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

§ 2.460 the temple of Hermes Promachus stood on the hill, on which he was reported to have been born; but it is very possible that by εν Τανάγρα Pausanias meant the district of Tanagra, and that Cerycium was the entire mountain stretching westward from Grimadha. At the time when Thebes had recently been restored by Cassander, and its desert inclosure laid out in streets, Dicaearchus described Tanagra in the following terms: “The road from Oropus to Tanagra leads for thirty stades through a country covered with olive plantations and forest trees, where the traveller is free from any apprehension of robbers. The city stands on a rugged and commanding height, and has a white argillaceous appearance. The houses are remarked for their handsome porticoes, and encaustic paintings. The country abounds less in corn than in wine, which is the best in Boeotia.” He then commends the inhabitants, who were all landholders, for a frugality void of avarice, for justice, good faith, hospitality and charity; and adds, that Tanagra was the safest and most agreeable residence in Boeotia for a stranger.

§ 2.461 The river Lari, although only a small brook, is said not to fail in summer. It receives a considerable contribution from some springs, which issue from the rocks, on its banks just below the city. No notice occurs of this stream in ancient history, and it seems not unlikely that it still preserves its ancient name. From Grimadha to the foot of Mount Parnes, and to the slope which conducts to the Pass of St. Mercurius, extends a plain, which is covered with pines towards the foot of Parnes, and in the other parts is fertile, and well cultivated. Low pines and brushwood cover the part of Mount Soro, near Grimadha. The place where the Asopus issues from the rocky ravine, which I have before described as separating the Parasopia from the Tanagrice, is not far above Tanagra: the summit of Cithaeron appears through the gorge; just below the exit the river is joined by a deep rema from Mount Parnes, and in the angle formed by the junction stands the hamlet of Latani, in a lofty situation. This gorge of the Asopus being exactly in the direction of Scolus and Plataea, Dicaearchus has correctly described the road from Tanagra to Plataea, as having been in some degree desert and stony, and as having passed near Cithaeron. His remark that it was not very dangerous, alludes probably to the robbers who appear to have frequented Cithaeron from that time to the present. On the edge of the hills which stretch along the sea-coast, and meeting a branch of Parnes, bound the plain to the eastward, are seen near

§ 2.462 the left bank of the Asopus the village and tower of'Inia, or Staniates, at the entrance of the lower gorges which separated the Tanagrice from the Oropia, and through which the river flows to Sykamino. Further on, towards St. Mercurius, is the hamlet of Buiati. The champaign country around Tanagra extends beyond Skimatari, as far as the range of Khtypa and Siamata, and communicates in the direction of Vasiliko, in Euboea, with a descent into a lower maritime plain, in which are Dhramisi, Vathy, and the great port of Aulis. The Tanagrice having been near the frontier of Attica and Boeotia, was frequently the scene of contention between the two rival people, or their allies. Besides the battle of Delium, there were two other celebrated actions fought in this district twenty-five years before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, and with an interval of only two months between them. In the first, the Athenians, with their allies, who were chiefly of Argos, and amounted in all to 14,000, were opposed to a somewhat smaller force of confederates, headed by Pleistoanax and his tutor Nicomedes, who in returning home with 1,500 Spartans from Doris, where, in union with a large army of allies, they had been defending their kinsmen, the Dorians, against the Phocians, were afraid of attempting a passage through the Megaris, which was in possession of the Athenians, and diverged therefore into the territory of Tanagra.

§ 2.463 They were victorious on this occasion, in consequence of the treachery of a body of Thessalian cavalry, who turned against the Athenians during the battle. The scene of action was probably the plain between Tanagra and the foot of Parnes, across which mountain the Athenians received their supplies. Diodorus relates, that there were two actions: that the Thessalians who deserted in the first, attacked on the same night a convoy of the Athenians, which brought on the second general conflict; that the latter was of doubtful event, and that it was followed by a truce of four months. Sixty-two days after the battle of Tanagra, as it was usually called, Myronides of Athens, who had in the preceding year been twice successful in battle with the Corinthians in the Megaris, obtained a third victory over the Boeotians at Oinophytae, which was of much greater importance than the former, as he followed it up by razing the walls of Tanagra; from whence he led his victorious forces to Thebes, and through Boeotia to the frontiers of Phocis and Locris, receiving the submission of many Boeotian and Phocic cities. and taking hostages from the Opontii of Locris. As we cannot doubt from the circumstances of the event, that Oinophytae was in the Tanagrice, not far from the Attic frontier, the name further shows that it was the place where the wine was chiefly produced, for which the Tanagrice was renowned. It is by no means unlikely that the modern Inia, written Οινια, is a corruption of Οινοφύται: it stands, as I have already remarked, in a commanding position near the left bank of the Asopus, between Tanagra

§ 2.464 and Oropus, or nearly in the situation where it is probable from history, that the battle was fought. Returning to Skimatari, I overtake a monk belonging to a convent not far distant, who says that he has always understood the ancient name of the ruins at Grimadha to have been Tenagra, so he pronounces it, quasi Ταιναγρα. In a tower a little to the left of the road, which, like that near Grimadha, has been converted into a church, I find on a block of the same kind of black marble which was employed in the principal building at Tanagra, the name Hipparchia in very ancient characters, the X being formed like an ordinary Ψ, and the initial aspirate expressed by H. Another marble has the name Βιοττος. Several other sepulchral stones, each with a name in the nominative, without either paternal or ethnic, are preserved in the churches in or near Skimatari. There is one also of a woman named Lais, in the dative preceded by επι. These two forms appear from a variety of examples to have been the Boeotian mode of inscribing names on tombstones, and to have been adhered to at very distant periods of time; whereas, so near as Oropus we find the name of the father added on four sepulchral inscriptions at Oropo and Sykamino. In Attica the demus seems to have been an indispensable adjunct. All the inscriptions at Skimatari are on black marble, except one which is not sepulchral, and on which I can distinguish only the letters ΟΝΤΑΝΑΓΡΑ. These letters, and the marble of the other inscribed stones, render it probable that they were all brought from Grimadha, from which place, as it has been long deserted, the neighbouring inhabitants have been accustomed to remove the ancient inscribed or sculptured stones, as they have been brought to light by the rains or the plough, to the churches in the surrounding country.

§ 2.465 Feb. 1.—From Skimatari to Andritza and Thebes: the road follows the left bank of the Lari in a direction parallel to the range of Soro. Besides the sources which issue from the bank of this river near Grimadha, there are others more copious, which join it not far above the tower or church, which I visited in returning from the ruins; but above the latter sources the Lari is nothing but a dry torrent, and in most places the water-course is even ploughed. We cross it, and a little afterwards, at 8.20 (having set out at 7.55), the village of Bratzi [m. Tanagra] is at the foot of the mountain on the left. Soon afterwards we ascend the inferior hills of the range of Soro, which border the plain on the west, and then arrive in a deep χείμαρρος, or torrent-bed, in a rich soil, and which, though now dry, is occasionally the principal feeder of the Lari. It receives others from the northward, and flows at first to the east, but afterwards turns to the southward, through the plain of Bratzi and Skimatari. It is clearly not the Thermodon. At 8.44 the hamlet of Kapandriti is on the right, at the distance of a mile and a half: at 9.8 we arrive at Andritza [Dritsa, m. Arma], a village of ten or twelve houses, forming what in the northern parts of European Turkey is called a palanka, that is to say, a quadrangle, having all the doors and windows of

§ 2.466 the houses within, and a single gate; thus the whole constitutes a rude fortress. This village, though little more than two miles distant from the road from Thebes to Egripo, is entirely concealed from it by a range of heights, which are distinguished from the low undulating hills characteristic of this part of Boeotia, by precipices of white rock, which crown the summits. On a part of these rocky heights, distant 6 or 7 minutes to the north-west of the village of Andritza are found the remains of a small Hellenic polis, or fortified come. The walls of the citadel are traceable round the most precipitous part of one of the rocky brows, which is about 140 yards long and 40 broad; and those of the town are in many places visible, enclosing a slope to the south and west of the acropolis, in which direction the site was bounded by a small torrent, descending from Mount Soro, and flowing into the plain eastward of Mount Siamata, where it joins the torrent which descends from the convent of Platanaki on that mountain. The ruins of the ancient walls are most considerable on the eastern side of the citadel, where a projecting rock is occupied by a square tower, and a similar piece of the wall adjoins it to the northward. Here the remains are about 15 feet high. [sketches]

§ 2.467 The masonry in the upper parts of the work consisted for the most part of irregular polygons joined with the utmost accuracy, but the basis is formed of narrower and regular courses. Beyond the torrent, where are some foundations, perhaps those of a temple, the rains of last October have uncovered an ancient pedestal, formed of a handsome kind of breccia with a red cement, about 2 feet 9 inches square, and 1 foot 6 inches high, divided in its mid-height by a moulding, and shaped at the top in the form of a triangle with a round hole in the middle, to which a statue may have been attached, or perhaps a tripod. There is no inscription, but on one side below the moulding a large vase is represented between an ox and a man, who is seated in a chair with a sceptre in his right hand: the two figures look inwards towards the vase. The style and execution are indifferent. The vase and ox may allude to the productions of the landed property of the seated figure, who was perhaps the dedicator of the tripod. Between the place where this monument is lying and the S.W. angle of the acropolis, where the rocks are highest, a copious fountain issues from under them, and discharges itself by two spouts. A small church stands just above it, and there are several other churches on the hills around, but all are in ruins except one near the village similar to that at the fountain. On the western and highest extremity of the hill stands a high square tower in ruins, which I remarked in proceeding from Thebes to Egripo; it seems to be of the time of

§ 2.468 the Franks. There are remains also of a reparation of the wall of the citadel, apparently of the same date, on the crest of the rocks on the southern side. This repair, as well as the churches, show that the source of water and the fertile soil of the surrounding plain had caused the place to retain its inhabitants from Hellenic times to those of the Lower Empire, or at least to be restored at the latter period, although they have been unable to save it from Turkish desolation. Only a small portion of the surrounding soil is now cultivated. It is only by negative arguments that any conjecture can be formed of the ancient name of this place. Its situation and small dimensions strongly argue that it was one of the four κώμαι of the Tanagrice, which were Harma, Mycalessus, Eleon, and Pharae. The two former having been on the route from Thebes to Chalcis, could not have been very near Andritza; indeed the situations of them both are tolerably well determined; and as Eleon of the Tanagrice was so named from its marshes, of which there is not the smallest appearance near Andritza, these ruins may rather be ascribed to Pharae, which, from Strabo and Stephanus, but still more from an extant autonomous silver coin, bearing on one side the Boeotian shield and on the other a diota with the letters ΦΑ, appears to have been a place of some importance, although it was not among the Homeric towns of Boeotia, unless, as some of the Boeotians thought, Νισσαν τε Ζαθίην had been improperly substituted in the

§ 2.469 catalogue for Φαράς τε Ζαθίας. Of the other Boeotian towns named by the poet, Hyria and Eilesium are the only two to which I have not yet adverted, with an attempt to their identification. Strabo says, or has been made to say, that in going from Thebes to Argos, Hyria lay upon the right of the road, and Tanagra on the left, which cannot be true of the road from Thebes to Argos, nor indeed of the road from Thebes to any other conceivable place, if Hyria, as he asserts, was near Aulis. Either the text therefore is faulty, or the information of Strabo incorrect; and probably some of the ancient critics were right in supposing that Hyria was the same place as Hysiae. Eilesium like Eleon, indicates, as Strabo remarks, a marshy position, which is not easily found in the part of Boeotia, where the names associated with it in the catalogue would seem to place it. At the foot of a height similar to that of Andritza, and situated in the direction from thence of Mount Soro, there is an ancient crypt, or sepulchral cavern of a semi-circular form, excavated in the rock. Conspicuous from Andritza also is a summit of the range of Soro, towards Tanagra, having a peak of naked rock which is called Vigla, or the look-out. It is separated from a higher summit towards Thebes by a narrow pass which leads to Mustafadhes, and some other small villages on the southern side of the ridge.

§ 2.470 From this pass to the Psilirakhi inclusive, extends a chain of summits, about the middle of which is the highest point, or proper Soro. I have in vain endeavoured to discover in history the ancient name of these heights, which, though low, compared with the surrounding mountains, are a remarkable feature in the topography of the Thebaea, and of all eastern Boeotia. Soros being a Hellenic word, the mountain may retain perhaps its ancient name. Towards the north it is separated by some hollows from a low parallel ridge stretching from the rocky heights of Andritza in the direction of the hill which advances into the plain of Thebes towards the foot of Siamata, and which I suppose to have been the site of Teumessus. Andritza itself stands nearly opposite to a projection of Mount Hypatus, a little westward of the remains of Glisas, mentioned Dec. 21. Ten minutes beyond Andritza, proceeding towards Thebes, at a ruined church of Aghia Paraskevi, or St. Friday, I find a long block of black marble, of the same kind as that of the foundations at Tanagra, and of which the monuments at Skimatari are composed, as well as that in the tower between that village and Grimadha. On the marble are inscribed two lines of characters of remote antiquity, rudely engraved, but tolerably preserved. Two sides of the stone are rough, as if broken, and one end of the inscription is thus lost; but enough remains to show that it was simply a dedication to Bacchus by one Aeschron, or Aeschrondas, the name of whose father

§ 2.471 is imperfect. The coincidence of the black marble and the worship of Bacchus are sufficient reasons for believing that the monument was brought from Tanagra. The dialectic peculiarities of AE and OE to express the Hellenic AI and ΩΙ are unexampled in any Greek inscriptions I have yet seen, and are the more remarkable as they have nothing in common with the Boeotic, according to the specimens of that dialect, which are afforded by the inscriptions of Orchomenus, Tanagra, and Lebadeia. From Aia Paraskevi, following the road to Spakhidhes, we arrive, after crossing the hills for seven minutes, at a source of water and a small ruined church of the Panaghia, before which lies a cubical stone 1 foot 7 inches in the side, having a rough moulding almost worn away by time at the bottom, but in other respects quite plain. The inscription is complete, and although it consists only of the name of a woman, Plaucha, preceded by επι, the letters are so large as to be disposed in two lines, and are written in Boustrophedon, as appears from the final E, which faces in the opposite direction to that of the former line. Here again, as in the names ΗΙΠΠΑΡΨΙΑ and AESΨRONDAS, the X is expressed by the Ψ of the Hellenic alphabet, and the Hellenic AΙ as in the document containing the latter name, is represented by AE. The two monuments, therefore,

§ 2.472 both evidently of a remote antiquity, concur in proving that there were dialectic forms employed in Boeotia in early times different from those of the middle period, when the Hellenic αι was converted into η, as Ήσχίνας for Αισχίνης, and the dative masculine was converted into u, as TY ΔΑΜΥ for ΤΩΙ ΔΗΜΩΙ, which in the earlier dialect would have been TOE ΔΑΜΟΕ. It is highly interesting to observe, that these forms agree with those of the Latin language, which is no more than natural, that language having been, like the Boeotian itself, a branch of the Aeolic. I am not aware, indeed, that there is any instance in Latin inscriptions of OE in the termination of the dative masculine, but it may be questioned whether there is any Latin inscription extant so old as these monuments of the Tanagrice; and the final E may have been dropped in the Latin dative at an early time, as occurred at a much later period in the Greek, in regard to the final I. There are some foundations of a Hellenic wall at the fountain, and some other wrought stones of large size, lying detached on the side of the extremity of that low chain which is characterized by its summit of white bare rocks. On the opposite side of the ridge, looking towards Mount Soro, stands the village of Vlokho, less than a mile distant, and consisting only of three or four families.

