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

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§ 1.422 Stagus therefore stands on the site of Aeginium, a fact in perfect conformity with Strabo, from whom we learn that Aeginium was in the country of the Tymphaei, and that it confined on Tricca. for Mount Tymphe is sufficiently identified with the summits near Metzovo, by its having contained the sources of the Arachthus; and Stagus lies exactly between the Zygos of Metzovo and Trikkala. The singular situation of the place, fortified on two sides by perpendicular precipices, accords also with the mention of Aeginium by Livy, who relates, that when the consul Quinctius entered Thessaly after the battle at the Aoi Stena, he first took Phaloria, and then advanced against Aeginium, but that finding it next to impregnable, he was deterred from even attempting to besiege it, and turned towards Gomphi. The importance of Aeginium is shown on other occasions in ancient history. Notwithstanding its strength, it was taken by the Athamanes, when they were in alliance with Antiochus against the Romans, but was soon afterwards recovered by the united forces of Baebius and Philip. It was given up to plunder by L. Aemilius Paullus for having refused to open its gates after the battle of Pydna.
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§ 1.423 But perhaps the most interesting illustration which the inscription of Kalabaka affords, is that of the march of Julius Caesar, in his way from Illyria to Pharsalia. Aeginium, which he describes as objectum oppositumque Thessaliae, was the place where he was met by the forces under Domitius, coming from Heraclia of Lyncestis It was from Apollonia that Caesar had begun his march into Thessaly; his route therefore probably followed the Aous and its branch, the modern Dryno, traversing from thence the plain of Ioannina, and crossing the Pindus by the pass of Metzovo, while Domitius, moving from Heraclia, which was near the modern Bitolia, returned to the vale of the Vistritza, or Haliacmon, where he had been opposed to Scipio previously to his movement upon Heraclia, and following that valley to Grevena, from thence crossed the heights which separate it from the Upper Thessalian plain, in which Kalabaka and Trikkala are situated. Scipio about the same time marched from the Haliacmon to Larissa, probably by the modern Servia and Elassona, in order to effect a junction with Pompey, who from Dyrrhachium had crossed Mount Candavia to Lyncestis, from whence, we may suppose his route to have been through Perrhaebia and the Larissaea. It is proper to observe, that besides Caesar’s error as to Heraclia, to which I have before adverted, the text is manifestly wrong in describing his march as being through Epirus and Acarnania; for the latter province lay very wide of his route to the
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§ 1.424 right. The latter name ought evidently, therefore, to be Athamania; for though in strictness Caesar’s line of march only passed along the northern borders of Athamania, it is easy to conceive that the importance which the latter district had assumed about the time of the earlier wars of the Romans in this country, may have caused the name to be applied, especially among the Romans themselves, to a larger portion of the mountains adjacent to the south-eastern part of Thessaly, than it had originally included. As the inscription of Stagus gives to the emperors the titles Parthici, Arabici, Adiabenici, its date was subsequent to A.D. 201, the year of the expedition of Severus into the East. Nov. 16.—This morning at 8.30, descending through the mulberry plantations, we rejoin, in less than twenty minutes, the direct road from Ioannina to Trikkala. On looking back toward Kalabaka, the rock of Aio Stefano appears higher than the double summit immediately behind the town. To our left, as we proceed, low hills skirt the plain, and thus continue all the way to Trikkala, beyond which they trend more easterly; and the mountains on the opposite side having also a direction more southerly than before, the plain becomes suddenly much wider. Our road is seldom more than half a mile distant from the hills on the left. In a little κόλπος, or retired plain, at about a quarter of the distance to Trikkala, stands Koveltzi, and in another, at half way, Voivoda, both villages of the district of Trikkala.
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§ 1.425 The land is a light and light-coloured mould, now under the plough, after having produced a crop of kalambokki. Cars are used like those of the plain of Grevena, but the trucks, or solid wheels upon which they turn, are higher. These trucks are thicker in the centre than at the edge, which is shod with iron: the car is drawn by two oxen, and moves, without creaking and bending, from one side to another, like those of Berat and the Mizakia. The plough-share is a flat triangular piece of iron, like the head of a spear. As we approach Trikkala, many large elms and planes are observable towards the river, which is two or three miles to the right. We crossed a torrent issuing from the mountains at Voidova; and another half an hour short of Trikkala, which passes through the town, and contains only pools of water in the deepest parts, with little or no current, though in the rainy season it would seem to be of a different character, as the road crosses it by a large stone bridge. It is probably the ancient Lethaeus. At the entrance of the town stands a new serai of Aly Pasha. Here we overtake a caravan of horses, mules, and asses, in number about two hundred, laden with the women, children, and household gear of Gramista on their road to Armyro. Gramista, like several other towns on the ridge of Pindus, consists chiefly of αγωγιάταις and βοσκοί, or in the Turko-Greek dialect of Thessaly,
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§ 1.426 κερατζίδες and τζουμπάνιδες; that is to say, carriers and shepherds, very few of whom remain in the mountain in the winter. The carriers, from the nature of their employment, are frequently absent from home at all times of the year, the shepherds proceed constantly in the winter to their pastures in the plains: so that in that season the villages in the mountains are almost deserted. Each village has its particular place of resort, where the Mukatesi levies a capitation upon the cattle for the right of pasture. The castle of Trikkala occupies a hill projecting from the last falls of the mountain of Khassia, and is commanded by one of those heights at no great distance. It is a structure apparently of the middle ages, which has been frequently repaired. It is of considerable extent, and has a small keep at the summit which commands a noble view of the great plain of Upper Thessaly, from Stagus to Maskoluri, backed by the mountains of Kotjaka and Agrafa. These two great ridges are separated only from each other by a klisura, or pass, called the Gates of Trikkala, where are two villages named Portes, standing in the pass. To the left of this remarkable feature of the view, the mountains of Agrafa occupy near ninety degrees of the horizon. A low projection of them immediately opposite to Trikkala, and nearly due south of it, is crowned with a village and ruined castle named Fanari.
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§ 1.427 The town of Trikkala covers the slope and plain on the southern and eastern sides of the castle, and is said to contain between twelve and fifteen hundred families, a great part of whom live in miserable cottages. The houses are all built of sun-baked bricks, and have a poor appearance compared with those of Ioannina, where in all the larger the lower half of the wall is of stone. Though Trikkala has rapidly declined since it has been governed by Aly Pasha, it is still one of the largest towns in Greece, has seven or eight mosques, more than as many churches, two synagogues, a well furnished bazar, and a market on Sundays, much frequented from the surrounding country. A large proportion of the houses, although built. by and belonging to Turks, are hired and inhabited by Greeks; so that the Christian population exceeds the Turkish. This has arisen from the conduct of Aly Pasha towards the Turks, whose lands he has obtained from some by purchase at a cheap rate, because their extravagance and debts had reduced them to that necessity, and from others by his accustomed modes of fraud or tyranny; others having been unable to bear their share of the expences caused by the wars of the Vezir, the visits of himself and his sons, the passage of Albanian troops, and those arbitrary demands which he makes at intervals, have either sold their property to live elsewhere, or have removed into some village and let their town-houses in apartments.
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§ 1.428 The post is another heavy tax on such a thoroughfare as Trikkala, and the Menzilji, or postmaster, is one of the leading men in the place. He contracts to keep one hundred and fifty horses for two hundred purses a year. An old inhabitant tells me, that he remembers when it was done for six purses. In one of his late visits to this place, Aly carried away with him a Trikkaline Greek, whom he imagined rich, and put him in prison at Ioannina, signifying to him that the price of his liberation was two hundred purses. After two years’ confinement, the man escaped and went to Adrianople, whence he immediately wrote to his son at Trikkala to join him. But the Vezir had been beforehand with him, and had already caused the son to occupy the father’s place in the prison. After a long bargaining, fifty purses was agreed to by the Vezir as the lowest price of the son’s liberty. The father had not so much; but after selling his house, two or three small farms, and some vineyards, in short, the whole property of the family, he collected thirty-six purses, which were paid to the Vezir, who, however, still kept his prisoner confined, until fully convinced that he had not the means of completing the fifty purses. The father, meantime, died at Adrianople, and the son is now in poverty at Trikkala. Aly refused to accept the property in house and lands from the son in full of his demand, but obliged the young man to sell them himself; purchased them secretly, and then received back the purchase-money from his victim.
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§ 1.429 The bishop of Trikkala, a man of some curiosity and information, supposes Stagus to be the site of the Ithome of Homer, judging so with great appearance of reason, from the poet’s epithet κλωμακόεσσα; but Ithome still retained its name in the time of Strabo; and his description of the site will not agree with that of Stagus. The bishop was of course ignorant of the decisive inscription containing the words Πόλις Αίγινιέων. He informs me, that there are some remains of a Hellenic town or fortress at Ardham, a village two hours from Trikkala to the north-west, in the Khassia hills, where also are the sources of the lazy stream, which flows through Trikkala. He is rather scandalized at my having passed without visiting the Meteora, which he qualifies as royal and heaven-built works. The only traces I can find of the ancient Tricca are some small remains of Hellenic masonry, forming part of the wall of the castle, and some squared blocks of stone of the same ages dispersed in different parts of the town. On the summit of the hill behind the castle stands part of the shaft of a column one foot eight inches in diameter, tapering like the Doric, but not fluted. It is fixed with the smaller end in the ground, and is not, therefore, in its original position. There is another similar column in an adjoining Turkish cemetery. They seem too small to have belonged to the Asclepium of Tricca; for Aesculapius having been an object of peculiar veneration as a native deity, whose sons conducted the Triccaei to Troy: his temple was probably one of the chief ornaments of the city. Some remains of it may, perhaps, be enveloped in the buildings of the modern town, or buried under the accumulated ruins and rubbish of ages. Strabo describes it as the most ancient and illustrious of all the temples of Aesculapius, and as the constant resort of invalids, whose cures were there recorded as in his temples of Cos and Epidaurus.
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§ 1.430 Nov. 18.—At 10 a.m. we proceed from Trikkala on the road to Larissa, and at the eastern extremity of the town pass by the serai of Vely Pasha, which, although built only a very few years ago, is already in such a dilapidated state, that the window-shutters are dropping off their hinges into the street. The road is dry and even dusty; the hills of Khassia are at no great distance on the left: to the right the plain extends for twelve or fifteen miles to the foot of the lower heights of Agrafa, behind which the central ridges which connect Pindus with Oeta, exhibit their majestic summits covered deeply with snow. At 11.40 we halt to dine at the little village of Kurbali: the men are all absent with their flocks, but we are received by the women without fear — one of the favourable traits of Aly’s government. A quarter of an hour beyond Kurbali, a hill, one mile and a half to the
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§ 1.431 left, which is one of the extreme points of the mountains of Khassia, and is connected with the heights behind Trikkala, is surrounded by Hellenic walls of considerable extent. A church crowns the summit, and there is another in ruins at the foot of the hill. The place is called Kardhiki, and still gives title to one of the suffragan bishoprics of the province of Larissa. In the interval between our road and the ruins is a small lake, which yields an abundance of fish. An opening in the hills, not seen from Trikkala, now discovers itself, through which the Salamvria flows, and the northern part of Mount Pelium makes its appearance. Our road, on turning towards the opening, approaches the hills on the left, and at 2 brings us to Kolokoto, a small village at the foot of a rocky insulated height not far from the hills, and about half an hour distant from the left bank of the Peneius. Immediately above the village are some remains of a Hellenic wall of rude and antique construction, which inclosed only the summit of the hill, together with a small space down the side. On the top of all is a modern tower in ruins. A little before Kolokoto our road touched the bank of the small stream which flows through Trikkala: it is narrow, in most parts deep, and moves so slowly that the current is visible only in particular places. From Kolokoto we pass over a paved road, between the rocky height of the Paleokastro and a marsh on the right, which is fed by some springs issuing from under the rocks, and then cross a bay or recess of the plain between the hill of Kolokoto and those of the district
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§ 1.432 of Khassia. At 3.10 Great and Little Tjigoto, or Tjighioti, or Tjaioti, are on the left; and to the northward of the latter Grisano, or Gritziano, above which are a large church, and the ruined walls of a considerable town, apparently of the time of the Byzantine empire. To the right, at the same time, a round insulated hill, situated at about the same distance from the right bank of the Salamvria as Tzighioti is from the left, is rendered very conspicuous by the ruined walls of a large Hellenic city inclosing its summit and face. We now come in sight of Zarko, situated, like Tzighioti, just within a projection of the heights which here form with other hills on the opposite side of the Salamvria a strait through which the river makes its way towards Larissa. Having crossed the plain which extends to the left to Grisano and the hills of Khassia, we arrive at 3.45 at Zarko, a town of 350 houses, built of a coarse granite from the adjacent hills, and which forms with Tjighioti an agalik of Mukhtar Pasha, who, besides the royal revenue of the two villages, receives an annual contribution as an exemption from the quartering of Albanian soldiers. For the accommodation of Tatars, or persons travelling with imperial firmahns, or with buyurdis of Aly or Mukhtar, the proestos has built two apartments adjoining his house, in one of which I take up my abode for the night. The proestos himself is now in prison at Ioannina, whither he was carried by Aly when
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§ 1.433 this primate had allowed the thieves to infest the country around Zarko, and had been on good terms with them. Zarko is chiefly noted for its cotton, which in good years produces 1000 fortomata of picked cotton, in a state fit for spinning. Each fortoma is of twenty okes, and requires ninetythree okes of cotton from the field. Notwithstanding the fertility of these plains, cultivation is confined to the vicinity of the villages; the remainder supplies only winter pasture to sheep and cattle. Cotton is almost the only agricultural production of this place, and a bad cotton-year is starvation to Zarko. It is the ordinary residence of the Bishop of Kardhiki, who is now at Constantinople. Nov. 19.—At 8.30 we begin to turn the point of the mountain of Zarko, and entering the boghaz or strait already mentioned, through which the Salamvria flows, arrive in twenty minutes upon the bank of the river. The water being now low, and fordable in many places, we leave on the right the πόρος, where at other times the river is passed by a boat, and continue to follow the left bank. At 9.45 there is an interval of only a mile and a half between the hills on either side. Here a rocky advanced height on the right bank preserves the ruins of a Hellenic wall, which incloses the summit together with the slope towards the river, and contains within the ancient inclosure some remains of a smaller and more modern castle. Ten minutes farther, we ford the Salamvria, which flows with a slow current over a bed formed of a mixture of mould and fine sand, resembling the deposit of the Nile; the
