude. These are in general quadrangular, but some are sloping at one end; the two or three lowest courses which are narrower than the others, and project beyond the rest of the wall, as often occurs in Hellenic masonry of the best times, are founded on the excavated rock. One of the stones, which rest on the uppermost narrow course, is 16 feet long and 4 high; another is 12 feet by 6. A little beyond the castle occurs the excavated foundation of another enormous wall parallel to the former, and indicating apparently, that the modern fortress occupies the site of a second ancient citadel. The town wall may again be seen supporting the terrace of the bishop’s garden overhanging the river, beyond which some smaller vestiges may be traced as far as the church of Parigoritissa,
:1.208
§ 1.208 beyond which, at the foot of the hill behind the church of Odhighitria, the foundations are again visible ascending the hill directly to the acropolis. Squared blocks formerly belonging to the walls or public buildings of the city, are to be seen in every part of the modern town, where they are often used as benches, steps, or mounting blocks at the doors of the houses. The traces of power and opulence evident in these remains, seem scarcely to leave a question that Arta stands on the site of Ambracia, though neither bishop Ignatius assents to this opinion, nor his physician, Dr. M., of Katuna, a learned and well informed man. But the presumption derived from the existing vestiges, from the fertile and extensive plain, and from the strong and central situation of Arta, which have made it the chief town of the surrounding parts of Western Greece, causing it to give name to the Gulf, like Ambracia of old, is fully confirmed by other coincidences derived from the ancient authors. From a comparison of their testimony, we learn that Ambracia was situated eighty stades from the sea, in the middle of the northern side of the Gulf, on the eastern bank of the Arethus, otherwise called Arachthus or Arethon, which rose in Athamania, and in the same mountains which give rise to the Peneius. There is no other river, nor any other position near the Ambracic Gulf, that will correspond to these requisites.
:1.209
§ 1.209 Livy, in the narrative which he has borrowed from Polybius, of the siege of Ambracia by the Romans under the consul Fulvius, in the summer of the year B.C. 189, informs us that the city of Ambracia was more than three miles in circumference; that it stood on the western side of a rugged hill called Perrhanthe, one of the summits of which was occupied by the citadel; and that it was well protected by the river and heights, and by the wall which surrounded it. These particulars are exactly justified by the existing remains. As the siege by Fulvius is the most remarkable event concerning Ambracia which occurs in history, and as it refers both to the topography of the place itself and to the geography of the surrounding country, I shall subjoin the principal circumstances of it.
:1.210
§ 1.210 From the reign of Pyrrhus, Ambracia bad been the capital of Epirus and the royal residence; but at the time of the siege it was in the hands of the Italians, and had been a main cause of the extent of the Aetolian power at that period of Grecian history, by giving them either a direct authority or a strong influence over the neighbouring states of Amphilochia, Aperantia, Athamania, and Dolopia, which last confined on other acquisitions of the Aetolians in Phthiotis and the country of the Aenianes. As soon as they found themselves unable to save Ambracia, they submitted to the Roman power, and never recovered their former importance. Fulvius, who had landed at Apollonia, and had marched through Epirus, first established two fortified camps at a moderate distance from each other in the plain, and built a castle on a height near the citadel. His Epirote allies were encamped in the plain on the opposite side of the river. Before the consul could unite his three works together by means of an entrenchment, Eupolemus, with one thousand Aetolians, made his way into the city. As soon as the circumvallation was complete, and the machines prepared for assailing the walls, the Romans began to batter them in five places: three of these, at two equal intervals, were in the plain overagainst the Pyrrheium; a fourth was near the temple of Aesculapius, and the fifth was at the citadel. The walls were so strong as to resist even beyond the expectation of the besieged;
:1.211
§ 1.211 giving them time to make sorties by night and day, and enabling them to counteract the effects of the battering machines of the enemy, either by means of engines or of fire. While these operations were in progress, a second body of Aetolians, amounting to five hundred, partly by force and partly under cover of a tempestuous night, entered the place, and immediately joined Eupolemus in assaulting the Roman lines, in which attempt it had been concerted that they were to be assisted by a simultaneous attack from without by Nicander, the praetor of Aetolia. Nicander, however, found a cause or an apology for inaction in the arrival of Perseus in Amphilochia, who had been sent by his father Philip to recover that country and Dolopia from the Aetolians. The double consequence was, that the sortie from Ambracia failed, and that Perseus retired from his attack of Argos on the approach of Nicander, and returned into Macedonia, contenting himself with the spoliation of Amphilochia and Dolopia. No sooner had this obstacle been removed, than a new diversion occurred to prevent the praetor from attempting to raise the siege of Ambracia. Pleuratus, king of Illyria, having arrived with sixty ships in the Corinthiac Gulf, made from thence desultory incursions on the Aetolian coast, which required the attention of Nicander and his army. Meantime the siege proceeded vigorously on both sides. The wall was breached and retrenched; a mine was formed and countermined, and the parties fought in the subterraneous passages, until the besiegers were driven out by the missiles of their adversaries, or by the smoke of burnt feathers.