§ 2.473 Here we join the road from Kalamo to Thebes. Twelve minutes beyond Vlokho, Spakhidhes is a mile on the right; 8 minutes farther, in a narrow valley at the foot of Mount Soro, we pass immediately under the principal summit, and after another half mile diverge 10 minutes to the left of our route, to visit a spring, called Σουλλας, which gives name to an inferior summit detached from Soro. Water distils from the rocks, forms a pool in a small cavern, and is no otherwise remarkable than as being useful to the shepherds in this part of the mountain, where water is scarce. From thence, at the end of a mile and a half, we regain the road from Kalamo to Thebes, on the low uncultivated slope of Mount Soro, immediately opposite to the rocky insulated height which I suppose to have been the site of Teumessus, A little farther, at a ruined church upon a height, are many ancient wrought stones, and two handsome cisterns, of the usual bottle shape, stuccoed within. These are on the left of the road from Egripo to Thebes, at a mile from the hill of Teumessus: a little beyond them, on the left, is another cistern of the same kind; we then fall into the Egripo road, and arriving at the wall of Thebes at 3.58, in 10 minutes make half the tour of them before we enter the town. Feb. 2. —We learn from Stephanus of Byzantium, who quotes Theopompus, that there was a town in Boeotia of the name of Chalia. That is was a polis of some importance, and that the inhabitants wrote themselves ΧΑΛΕΙΕΙΣ, and not ΧΑΛΙΟΙ as in the words of Theopompus cited by Stephanus, is evident from an inscription at Oxford, brought by Dawkins from a place near the Asopus, which he

§ 2.474 called Vasiliko. I have inquired in vain for this place, but I learn from a list of the villages of the district of Thebes, that there are two named Khalia in the Parasopia, It was in that part of Boeotia, therefore, that the marble was probably found by Dawkins, and that the ancient Chalia was situated. As Theopompus couples Chalia with Hyria, it is an argument that Hyria and Hysiae were the same, for the site of Hysiae is at no great distance from Khalia. Among the minor places of the Thebaea were Cynoscephalae and Graeas-stethus. In the first invasion of Boeotia by Agesilaus, B.C. 378, he proceeded, after crossing Mount Cythaeron, to Thespiae, and from thence entered the district of Thebes. The Thebans had thrown up entrenchments, as well in their passes as in many parts of their plains; behind these they fought, or sallying with their cavalry through openings which had been left for that purpose in the ramparts, annoyed the Spartans so as to oblige them frequently to shift their ground. Agesilaus nevertheless contrived to drive them from their positions, and destroyed the country up to the walls of Thebes. Xenophon, in again stating these transactions, in his Agesilaus, there remarks that the king passed Cynoscephalae, in the Theban territory, advanced to the city, and offered battle to

§ 2.475 the Thebans both in the plains and among the hills, by which the panegyrist intended apparently to contrast the conduct of Agesilaus with that of Cleombrotus, who in the preceding winter, though he had moved from Thespiae to Cynoscephalae, and had encamped there sixteen days, had not advanced beyond it, nor had laid waste the Theban land. In the second expedition of Agesilaus, in the following spring, he again took the road of Thespiae, after crossing the Cithaeron, but as soon as the Thebans moved towards the same point, he turned suddenly in the opposite direction, to Scolus, and having passed the Theban entrenchment which had been formed at that place, he proceeded to lay waste all the eastern part of the Thebaea as far as the Tanagrice. Returning from that frontier, he marched to Thebes, and passed the city with the walls on his left; while the Thebans, having retired from near Thespiae, prepared for battle in a narrow and difficult pass called the Graeas-stethus, in front of an entrenchment which they had there formed. But Agesilaus not choosing to attack them in such a strong position, made a flank movement towards the city, which obliged the Thebans to quit their position at Graeas-stethus, and to move in all haste to Thebes, taking the road by Potniae as being the safest. Some of the Lacedaemonian morae approached the Thebans as they were proceeding along the heights; and one of the polemarchs was slain in the encounter, while on the part of the Thebans the rear suffered a little, when they had nearly arrived at the city, from the cavalry and Sciritae, and were obliged to

§ 2.476 turn and face their pursuers, who thereupon retreated. Agesilaus then occupied the position at Graeas-stethus, which his manoeuvre had obliged the enemy to evacuate, and on the next day he marched to Thespiae. Cynoscephalae was renowned for having been the birth-place or residence of the great lyric poet of Boeotia; and its situation seems to have been not more than half a mile from the walls of Thebes; for Pausanias, after having described some monuments on the outside of the gate Neitae, proceeds to remark that the route which led towards Onchestus, crossed the river Dirce; and that the ruins of the house of Pindar were on the opposite bank of the river, with a temple of Dindymene, containing a statue which had been dedicated by the poet. Probably Cynoscephalae, like many other places in the time of Pausanias, preserved only its sacred edifice, together with ruins of the poet’s house, which had been preserved from respect to his memory. Graeas-stethus seems to have been in a narrow valley of the Kanavari, which lies exactly in the route from Thebes to Thespia, and affords several passes, such as Xenophon describes. As Potniae was ten stades from Thebes, on the way to Plataea, the marches of the Lacedaemonians through the Thebaea are thus perfectly intelligible.

§ 2.477 CHAPTER 19 BOEOTIA. Feb. 3.—From Thebes to Rimo-kastro. Having pursued the road to Livadhia for 40 minutes, as far as the crossing of the Kanavari, we turn to the left along the right bank of that river, which flows between downs of no great height, and in 20 minutes from the turning arrive at the ruins of a church on the left, which contains some remains of an ancient monument, consisting of squared blocks of white marble. Having remained here 5 minutes, we soon afterwards cross the Kanavari, and proceed along the left bank. Hereabouts the river is joined by several smaller torrents from the hills on either side, which are all now flowing in consequence of last night’s rain. In 42 minutes from the church, at 11.17, we pass a mill on the right bank of the river, and at 11.30 the hamlet

§ 2.478 of Arkhudhitza, on the hill which borders the valley on the same side. Twenty minutes farther, a verdant plain, containing the sources of the river, opens to view; and at 12.5 we begin to ascend the height which rises from its northern side, and which is one of the most commanding points towards the western extremity of that long range which extends from Mount Helicon by Thebes to Tanagra. On the summit stand the villages of Erimokastro, or Rimokastro, to the west, and Katzikaveli to the east, separated only from each other by a torrent flowing to the Kanavari. To the southward the valley abovementioned is bordered by a parallel ridge which terminates eastward at Khalki and Balitza, three miles north of Plataea, or rather is there blended with the downs, which extend from the Asopus to Thebes. The valley is separated to the eastward by ground so gently rising from the plains of Leuctra and of Platae, that it may be considered as continuous with those plains, although the waters on either side of the rise flow in very different directions; those to the eastward of it forming the western branch of the Asopus, and those below Rimokastro feeding the river Kanavari, which joins the lake Livadhi or Hylice.

§ 2.479 In the middle of the vale, immediately below Rimokastro, are extensive ruins of an ancient town, undoubtedly Thespia, the founders of which seem to have chosen the site for the sake of the sources of the Kanavari. Such a low situation, commanded by hills on either side, although not so important in ancient as it would be in modern times, must have been inconvenient in any kind of warfare; and the instances of Greek cities in such a position are rare. The only remains of military architecture are the foundations of an oblong or oval inclosure, built of very solid masonry of a regular kind. It is scarcely half a mile in circumference; but all the adjacent ground to the south-east is covered, like the interior of the fortress, with ancient foundations, squared stones, and other remains, proving that if the inclosure was the only fortified part of the city, many of the public and private edifices stood without the walls. The place is called Lefka, from a village of that name no longer in existence, but the ruined churches of which still remain to the number of five or six. When I visited these ruins in 1802, there were still three inhabited cottages at Lefka, but these are now deserted and ruined. In the time of Wheler the village appears to have been nearly of the same size as Rimokastro or Katzikaveli. The springs which give rise to the Kanavari are in various parts of the valley; so that at the ancient site the stream is already formed, and flows

§ 2.480 along the northern side of the ruins, where it is joined by other sources which issue from the slopes near the river’s bank, as well as from below the walls of the fortress, and even from among the ruins within the walls. The churches contain the remains of cornices, ceilings, architraves, columns, and plain quadrangular stones, all of white marble, and similar relics are found in all the surrounding villages and solitary churches, showing that the city which stood here was one of the most considerable in Boeotia. Lefka, Λεύκα, so nearly resembling Λεύκτρα, would at first incline one to the belief that Leuctra was here situated, but Leuctra was never any thing more than a village of the Thespice, and it no longer existed in the time of Strabo, whereas the geographer’s description of Thespiae, as the only considerable town of Boeotia except Tanagra. corresponds to the abundant remains at Lefka, as well as to the date of the inscriptions which still exist here. Though I do not find the city named in any of these documents, Meletius has given us a copy of two which he discovered at Rimokastro bearing this evidence; to which I may

§ 2.481 add the fact, that at the two villages I have procured several coins of Thespiae, which are not very common in other parts of Boeotia. It must be admitted, that the description of Thespiae by Pausanias, and by a poet cited by Stephanus, both of whom describe it as situated υπό, or at the foot of Helicon, would lead one to seek for it rather nearer to that mountain than Lefka; but, on the other hand, the distance of this place from Mount Faga exactly accords with the fifty stades which Pausanias places between Thespiae and the mountain of the Sphinx. The inscriptions of the date of the Roman Empire are a fragment in honour of Trajan at Lefka, another containing the name and titles of Pertinax at Rimokastro, and a stele at the latter place inscribed in honour of a native citizen named Titus Flavius Philinus, who had attained under one of the Roman emperors not named, the dignity of quaestor of Asia, tribune, praetor, legate of Cyprus, and proconsul of Lycia and Pamphylia. Among several broken inscriptions in the ruined churches at Lefka, there is one more ancient than the others consisting of three lines of characters of the best times, engraved with great care on a block of white marble, the face of which is divided by lines into squares, so that each letter is inclosed

§ 2.482 within a square. Unfortunately one end of the marble is built into the wall, so as to conceal the end of each line, and the entire tenor of the inscription is thus left uncertain, though there is enough extant to show that it recorded the dedication by Archias and Thrasymachus, of a work made by Praxiteles of Athens. As Pausanias observed in the temple of Eros or Love, which was the deity held in the highest honour at Thespiae, statues of Venus and Phryne in marble, made by Praxiteles, the great Athenian sculptor, it is not improbable that the existing inscription may relate to those works. As to the celebrated statue of Love in Pentelic marble, which was presented by Praxiteles to the εταίρα Phryne, and by her to the Thespienses, by which she conferred a great benefit upon her native city by attracting strangers thither, the words of Strabo show that it had been removed from Thespiae considerably before his time; and Pausanias found only an imitation of it by Menodorus of Athens. In the time of Pliny the original was in the schools of Octavia at Rome; and its ultimate fate is unknown. A brazen Eros, which Lysippus had made for the Thespienses, not inferior in merit perhaps to that

§ 2.483 of Praxiteles, was destroyed by fire at Rome, after having been first carried thither by Caligula, restored to Thespiae by Claudius, and again transported to Rome by Nero. The earliest representation of Love worshipped at Thespia, still existed in the time of Pausanias in the form of a rude stone. The other principal monuments of Thespiae were not near the temple of Eros, but in a different part of the city near the agora, which contained a statue of Hesiod in brass. Near the agora was the theatre, a temple of Venus Melaenis, a statue of Victory in brass, and a small temple of the Muses, containing their figures in stone of small dimensions. There still existed at Thespiae also, in the time of Pausanias, a very ancient temple of Hercules, and in another part of the town images of Jupiter Saotes, of Bacchus, of Fortune, of Health, and of Minerva Ergane, with Plutus standing by her, both which were the work of (Theron?) The principal cause of the present superiority of Rimokastro over the neighbouring villages, and perhaps of the desertion of Lefka, is the fame of its patron saint named Kharalambo, Χαράλαμπος, who has the reputation of curing the plague, and of preserving from the infection. When the disorder rages in Thebes, or Livadhia, or Egripo, a disaster which though not very frequent in Greece is sure to happen occasionally where Turks reside, the Greeks often fly from the infected town, and place themselves under the Saint’s protection at Rimokastro.