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§ 1.434 depth in the deepest part is about four feet. But the dry autumn has made the river lower and less rapid than usual. In proceeding, the village of Alifaka is a mile on the right, not far from the foot of the height of the Paleokastro, from whence the hills on that side take a southerly direction. We now cross the plain to Larissa, along the chord of a large arch formed by the Salamvria: the river however does not, throughout this distance, flow through the great plain, but first passes in a northerly direction through a valley included between a continuation of the Zarko range of hills, and a rocky ridge on the opposite bank, which forms the boundary of the plain of Larissa to the westward. The river then emerges into the plain two hours to the westward of Larissa, at a narrow opening between the northern extremity of the last-mentioned ridge and the southern end of a root of Mount Olympus, at the foot of which stands Turnovo, two hours to the north-eastward of the opening. After passing the city, the river makes a remarkable turn to the northward before it arrives at Tempe. As soon as we had passed the opening of Alifaka, Olympus, Ossa, and Pelium, were displayed before us in all their magnificence. Ossa, with its woody slopes and its conical peak now deeply covered with snow, is one of the most beautiful mountains in Greece, and is well contrasted in character with the broad majesty of its neighbour. The lower sides of Olympus are well wooded, but the summit presents a wide extent of a bare light-coloured rock, which has very little snow on this side, though it is evidently the highest of the mountains
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§ 1.435 which surround Thessaly, and probably the highest in Greece. From the ford of Alifaka, as far as Thumai, we cross an uncultivated plain, with a soil resembling that of Egypt. Thumfo’ is on the rise of a low ridge which projects into the plain from the hills on the right. It consists of twenty or thirty families, with one Turkish house. Having halted here from 10.50 to 12.40, we cross a slight elevation, upon which are two or three other small tjiftlik villages, and descend again into the lowest level where the town of Larissa, surmounted by more than twenty minarets, displays itself in front. Having traversed some gardens and vineyards, where the Salamvria flows at a small distance on the left, we enter the town at 2.45, and at 3 arrive at the serai or παλάτι of the metropolitan bishop, situated on the right bank of the Peneius. The palace, together with the adjoining cathedral, which is remarkable neither for its size or decorations, is inclosed by a wall, serving in some measure as a protection from Turkish insult. The upper story commands a noble view of the Larissae campus opimae, surrounded by Ossa, Olympus, and the Perrhabian hills. Immediately above the metropolis, the river is crossed by a bridge of nine arches, 300 feet in length, faced with large squared stones, and having a road-way
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§ 1.436 which, very unlike that of the narrow Albanian bridges, is wide enough for two carriages: the piers which terminate below in spurs, are pierced with Saracenic arches, curved and pointed. Larissa, though standing in the lowest part of the plain, and subject to excessive heat in summer, is not considered unhealthy, which is ascribed to its being unconfined by neighbouring mountains, and therefore always well ventilated; nevertheless, as in the generality of Greek towns, the autumn is seldom unattended with some degree of sickness and mortality. Although the plain immediately around is as dry and dusty in the summer months as Egypt in June, there is a marshy space to the north-east, caused by an inundation from the river in winter, where the water is never quite absorbed by the sun. The exhalations from thence, and the cold air which descends at night from the mountains, can hardly fail to produce some degree of disease, when after the termination of the Etesian breezes, that stagnation of the atmosphere prevails, which throughout Greece is prevalent from the beginning of September to the autumnal rains. Since we have crossed the Pindus the weather has been perfectly serene, with a slight breeze from the north or north-east, and a sharp frost every night, yielding at an early hour to the power of the sun. While deluges were falling on the western side of that chain of mountains, Thessaly was suffering from drought, and the land is now so parched that the peasants cannot sow: it is admitted, however, that this is an unusual occurrence, and that in
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§ 1.437 general there is a sufficiency of moisture to make the light rich mould of Thessaly the most productive soil in Greece. A beautiful autumnal season generally follows the equinoctial rains, and continues with short intermissions to the end of the year, while in Epirus the same kind of weather occurs only at intervals, which after the beginning of November are both short and rare. The softness of the Thessalian climate, compared with that of Epirus, seems to have had its effect upon the character of the inhabitants, who are more cheerful and civil than those to the west of the Pindus, although living in the midst of poverty and the most grinding oppression. Finding the Mitropoli too much like a Turkish kiosk for the present season, and that the inmates, although bearing the sounding titles of πρωτοσύνκελλος, οικονόμος, and ιεροδιάκονος, are too ignorant of every thing beyond their walls to afford much assistance to my inquiries, I procure, not without some difficulty, an apartment at the house of Kyr P., a medical practitioner. But I have reason to regret the change of lodging. Though a native of the place, my host knows very little about it, and thinks only of turning my occupation of his apartment to his own benefit. He proceeds in this manner: according to custom, the town undertakes to entertain the Vezir's musafir, and to supply him with a taim of meat, bread, wood, oil, and candles. The iatros having taken this duty upon himself, soon begins to complain of the extreme difficulty of obtaining such commodities (in Larissa of all places in Greece), and gives various ingenious reasons
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§ 1.438 for it, until at length, to avoid starvation, we are obliged to make our own purchases, and to entertain our entertainer and his whole family, who will make his own charges as soon as I am gone, when there will no longer be any possibility of a reference for the truth of them. Among the great number of petty inconveniences, which put the traveller’s patience to trial in these countries, the unavoidable necessity of contributing occasionally to the misery of the lower classes, and of abetting the oppression and roguery of the higher, is that which is most mortifying. Last winter Kyr A., the hodja-bashi of Ioannina, after starving my friend M. and his suite for several days, charged the town at the rate of sixty piastres a day for their maintenance. Mr. P. asserts, that there are 8000 Turkish families in Larissa, instead of which probably they do not much exceed half that number. There are 300 or 400 Jewish houses, some of which are said to be among the richest of European Turkey, and about 400 Greek. Formerly, there were many Armenian families, but the greater part have had the wisdom to withdraw to places where the Christians can pursue their trades in greater security. The Armenians are the most prudent, crafty, and knowing, of all the Ghiaurs of the Levant, and are generally to be found in the beet situations. They are industrious, always intent on gain, and far more profound knaves than the Greeks, whose flighty and inconstant tempers render it difficult for them to attend to any fixed plans, and who, amidst all their roguery and deceit, are capable of liberal and disinterested actions, and have a curiosity and thirst for mental improvement, which is very rarely found among the Armenians of Turkey.
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§ 1.439 Nov. 20.— Larissa, like the generality of the sites of Greece, which have been continually inhabited, preserves few remains of Hellenic times. The circumference is less than three miles, one fourth of which is contiguous to the river, on the opposite bank of which there is a grove of elms and white poplars. The remainder of the town is surrounded by hillocks, and at intervals by large spaces covered with Turkish tombstones. Among these cemeteries is found almost all that now remains above ground of the ancient Larissa, consisting of plain quadrangular stones, fragments of columns mostly fluted, and a great number of ancient cippi and sepulchral stelae, all now serving for Turkish tombstones. In many instances a sepulchral stone with a Greek inscription has been placed at the head of a Turkish grave, without any Turkish inscription now apparent, so that many a Mehmet or Mustafa is reposing under the name of an Aristomachus or Cassander. It would be tedious to examine thoroughly all the burying grounds, but a person who had the patience, and the good fortune to do so without insult, for the Turks of Larissa are very insolent, might possibly find something interesting among the inscriptions. Almost all those I saw were simple μνήματα. In the wall of the metropolitan church is a register of the names of certain freed men and women, who had each paid a stater to the city upon the occasion of their liberation.
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§ 1.440 The marble is incomplete, and contains only the names of seven persons who had been the slaves of one Marcus Afrius. Larissa is the most Ottoman town in Greece to the southward of Saloniki, having been the chief settlement of the Turks ever since the conquest of this part of the country previously to that of Constantinople. It then received the name of Yenisheher, which is still the official appellation. When Mahomet IV. was engaged in the siege of Candia, he made this place his residence, and here Dr. Brown, an English traveller, found him in the year 1669. The doctor relates, that the Sultan encamped during a part of that summer upon Mount Olympus, in order to avoid the heat and malaria of Larissa, but that the cold of the mountain was fatal to many of his followers. As an instance of the daring character of Mahomet, Brown states, that he killed one of his finest horses in an attempt to ride up the peak of Kissavo, (the summit of Ossa. [The doctor seems to have mistaken Kissavo for a part of Olympus; it is possible, therefore, that Mahomet’s camp may have been upon Ossa.]) Although Yenisheher, in civil and military arrangement, is subordinate to Tirhala (Trikkala), which gives name to a liva or district of the eyalet or province of Rumili, it has like many other places in Turkey, a jurisdiction separate from its district, the judicial and ecclesiastical affairs being in the hands of a Molla, who is
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§ 1.441 appointed like the pashas every year at the Kurban Bairam, and whose maintenance being assigned upon a certain portion of the liva of Trikkala, has given to that portion the name of the Mollalik. The civil power at Larissa is divided among several rich Beys styled the Ayans: the chief is Abdim, who possessing a large portion of the Pelasgic plain, has no reason to envy the precarious fortune of any vezir in the empire. There are several other Turks here with good landed properties, but in general their expences in arms, horses, furniture, and women, oblige them in a few years to cheat the Christian or Jewish trader, or to oppress the farmer so much by forced contributions of produce, that he is obliged to migrate elsewhere, and to leave the estate unproductive, for want of cultivation. In the tjiftliks of the surrounding plains the peasant generally receives half the crop for his labour, he supplying the seed, but the farming-stock belonging to the landlord. In any other country this would leave enough for the farmer; but such is the conduct of the Turks, that the Greeks are continually migrating, chiefly to the districts of Ionia, governed by the family of Karaosman-oglu; in return, Turkish peasants from Asia Minor have settled on some of the Larissaean farms, and have been able to live better than the Greeks, because they are exempt from the kharatj, and some impositions to which the Greeks alone are liable. Some of the grievances to which both the townsmen and peasants are subject are owing to the Vezir Aly, who, as Pasha of Trikkala and Superintendant of the Dervents, considers himself privileged
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§ 1.442 frequently to visit Larissa, when it is well understood that he expects a large gratuity, and will not depart without it. He generally finds some excuse also for carrying away with him some Jew or Greek, to be kept in prison until he has extorted a sum of money from him. The Greeks afford him little plunder, being generally poor. The most flourishing trade seems to be that of physician, of whom there are several at Larissa; at Trikkala, the favourite abode of Aesculapius, there was not one. The expression εκαλάσθηκε ο κόσμος, (the world is ruined), so common all over Greece, is repeated here loudly, not less by the Turks than by the Greeks. They allude to the increasing poverty, and to the excessive rise in the price of provision, and every necessary of life within the last few years, which has been the ruin of many families. Its causes are the necessities of the Porte, the progressive debasement of the currency, the extortion of local governors, and particularly in this part of the country the destruction of industry consequent upon the oppressive government of Aly Pasha, his wars, his progresses, his arbitrary demands, and the forced maintenance of his Albanian soldiers. The Greeks being in that small proportion at Larissa which I have stated, are ill-treated whenever any affair in which a Turk is concerned is brought before the kadi. Not many days ago, a Greek entering the town with an ass-load of charcoal, from one of the mountains which supply Larissa, was killed by a Turk, for no other reason than because the latter wished to have the charcoal,
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§ 1.443 while the Greek insisted upon carrying it to the market, where he was more sure of being paid for it. As the poor Greek had no friends ready with the proper compliment for the kadi, and none of the persons who were present at the murder, and who were chiefly Turks, were able or willing to swear that he saw the Turk point the pistol or pull the trigger, the kadi declared there was a want of evidence, and discharged the prisoner. As three Christian witnesses are only considered equal to one Turk, there is little chance of justice for the Christian at the Turkish tribunal. Where Christians only are concerned, the Turkish law seldom interferes, except in criminal cases, leaving the affair to the bishop or hodjabashi. The Greeks nevertheless not unfrequently carry their disputes to the mekheme, though they generally have reason to repent it. Here, as in other parts of Turkey, the Jews are less oppressed, unless perhaps when by some imprudence they allow it to be suspected that they are wealthy, and thus excite extortion. The preference of the Turks for the Jews does not arise from any respect for this people, whom they hold in extreme contempt, but because they have no fears from the Jews, while they consider the Christians as the natural allies of their European enemies, by whom the Ottoman Empire is destined to be overthrown, and the Musulman faith to be destroyed. The Jews moreover recommend themselves to the Turks as being ardent haters of the Greeks. At Larissa they speak Spanish, in common with those of the rest of Greece, whose ancestors
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§ 1.444 migrated to this country in great numbers, when expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. Benjamin of Tudela, in his journey through Greece, three centuries earlier, did not pass through Larissa, so that we remain uninformed whether any Jews then inhabited this city. The greater part of the rich plain which lies between Larissa and Mount Olympus is inhabited by a race of Turks cultivating their own lands and employed almost entirely in agriculture. They are descendants of the earliest Turkish settlers, and by the Greeks are called Koniaridhes, a name as old probably as the eleventh century, when Iconium was the seat of Turkish power, and when Turkish auxiliaries were employed by Alexius Comnenus in Thessaly against the Normans: though their permanent settlement in this country cannot be attributed to an earlier period than the 14th century, after their conquest of Adrianople. Some of the Koniaric villages, which are about twenty in number, are situated towards Mount Ossa, and others to the southward of Larissa. The larger are divided into several makhalas, and the whole Koniaric population is not less than ten or twelve thousand. Nov. 22.—From Larissa to Fersala.—The great plain of Lower Thessaly, or Pelasgiotis, of which Larissa is still the chief city, extends from the mountains Titarus and Ossa to Pelium, and the branches of Othrys, interrupted only by a mountain of no great height now called Karadagh, or in Greek Mavrovuni, which, by means of an inferior
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§ 1.445 ridge not far north of Fersala, is united with the heights on the right bank of the Salamvria, which separate the Pelasgic plains from the equally extensive levels of Upper Thessaly, which constituted the ancient divisions named Thessaliotis and Histiaeotis. The ridge to the north of Fersala, although the lowest of all the heights around these plains, is sufficiently high to be seen from Larissa at a distance of fifteen miles; and one point in it, which lies nearly in a line between Larissa and Fersala, is rendered conspicuous by several tall cypresses round the tomb of a Turkish sheikh or saint. The road begins to rise very gradually to this ridge, from a point not far from Larissa; so that between Zarko and Larissa the lowest level is narrow on the right bank of the river, though very extensive on the left. Below Larissa the lowest level widens on the right bank towards the foot of Mount Ossa, and here is the inundation which I have already mentioned: it is called Karatjair, and corresponds exactly to the ancient Nessonis which Strabo has described as “a lake in the Larissaea, formed by the overflowing of the river.” In fact, there is no other lake in the Thessalian plains, except that of Karla, which seems from its position to accord equally well with the ancient Boebeis.
