[Sidenote: Temple of

Apollo at

Delphi.]

Lastly, it has been assumed that Pausanias’s account of the temple of

Apollo at Delphi is irreconcileable with the remains of the building and

with inscriptions relating to it which have recently been discovered by

the French at Delphi. The combined evidence of architecture and

inscriptions proves conclusively that the temple built by the

Alcmaeonids in the sixth century B.C. was afterwards destroyed, probably

by an earthquake, and that it was rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. Yet

Pausanias, it is said, describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. as

if it still existed in his time. Let us look at the facts in the light

of the French discoveries. Observe, then, that Pausanias mentions the

Gallic shields hanging on the architrave of the temple. These shields

were captured in 279 B.C. Hence the temple which he describes cannot

have been the old one built in the sixth century B.C., since that

temple, as we now know, was afterwards destroyed and rebuilt in the

fourth century B.C. But did Pausanias believe it to be the old one?

There is nothing to show that he did, but on the contrary there is a

good deal to show that he did not. In the first place, he does not say

that the temple was built by the Alcmaeonids. He says it was built for

the Amphictyons by the architect Spintharus. The date of Spintharus is

otherwise unknown, but we have no reason to suppose that he lived in the

sixth rather than in the fourth century B.C. In the second place,

Pausanias tells us that the first sculptures for the gables of the

temple were executed by Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, but that as the

building lasted some time, Praxias died before it was finished, and the

rest of the sculptures were executed by another artist. Now we have the

evidence of Pausanias himself that the sculptor Calamis was at work as

late as 427 B.C. His pupil Praxias may therefore easily, at least in the

opinion of Pausanias, have been at work at the end of the fifth century

B.C. or in the early part of the fourth century B.C., and this is

precisely the time when, if we may judge from the historical and

inscriptional evidence, the old temple was destroyed and preparations at

least for rebuilding it were being made. At all events, Pausanias cannot

possibly have supposed that the pupil of a man who was at work in 427

B.C. can have executed sculptures for a temple that was built in the

sixth century B.C. In short, neither was the temple which Pausanias

describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. nor can he possibly have

supposed it to be so. The temple he describes was in all probability the

temple of the fourth century B.C. His statement that the temple was long

in building is amply confirmed by the inscriptions, which prove that the

process of reconstruction dragged on over a period of many years.

Thus in every case an analysis of the evidence adduced to prove that

Pausanias described a state of things which had passed away before his

time, reveals only some oversight or misapprehension on the part of his

critics. We might take it, therefore, without further discussion that he

described Greece as it was in his own age. But if any reader is still

sceptical, still blinded by the phantom Polemo, let him turn to

Pausanias’s description of new Corinth [Sidenote: New Corinth.] and read

it with attention. Here was a city built in 44 B.C., more than a century

after the time of Polemo, upon whom Pausanias is supposed by some to

have been slavishly dependent. Yet he describes the city minutely and in

topographical order, following up each street as it led out of the

market-place. Amongst the many temples he mentions in it is one of

Octavia and another of Capitolian Jupiter; among the many waterworks is

the aqueduct by which Hadrian, the author’s contemporary, brought the

water of the Stymphalian Lake to Corinth. And his description of the

city with its temples, images, fountains, and portals is amply borne out

by coins of the Imperial age. In the face of this single instance it is

impossible to maintain that Pausanias must needs have borrowed most of

his descriptions from writers who lived before 170 B.C. If he could

describe Corinth so well without their aid, why should he not have

described Athens, Olympia, and Delphi for himself? Nor does his power of

description fail him when he comes down to works which were produced in

his own lifetime. Not to mention his many notices of the works of

Hadrian, such as the Olympieum at Athens with its colossal image of gold

and ivory, and the library with its columns of Phrygian marble, its

gilded roof, its alabaster ornaments, its statues and paintings, he has

given us a minute account of the images dedicated by his contemporary

Herodes Atticus in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus. [Sidenote:

Images dedicated by Herodes Atticus at the Isthmus.] He describes the

images of Amphitrite and Poseidon, made of gold and ivory, standing

erect in a car drawn by gilt horses with ivory hoofs; the image of

Palaemon, also made of gold and ivory, standing on a dolphin; the two

Tritons beside the horses, each of them made of gold from the waist

upward and of ivory from the waist downward; and the reliefs on the

pedestal of the images, comprising a figure of the Sea holding up the

infant Aphrodite, with Nereids and the Dioscuri on either side. If he

could describe in such detail the work of an obscure contemporary artist

whom he does not condescend to mention, what reason have we to think

that he could not describe for himself the famous images by the great

hand of Phidias, the image of the Virgin at Athens and the image of Zeus

at Olympia? In short, if Pausanias copied his descriptions from a book,

it must have been from a book written in his own lifetime, perhaps by

another man of the same name. The theory of the copyist Pausanias

reduces itself to an absurdity.

[Sidenote: Pausanias

and the

existing

monuments.]

The best proof that Pausanias has pictured for us Greece as it was in

his own day and not as it had ceased to be long before, is supplied by

the monuments. In all parts of the country the truthfulness of his

descriptions has been attested by remains of the buildings which he

describes, and wherever these remains are most numerous, as for example

at Olympia, Delphi, and Lycosura, we have most reason to admire his

minute and painstaking accuracy. That he was infallible has never been

maintained, and if it had been, the excavations would have refuted so

foolish a contention, for they have enabled us to detect some errors

into which he fell. For example, he mistook the figure of a girl for

that of a man in the eastern gable of the temple of Zeus at Olympia; he

misinterpreted the attitude of Hercules and Atlas in one of the metopes

of the same temple; he affirmed that the colossal images at Lycosura

were made of a single block of marble, whereas we know that they were

made of several blocks fitted together; and he described the temple of

Athena Alea at Tegea as the largest in Peloponnese, though in fact it

was much smaller than the temple of Zeus at Olympia. These and similar

mistakes, like the slips he sometimes made in reading inscriptions, do

not lend any colour to an imputation of bad faith. All they show is that

he shared the common weaknesses of humanity, that his eye sometimes

deceived him, that his attention sometimes flagged, that occasionally he

may have lent too ready an ear to the talk of the local guides. If these

are sins, they are surely not unpardonable. Those who have followed in

his footsteps in Greece and have formed from personal experience some

idea, necessarily slight, of the magnitude of the task he set himself

and of the difficulties he had to overcome in accomplishing it, will

probably be the readiest to make allowance for inevitable imperfections,

will be most grateful to him for what he has done, and least disposed to

censure him for what he has left undone. Without him the ruins of Greece

would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without

an answer. His book furnishes the clue to the labyrinth, the answer to

many riddles. It will be read and studied so long as ancient Greece

shall continue to engage the attention and awaken the interest of

mankind; and if it is allowable to forecast the results of research in

the future from those of research in the past we may venture to predict

that, while they will correct the descriptions of Pausanias on some

minor points, they will confirm them on many more, and will bring to

light nothing to shake the confidence of reasonable and fair-minded men

in his honour and good faith.

II. OROPUS.—The plain of Oropus extends along the shore for about five

miles; inland it narrows to a point, two or three miles from the shore,

where the Asopus issues from a beautiful defile. At this inner angle of

the plain stand the modern villages of Oropo and Sykamino on opposite

sides of the river. But the territory of Oropus included some at least

of the low hills which environ the plain, for the hills of Oropus were

at one time divided between two Attic tribes. Moreover, the sanctuary of

Amphiaraus, which belonged to Oropus, stands in hilly ground to the east

of the plain. The whole of this district, lying between the Euripus and

the northern declivities of Mount Parnes, is of great natural beauty. It

is an undulating and richly wooded country, where the road runs between

soft green hills and knolls, with charming and varied prospects across

the winding waters of the Euripus to the blue mountains of Euboea, among

which the lofty Delph may be seen glistering white with snow even in the

hot days of summer. The traveller who comes direct from the monotonous

and sterile plain of Athens is struck, on emerging from the wooded pass

of Decelea, by the contrast between the scene which he has left behind

and that which is suddenly unrolled at his feet. In antiquity this road,

which went by Aphidna and could be traversed on foot in a day, was noted

for the number and excellence of its inns, a distinction which it

certainly does not enjoy now.

The country between Oropus and Rhamnus, through which Pausanias conducts

his readers, is of similar character. Parallel chains of hills run from

Mount Parnes to the high steep coast; and between them are fruitful

valleys watered by pleasant brooks and embowered in luxuriant

vegetation, with thickets where the song of the nightingale may be

heard.

The site of the city of Oropus is now occupied by Skala Oropou, that is,

‘the port of Oropo,’ a small hamlet prettily situated among gardens,

meadows, and springs, on the shore of a bay which is formed by two low

projecting points a couple of miles asunder. Across the water the white

houses of Eretria are clearly visible on the shore of Euboea; the

mountains above them, when seen at evening from Oropus, are of a deep

azure blue. In the sea are the remains of an ancient breakwater

extending parallel to the shore. Among the remains of antiquity which

have been found here is a beautiful marble relief of the best period of

Greek sculpture, representing Amphiaraus and his charioteer Baton

driving in a car drawn by four horses; the moment chosen by the sculptor

is that when the earth gaped to receive the prophet; the horses are

starting back in terror at the sight of the abyss which yawns at their

feet.

The sanctuary of Amphiaraus, described by Pausanias, lies in a pleasant

little glen, neither wide nor deep, among low hills partially wooded

with pine. The place, now called Mavrodhilisi, is distant about four

miles south-east of Skala Oropou; Pausanias has greatly understated the

distance. The path to it first goes through corn-fields near the sea,

then turns inland and ascends through woods. A brook flows through the

glen and finds its way between banks fringed by plane-trees and

oleanders to the sea, which is more than a mile off. The clumps of trees

and shrubs which tuft the sides of the glen and in which the nightingale

warbles, the stretch of green meadow at the bottom, the stillness and

seclusion of the place, and its sheltered and sunny aspect, all fitted

it to be the resort of invalids, who thronged thither to consult the

healing god. So sheltered indeed is the spot that even on a May morning

the heat in the airless glen, with the Greek sun beating down out of a

cloudless sky, is apt to be felt by a northerner as somewhat

overpowering. But to a Greek it was no doubt agreeable. The oracle, we

know, was open only in summer; and Livy speaks of “the ancient temple

delightfully situated among springs and brooks”. The ruins of the

sanctuary, excavated some years ago by the Greek Archaeological Society,

lie on the narrow strip of flat ground on the northern or left bank of

the stream.

III. RHAMNUS.—Rhamnus is one of the loneliest and most secluded, but at

the same time most picturesque and verdant spots in all Attica. It lies

on the north-east coast of Attica, about six and a half miles north of

Kato-Souli, the village which occupies the site of the ancient

Tricorythus. The distance agrees well with the sixty Greek furlongs

(nearly seven miles) at which Pausanias estimates it. The road from

Kato-Souli first goes north-east across the northern portion of the

Marathonian plain, which it quits by a pass leading northward through

the hills. The pass soon opens into an upland valley, three miles long

from south to north by one mile wide, enclosed on both sides by wild and

barren hills. The upper slopes of these hills are scantily wooded with

firs; their lower slopes are overgrown with myrtle, lentisk, and many

sorts of thorny shrubs, especially the one called rhamnus, which gave

the district its ancient name. The soil of the valley is partly under

cultivation, but most of it is covered with dense underwood and oaks of

the valanidia species. On a low flat ridge which runs across the valley

from east to west there are some ancient ruins, consisting of walls and

foundations of houses. There are now no permanent inhabitations in the

whole valley. A few dirty hamlets, tenanted from time to time by

peasants for the purpose of looking after their fields, lie at its

eastern edge. The general aspect of the country is lonesome and

desolate.

Towards the northern end of the valley the ground gradually rises; and

where it terminates the scenery changes. Here, at the northern extremity

of the valley, a narrow woody glen, about half a mile long, descends

rapidly in a north-easterly direction to the sea-shore. At the head of

the glen, commanding a magnificent view down its wooded depths and

across the narrow channel of the Euripus to the lofty mountains of

Euboea, rises a stately terrace supported by exquisitely constructed

walls of white marble, which are embowered in a luxuriant growth of

dark-green shrubbery and fir-trees. In this superb situation, crowning

the terrace, stand side by side the ruins of two temples, the famous

temple of Nemesis and a smaller temple, probably of Themis. Below, where

the glen opens on the shore, an isolated rocky hill juts out into the

sea; and on its sides, half buried in thickly clustering masses of

evergreens, are the white marble walls and towers of Rhamnus.