§ 2.484 His church stands on a hill to the eastward of the village. Among the pictures which cover all the walls, is the figure of the saint himself, bearing very little resemblance to the ancient patron of Thespiae, as imagined by Lysippus or Praxiteles, with the plague represented as a monster in chains at his feet. In another picture a crowd of kings, bishops, archons, and others, are driven by the plague, or the destroying angel, into the flaming gulph. The same church contains a large Hellenic sepulchral monument, representing, in indifferent workmanship, a naked man and a dog, without any inscription. It was found not long ago in a corn-field to the south-west of Lefka. The inscription in honour of Philinus is at the same church; and in the wall outside are inserted two sepulchral stones, on one of which is the common heroic emblem of a man mounted on a horse, which has its left fore foot on an altar. The other stone has nothing but the name Ephippus, in very ancient characters. The heights to the northward of Rimokastro and Katzikaveli are covered with vineyards: the rest of the surrounding country, like all that which extends to the mountains bordering the Euboie frith on one side, and to Mount Parnes on the other, consists of plains or downs bearing corn near the villages, but the greater part in natural pasture, with scarcely a tree or shrub to enliven the scene. It was not so anciently, when an oracle of Delphi bestowed the epithet of shady on Leuctra, and when, as we are

§ 2.485 told by Plutarch, the heroum of Androcrates near Plataea was thickly surrounded with trees. There were then probably gardens and plantations near the waters, the heights were well wooded, and all the detached temples and heroa stood in the midst of groves. The Kanavari, which has its rise in the springs of Thespia, probably took that modern name from plantations of hemp which once existed on its hanks. It is said to retain water all the year, a rare quality in the smaller, and indeed in some of the more celebrated rivers of Greece; for the Asopus flows only about four months in the year. But the Kanavari, though it is preserved in the dry season by the narrowness of the valley below Thespia, which admits only of the water being diverted to mills, serves in its lower course for the irrigation of the plain of Thebes, so that in summer little or no water remains to be discharged into the lake Livadhi. The site of Leuctra is very clearly marked by a tumulus and some artificial ground on the summit of the ridge which borders the southern side of the valley of Thespia; this position being exactly in the line between Thespia and Plataea, as Strabo intimates Leuctra to have been, while its smaller distance from the former accords with the fact of Leuctra having been included in the district of Thespiae. The battle of Leuctra was fought probably in the valley on the

§ 2.486 northern side of the tumulus, about midway between Thespiae and the western extremity of the plain of Plataea. Cleombrotus, in order to avoid the Boeotians, who were expecting him by the direct route from Phocis, marched by Thisbe and the valleys on the southern side of Mount Helicon; and having thus made his appearance suddenly at Creusis, the port of Thespiae, captured that fortress, and twelve triremes belonging to the Thebans. From thence he moved upon Leuctra, where he intrenched himself on a rising ground; after which the Thebans encamped on an opposite hill, at no great distance. The position of the latter, therefore, seems to have been on the eastern prolongation of the height of Rimokastro. The Theban commanders having cited an oracle, which declared that the punishment of the Lacedaemonians, for the violation of the daughters of Scedasus of Leuctra, by two Spartans, was to take place in the plain of Leuctra, where the monuments of the women were erected, the Thebans adorned the tomb previously to the battle.

§ 2.487 According to Diodorus (1.15, c. 52), Cleombrotus was encamped at Chaeroneia before he moved towards Thebes, and Epaminondas waited for him at the passes near Coroneia, probably at the pass of Petra. Hence the monument and the plain appear to have been between the two positions. The numbers of the contending parties are not stated by Xenophon, but by the most probable accounts of subsequent times the Lacedaemonians had 10,000 hoplitae and 1000 cavalry; and the Boeotians 6000 hoplitae, with a better, if not a more numerous cavalry, than that of their opponents. The two armies met in the plain, with their cavalry in front. That of the Lacedaemonians was soon defeated, and in turning, disordered their hoplitae, just at the time when the Theban phalanx, which was fifty shields in depth, attacked the right of the Lacedaemonians, who were only about twelve deep. The close order of the Thebans had been purposely arranged by Epaminondas with the hope that, if he could break the Spartans where the king commanded, the rest of the army would be an easy conquest. The result was more successful than he could have expected. Cleombrotus, together with Dinon and Sphodrias, two of his chief officers, were slain; the right was turned; the left, as soon as they perceived it, retreated to the Tising ground, and the whole army took refuge within the entrenchments, when finding that 1000 Lacedaemonians had fallen, including 400 out of 700 Spartans, the surviving leaders

§ 2.488 determined to demand a truce to bury their dead, and thus to acknowledge themselves beaten, upon which the Thebans delivered the dead and erected a trophy. As the barrow on the site of Leuctra is exactly on the summit of the ridge which was occupied by the Lacedaemonian camp, it is probably the place of sepulture of the 1000 Lacedaemonians who fell in this celebrated contest, from which is dated the decline of Sparta; it is therefore a monument of the same kind as the tumulus of Marathon, and a relic of antiquity scarcely less interesting. On leaving Rimokastro for Paleo-panaghia, we descend into the plain and proceed along the foot of the hills. At about half-way, the village of Neokhorio stands on a projection of the opposite mountain. In the middle of the valley, in the same direction, lies a large block of marble, on one side of which, in a circular compartment, figures of a man and horse are represented, below which is inscribed, in very large characters, ΡΙΣΤΩΝΙΔ ΗΡΩΙ The inscription is incomplete at both ends, one being buried in the ground and the other broken; but the name was evidently Aristonides. Having returned into the road, six minutes farther a church occurs, which is made up of pedestals, altars, tombstones of different sorts, and other fragments of ancient architecture. Among the sepulchral monuments are five which represented horsemen in relief, like the hero above-mentioned.

§ 2.489 There are two monuments of the same kind at the church of St. Kharalambo, another in the village of Rimokastro, others below that village, among the ruins of Thespiae, and there is a similar one in the aqueduct of Thebes. In some of these the man is on foot by the side of his horse; in others he is mounted and armed with a shield and sword. The horse generally sets his left foot upon an altar, and the man's name is inscribed below with the addition Ήρως. In the same ruined church a part of a human figure in high relief, representing a man in the act of stretching out his right arm, has lately been uncovered by the rains: a part of the figure is still buried in the earth. The place seems to be the same which Wheler states to have been called Phria, but no knowledge of that name now exists. At the end of the plain of Neokhorio we cross a slight elevation, and arrive at sunset at the village of Panaghia, situated among vineyards, a little above a small plain which reaches to the foot of Mount Helicon. The distance from Rimokastro is thirty-six minutes. At the church of Aio Vlasi at Panaghia are three inscriptions, the most curious of which is a stele of a singular form, inscribed with the name of Timon, and χήρε for χαίρε in the Boeotic dialect, like κη for και in the inscriptions of Tanagra.

§ 2.490 Feb. 4.—The ruins of Paleo-panaghia are about a mile distant to the north-westward of the present village, on a rocky summit in the direction of the mountain of Zagara. Here stands a ruined tower of the middle ages on a peaked rock, at the foot of which are remains of churches and houses. Wheler, who calls this place Panaghia, without the Paleo, shows it nevertheless to have been exactly in the same desolate state it is at present. It would seem that new Panaghia was not then in existence, for he describes the valley and river, which is between it and Neokhorio, without any mention of the village. He supposed the ruins to stand on the site of Ceressus, a strong fortress of the Thespienses, whose city, standing in a plain, seems to have required some such place of retreat towards the mountains. Twice Ceressus served as a place of refuge to them; first on occasion of an incursion of Thessalians, whose attacks they here successfully resisted; and again after the battle of Leuctra, when the place soon yielded to Epaminondas. The tower commands a fine view of the Thespiae and Parasopia as far as Mount Parnes, as well as of Thebes and a part of the Lake Copais. The nearer view is confined to the Heliconian summits. To the right the serrated top of Mount Zagara, or Libethrium, is seen foreshortened: and a little on this side of the highest point appears the monastery of Zagara, delightfully situated on a woody slope which falls to the retired valley where stand the two villages also called Zagara. To the left of the mountain the snowy summit of Parnassus just shows itself.

§ 2.491 The rocky ridge of Paleo-panaghia is divided only from Helicon by a valley, which branches to the north-east. This plain is probably the territory of Ascra, for on the opposite side of it are the remains of a Hellenic fortress, on the summit of a high conical hill, or rather rock, which is connected to the north-west with Mount Zagara, and more to the westward with the proper Helicon. The distance of these ruins from Lefka corresponds exactly to the forty stades which Strabo places between Thespiae and Ascra; and it is further remarkable, that a single tower is the only portion of the ruins conspicuously preserved, just as Pausanias describes Ascra in his time, though there are also some vestiges of the walls surrounding the summit of the hill, and inclosing a space of no great extent. The place is now called Pyrgaki from the tower, which is formed of equal and regular layers of masonry, and is uncommonly large. Hesiod describee Ascra as a disagreeable residence both in winter and summer, which may have been caused by the confined circuit of its walls, the abruptness of the hill, and the proximity of the great summits of Helicon, rendering the winter long and severe, and in summer excluding the refreshing breezes of the west. Ascra however is surrounded with beautiful scenery, with delightful summer retreats, and with fertile plains, enjoying a mild climate during the winter; and it was less, perhaps, upon its intrinsic defects, than upon a

§ 2.492 comparison of it with the delightful Asiatic Aeolis, from whence his family came, that Hesiod founded his condemnation of Ascra. The middle of the valley, which lies between Paleo-panaghia and Pyrgaki, is watered by a torrent, which is joined farther on by two small streams from Mount Marandali, as the neighbouring or eastern summit of Helicon is called, and thus forms the river which flows between new Panaghia and Neo-khorio. From the left bank of this torrent, midway between Paleo-panaghia and Pyrgaki, issues a fine perennial source of water, which, by the numerous squared blocks around it, seems anciently to have enjoyed considerable reputation. On one of the blocks are the letters IPOMIO/ in large and well-formed characters: the fields around are spread with stones and remains of habitations, among which are two or three small churches in ruins. If Pyrgaki was Ascra, this fountain was probably the famous Aganippe, for Pausanias, after having described Ascra, proceeds to the Grove of the Muses in Helicon, and remarks that Aganippe was on the left hand, which is exactly true of this source, supposing the Grove of the Muses to have been at St. Nicolas, of which I was satisfied on my former journey, by an inscription which I found there, relating to the Games of the Muses, mentioned by Pausanias.

§ 2.493 This inscription, after having proceeded from the foot of the hill of Pyrgaki to Aio Nikola, I again copy. It contains a catalogue of victors in the Museia, preceded by the names of the Agonothetae and of the Archon (of Thespiae ), under whom the games were celebrated, which are styled the Great Caesarian Augustan Museia. St. Nicholas is a metokhi, or church and small convent dependent on that of Makariotissa, which is in the upper region of Helicon, towards its southern declivity. The metokhi is beautifully situated in a theatre-shaped hollow at the foot of Mount Marandali. The buildings stand in the midst of a grove of pine, walnut, plane, and olive, mixed with myrtle, bay and oleander, and adjoining to them are some gardens containing many hazel trees. A constant verdure is maintained here in summer by a copious source of water. The fountain Hippocrene, which was twenty stades above (επαναβαντι) the Grove of the Muses, was

§ 2.494 probably at Makariotissa, which is noted for a fine spring of water, though the twenty stades of Pausanias accord better with the direct distance, than with that by the road. At the Hippocrene, Pausanias saw an ancient copy of the ‘Έργα of Hesiod written upon lead, and much injured by time. In my former tour in Boeotia, in which I proceeded from St. Nicholas to Zagara, and after following that valley, descended by Kotomula to Livadhia, I remember to have remarked two other springs on the ascent of the mountain from St. Nicholas, but as these are scarcely more than half the distance mentioned by Pausanias, and are very inconsiderable in summer, neither of them can be the Hippocrene; there is a well also near the summit of Mount Marandali, noted among the peasants as serving to water their cattle in summer, and called Kriopigadho (cold well), a name which is sometimes applied to the summit itself. If Marandali was the sacred summit of Helicon, as its vicinity to the Grove of the Muses suggests, Kriopigadho corresponds with the fountain near the altar of Jupiter on Helicon, alluded to by the author of the Theogonia. The Grove of the Muses preserved in the time of Pausanias a greater number of statues, by eminent masters, thair any place in Boeotia,

§ 2.495 not excepting Thebes, and the extant inscription gives strong reason to believe, by the form of its letters, that the Museia were celebrated long after the time of Pausanias. The statues of the Muses remained here until the reign of Constantine, when they, were removed to his new capital, where they were consumed by fire in the year 404. In the approach to the alsos, Pausanias remarked a rock wrought in the shape of a cavern, which contained portraits in relief of Eupheme, nurse of the Muses, and of Linus. In the sanctuary were the nine Muses by Cephisodotus, and another set, of which three were by the same sculptor, three by Strongylion, and three by Olympiosthenes. Here also were Apollo and Hermes in brass, contending for the lyre, a Bacchus seated, the work of Lysippus, and another upright Bacchus, the finest of the productions of Myron, except his Erechtheus at Athens. This Bacchus had been presented by Sylla, who had taken it from Orchomenus. There were portrait-statues of several poets or other followers of the Muses, namely, Thamyris blind and bearing a broken lyre, Arion of Methymna on a dolphin, Sacadas of Argos, Hesiod seated with a lyre on his knees, Orpheus (seated) with Telete standing by him, and surrounded by brutes in marble and bronze. The Grove contained also a statue of Arsinoe, sister and wife of Ptolemy, seated on

§ 2.496 an ostrich of brass, and the figure of a deer giving suck to Telephus, near which were an ox and a statue of Priapus. Among the votive tripods, the most ancient was that dedicated by Hesiod, who had obtained it at Chalcis, as a prize for his verses. “The vicinity of the Grove,” adds Pausanias, “is inhabited, and the Thespienses here celebrate a festival and contest called the Museia, and another in honour of Love in which there are prizes, as well in the arts of the Muses as for Athletae.” The water from the fountain at St. Nicolas, together with that from the adjacent slopes, joins the stream from Aganippe and the valley of Ascra, the latter having previously received another small contribution from the pass which leads to Zagara, and which was the ancient road from Thespiae and the Museium of Helicon to Coroneia, by the valley of Libethrium. The united river or rather rivulet, then leaves the two Panaghias on the left, and Neokhorio on the right, flows three miles in the direction of Platoea, then takes a sudden turn to the south-west, and dividing the roots of Mount Korombili from those of Helicon, follows a still more westerly course to Dobrena and Kakosia, leaving on the right Karada and Tateza, and on the left Xeronomi. What was the ancient name of this river?—which having had its origin in such illustrious sources as Aganippe, Hippocrene, the Fountain of the Muses, and that of Narcissus, cannot but have had some celebrity among the Greeks.