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§ 1.446 From the point where the road begins to rise, as far as the summit of the ridge of the Sheikh, the whole country has a gently undulated surface, and consists of a fertile soil, which, though well cultivated around several small villages, has far the largest portion, particularly on the right side of the road, in a state of nature, and covered with thorns. The cultivated land is ploughed but not yet sown. The other parts furnish an excellent pasture to the sheep, which are driven here in great numbers in winter from the mountains around Thessaly. All the southern part of the country just mentioned I take to have been the territory of the Crannonii, more anciently named Ephyraei, the extent of whose pastures may be inferred from the allusion made by Theocritus to the numerous flocks and herds possessed by the Scopadae, one of the leading families of Crannon. At the end of two hours and a half we halt for dinner at a fountain; and proceeding at 12.40, arrive at the summit of the ridge of the Sheikh at a little after 2.
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§ 1.447 The only trees I have seen on the route are wild pears and dwarf oaks, the latter of which cover a large tract of the uncultivated downs, and are not more than a foot high, though exactly resembling the common oak, and still bearing both leaves and acorns. The road crosses the ridge at a mile to the right of the Sheikh, and at the summit opens upon an extensive prospect, but which is not seen to-day to advantage on account of the cloudiness of the atmosphere. On a clear day it commands the greatest part of Thessaly, included within the renowned barriers of Olympus, Ossa, Pelium, Othrys, and Pindus. Pelium, however, particularly its southern part, is considerably hidden by Mount Karadagh. We look down immediately upon the valley of the Enipeus, and the scene of the great victory which gave the world to Caesar. It is bounded on the other side by a range of mountains branching from Othrys, the summit of which is seen above them to the south-eastward. The town of Fersala lies at the foot of the hills, immediately opposite to us. To the right, the extensive plain, watered by the Enipeus, Apidanus, and Peneius, is spread at the foot of the Agrafiotiko, or great snowy range of Agrafa. The ridge of the Sheikh, which has a rise almost imperceptible on the north, slopes rapidly into the Pliarsalian valley, leaving on the descent the village of Tataris a little to the right. Several other Turkish villages occupy the valley as well as the hills on either side. At 2.23 we enter the level, and at 2.55 ford the Fersaliti, as the Greeks now call the Enipeus, just below a handsome bridge of seven arches, which shows that
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§ 1.448 the river is sometimes formidable, though now narrow, clear, and about two feet deep, flowing with a slow current; from thence, crossing some open corn-land we enter Fersala at 3.30. Fersala, called Tjataltje by the Turks, and often by the Greeks, covers the foot of a height, somewhat detached from the rest of the range, which bounds the valley of the Enipeus to the southward, and having a natural citadel formed by a tabular summit which is encircled by a low precipice of rock. The town contains between six and seven hundred inhabited houses, and many others empty: there are five or six mosques, and the population is entirely Turkish, except at the two extremities of the town to the east and west, which are inhabited by Greek artisans, and keepers of shops in the bazar, or by zevghites, who cultivate the Turkish lands in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. Our konak is at a shopkeeper's at the eastern end of the town,—a neat cottage with a plastered floor, well furnished with mats and other stromata, and having a yard which contains a stable and a good provision of fire-wood.
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§ 1.449 Fersala is one of the most important military positions in Greece, as standing at the entrance of the most direct and central of the passes which lead from the plains of Thessaly to the vale of the Spercheius and Thermopylae, With a view to ancient warfare, the place had all the best attributes of a Hellenic polis or fortified town: a hill rising gradually to the height of six or seven hundred feet above the adjacent plain, defended on three sides by precipices, crowned with a small level for an acropolis, watered in every part of the declivity by subterraneous springs, and still more abundantly at the foot by sources so copious as to form a perennial stream. With these local advantages, and one of the most fertile plains in Greece for its territory, Pharsalus inevitably attained to the highest rank among the states of Thessaly, and became one of the largest cities of Greece, as its ruined walls still attest. The height which was occupied by the acropolis, consists of two rocky tabular summits, united by a lower ridge. The western summit is lower than the eastern, and is not above a third of it in length. The entire acropolis was about five hundred yards long, and from one hundred to fifty broad, but still narrower in the connecting ridge, where are the remains of two gates nearly opposite to each other, one of which led down a
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§ 1.450 steep descent at the back of the acropolis, the other into the city. On one side of the northern gateway, the ancient masonry consists of irregular masses of rock, having smaller stones in the intervals, as at Tiryns; but the masses are not so large as some of those in the latter ruin: one measures 6 feet 7 inches, by 3.10 by 2.4. Another piece of wall toward the eastern summit seems to be of an antiquity not less remote. All the other remains, both of the town and citadel, are of the kind of masonry which was employed about the time when history gives reason to believe that Pharsalus was very populous and powerful. There is a monument, however, of very early times in the middle of the acropolis, which taken together with the remnants of Cyclopian walls, may favor the opinion that this city was the capital of Phthia in the time of the Trojan war. It is a subterraneous construction, built in the same manner as the treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. Below an oval opening, level with the present surface of the ground, eight feet two inches long, and six feet ten inches broad, eight courses of stone, in all about ten feet high, nearly cubical,
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§ 1.451 and laid together as usual without cement, are visible above the rubbish which fills up all the lower part of the monument. In the three or four upper courses, each course projects a little beyond the one below it; but those below, as far as they are visible, have the spheroidal curve of the interior of the treasury of Atreus. The acropolis of Pharsalus was replaced by a castle of Roman, or Imperial Greek times, which is now itself a complete ruin. It included not only the level occupied by the acropolis, but the upper part of the adjacent slope to the north, inclosing about a sixth part of the ancient city. At the top of the hill the walls of this castle were raised on the remains of the Hellenic inclosure, but on the slope they were constructed, from the foundation, of rough materials mixed with mortar, though cased in some parts with squared blocks taken from the more ancient ruins: in this part they are thicker even than the Hellenic walls, being not less than eleven feet. In the acropolis are two or three cisterns of the same kind of masonry as the modern castle; one of these is fifty-five feet long and twenty-five broad. The summit of the hill commands a most extensive view, bounded to the north by Olympus, and comprehending to the westward all the great plains of Upper Thessaly as far as Trikkala and the rocks of Meteora. Due south is seen a high summit near Zituni, between which and the ridges near Fersala is an elevated valley, containing the villages Kaklidji and Tjeutma.
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§ 1.452 The ancient city was near four miles in circuit, and of the very common form of an irregular triangle; the walls are traceable on the two descending sides in their entire extent. On the eastern slope of the mountain, which is very steep, and naturally defended by a torrent, there are no towers, nor even any of those short flanks which were common among the Greeks when towers were not employed. Near the north-eastern angle a piece of the ancient wall, having eight regular courses of masonry, now forms part of the wall of the episcopal church of Fersala. In few other parts of the ancient inclosure so many courses remain. On the western side, the walls, towards the upper part, made a wide sweep, for the purpose of following the crest of two detached heights, and that of a ridge which unites them. Between the citadel and the nearest of these two summits, which is rocky, and rises almost to a level with the citadel, the ground is hollow, with a gradual declivity, and is consequently weaker than in other parts; hence the hollow was fortified with a second wall, distant fifty yards from the outer, and having an obtuse re-entering angle in the middle. The ridge which unites the two heights just mentioned being almost at right angles with the double wall, formed an additional security to this weak point. The northern, or lower wall of the city, on the edge of the plain, was a mile in length; it is traceable only in a few places, chiefly where excavations have been made by modern masons, to take away the foundations, and which thus sufficiently
:1.453
§ 1.453 show to what we are to attribute the disappearance of this wall. There are still, however, some remains of it above ground at the western extremity of the modern town, particularly at the foot of a rock above a pool and some sources of water, uniting in a permanent stream, which, after a winding course through the plain, joins the Enipeus, near Vashli. Near the pool are two courses of a tower, 20 feet square, from which it may be judged that all this northern front of the town, on account of its being naturally the weakest, was fortified by a chain of towers, although there were very few on the western, and none on the eastern face of the city. A few stones remaining in their places to the westward of the springs, show that the northern wall joined the western, exactly at the spot where the road from the west enters the modern town. Besides the fountains which issue from the rocks below the town, in many pellucid streams, and which were obviously one of the recommendations of the site to the founders of the city, the Pharsalii were supplied from sources on the height by an aqueduct, excavated in the form of a deep trough in the rock, and covered with large stones reaching from side to side. At one place I observed a descent into the conduit of several steps, and a piece of wall of a later date, formed of tiles which crossed the opening. The modern Pharsalians supply the fountains of their town in the same manner; the lower sources serving only for washing, or to gratify the Turks in summer by the coolness, the agreeable sound of the running water, and the shade of the plane trees.
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§ 1.454 In order to enjoy these favorite luxuries the better, they have constructed several kiosks, in some of which the water issues from the ground in the building. The margins of the springs are bordered by squared blocks, some of which were probably placed there by the ancients; others have been transferred from the ruined walls to their actual positions by the Turks. Many wrought stones are to be seen in the houses, steps, and pavements of the town, but I can find no relics of sculpture, and only one inscription (No. 14), which is inserted in the wall of the Greek church. It was the monument of Aurelia Phila who denounces a penalty against any one who shall open her tomb, or place another body in it, and is curious only for its bad spelling. παραγγέλλει is written παρανγελλι--τεθήναι, τεθηνε --εις, ις,ανοίξαι, ανυξε. Nov. 23.—Having moved from Fersala at 1.25, p.m. in a westerly direction, we pass through an opening which separates the ridges adjoining to the ancient site from a north-western projection of the same range, and at 2.15 re-enter the great plain. The hills now take a direction to the south-west, as far as Ghynekokastro, from whence to the head of the plain under Dhomoko they trend more to the south. At a distance of about 10 miles to the westward are the lower heights of Agrafa and behind them the steep snowy mountains of that district. In re-entering the plain, Vrysia (Turcice Bey Bunar) is a mile on the left, at the foot of the hills; the village takes its name from some very copious springs which issue from
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§ 1.455 under the rocks a little below it, and form a considerable stream which we cross by a bridge at 2.30. From hence the road leads directly to the point of Ghyneko-kastro, where we arrive at 2.55. All this corner of the plain, and as far as can be seen on the right, consists of a fine turf, now covered with sheep and cattle, with the exception of a few patches of arable land, surrounding some small Turkish villages. The soil seems equally adapted to cultivation or pasture, and as the adjacent hills furnish food to the cattle in summer when the plains are parched, the country well deserves the double character conveyed by the epithets which Homer attached to Phthia. Ghyneko-kastro is the modern name of a Hellenic ruin [ Proerna ], standing upon an extremity of the Phthiotic ridges; remains of walls of the third order of masonry inclose the north-western face of the hill, which slopes in that direction, and surround also a long narrow tabular summit, which was the ancient acropolis. At the back the descent is more rapid, and on that side the wall and towers of the citadel remain perfect to one third of their original height. Although small compared with Pharsalus, this seems to have been a place of some importance. After having remained here a quarter of an hour, we proceed, and soon arrive in sight of Dhomoko, situated on the summit of the ridge which here closes the plain.
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§ 1.456 Half an hour beyond Ghyneko-kastro we pass some sources on the right side of the road; and on the left a ruined mosque standing on a height. Here is an extensive Turkish burying-ground, in which one of the tombstones is an ancient Greek statue of a female, wanting the head. From the mosque we cross direct towards Dhomoko, which does not lie exactly above the extremity of the plain, but rather towards the Agrafa side, and in one hour and 25 minutes from the mosque reach the foot of the hills, on which the town is situated, when leaving on the left the direct road to Zituni, we arrive at the town at 5.15, after a tedious ascent of 40 minutes, rendered disagreeable by the rain, and difficult by the slippery path, and the weakness of our wretched cattle. Dhomoko contains about 300 families and several large houses: half the inhabitants are Greek and half Turks. The situation resembles that of Dhimitzana in the Morea, standing upon the two sides and crest of a ridge in a very lofty situation. In the menzil road, which we quitted at the foot of the mountain, is a large khan, on one side of which a copious spring and pool of water supplies canals, which after turning several mills on the side of the hill, are collected into a small stream flowing to join the others of similar origin, which we have this day passed. The house in which I lodge belongs to four partners in trade, all of whom have their families in the house.
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§ 1.457 Nov. 24.—This being Sunday, the usual market day in Greece, a concourse of people crowd the village, buying and selling corn, maize, and other agricultural commodities. There is no want of evidence to show that Dhomoko stands exactly on the site of the ancient Thaumaci. The bishop, who is one of the suffragans of Larissa, is styled ο θαυμακου και Ζητουνίου; and two inscribed marbles are still preserved, in which the words πόλις θαυμακων occur several times.
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§ 1.458 Many Hellenic foundations are to be seen around the town, though too disjointed to indicate the exact plan or extent of the place. The inscriptions are grants of proxenia, to foreign benefactors, with the accompanying privileges: two of the favoured persons were citizens of Heracleia and of Callium, both which towns were in or near the valley of the Spercheius. At the southern end of the town a rocky point overtopping the other heights, commands a magnificent prospect of the immense plain watered by the Peneius, and its branches, which extends from Pharsalus to Aeginium; behind the latter rise the rocks of the Meteora, distant at least 50 miles in a direct line. This is the view which Livy describes, following probably the words of Polybius, in relating an attempt made upon Thaumaci by Philip son of Demetrius, at the close of the year (B.C. 199) which preceded that of his defeat at the Aoi Stena. The historian remarks that Thaumaci was situated in the pass called Coela, in a lofty position defended by precipices, where the traveller entering Thessaly from Thermopylae and Lamia, after having passed over rugged mountains and intricate valleys, suddenly came in sight of a plain resembling an immense sea, and so extensive that its extremity was scarcely visible. A reinforcement of Aetolians having penetrated through the guards of Philip into the city, he abandoned the siege, and retired into winter quarters in Macedonia.
