Volume 1 — GREECE BEYOND PELOPONNESUS. (continued 2)

The Phocians are unimportant in Greek history, and are mentioned only in connection with their misfortunes, first in the wars which they had to wage against the Thessalians,—for the Thessalians, after completing the conquest of Haemonia, also endeavoured to subdue Phocis, and its inhabitants had great difficulty in warding them off,—and afterwards in the Sacred War. The twenty-two Phocian towns, which were destroyed by Philip, were probably for the most part insignificant places. We are perfectly ignorant as to the relations subsisting among them, but they did not form a political community, with a common magistracy, a common commander in war, and the like; not a trace of such institutions is to be found. It is, in general, one of the most puzzling problems to state what were the bonds which kept an ἔθνος together: to acquire the name of an ἔθνος, no political band was needed; a co-operation for common objects is generally produced spontaneously through the power of circumstances. There are, however, traces to show, that in early times the Phocians formed a closer union among themselves. The case of their leaders in the Sacred War was of a different kind: they are generally called στρατηγοί, but sometimes also τύραννοι; Philomelus and Onomarchus were, in fact, not lawful magistrates; the circumstance that being elected in a lawful form, they were at the head of a numerous army of mercenaries, gave them a power which was limited by no laws, and was, therefore, formidable indeed.

The only important place in Phocis was Elatea, which was either spared in an inconceivable manner by Philip, or was soon afterwards restored on account of its excellent situation, and attained a high degree of prosperity; for during the Macedonian period it is mentioned as a considerable place, notwithstanding the general decay of the Greek towns; and in the same light it appears in Livy’s account of the Roman wars. It was situated in the rich valley of the Cephisus, which widens towards Boeotia, and this may have contributed to its prosperity. The valley formed a pass; and an enemy even after forcing his way through Thermopylae had difficulties at Elatea, which was the key to Boeotia; hence when Philip occupied Elatea by a garrison, this act created at Athens the consternation which is so graphically described by Demosthenes.

Anticyra, also, had a kind of importance; and after the destruction of Cirrha, it was the real port of Phocis, whence a small trade was kept up with the gulf of Corinth. In the first war of the Romans against Philip, Anticyra was destroyed by the fleet which, under the command of Sulpicius, cruised along the coasts of Greece, and laid waste so many thinly-peopled places.

The well-known war called “The Sacred” has received that name quite improperly; it had been stirred up by the Thessalians and Boeotians to the misfortune of the Phocians, who were driven to despair and an infuriated defence, just like the Hussites in the 15th century; and the Phocians ravaged all the countries around, as the Hussites from Bohemia spread devastation far and wide in Bavaria, Franconia, and Saxony. They were completely outlawed, so that no quarter was given to any one; the dead were treated as accursed, and the wounded were run through with spears or nailed on crosses: the rage was quite savage and unpardonable. The Phocians were driven to such extremities, as to seize upon the sacred treasures of the Delphic temple, which enabled them to carry on the war for eight years, until Philip came forward as the champion of the Amphictyons, and, after the withdrawal of the Athenian troops from Thermopylae, advanced with irresistible force. The commanders of the Phocians were unskilful and faithless men, and the nation, losing courage, laid down its arms. Their fate was terrible, though it was called mercy: Philip granted to the troops a free departure; all the towns were destroyed, and their walls demolished; all arms and horses were taken; the inhabitants dispersed in villages, and, in a condition of servitude, placed under the supremacy of the temple of Delphi, which itself stood under the supremacy of Macedonia. They were obliged to pay an annual tribute to the temple, to refund the treasures; but they seem to have neglected this duty, or the money was pocketed by the Macedonians, for Brennus found no gold at Delphi, but only works in bronze. This is again a remarkable instance of the uncertainty of history, even at so late a period: some say that Brennus did not enter Delphi at all, while other historians state that he was at Delphi and plundered it, but that he found little to take. However, the Phocians showed great valour; they withdrew into the highest mountains, and thence made great havoc among the formidable host of Gauls, especially during their retreat. For this reason it was resolved to make amends for what had been done: they were again admitted into the Amphictyony, and allowed to restore their towns; but, like the Locrians, Chalcis, and Corinth, they remained under the supremacy of Macedonia, and when the Romans appeared, they did not belong to Greece, but were Macedonian subjects. Afterwards, they also shared the last two calamities of Greece: the flight of Critolaus from Thermopylae led the Romans through Phocis, and on that occasion the country was ravaged by the conquerors, and Elatea had to suffer severely; lastly, the campaign of Archelaus, who had his head-quarters at Chaeronea, also extended to Phocis, which for this reason was then completely devastated by Sulla.

Doris.