§ 2.497 Hesiod mentions only the Permessus and Olmeius. I have already remarked, that the evidence of Strabo and of the Scholiast on Hesiod, is favourable to the opinion that the river Kefalari, which joins the lake Cephissis near the site of Haliartus, is the Permessus and its confluent the river of Zagara the Olmeius. But to this conclusion some objection may be made: both the testimonies just referred to are derived from Zenodotus, an Ephesian who lived in the time of the second Ptolemy, and of whose judgment on Grecian topography

§ 2.498 Strabo does not leave a very favourable impression when he remarks, that Zenodotus proposed to alter the πολυστάφυλαν Άρνην of the Iliad into πολυστάφυλον’Άσκρην, in opposition to the description which Hesiod has given of his native place, and the still stronger language of Eudoxus. Pausanias, the only author besides Hesiod whom we can rely upon as having certainly seen the rivers in question, says only of the Permessus that it was a river of Helicon, and the reputed father of Aganippe; and of the Olmeius, that it was a small river flowing on the summit of Helicon, which is so slight a mention of these celebrated streams, and so different from the usual confidence of Pausanias in recognizing places renowned in history or fable, that one cannot but suspect that he had doubts as to the identity of the rivers of Hesiod with those pointed out by the εξηγηται, and which were probably the same alluded to by Strabo. His silence as to any river in the Haliartia except the Lophis, which rose not in Helicon but near the walls of Haliartus, tends to support this opinion of the impressions of Pausanias. Nor ought we to

§ 2.499 omit the consideration that both Pausanias and the Scholiast seem to have mistaken the meaning of Hesiod, who does not place the Olmeius on the summit of Helicon (a singular situation for a river), but only says that the Muses bathed in the Permessus, Olmeius or Hippocrene, and that they danced at a fountain and altar of Jupiter, on the summit of the mountain. If, then, we can suppose that the names of Permessus and Olmeius had been changed between the time of Hesiod and that of the Ptolemies, or of the Roman empire, it will be natural to conclude that the two rivers noticed, by the native poet, are those which we now find to be the only two considerable and perennial streams on the eastern side of Helicon, and that if the Kefalari was the Permessus, the river which rises in Aganippe and the Grove of the Muses, and flows to Kakosia, was the Olmeius. Returning in 20 minutes from the Metokhi of St. Nicolas to New Panaghia, we descend from thence at 11, by a gentle slope to the river, cross it at 11.12, and immediately mounting the foot of an advanced height of Mount Marandali, arrive in a few minutes at Neokhorio. If I understand Wheler rightly, it was on the hill above Neokhori, which is well defended by its form on every side except towards the mountain, that he supposed Thespiae to have been situated, having observed upon it some “ruins of an ancient city,” and having found in a

§ 2.500 church on the ascent, an inscription containing the name of Thespiae. But as Thespiae was certainly at Lefka, this was probably the site of one of the subordinate towns of the Thespice, to which supposition the inscription itself is not unfavourable, having belonged to a monument which was erected in honour of one Protogenes, son of Protarchus, by the young men of Thespiae, in conjunction with those of some of the Παροικοι, or neighbouring people who were engaged in business in Thespiae. Such a monument might have been placed in any of the towns of the Thespice as well as in Thespiae itself. It is by no means improbable that this position, and not Paleopanaghia, may be the site of Ceressus, being more centrical with regard to the Thespice, whereas Paleopanaghia is on the extremity of the district very near Ascra, and has not the advantage of being backed by Mount Helicon, from which it is quite separated. Beyond Neokhori the road quits the cultivated country, and crosses the barren roots of the mountain, which are covered with wild thyme and shrubs, particularly the paliuri, or Jerusalem thorn. In descending towards the valley which lies between the mountains Helicon and Korombili, and which is watered by the stream from Paleopanaghia, we arrive, at 11.53, at Tateza, a hamlet dependent on Xeronomi.

§ 2.501 On the opposite bank of a rivulet which flows by the village, stands a ruined church, built of ancient fragments, among which are some heroic monuments like those already described. Here are also two plain tomb-stones, with single names in the nominative, in archaic characters. Five minutes higher up the stream, is a copious fountain surrounded by a modern inclosure, of which the materials are ancient squared blocks. In the corn-fields above are many remains of former habitations. It is the site, perhaps, of that Donacon to which Pausanias adverts, immediately after noticing the Olmius, and before he describes Creusis and Thisbe, which two sites occur exactly in conformity with the order of his narrative, if we suppose Donacon to have been here situated, and his Olmius to be the river which flows from Panaghia to Kakosia, and which receives the rivulet of Tateza near Xeronomi. If the remains near Tateza indicate the site of Donacon, the fountain is that of Narcissus. From Tateza we proceed, in 25 minutes, to Xeronomi or Xeronomes, a considerable village in a wide cultivated valley, surrounded by high mountains, and watered by the small river before mentioned. Xeronomi has a large ruined church, composed of fragments of Hellenic architecture, and many ancient squared blocks of the white stone of the neighbouring mountains. Here are several heroic monuments, bearing figures of a man and horse; and three plain sepulchral stones of

§ 2.502 very ancient date, inscribed with the names Aristophanes, Nicomachus, and Phrasse. Arisstophanes is written with a double sigma: the X in Nicomachus is represented by Ψ. One only of the heroic monuments, and apparently more ancient than the others, is inscribed: the name of the deceased is preceded by επί and followed by ηρω, but both the latter word and the name are in the Boeotic dialect. It is evident from the numerous churches in this part of Boeotia, some of which are of large dimensions and ancient construction, that the Thespias continued to be well inhabited under the Byzantine empire, as it had been under the Roman; and it is curious to observe that these churches still preserve numerous remains of the temples and other buildings of Thespiae, and its dependent villages and sacred places, which were one of the last holds of Paganism. Leaving Xeronomi at 2.25, and sending my baggage by the direct road down the vale to Kakosia, I take that which leads to the port of Aliki—soon quit the valley, enter a gorge of Mount Korombili opposite to Xeronomi, and after following it for about a quarter of an hour mount the ridge which borders the Corinthiae Gulf, leaving the summit of Korombili to the left. The ridge, as well as the whole mountain, is a mere rock having some scanty intervals of soil, covered with wild shrubs. On the crest of the ridge, where we arrive at 3.10, the road passes over the remains of a Hellenic fortress, where, among the foundations of walls and houses,

§ 2.503 one tower is still standing, which has given to the place the name of Pyrgo. The masonry is similar to that of Ascra, and the tower seems to have been intended as a watch and signal post, as well from its commanding position as from the great height of the original work, for though still enough remains of the tower to be very conspicuous at a distance, it seems formerly to have been twice as high; the part now standing being entirely filled with the materials of the upper part which have fallen into it. This point looks immediately down upon the port of Aliki, which opens to the west, but is well sheltered. The termination of the ridge of Pyrgo, to the southward, forms the northern side of the entrance into the harbour, and being connected above with a more abrupt ledge of rock, descending from the summit of the mountain, thus affords a natural protection to the harbour on the land side. The ancients, however, were not satisfied with this degree of security, but built a wall along the crest of the ledge of rock, which completely excluded all access to the harbour by land from the eastward. The principal remains are a tower, and an adjoining piece of wall of the same kind of masonry as that of Pyrgo. There was also a space at the foot of the heights inclosed within the ancient walls, and on the shore of the harbour is a marshy level, containing ponds for making salt, whence the name Aliki. Pyrgo commands a fine view of the northern shore of the Morea, and of the mountains which rise from it, but Corinth is hidden by the Cape of Perakhora.

§ 2.504 It is remarkable that the mountains of the Morea are more deeply covered with snow than those on this side of the gulf. Last year I remarked the same tardiness of the spring in the northern part of the Morea; here, on the contrary, and ever since I have left Athens, the sun at noon has been already too warm to be agreeable for travelling. The mountains on either side of the gulf seem to have the same relation to each other in respect of climate as two parallel walls, one of which is exposed to the north and the other to the south. Half way towards the coast of Megaris lie the Kala Nisia, three low islands, upon one of which is a monastery. Eastward of Korombili is Livadhostra, a bad harbour in a large bay. From Pyrgo it lies to the west of the summit of Korombili: near Livadhostra eastward is another port named Kalamaki; then occur those of Ai Vlasi, or Aio Vasili. and of Ghermano or Aegosthena. To the westward of Aliki, near the Boeotian coast, are four small islands lying in a line parallel to the coast; their names in the direction from east to west are Makria, Kumboluri, or Stronghylo, Kuvoli and Fonia. Within them is the entrance into Vathy, the port of Kakosia and Dobrena. Khosia, a large village, is seen immediately under the peak of Paleovuni or Helicon. Farther westward the uncultivated roots of that mountain impede all prospect of the coast.

§ 2.505 It is difficult to assign the ancient name to the port and fortress at Aliki. There are insurmountable reasons against its being Creusis, the harbour of Thespiae. When the Lacedaemonians twice retired from the Thespice to the Isthmus by Aegosthena, they are reported by the historian to have marched on both occasions by Creusis: the first time under the command of Cleombrotus; and again between seven and eight years afterwards, immediately after the defeat at Leuctra, in which the same Cleombrotus was slain. A glance at the map will suffice to show that the route of the retiring Lacedaemonians could not have led by Aliki, their object being to make as speedy a retreat as possible, at the same time that they avoided the more direct roads across Mount Cithaeron. In order to have reached Creusis, supposing it to have been at Aliki, they must have diverged to the right of their line of march near Livadhostra; either following the steep maritime side of Mount Korombili eastward, or making the tour of it by Xeronomi westward, and must then have returned by one of those routes nearly to the point in their line of march from which they had diverged. It may be considered certain, therefore, that Creusis was in the bay of Livadhostra, and that the fortress and harbour at Aliki were some other ancient place. Leaving Pyrgo I follow the summit of the ridge, and there being no path whatever, consume an hour in threading my way through the rocks to the valley, from whence, after crossing the river which is near the foot of the mountain, we arrive in twenty minutes at Dobrena, or Dobroni, and in fifteen more at Kakosia. The distance to this place from Xeronomi by the straight road may be about an hour and a half.

§ 2.506 Feb. 5.—A strong northerly wind and rain. Kakosia stands precisely on the site of the ancient Thisbe, which is well described by Strabo as situated at a small distance from the sea, under the southern side of Helicon, in a district confining on those of Thespiae and Coroneia. The position is between two great summits of the mountain, now called Karamunghi and Paleovuna, which rise majestically above the vale, clothed with trees in the upper part, and covered with snow at the top, but in no great quantity at present. The modern village lies in a little hollow surrounded on all sides by low cliffs connected with the last falls of the mountain. The walls of Thisbe were about a mile in circuit, following the crest of the cliffs which surround the village; they are chiefly preserved on the side towards Dobrena and the southeast. The masonry is for the most part of the fourth order, or faced with equal layers of large, oblong, quadrangular stones on the outside, the interior as usual being filled with loose rubble. On the principal height which lies towards the mountain, and which is an entire mass of rock, appear some reparations of a later date than the rest of the walls, and there are many Hellenic foundations on the face of this rock towards the village.

§ 2.507 In the cliffs outside the walls, to the north-west and south, are many sepulchral excavations. The primates of the village, on visiting me, inquire whether I have found in my books any mention of the mode in which the place was anciently supplied with water, and where was the spring, their only resource at present being a well behind the rocky height. As neither Strabo nor Pausanias make any mention of a fountain at Thisbe, the inhabitants probably depended upon cisterns and wells, which can seldom fail at the foot of such a mountain as Helicon. The Kakosiotes, however, instead of digging wells, have preferred spending their money in building houses, and the same is observable at Dobrena; their ability to do so is probably caused by the retired situation of the place, and its distance from all the ordinary lines of communication. The port of Thisbe, which is now called Vathy, is a beautiful little harbour surrounded by woody hills. On the ridge looking down upon it, which separates the plain of Thisbe from the coast, are the remains of a Hellenic tower and station, similar to that upon the ridge above Aliki, and evidently a fortified point and signal post on the road from Thisbe to its port. There are said also to be some remains of a fortress on the side of the harbour. The modern Skala of Dobrena in Port Vathy is called Plaka, that of Kakosia, Ai Ianni: and there are separate roads leading to them from either village a mile and a half across the plain, and then over the maritime ridge.