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§ 1.459 The situations of Pharsalus and Thaumaci being determined with certainty, there remains the greatest probability that Ghyneko-kastro is the ancient Proerna which Strabo names among the towns of Phthiotis, together with Thaumaci and Pharsalus, and which in the war with Antiochus, eight years after the transaction just alluded to, was taken by the Consul Acilius, in his way from Larissa to Hypata. On this occasion his first march was from Larissa to Crannon. As he advanced, he received the submission of Pharsalus, Scotussa, and Pherae, took Proerna and some castles near it, but was attacked as he approached Thaumaci from the woods and mountains overhanging the pass; he penetrated however to the town, which had been deserted, and the next day, arriving upon the banks of the Spercheius, ravaged the lands of the Hypataei. On quitting Dhomoko we make a circuit of the hill, and proceed by a short descent into an elevated plain, which extends south-eastward to the foot of the mountain of Gura, the proper Othrys, and to the northward rises by a gentle slope to the summit behind Fersala. Having traversed this plain, we descend over an uncultivated tract into the lower plain of Taukli, leaving a mile to the right the nearest part of the lake of Taukli, which
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§ 1.460 occupies all the lowest part of the plain, and is six miles in circumference. The greatest dimension of the plain is from east to west; the soil seems fertile, but is little cultivated. We cross it obliquely by a road which the rain of yesterday has rendered very bad, and having reached the hills on the southern side, leave Taukli on the right, and beyond it a promontory or peninsula in the lake, distant two or three miles from us, on which are some remains of ruined edifices. It is probably the ancient Xynia, for that place gave name to a lake on the southern borders of Thessaly, not far from the country of the Aenianes, who inhabited the valley of the Spercheius. Beyond the lake the ground rises to the hills of Agrafa. In the plain of Taukli we joined the main road from Fersala to Zituni, which crosses the mountain at the back of the former town, leaving the summit on the right. The heights of Taukli are part of a ridge which branching from the mountain of Gura, borders the plain of the Spercheius on the north, and is connected with the mountains of Agrafa to the west. Our passage over it is in the lowest part; but there is another pass to the westward called the derveni of Karya, which leads from Taukli directly to Neopatra. These are the two natural entrances into Thessaly from the southward; and the plain of Taukli with Zituni, Dhomoko, and Fersala, are therefore the most
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§ 1.461 important military positions of the frontier. Having ascended the ridge along the side of a gorge formed by a small torrent, we arrive in two hours and three quarters from Dhomoko at a derveni, where a guard is stationed for the protection of the pass. The rain falls heavily as we proceed, and the road is very bad, winding among woody mountains, but without much ascent. This is the δρυμός Μαλεαίος, or Maliac forest, which, not long ago, was as dangerous as it seems to have been in ancient times, but which now, thanks to the strong arm of Aly Pasha, is acknowledged to be free even from suspicion, like the greater part of the country over which his guardianship as Dervent Aga extends. Anciently in some part of this forest stood the sepulchral monument of a young man named Derxias, who had been murdered by robbers, and whose epitaph is still preserved in the Anthologia. At the end of seventy-five minutes from the first derveni we pass a second, which, as well as the whole defile, is known by the name of Furka. The road then begins to descend towards Zituni, and soon brings us in sight of the plain of the Spercheius. From the Furka to Zituni is a distance of one hour, in a direction more easterly than before. After some delay at the entrance of Zituni [Lamia] I obtain a lodging
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§ 1.462 in the house of one of the principal Greeks, who is absent, but whose family is at home. The house is built on the same plan as the generality of the better sort of Greek houses in this part of the country: a lower story serves chiefly as a stable and storehouse, the upper consists of a row of four chambers opening into a wide gallery, almost as large as'all the other apartments together; none of these has any door or window but into the gallery, and within they are black with smoke and dirt. The walls of the lower story are formed of loose stones cemented with mud, those of the upper of sun-baked bricks, plastered and whitewashed. In few of the houses are the walls upright, or the floors level, owing to the green timber and loose masonry, which settle into a distorted form. My konak is an extreme example, and seems to require only a slight earthquake, or a strong euroclydon, to crumble it into a heap of ruins. It has, nevertheless, stood these forty years, and is said to have settled into its present shape soon after it was built.
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§ 2.001 CHAPTER 10 MELIS, AENIANES Nov. 25.—Ζητούνιον is a name remarkable from its resemblance to the Arabic Zeitun, which means a place of olive trees, and is repeatedly found in countries where that language is spoken, but as none of the names of Greece are derived from the Arabic unless through the Turkish, as the Turks have corrupted Zeitun into Isdun, and as Ζητόνιον is found among the bishoprics of the province of
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§ 2.002 Larissa in the ninth century, there can be little doubt that the name came into use with others still existing, which are found in the Notitiae Episcopatuum, and is not to be traced to an Oriental origin. There are about 3000 Turks in the town, and 2000 Greeks, who are poor, or at least afraid of not appearing so. The district confines eastward on that of Armyro, and is bordered in the other directions by Neopatra [Hypata], Agrafa, and Fersala. It contains near 60 villages, of which the population is almost entirely Greek. The strength of the castle hill of Zituni, the secure and convenient distance of the place from the sea, and its abundant sources of water, point it out at once as the position of an important Hellenic city, which an inscription copied at Zituni, by Paul Lucas, shows to have been Lamia. And this is amply confirmed by Livy and Strabo. The latter places Lamia above the plain, which lies at the head of the Maliac Gulf, at a distance of 30 stades from the Spercheius. Livy describes it as situated on a height distant seven miles from Heracleia, of which it commanded the prospect, and as lying
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§ 2.003 on the route which led from Thermopylae through the passes of Phthiotis to Thaumaci. The only remains I can find of the ancient city are some pieces of the walls of the acropolis, forming a part of those of the modern castle; and some small remains of the town walls constructed of masonry of the third species, at the foot of the hill beyond the extreme modern houses to the eastward. On the opposite side of the town, a brisk little river turns fourteen mills, situated one above the other, on the slope of the hill. The same method is practised at Dhomoko, but there with only four mills. The ancient importance of Lamia is shown by its silver coins, and by the occurrence of its name in ancient history, on some important occasions, particularly in the year B.C. 323, when the Athenians, on the death of Alexander, were excited by the “sibi mortifera facundia” of Demosthenes to renew their struggle with Macedonia. Antipater was at first unsuccessful, and retired into Lamia, where he was besieged by the Athenians, but their commander Leosthenes, having been slain, and Antipater having received a reinforcement from Asia under Craterus, the Macedonians were again enabled to meet the enemy in the field, and terminated the war by a victory near Crannon. In the year B.C. 191, Lamia was besieged by Philip, son of Demetrius; Livy, in relating this
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§ 2.004 transaction, takes notice of the rocky soil of Lamia, which prevented the Macedonians from making so rapid a progress in this siege as their comrades, who were similarly employed at Heracleia on the opposite side of the plain. In the following year Lamia was taken by the Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio. The castle of Zituni commands a most beautiful and interesting prospect; and being itself a remarkable point, is an excellent geographical station. There is no other of equal altitude which comprehends so complete a view of the country adjacent to the head of the Maliac Gulf, or at least that affords so much assistance in understanding the history of the celebrated events which have occurred on this scene. Having the advantage today of a most diaphanous atmosphere, I easily recognize the places with which I was familiar in 1802. The most striking part of the prospect is the vast Oetaean range of mountains extending from Callidromus above Thermopylae, as far westward as the summit near Karpenisi named Velukhi, not far to the left of which is seen Patratziki or Neopatra, below one of the highest summits of the range; to the left of that town rise the stupendous precipices called Katavothra, which fall in a northeastern direction to the plain of Zituni. In the opposite quarter, towards the entrance of the gulf, is seen Stylidha, the port of Zituni; and in a line
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§ 2.005 with it the most westerly inlet of the sea, which here advances to within three miles of the town. Near the shore, on this side of Stylidha, appears the village Aghia Marina; and beyond Stylidha the slope of Mount Othrys, as far as the entrance of the Euboic Straits. The promontory of Lithadha in Euboea forms a lofty peninsula in the center of the gulf, to the right of which the view comprehends a long reach in the Euboic channel; and at its entrance the islands anciently called Lichades, to the right of which is Mount Cnemis, with the village of Mola at its foot. From hence, to the beginning of the pass of Thermopylae, a narrow plain abounding with wood extends along the shore, behind which are the hills below Pundonitza, which connect the mountains Cnemis and Callidromus, and at their foot a remarkable rock, upon which I observed, on my former visit to this country, some remains of ancient monuments. It is nearly in a line with the castle of Pundonitza, seven degrees to the left of which appears the peak of Khlomo above Talanda. Considerably to the right of Pundonitza begins the precipitous termination of Mount Callidromus above the salt springs, which gave name to Thermopylae. This alone is the proper pass, for to the eastward of it the hills, though now difficult to penetrate on account of the woods, form a very regular slope from the summit of Callidromus to the paralian plain, about Mola; the above-mentioned rock
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§ 2.006 with the ancient remains, being at the foot of a part of this slope, is not very near the pass, and cannot therefore be the site of any of the places in the pass mentioned by Herodotus; it may indicate perhaps the position of Nicaea. Thereabout it must have been that Hydarnes descended to the rear of Leonidas. The eastern extremity of the pass was a little to the left or east of the derveni, or guard-house, from whence to the upper or western salt-springs, precipices overhang the pass, gradually increasing in height from the former position to the latter, immediately over which they are highest. Above these precipices there is still an elevated country of varied surface, gradually rising to the foot of the snowy and fir-clad summit of the mountain; and in this place, just under the highest peak, stands the village of Dhrakospilia. Below the district of Dhrakospilia, to the westward, extends a regular and cultivated declivity, which belongs to another village named Dhamasta, and reaches to the Asopus, and Thermopylae, terminating at the latter in a long stony slope corresponding to the plain of Anthele of Herodotus, which lies between the upper salt source of Thermopylae proper, and another pass to the westward where the road is confined between cliffs and a marsh, and where are also some sources of hot salt water.
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§ 2.007 But this latter pass, lying between the plain of Anthele and the Asopian plain, may be turned through the slope of Dhamasta. So that supposing the sea and marshes to have occupied all that which now forms a plain in front of Thermopylae, the real pass will be reduced to the space between the derveni and the old or upper sources, or in other words to the space eastward of the plain of Anthele, which is now occupied by the course of the eastern salt springs and their deposit. Dhamasta is situated at the head of some cultivated declivities at the foot of a precipice under the upper heights of the mountain, and around it there is a considerable tract of vineyards. The cultivated slope immediately below the village is separated by some shrubby steeps from the Asopian or Trachinian plain. To the right of Dhamasta is seen a little table land on the mountain, upon which, among the woods, stands a monastery of the Panaghia, and near it to the right, is an acclivity reaching to the crest of the Zygos, or connecting ridge, which unites Mount Callidromus with the great Oetaean summits, and over which passes the modern road from Zituni to Salona. This Zygos is cultivated in patches quite to the top. The summit of Parnassus makes its appearance above a shrubby height; one of the lowest of those bordering the plain, and which to the westward is bounded by the precipitous ravine of the Asopus, which river here traverses the mountain nearly in the same oblique direction in which it crosses the plain.
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§ 2.008 To the right of the Asopus for two miles are seen the great precipices from which the city Trachis derived its name, and which about the middle advance considerably into the plain. Above them are seen some small villages, situated on cultivated slopes, extending as far as the great summit which is called Patriotiko, or Patratzikiotiko, from its being immediately above Neopatra, or Patratzik. This summit is covered with firs and other trees. Between the cliffs of Trachis or Heracleia, to the westward, and the still higher precipices called Katavothra, where the valley is narrowest, a cultivated declivity advances into the Trachinian plain. Here on the edge of the plain are the villages Vardhates, Alpospata, and Franzi. A remarkable chasm separates the south easternmost summit of the Patriotiko from the Katavothra, and terminates to the left of the heights of Franzi in a ravine which descends into the plain near Alpospata, half way between the end of the Trachinian Rocks and the point of Franzi. Here and at the foot of the gorge of the Asopus, the land of Trachis is highest, and from these two points it subsides gradually to the Spercheius. This river is now known by the name of Elladha; Mount Callidromus is called Saromata, —the Asopus, Karvunaria. A pezodhromo well acquainted with all this country, informs me that there is a road of not above two hours along the upper region of the mountain from Dhrakospilia to Pundonitza, which he has often traversed. It is undoubtedly by the same route that Hydarnes crossed the mountain, and the pezo may possibly be a descendant of his
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§ 2.009 guide; for neither the barbarians of the east nor of the north seem to have colonized much in Melis, if we may judge by the names of places, which are chiefly of Greek derivation. Livy thus describes the Oetaean barrier: “These mountains which divide Greece in the middle, as Italy is divided by the ridge of the Apennine, extend in a continued line from Leucas and the western sea to that on the eastern side of Greece; they are so uneven and rocky, that not only armies, but even ordinary pedestrians find a difficulty in crossing them by the few paths which they afford. At the eastern extremity they are named Oeta, and their highest summit Callidromon, at the foot of which, towards the Maliac Gulf, there is a pass only sixty paces in breadth. This is the only military road which affords the means of transit to an army, when it meets with no impediment from an opponent. Hence the place is denominated Pylae, and sometimes Thermopylae, the latter name being derived from some hot waters, which have their sources in the pass itself.” Strabo agrees with Livy in considering the proper Oeta to have been the eastern portion of the ridge which stretches across the continent from the Ambracic Gulf, as well as in describing the summit nearest to Thermopylae as the highest point of Oeta; in which latter opinion, however, they were both mistaken, Mount Patriotiko being
:2.010
§ 2.010 considerably higher. Strabo further remarks, that Oeta was 200 stades in length, that it terminated towards the sea in precipices which left only a narrow passage for the road from Thessaly into Locris, and that the pass was called Pylae, or Stena, or Thermopylae, which last appellation was derived from some hot waters, sacred to Hercules. He adds that the mountain which rises above the pass bore the name of Callidromum, though some gave this denomination to the whole range, extending through Aetolia and Acarnania to the Ambracic Gulf; and that near Thermopylae, within the Straits, were several fortresses, namely, Nicaea on the sea shore of Locris, —higher up Teichius, and Heracleia, which was founded by the Lacedaemonians in a position six stades distant from the ancient Trachis, and Rhoduntia, in a strong situation. The geographer then subjoins some remarks borrowed from Herodotus, who, as his object was that of tracing the progress of Xerxes and his host through the eastern part of Greece, confined himself to a description of the eastern extremity of that belt of country which is referred to by Livy and Strabo. After having described the march of the Persian army through Thessaly and the Achaian Phthiotis, Herodotus states that Xerxes then entered Melis, near a gulf where the sea ebbs and flows. “Here,” he continues, “is a plain, large in one part, and in another very narrow. High and inaccessible mountains, called the Trachinian rocks, surround the land of Melis.