:1.212
§ 1.212 Affairs were in this state when deputies arrived to solicit peace on the part of the Aetolian council, who were urged to this measure by the defeat of Antiochus in Asia, by their conscious inability of resisting three such enemies as Philip, Pleuratus, and the Romans, and probably by the conviction that the Ambraciotae and their friend Amynander, king of Athamania, were only waiting for an opportunity to withdraw from their forced alliance with Aetolia. The principal conditions were, that the Aetolians should pay five hundred Euboic talents to Rome, and should cease to claim any authority over the cities which had been taken by or allied with the Romans since the arrival of T. Quinctius in Greece. The people of Ambracia presented Fulvius with a golden crown of one hundred and fifty pounds weight; but this present did not save the city from being despoiled of all the statues of brass and marble, with which, as having been the royal residence of Epirus, it was adorned beyond all the cities of Western Greece. In the triumph of Fulvius two years afterwards, on his return from his proconsulship, two hundred and eighty-five statues of brass, and two hundred and thirty of marble, were exhibited in the procession, the greater part of which had been brought from Ambracia, Aetolia, and Cephallenia. The triple assault of the walls seems evidently to have been from the side of the modern gardens, that being the only part of the circuit where the walls were contiguous to the plain.
:1.213
§ 1.213 The Pyrrheium, consequently, which I take to have been a fortified palace built by Pyrrhus, was in the adjacent part of the modern town, and probably near the river, comprehending the beautiful terrace now occupied by the metropolis. The situation of the monastery of Fanaromeni seems to have been an advantageous point for one of the battering machines of the Consul, and may therefore be the site of the temple of Aesculapius. The castle which Fulvius built on a height over against the citadel we can hardly doubt to have been on the hill of St. Elias, which is separated only by a hollow from that of the acropolis; for the occupation of that height was obviously necessary to the safety of his line of circumvallation. The position of his work for battering the acropolis was of course immediately opposite to the hill of St. Elias, on the crest of that of the citadel, and close to the wall. Dicaearchus informs us that Ambracia was noted for a temple dedicated to Minerva, which may have been converted into one of the ancient churches now existing, such having, often been the use made of the pagan temples. The other situations in the Ambracian territory which history has noticed are: 1. Ambracus, which was captured by Philip, son of Demetrius, in the year B.C. 219, after a siege of forty days,undertaken at the instigation of the Epirotes, who hoped that it would lead to the recovery of Ambracia from the Aetolians. 2. The port of Ambracia, near which there was a fortressl.
:1.214
§ 1.214 3. Craneia, which a comparison of Pliny and Stephanus shows to have been a subordinate place of the Ambracia, on a mountain of the same name. Ambracus is described by Polybius as a place, in the territory of Ambracia, well fortified with ramparts and outworks, and as surrounded by marshes, through which there was only one narrow causeway leading to it. This description accords so well with Fidhokastro, that little doubt can remain of the identity. If Ambracus was the same as the τεΐχος, or fortress near the port of Ambracia, mentioned by Scylax,of which the probability is very great, we may conclude that the harbour, which, according to the same author and Dicaearchus, was a κλειστός λιμήν, or port closed with moles, leaving a narrow entrance which might be shut with a chain, was an artificial basin, excavated near the fortress, and opening towards the mouth of the river, which appears anciently to have discharged itself very near to Fidhokastro.
:1.215
§ 1.215 Craneia I conceive to have been the high mountain now called Kelberini, which rises from the right bank of the river of Arta, immediately opposite to the town, and which is exactly of the rugged nature described by the ancient name. Whether this was the same as the Sacred Mountain mentioned by Dicaearchus, or whether the ridge on which Ambracia stood, and which Livy calls Perrhanthe, bore that name, cannot be asserted; but these being the only heights near Ambracia, the words of Dicaearchus seem applicable only to the one or other of them. The poetical topographer just named differs from Scylax in interposing the Oreitae between the Ambracian coast and that of the Amphilochi, and thus identifies the country of the Oreitae with Makrinoro;
:1.216
§ 1.216 for as Polybius and Livy agree in placing Argos Amphilochicum at 22 miles from Ambracia, it is evident that the country at the head of the gulf, immediately beyond Makrinoro, was the Amphilochia. The Oreitae therefore seem to have been the inhabitants of that remarkable mountain, and probably of its northerly continuation also, as far as it bordered on the Ambracian territory. As the foundation of Nicopolis was the term of the existence of Ambracia, it was to be expected that the site of Arta should be deficient, as we find it in those remains of the time of the Roman empire, which so constantly meet and sometimes disappoint the traveller when in search of earlier monuments in Asia, Africa, and many of the cities of Greece. Whatever may be found at Arta will probably be of the best times of Greece, as Ambracia, after having been plundered by Fulvius, shared the fate of the other cities of Epirus, 22 years afterwards, when the Senate of Rome, to gratify their army, which had been disappointed of the plunder of Macedonia, gave directions for that atrocious act of deliberate cruelty and perfidy, too well attested by the cotemporary historian, which consigned 70 cities of Epirus to plunder and destruction, and 150,000 Epirotes to be sold as slaves.