§ 2.508 The shore of Vathy is very rocky, and abounds in wild pigeons, as Strabo and Stephanus have remarked. The geographer ascribes to the abundance of pigeons at the harbour the epithet which Homer gives to Thisbe; but there is no deficiency of them at Kakosia itself, for before I had made any inquiry on the subject, my Athenian janissary, whom I do not suspect of having ever read the Iliad, brought me as a present a brace of pigeons, which he had just shot among the rocks near the village. In the islands opposite to the harbour these birds are said to be still more numerous than at Vathy. The only building remarked by Pausanias at Thisbe was a temple of Hercules, containing an upright statue of the god in stone: a festival was celebrated in honour of him called the Heracleia. The Grecian traveller then proceeds to describe a peculiarity in the adjacent plain, which is alone sufficient to identify the place. “Between the mountain on the sea side,” he says, “and that at the foot of which the town is situated, there is a plain, which the water flowing into it would cause to be a lake, were it not for a strong embankment constructed through the middle, by means of which the water is turned every year into the part of the plain lying on one side of the causeway,

§ 2.509 while that on the other side is cultivated.” In fact, the plain of Thisbe is completely surrounded by heights, there is no issue for the river which rises in the Ascraea and here terminates; nor can I even perceive the entrance of any sμbterraneous channel such as frequently occurs under similar circumstances in the calcareous formations of Greece: if there be any, it is still, as in the time of Pausanias, insufficient to the drainage of the plain. The mole or causeway which he describes, still subsists and serves, as it probably always has done, for a road across the marsh towards the port. It consists of solid foundations of masonry, and is traceable nearly half across the plain, on the side opposite to Kakosia. The river crosses the causeway into the marsh by two openings, the closing of which in the winter or spring would at any time cause the upper part of the plain to be inundated, and leave the lower fit for cultivation in the summer; but as the river is now allowed to flow constantly through them, the western side is always in a state of marsh, and the ground has become much higher on the eastern side. Besides this work there are the remains of another above Dobrena, which the archons of Kakosia conceive to have been constructed for the purpose of making each division of the valley cultivable every two years out of three, whereas the ancient work only gave cultivation every other year.

§ 2.510 They remark, that the inundation of any part of the land once in three years would serve both for fallow and manure, and would ensure constant fertility to two-thirds of the valley. This second work was between two and three miles beyond Dobrena, in the direct road to Xeronomi, where the valley is not more than four hundred yards wide. But it was merely a wall composed of loose stones and mortar, in nothing resembling the solid construction of the ancient mole opposite to the town, except that some squared blocks of Hellenic appearance are seen in one part of it. It is probably of the same period of the Byzantine Empire, when the churches were built, which show this part of Boeotia to have been at one time well peopled by Christians. The wall has been carried away in the centre by the stream, and could scarcely have served at any time for the purpose imagined by the Kakosiotes, but was rather a military separation between the two valleys of Xeronomi and Kakosia, or in other words, between the Thespice and Thisbaea, of which these straits are the natural boundary. It is very possible there may have been a Hellenic wall here, for such barriers of separation between districts were common among the ancients, as many remains of them attest, and which in this instance may have been renewed or repaired in the time of the Lower Empire. Just above the wall a narrow vale branches off from the main valley, and conducts again into it behind a hill which is thus insulated from Mount Helicon. The soil of all these valleys is excellent, and produces plentiful crops of wheat and barley; there is a considerable space covered with vineyards immediately below Dobrena, but the wine is bad, in consequence of the

§ 2.511 low and moist situation, and negligent manufacture: a part of the marsh bears in summer kalambokki of both sorts. The monastery of Makariotissa, where is a copious source of water, which I suppose to have been the ancient Hippocrene, is visible from the southern side of the plain of Kakosia; it is situated on a little level half-way up the Karamunghi, on the southern side of that summit. The road to the monastery from the plain of Thisbe ascends by the valley behind Dobrena. Kakosia preserves several inscriptions, but the name Thisbe does not occur in any of them. Two relate to a family of the name of Brachas. One of these is a fragment, preserving only the ending of two elegiac couplets, which show that a Brachas had erected a monument in the city. The other, which is on a square stele, is complete, and testifies that a brother and two sisters, named Ulpius Brachas, Ulpia Paula, and Ulpia Hygeia, had erected a monument according to a decree of the council and people to their brother, M. Ulpius Paramonus, who was son of M. Ulpius Brachas Paramonianus, by Aurelia Arescusa, and grandson of M. Ulpius Paramonus by Corane Paula. On a cornice or moulding near the top of the stele, is a line in smaller letters, implying that the dedicators were descendants of Marcus Ulpius

§ 2.512 Nicias, who had held the office of Boeotarch. An inscription which was copied at Kakosia by Meletius, a century ago, and is no longer to be found, related to the same family of Brachas. It was inscribed on a monument erected to Trajan by Marcus Ulpius Brachas Epiphanianus Φιλόκαισαρ, in conjunction with his two sons and two daughters, and is probably the most ancient of the three inscriptions relating to the Brachae, being cotemporary with the Emperor, from whom undoubtedly so many of the family had assumed the name of Ulpius and Ulpia.

§ 2.513 Another inscription at Kakosia, not quite complete, records the construction of a house and [--] to the Gods Augusti, by Tiberius Claudius Urbanus, by his wife Claudia Philonicha and by their two children, Urbanus and (Ulpius) at their own expence. The earliest Augusti were M. Aurelius and Verus, and the form of the letters does not indicate a later time. The monument therefore was probably erected between the years 161 and 169 of the'Christian aera. The only inscribed monument at Kakosia older than the Roman Empire, is a dedication to Minerva, in characters of a very remote age, on a long narrow stone, now inserted in the wall of a private house; at one end the engraver, miscalculating the space, was obliged to end his line in a curve. At 3.45 we quit Kakosia, and soon afterwards pass, between the marsh and the mountain, through vineyards in which the vines are mixed with almond trees now in blossom:—from thence ascend the mountain, which here closes the plain, and at 4.45 enter Khosia, or Khostia, containing, like Kakosia and Dobrena, about 100 houses, which are beautifully situated under the rocks of Helicon, and dispersed among orchards of fruit-trees, chiefly almonds. A small torrent falls in cascades down a rocky gorge; and in summer,

§ 2.514 when the water is scanty, is received into a tank in the lower part of the village, from whence it is conducted to the vineyards and olive-trees which cover the slope extending to the commencement of the plain of Thisbe. After passing through Khosia, we enter a mountainous district where the great counterforts of Helicon descend to the sea, and cross one of them, the extremity of which forms a lofty cape on the eastern side of the bay of Sarandi The summit of this ridge commands an extensive view of the Corinthiac gulf, with the coast of the Morea, as far eastward as the bay of Corinth, and the Acro-Corinthus. On the western side of the bay of Sarandi rises another ridge, still more lofty than the eastern, and midway between them, in a beautiful retreat just under the woody steeps of Paleovuni, is situated a monastery dedicated to St. Taxiarches, a title of the archangel Michael, as leader of the heavenly host. Here I halt for the night at 5.25. The house is large, and contains numerous inmates, both monks and laics, whose persons are as dirty as their dwelling. The territory of the monastery consists chiefly of terraces on the slope of the mountain, producing olives and corn, and which end in a small level at the head of port Sarandi. A projection of the mountain which advances into the middle of the plain, about a quarter of an hour’s walk below the monastery, and a mile from the sea-side, was the site of a small Hellenic polis.

§ 2.515 Feb. 6.—A tabular summit formed the acropolis, of which the walls are still traceable, as well as those of the town, which was situated on the eastern slope of the height, the western side having terminated in a precipice. Within the enclosure are the remains of terrace-walls, and to the south, looking towards the harbour, those of a narrow gate. On the slope of the acropolis towards the south, are some foundations cut in the rock. The whole is scarcely a mile in circumference. Some parts of the walls are carelessly constructed of rough stones, fitted together as in the first order of Hellenic masonry; other parts are of the second and third kind. There can be little doubt that these are remains of Tiphae, or Siphae, which was said to have taken its name from Tiphys, the pilot of the Argonauts, and where Demosthenes, the Athenian commander, made the unsuccessful attempt already adverted to, which preceded the battle of Delium. It may indeed be objected that Thucydides and Apollonius Rhodius, as well as Stephanus, who probably follows the historian, describe Siphae as a dependency of Thespiae, between which and Sarandi the whole of Thisbaea is. interposed, but this may perhaps be reconciled by the superiority of Thespiae over all the places in this angle of Boeotia, whence the entire country lying along the Alcyonic sea, under

§ 2.516 Helicon, as far as the borders of Phocis, including Thisbe, may have often in common acceptation been called the Thespice. Pausanias expressly describes Tiphae, which was probably the Aeolic or local form of the word, as being on the coast beyond Thisbe to the westward. We learn from the same authority that the Tiphaeenses had a temple of Hercules, in whose honour they celebrated a yearly festival, and that they pointed out the place where the ship Argo anchored on its return from Colchis. The steeps of Helicon above the convent are clothed with shrubs, growing with great luxuriance, and among which the lentisk, the prinari, the wild olive, and the κεδρος or juniper, are the most abundant. These heights folding over one another, and crowned with the great summit of Paleovuni, covered with firs and snow, and so high and near that it seems to overhang the lower hills, form a scene of singular grandeur and beauty. Leaving St. Taxiarches at 9.15, we begin to ascend the great ridge which forms the western cape of Port Sarandi. The road leads through a thick forest of the shrubs, or rather trees, just mentioned, among which the kedhri are remarkable for their uncommon size. Large tufts of myrtle frequently occur; and as well as the wild olive, the arbutus and the andrachne have their fruit still hanging on them.

§ 2.517 Of the last, Pausanias remarks that it produces a sweeter fruit in Helicon than in any other place. At the best, however, they may be compared to a very insipid strawberry, and are admissible only to the table at a season when no other fruit is to be had, as I have seen the berry of the myrtle in Sicily, where that fruit attains a larger size than in Greece. At 10.30 we arrive on the crest of the ridge which terminates in a cape, known (as well as a great part of the neighbouring district) by the name of Velanidhia, and then descending the western slope of the ridge, arrive at 10.54 at the monastery of Dobo (Δομπόν or Ντομπόν), which is larger than St. Taxiarches, contains a handsome church newly painted, many cells and chambers, and between monks and servants, not less than forty inmates. Some of the apartments are neat and clean, which cannot be said of the inhabitants. The church is dedicated to St. Seraphim Thaumaturgus, a Greek of large property, who retired here not long after the Turkish conquest, and built the monastery. His skull, which is here deposited, is in great request in the neighbourhood, for its wondrous power in driving away all kinds of evil. The holy relic has just been sent to Thebes, to put a stop to an epidemic disorder which has made its appearance in that town; and it is with difficulty that I can procure a sufficient number of mules to carry me to St. Luke, all those belonging to the convent being employed on that service.

§ 2.518 There are many manuscripts in the monastery, handsomely written on parchment or vellum, but all of late date, and all πατερικά, with the sole exception of a general history, which begins with the creation and war of Troy, and ends with a part of the history of Venice, and of the Turks. The author’s name Ι could not discover. There are said to be some good printed editions of the classics belonging to Dobo, but they have been sent to Livadhia for the use of the school there. Sending my baggage to Kyriaki by the direct road over the mountain, Ι proceed thither by the way of the sea shore, for the sake of visiting a Hellenic site near the harbour of the monastery, which we reach in an hour, the road descending through hills covered with shrubs. The ruins are those of a small fortified town, which we may confidently name Bulis. It occupied the summit of a rocky height which slopes on one side towards a small harbour, and is defended in the opposite direction by an immense, βράχος, or lofty rock, separated by a torrent from the precipitous acclivities of Helicon. These which rise directly to a snowy summit called Tjivri (Τζήβρι) from a small village of that name, consist of perpendicular white rocks, mixed with narrow natural terraces covered with pines. The slope of the site of Bulis towards the sea is cultivated, and contains a house belonging to Dobo, below which there is a level on the shore two thirds of a mile broad, and a magazine which was built by the monks when they owned a boat; but of this convenience, so important to

§ 2.519 them, as there is no easy access to the place but by sea, they are now deprived. The port is called Zalitza; between it and Cape Velanidhia is a similar inlet of the sea, named Mazeri, around which are some pastures belonging to Zeriki, or Zeritza, a village on Mount Helicon, and serving for its flocks in winter. The Paleokastro has some handsome pieces of wall of the third order remaining, and seems to have been rather larger than the ancient town at St. Taxiarches. Although Pausanias places his remarks on Bulis in his Phocics, he seems hardly to have accounted it a city of Phocis, since he describes it as bordering upon that province. He considered it, perhaps, as a neutral town, from having been colonized by Dorians under Bulon. Stephanus, Pliny and Ptolemy, however, all attribute Bulis to Phocis. Pausanias describes it as occupying a lofty site, conspicuous to those who sail from Anticyra to Lechaeum, and as distant seven stades from the sea, eighty stades from Thisbe, and one hundred stades from Anticyra, all which computations will be found tolerably correct, applied to this site. He notices the remarkable torrent which here joins the sea, and which was named Heracleius; there was also a fountain, Saunium, which I have not discovered,

§ 2.520 perhaps from not having sufficiently searched for it. The murex, producing the purple dye, the fishery of which employed half the people of Bulis in the time of Pausanias, is no longer caught on this coast, though assuredly it still exists here. The deity chiefly worshipped by the Bulidii was named Megistus, meaning Jupiter. The city contained likewise temples of Diana and of Bacchus, with statues of those deities in wood. Having ascertained the ancient positions of Siphae and Bulis, I shall revert to the inquiry as to the ancient name of the fortress and harbour, now called Aliki. The only authors who afford us any assistance in this question are Scylax and Pliny, and the extreme corruption of the text of the former renders him a most doubtful guide. Proceeding along the coast from west to east, he names Corsi, Siphae, the harbour Eutretus, a fortress Boethon, and then Aegosthena of the Megaris. This is the vulgar reading, but some of the commentators have changed Corsi into Creusia, and Boethon (ό Βοηθών) into τών Βοιωτών'. The rejection of the word Corsi is founded on Pausanias, who places Corsi near the northern shore of Boeotia, and partly on the improbability of Scylax having omitted Creusis, which was the chief harbour on the southern coast of this province. There is reason however to believe from Pliny, that there

§ 2.521 really existed a second Corsiae in this part of Boeotia, and that it was distinguished from the other by the name of Thebae Corsicae, in which case the similarity of name seems to point out the modern Khosia as the successor of Thebae Corsicae, its situation just below the highest summit of Helicon, according moreover with Pliny’s words, juxta Heliconem. On this supposition, the arrangement of the names by Scylax is not incorrect, whereas if we read Κρεουσία for Κορσίαι, we must suppose Scylax to have placed Creusia the first name on the coast, when it ought to have been the last. By the port Eutretus, there is some appearance that Scylax intended the harbour of Thisbe, which may have received the name of Eutretus from the numerous cavities in the rocks, where pigeons still breed in immense numbers, as Strabo remarked. It would then follow, that the τείχος, or fortress of Boeotians, which is the next place in the arrangement of Scylax, was that still existing at Aliki, the name of which may have been lost by the corruption of the text. But there is still another interpretation which may be given to this passage of Scylax.