IV. MARATHON.—The plain of Marathon, the scene of the memorable defeat

of the Persians by the Athenians in 490 B.C., is a crescent-shaped

stretch of flat land curving round the shore of a spacious bay and

bounded on the landward side by a semicircle of steep mountains, with

bare rocky sides, which rise abruptly from the plain. In its

north-eastern corner the plain is terminated by a narrow rocky

promontory running southward far into the sea and sheltering the bay on

the north-east; in antiquity this promontory was called Cynosura (‘dog’s

tail’), it is now called Cape Stomi or Cape Marathon. At its southern

end the plain is terminated by Mount Agrieliki, a spur of Mount

Pentelicus, which here advances so far eastward as to leave only a

narrow strip of flat land between it and the sea. Through this strip of

flat land at the foot of Mount Agrieliki runs the only carriage road

which connects Marathon with Athens. The length of the plain of Marathon

from north-east to south-west is about six miles; its breadth varies

from one and a half to two and a half miles. The shore is a shelving

sandy beach, free from rocks and shoals, and well suited for the

disembarkation of troops. A great swamp, covered with sharp reed-grass

and divided from the sea by a narrow strip of sandy beach overgrown with

pine-trees, occupies most of the northern end of the plain. It never

dries wholly up even in the heat of summer; two canals constructed by

General Sutzos have only partially drained it. Tamarisk bushes grow in

the drier parts of the marsh; their scarlet blossoms are conspicuous in

spring. The swamp is deepest at its western side, where it is separated

only by a narrow passage, hardly wide enough for two horses to pass each

other, from the steep rocky slope of Mount Stavrokoraki. The ancient

road which led northward from the plain of Marathon to Rhamnus ran along

this narrow passage, between the marsh on the one hand and the slope of

the mountain on the other. Leake noticed traces of ancient

chariot-wheels here; and till a few years ago a long line of stones, a

little farther to the south, marked the line of the ancient road. At the

northern end of this defile between the marsh and the mountain stands

the modern village of Kato-Souli. About a quarter of a mile to the south

of it, close to the road and to the foot of the mountain, are the

deepest pools of the swamp; they are easily distinguished by the

luxuriant vegetation that surrounds them, the tall reeds being

particularly noticeable. These pools, beside which cattle find green

pasture in summer when the plains are scorched and brown with heat, are

fed by powerful subterranean sources, the Macaria of the ancients, about

which Pausanias tells us the legend of Macaria, daughter of Hercules,

who gave her name to the spring. Strabo says that the head of Eurystheus

was cut off and buried by Iolaus beside the spring Macaria, under the

highroad, and that hence the place was called ‘the head of Eurystheus.’

At Kato-Souli, about half-way up the slope of the hill which rises above

the village, there are some shallow niche-like excavations in the rock,

not unlike mangers. It may have been these niches to which popular fancy

gave the name of ‘the mangers of the horses of Artaphernes.’ On its

opposite or eastern side the great swamp ends in a small salt-water

lake, now called Drakonera, that is ‘the dragon-water’ or ‘the enchanted

water.’ This lake discharges itself into the sea by a stream which flows

exactly at the point where the sandy beach of the bay ends and the rocks

of Cape Cynosura begin. Sea fish are caught in the lake, and eels in the

fresh-water pools of the marsh. The salt lake has perhaps been formed

since the time of Pausanias, for he describes only the marsh and a

stream flowing from it into the sea. At the southern end of the plain of

Marathon there is another, but much smaller, swamp called Vrexisa

between the sea and the foot of Mount Agrieliki. Its greatest breadth is

about half a mile. It is covered with reedy grass and shrubs, and is

separated from the sea by a strip of sand. The highroad to Athens runs

betwixt this marsh and the foot of the mountains.

Between these two marshes, the one on the north, the other on the south,

the plain of Marathon is now chiefly covered with corn-fields. But

towards its southern end there is a stretch of vineyards mixed with

olives and fruit-trees and dotted with a few pines and cypresses.

Farther north, an isolated oak-tree rising here and there, and a green

belt of currant-plantations stretching from the foot of the hills to the

shore of the bay, break the uniformity of the endless corn-fields. The

plain is uninhabited. The villages lie at the foot of the mountains or

in the neighbouring glens. On a still autumn day, under a lowering sky,

the wide expanse of the solitary plain presents a chilling and dreary

aspect. Not a living creature is to be seen, except perhaps a few

peasants in the distance ploughing with teams of slow-paced oxen.

In this vast sweep of level ground the eye is caught, at no great

distance, by a single solitary object rising inconspicuously above it.

This is the famous mound, now called Soros, which covers the remains of

the Athenians who fell in the battle. It rises from the plain a mile

from the foot of the hills, half a mile from the sea, and about

three-quarters of a mile north of the marsh of Vrexisa. It is a conical

mound of light, reddish mould, some thirty feet high and two hundred

paces in circumference. Its top has been somewhat flattened by

excavations; its sides are overgrown with low brushwood. A wild

pear-tree grows at its foot. In April-June 1890 the mound was excavated

under the superintendence of Mr. Staes for the Greek Government.

Trenches were cut into it, and at the depth of about nine feet below the

present surface of the plain there was found an artificial floor,

constructed of sand and other materials, about eighty-five feet long and

twenty feet broad. On this floor there rested a layer of ashes,

charcoal, and human bones, charred by fire and mouldering away with

damp. Mixed with this layer of ashes and bones were about thirty

earthenware vases, most of them broken in pieces. These vases are

painted in the common black-figured style; the subjects represented are

generally chariots, but in some cases horsemen and foot-soldiers.

Besides these vases there was found a long-necked amphora adorned with

friezes of beasts and monsters in the oriental style, and a winged

figure of the oriental Artemis; and another two-handled vase of

reddish-brown clay, with decorations somewhat in the Mycenaean style,

was found to contain charred bones, perhaps those of a general. Further

excavations made in the following year laid bare a sacrificial pit or

trench extending diagonally under the mound from north to south. This

trench is cased with burnt bricks, and contained ashes, charcoal, and

the bones of animals and birds, mixed with fragments of black-figured

vases. It had originally been roofed with bricks, which had fallen in.

The bones found in this trench are clearly those of the victims

sacrificed to the heroic dead before the mound was heaped over their

remains; and the broken vases discovered along with them may have been

those which were used at the funeral banquet. The Greek archaeologists

further detected some vestiges which led them to believe that, even

after the mound had been raised, sacrifices continued to be annually

offered at it. This confirms Pausanias’s statement that the men who fell

in the battle were worshipped as heroes by the people of Marathon. From

an inscription we learn that the Athenian lads went to the tomb, laid

wreaths on it, and sacrificed to the dead.

The excavations have finally disproved a theory, broached by E. Curtius

in 1853 and maintained by Professor Milchhöfer as late as 1889, that,

the mound was prehistoric and had nothing to do with the battle of

Marathon. For the black-figured vases found with the bones and ashes of

the dead belong to the period of the Persian wars; the human remains can

therefore be no other than those of the hundred and ninety-two Athenians

who fell at Marathon. Curtius’s erroneous theory was apparently

countenanced by some imperfect excavations made by Dr. Schliemann in

1884. Many bronze arrow-heads, about an inch long and pierced with a

round hole at the top for the reception of the shaft, have been picked

up at the mound; also a great number of black flints, rudely chipped

into shape. It has been conjectured that these flints are parts of the

stone-headed arrows discharged by the Ethiopian archers in the Persian

army. But against this opinion it has been urged that similar flints

have been found at other ancient sites in Attica and elsewhere,

especially in the oldest graves on many Greek islands, and have not been

found at Thermopylae and Plataea, where, if anywhere, the stone-headed

arrows may be supposed to have flown in showers.

There are two main routes from the plain of Marathon to Athens; one of

them goes by the south, the other by the north side of Mount Pentelicus.

The first route leaves the plain at its southern extremity, and passing

between the foot of Mount Agrieliki and the marsh of Vrexisa runs

parallel with the coast for some distance. It then turns westward, and

crossing the deep valley which divides Pentelicus on the north from

Hymettus on the south enters the plain of Athens. This is by far the

easiest road; it is the only one which vehicles can traverse. The

distance by this road from the great mound at Marathon to Athens is

about twenty-five or twenty-six miles. The other route, by the north

side of Mount Pentelicus, goes from Oenoe (the modern Ninoi) by a very

steep and toilsome path to Stamata, a village in a high situation,

surrounded by a few barren fields, among woods of pine. In many places

the path is so hemmed in between cliffs and precipices that there is

room only for a single horse. Trees are rare, but the stony slopes of

the mountain are overgrown with shrubs of many sorts, among which the

_Erica arborea_ is conspicuous. In spring its masses of white blossoms

perfume the whole air with their fragrance. About half an hour short of

Stamata, at a point where there is a spring shaded by fine plane-trees,

the path is joined on the left by another path, also steep and toilsome,

which comes up from Vrana. This latter path commands a magnificent view

backward down the deep ravine through which the traveller has ascended.

On either side of the ravine rise the mountains, their precipitous sides

covered with straggling pine-forest or evergreen copse, and terminating

in bold peaks; below is spread out the green expanse of the Marathonian

plain, backed by the sea and Cape Cynosura curving into the blue water

with the sweep of a scimitar. Farther off, bounding the prospect,

stretches the long line of the mountains of Euboea.

From Stamata the path skirts the north-western shoulder of Mount

Pentelicus and enters Kephisia, from which there is a good highroad

through the plain to Athens. The distance by this route from the mound

at Marathon to Athens is roughly about twenty-two miles.

A third route, intermediate between the two preceding routes and shorter

than either of them, goes from Vrana up the wild romantic ravine of

Rapentosa and crosses the southern shoulder of Mount Pentelicus, the

highest summit of which is left about a mile to the westward. It is a

rugged and precipitous path, hardly practicable even for heavy infantry.

Within a distance of little more than nine miles the route ascends and

descends a ridge which rises more than two thousand five hundred feet

above the plain below.

Clearly the first of these routes is the only road by which a large army

with cavalry and baggage-train could march. Therefore when the Persians

landed at Marathon, under the guidance of the banished Athenian tyrant

Hippias, who was of course familiar with the country, they must have

intended to advance on Athens by the southern road, and consequently the

Athenians must have marched to meet them by the same road; for had they

taken the northern route the enemy might have given them the slip, and

his cavalry might have been entering the streets of Athens at the time

when the Athenians were emerging from the defiles of Pentelicus on the

plain of Marathon. Thus the traveller who drives to Marathon by the

carriage road may feel sure that he is following very closely the route

by which the Athenian army advanced to the battle.

V. PRASIAE.—The township of Prasiae was situated on the spacious and

beautiful bay now called Porto Raphti, on the east coast of Attica,

about sixteen miles north-east of Sunium. From the fertile valley of

Cephale (now Keratea) a path leads north-eastward through a very deep

and narrow glen to the shore of the bay. In the depths of this romantic

glen there winds the bed of a stream which is sometimes nearly or wholly

dry. The sides of the glen, seamed with the beds of torrents and rifted

rocks, are so thickly wooded and overhung with pine-trees and bushes

that in many places it is hard to force a passage along it. Flocks of

sheep and goats browsing, and in spring the warbling of numerous

nightingales in the thickets, alone relieve the solitude. At the end of

the glen, which is about three miles long, the view of the wide bay,

enclosed by barren mountains, suddenly bursts on us. On the north Mount

Peratia, with its jagged ridge and bold beautiful outline, descends in

precipices almost sheer into the water, its sides bare except for here

and there a thin patch of pinewood. On the south rises, dark and

massive, the loftier Mavronori (‘the black mountain’). From its base the

rocky headland of Koroni runs far out into the sea, sheltering the bay

on the east and narrowing its entrance to about a mile and a quarter.

Right in the middle of the entrance, breaking the force of the waves

when the wind blows from the east, a rocky islet in the shape of a

sugar-loaf or pyramid rises abruptly from the sea to the height of about

three hundred feet. Its sides, clothed with lentisk bushes and dwarf

pines, are so steep that it can be scaled only on one side, the north.

