Note 496 — Chapter IV · EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN ARGOS AND THE NEIGHBORING CITIES.

Herodot. vi. 74; Pausan. viii. 18, 2. See the description and print of the river Styx, and the neighboring rocks, in Fiedler’s Reise durch Griechenland, vol. i. p. 400.

He describes a scene amidst these rocks, in 1826, when the troops of Ibrahim Pasha were in the Morea, which realizes the fearful pictures of war after the manner of the ancient Gauls, or Thracians. A crowd of five thousand Greeks, of every age and sex, had found shelter in a grassy and bushy spot embosomed amidst these crags,—few of them armed. They were pursued by five thousand Egyptians and Arabians: a very small resistance, in such ground, would have kept the troops at bay, but the poor men either could not or would not offer it. They were forced to surrender: the youngest and most energetic cast themselves headlong from the rocks and perished: three thousand prisoners were carried away captive, and sold for slaves at Corinth, Patras, and Modon: all those who were unfit for sale were massacred on the spot by the Egyptian troops.