§ 2.522 We learn from Strabo, that Eutresis, one of the Homeric towns of Boeotia, was in his time a village of the Thespice. Stephanus places it between Thespiae and Plataea, but his information may be doubted, as there is but one place in the ten miles between Plataea and Thespiae where any town is likely to have stood, and that was occupied by Leuctra. There is some reason therefore for thinking that the θεσπιών of Stephanus ought to be θισβών, that Eutresis was a κώμη of the Thespice in the road from Thisbe to Plataea, and that the vale of Xeronomi.was its territory, for it seems clear that this valley belonged to the Thespice, and not to the Thisbaea, which latter, considering the relative importance of the two cities, one cannot conceive to have extended beyond the narrow place before described in the valley of Dobrena, across which there was formerly a wall. In this view of the question it seems not improbable that the ruins at Aliki are those of the fortress of the Eutresitae, and that the Hellenic remains at Xeronomi belonged to the temple of Apollo Eutresites, mentioned by Stephanus, which may have been converted by successive repairs into the ancient church now remaining there.

§ 2.523 And in this case it is also possible that the words ὁ λιμην Ευτρητος καί τείχος των Βοιωτών are all to be referred to the harbour and ruins at Aliki. Having quitted the Paleokastro of Zalitza at 2, we cross the torrent, pass under a singular sharp insulated rock, upon which are some remains of ancient terraces, and continue to follow the side of the rocky mountain by a road overhanging the sea. On the right towards the summit of the heights, are churches of St. Theodore and St. Anthony, but not in sight. These, like the monasteries of St. Michael and Dobo are remains of the eremitical and monastic establishments which peopled these woody deserts in the time of the Byzantine empire. The hills are chiefly covered with wild olive, ilex, holly-oak, and juniper of a large growth. The oaks would furnish an abundance of useful timber, but at present, like the others, they serve chiefly to supply fire-wood to the towns on the gulf. As we proceed, the hills become very steep, and terminate precipitously in the sea, affording only an extremely rugged and difficult path along the side of them: it was no better in the time of the Roman Empire, for Pausanias doubted whether there was any road at all from Anticyra to Bulis, though more anciently there was a communication, as Cleombrotus marched this way from Chaeroneia with a large army just before the battle of Leuctra, in order to avoid an

§ 2.524 encounter with Epaminondas in the passes of Tilphossium and Haliartus on the direct route At 4 we turn off from the sea-shore, and ascend the ridge which borders the sea, in a direction forming a right angle with our former route. The summit commands an extensive view of the Corinthiac gulf, and of all the northern part of the Morea from Corinth to Mount Voidhi; the gulf of Aspra Spitia also presents itself surrounded by steep, barren ridges, which exhibit an appear-ance almost as dismal as any part of Dalmatia, or Albania. Inland in every direction appear the snowy fir-clad summits of Parnassus and Helicon. Not far from the place where we quitted the coast a high rocky cape extends into the sea, beyond which the coast retires as far as Punda, a cape on the south eastern side of the gulf of Aspra Spitia, opposite to which on the north-western shore is the peninsula of Kefali. Having crossed two high stony ridges, we arrive at 6.10 at Kyriaki, situated in the heart of the mountains under the last of the snowy summits of Mount Helicon. Half way from the sea we passed on our left a little level on the sea-side, where is a port called Aghia, belonging to the monastery of St. Luke, while at the same time on the right I perceived the road from Dobo to Kyriaki, leading through a hollow between two of the highest points of Mount Tzivri.

§ 2.525 Our baggage was upwards of four hours in coming by this road, having passed a great part of the way through snow, which in some places was three feet in depth. The greater part of it was collected yesterday and in the preceding night, when it was raining at St. Taxiarches, but the snow fell as we crossed the higher parts of the ridges between that place and Dobo.

§ 2.526 CHAPTER XX. PHOCIS. KYRIAKI is a village of 30 families belonging to the district of Livadhia, situated on the north-western side of Mount Tzivri in a small hollow cultivated chiefly with vines, and surrounded closely on all sides by fir-clad summits of the Heliconian range. The valley is very cold and humid in the present season. A torrent runs through the village, which, uniting with others a little below St. Luke, joins the sea at Sidhero-kafkhio in the gulf of Aspra Spitia. Pausanias says, that of all the mountains in Greece Helicon is the most fertile, and abounds the most in trees'. Though he may be correct in the main, the western extremity differs in character from the other summits.

§ 2.527 The Muses naturally preferred the gentler slopes, the springs, and groves, and smiling valleys to the eastward. Here the barren and terrific prevail over the beautiful and fertile: the higher parts consist of rocks intermixed with pine-trees, while the lower roots partake of the naked barrenness of the neighbouring Cirphis, a mountain which is almost entirely of this character. But even on this side of Helicon some pleasant valleys are interspersed among the rocks. In summer the woods and verdant pastures of Helicon contrast most agreeably with the parched plains of Boeotia; and if industry were protected, all the cultivable parts of the mountain would speedily be embellished by fields and gardens, villages and houses, offering delightful retreats in summer, instead of merely furnishing pasture to the flocks when they retire in that season from the arid plains. The only villages at present in the upper regions of the mountain, including the divisions of it anciently called Laphystium and Libethrium, are Tzara, Surbi, Granitza, Zagara, Steveniko, Zeriki, Tzivri, and Kukora. Strabo describes Helicon as equal to Parnassus both in height and perimeter. In the latter he may be correct, if we consider Parnassus as bounded by the Nape of Delphi to the south, and on the western side by the ravine which extends from Cytinium to Amphissa, but in regard to the height the geographer was certainly mistaken, as Liakura is some hundreds of feet higher than Paleovuna, which is the highest point of the Helicon. In the quantity of cultivable land Parnassus may rival Helicon, as there is nothing upon the latter which can be compared in extent to the upper Parnassian plains containing Aguriani, the Corycian cave, and the Kalyvia of Arakhova; but Helicon in general is more εύγεως, as Pausanias describes it, and better clothed with a productive soil, the Parnassian plain just mentioned being poor and gravelly, though in some parts barley is grown and even wheat.

§ 2.528 Feb. 7.—At a distance of thirty-five minutes from Kyriaki, a peaked summit bordering the valley on the north retains a piece of ancient wall; and in the descent of the pass to the right of this hill, which leads from the vale of Kyriaki into that of Stiri, are some other remains of the same kind, and an excavation in the rock. The pointed hill was probably the site of a dependent come of the Stiritis, and the pass may have been fortified on account of its importance as one of the approaches to Stiris from Boeotia. Continuing to descend by a bad road, we enter, in forty minutes, the valley of Stiri, and in fifteen more arrive at the Palea khora, a height so called in the centre of the valley, and which has every appearance of an ancient site, being a tabular hill defended by precipitous rocks, and situated at the junction of two streams. The summit is surrounded with a wall of loose construction, resembling in some parts the first kind of Hellenic masonry, though with much smaller stones than the Cyclopes used.

§ 2.529 No citadel is traceable, but the surface of the rock within the inclosure is excavated in many places for habitations, and there are two or three ancient cisterns near a ruined church. The height is between seven and eight hundred yards long, lying in a direction of Ν.E. and S.W., and not more than one hundred yards broad in the widest part. A lower rocky summit of the same height to the south-west was not included within the ancient walls. The torrent of Kyriaki is joined at that extremity of the hill by another which comes from the neighbourhood of Zeriki; and which, after having received several tributaries in the valley of Stiri, flows along the northern side of Palea khora. All these torrents are dry in summer. Zeriki is situated between two of the summits of Helicon, called Gdhameni and Kolles. On the northern side of the latter is the village of Surbi, not far from Livadhia. From the Palea khora, a quarter of an hour’s ride in a N.W. direction, brings me to the monastery of St. Luke of Stirisa, which stands on the side of a peaked hill advancing into the valley. This height also was fortified by the ancients; some of the foundations still remain on the summit, others are seen a little below the monastery, as well as to the north-east of it, where an angle of the Hellenic wall is still standing, and the monastery itself is in great part built of ancient materials. The fortress was of the triangular form, common among the ancients; the two sides which descend from the angle at the summit of the hill follow two ridges which inclose a hollow between

§ 2.530 them. To the south the height is precipitous. The walls seem to have been much more carefully constructed than those of the Palea khora: the masonry is partly of the third order and partly of regular courses. Though the hill narrows towards the base of the triangle, the circumference of the fortress was greater than that of Palea khora, and the monks believe it to have been Stiris. But it could hardly have been the Stiris which Pausanias describes, because there is a copious fountain within the walls of the monastery issuing from the side of the hill, whereas Pausanias says of Stiris that “it was situated on a stony height, where the wells were few and supplied only water fit for washing or the use of cattle; and that the inhabitants brought water for drinking from a place four stades below the city, where was a descent to a source excavated among the rocks.” On the other hand, it is not easy to reconcile the source at the monastery with that which Pausanias mentions, the distance from the Palea khora to the monastery being greater than four stades, and there being instead of a descent, an ascent, to the fountain, almost equal in height to the descent from the Palea khora. The only other source in the valley of Stiris is a well to the south-westward of Palea khora; but instead of being in a hollow among rocks, it rises to the surface of the cultivated part of the valley, and instead of being four stades, is not more than one and a half from the ancient site.

§ 2.531 An inscription, however, in the outer wall of the church, leaves little doubt that the adjoining fountain was that intended by Pausanias. Of this inscription there remain about two-thirds, which was more than I expected to find, as Chandler remarks only that it had been seen by Wheler, and supposed apparently that it no longer existed in his own time. It resembles that at Thisbe, which records the dedication of a building at that place to the gods Augusti and to the city, attesting in like manner the dedication to the gods Augusti and to the city of a κρήνη, or constructed fountain, with steps, and a covered building, and a conduit of water which had been made at the expence of the dedicators Xenocrates and Eumaridas. The word βαθμοί in the inscription accords with the κατίοντες of Pausanias, and the rocks from which the source issues, with his πετραις. If the descent to the water is not now such as both Pausanias and the inscription seem to imply, that may easily be accounted for by an alteration in the ground, caused by the erection of the monastery. The word πολει, though at first sight it seems to favour the opinion of the monks of St.

§ 2.532 Luke, is not adverse to either supposition, as the fountain was a mere dependency of the city. Upon the whole, therefore, I believe that the height in the valley at the confluence of the two torrents is justly called the Palea khora, or old town, and that the fountain is that which the Stiritae made use of; but that, from the fault either of Pausanias or of his text, the distance of the fountain from the city is not correct, and he has omitted to describe the fountain as situated on the side of a hill. The ancient walls on this height are perhaps those of a fortress built by the Stiritae, as well for the sake of occupying this commanding height as for that of protecting the fountain, and which Pausanias may not have noticed because it may have been already ruined before his time. The people of Stiris considered themselves a colony of the demus Στειριεις in Attica, who settled here under Peteus, when he was driven out of Attica by Aegeus. The city partook of the severe punishment inflicted upon the Phocians by Philip, son of Amyntas, at the end of the Sacred War, B.C. 346, but as generally occurred in regard to the cities of Greece, which history represents to have been destroyed, the inhabitants, after having been dispersed for a short time in the villages, returned to the old site. Stiris still preserved some population when Pausanias travelled, but it contained no public monument worthy of remark, except a temple of Ceres Stiritis made of crude brick, in which were two statues, one of Pentelic marble,

§ 2.533 the other of ancient fabric, and enveloped with sashes or bandages. The Igumenos of St. Luke wishes to persuade me that the monastery was built by the same architects who afterwards erected St. Sophia at Constantinople. Wheler and Chandler met with abbots more intelligent, and who knew that the building was not founded till about the year 960 by Romanus the Second, in honour of a hermit of Stiris of the name of Luke, whose history has been related by Chandler. The church, however, certainly resembles that of St. Sophia εις μικρόν μεγάλω, being built in the form of a Greek cross, with a vestibule and three doors at the western end: a dome in the centre, and upper galleries supported by columns on the sides. The length of the nave, from the inner door to the skreen of the altar, is 46 feet; the θόλος, or dome, is 31 feet in diameter: some fine slabs of verd antique are seen in the pavement and walls. There are 130 men, 62 horses, and 23 mules, attached to the monastery, which possesses two metokhis, one at Patra and the other on the sea-side, at Sidhiro-kafkhio. To my inquiry for manuscripts and books, they reply that every thing of that sort was burnt by the archicleft Andrutzo. Whether this he true, or rather, as I suspect, partly true, and partly used as an excuse to conceal what is left, it is evident, at least, that the house has suffered from some such cause since the time of Chandler, for I can learn no tidings of the Iambic verses hung up in a frame in the church, which Chandler copied and published.