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§ 2.011 The first city in the gulf, proceeding from Achaia, is Anticyra, near which the river Spercheius, flowing from the Aenianes, falls into the sea. About 20 stades from it is another river, named Dyras, which is reported to have first made its appearance to relieve Hercules when he was burning. Twenty stades farther is a third river called Melas, five stades distant from which is the city Trachis. Between the mountains where Trachis stands and the sea, the plain is widest; its whole surface contains 22,000 plethra. In the mountain which encircles the Trachinian land, there is an opening to the southward of Trachis, from which the river Asopus issues, and then flows along the foot of the mountains. To the south of the Asopus is a small river, named Phoenix, from whence to Thermopylae the distance is 15 stades.” A comparison of this passage with the topographical sketches at the end of this volume, will, it is hoped, carry with it the conviction, that the names mentioned by Herodotus are there correctly placed, notwithstanding the surprising change which appears to have taken place in consequence of the accumulation of soil brought down from the upper country by the rivers, especially the Spercheius. The Asopus is recognized by its διασφάξ, or rocky gorge, through which it issues into the plain: between it and the Spercheius are found the two streams corresponding to the Melas and Dyras, which now, instead of falling separately into the sea, unite, and then discharge their waters, as does the Asopus itself, into the Spercheius.
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§ 2.012 The latter, instead of meeting the coast nearly opposite to Lamia, as it appears to have done in the time of the Persian war, not only receives the Dyras, Melas, and Asopus, as tributary streams, but continues its course on a line parallel to the pass of Thermopylae, at a distance of a mile from the hot sources. It then forms a delta in that new plain which has been created beyond the pass, and which has thus caused the head of the gulf to be removed three or four miles from its ancient position. The consequence is, that all the lower plain, although intersected with marshes at all seasons, and scarcely passable in the winter, affords in summer a road through it from Zituni to Mola, which leaves Thermopylae two or three miles on the right, and renders it of little or no importance as a pass in that season. This I had particularly occasion to remark on my former visit to Thermopylae and Zituni, which was in the month of July. The inclination of the new course of the Spercheius, in the direction of Thermopylae, and towards the south-western corner of the head of the gulf seems connected with the form of the high land on either side of the plain. As the Oetaean chain rises much more abruptly than the ridge on which Lamia stood, it is probable that when the gulf extended as far westward as the meridian of Lamia, the deepest water was towards the southern shore, whence the new plain formed itself more speedily on the northern than on the southern
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§ 2.013 side, and the new stream had therefore a tendency towards Thermopylae. So copious, however, is the deposit from the salt springs, and so rapid the formation of new soil below them, that this cause has been sufficient, together with the alluvion of Mount Callidromus, aided perhaps by the Asopus, to prevent the Spercheius from approaching nearer than a mile from the foot of the mountain. The increase of land at the head of the gulf is still rapidly continuing; for I remember to have observed, on my former journey, some of those basins for making salt which are common on the coast of Greece, so far removed from the shore that they had been abandoned, and new salt-pans had been constructed nearer the sea. Nov. 26.—This day, at 12.45, leaving Zituni for Neopatra, we traverse the plain to a bridge near Franzi, crossing some rice-grounds, which, though they have not been cultivated for some years, impede us by the little mounds of earth which serve to divide the ground into small squares for irrigation: we afterwards follow the bed of a canal (αυλάκι) made for the same purpose, and at 1.23 cross the Spercheius. The bridge consists of planks strewn with earth and resting upon trunks of trees supported by the piers of a stone bridge, which was carried away by an inundation. From hence we resume a winding course among corn-fields, and at 1.55, at the foot of the hills below the village of Franzi, join the route from Salona to Neopatra. Here is a mill turned by a very considerable stream of water, which descends to the Elladha. Mount Callidromus is well seen from hence in
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§ 2.014 profile, giving a perfect idea of the track pursued by the Persians after they had attained the part of the mountain near Dhrakospilia; for this practicable ground, which comparatively may be called a plain, occupies the entire face of the mountain between the summit and the precipices, overhanging Thermopylae, and beyond this elevated region there seems no longer any great difficulty in descending to the positions of Nicaea and Alpeni. We now follow the foot of the magnificent precipices named Katavothra, and at 2.17 leave the small village of Kostalexi, a little above us on the left. At 2.35 pass along the edge of another named Komoladhes, below which there is a small wood of plane-trees. Here the Turk, proprietor of the village, advances from his pyrgo, and invites us to lodge with him. The river is at a small distance on the right, but leaves a broad plain on the opposite side; the valley is narrowest opposite to Franzi. Our road now continues, as far as Neopatra, along a stony slope formed by the torrents descending from the gorges of Mount Katavothra, which rises like an immense wall, shading the road from the afternoon sun for several hours, like the similar precipices at Mistra. But the Katavothra are much higher than the abrupt terminations of Mount Taygetum in the Spartan valley. We arrive in the town at 4. Neopatra, by the Turks called Badrajik, stands partly at the head of a long stony slope, similar to that below Mount Katavothra, and partly upon a ridge which rises at the back of the slope, terminating above in a steep detached summit of a peaked form.
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§ 2.015 On this height are the ruins of a small castle of Lower Greek construction, or perhaps a work of the Franks in the fourteenth century, when Neopatra was conquered from the Greek despot of Western Greece by the Catalans, and became a part of the duchy of Athens under the Spanish sovereigns of Sicily until Thessaly was overrun by the Turks. The ridge is protected on either side by a ravine, in which flows a torrent, (ρεύμα); that on the west has a wide gravelly bed; the eastern is shaded by plane trees, and waters numerous gardens around a suburb which stands below the ridge on that side. These streams do not fail in summer, but after turning many mills, irrigate plantations of tobacco in the plain. The Spercheius, or Elladha, is diverted from the general course in which it descends to the sea from the westward by the long projection of the hill of Neopatra, which forms a diminishing ridge almost as far as the river’s bank. The town is inhabited by about 500 Turkish and 150 Greek families. Their proportion accounts for the prevalence of the Turco-Greek name, Πατρατζήκι, in preference to that of Neopatra. The latter however is well known to be the right appellation, and the bishop is styled των Νεών Πατρών. Almost all the power is in the hands of an Albanian Bey, placed here by Aly Pasha. The district contains between 30 and 40 villages, all Greek; not long ago there were 70, so great have been the emigrations of late from this part of the country. The major part of these villages are in the subjacent plain.
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§ 2.016 The town contains one church besides the metropolitan, and a third unfinished, which the Greeks have lately been permitted by Aly Pasha to rebuild. The streams and gardens of the town, and its lofty position are very agreeable, but the air is said to be unwholesome in the summer and autumn, which the natives ascribe to the exhalations of the tobacco plant, though undoubtedly the rice-grounds, as at Zituni, equally contribute, and probably the overhanging mountains, as well as the want of a good Imbat in the Maliac Gulf, which is too narrow and too much excluded from the open sea by surrounding mountains to receive in perfection that great corrector of the air in the maritime parts of Greece. There is no direct road over the mountains from Neopatra to Salona: the usual route falls into that from Zituni to Salona at the ascent of the Oetaen pass. That from Neopatra into Thessaly passes the Elladha nearly opposite to the village of Ghenokladha, and crosses the opposite hill at the derveni of Karya, so called from a small village of that name to the left of the road: it then descends upon Taukli, near which it joins the road from Zituni to Dhomoko. The hills which bound the valley of Neopatra to the north are included in its district, but immediately beyond them begins that of Agrafa. Not far above Neopatra the plain widens to the breadth of five miles, and here the Elladha is joined by the Vistritza, a large branch which descends with great rapidity through a gorge dividing the Patriotiko from a peaked mountain lying between the former and
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§ 2.017 Mount Velukhi. The Vistritza crosses the plain obliquely in a wide gravelly bed, and joins the Elladha immediately opposite to Neopatra, at a distance of three or four miles. Its waters, like those of the Elladha, serve to irrigate some rice-fields in the lowest part of the valley. About ten miles above Neopatra, the valley of the Spercheius is reduced to narrow limits by the approximation of the two ranges of hills. Karpenisi is reckoned nine hours from hence, its position lying to the left of the summit of Velukhi, near the sources of a branch of the Aspropotamo which joins the main stream near the monastery of Tetarna. The sources of the Elladha are on the northern and eastern sides of the same mountain, which seems clearly therefore to be the ancient Tymphrestus; for Strabo states that the Spercheius had its origin in Tymphrestus, and that Mount Othrys extended from the Maliac Gulf to Tymphrestus and Dolopia. The two most distant tributaries of this river flow from Neokhorio of Kostriava in Agrafa, and from Mavrilo in the district of Neopatra. These streams are joined by other branches from the summit, intermediate between Oeta and Tymphrestus, but by none of any magnitude from the Othryan range of mountains.
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§ 2.018 The Vistritza, which is almost as large as the Elladha itself, originates in a ridge which stretches in a south-easterly direction, uniting Velukhi with Vardhusi, and which, from its forests of beech, is known by the name of Oxies. There are many large quadrangular blocks of stone, and foundations of ancient walls, on the heights of Neopatra, as well as in the buildings of the town, particularly about the mosques and fountains: several of these remains are of white marble, of a species different from the Attic, and which was probably quarried in the adjacent mountains. I observed some shafts of columns of this material, but could not find a capital. In the metropolitan church, which is a wretched old building with a falling roof, there is a handsome shaft of white marble, and on the outside of the wall an inscription in small characters of the best times: of which I was unable to decipher any more than the three last words— απο Υπαταιων πάντων. Another stone, inscribed in a similar character, is sufficiently legible to show that it recorded grants of proxenia to foreign benefactors. As in one of these records the Hypataei, and in another the council, or magistrates of the Aenianes, conferred the favour, we may infer not
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§ 2.019 only that Neopatra is the site of Hypata, but that Hypata was in the country of the Aenianes, and probably their chief town: the grant in one case was perhaps confined to Hypata, and in the other extended to the whole district. The latter inscription is on a broken block of white marble, lying under a plane-tree near a fountain in the Jewish burying-ground, and not far above the western torrent; on the opposite side of which an ancient sepulchre was lately excavated. It produced nothing but bones; but it serves to confirm the very natural supposition that the city was bounded by the two torrents. If Hypata was the chief town of the Aenianes, we have an obvious reason for the non-existence of any coins of Hypata; the money coined here having probably all had the inscription Aινιάνων. The length of 200 stades which Strabo assigns to the proper Oeta, seems to leave little doubt that the Mount Patriotiko, which is the highest point in this part of the country, is the proper summit of Oeta; and it is not improbable that the name Hypata may have been originally Hypoeta, as having been situated immediately under Oeta. But there was also a city Oeta, said to have been founded by Amphissus, son of Apollo and Dryope, where it is to be supposed that the beautiful coins with the legend Οιταιων were struck. As Herodotus and Thucydides distinguish the Oetaei from the Trachinii, and as Stephanus describes Oeta to have been a city of the Melienses, we have good reason for
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§ 2.020 believing that it stood at the foot of Mount Patriotiko, towards the Trachinian plain. It was the same place, perhaps, as the ιερόν αστυ, to which, according to Callimachus, the Hyperborean offerings were sent from Dodona in their way to Delos, and which gave name apparently to the Hierenses, one of the three tribes of the Malienses. Oeta may have been called the sacred city, from the worship of Hercules, and because near it, on the mountain, was Pyra, where Hercules was said to have died on the burning pile,—a place of such sacred celebrity, that the Roman Consul, Acilius, ascended thither from Heracleia to offer sacrifice, continuing his route from thence across Oeta and Corax to Naupactus. The two other tribes of the Malienses were the Paralii and Trachinii, the former of whom evidently occupied the maritime towns of Anticyra, Phalara, and Echinus, the latter the opposite mountains, with the adjacent part of the plain round Heracleia. As to Lamia, although once a city of the Paralii, it would seem afterwards to have been altogether separated from Melis; for we find coins both of the Μαλιέων and Λαμιέων. Echinus preserves its name, slightly corrupted into Akhino, Phalara was probably the modern Stylidha, and Anticyra, which stood at the mouth of the Spercheius, should now be
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§ 2.021 sought for towards the middle of the plain below Zituni. There were some other towns of the Malienses, the names of which only are preserved, without any indication of exact locality, such as Colaceia, Aegoneia, and Irus, or Ira. With these particulars as to the position of the Malienses and Aenianes, there is little difficulty in adjusting the local distribution of the other small districts, which were surrounded by Doris, Locris, Thessaly, and Aetolia. Their exact boundaries cannot easily be defined, but their relative situation may be inferred from that of their cities. Included between the south-eastern extremity of the Thessalian plains and Melis were the Phthiotae, whose towns have not been named by Homer. Their capital at that time was probably Pharsalus; in latter ages, when Phthiotis extended to the Pagasaean Gulf, and maritime commerce was in its meridian, Thebae Phthioticae rivalled Pharsalus. Westward of the Pharsalia was Dolopia, a mountainous country, which, falling to the great Thessalian plain, extended westward to Athamania, and bordered southward on Aetolia and the Aenianes. It corresponded to the northern and eastern part of the modern Agrafa; its principal town is not specified in ancient history. The situation of Dryopis is exactly indicated by a passage of Strabo already referred to, which shows it to have been adjacent to Mount Tymphrestus,
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§ 2.022 now Velukhi; whence, on comparing this fact with other geographical data which have been mentioned, the general inference may be drawn, that the Dryopes occupied the upper valleys of the Spercheius, and the Aenianes the lower, as far as the entrance into the plains of Melts, near the modern Franzi. The Aenianes derived their name perhaps from Anias, which, as it often occurs simply, or in composition as a river’s name, both in Greece and Italy, would seem to have been a generic word for river in the Pelasgic tongue. There is some reason to believe, from a story related by Plutarch, that the great branch of the Elladha, called Vistritza, was anciently named Inachus. He states, that in the last migration of the Mnianes, they removed from Crissa to the country on a river Inachus, which was partly occupied by Inachii and Achaei, and that the Aenianes acquired this portion when Hyperochus, king of the Inachii, had been slain by Phemius, king of the Aenianes.