On its summit, looking seaward, sits a colossal but headless and armless

statue of white marble on a high pedestal, the blocks of which were

falling to ruin at the time of Dodwell’s visit but are now held together

by iron clamps. This statue, which, to judge from its style, dates from

the time of the Roman empire, is popularly supposed to resemble a tailor

(_raphti_) seated at his work; hence it has given its present name of

Porto Raphti to the bay. It has been plausibly conjectured that this is

the monument described by Pausanias as the tomb of Erysichthon who died

at sea on his way home from Delos. The striking monument, looking out

from its high lonely isle across the blue sea, may have been erected on

the traditionary site of the hero’s grave by some wealthy patron of art

in Roman days, perhaps by Herodes Atticus himself.

The inner part of the bay is divided into two by a rocky spit jutting

out from the shore, to which it is attached by a low isthmus. The

promontory takes its name from a chapel of St. Nicholas which stands on

the isthmus; a small island off the promontory still bears the name of

Prasonisi or ‘Isle of Prasiae.’ The anchorage for fishing boats is on

the north side of the isthmus, and here are the few wretched hovels

which make up the hamlet of Porto Raphti. The hamlet is not permanently

inhabited. For the bay, though one of the finest harbours in Greece, is

desolate and hardly frequented except in summer. By day peasants may be

met at work in the fields or carting fish to the neighbouring villages.

But all through the colder seasons of the year and even on summer

evenings a profound stillness, broken only by the lapping of the waves

on the beach, reigns on the shores of this beautiful bay, one of the

fairest scenes in Attica.

On the northern shore of the bay there are a few scanty remains of

antiquity which seem to have belonged to the township of Stiria. Prasiae

lay on the southern shore, which still bears the ancient name. Here,

between the sandy and in part marshy beach and the hills, there

stretches a strip of level cornland interspersed with olives and stately

cork-oaks. Some vestiges of ancient wall may be traced at a garden not

far from the shore, where there is also an ancient well. But the sand is

gaining so fast here that a few years ago the ruins of a chapel with

some Christian graves were discovered buried in the downs. The citadel

of Prasiae occupied the rocky headland of Koroni (probably the ancient

Coronea), which, as we have seen, shelters the bay on the east. This

bold headland, joined to the mainland by a low sandy isthmus, has

obviously been at one time an island; indeed the whole of the southern

part of the bay is being gradually sanded up. The fortification walls,

six feet thick and built without mortar, may be followed all round the

summit of the headland, which is besides so well protected by its steep

cliffs that an attack from the side of the sea must have been nearly

impracticable. Another wall, eight to ten feet thick, which seems to

have been strengthened with towers or bastions, runs down in a

south-westerly direction from the ring-wall of the citadel. It probably

served as an outwork and may have reached as far as the shore, though

now it disappears some distance above the water. Within the ring-wall of

the citadel are the remains of a number of cross-walls extending at

right angles to it; but they are now so overgrown by dense underwood

that it is almost impossible to trace them. From the summit of the

headland there is a fine prospect, on the one side over the noble bay

with its rocky islets, on the other side across the sea to Euboea,

Andros, and Ceos. The white houses which are seen gleaming in Ceos are

those of the modern town which occupies the site of the ancient Julis.

VI. MOUNT HYMETTUS.—The outline of Hymettus, viewed from Athens, is even

and regular; but its sides are furrowed by winter torrents and its base

is broken into many small isolated hills of a conical form. Except

towards its base the range is almost destitute of soil. Wild olives,

myrtles, laurels, and oleanders are found only in some of the gullies at

the foot of the mountain. Its steep rocky slopes are composed of grey

marble seamed and cracked in all directions. Some stunted shrubs,

however, including the lentisk, terebinth, and juniper, and

sweet-smelling herbs, such as thyme, lavender, savory, and sage, grow in

the clefts of the rocks, and, with flowers such as hyacinths and purple

crocuses, furnish the bees with the food from which they still extract

the famous Hymettian honey. Hymettus seems to have been as bare and

treeless in classical antiquity as it is now; for Plato remarks that

some of the Attic mountains, which now only provided food for bees, had

at no very remote epoch furnished the timber with which some very large

buildings were still roofed at the time when he wrote. The honey of

Hymettus was renowned. It was said that when Plato was a babe the bees

on Hymettus filled his mouth with honey. The story went that bees were

first produced on the mountain. Poets spoke of the flowery and fragrant

Hymettus. The thyme and the creeping thyme (_serpyllum_) of Hymettus are

specially mentioned; the creeping thyme was transplanted to Athens and

grown there. When ancient writers speak of Attic honey in general, they

may have had Hymettian honey in view. Vitruvius compares Attic honey to

resin in colour, which aptly describes the colour of the modern

Hymettian honey. When Synesius visited Athens in the fifth century A.D.

he found that the glory of its philosophers had departed, but that the

glory of its bee-masters still remained. Opinions differ as to the

quality of the modern Hymettian honey. Leake pronounced it superior to

that of the rest of Attica and of the surrounding provinces of Greece.

Others think it inferior to the honey of other parts of Greece, such as

the Cyclades, Corinth, and Thebes, as well as to the heather honey of

Scotland and Ireland. Most of the honey sold as Hymettian comes from

Tourko Vouni, north of Athens, and from other parts of Attica.

Hymettus was also famous in antiquity for its marble, which seems to

have been especially prized by the Romans. This marble, which is still

quarried in large quantities on Hymettus, is a bluish-grey streaky

marble, of finer and closer grain than the white Pentelic marble, but

far inferior to it in beauty. The Greeks seem not to have used it

commonly till the third century B.C. From that time onward we find it

employed for tombstones, inscriptions, and the casing of buildings. The

principal quarries are on the western side of the mountain, on the

slopes which enclose the valley of St. George on the south and

south-east and which on the other side descend nearly sheer into ‘the

Devil’s Glen’ or ‘the Evil Glen,’ the deepest and wildest gorge in

Hymettus. Vestiges of the ancient road or slide by which the blocks were

brought down from the quarries may be seen about a hundred yards above

the chapel of St. George; the road seems to have been led in serpentine

curves down the slope, not in a straight line like the road from the

quarries on Pentelicus. A great part of the upper ridge of Hymettus is

composed of a white marble resembling the white marble of Pentelicus,

but inferior to it in crystalline structure and of a duller white. The

ancients apparently made little use of this white Hymettian marble.

Clouds on Hymettus were believed to prognosticate rain; if during a

storm a long bank of clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it meant

that the storm would increase in fury. Hymettus is still as of old

remarkable for the wonderful purple glow which comes over it as seen

from Athens by evening light. When the sun is setting, a rosy flush

spreads over the whole mountain, which, as the daylight fades and the

shadows creep up the slope, passes by insensible transitions through all

intermediate shades of colour into the deepest violet. This purple tinge

is peculiar to Hymettus; none of the other mountains which encircle the

plain of Athens assumes it at any hour of the day. It was when the

sunset glow was on Hymettus that Socrates drained the poisoned cup.

VII. MOUNT PENTELICUS.—Pentelicus is the pyramid-like mountain, between

three and four thousand feet high, which closes the Athenian plain on

the north-east, at a distance of about ten miles from Athens. Its upper

slopes, as seen from the Acropolis at Athens, have been aptly compared

to the pediment or gable of a Greek temple. Through the clear air of

Attica the unaided eye, looking from the Acropolis, can distinguish the

white line of the ancient quarries descending, somewhat to the right of

the highest peak, straight down into the valley where the monastery of

Mendeli lies hidden by the intervening heights; to the left of the

summit, half-way up the slope, may be discerned the large white patches

which mark the site of the modern quarries.

But though the view of the pyramidal or gable-like summit is the one

which chiefly strikes the observer at Athens, Pentelicus is really a

range of mountains with a number of lesser summits, extending from

north-west to south-east for a distance of about four and a half miles.

The ancient quarries lie on the south-western side of the highest peak.

Five-and-twenty of them may be counted, one above the other; the highest

is situated not far beneath the highest ridge, at a height of over three

thousand three hundred feet above the sea. They are reached from the

monastery of Mendeli, the wealthiest monastic establishment in Attica,

which nestles in a well-watered and wooded glade at the southern foot of

the mountain, about twelve hundred feet above sea level. The ground in

front of the monastery is shaded by gigantic white poplars, under which

flows a spring of excellent water. The name Mendeli is the modern

equivalent of Pentele, the name of the ancient township, the site of

which is perhaps marked by some ancient blocks and traces of walls and

terraces at the chapel of the Trinity, a little to the north-east of the

monastery.

The quarries are situated in the gullies above the monastery. An ancient

road, very steep and rugged, leads to them up the eastern side of the

principal gully. The road is roughly paved; the blocks of marble were

probably brought down it on wooden slides. Square holes may be seen at

intervals cut in the rock at the side of the road; the beams which

supported the wooden slides may have been fastened in these holes. The

road appears to end at the principal quarry, a spot now called Spilia,

two thousand three hundred feet above the sea. Here the rock has been

quarried away so as to leave a smooth perpendicular wall of marble, the

top of which is fringed with firs. The marks, delicate and regular, of

the ancient chisels may be seen in horizontal rows on the face of the

rock. At the foot of this wall of marble, overgrown with shrubs and

mantled with creepers, is the low entrance to a stalactite grotto, well

known to visitors, as the names cut and painted on the walls suffice to

prove. The entrance is partly built up with walls of the Byzantine age;

to the right, roofed by the rock, is a chapel of St. Nicholas. The

grotto is spacious, cool, and dark; its floor descends somewhat from the

mouth inwards. About sixty paces from the entrance there is a small

side-grotto with a rocky basin full of cold spring-water.

An examination of the marks on the rock shows that the ancients

regularly quarried the marble in rectangular blocks, first running a

groove round each block with the chisel and then forcing it out with

wedges. The effect of this has been to leave the quarries in the shape

of huge rectangular cuttings in the side of the mountain.

The stone extracted from these quarries is a white marble of a close

fine grain. It is readily distinguished from Parian marble—the other

white marble commonly used by Greek sculptors and architects—by its

finer grain and opaque milky whiteness; whereas the Parian marble is

composed of large transparent crystals, and is of a glistering snowy

whiteness. Parian marble resembles crystallised sugar; Pentelic marble

resembles solidified milk, though its surface is of course more

granular. Pentelic marble, alone among all Greek marbles, contains a

slight tincture of iron; hence its surface, when long exposed to the

weather, acquires that rich golden-brown patina which is so much admired

on the columns of the Parthenon and other buildings constructed of

Pentelic marble. The Parian marble, on the other hand, though it

weathers more easily than the Pentelic on account of its coarser grain,

always remains dazzlingly white. Pentelic marble is always clearly

stratified, and in places it is streaked with veins of silvery white,

green, and reddish-violet mica. Blocks so streaked were either thrown

aside by the ancients or used by them for buildings, not sculpture. But

even in architecture these veins of mica entailed this disadvantage that

the surfaces containing them, when long exposed to the weather, split

and pealed off in flakes, as we may see on the drums of the columns of

the Olympieum or Parthenon.

Besides the fine white marble already described, which is commonly known

simply as Pentelic marble, there occurs on Mount Pentelicus a grey,

bluish-grey, and grey-streaked marble identical in kind with the marble

known as Hymettian, because the ancients quarried it on Mount Hymettus.

This grey or bluish-grey marble is of more recent geological formation

than the white. It does not appear to have been quarried by the ancients

on Pentelicus; at least no ancient quarries of it have been discovered

on the mountain. But it is now obtained in great masses in the large

modern quarries to the east of Kephisia, and furnishes Athens with

building material for the better class of houses and public edifices;

even paving-stones are made of it.

An hour’s climb from the great quarry at Spilia takes us to the summit

of Pentelicus. The path ascends slopes which not many years ago were

thickly wooded, but are now bare and stony. The view from the top is the

clearest and most comprehensive that can be obtained of the Attic

peninsula. Conspicuous below us on the north is the sickle-shaped bay of

Marathon. The snowy peak of Parnassus closes the prospect on the west;

the mountains of Euboea bound it on the north; and to the south, in

clear weather, the island of Melos is faintly visible at a distance of

ninety to a hundred miles. On the ridge, a little below and to the

south-east of the summit of Pentelicus, there is a small platform, which

on three sides shows traces of having been hewn out of the rock. It is

exactly in the line of the ancient paved road, which, however, comes to

an end considerably lower down, at the great quarry. On this platform

probably stood the image of Athena mentioned by Pausanias.