:1.217
§ 1.217 Hence the wretched state into which Ambracia fell, in common with the other cities occupying the naturally favoured districts around this beautiful inland sea, and which reduced them all to so small a population, that they sufficed only, even with the aid of a Roman colony, to furnish inhabitants for the single town of Nicopolis. To the abandonment of the site of Ambracia we may attribute, as in the instance of Sparta and a few other leading cities, the loss of the ancient name; for it has rarely happened where the positions have been continually inhabited, that the name has not been preserved. When strength of situation became again an important requisite, Ambracia was re-occupied, as well as two other Hellenic sites at Vonitza and Rogus, while such as Sparta, Megalopolis, and other places little defended by nature, have remained desolate. The new name seems to have been taken from that of the river'Άραιθος, or Άραχθος, which was the more easily contracted into two syllables as the accent was on the first. The monasteries and churches, Vlakherina, Fanaromeni, Parigoritissa, Saint Theodhora, and Pandokratora, show the importance of the renewed city under the Byzantine emperors.
:1.218
§ 1.218 CHAPTER V EPIRUS. JUNE 27.—This afternoon, at 6, having re-crossed the bridge of Arta, we follow the right bank of the river to Marati, a suburb standing just opposite to the metropolis of Arta, and consisting of a Turkish mosque with some houses and gardens. The Turk who built the mosque adorned it with several columns from the church of Parigoritissa, where the loss has been very clumsily repaired. The gardens of Marati abound in filbert trees, the fruit of which forms one of the exports of Arta. Among the gardens is a ruin with walls and towers, apparently of the early times of Arta, forming a square of 36 yards; it is now called Καστέλι. Beyond Marati we cross the plain, leaving a marsh on the left hand, and having arrived at the foot of Mount Kelbermi, bend to the left along its foot, following a paved road which overhangs the edge of the marsh.
:1.219
§ 1.219 In the midst of this pass at 7.7 are some copious springs issuing from under the mountain, and forming a large stream; it is supposed to be the subterraneous discharge of the Lake of Ioannina, and flows to the lagoon of Logaru. The marsh now becomes more deep and impracticable, and the mountain steep and rocky, the exhalations are offensive, and numerous serpents are seen on the water’s edge. At 7.40 the pass ends, and the marsh retires to the left, leaving a cultivated plain which extends to Strivina in front, but narrows to the right, where it terminates in an ascending valley, the direct route and natural opening of communication from the Gulf of Arta to the plain of Ioannina. At a khan called Khanopulo we leave that road to the right, and proceed for the night to Strivina, where by order of the bishop a cottage had been prepared for me. This village contains 30 or 40 families, who are chiefly employed in the culture of tobacco on the banks of a stream, of which the sources are in the village. After flowing through a marshy plain, it forms one of the tributaries of the river of Luro.
:1.220
§ 1.220 June 28.—Setting out this morning at 4.30, we rejoin the road to Ioannina at the entrance of the valley above-mentioned at 5, then ascend the dry bed of a torrent, and at 5.30 leave the village of Kometzades a quarter of a mile to the right, situated on uneven ground on the side of the torrent, which here issues from between two high summits of Mount Kelberini. To our left, at the same time, are the remains of a small triangular Hellenic fortress, standing on the summit of a hill, which commanded the entrance of this important pass. The walls are in some parts still standing to a considerable height. From hence we continue to ascend, passing a little to the right of Koliadhes; and at 6.38, arriving at the summit of the pass, descend into a small valley included between steep rocky mountains. At 7.10 the village of Muliana is half a mile on the right, on the mountain’s side, situated at the entrance of a lateral pass which leads to the vale of the Arachthus, over Mount Kelberini, or rather which separates that summit from Xerovuni, a ridge following the same northerly direction as the former. The Vezir has lately built a serai at Muliana, and has constructed a good paved road by which we cross a counterfort of the mountain to Pende Pigadhia, where are a few cottages, and a little beyond them the five wells which give name to the place. It is situated just at the opening of the pass where it begins to descend into an elevated plain, similar to that below Muliana, but much more extensive, and equally bordered on either side by a steep rocky mountain.

Via ToposText (topostext.org), a project of the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation created by Brady Kiesling. Composed ca. 1830 CE. Licence: public domain. Source.