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§ 2.023 Nov. 27.—At 1.30 p.m., setting out from Neopatra we descend by a path which conducts along the side of the mountain above the lower suburb, where on the skirts of the upper town, the remains of a very massive Hellenic wall are observable on the brow of the slope, showing that Hypata occupied exactly the site of the present town. On a rock close by a piece of ancient wall, on the side of the eastern torrent, are two niches; one of these is in the form of a cockle-shell, the other, which is perpendicularly above it, is quadrilateral. On the descent of the hills, beyond the gardens of the lower Makhala, is a handsome wood of elms, chestnuts, and other trees, and many sources of water by the road side. We enter the valley through a wood of plane trees, at 2 join the road by which we came, and retrace it as far as the point near Franzi, where we arrive at 4. From thence an ascent of a quarter of an hour brings us to the village. On the edge of the plain a labourer was sowing barley, and another behind him, ploughing it in. In the lower level very little besides maize and rice is grown. The cottage in which I am lodged is neat and comfortable. The owner of it asks my servant secretly whether it is true, as reported in the village, that all the plain belongs to me, and that I am come to look at the state of it; but, adds he, “When will he come with his palikaria and take possession?”
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§ 2.024 Nov. 28.—Departing from Franzi this morning at 7.52, we descend the hill obliquely, and cross at 8.4, on the edge of the plain, a wide avlaki, or artificial channel, which conducts a deep and rapid stream towards the mill on our left, which I mentioned on the 26th. From the mill the stream descends directly to the Elladha, but the water is for the most part consumed in watering plantations of cotton and maize. It is a derivation from the Gurgo-potamo, a torrent which descends from the great chasm of Mount Oeta, between the Katavothra and Mount Patriotiko, described on the 25th. We now enter the plain which below Franzi expands to a breadth of six or eight miles, and proceed in the direction of the rocks of Trachis, by which I mean those near the site of that city, for as Herodotus states, that all the lofty mountains which surrounded this plain were called the Trachinian rocks, it would seem that he meant to include among them the precipices of Mount Katavothra, which were four or five miles from the site of Trachis. At 8.15 we cross the Gurgopotamo, a clear, rapid, perennial stream, which, after passing through Moskokhori, joins the Elladha two miles below that village. The Trachinian plain is little cultivated, and much overgrown with agnuscastus and oleander. At 8.25 Alpospata, a small village of fifteen or twenty houses, is a quarter of a mile on the right. We here cross a small rivulet running down into the plain. At 8.32 we are at the low point of hill which appears from Zituni to project into the plain to the right of the rocks of Trachis. It is commanded at the back by a round hill, behind which a gentle slope ascends to the foot of some great precipices, which are a continuation of the Katavothra.
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§ 2.025 On the slope stands the village of Dhyo-vunia (two hills). The round height has much the appearance of the site of an ancient acropolis, but a man of Alpospata, of whom I inquire, knows of no remains of ancient walls there, nor can I perceive any, though we make the semi-tour of the hill at no great distance. It may, nevertheless, be the site of the city Oeta, or ιερόν άστυ of Callimachus, for it lies immediately at the foot of the great summit of Oeta, and is also very near the borders of the plain of Melis. Alpospata occupies the lowest declivity of the hill on the north-eastern side. Proceeding in the same direction, at 8.41 we have the small village of Vardhates half a mile on the right, at the foot of the hill, and at a few paces on the left of the road an ancient tumulus, near the angle where the rocks of Trachis begin to overhang the plain. At 8.46 cross a streamlet running from right to left in the direction of those precipices, and at 8.52 arrive at the foot of the rocks, which rise to the height of four or five hundred feet with great magnificence and beauty, the bareness of the rock being relieved at intervals by patches of green shrubs hanging over it. Continuing along the foot of the precipices, we arrived at 8.59 at their most projecting point, as observed from Zituni, on either side of which are several sources, issuing from below the rocks, and collecting into two streams which meet below the projection. The united river flows from thence across the plain in the direction of Moskokhori, a little above which village it joins the Gurgo-potamo. The sources and river are called the Mavra-neria; the streamlet, which we
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§ 2.026 crossed at 8.46, is a branch of it. It seems clear that the Gurgo is the Dyras, and the Mavra-neria the Melas, of which word the modern name is a synonym. In the time of Herodotus these two streams, which now unite and fall into the Spercheius, discharged themselves separately into the sea. A little before arriving at the projecting point, the road, in order to avoid the rivers and springs, ascends a steep rocky slope, which at this place forms the base of the rocks. It continues thus passing just above the springs till 9.3, when it again enters the level at the foot of the rocks. From hence for half a mile onwards, towards the gorge of the Asopus, there are many catacombs excavated in the side of the perpendicular rocks. Some of these have narrow entrances, others are square and open, and one has a curved roof. Within they are (at least all those I entered) plain sepulchral chambers, small and low. These catacombs and their distance from the sources of the Mavra-neria, agreeing with that of five stades, which Herodotus places between the river Melas and Trachis, determine the position of this city; the direction which the rocks take from the projecting point to the Asopus, equally justifies his remark, that the Asopus was to the south of Trachis. Fifty-four years after the events described by Herodotus, or in the year B.C. 426, which was the sixth of the Peloponnesian war, Trachis received a colony of Lacedaemonians, in consequence of a complaint made by the Trachinii in conjunction with their neighbours of Doris, from whom the
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§ 2.027 Lacedaemonians were supposed to derive their origin, that they were harassed by the surrounding Oetaei, and no longer able to defend themselves. Thucydides, from whom we learn this fact, asserts that Heracleia was situated at a distance of forty stades from Thermopylae, and of twenty from the sea, which latter number, if it be not below the truth, shows that the sea still reached at that time to the western extremity of the heights of Thermopylae. After the defeat of Antiochus at Thermopylae, B.C. 191, Heracleia was besieged and taken from the Aetolians by the Romans under Acilius, and the circumstances of this conquest, as extracted from Polybius by Livy, are well illustrated by the topography. The consul having divided his army into four bodies, placed one of them on the Asopus, near the gymnasium, another near the citadel, a third at the temple of Diana, on the banks of the Melas, and the fourth towards the Maliac gulf. The approach was most difficult in the last direction, which is accounted for by another remark of the historian, namely, that the plain of Heracleia was marshy, and abounded in lofty trees. These, however, were very useful to the Romans, who, finding moreover every other kind of building materials necessary for their works in the deserted houses of the suburbs, speedily constructed towers, battering-rams, and other implements used by the ancients in the attack of fortified places. The
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§ 2.028 Aetolians, nevertheless successfully maintained their positions in all the four quarters of attack for twenty-four days, when the consul, finding that the enemy’s numbers and efforts were diminishing, resolved upon a general attack of the lower town, first deceiving the enemy by a feigned relaxation on his part, and then making a general assault in the fourth watch of the night. The Aetolians were surprised, and retired into the citadel. The next day the consul, after allowing his troops to plunder the town for some hours, divided them into two bodies; one of these he led by a circuitous route round the foot of the mountain to a rocky summit, which was equal to the citadel in height, and was separated from it only by a chasm so narrow, that the two summits were within the range of a missile. The
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§ 2.029 occupation of this height was to be the signal to the Romans in the town to ascend against the citadel, but the Aetolians were now disheartened, and the citadel being crowded with women and children, and without any preparation for a further defence, they did not wait for the assault, but surrendered at the consul’s discretion. It seems quite clear from this account that the city occupied the low ground between the rivers Karvunaria and Mavra-neria, extending from the one to the other, as well as a considerable distance into the plain in a north-eastern direction. The citadel stood on the summit of the same precipice in the lower part of which are the catacombs. Its distance above the town justifies the words extra muros, which the historian applies to it, and may explain also the assertion of Strabo, that Heracleia was six stades distant from the ancient Trachis; for although the town of Heracleia seems to have occupied the same position as the Trachis of Herodotus, the citadel, which according to Livy was better inhabited in the Aetolian war than the city, may very possibly have been the only inhabited part of Heracleia two centuries later. The Latin historian has not left us the means of judging of the route taken by the Roman division which seized upon the summit near the citadel,—whether
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§ 2.030 by the ravine of the Asopus, or round the western end of the rocks near Vardhates. I am informed that some vestiges of the citadel of Heracleia still remain, but they are not visible from below; and as it would require a long detour on foot to reach them, I was under the necessity of giving up the attempt. The marshy plain, which in the consulship of Acilius, occupied the space between the northern wall of Heracleia and the shore of the Maliae Gulf, we may suppose to have been narrower and more difficult at an earlier period, when Heracleia consequently more completely commanded the passes from Thessaly into Southern Greece, as well along the shore by Thermopylae into Locris, as over Mount Oeta into Doris; and this consideration illustrates a passage in Xenophon, who informs us that when Jason of Pherae returned from Boeotia into Thessaly after the battle of Leuctra, (B.C. 371,) he destroyed the walls of Heracleia, in order that they might not be an impediment to his own free passage into Greece. At a later period its possession by the Aetolians was a main cause of the power of that people which balanced that of Macedonia under the successors of Alexander, especially when after the termination of the Epirote monarchy they obtained Ambracia, and thus extended their wings to either shore of continental Greece. Had they been a virtuous and prudent people, or had they been
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§ 2.031 guided at the right time by such counsellors as their praetor Agelas of Naupactus, they might have cemented such an alliance as would have saved Greece from the Romans; but all hope of successful resistance was lost when Heracleia fell, and two years afterwards Ambracia. Having quitted the catacombs, after a delay of five minutes we ride in a direction a little to the right of the point at which the pass of Thermopylae begins. This part of the plain is quite uncultivated, and overgrown with shrubs. At 9.22 we cross the Karvunaria or Asopus, half a mile below the rocky opening from which it issues into the plain, and opposite to the ruins of the village of Mustafa Bey. Within the gorge there are perpendicular precipices on either side, as far up the stream as the view admits: those on the left bank are intermixed with wood. The ravine after some distance winds to the eastward, or exactly in the direction which Hydarnes wished to follow in his march over the mountain. At 9.40 the part of the Oetaean ridge, on which stands Nevropoli, and which I crossed in 1802 on the way from Zituni and the bridge of Alemana to Gravia, and Salona is on our right. A little farther a torrent issues from a small ravine and passes into the plain in several rills, over a slope a quarter of a mile in breadth, which has been formed in process of time by the deposition of the torrent: a part of the stream terminates in a marshy spot at the foot of the slope; another part serves to fill an avlaki used for irrigating some cotton-grounds on the left.
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§ 2.032 As generally found at the issue of torrents from the mountains, the surface of the ground is gravelly, and shaded with planes and other trees. At 9.48, half a mile to our right, the road to Dhamasta begins to ascend the mountain: we halt three minutes, and then proceed through cotton-fields watered by another small rill from the hills on the right. At 10.4 arrive at the point where begins the western pass, or false Thermopylae, as it may be called. At 10.8 cross the first stream of mineral water, which runs with rapidity towards the Spercheius, leaving a great quantity of red deposit. This I take to be the Phoenix, so called, probably, from the colour of its sediment. Strabo, indeed, derives the name from a hero Phoenicius; but the Greeks were fond of an heroic etymology for their names, and as Herodotus clearly describes the Phoenix to have been in a narrow pass westward of Anthele, and fifteen stades from the real Thermopylae, which is found exactly to be true as applied to this red rivulet, there can be little or no doubt of the identity. The junction of the Asopus and Spercheius is on our left, a little below the khan of Alemana. The ground being still white and hard with frost under the shade of the point, and the air very cold, the stream of the Phoenix is covered with vapour, though it is much cooler than that of Thermopylae. Nor is it so much impregnated with salt. The red deposit also, which may indicate the presence of iron, shows that the water differs from that of Thermopylae, which leaves only a white crust.
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§ 2.033 The plain between this place and the Spercheius, which is now covered with a fine grass, furnishing pasture to sheep and goats, appears to have been formed by the deposit of the springs in the course of ages. The soil, however, has not accumulated so rapidly here as below the springs of Thermopylae. At 10.11 we arrive at a second salt spring or source of the Phoenix, issuing at an angle of the steep bank or cliff, and flowing to the former rivulet: here we join the road from Zituni, which now passes over the foot of the heights. Below on the left are cotton-fields, and in one place some appearance of the marsh, which in former ages was impassable in every part, and reached nearly to the foot of the cliffs. At the entrance of the road over the heights there is a fountain of fresh water constructed in the usual manner with a low wall, a small basin, and a spout supplied by a pipe. These Turkish fountains, as they are usually called, are probably nothing more than the Greek κρηναι continued to the present day, with such changes only in the decorations as the Turkish religion and manners have required, arabesques with sentences from the Koran, or the name of the builder, being substituted for the elegant ornaments of architecture, or the sculptures allusive to their mythology, which the Greeks employed. At 10.20 the heights terminate, and in one minute more we cross a stream of cold salt water, frozen at the edges, and then enter upon that which Herodotus calls the plain of Anthele. This is a long triangular slope, formed of a hard gravelly soil and covered with shrubs.