VIII. PHYLE.—An expedition to the ruins of Phyle is a favourite

excursion of visitors to Athens. The distance by road is about fourteen

miles. Diodorus indeed estimates the distance at a hundred Greek

furlongs or eleven miles. But he is wrong. Demosthenes, more correctly,

says that it was over a hundred and twenty Greek furlongs. A carriage

road runs as far as Chasia, a large village on the southern slopes of

Mount Parnes, about ten miles from Athens. Beyond this point the way is

nothing but a steep and stony bridle-path. After ascending it for half

an hour we come to the meeting of two deep and savage glens. In the glen

to the right or east the little monastery of Our Lady of the Defile

stands romantically at the foot of sheer precipices. The path to Phyle

(which is at the same time the direct road to Thebes) winds rapidly up

the narrow western glen through a thin forest of firs. In places the

path is hewn in the rock, and the defile is so narrow that a handful of

men might make it good against an army. Phyle is reached in about an

hour and three-quarters from Chasia. The fortress with its massive walls

and towers crowns a high precipitous crag on the southern side of the

pass, which it completely dominates. A ridge connects the crag with the

higher mountains on the east; and along this ridge is the only approach

to the fortress. On the west and south the sides of the crag fall away

abruptly into a deep ravine, which is broken by tremendous precipices,

crested with firs and tufted with shrubs and underwood. The ruins of the

fortress encircle a little plateau, scarcely three hundred feet long

from east to west, on the summit of the crag. The walls and towers,

built of fine quadrangular blocks without mortar, are best preserved on

the north-east side, where they are still standing to a height of

seventeen courses. The tower at the north-east angle is round; the other

two remaining towers are square. The principal gate was on the east

side, approached from the ridge. There was further a postern, also

approached from the ridge, near the south-east corner. From the

fortress, which stands more than two thousand feet above the sea, the

view is magnificent, taking in the whole of the Athenian plain with

Athens itself and Hymettus, and the sea with Salamis, Aegina, and the

coast of Peloponnese.

The high peak, now named Mount Pagania, which towers immediately to the

north-east of Phyle in the form of a crescent-shaped wall of naked rock

is probably the ancient Harma, which the augurs at Athens watched till

they saw lightning flash about its summit, whereupon they sent the

sacrifice to Delphi. Strabo expressly says that Harma was near Phyle. On

its eastern side the peak descends in precipices into the deep glen,

already mentioned, at the entrance of which is the monastery of Our Lady

of the Defile.

Farther up this glen than the monastery, at a height of some hundreds of

feet above the torrent (the Potami) which traverses it, there is a

cavern which is sometimes visited. The direct distance of this cavern

from the monastery is only about a mile and a half. But in the glen the

stream, hemmed in by precipices advancing from the mountains on both

sides, has scooped out for itself between them a bed so profound and

rugged that to scramble along it is impossible, even when the water is

at its lowest. Hence in order to reach the cavern it is needful to make

a long detour round the western flanks of Mount Pagania and to come down

into the glen at a point a good deal higher up. Having done so we follow

the glen downward past the place where another glen opens into it,

bringing its tributary stream to swell the Potami. The cave is situated

high up on the eastern side of the main glen, a little below the meeting

of the waters. To clamber up the steep slope to it is far from easy. The

mouth of the cave is so narrow that only one person can enter it at a

time; it opens at the foot of a precipice darkened by overhanging trees

and flanked by two crags which project like wings on either side. In the

face of the rock to the right of the entrance into the cavern are some

votive niches with worn inscriptions under them. Within the cave, which

may be about a hundred paces deep, water dripping from the roof has

formed large stalactites and has hollowed out basins in the floor.

Broken lamps and potsherds have been found in it in considerable

quantities, which, with the votive niches outside, prove that this

secluded spot was an ancient sanctuary. It was most probably the

Nymphaeum or sanctuary of the Nymphs, which Menander mentioned as being

near Phyle. Here, too, the people of Phyle probably offered the

sacrifices to Pan to which Aelian refers. For one of the inscriptions on

the rock outside the cave sets forth that a certain Tychander caused

workmen to put up the image of Pan beside the Celadon, and that

sacrifices were offered by one Trophimianus. From this inscription we

learn that the Potami, which flows in the depth of the glen below the

cave, went in antiquity by the name of the Celadon or ‘Roaring Stream.’

IX. THE PORT OF ATHENS.—Piraeus, the port of Athens, is a rocky

peninsula which runs out into the sea in a south-westerly direction for

a distance of more than two miles. It is composed of two masses, each

over a mile wide, which are united to each other by a somewhat low and

narrow ridge or isthmus. The south-western mass, anciently known as the

Acte, rises gradually on all sides to a height of nearly two hundred

feet. The north-eastern mass attains a height of nearly three hundred

feet in the steep rocky hill of Munychia. The ancients believed that the

peninsula of Piraeus had formerly been an island, and that it had

received its name because it was the land across (_peran_) the water.

Modern observation confirms the belief that Piraeus was once an island.

The peninsula is joined to the mainland by a stretch of low swampy

ground, nowhere more than eight feet above the level of the sea. This

stretch of low land, which the ancients called Halipedon, appears to be

formed of alluvial soil brought down in the course of ages by the

Cephisus, which falls into the sea a little to the east, and which has

by its deposits gradually converted the rocky island into a peninsula.

Piraeus includes three distinct harbours, each opening to the sea by a

separate mouth. These are the great harbour, technically known as

Cantharus, on the north-west side of the peninsula, and the two smaller

and nearly circular harbours of Zea and Munychia on the south-eastern

side. The whole of the peninsula, with its three harbours, was strongly

fortified in antiquity. The line of the fortification wall may still be

traced almost all round it, and in most places the foundations are so

well preserved that it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the

fortress as a whole. The wall runs along the shore at such a distance as

to be out of reach of the waves, and yet near enough the sea to prevent

an enemy from bringing siege engines into play on the beach. It is from

ten to twelve feet thick, and is very carefully built of squared blocks

of the native limestone without mortar. The quarries in which the stones

were hewn may be observed at many points both behind and in front of the

wall. In places where the stones have been taken away from the wall to

furnish building material for the modern town, we can see the grooves or

channels cut in the rock in which the stones were originally bedded.

These grooves are each about two and a half feet wide and run parallel

to each other, showing that only the outer and inner faces of the wall

were of solid masonry, and that the core must have been, as in many

ancient Greek walls, filled up with rubble and earth. In the best

preserved portions the wall is still standing to a height of five

courses or more. It is flanked by towers which project from the curtain

at intervals of sixty or seventy yards.

In addition to this sea-wall which skirted the coast, the mouths of the

three harbours were contracted by moles of solid masonry that ran out to

meet each other on either side, leaving only a narrow entrance between

their extremities. The long moles which thus barred the mouth of the

great harbour still exist, though the southern of the two has been

washed away by the waves to a depth of some thirteen feet under the

surface of the water. They now support the red and green lights which at

night mark the entrance to the harbour. The haven of Zea is naturally

stronger than the great harbour, and therefore needed less elaborate

fortifications. It consists of a circular basin lying about two hundred

yards inland from the sea, and is approached by a channel a hundred

yards wide. Walls ran along this channel on either side, so that an

enemy’s ships endeavouring to enter the harbour would have had to run

the gauntlet of a cross fire. At its inner end the channel was flanked

on either side by a tower of solid masonry built out into the water, but

connected with the fortification walls. The third harbour, Munychia, the

smallest of the three, is farthest removed from the business and bustle

of the modern port town, and hence has, in some respects, best preserved

the relics of antiquity. Originally it was a mere open bay, and

therefore needed vast constructions of masonry to convert it into a war

harbour. The moles built for this purpose are described by Lieutenant

von Alten, who examined them with attention, as the most magnificent

specimens of ancient Greek fortification which have survived. In some

places on the outer edges of the moles the colossal blocks of which they

are composed have been piled up in wild confusion by the heavy surf, and

project like islets above the surface of the water. Each mole ended in a

tower; and the narrow entrance to the harbour was between the towers.

The tiny basin is commanded by the hill of Munychia which rises steeply

from the shore. In time of danger each of the harbour mouths could be

closed with a chain stretched between the two towers that flanked the

entrance. The chain seems to have been coated with tar to prevent it

from rusting in the water.

On the landward side the peninsula was defended by a wall, which started

from the harbour of Munychia, ascended the hill, and after following the

edge of the plateau for some distance gradually descended westward to

the shallow northern bight of the great harbour, across which it appears

to have been carried on a mole or dam. This landward wall, to judge from

its existing remains, seems to have been a masterpiece of military

engineering, every opportunity offered by the nature of the ground for

strengthening the fortifications having been unerringly seized upon and

turned to account. The naturally weakest spot in the whole circuit was

where the wall crossed the flat between the hill of Munychia and the

great harbour. Here accordingly we find the wall especially strong; it

is twenty-six feet thick, and is constructed of solid masonry in large

squared blocks without any core of rubble. Naturally the gates were

placed in this landward wall and opened northward. Remains of four of

them can be distinguished. The principal gate, flanked by two square

towers on oval bases, stood in the flat ground between the north-east

end of the great harbour and the heights of Munychia. Through it

doubtless ran the highway to Athens; and here at a little side portal

for foot-passengers probably stood the image of Hermes, which the nine

archons dedicated when they set about fortifying Piraeus. A little to

the east of this principal gate and on slightly higher ground is another

gate, through which the road to Athens went between the two Long Walls.

The gate is double, that is, it is composed of a court nearly square

with a gate at each end. The reason of this construction, which is

common in Greek fortifications, was that, if an enemy should force the

outer gate, he would still have a second gate in front of him, and would

in the meantime find himself pent in a narrow court, as in a trap, from

the walls of which he would be assailed on all sides by the missiles of

the defenders.

The docks at Piraeus were one of the glories of Athens. Demosthenes

mentions them along with the Parthenon and the Propylaea. When the

Athenian navy numbered about four hundred warships, we learn from

inscriptions that the number of docks was three hundred and seventy-two.

But this excess of ships over docks could scarcely have caused

inconvenience, as some vessels must always have been in commission. Very

considerable remains of the ancient docks are still to be seen in the

harbours of Zea and Munychia. The flat beach all round the basin of Zea

was enclosed by a wall of ashlar masonry, which ran round the harbour at

a distance of fifty or sixty feet from the water’s edge. This formed the

back wall of all the docks, which extended at right angles to it and

parallel to each other down into the water. The average breadth of each

dock or berth was about twenty feet. The docks were separated from each

other by rows of columns, the foundations of which, bedded on the

shelving rocky beach, descend in steps to the water, and are continued

under it for some distance. These columns supported the roofs, which

were probably wooden, for no remains of a stone roof have been found.

Between these partition rows of columns the rock has been hollowed out

and smoothed, so that it forms an inclined plane, descending gradually,

like the rows of columns, to the sea, and continued under water for some

way. Each of these inclined planes formed the floor of a dock. In the

middle of each floor is built a stone pier about ten feet wide and a

yard high; in some places the native rock, hewn out at the sides, has

been left standing in the centre so as to form a pier of similar

dimensions. On these piers, whether built or hewn out of the rock, the

ancient ships were hauled up and down. Remains of them may still be seen

all round the harbour of Zea running out under the clear water.

The only relics of ancient ships which have been found at Zea are some

plates of Parian marble representing great eyes. Clearly these were the

ship’s eyes which used to be fastened to the bows of ancient Greek

vessels. Pollux tells us that the ship’s name was painted beside its

eye. Philostratus describes the picture of an Etruscan pirate ship

painted blue, with fierce eyes at the prow to frighten the enemy. In a

list of missing or unserviceable ships’ furniture, preserved in an

inscription, mention is twice made of a broken ship’s eye. Some of the

eyes found at Zea show traces of red paint at the back; the paint

probably adhered to them from the ships’ sides; for ships’ bows were

often painted red. Modern Italian sailors sometimes still paint an eye

on the bow of their vessel. In the East, too, every craft owned by a

Chinaman, from a sampan up to an English-built screw-steamer, has a pair

of eyes painted on the bows, that it may see its way and spy out sunken

rocks and other dangers of the deep. Indeed, in all parts of eastern

Asia where many Chinese travel, the local steamers, whether owned by

Chinese or not, all have eyes; otherwise no Chinaman would travel in

them, or send his goods by them.