§ 2.534 The building beare strong marks also of having been shaken by earthquakes, which are not unfrequent here; and a great fissure in the dome is known to have been caused by one of these convulsions. The valley of Stiris affords a beautiful contrast to the rocks and woods of the lofty and rugged summits which surround it. Unlike some of the basins of the Morea similarly encased, which have not a tree, or shrub, or hedge in them, and are such perfect levels as to resemble lakes, this vale is enlivened by rising grounds, and a great variety of vegetation. Although not more than two or three miles in diameter, the surface is diversified with natural pasture, corn-fields now green, and vineyards still quite brown, mixed with copses of holly-oak, and ilex, or with olives and cypresses. To the peculiar shape and colour of the two latter trees, which contrast so agreeably with all others, the scenery of Greece is much indebted for its beauty in all seasons. At present those trees, with the two species of oak just mentioned, and the smaller evergreens which prevail in all the retired valleys and sheltered situations, particularly the lentisk and myrtle, enliven the winter scene in a manner unknown among the woods of Northern Europe. One kind of pirnari grows to the size of the common oak on the hills around the valley of Stiris, as well as in other parts of the Heliconian ridges, but there are two other varieties of it, one of which is a large shrub, the other a small low bush; this last is the κόκκος of Pausaniae, which he justly

§ 2.535 compares to the σχινον, or lentisk, and describee as abounding in the district of Ambrysus, and as producing an insect used for dying wool. The insect is found on every kind of pirnari, though of course it is not so easily gathered from the larger trees. The ilex with smooth leaves, which abounds here, as it generally does in the woods of Greece, and which is called aria in the Morea, is here known by the name of aglimi. Above the heights which bound the vale of Stiris on the north-west, and separate it from the valley of Dhistomo, rises the bare and rocky Cirphis, which is itself overtopped, by the majestic summits of Liakura, painful to behold, from the dazzling whiteness of the recent fall of snow, and receiving an apparent increase of height and diminution of distance from that clearness of atmosphere which in Greece generally attends fair weather in winter. There are two roads from St Luke to the Gulf of Aspra Spitia: one by the metokhi at Sidhiro-kafkhio, more commonly called Sto laid; the other more circuitous, which passes from the north-western extremity of the valley of St. Luke through a defile to Dhistomo, the site of the ancient Ambrysus. Having visited this place on a former journey, I prefer the route by the metokhi.

§ 2.536 The remains of Ambrysus are too inconsiderable to illustrate the description which Pausanias has given of its double wall, built by the Thebans against Philip, son of Amyntas, and which Pausanias considered the strongest defensive work in Greece, next to the fortification of Messene, though the walls were only about fourteen feet high, and five feet thick, with a distance between them of a little more than five feet. The town was situated at the southern foot of Mount Cirphis, in a small valley giving rise to the stream called Platanid, which joins the Cephissus in the plain of Cfueroneia. The long valley of this river furnished an easy access from that plain to Ambrysus, nor is the other approach to it from Stiris difficult, though both might be perilous routes for an army if the country were hostile, particularly the former, from the length of the narrow valley. It appears from Pausanias that there was a more direct road from Chaeroneia into the vale of Stiris across the mountains, for he conducts his reader from Chaeroneia to Stiris, and from Stiris to Ambrysus, and remarks that the road from Chaeroneia to Stiris was rugged, and for the most part mountainous. At 2.15 we proceed from the monastery to its metokhi “by the sea.” The road leaves the plain at its south-western end, and at 2.45 enters a narrow opening, through which the torrent, formed by

§ 2.537 the joint waters of the valleys of Kyriaki and of Stiri, makes its way, bordered on either side by precipices of white rock, among which grow a few junipers and wild olives. The road frequently crosses the torrent, and follows alternately either bank, until at 4 it enters a valley included between two steep and rocky mountains, and covered with olive plantations and corn-fields. At 4.15 we arrive at the metokhi, which consists only of two apartments; one with a fire-place in the middle, and a wooden ledge round the wall for the Kalogheri to sleep upon; the other containing an oil mill and a press, with stables for the mules used in the mill and farm. The monks cultivate the corn and olives, gather in the harvest, and make the oil. The mill is nothing more than a cylindrical stone, turned by means of a horse or mule yoked at one end of a lever, the other end of which is fixed in the centre of the stone. The olives thus bruised are put into baskets and pressed. In the evening a ten minutes’ ride conducts me from the metokhi to the sea, where are some remains of a Hellenic fortress, crowning a rocky promontory at the northern end of the beach in which the plain terminates. The road from the metokhi to Aspra Spitia leads through a narrow pass between the promontory and the mountains which border the vale of the metokhi to the northward. The wall of the fortress remains in good preservation on the northern side of the hill, where in some places it still exists to more than half the original height: on the other sides it is hardly traceable, but within the enclosure there are some terrace walls, one particularly,

§ 2.538 which is a fine specimen of polygonal masonry, verging to a more regular kind. On the road side, at the foot of the promontory, is a heap of ruins near the shore, consisting of some ancient blocks in situ, covered with the remains of a church, among which is a capital of white marble of indifferent execution. There seems to have been an ancient tower here which had been converted into a church. The promontory and ruin, as well as an anchorage for boats within the cape, are named Sidhiro-kafkhio, meaning a place where iron has been smelted, though there is not at present any appearance or tradition of such works having existed here. The summit of the promontory commands a good view of the Gulf of Aspra Spitia with the cultivated lands surrounding it, of the promontory Kefali on the opposite side of the Gulf, and of the coast of Phocis, as far as Cape Trakhila. Opposite to the latter, on the eastern side of the gulf, is seen Cape Punda, which is the extremity of Mount Verseniko; beyond it are the inlet and port called Aghia, and then the rugged falls of the earne mountain extending to the place where I quitted the coast coming from Dobo. The little vale of the metokhi, watered by the river of Stiris, separates Mount Verseniko from the equally rocky and forbidding heights which lie between this valley and that of St. Luke, and which extend westward as far as the vale of Dhistomo, and to a narrow pass which leads up to that place from the gulf.

§ 2.539 Feb. 8.—Having returned to Sidhiro-kafkhio, I pass at 8.15 through the opening which separates the promontory from the mountain on the right, and continue along the rocky foot of the latter, near the sea-side, till 9.5, when we arrive on the beach at the extremity of a little valley, which is the entrance of the pass already mentioned, as leading from the sea to Dhistomo. In this direction appears one of the summits of Cirphis, now called Xero-νύηί1, covered with snow. That named Somalesi, which was seen from the vale of Stiris, is more to the southward, near Dhesfina, beyond which village a part of the same range, called Xeroghianni, projects into the sea, and terminates in Cape Trakhila. Finding here some Kefaloniote fishermen about to haul their seine, I remain to wait the event, in hopes of a purple murex, or some fish with an ancient name; and not quite without success to me, though with little to the fishermen, who besides a few kalamakia, or cuttle-fish, catch only two or three of a small species of herring, the name of which, μαρίδες, cannot but be Hellenic. The chief market for the fish caught in this gulf is Livadhia. Proceeding at 9.30 along the shore of the gulf, we cross the extremity of a root of Mount Cirphis, and arrive in a little cultivated plain and slope, where on a hill on the right are the remains of Aspra Spitia (the white houses), once a considerable village, but now only a small dependence on

§ 2.540 Dhesfina. The baggage males which set out with us from the metokhi arrive at Aspra Spitia at 10.20, and continue their route to Dhesfina, while I visit a spot towards the head of the bay, where, among olive plantations, are some ancient foundations sufficient to indicate a Hellenic site, though as building materials are often carried away from hence by sea to the neighbouring coasts, in a few years probably there will hardly be a vestige of antiquity left. Half a mile farther south is the high peninsula named Kefali. It is connected with the main by a level isthmus which is cultivated with com and olives, and on the southern side forms the head of a harbour named Ai Isidhoro (St Isidore), where on a rocky projection at the south-eastern comer of the bay are the remains of a castle built with small stones and mortar. To the left, on the side of this peninsular mountain, are some ancient catacombs in the rock. From hence as far as Xeropigadho in the plain of Salona, all the shore, with the exception of a few cultivated hollows on the sea-side, is ragged and mountainous; the entire promon-tory, as far inland as the Pleistus, belongs to Dhesfina. One of the small maritime valleys just mentioned is situated within Cape Trakhila, and is in sight from Ai Isidhoro as well as from Sidhiro-kafkhio. It is called Prdsako, and between it and Ai Isidhoro are two long narrow inlets, named Steno and Valto. Steno is said to be a good port, and to be frequented by vessels of considerable burthen. Karindria is a cultivated spot beyond Cape Trakhila, similar to Prdsako.

§ 2.541 In the entrance of the gulf of Aspra Spltia are three islands, two towards Aghia, the other to the westward, not far from Cape Trakhila. On the middle one, named Dhaskalio, as well as on the westernmost, Tzarukhi, are remains of walls, cisterns, arches, and houses, constructed of small stones and mortar. Having returned to the village of Aspra Spitia, I there find an inscribed marble, serving to prove that the remains near the sea are those of Anticyra, which Livy and Pausanias sufficiently show to have stood in some part of this gulf. The marble is said to have been originally found among the fields near the sea, where it lay for many years by the side of a well, and served the women to beat their clothes upon in washing them, by which means the greater part of the letters had been obliterated, when it was brought up to the village two years since. There still remains enough to show that it was a record of the rights of proxenia granted to strangers by the people of Anticyra. Although like the other Phocian cities, Anticyra was for a time dismantled and abandoned at the end of the Sacred War, it had survived many of the other cities of Phocis in the time of the Roman empire, an advantage which it

§ 2.542 chiefly owed to its situation on this sheltered gulf, and its importance as a point of communication with the interior. It was besieged and taken in the year B.C. 198, by the Consul T. Quinctius Flamininus, when after having forced his way through Epirus into Thessaly by defeating Philip at the Aoi Stena, he was repulsed at Atrax, which caused him to proceed into Phocis for winter quarters, where he took Anticyra for the sake of its harbour and the convenient situation for communicating by land with Thessaly. These attributes of Anticyra are exemplified on other occasions in ancient history, and exactly accord with modern experience, there being no place in the Corinthiac gulf more frequented than Aspra Spitia as a point of passage, in consequence of its central position and the excellence of the harbour. In ancient times Anticyra was chiefly celebrated for the production and preparation of the best hellebore in Greece,— a medicine to which the ancients attached an absurd value, many persons even coming from a distance to reside at Anticyra for the sake of a more perfect curea. According to Pausanias, there were two kinds growing in the district, of

§ 2.543 which the root of the black was used as a cathartic, and that of the white as an emetic. Several of the ancient authors, or rather perhaps their copyers and commentators, have confounded this Anticyra with another of the same name in Locris. When the Romans were allied with the Aetolians against Philip, (in the year B.C. 210,) Laevinus, the Roman praetor, besieged Anticyra of Locris, both by land and sea. The town stood so near the shore that the praetor brought the engines on board the ships to bear upon the walls, and in a few days became by these means master of the place, which he delivered to the Aetolians. The historian, whose description is the more worthy of attention as having been taken from Polybius, represents Anticyra as being a town of Locris, situated on the left in entering the Corinthiac gulf, and at a short distance, both by land and sea, from Naupactus. It is evident that such a description will not suit the Anticyra which stood at Aspra Spitia; for this town was in Phocis, as Livy himself states in the former passage just cited; it was even nearer to the borders of Boeotia than of Locris,—nearer to the inner extremity than to the entrance of the Corinthiac gulf,—and instead of being near Naupactus, it was separated from that place by sixty miles of a very rugged and difficult country. The place therefore taken by Laevinus, and given up to the Aetolians, was evidently not the Anticyra which stood at Aspra Spitia, but a town towards the western extremity

§ 2.544 of the Locrian coast. The existence of three Anticyrae may be deduced from Strabo; one in Oetaea, or rather Melis, one in the country of the Locri Ozolae, and the third in Phocis. Horace in a well-known verse alludes to the three Anticyrae, and ascribes the production of hellebore to them all.

§ 2.545 Pausanias remarked at Anticyra some statues of brass in the agora, and a temple of Neptune at the port, small, constructed of wrought stones, plastered within, and containing an upright statue of Neptune in brass, one foot of which was upon a dolphin, the hand on the same side on the thigh, and the other hand bearing a trident. There were two gymnasia, one of which contained the baths; in the more ancient stood a brazen statue of a Pancratiast of Anticyra, who had gained the prize at Olympia. Above the agora was a source in a well, which was covered with a roof supported by columns; a little higher up was a monument formed of rude masses, said to be that of Schedius and Epistrophus, sons of Iphitus. Two stades beyond the city to the right, upon a high rock, which was part of the mountain, stood a temple of Diana, containing a statue by Praxiteles of more than the human size, which represented the goddess as bearing a torch in the right hand, and a quiver on the shoulders, with a dog at her feet to the left. Having quitted Aspra Spitia at 1.35, and ascended, by a path of extreme steepness, the rocky mountain at the back of the village, the

§ 2.546 same probably upon some part of which stood the Temple of Diana, we enter at 2.20 upon an elevated plain, bounded on the left by the barren mountain Xeroghianni, and on the right by Somaleei, of a similar character. Whether applied to these or to the height we ascended, the description which Pausanias has given of the mountains above Anticyra is perfectly justl. Here it is, he adds, that the hellebore chiefly grows, a fact which, not knowing the plant, I can neither confirm nor contradict. Half way across the plain to Dhesfina we enter vineyards, on the side of which are iraritpia, or little circular constructions of masonry for treading the grapes. In other parts the plain is bare, with the exception of a few scattered wild pear-trees. Midway on the left hand, at the foot of Xeroghianni, and hid from the road in a rema, stands the monastery of St. John, from which the mountain takes its name of Dry-John. The land of the territory of Dhesfina is cultivated only once in two years with barley and wheat, except in certain places among the rocks, where they burn the bushes, or where the soil is manured by the sheep and goats; which resort to the rocks for shelter. There they sow every year and without any previous ploughing. This year all the southern end of the plain lies fallow, while the northern part is ploughed.