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§ 2.034 It is bounded above by a rocky ravine which separates the cliffs of the false from those of the real Thermopylae; and it appears to have been formed in the process of time by the alluvial matter brought from the mountain through the gorge. The plain is broadest where the road crosses it, narrowing from thence to a point towards the Spercheius, where it terminates. The precipices at the head of the plain of Anthele prevent all approach on that side except through the gorge; but this affords an easy though very defensible access from the plain of the Asopus by passing above the cliffs of the Phoenix or false Thermopylae. In the middle of the plain of Anthele, at 10.30, we cross the deep bed of a torrent now dry, but flowing copiously in times of rain. On my former visit I searched in vain, when passing the greatest part of two days at Thermopylae, for any remains of Anthele, or of the buildings mentioned by Herodotus which formed the place of meeting of the Amphictyonic council. At 10.40 we arrive at the end of the plain, and enter upon the white elevated soil formed by the deposit of the salt-springs of the proper Thermopylae. The upper source is in a corner retired within the line of termination of the plain of Anthele, immediately at the foot of the highest part of the great cliffs. The soil appears to have been very much raised in the course of ages by the deposit. The water is inclosed within a receptacle of masonry, about two feet in depth, and is seen springing from the earth below. Some small superfluities from this basin run down the white slope, but the main stream formerly serving to turn a mill which is now in ruins, issues from the
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§ 2.035 foot of the slope, its previous course from the spring to the issue being below the calcareous crust or deposit. Some of the veins of water which contribute to it are visible through apertures in the crust at a depth of a foot and a half below the present surface. From the upper or western to the lower or eastern hot spring, the distance is two hundred yards. Between them a path conducts to some vineyards on the table summit of a precipice which is advanced in front of the great cliffs, but ascends no farther; the ordinary path from the pass to Drakospilia leading by a church which is situated on the heights above the western cliffs, to which there is an ascent by the bed of the torrent of Anthele. The sides of the mountain immediately over the pass (for the great precipices are some distance farther back) are covered with a thick wood of wild olive, holly-oak, lentisk, and other common shrubs. From the lower source there is a distance of 400 yards to a mill which is still in use, the road leading along the avlaki or artificial canal, which conducts the water to the mill. The water in the avlaki is deep, and runs with rapidity, emitting a vapour which has a strong sulphureous smell. The sides of the canal, both within and without, are clothed with a thick white fetid deposit, which consists chiefly of carbonate of lime, but seems to retain a considerable portion of sulphur. The deposition of this substance is so rapid that the twigs of the plants which hang into the water, and even the green leaves, are partly covered with it; a fact which easily accounts for some of the changes that
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§ 2.036 have occurred in the elevation of the surface and the strength of the pass in the course of twenty-three centuries. The water throws out a great volume of smoke as it issues from the mill. It appears that there was formerly another mill below, for the avlaki is continued, though in a ruinous state, beyond the existing mill, along the foot of the two conical heights marked in the plan, the easternmost of which is crowned with the guard house of the derveni. Beyond this height the canal ceases, and the water is suffered to flow in a natural course down to the river. A lake of the same water as the springs, but not hot, occupies all the space between the mill and the western conical height, a distance of 150 yards; the avlaki is there carried along the edge of the lake. There is another smaller pond behind the derveni, or eastern conical height, towards its western side. The water of these pools, like that of the principal hot source, is very bright, and of a deep blue colour, thus illustrating in some measure the remark of Pausanias, that the bluest water he ever saw was in one of the baths at Thermopylae. The coolness of the water of the two lakes may be ascribed to the slowness with which they are supplied by the subterraneous veins, for the water being of the same composition as that of the hot springs, is probably hot also at its issue from the ground. The difference in quality between the water of the Phoenix and
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§ 2.037 that of Thermopylae, is practically shown by the cultivators of the cotton plantations, who carefully exclude the water of Thermopylae from the cotton, whereas they use that of the Phoenix to irrigate it. Neither of the two heights just mentioned, though very regular in form, has the smallest appearance of being artificial, and in fact each of them is united by means of a small ridge with the mountain: from the western to the eastern there is a distance of 250 yards, and 400 more to the point where the road, leaving the white soil formed by the deposit of the thermal waters, begins to ascend through the wood. This is the eastern extremity of the real pass of Thermopylae, as the plain of Anthele is the western. At a few minutes within the wood stands a mill turned by a small torrent of fresh water from the mountain, and belonging to a monastery of St. George, above Mola: three men of Dhrakospilia had just arrived to take possession of the mill, having hired it of the convent, on condition of paying thirty-five kuvelia of flour of eighteen okes each, to the convent yearly. They inform me, that though there are thirty houses at Dhrakospilia, there are no more than four families now residing there, but that they have little reason to regret the reduction of their numbers, as they are now less tormented by Turkish visitations, particularly that of the Dervent Aga, a deputy of Vely Pasha, who has four or five hundred men under his command, and travels continually in the neighbourhood of these passes, quartering and living upon the villages.
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§ 2.038 We met some of his palikaria in the pass; the Aga himself was at Neopatra. There was a sharp frost under the shade of the mountain in the pass, and the edges of the salt streams were frozen. Here in the sun, at the mill, it is warmer than is agreeable. Not far from this spot was probably situated Alpeni, or Alponus, the frontier town of Locris. At 12.40 we continue to ascend through the wood, in which, among other shrubs, there is an abundance of large myrtles; at 1.35 cross the foundations of a Hellenic wall, traceable for a considerable distance in an oblique direction towards the cliffs, which are a continuation of those overhanging and forming the pass of Thermopylae, and which are here about half a mile on our right. Similar remains are observable between the upper and lower cliffs immediately above Thermopylae, the remains of works by which the pass has at various times been fortified. The foundations of the wall which we cross in the road are nearly opposite to the height on the left; where, as I mentioned on the 25th, I found on my former visit a tumulus, and the foundations of a circular monument, just above a deep marsh near the right bank of the Spercheius. It is very probable that the Hellenic wall was carried from the cliffs to this point as an advanced defence to the pass on the eastern side, and that there stood the town of Nicaea. Thus far I can see no place where the Persians could have descended. To our left on the declivity are some small Kalyvia, and fields of kalambokki. At 1.50 we arrive at a fountain immediately below a rocky ravine, between two of
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§ 2.039 the lower heights of Callidromus. This ravine is stony and narrow, but is said to afford a route, though difficult, to Dhrakospilia and the summit of the mountain, passing by the monastery of Ai Ianni, which is situated an hour above the fountain. With the telescope I perceive some foundations of ancient masonry on the round summit of the lower, which is the smaller and westernmost of the two heights bordering the ravine. These summits which are nearly a mile distant from the fountain, are themselves very steep, but below them, as well as around the fountain, there is a level pasture and an easy descent in every direction, both to the maritime plain and to the pass. Leaving the fountain at 2, we cross half an hour afterwards a deep ravine in which the torrents, descending from the summit of Callidromus, are collected into one bed. It is the easiest and most direct passage to the summit of the mountain: no more than two hours being required to reach Dhrakospilia by this route, though an equal time is employed in proceeding to the same place from Ai Ianni, which is only half the distance. It is probably, therefore, the route by which the Persians under Hydarnes descended from the summit of the mountain; for Herodotus remarks, that their descent was much shorter and less circuitous than the route by which they ascended, which may be partly accounted for by the facility of route afforded by the ravine, and partly by the summit being nearer to this end of the ridge than to the Asopian plain, from whence Hydarnes began his march.
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§ 2.040 At 3 we enter the town of Pundonitza. In referring the ancient descriptions of Thermopylae, or the allusions to it contained in history, to the real topography, we are immediately sensible of the great change which the place has undergone from natural causes in the intermediate time. The strength of Thermopylae as a pass now depends upon the season of the year, for as the sea, instead of bordering the defile, is now at a distance of three or four miles from it, the difficulty of passing Thermopylae depends on the dry or marshy state of the plain. At the Phoenix, or Western Pass, there is still in winter only a narrow road at the foot of the hill, bordered by marshes; but as these in summer afford intervals for cultivation, they would likewise admit of the passage of troops into the plain of Anthele. In the Eastern Pass, or proper Thermopylae, there is in like manner a plain, more than half a mile in breadth, between the pass and the Spercheius, and this plain also, although marshy and sometimes impassable in winter, is partly cultivated in summer, and presents no difficulties of passage. Between this level and the cliffs, moreover, there is a slope formed of the calcareous depositions of the springs, dry at all seasons, and in some places four or five hundred yards in breadth. To show how different this state of the place is from that which it presented at the time of the Persian invasion, it will be sufficient to extract the description of the pass by Herodotus, together with his narrative of the circumstances which accompanied the death of Leonidas and his three hundred heroes. “From the river Phoenix,” he says,
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§ 2.041 “to Thermopylae, there is a distance of fifteen stades. Between them stands the town named Anthele, near which the Asopus falls into the sea. Here the country is open, and contains the temple of Ceres Amphictyonis, and the seats of the Amphictyones, and the temple of Amphictyon. Xerxes the king stationed his army in Trachinia of Melis, and the Greeks in the pass called by the natives Pylae,but Thermopylae by the Greeks in general.” The following passage is more particular: “The entrance into Greece through Trachis is half a plethrum in breadth where it is most confined. The narrowest part of all the country, however, is not there, but before and behind Thermopylae behind, near Alpeni, where the road admits only of one chariot; and before, at the river Phoenix, near the city Anthele, where also the space is no more than sufficient for a single carriage. To the west of Thermopylae a mountain inaccessible, precipitous, and lofty, extends to Oeta. On the eastern side of the defile, are the sea and marshes. In the Strait are the hot-baths called by the natives Chytri, where stands an altar of Hercules. Anciently there was a wall with a gate in the pass, which had been erected by the Phocenses, when fearful of being invaded by the Thessali, who had come from Thesprotia to inhabit the Aeolic land which they now possess.
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§ 2.042 The Phocenses used every contrivance to shut the entrance of their land against the Thessali, and among other things let loose the hot water upon the pass to form a torrent. As the greater part of the wall lay in ruins, the Greeks thought right, upon the present occasion, to repair it, and make use of it as a defence against the barbarians. They resolved also, as the town Alpeni was very near, that the Greeks in the Strait should be supplied from thence with provisions. In this pass the Greeks, having examined the places and found them convenient, resolved to await the attack, judging that here the barbarians could neither derive advantage from their immense numbers, nor make use of their cavalry. Having departed therefore from the Isthmus as soon as they heard of the arrival of the enemy in Pieria, some went in ships to Artemisium, and others by land to Thermopylae.” Of the road over the upper part of Mount Callidromus the historian thus speaks:—“This path was discovered by the inhabitants of Melis, who made use of it to conduct the Thessalians against the Phocenses, when the latter shut the pass of Thermopylae with a wall; from that time the path had been of no use to the people of Melis. It began from the rocky opening of the Asopus, and was named, as well as the mountain over which it leads, Anopaea. It passes over the crest of the mountain, and terminates towards Alpeni, the frontier town of Locris, and towards the rock called Melampygus, and the seats of the Cercopes, where the road is narrowest. By this path the Persians marched,” etc.
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§ 2.043 Three accidents concurred to frustrate the endeavours of the Panhellenic council at the isthmus to defend Thermopylae. They were ignorant of the path over Mount Anopaea, by which the position might be taken in reverse, Leonidas himself having only been informed of it by the Trachinii on his arrival, when he sent 1000 Phocenses to defend that route. Secondly, there was no expectation when Leonidas marched from the isthmus that the troops at Thermopylae would be soon attacked, the consequence of which was, that none of the allied states dispatched more than a small force in the first instance. And lastly, a religious ceremony, as had happened in the former Persian invasion, contributed to interpose a delay in the movements of the main body of the Spartans, while the Olympic games produced a similar effect in the rest of Greece. It appears, indeed, that the Spartans would not have sent any of their forces so soon, had it not been with a view to set an example to the allies, and thereby prevent them from embracing the interests of Persia. The allies had only time to reach Thermopylae and repair the Phocian wall, when the Persians made their appearance before the pass. On the part of all the Peloponnesians, except the Spartans, there was a wish to reserve their efforts for the defence of the isthmus of Corinth; but as this gave great offence to the men of Phocis and Locris, who were supported by Leonidas, it was at last resolved to remain at Thermopylae, and to
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§ 2.044 dispatch messengers to hasten the march of the remainder of the allied forces. Xerxes, meantime, had been informed that a small body of men, headed by the Lacedaemonians and their king Leonidas, occupied the pass; but he could not believe that they really meant to defend it against his multitude, though such was the positive assurance of Demaratus king of Sparta, who, in the same manner as Hippias the king of Athens had guided Datis in the invasion of Attica, accompanied the Persian monarch in the present expedition. Xerxes seems to have been ignorant of the real numbers of the Greeks; for the single horseman whom he sent for information, and who was allowed to approach unmolested, found only the three hundred Spartans on the outside of the wall, which concealed the remainder of the Greek forces. The Spartans were engaged, some in their gymnastic exercises, and others in combing their hair, which being their custom when they were on the point of exposing their lives to imminent danger, proved to Demaratus that they were resolved upon defending the position to the last extremity. Xerxes, however, was still incredulous, and wasted four days in expectation of their retreat. On the fifth he sent a detachment of Medes and Cissi against them. These, and others who succeeded them, having fought the whole day without making any impression upon the Greeks, Xerxes was at length convinced that though he had many men he had few soldiers.
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§ 2.045 On the sixth day from that on which the Persian horseman reconnoitred the Greeks, they were attacked by the Immortals; but these also soon found that their numbers were of no advantage in such narrow ground, against the long spears and large shields of the Greeks. The Lacedaemonians, who were the men chiefly engaged in this day’s action, retired several times as if defeated, and then suddenly facing about, overthrew great numbers of their opponents. On the following day the Greeks were not less successful in maintaining their post. All the allies were present except the Phocians, who were guarding the passage over the mountain. Xerxes, convinced at length of the infinite superiority of the Greek soldier, was reduced to such a state of embarrassment, as might have made Mount Oeta the term of his expedition, had the allied forces of the Greeks arrived in time to defend the upper passage of Mount Anopaea as well as Thermopylae had already been defended. It seems to have been on the eighth day of the operations that the Persian king obtained from a Trachinian named Ephialtes, whose countrymen had joined the Persian army, a knowledge of the path over the
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§ 2.046 mountain, by which he might send a body of men into the rear of the Greeks, and thus attack their position on both sides. In the evening, Hydarnes with the Immortals began his passage over the mountain, by a circuitous path which at first ascended the ravine of the Asopus. He marched all night, with the mountains of the Oetaei on the right, and those of the Trachinii on the left, and arrived at daybreak near the place where the Phocians were posted. As the enemy advanced, unseen, through a forest of oaks which covered the upper parts of the mountain, the Phocians would have been surprised had not the rustling of the dead leaves under the feet of the enemy, which the calmness of the morning rendered audible, advertized them of the approach of a large body of men. They had only time to arm, when a shower of Persian arrows obliged them to retreat to a more defensible position upon the summit of the mountain, where imagining that the enemy had come expressly to attack them, they prepared to resist to the last. This movement being precisely what the Persians wished, they took no further notice of the Phocians, but descended the mountain. Meantime, the Greeks at Thermopylae had heard of the movement of Hydarnes, and the whole camp was informed of it before daylight.