Another famous structure in Piraeus was the arsenal, which formed a

necessary adjunct to the docks of the navy. We know from ancient authors

that it was built from designs furnished by the architect Zeno, who

explained them to the people in a speech which won him a high reputation

for eloquence. The building was admired for its elegance, and the

Athenians were proud of it. However, it was finally burnt by the Romans

under Sulla, and no certain vestiges of it have been as yet discovered.

But by an extraordinary piece of good fortune the directions given to

the contractor for its construction have been preserved to us. They were

discovered in 1882 engraved on a slab of Hymettian marble at the foot of

the hill of Munychia, not far from the harbour of Zea. The directions

are so full, clear, and precise that we now know Philo’s arsenal from

roof to foundation better than any other building of ancient Greece,

though not a stone of it has been found. A brief description of the

edifice, derived from the inscription, may not be uninteresting.

The arsenal was to be built at Zea, the principal war-harbour, and was

to begin at the gateway which led from the market-place and to extend to

the back of the docks. It was to be constructed of the hard reddish-grey

Piraeic limestone, an excellent building material often mentioned in

inscriptions and still much in use. In shape it was to be a sort of

arcade, lit principally by rows of windows in the long sides, and

divided into three aisles by two rows of columns running down its whole

length. The central aisle, paved with flags, and entered by two

bronze-plated doors at each end, was to be kept clear as a passage for

the public; while the two side aisles were to serve for storing the

ships’ tackle. For this purpose each of the side aisles was divided into

two stories by a wooden flooring. On the ground floor the sails and

other canvas gear were stowed away in presses; and in the upper

galleries the ropes were coiled on open wooden shelves. Between the

columns which flanked the central aisle there ran a stone balustrade

with latticed gates opening into the side aisles between each pair of

columns. The roof of the building was to be constructed of strong wooden

rafters overlaid with boards, which were to be fastened on with iron

nails; and the whole was to be covered with close-fitting Corinthian

tiles. To secure that the building should be well aired, which was

especially necessary in a magazine of this sort, lest the tackle should

suffer from damp, slit-like openings were to be left in the walls

between the joints of the stones, the number and situation of these

air-holes being left to the discretion of the architect. Such was, in

outline, the great arsenal of the Piraeus. Thither on hot summer days,

we may suppose, crowds were glad to escape from the dust and glare of

the streets and to promenade in the cool, lofty, and dimly-lighted

arcade, often stopping to gaze with idle curiosity or patriotic pride at

the long array of well-ordered tackle which spoke of the naval supremacy

of Athens.

Before we quit the war-harbours we should note the Choma, as it was

called, a quay near the mouth of the harbour on which, when an armament

was fitting out for sea, the Council of the Five Hundred held their

sittings daily till the squadron sailed. When all was ready, every

captain was bound by law to lay his vessel alongside the quay to be

inspected by the Council. The inspection over, the fleet weighed anchor

and proceeded on its voyage. It must have been a heart-stirring sight to

witness the departure of a fleet for the seat of war, as gallant ship

after ship passed in long procession through the mouth of the harbour

and stood out to sea, followed by the gazing eyes and by the hopes and

fears and prayers of thousands assembled on the shore. When the last

ship had glided from the smooth water of the harbour, and begun to

breast the waves and shake out its sails to the freshening breeze,

multitudes would rush from the shore to the heights, there to watch the

galleys slowly lessening in the distance, till they could discern no

longer the flash and sparkle of the oars as they rose and fell at the

ships’ sides, and till even the white sails melted away like snow in the

blaze of the sun on the far southern horizon.

A long line of colonnades extending along the eastern shore of the great

harbour appears to have formed the public mart or emporium. One of the

most important buildings in this commercial part of the harbour was a

bazaar or exchange, where foreign merchants exhibited samples of their

wares, and where bankers sat at the receipt of custom. It must have been

close to the quays and the shipping, as we learn from the account of a

successful raid which Alexander of Pherae once made on the bankers’

counters. One day a squadron was seen standing into the harbour. The

loungers on the quays watched it with indolent curiosity till the ships

drew up alongside the wharfs, when a crowd of armed men leaped from the

ships’ sides, drew their swords, and with a flourish of trumpets made a

rush for the bazaar, where they swept the counters clean and then

returned with the booty to their vessels, without stopping to notice the

panic-stricken crowds who were fleeing in all directions. In another

‘cutting-out’ expedition which the Lacedaemonians made with twelve ships

into the harbour of Piraeus, a handful of daring men jumped ashore, laid

hold of some merchants and skippers in the bazaar, and hurried them on

board. It was in the bazaar that the Boastful Man in Theophrastus used

to stand talking with foreigners about the great sums he had at sea,

while he sent his page to the bank where he kept the sum of ten-pence.

Chief among the holy places of Piraeus was a sanctuary of Saviour Zeus.

Fine paintings by distinguished artists adorned the cloisters attached

to it, and statues stood in the open air. The festival of the god

included a regatta and a procession through the streets. The expenses of

the sanctuary were partly defrayed by a small tax levied on every vessel

which put into the port. Moreover, persons who had escaped from

danger—for example, seafaring men who had come safe to land—commonly

brought thank-offerings to the shrine. From a fragment of an ancient

comedy we learn that, among the long-shore sharks who lay in wait on the

quays for sailors fresh from a voyage, there were cooks with an eye to

business. For in the passage in question one of the fraternity tells us

how, whenever he spied a jolly tar just stepping ashore, ready for a

spree, with a bulging purse in his fist and an expansive smile on his

sunburnt face, he used to rush up to him, shake him warmly by the hand,

drop a delicate allusion to Saviour Zeus, and proffer his services at

the sacrifice. The bait took, and soon he was to be seen heading for the

sanctuary with the sailor man in tow.

Better known to English readers than the sanctuary of Saviour Zeus was

the altar of the Unknown God which St. Paul, and after him Pausanias,

saw at Phalerum, the old port of Athens. In a dialogue attributed to

Lucian, a certain Critias raps out a number of oaths by the old heathen

gods and goddesses, and for each of them he is gravely taken to task by

his comrade Triephon, who has just been initiated into the sublime

mysteries of the Christian theology by a person of a Hebrew cast of

countenance, whom he describes as a bald-pated long-nosed Galilean. At

last Critias swears by the Unknown God at Athens, and this oath is

allowed to pass unchallenged by Triephon, who winds up the dialogue with

this edifying advice: “Let us, having found out and worshipped the

Unknown God at Athens, raise our hands to heaven and give him thanks

that we have been found worthy to be subject unto so great a power; but

let us leave other folk to babble, satisfied ourselves with applying to

them the proverb 'Hippoclides doesn’t care.'”

A little way from the shore of the great harbour was the market-place

named after the Milesian architect Hippodamus, who laid out Piraeus on a

regular plan. It must have been a spacious open square, for we hear of

troops mustering in it. The distinguished general Timotheus had a house

on the market-place, and it was here that he lodged his two royal

visitors, Jason of Pherae and Alcetas king of Epirus, when they came to

give evidence at his trial. The general had impaired his private fortune

by his exertions in the public service, and when his illustrious

visitors arrived late one evening he had to send out his Caleb

Balderstone in haste to borrow some bedding and silver plate. From the

market-place a street led upwards to the sanctuary of Artemis on the

hill of Munychia. It must have been a wide street; for in the

street-fighting at the revolution which overturned the tyranny of the

Thirty and restored the democracy, the troops of the tyrants formed in

order of battle in the market-place and then marched up the street,

while the democratic party, led by Thrasybulus, charged down the street

in battle array and met them. At one time apparently the market-place

fell into disrepair, and enjoyed the dubious privilege of what is

popularly known in Scotland as a ‘free coup,’ the inhabitants of the

neighbouring streets using it unceremoniously as a convenient dust-hole

wherein to throw away their old rags and bones and other domestic

refuse. At last the authorities felt constrained to interfere and put a

stop to the nuisance. So they ordered that the market-place be levelled

and put in good repair, and that for the future nobody should be allowed

to shoot rubbish or dump down dung in it.

The broad straight streets of the new town of Piraeus must have formed a

striking contrast to the narrow and crooked streets, lined with mean

houses, which Athens itself seems always to have retained. Aristotle

perhaps had this contrast in his mind when he recommended for his ideal

city a mixture of the two modes of building, remarking that the new

straight streets in the style of Hippodamus were handsomer and more

convenient, but that the old crooked streets could be better defended

against an enemy. Another advantage of the older style of architecture,

at least in southern cities, is the shade and coolness of narrow lanes

from which, as from the bottom of a well, we look up at a narrow strip

of blue sky high overhead, instead of being exposed to the pitiless

glare of the sun as we pace, with blue spectacles on our eyes and a

white umbrella over our head, the broad open streets which, on the model

of the Parisian boulevards, are rapidly springing up in the towns of

southern Europe. Still, in spite of the ravages of municipal authorities

and the jerry-builder, we can even yet remark in modern Europe a

contrast between the towns that have grown up irregularly in the course

of ages, and those which have been created at once on a regular plan by

the will of a despot. The two most regularly built towns in Europe are

probably Turin and Mannheim. Turin still stands on the lines laid down

by Augustus, when he founded a Roman colony on the site; Mannheim was

built by the Elector Palatine, Frederick the Fourth, in 1606. Something

of the same difference may also be observed between Madrid, the new

capital of Spain, with its thoroughfares radiating like the spokes of a

wheel from the Puerta del Sol, and the old Spanish capital Toledo, with

its narrow lanes straggling up and down the rocky hill whence the white,

silent, seemingly half-deserted city looks down on the gorge of the

Tagus. But Madrid, a creation of Philip the Second, does not equal Turin

or Mannheim in mathematical regularity of construction.

There can be no doubt that the fortification of Piraeus and the

transference to it of the port of Athens from the open roadstead of

Phalerum constituted one of the most momentous steps in the history of

Athens. Coupled with the construction of a large permanent war-fleet it

made Athens the first naval power in Greece, and so determined her

subsequent history. All three measures originated in the far-seeing mind

of Themistocles, who thus in a sense created Athens, and proved himself

thereby one of the greatest of statesmen. He saw that Piraeus was more

important to the Athenians than Athens itself, and he often advised

them, if ever they were hard put to it by land, to evacuate Athens and

settle at Piraeus, where with their fleet they could defy the world. If

they had taken his advice, Athens might perhaps have played a still

greater part in history.

The man to whom Athens owed so much died an exile in a foreign land;

but, if tradition may be trusted, his bones were afterwards brought and

laid, with singular felicity, beside the sea at the foot of the frowning

walls of that great fortress which formed his noblest monument. The

exact spot has been described by an ancient writer. “At the great

harbour of Piraeus,” says Plutarch, quoting Diodorus the Periegete, “a

sort of elbow juts out from the headland of Alcimus; and when you have

rounded this elbow, on the inner side, where the sea is somewhat calm,

there is a large basement of masonry, and the altar-like structure on it

is the grave of Themistocles. And Diodorus imagines that the comic poet

Plato bears him out in the following passage:

'Fair lies thy tomb

For it will speak to merchants everywhere;

It will behold the seamen sailing out and in,

And mark the contests of the ships.'”

Tradition places the site of the tomb on the shore of the Acte

peninsula, near the modern lighthouse, some way to the south of the

entrance to the great harbour. Here a small square space has been

levelled in the rock; and its outer margin has been cut and smoothed as

if to form the bed of a wall. Within this area are three graves, and

just outside it, on the side away from the sea, is a large sepulchre

hewn in the rock. It has been suggested that when the square space was

enclosed by its wall, and the interior was filled up with rubble, it may

have been the “altar-like structure” described by Diodorus the

Periegete, and that the rock-hewn tomb behind it, and sheltered by it

from the surf and spray of the neighbouring sea, may have been what

antiquity was fain to regard as the grave of Themistocles.

X. THE SACRED WAY.—Having completed his description of the Attic

islands, Pausanias returns to Athens and sets out thence for Eleusis

along the Sacred Way. This was the road by which the initiated went from

Athens to Eleusis: the antiquary Polemo devoted a whole book to a

description of the route. The present highroad from Athens to Eleusis

follows very closely the line of the Sacred Way. This road, running in a

north-westerly direction, soon passes on the left the Botanic Garden,

conspicuous by its tall and stately poplars, and enters the broad belt

of olive-wood which still extends, as it doubtless extended in

antiquity, along both sides of the Cephisus for mile after mile. Through

this wood of ancient olives, with their massive gnarled trunks and pale

green foliage, the road runs for more than a mile, crossing several arms

of the Cephisus, which are generally dry and dusty, the water being

diverted in many petty rivulets to feed the olive-yards and gardens.