§ 2.547 The village of Dhesfina, or Thesfina, is situated on the western slope of a high rocky hill, on the summit of which stand a chapel and a large pirnari-tree. This height is separated only from the equally rocky roots of Xeroghianni by a torrent flowing to the northward, which a little above the village issues from a narrow rocky opening between the two mountains: opposite to the village the ravine widens, and below it spreads into the plain. The village contains one hundred and seventy families, most of whom inhabit houses of two stories, comfortable when compared with the poor cottages of the peasants of Albanian race in Attica and Boeotia. Here, as at Arakhova and further westward, the Albanian language is uncommon, although so near as the villages and convents of Mount Helicon it is generally spoken, and many of the women are even ignorant of the Greek. Though Dhesfina is in the district of Salona, a large proportion of which belongs to Turks, there is no Turk inhabitant or proprietor in the territory of Dhesfina. The mukata and spahilik are purchased by a native Greek, who collects the taxes and accounts to the Voivoda of Salona for a dhekatia of one-ninth on corn, vines, and olives, for two paras a head upon cattle, and five piastres a head as an average on all males subject to the kharatj. For himself he receives as Spahi one asper a head on cattle, and four paras the strema upon vineyards. Lastly, if such a word can ever be correctly employed in Turkey in speaking of imposts, the village contributes forty-eight purses a year to the Voivoda to enable him to satisfy the demands of Aly Pasha, The monasteries pay only the kharatj on their inmates, the dhekatia on their land, and the αστρο-κεφαΧο on πραγματα, or a tax of an asper a head on cattle of all kinds. When I inquire here whether any traveller like myself has been seen before at Dhesfina, no one can recollect such an occurrence, though one man states that he remembers to have seen one of the people called Μιλιορδοι so near as Arakhova.

§ 2.548 Feb. 9.—From the chapel of St. Elias, on the summit of the hill of Dhesfina, I perceive that this hill is the extremity of a ridge which divides the plain of Dhesfina into two nearly equal parts, and that above the gorge, and not far from the village, there is another plain on a higher level. About a mile to the westward of the village, at the foot of a rocky projection of the range of Xeroghianni, the plain is covered with a hybernal inundation which usually remains until the month of May. It is chiefly caused by the torrent of Dhesfina, and has, I believe, a katavothra, through which there is a partial discharge to the Gulf of Crista. On either side of the village, and even among the rocks in the upper part of it, are many ancient catacombs, but all very small, and capable only of containing a single body. There are others to the south of the village, excavated in the face of the rocky height which rises from the opposite bank of the torrent. These remains, slight as they are, are sufficient to show that Dhesfina is the site of a Hellenic town, as its commanding position in the middle of thi secluded promontory would alone induce one to presume.

§ 2.549 I am inclined to think it was Medeon; for though neither Strabo nor Pausanias in speaking of that city can be said to indicate its precise situation, yet as the former places Medeon on the Crissaean Gulf, and the latter near Anticyra, we may infer at least that it was in some part of the country lying between the two gulfs. Nor are the one hundred and sixty stades, which according to the former authority was the distance between Medeon and the frontier of Boeotia, very different from the reality when applied to Dhesfina. Strabo mentions some other places in Phocis, to the eastward of Anticyra: first, Marathus, a small town; then Cape Pharygium, with a station.for ships; and Mychus, so called as being the last port of Phocis, and which lay below Mount Helicon and Ascra. “Nor,” he adds, “is Abae, a city noted for its oracle, far from these places; nor Ambrysus, nor Medeon, a town of the same name as that in Boeotia.” In another place he remarks that Mychus, the last port of Phocis, and lying below the western end of Helicon, was 90 stades distant from Creusis. From a comparison of which passages with one another, and with the coast itself, it seems probable that the remains at Sidhiro-kafkhio are those of Marathus, that the cape and harbour Pharygium were the same now called Aghia, and that Mychus was the port of Bulis, which lies under one of the summits of Helicon,

§ 2.550 though it is obvious that the 90 stades from Creusis must be too little if Pausanias is right, as in fact he is, in placing Bulis at 80 stades from Thisbe. As to the introduction of the names of Abae and Ascra, as of places situated near this coast, it can only be considered as an example of the want of precision, or of the defective information of the geographer, or of the corruption of his text; for neither of these places is much less than 20 geographical miles in direct distance from the Gulf of Aspra Spitia. He shows the same want of precision in coupling Medeon with Ambrysus, having before placed it in the Crissaean Gulf; though a comparison of the two passages may perhaps afford some argument in favour of placing Medeon at Dhesfina, this place being about midway between the Crissaean Gulf and the site of Ambrysus at Dhistomo. In the steep mountains and rocky paths of this coast of the Corinthiac Gulf, few horses are kept. Dobo is the last place where I could find any for hire. At St. Luke I exchanged them for mules, and at Dhesfina asses only can be procured for the baggage. The road from Dhesfina to Kastri leads nearly north across the plain for three quarters of an hour, and then begins to descend into the valley of the Pleistus between the two summits of Mount Cirphis, now called Somalesi and Kutzura; the latter of which borders the plain of Salona, and forms the steep rocky coast on the eastern side of the Crissaean Gulf.

§ 2.551 The view from the summit of the ridge comprehends all that magnificent ravine, the famed Parnassia Nape, from the root of Mount Parnassus, which closes the site of Delphi to the westward, asfar as another great counterfort of the mountain eastward, which, descending from Arakhova, meets Mount Xerovuni, and divides the course of the waters forming the Pleistus from those which flow through the Schiste to the Platania and the Cephissus. All the side of Parnassus which slopes to the Pleistus, from the foot of the white cliffs extending from Kastri to Arakhova, is cultivated: round Arakhova, with vineyards; between that village and Kastri, with corn; and around Kastri, with olives, which are also grown along the banks of the river wherever there is any level space or easy slope. The range of Cirphis on this side consists throughout of precipitous cliffs, every where naked, with the exception of the highest point Xerovuni, which bears firs, and is now covered with snow. The road on the descent of Orphis is for a quarter of an hour good and not abrupt, leading along a slope covered with bushes; afterwards it is that zig-zag stony path down the steep side of the mountain, which forms so conspicuous an object from Kastri. In 39 minutes from the summit of the mountain we cross a bridge over the Xeropotami, or dry river, as the Pleistus is called, for though now a respectable stream, it is dry during a great part of the year, as it was when I last saw it in the month of July. After an ascent from the river of nine minutes in a direction eastward of the site of Delphi, we arrive at a fountain and great plane tree, then skirting for seventeen minutes an olive wood, which extends from thence a considerable distance to the eastward, we arrive at the issue of

§ 2.552 a stream from the hill, so considerable as to turn eight or ten mills in the course of its rapid descent to the Pleutus: having ascended five minutes from this source, we join the road from Arakhova to Kastri, on the crest of a small ridge which branches from the rocks of Parnassus, and where are the ruins of an ancient tower, so placed as to have furnished a good look-out on the approach to Delphi from the Schiste. Here begins the ancient cemetery: many sori remain in the neighbouring corn-fields, some of which have their opercula, some are almost buried, and there are others probably below the surface. On the side of the rocks which overhang the road are cryptae with curved tops. The flat stones which covered the receptacles are still lying upon some of them, but either broken or a little removed on one side, so as to show that the tombs have all been opened. There are some remains of an ancient road nearer to the rocks than the modern path. The sepulchral excavations continue from hence as far as the turning to the left which leads to the monastery of the Panaghia; many sepulchres, perhaps, are concealed behind the earth and stones, which are continually descending from the cliffs, and are deposited at the foot of them. Three or four minutes beyond the tower is a curiously sculptured incision in the rock on the right, in the style of those at Telmissus, and other places in Asia Minor. The sculpture is on a large mass, now broken in two, and which probably fell off from a higher situation on the cliff, for one cannot imagine any lees powerful shock capable of breaking it.

§ 2.553 It represents a door studded with nails, and undoubt edly belonged to some great excavated sepulchre. Above it are seen several catacombs of different forms. From hence to the Castalian spring is a distance of seven minutes, leaving on the left the monastery of the Panaghia, which stands on a platform supported by massy Hellenic walls. In eight minutes more I arrive at Kastri, at the house of the Papas, not quite so dignified a personage as his predecessor, the high priest of Apollo, though he unites to his ecclesiastical character the civil office of Protogheros, or prime elder of the village. Delphi is correctly described by Strabo and Justin as occupying a rocky theatre-shaped position, but the remark of the latter author, that it is precipitous on every side is not that of an autoptes. The following are the topographical notices of the place, which Pausanias has left us:— “From the Schiste,” he says, “ there was a steep and difficult road to Delphi. On entering the city, four temples presented themselves in succession: the first was in ruins; the second had been despoiled of all its statues; the third preserved only a few images of the Roman emperors; the fourth was the temple of Minerva Pronαea, containing a statue of the deity, and in the pronaus another larger, in brass, dedicated by the Massaliotae.

§ 2.554 Adjoining to the temple of Pronaea was the temenus of the hero Phylacus. On turning to the left from the gymnasium, there was a descent of not more than three stades to the river Pleistus, which joins the sea at Cirrha, the harbour of Delphi. In ascending from the gymnasium to the temple of Apollo, the water of Castalia was on the right of the road. The city stood entirely upon a slope, and so did the sacred incloeure of Apollo, which occupied a large space in the highest part of the city, and was traversed by numerous passages of communication. On going out of the temple, and then turning towards the left, there occurred an inclosure containing the sepulchre of Neoptolemus, above which was a stone of no great size, fabled to have been given to Cronus, as a substitute for the infant Jupiter. On returning from thence towards the temple of Apollo occurred the fountain Cassotis, to which there was an ascent through an inclosing wall. The water was said to proceed under ground into the adytum of the temple, and to render the priestess prophetic.

§ 2.555 Above Cassotis was the Lesche, an edifice containing paintings by Polygnotus of Thasus, which had been dedicated by the people of Cnidus'. The theatre was contiguous to the sacred inclosure of Apollo: above the latter was a statue of Bacchus, dedicated by the Cnidii. In the highest part of the city was the stadium, originally constructed of the ordinary stone of Parnassus, and in which state it remained until Herodes, the Athenian, adorned it with Pentelic marble.” Of the two fountains the Cassotis is recognized without difficulty as that now called Kerna, which is just above the village of Kastri, to the northwest; and the Castalia still more evidently as that already mentioned at the upper extremity of the ancient site towards the east, on the right hand in entering a narrow fissure which separates the two renowned Parnassian summits. This fissure, called ΆρκονΒόρίνμα, or bear-ravine, is the bed of a torrent originating in the upper region of Parnassus, and

§ 2.556 which, though generally dry, forms in seasons of rain a cascade of about 200 feet in height, falling over a rock which closes the ravine of the Castalia 60 or 70 yards above that fountain. Near the foot of the cascade is a small perennial spring. The Castalia itself is a copious pool of very pure and cool water, at the foot of a perpendicular excavation overhung with ivy, saxifrage, and rock plants; around which grow some larger shrubs in front a large fig-tree, and near the road a spreading plane. The commendation which Pausanias bestows on the water, as πιείν ηδύ, is confirmed by the natives, who consider it as lighter, more agreeable and wholesome, than the water of Cassotis. The pool is not only kept constantly full by subterraneous supplies, but affords also a small stream flowing out of the basin into the bed of the Arkudhorema, and from thence in a deep channel to the Xeropotami, or Pleistus, unless when the water is diverted for the purpose of irrigating the fields and olives below Kastri. The Castalia is now called the fountain of Ai Ianni, from a small chapel of St. John, standing above one corner of the basin; and the same name is given to the whole course of the rivulet down to the Pleistus. The natural pool of the Castalian spring was enlarged, adorned, and made more commodious by the ancients by means of an excavation in the rock, both vertical and horizontal, of which the annexed plan, elevation and section, may give some ideas.

§ 2.557 [CASTALIA plan]. 1. Castalia. 2. Canal to carry off the superfluous water. 3. Niches. 4. Excavation and chapel of St. John. 5. Steps descending into the basin of Castalia. The steps seem to show that the subterraneous supply of the spring was not always equal: in summer perhaps not reaching above the lowest steps; but filling the basin in winter, when the channel at the back prevented the water from rising above the upper step. This channel, however, no longer serves its original purpose; the Kastrites, who chiefly use the basin for washing clothes, having cut an opening through the upper steps, so that the depth of water in the basin can never be so great as it was anciently. The larger niche may possibly have been destined for a statue of Apollo, and the two smaller for figures of Pan and the nymph Castalia, who

§ 2.558 gave name to the fountain. The chapel of St. John may perhaps occupy the place of the heroum of Autonous, which is described by Herodotus as having been at the foot of Mount Hyampeia, near the fountain Castalia. Strabo and Pausanias agree in placing the temple of Apollo in the highest part of Delphi, though it appears from the words of the latter author as already cited, not to have been so high as the stadium, the remains of which are fortunately extant to guide us, nor even so high as the fountain of Cassotis, as the water of that fountain flowed into the temple. It was, however, very near this fountain, for Strabo places the tomb of Neoptolemus, which according to Pausanias was above Cassotis, within the sacred inclosure. It seems evident, therefore, that the sacred temenus or peribolus occupied the exact site of the present village, and this is proved by an inscribed wall forming part of the foundation of a house in the village, which recorded the manumission of slaves, or rather the dedication of them as ιεροδουλοι to Apollo. It cannot be doubted that these records were placed in the sacred inclosure. The remark

§ 2.559 of Pausanias that the peribolus was of great extent is illustrated by another inscribed wall below the village, upon which are recorded grants of proxenia, with other privileges to foreign benefactors of Delphi; in some of these it is expressly stated that the record is to be placed in the temple of Apollo. As the distance from this wall to the fountain Kerna is not less than three hundred yards, it becomes probable that the entire inclosure was not less than equal to a square of eight hundred or one thousand feet. The nature of the ground explains the numerous εξοδοι, or passages which Pausanias describes in the peribolus; for as the entire site of Delphi is a steep declivity, it was of necessity divided into terraces, many remains of the supporting walls of which are still extant in every part of the slope. The temple itself occupied probably the upper part of the village not far below Cassotis, standing on