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§ 2.047 A council was immediately held; the result of which was, that all the Greeks should retire to their respective cities, except the Lacedaemonians, Thespienses, and Thebans. Ephialtes, having calculated that he should arrive at the eastern end of Thermopylae about the middle of the forenoon, had recommended to Xerxes to attack the Greeks in front about that time. The Persians advanced accordingly, and Leonidas met them in the widest part of the pass, having advanced in front of the wall. Great numbers of the Persians were slain, many fell into the sea, and many were trodden to death under the feet of their own comrades. The Greeks, knowing that they could not avoid their fate when the Persians should arrive in the rear, fought with all the energy of despair, and having broken their spears, came to action with their swords alone. Here fell Leonidas, and two of the half brothers of Xerxes. The chief contest was now for the body of the Spartan king, which the Greeks at length gained possession of, after having four times obliged the enemy to retreat. Thus each side had alternately the advantage, until the arrival of Hydarnes, when the Greeks, retreating to the narrowest ground, retired behind the wall, and from thence gained the hill in the pass, upon which a stone lion was afterwards erected in honour of Leonidas. Here, assailed on every side, they were all buried under the missile weapons of the enemy, with the exception of the Thebans, who had been retained by Leonidas solely because their city was already suspected of medizing; and who, when the Greeks retreated to the hill, advanced to meet the Persians, when some were slain as they approached; the rest had quarter,
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§ 2.048 but were afterwards branded with the royal mark of Xerxes. Diodorus, Plutarch, and Justin, give a very different account of the death of the Spartans, representing that they penetrated in the night into the camp of Xerxes, and there fell, after slaughtering the Persians for several hours. This improbable tale deserves not a moment's confidence, when opposed to the historian who was a cotemporary of the heroes of Thermopylae. According to an epitaph on the polyandrium at Thermopylae, cited by Herodotus, “4000 Peloponnesians fought there against 300 myriads.” His enumeration, however, amounts only to 3100. There is reason to believe, therefore, that Isocrates and Diodorus were right in supposing the 300 Spartans to have been exclusive of the Lacedaemonians. From the cities of Greece northward of
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§ 2.049 the Isthmus there were about 3000, and as all the 7000 were hoplitae, and were undoubtedly attended by a proportion of light-armed, it is probable that about 10,000 Greeks were assembled, when the impossibility of defending the pass having been proved, the Spartans and Thespienses alone under Leonidas and Demophilus, devoted themselves, by remaining, to certain destruction. The Persian land forces assembled in Melis amounted, according to Herodotus, to 80,000 Asiatic cavalry, and two millions of infantry, among whom, were included 300,000 Europeans from Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and other states of Greece, and the followers of the camp were even more numerous than the combatants. The only proof which the historian has left to corroborate this statement is the mural measurement of the Asiatic infantry in the plain of Doriscus in Thrace, where 10,000 men having been set apart and made to stand close together, a wall was built round them, and the inclosure was successively filled until the whole army was thus counted, and found to amount to 1,700,000. Such a process, if carefully and fairly executed, could scarcely have failed to produce an approximation to the truth within 10,000.
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§ 2.050 It is obvious, however, that there may have been many persons interested in producing a false muster. We may readily credit that the host of Xerxes was one of the largest which ever entered an enemy’s country. Asiatic armies have always been greater in proportion than those of other countries, in consequence of the peculiar structure of society, which pervades almost the whole of that continent. And in this instance we know the numbers assembled to have been the result of a four-years’ preparation, to have been collected from the whole Persian empire, which then included Egypt as well as all Western Asia, and to have been augmented by the forces of Europe, from the extremity of Thrace to the foot of Mount Oeta. But some of the same causes, which facilitate the collection of large armies in the east, render it difficult to arrive at any certainty as to their exact numbers; and the impossibility of finding subsistence in an enemy’s country for such a multitude, although attended as they were by all the naval forces of the states which supplied the troops, is alone sufficient to justify a disbelief in the numbers of Herodotus. The silence of Persian history on the invasion of Greece has been supposed to invalidate the truth of the whole transaction, or at least to show that it was nothing more than an expedition of some provincial satrap, magnified by Grecian vanity, and which being unsuccessful, the Persians took no great pains to record. But no person who has reflected on the history of Greece, or has read Herodotus with attention, will easily entertain such an opinion.
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§ 2.051 With the sole exception of the amount of the enemy’s land forces, there is no reason to question the statements of Herodotus, who in his narrative of the Persian invasion has left us one of the most cautious and accurate narratives that ever was written, not even excepting those of Thucydides and Polybius. The conquest of Egypt is no more recorded in Persian history than the failure of the expedition to Greece. The oblivion of both these events we may attribute to the same cause: namely, the total loss of the literature and history of ancient Persia, of which the arrow-headed character was the element. A few names only of the ancient monarchs seem to have escaped that literary wreck. The following are a few reflexions occurring on a view of the scene of this celebrated event. Thermopylae appears to have been the name generally applied to the whole road or passage at the foot of Mount Callidromus, from the plain of the Asopus to the woody slopes which commence a little beyond the modern derveni. But it is distinctly divisible into three parts, the pass of the Phoenix, the plain of Anthele, and Thermopylae proper. The latter was the only part very defensible against a great disparity of numbers; for, as I have already remarked, it is not difficult to turn the pass of the Phoenix from the westward, and to descend upon the plain of Anthele, which being more than half a mile in breadth, leaves only for the real Stena or pass, the part where are the hot springs, anciently called Chytri, and now Therma,
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§ 2.052 together with the two ponds of the same kind of water, and the two conical heights. Above all these rise immediately steep woody slopes mixed with rocky precipices, behind which are other precipices still higher, which impede all communication but along the foot of the hill by the hot sources, ponds, and conical heights. Herodotus gives reason to believe that the wall of the Phocians was built a little eastward of the western salt spring, which issues on the eastern edge of the upper extremity of the plain of Anthele, so that the current from this spring may have flowed along the exterior side of the wall. The κολωνός εν τρ εσόδω, or hill in the pass, which was the last retreat of the Spartans, and where the stone lion was erected in honour of Leonidas, I take to have been the western of the two small heights, this being nearest to the position of the Phocian wall, and the narrowest part of the pass, which begins to widen near the hill of the Derveni. The latter moreover being rocky, whereas the former is smooth and even, will better correspond to the rock Melampygus, upon which were the Kερκωπων εδραι, or seats of the Cercopes. A little beyond this hill eastward, the pass terminates: the woody heights, which rise steeply
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§ 2.053 from the saline sources and ponds, diminish in height, and at the same time recede to the southward, leaving at their feet a long practicable slope covered with wood, which reaches to the marshes near the mouth of the Spercheius, and which I traversed on quitting Thermopylae for Pundonitza. In regard to the route of Hydarnes from the plain of Trachis, over Mount Callidromus, otherwise named Anopaea, to Alpeni, there can be little doubt from the words of Herodotus, that it began by ascending the ravine of the Asopus, which, having (as before remarked) a direction from the eastward, and being perfectly concealed, was thus well adapted to the object of the movement of Hydarnes. After following the ravine for some distance, a rugged and circuitous ascent would conduct him to Dhamasta, from whence the route was comparatively easy to Dhrakospilia, a little beyond which probably was the position of the Phocians. After engaging with them until they retreated to the neighbouring summit of the mountain now called Saromata, he descended by the torrent, which I crossed at 2.30, and turning westward on arriving at the modern route from Pundonitza to Thermopylae, reached, without any further difficulty, the position of Alpeni and the eastern end of the pass. As he quitted the camp of Xerxes in the dusk of the evening, and arrived
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§ 2.054 at the Phocian position at day-break, he was about eight hours on his march, the transaction having taken place in the beginning of August. Even if the road had been as good as the ground could possibly admit, the distance could not have been less than twelve miles: on considering, therefore, the steepness of the ascent from the vale of the Asopus, the varied surface of the mountain in the upper region, the necessary halts and other delays incidental to the march of 10,000 men by such a path as the historian has described, partly through a thick forest, and in the night, the time does not seem too much in proportion to the distance to be performed. The descent was not much less than the ascent in actual distance but was very different in other respects, being little encumbered with rugged ground or forests; and the march was performed by day. These causes combined would produce a great diminution in time; so that Hydarnes probably was not more than five hours in the descent, including the delay occasioned by the skirmish with the Phocians, and may have arrived at Alpeni about nine o’clock in the forenoon. The only difficulty in the historian’s narrative is, that he states Hydarnes, in commencing his march, to have left the mountains of the Oetaei on his right hand, and those of the Trachinii on his left, which tends to the belief that he began his ascent from the plain to the westward of the Trachinian rocks, about the modern Vardhates. But as this would have doubled the distance, and the words of Herodotus decisively indicate the ravine of the Karvunaria as
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§ 2.055 the beginning of his route, we are to conclude that all the summits above the city of Trachis and the Trachinian rocks, on one of which the citadel of Heracleia was afterwards built, then belonged to the Oetaei. The Trachinia, it is easy to conceive, comprehended all the mountain Callidromus, as far as the boundaries of Locris; and thus, notwithstanding the city Trachis was on the right of Hydarnes, the Oetaean mountains, during a great part of his march, may have been on the right, while the Trachinian were on his left. The stillness of the dawn, which saved the Phocians from being surprised, is very characteristic of the climate of Greece in the season when the occurrence took place, and like many other trifling circumstances occurring in the history of the Persian invasion, is an interesting proof of the accuracy and veracity of the historian. A little more than two centuries after the Persian invasion, in the year B.C. 279, the Gauls, whose appetite for plunder had been more excited than satisfied by that of Italy, Illyria, Pannonia, and Thrace, turned their steps towards Greece, which then offered a more tempting field for the plunderer than any country in the world. They first made their appearance in Macedonia, where in two successive years they defeated Ptolemy Ceraunus and Sosthenes.
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§ 2.056 Elated with this success, they now advanced towards the southern provinces of Greece, having principally in view the pillage of the temples of Greece, and particularly that of Delphi. They were met at Thermopylae by an allied army of Greeks, amounting to about 23,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry, together with all the Athenian triremes which could be collected. The chief management of the war was entrusted to the Athenians, who were led by Callippus, son of Moerocles. The Greeks, having destroyed the bridges of the Spercheius, and stationed a body of troops to oppose the Gauls in crossing at the same point, Brennus effected a passage with 10,000 men nearer to the sea, where the river spreading over the low grounds formed a lake and marshes instead of the single and steady stream which it presented higher up.
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§ 2.057 Loftiness of stature, says Pausanias, being a general characteristic of the Celtic race, some of their tallest men waded over the marshes, while some employed their shields as rafts, and others passed over by swimming. The Greeks then withdrew their forces from the river, and retired within the pass of Thermopylae. The next measure of Brennus was that of obliging the people of Melis to construct bridges over the Spercheius, and he then crossed with his whole army, which had consisted, when he first entered Greece, of upwards of 200,000 men. After having laid waste the country, and murdered the inhabitants around Heracleia, which was then in the possession of the Aetolians, he proceeded against the Greeks in Thermopylae. Being informed of their amount by some fugitives, and despising the smallness of their numbers, he attacked them at sunrise on the day after his arrival at the entrance of the pass. But neither the military skill nor the armour of the Gallic infantry, qualified them to contend with Greeks. Their shields were a very insufficient covering, and their swords were made to cut only, having no point. The cavalry, in consequence of the narrowness of the ground and of the rocks and torrents was of no use on either side. The Gauls attacked with their accustomed impetuosity, and fought with the utmost perseverance
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§ 2.058 notwithstanding the wounds inflicted by the battleaxes and swords of the hoplitae, as well as by the javelins and arrows of the light-armed. Many even drew out the missiles of the Greeks from their own bodies, to hurl them back upon the enemy. Unable, therefore, with all their efforts to obtain any advantage, they regained their camp, after considerable loss, by a retreat as tumultuous and confused as their attack had been, and in which those who were trodden to death by their own comrades or who were lost in the marshes, were not less numerous than those who fell in the engagement. The success of the day was in great measure due to the Athenian galleys, which were conducted with great difficulty and danger through the marshes, until their missiles were brought to bear upon the enemy. On the seventh day after the battle, a body of Gauls ascended Mount Oeta by a narrow path near the ruins of Trachis, not with a view of crossing the mountain into the rear of the Greek position, but for the purpose of plundering a temple of Minerva, situated above the ruins of Trachis. They were met and beaten by the Aetolians from Heracleia, whose commander, Telesarchus, fell in the action. Brennus now attempted to detach the Aetolians from the confederate army, by undertaking an expedition into their country with the view of thus obliging them to march to its defence: 40,000 Gallic infantry and 8000 horse having crossed the Spercheius, as if marching into Thessaly, suddenly entered Aetolia and attacked Callium, which they took and treated with the most
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§ 2.059 merciless cruelty; but having been encountered on their return by the Italians from Thermopylae reinforced from various parts of Aetolia, they were completely defeated, and not half their number returned to the camp of Brennus. An example of that selfishness and disunion which has been the bane of Greece in every age was now destined to favour the invader. The Heracleotae and Aenianes, tired of the protracted stay of the enemy in their territory, and thinking only of the readiest means of ridding themselves of the evil, undertook to guide the Gauls across Mount Callidromus by the same path which the Persians had followed. Brennus resolved upon conducting the expedition in person. Leaving Acichorius, therefore, in charge of the main army, with orders to attack the Greeks in front, as soon as those who crossed the mountain should arrive in their rear, he ascended Callidromus at the head of 40,000 men. A body of Phocians, for the defence of the road, had been stationed on the mountain, as in the time of Xerxes, and to as little purpose. A dense vapour covering the summit, the Phocians were not apprized of the approach of the Gauls until they were attacked, when, after a short resistance, they retreated with all expedition to their comrades at Thermopylae. The whole army then embarked in the Athenian galleys, and thus effected its retreat without further loss.

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