Beyond the olive-wood the road at first gradually ascends through a bare

stony tract where nothing grows but thistles; then it climbs more

steeply the arid and rocky slopes of Mount Aegaleus, which it crosses by

a narrow but easy pass, enclosed on both sides by low and desolate

heights. Near the summit of the pass a round isolated hill, crowned by a

church of St. Elias, rises conspicuously on the right. From this point

of the road there is a famous view backward over the Athenian plain. The

scene is especially striking at sunset, when the acropolis, rising high

above the olive-woods, with its temples lit up by the dying splendour of

the sun, stands out against a background of purple mountains. A little

farther on the road turns and begins to descend, and Athens is lost to

sight.

About a mile farther on we pass the deserted monastery of Daphni, which

probably occupies the site of the sanctuary of Apollo mentioned by

Pausanias. It stands on the left of the road enclosed by a high

battlemented wall above which rises the dome of its Byzantine church.

Beyond the monastery the road descends rapidly towards the shore. Here

the ancient road may be traced for a long way on the north side of the

pass, running parallel to the modern highway on the left bank of a dry

water-course which descends from the monastery. The road was partly cut

in the rock, partly supported by a wall of rough stones on the side of

the water-course. As the road descends the sea appears at the farther

end of it, framed between the stony slopes of the hills which enclose

the pass. Farther on, the pass opening out, we see stretched below us,

like a lake, the deep blue waters of the landlocked Gulf of Salamis,

shut in on the south by the bare but beautifully outlined hills of

Salamis, on the north by a graceful sweep of the Attic coast, and backed

by the distant heights of Cithaeron and the mountains of Megara on the

west. Through a dip between the hills of Salamis and the mainland may be

seen in clear weather the far conspicuous peak of Cyllene in Arcadia

with its crown of snow.

A mile or so after passing the monastery we see on the right of the road

some ancient masonry and large blocks of stone at the foot of a rugged

wall of rock, in the face of which many niches are cut. This is the

sanctuary of Aphrodite mentioned by Pausanias. Soon after this point the

hills retire on both sides and the pass ends in a little plain, barren

and waterless but partially planted with olives, beside the shore. Here

the road turns sharply to the right and, following the shore, runs

northward, hemmed in between the sea on the one side and the grey arid

slopes of Mount Aegaleus on the other. Soon, however, the hills trend

inland a little, leaving between the foot of their declivities and the

road a small lake or large pond of clear salt-water, fed by a number of

copious salt-springs, the ancient Rhiti. The pond is formed by damming

up the water of these springs by means of a stone dyke or embankment,

beside which the modern road runs on a narrow strip of sand between the

pond on the right and the sea on the left. Fiedler observed flying-fish

of the size of herrings rising from the surface of the pool: he says

their flesh is white and succulent, better than that of the sea fish in

the neighbouring bay. In antiquity, as Pausanias tells us, the right of

fishing here was strictly preserved by the priests of Eleusis. A strong

stream, turning a mill, flows out of the pool into the sea. At the

farther end of the pond Mount Aegaleus sends down its last spur close to

the road; after passing it the road skirts on the right another

salt-pool and enters the Thriasian plain. The stream which issues from

the second of the two salt-ponds turns, or rather used to turn, another

mill. Opinions have differed as to whether the ancient road ran, like

the modern highway, between the salt-pools and the sea, or skirted the

foot of the hills, making a circuit round the pools. In any case it

seems probable that in antiquity the water of the salt-springs was not

dammed up as at present so as to form pools, but was allowed to flow

directly into the sea in brooks which hence received the name of Rhiti

(‘streams’).

After entering the Thriasian plain the road continues to skirt the

shore. As the ground is here low and marshy, the road is raised on a

causeway, which consists of ancient materials mixed with those of later

ages. This causeway therefore marks the line of the Sacred Way. On the

right of it, about half a mile beyond the salt-pools, where the road to

Kalyvia branches off across the plain to the right, there are remains of

an ancient monument, which appears to have consisted originally of a

cubical mass of earth, cased with white marble and supporting a

tombstone. An inscription proves that the monument marked the tomb of

one Strato, his wife Polla (Paula) Munatia, and his son Isidotus. This

sepulchre, one of the many sepulchres which lined the Sacred Way in

antiquity, is not mentioned by Pausanias.

The Thriasian plain, through which the Sacred Way led to Eleusis, is

surrounded by mountains and hills except on the south, where it is

bounded by the Gulf of Salamis. It is about nine miles long from east to

west, and five miles wide at the broadest part, from north to south. The

northern and western parts of the plain are stony and barren. Nearer the

sea there is a tract of fertile cornland, but it does not extend much to

the north of Eleusis itself. The monotony of the otherwise treeless

expanse is broken here and there by some scattered olive-trees and oaks.

In spring and early summer the plain is gaily carpeted in places with

anemones, red, purple, and blue.

XI. THE HALL OF INITIATION AT ELEUSIS.—The great Hall of Initiation, to

which the paved road leads from the smaller portal, is a vast single

chamber about a hundred and seventy feet square, the sides of which face

north, south, east, and west. The whole of the west side, together with

the western parts of the northern and southern sides, are bounded by the

rock of the acropolis, which has been cut away perpendicularly to make

room for the hall. The roof was supported by six rows of columns, seven

columns in each row: the bases of all these columns except one are still

to be seen in their places. Eight tiers of steps, partly cut in the

rock, partly built, ran all round the chamber except at the entrances,

of which there were six, namely, two on the north, two on the east, and

two on the south. On these tiers of steps the initiated probably sat

watching the performance of the mysteries which took place in the body

of the hall. It is calculated that about three thousand people could

find room on them. The steps, originally narrow, were widened at a later

date by a casing of marble. That this marble casing of the steps is a

late work appears from the use of mortar to fasten it on.

There are passages of ancient writers which seem to imply that besides

the place to which the initiated had access there was an inner Holy of

Holies called the _anaktoron_ or _megaron_, which none but the

high-priest of the mysteries might enter, and which, being suddenly

thrown open, disclosed to the view of the awestruck beholders the most

sacred objects of their religious veneration lit up by a blaze of

dazzling light. But no trace of any inner chamber or enclosure has been

discovered in the great Hall of Initiation. It may therefore be

suggested that the _anaktoron_ or _megaron_ was perhaps nothing but the

body of the hall, which may have been screened by curtains from the

spectators sitting in darkness on the tiers of seats that ran all round

it, till suddenly the curtain rose and revealed the vast hall

brilliantly illuminated, with the gorgeously attired actors in the

sacred drama moving mazily in solemn procession or giddy dance out and

in amongst the forest of columns that rose from the floor of the hall,

while the strains of grave or voluptuous music filled the air. Then,

when all was over, the curtain would as suddenly descend, leaving the

spectators in darkness and silence, with nothing but the memory of the

splendid pageant that had burst upon them and vanished like a dream.

XII. ELEUTHERAE.—From Eleusis the road to Eleutherae, which is at the

same time the highway from Athens to Thebes, goes north-west across the

plain. The olive-trees begin to appear soon after we have left Eleusis,

and the road runs for three miles through thick groves of them to the

large village of Mandra situated on a small height at the entrance to a

valley; for here the mountains which bound the plain of Eleusis begin.

The native rock crops up among the houses and streets of the village.

The hills that rise on both sides of the valley are wooded with pine.

Beyond the village the valley contracts, and the road ascends for a long

time through the stillness and solitude of the pine-forest. A little

wayside inn (the khan of Palaio-Koundoura) is passed in a lonely dale;

and then, after a further ascent, the prospect opens up somewhat, and

the tops of Hymettus and Pentelicus are seen away to the east, appearing

above a nearer range of hills. Soon afterwards the road descends into a

cultivated and fertile little plain or valley watered by the chief arm

of the Eleusinian Cephisus, and bounded on the north by the principal

range of Cithaeron, on the south by the lower outlying chain which we

have just crossed. This no doubt is the plain in which stood the temple

of Dionysus mentioned by Pausanias. At the northern end of the valley or

plain there is now a police-barrack on the right of the road, and near

it a public-house, the khan of Kasa. Here the pass over Cithaeron, in

the strict sense, begins. It is a narrow rocky defile, up which the road

winds tortuously between high pine-clad slopes on either hand. In the

very mouth of the pass, immediately beyond the barrack, a steep,

conical, nearly isolated hill rises up as if to bar the road. Its summit

is crowned with the grey walls and towers of Eleutherae.

The ruins of Eleutherae, now called Gyphtokastro or ‘Gypsy-castle,’ form

one of the finest extant specimens of Greek fortification. The circuit

of the walls, which is but small, encloses the summit and part of the

southern slope of the hill. The north wall, strengthened with eight

square projecting towers, is nearly complete. It is about eight feet

thick, and is built of blocks laid in regular courses, with a core of

rubble. As the ground falls away to the north, the wall is higher on the

outside than on the inside. The towers are about thirty paces apart.

Most of them entered from the ramparts by two doors, one on each side of

the tower. These doors are still to be seen, though the floors of the

upper stories, having been of wood, have of course perished. Each tower

has three small windows or loopholes, one in each of the sides which

project outward beyond the curtain. Traces of the wall and towers on the

other and lower sides of the hill can still be seen, but they are far

less perfect than on the north side. The chief gate was on the south.

The whole place is now an utter solitude. When I first visited it, on a

day in May, the ground was carpeted with yellow flowers; goats were

balancing themselves on the grey ruins; and the goatherd was sleeping in

the shadow of one of the towers. On either hand the mountains, clothed

in their sombre mantle of dark pine-forests, towered into the bright

sky.

If from the ruins of Eleutherae we return to the highroad which winds

along the western foot of the hill, and follow it for a few miles to the

top of the pass, we obtain a commanding view over the wide plain of

Boeotia stretching away to the line of far blue mountains which bounds

it on all sides. Below us, but a little to the west, at the foot of the

long uniform slope of Cithaeron, the red village of Kokla marks the site

of Plataea. Thebes is hidden from view behind the dip of a low

intervening ridge. The sharp double-peaked mountain on the west, beyond

the nearer fir-clad declivities of Cithaeron, is Helicon. The grand

mountain mass which, capped with snow, looms on the north-west, is

Parnassus. The mountains on the north-east are in Euboea, but the strait

which divides them from Boeotia is not visible.

XIII. MEGARA.—From Eleusis to Megara by road or railway is about

fourteen miles. The road first passes along the northern side of the low

ridge which formed the acropolis of Eleusis; then it turns down to the

sea and follows the shore. The plain of Eleusis is divided from the

plain of Megara by a chain of wooded hills which advances southward from

Mount Cithaeron to the shore of the bay. The road skirts the foot of

these hills, ascending and descending, traversing olive-groves, and

winding round little bays and headlands, commanding views, ever shifting

but ever beautiful, of the coast of Salamis across the blue and

blue-green waters of the lake-like bay, which is here so narrow that the

white monastery of Phaneromene, with its clustered domes and turrets,

can be plainly seen standing among green fields on the opposite shore.

Then, when the last spur of the hills is rounded, the plain of Megara,

covered with olives and vines, and backed by high mountains, opens out

before us. In the distance can be distinguished the picturesque

oriental-looking town of Megara, with its white houses rising in

terraces, one above the other, on the sides of two isolated hills in the

far corner of the plain: the higher of the two hills used to be crowned

by a square mediaeval tower.

The modern town is chiefly confined to the western hill, the southern

slope of which it occupies to the summit. Its narrow steep streets, and

white-washed, flat-roofed, windowless houses, with low doorways opening

into courts shaded here and there by a fig-tree, have much the

appearance of an Arab village. The dazzlingly white walls make, in the

brilliant sunshine, an excellent background for the gay costumes of the

women, the bright colours of which (red, green, blue, violet) add to the

Eastern effect of the scene.

XIV. THE SCIRONIAN ROAD.—The famous pass along the sea-cliffs, known in

antiquity as the Scironian Road, is thus described by Strabo: “The

Scironian cliffs leave no passage between them and the sea. The road

from the Isthmus to Megara and Attica runs along the top of them; indeed

in many places it is compelled by the beetling mountain, which is high

and inaccessible, to skirt the brink of the precipices.” The dread of

robbers, who here lay in wait for travellers, enhanced the natural

horrors of the pass in ancient as well as in modern times. In recent

years these horrors have been dissipated by the construction of a

highroad and a railway along the coast; but down to the middle of the

present century, if we may trust the descriptions of travellers, the

cliff-path well deserved its modern name of Kake Skala or ‘the Evil

Staircase.’ For six miles it ran along a narrow crumbling ledge half-way

up the face of an almost sheer cliff, at a height of six to seven

hundred feet above the sea. On the right rose the rock like a wall; on

the left yawned the dizzy abyss, where, far below, the waves broke at

the foot of the precipices in a broad sheet of white curdling foam. So

narrow was the path that only a single sure-footed beast could make its

way with tolerable security along it. In stormy or gusty weather it was

dangerous; a single slip or stumble would have been fatal. When two

trains of mules met, the difficulty of passing each other was extreme.

Indeed at the beginning of the present century Colonel Leake pronounced

the path impassable for horses; and at a later time, when it had been

somewhat mended, another distinguished traveller, himself a Swiss,

declared that he knew of no such giddy track, used by horses, in all

Switzerland. In many places the narrow path had been narrowed still

further by its outer edge having given way and slid into the depths, so

that it was only by using the utmost caution that the traveller was able

to scramble along at all. At one point, where it crossed the mouth of a

gully, the road had completely disappeared, having either fallen into

the sea or, according to another account, been blown up in the War of

Independence. Here therefore the wayfarer was obliged to pick his steps

down a breakneck track which zigzagged down to the narrow strip of

beach, from which he had laboriously to clamber up by a similar track on

the opposite side of the gully. One traveller has graphically described

how his baggage-horses slid and slipped on their hind feet down one of

these tracks, while their drivers hung on to the tails of the animals to

check their too precipitate descent. Last century the path had ceased to

be used even by foot-passengers. Chandler took boat at Nisaea and

coasted along the foot of the cliffs, looking up with amazement at the

narrow path carried along the edge of perpendicular precipices above the

breakers and supported so slenderly beneath “that a spectator may

reasonably shudder with horror at the idea of crossing.”

Nothing was easier than to make such a path impassable. Accordingly when

word reached Peloponnese that Leonidas and his men had been annihilated

by the Persians at Thermopylae, the Peloponnesians hurried to the

Isthmus, blocked up the Scironian road, and built a fortification wall

across the Isthmus. In modern times, though the path had fallen into

decay, it still showed traces of having been used and cared for in

antiquity. In many places the marks of the chariot-wheels were visible

in the rock; in other places there were remains of massive substructions

of masonry which had once supported and widened the road; and here and

there pieces of ancient pavement were to be seen. These were probably

vestiges of the carriage road which, as Pausanias tells us, the emperor

Hadrian constructed along this wild and beautiful coast. At the present

day, as the traveller is whirled along it in the train, he is struck

chiefly by the blueness of the sea and the greenness of the thick

pine-woods which mantle the steep shelving sides of the mountains.

XV. THE ISTHMUS OF CORINTH.—The Isthmus of Corinth, which unites

Peloponnese on the south to the mountainous district of Megara and

Central Greece on the north, is a low flat neck of land about three and

a half miles wide at the narrowest part and about two hundred and sixty

feet high at the lowest point, stretching roughly in a direction from

south-west to north-east. The central part is a flat tableland, which

shelves away in steep terraces to the sea on the southern side. Its

surface is rugged, barren, and waterless; where it is not quite bare and

stony, it is mostly overgrown with stunted shrubs and dwarf pines, or

with thistles and other prickly plants of a grey arid aspect. There is

no underwood and no turf. In spring some grass and herbage sprout in

patches among the thistles and afford pasture to flocks. The niggard

soil, where soil exists, is cultivated in a rude imperfect way, and

yields some scanty crops, mostly of wheat and barley. But in the drought

of summer every green blade disappears, and the fields are little more

than a bare stony wilderness swept by whirling clouds of dust. This

rugged barren quality of the soil was equally characteristic of the

Isthmus in antiquity. It seems to have been customary to gather the

stones from the fields before sowing the seed.

In ancient times ships of small burden were regularly dragged on rollers

or waggons across the narrowest part of the Isthmus in order to avoid

the long voyage round Peloponnese; hence this part of the Isthmus was

known as the _Diolkos_ or Portage. The Portage began on the east at

Schoenus, near the modern Kalamaki; its western termination is not

mentioned by ancient writers, but was probably near the west end of the

modern canal. We read of fleets of warships being transported across the

Isthmus; for example after the battle of Actium the victorious Augustus

thus conveyed his ships across the Isthmus in pursuit of Antony and

Cleopatra, and in 883 A.D. the Greek admiral Nicetas Oriphas transported

a fleet across it to repel an attack of the Saracens. Some remains of

the ancient Portage, which seems to have been a sort of tramway, may

still be seen near a guard-house, at the point where the road from

Kalamaki to Corinth crosses the northern of the two ancient

fortification walls.

The lowest and narrowest part of the Isthmus, through which the Portage

went in antiquity and the modern canal now runs, is bounded on the south

by a line of low cliffs. Along the crest of these cliffs may be traced

the remains of an ancient fortification wall stretching right across the

Isthmus from sea to sea. It is built of large blocks laid in fairly

regular courses, and is flanked by square towers which project from the

curtain at regular intervals of about a hundred yards on the north side,

showing that the wall was meant to protect the Corinthian end of the

Isthmus against invasion from the north. The wall does not extend in a

straight line, but follows the crest of the cliffs, wherever this

natural advantage presented itself.

XVI. THE BATH OF APHRODITE.—The lower spring, which Pausanias took to be

Pirene, has sometimes been identified with the copious springs now known

as ‘the bath of Aphrodite.’ They issue just below the steep northern

edge of the broad terrace on which the old city of Corinth stood. Here

the rocks curve round in a semicircle and overhang so as to form

grottoes under their beetling brows. From these rocks, overgrown with

moss and rank creepers, the clear water bubbles and trickles in copious

rills, which nourish a rich vegetation in the open ground through which

they flow. The grotto, which is always fresh and cool, commands an

uninterrupted view over the Gulf to the mountains beyond. Here in the

days of the Turkish dominion the bey of Corinth had his gardens, where

he led a life of Asiatic luxury. A staircase still leads from the grotto

to the terrace above, on the edge of which stood his seraglio. All is

now ruin and desolation. A few pieces of ancient columns of green and

white streaked marble mark the site of the seraglio. The spring is

frequented only by washerwomen, and its streams water only vegetable

gardens and orchards. But the water is as sweet as in Pausanias’s time,

and the grottoes under the overhanging ledge of rock might pass for “the

chambers made like grottoes” of which he makes mention.[6]

-----

Footnote 6:

However, the true Pirene described by Pausanias has lately been

discovered elsewhere by the American archaeologists who are now

excavating the site of ancient Corinth.

-----

XVII. THE PROSPECT FROM ACRO-CORINTH.—The view from the summit of

Acro-Corinth has been famous since the days of Strabo, who has

accurately described it. The brilliant foreground, indeed, on which he

looked down has vanished. The stately city with its temples, its

terraced gardens, its colonnades, its fountains, is no more. In its

place there is spread out at our feet the flat yellowish expanse of the

Isthmus, stretching like a bridge across the sea to the point where the

Geranian mountains, their slopes clothed with the sombre green of the

pine-forests, rise abruptly like a massive barrier at its farther end,

sending out on their western side a long promontory, which cuts far into

the blue waters of the Corinthian Gulf. Across the Gulf tower on the

north the bold sharp peaks of Cithaeron and Helicon in Boeotia. On the

north-west Parnassus lifts its mighty head, glistering with snow into

late spring, but grey and bare in summer. In the far west loom the

Locrian and Aetolian mountains, seeming to unite with the mountains of

Peloponnese on the south, and thus apparently converting the Gulf of

Corinth into an inland mountain-girdled lake. To the south-west, above

ranges of grey limestone hills dotted with dark pines, soar the snowy

peaks of Cyllene and Aroania in Arcadia. On the south the prospect is

shut in by the high tablelands and hills of Argolis, range beyond range,

the lower slopes of the valleys covered in spring with corn-fields,

their upper slopes with tracts of brushwood. Eastward Salamis and the

sharp-peaked Aegina are conspicuous. In this direction the view is

bounded by the hills of Attica—the long ridge of Hymettus and the more

pointed summits of Pentelicus and Parnes, while below them in clear

weather the Parthenon is distinctly visible on the Acropolis nearly

fifty miles away, the pinnacle of Lycabettus rising over it crowned with

its white far-gleaming chapel.

XVIII. THE CAPTURE OF CORINTH BY ARATUS.—The story of the capture of

Corinth by Aratus has been told by Plutarch with a wealth of picturesque

details which he doubtless took from the Memoirs written by Aratus

himself. The city, and especially the lofty and precipitous acropolis of

Corinth, was held for King Antigonus by a Macedonian garrison. Aratus

resolved to take the place by a night surprise. For this perilous

service he picked out four hundred men, and led them to one of the

city-gates. It was midsummer: a full moon rode in a cloudless sky, and

the assailants feared that its bright beams, reflected from so many

helmets and spears, might betray their approach to the sentinels on the

walls. But just as the head of the column neared the gate, a heavy bank

of clouds came scudding up from the sea and veiled the moon, blotting

out the line of walls and shrouding the storming-party in darkness.

Favoured by the gloom eight men, in the guise of travellers, crept up to

the gate and put the sentinels to the sword. Ordering the rest of his

men to follow him at the best speed they could make, Aratus now advanced

at the head of a forlorn hope of one hundred men, planted the ladders,

scaled the wall, and descended into the city. Not a soul was stirring in

the streets, and Aratus hurried along in the direction of the acropolis,

congratulating himself on escaping observation, when a patrol of four

men was seen coming down the street with flaring torches. The moon shone

full on them, but Aratus and his men were in shadow. Aratus whispered

his men to stand close in the shadow of the houses. The unsuspecting

patrol came on: in a minute three of them were cut down, and the fourth

escaped with a gash on his head, crying out that the enemy were within

the walls. A few minutes more and the trumpets rang out and the whole

city was up. The streets, lately silent and deserted, were thronged with

crowds hurrying to and fro; lights glanced at the windows; and high

above the city a line of twinkling points of fire marked the summit of

the acropolis. At the same time a confused hum of voices broke on the

ear from all sides. Undeterred by these symptoms of the gathering storm,

Aratus pressed up the winding path towards the acropolis as fast as the

steep and rugged nature of the ground allowed.

Meantime the three hundred men whom he had left behind, bewildered by

the sudden uproar, the flashing of multitudinous lights, and all the

tumult of the rudely awakened city, missed the path up the acropolis

and, knowing not whither to turn, halted under an overhanging crag at

the foot of the mountain. Here they remained in a state of the utmost

anxiety and alarm. For by this time Aratus was hotly engaged with the

garrison on the summit, and the noise of battle and of distant cheering

came floating down to them, but so faint with distance, so broken and

distorted by the reverberation of the cliffs, that the men below,

listening intently, could not tell from which direction the sounds

proceeded. While they were still crouching under the shadow of the

precipice, they were startled by a loud peal of trumpets close at hand,

and peering through the gloom they perceived a large body of men

marching past them up the slope. It was the king’s troops hastening to

the relief of the garrison on the acropolis. Instantly the three hundred

charged out from their lurking-place, and taking the enemy completely by

surprise, broke them and drove them in confusion towards the city. They

were still flushed with victory when a messenger came hurrying down at

breakneck speed from the citadel, telling them that Aratus was at it,

cut and thrust, with the garrison, who stood bravely to their arms, and

imploring them to hasten to his assistance. They bade him lead the way;

and as they toiled upwards they shouted to let their comrades know that

help was at hand. By this time the clouds had passed over and the sky

was again clear; and so all up the weary ascent they could see the

weapons of friend and foe glittering in the moonlight, as the fight

swayed this way and that, and could hear their hoarse cries, multiplied

apparently a thousandfold as they rolled down on the night air from crag

to crag. At last they reached the top, and charging side by side with

their friends, forced the enemy from the walls. Day was beginning to

break when Aratus and his men stood victorious on the summit.

XIX. SICYON.—Few ancient cities were more advantageously or beautifully

situated than Sicyon. Built on a spacious and level tableland, defended

on every side by cliffs, abundantly supplied with water, at a distance

both safe and convenient from the sea, which, lying beyond a strip of

fertile plain, sends its cool refreshing breezes to temper the summer

heat, the city possessed a site secure, wholesome, and adapted both for

agriculture and commerce. Nor are the natural beauties of the site less

remarkable than its more material advantages. Behind it rise wooded

mountains and in front of it, across the narrow plain, is stretched the

wonderful panorama of the Corinthian Gulf, with Helicon, Cithaeron, and

Parnassus towering beyond it to the north, and the mighty rock of

Acro-Corinth barring the prospect on the east. At sunrise and sunset

especially the scene is one of indescribable loveliness. The ancients

themselves were not insensible to the charms of Sicyon. “A lovely and

fruitful city, adapted to every recreation,” says a scholiast on Homer,

and Diodorus speaks of Sicyon as a place “for peaceful enjoyment.”

XX. PHLIASIA.—The valley of the Asopus above Sicyon is a deep and narrow

glen shut in on either hand by mountains, the steep sides of which are

thickly overgrown with bushes. In some places, where the road is hemmed

in between the roots of the mountain and the white, turbid, rushing

river, the bank is occasionally undermined and swept away by the stream,

and the path disappears altogether. In its upper reaches the glen widens

so as to admit of here and there a small riverside meadow, prettily

situated among oaks and shrubbery, with now and then a patch of ploughed

land. After we have followed the glen upwards from Sicyon for about four

hours, it opens out into a broad and fertile plain, encircled by steep

mountains, down which brooks flow on all sides to join the Asopus. This

upland plain, some four miles long and standing about a thousand feet

above the sea, is Phliasia, the district of which Phlius was the ancient

capital. On the west its level expanse is bounded by the picturesque,

rugged, woody mass of Mount Gavria (about five thousand feet high),

above which appears the snowy top of the lofty Cyllene in Arcadia. The

eastern side of the valley is bounded by the Tricaranian range, which

with its three flat summits divides the Phliasian valley from the vale

of Nemea. The Asopus rises among the southern hills and flows northward

through the valley in a deep grassy bed. It is here a clear and tranquil

stream, very different from the rapid and turbid river which it becomes

in the glen below, where it takes its colour from the soil which is

washed down into it by the numerous torrents from the white argillaceous

mountains through which it threads its way. About the middle of the

plain it is joined by a tributary, longer than the Asopus itself,

flowing from the mountains which enclose the south-western corner of the

plain. The soil of the Phliasian valley is excellent; the central part

of it is given up almost exclusively to vineyards which furnish now, as

they did in antiquity, a fine fiery wine like Burgundy. In autumn the

red and golden foliage of the fading vines lends a richer glow of colour

to the beautiful landscape.

Some light is thrown on the topography of Phlius by the events which

followed the battle of Leuctra. The Phliasians had been friends of

Sparta when Sparta was at the height of her power; and after the

disastrous day of Leuctra, when Sparta was deserted by allies and

subjects alike, the Phliasians stood loyally by their old friends. This

drew down on them the hostility of the victorious Thebans and their

allies. In 368 B.C. a body of Arcadians and Eleans, marching through the

pass of Nemea to join the Thebans, were induced by some Phliasian exiles

to make an attempt to surprise and capture Phlius. Six hundred men,

supplied with ladders, being sent in advance, concealed themselves by

night at the foot of the citadel walls. Next morning the sentinels on

Mount Tricaranum, to the east of the town, signalled the approach of the

enemy from the valley of Nemea. The eyes of the citizens were thus

turned to the hills, over which they momentarily expected to see the

enemy appearing. Taking advantage of their distraction the six hundred

men under the acropolis planted their ladders and were soon masters of

the almost deserted citadel. But the citizens rallied, and after a

fierce struggle drove the enemy with fire and sword over the ramparts.

Next year the allies made a more determined attempt to get possession of

Phlius. The Theban commander at Sicyon marched from that city against

Phlius at the head of his garrison and of a body of Sicyonian and

Pellenian troops. He was supported by Euphron, tyrant of Sicyon, with

two thousand mercenaries. The attack was again made from the hills on

the east of the town. On the neck of land which joins the citadel of

Phlius with the hills a detachment of Sicyonians and Pellenians was

posted, to prevent the Phliasians from ascending the hills and taking

their enemies in the rear. The rest of the army then descended from the

hills in the direction of a sanctuary of Hera, meaning to ravage the

corn-fields and vineyards in the valley. But the Phliasian cavalry and

infantry met them and prevented them from carrying out their intention.

Skirmishing went on most of the day with varying fortune. At one time

Euphron with his mercenaries drove the Phliasians over the broken

ground. But as soon as they reached open ground, where the Phliasian

cavalry could come into play, they were in turn driven back up the hills

as far as the sanctuary of Hera. At last the assailants abandoned the

attack and retreated up the hill, purposing to join the detachment of

Sicyonians and Pellenians, which they had left on the neck of ground

leading to the citadel. To reach them they had to make a long detour up

the hill, for a ravine lay between them and their friends, the ravine

namely along which the city walls were built. The Phliasians pursued

them up hill a little way, then perceiving the enemy’s intention of

forming a junction with the detachment on the neck they turned back, and

taking a short cut close under the town walls hastened to attack the

detachment of the enemy before the main body could come up to their

assistance. In this race the cavalry outstripped the infantry and

charged the Pellenians alone. The latter stood to their arms and

repelled the cavalry, till the Phliasian infantry came running up. Then,

attacked by horse and foot simultaneously, the Pellenians and Sicyonians

gave way. The victorious Phliasians erected a trophy and sang a loud

paean. The enemy watched the scene from the hills; then, drawing

together his beaten and scattered forces, fell sullenly back on Sicyon.

XXI. NEMEA.—Between the valley of Cleonae on the east and the valley of

Phlius or St. George on the west is interposed the valley of Nemea,

running like its sister valleys from south to north. It is a narrow

dale, some two or three miles long, and from half to three-quarters of a

mile broad. At its northern end it contracts to a mere gully. Through

the bottom of the valley, which is almost a dead flat, meanders like a

thread the brook Nemea, fed by the numerous rills which descend from the

neighbouring hills. When swollen by heavy rain, these tributaries,

having an insufficient outlet through the gully at the north end, keep

the bottom of the valley green, moist, and marshy. The dale is thus

better adapted for pasturage than tillage; indeed from the rich pastures

which clothe its bottom and the lower slopes of the hills it received

its name of Nemea, ‘the pastoral vale.’ But if the valley itself,

especially after rain, is green and smiling, the surrounding hills,

scarred and seamed with the beds of torrents, are of a dark and

melancholy hue, and, combined with the absolute solitude—not a human

habitation being visible through the length and breadth of the

dale—affect the mind with a sense of gloom and desolation.[7] The

solitude is only broken by the wandering herds of cattle, and from time

to time by a group of peasants, who come over from St. George to till

their fields in this secluded valley. A white track winds up the western

slope to the mouth of a glen which opens in the hill-side. Through this

glen is the way to St. George and Phlius.

-----

Footnote 7:

The valley has been less solitary since the village of Herakleia was

founded near the ruined temple of Nemean Zeus.

-----

XXII. THE PASS OF THE TRETUS.—At the southern end of the valley of

Cleonae there rises like a wall of rock the mountain of Tretus, which

forms the watershed between the Corinthian and the Argolic gulfs. A

straight toilsome path led from Cleonae in antiquity, and still leads

past the village of Hagios Vasilios, over the mountain, descending into

the Argolic plain at the ruins of Mycenae. But the more convenient way

from the valley of Cleonae to the plain of Argos bends round to the

west, where the mountain is not so high, and runs up a gradually

ascending gully. This was the pass of the Tretus, the chief line of

communication between Corinth and the south. In antiquity it was, as

Pausanias tells us, a driving road, and the ruts worn by the

chariot-wheels can still be seen in many places. The defile, though long

and narrow, shut in by high mountains on either hand, is nowhere steep,

and the rise is not considerable. The road runs by a deeply worn

watercourse, at the bottom of which a clear and shallow stream finds its

way amid luxuriant thickets of oleander, myrtle, and arbutus. The lower

slopes of the mountains are also green with shrubs, but their upper

slopes are grey and rocky.

The pass is easily defended. On both sides, towards Cleonae and towards

the plain of Argos, may be seen traces of ancient works built to defend

the defile. Near the highest point of the pass, where the road begins to

descend towards Argos, there are low Turkish watch-towers called Derweni

on both sides, and rough stone walls such as the Greeks threw up in many

passes during the War of Independence. In 1822 the Turkish army under

Dramali Pasha, retreating from the plain of Argos, was caught by the

Greeks in the pass of the Tretus and nearly annihilated; for years

afterwards the defile was strewed with skeletons and skulls of men and

horses.

“Every part of the Argolic plain,” says Leake, “is considered unhealthy

in summer, and the heat is excessive; that of the ravine of the Tretus,

in the mid-day hours, is said to be something beyond bearing, which I

can easily conceive, having passed through it in August, at an hour in

the morning when the heat was comparatively moderate. Not long since a

Tartar, after having drunk plentifully of wine and raki at Corinth, was

found to be dead when the suriji held his stirrup to dismount at the

khan of Kharvati (Mycenae), just beyond the exit of the Tretus.”

The name Tretus (‘perforated’) was supposed by the ancients to be

derived from a great cave in the mountain where the Nemean lion had his

lair. As to the ancient name of the pass, and the supposed wheel-marks

in it, W. G. Clark says: “This is the road known by the name of Tretos,

or ‘the perforated’; not, I conceive, in consequence of the caverns in

the neighbouring rocks, which are not more numerous hereabouts than

elsewhere, but because the glen is, as it were, _drilled_ through the

rock. And drilled it has been by the stream which flows at the bottom.

We saw, or fancied we saw, frequent wheel-marks in the rocks, and we

know that this was the direction of a carriage road. But from my

subsequent observations I learned to distrust these marks. The ordinary

mode of carrying wood in Greece is to tie the heavier ends of the poles

on each side to the back of the horse or donkey, and suffer the other

ends to trail along the ground, thus making two parallel ruts which in

course of time may attain the depth of and be mistaken for wheel-tracks.

When a depression is once made, it becomes a channel for the winter

rains, and so is smoothed and deepened.”

The modern name of the defile is Dervenaki. The railway from Corinth to

Argos runs through it. Towards the northern end of the pass the khan of

Dervenaki stands in a little glade overshadowed by tall poplars,

cypresses, and mulberry-trees, beside a murmuring spring. At the

southern outlet of the pass the whole plain of Argos, with the mountains

on either hand and the sea in the distance, bursts suddenly on the view.

On the left, nestling at the foot of the hills, are Mycenae and Tiryns,

with Nauplia and its towering acropolis rising from the sea and bounding

the plain on this side. On the right is Argos with its mountain citadel,

and beyond it the Lernaean lake glimmers faintly in the distance. In the

centre of the picture, beyond the long foreground of level plain,

stretches the blue line of the Argolic Gulf.

XXIII. MYCENAE.—Passing southwards through the pass of the Tretus, we

see the spacious plain of Argolis stretched out before us. Mycenae lies

to our left at the roots of the mountains which bound the eastern side

of the plain, not far from the point where the pass of the Tretus opens

out on it. The Argolic plain may be roughly described as a great

triangle, the base of which, on the south, is formed by the Argolic

Gulf, while the eastern and western sides are enclosed by the ranges of

mountains which converge northwards till they meet in Mount Tretus. The

length of the plain from north to south is about twelve miles, the

greatest breadth from east to west perhaps not much less. The mountains

which shut it in are barren and rocky, the highest being those on the

west which form the boundary between Argolis and Arcadia. The whole

expanse appears to have been once a bay of the sea, which has been

gradually filled up by the deposits brought down from the surrounding

mountains. The Gulf of Argolis, a broad and beautiful sheet of water

winding between mountains, must originally, before its upper waters were

expelled by the alluvial deposit, have resembled still more closely,

what it still recalls, a fine Scotch sea-loch or a Norwegian fiord.