Doris was that district where the highest parts of Parnassus extend towards Pindus. Its towns formed the Doric tetrapolis, or rather tripolis, for the names of only three places are certain, viz., Boion, Cytinion, and Erineos, and they are described by the Greeks themselves as very small places (πολίχνια). The general Greek tradition is, that the Dorians who conquered Peloponnesus came from these three towns; but this is impossible. It is true no traveller has yet visited that district, but we are able to determine at least its extent, which is not as large as that of the Swiss canton of Uri; and as the latter has about 12,000 inhabitants, we may be sure that Doris had not by far as many, for the country in those parts of Parnassus is extremely mountainous, and contains only few valleys that are inhabitable to Alpine shepherds. The Dorians must at one time have occupied a far more extensive country: the little district of Doris stands in the same relation to the former seats of the Dorians, as the present district of Angeln in the duchy of Schleswig stands to the extensive countries once occupied by the ancient Angli. We should be forming a very erroneous estimate, if we were to calculate the number of Angli who invaded Britain from the district at present bearing their name. After the emigration of the great body of the Dorians, the little country of Doris retained their name, while the earlier Doris may perhaps have embraced all Phocis and other neighbouring countries. According to the express testimony of Herodotus,⁠[60] they had formerly dwelt on mount Pindus, and had migrated from north to south. The little tribe maintained itself in the impassable mountains, but we do not know how; it may have been by alliances. They boasted of their pure Doric origin, and regarded themselves as the μητρόπολις of the Peloponnesians, though the latter were mixed with the earlier inhabitants of the peninsula. The Peloponnesians, however, showed them the respect and attachment which everywhere in Greece colonists used to show to their mother country. The Dorians were often involved in wars with the Phocians, and even before the Peloponnesian war they had once been subdued by them, but a Spartan army quickly coming to their rescue, chastised the Phocians, and restored the Dorians to freedom.

It is quite uncertain what afterwards became of the little people. During the period when the administration of Greece was in the hands of the Romans, the Dorians are not mentioned at all; so that they must have been united either with the Phocians, or, which is not improbable, with the Aetolians. If that part of Greece should ever become accessible, much may be discovered that is of importance for ancient history and geography; with the exception of the coasts, scarcely anything is accurately known; the upper countries of Parnassus have scarcely been visited at all, and our maps are arbitrary. It will hardly be possible ever to ascertain the sites of the towns from the want of inscriptions. Beyond the mountains of Doris there is a grand Alpine country.

Aetolia.

In the later history of Greece, the Aetolians are a people of the highest importance, and so they are in the earliest traditions, but during the best period of the Greeks, they sink completely into the background. Their peculiarity is very perplexing to the inquiring historian. We find them mentioned in the Homeric Catalogue, and in the legends of Calydon and Pleuron, and there can be no doubt as to their being a Greek people, for the Curetes as well as the Aetolians themselves are called Greeks. Thucydides too⁠[61] considers them in this light, though only conditionally; he calls them Ἠπειρωτικὸν ἔθνος, and where he mentions their separate tribes, they appear as different from all the other Greeks; he speaks of their language being unintelligible (ἀγνωστότατοι γλῶσσαν), which is a strong expression with Athenians who, like all Greeks, were very tolerant in regard to dialects. The Laconian dialect was quite as different from the Attic, as the Swiss German is from the Low German, and the Athenians scarcely understood one third of it. The Aetolian dialect, accordingly, seems to have already become so barbarous, as to require great attention to guess the meaning when it was spoken. In these circumstances, therefore, the Aetolians appear as non-Greeks, and still more so in Polybius, who says that most of the Aetolians were barbarians. In one passage, Thucydides also classes them with the barbarians, when he states that they, like the Acarnanians, went about in time of peace armed with knives (σιδηροφορεῖν); he also asserts that they were ὠμόφαγοι. Such statements appear to us extremely strange, and seem to suggest a degree of barbarism similar to that of the Abyssinians; but a French traveller has given an excellent explanation of the matter. The inhabitants of those countries are to this day shepherds, for agriculture is scarcely possible there. They kill their cattle, and sometimes cook the meat, but they also smoke it for the purpose of keeping it, and such smoked meat they eat raw, which is not done in the other parts of Greece. Sometimes also they act like the savages in America: they cut the meat into very thin slices, dry it in the air, and then eat it.

As far back as we can trace history, we always find the Aetolians and Curetes as two nations dwelling by the side of each other in the south of Aetolia: such is the case in the Iliad. Afterwards the Curetes disappear, and all the country is occupied by the Aetolians alone. But that country is only a very small portion of what is subsequently called Aetolia, for it embraced only the district of Pleuron and Calydon, about the Evenus. These two towns play as prominent a part in the legends as Mycenae and Tiryns, and Oeneus and Meleager are as familiar to you as Agamemnon and Menelaus. This was Aetolia proper, and a truly Hellenic country: from it proceeded the emigration of Oxylus, which must not be viewed as if Oxylus had served the Heracleids as a guide and joined them; but the Aetolian migration to which Elis owed its origin, was an occurrence quite distinct from the migration of the Dorians into the other parts of Peloponnesus. The Aetolians farther inland were subsequently joined by other Pelasgian tribes of Epirus. As early as the Peloponnesian war, Aetolia was a country of considerable extent, and Thucydides mentions the Bomians, Ophians (Ophionians), and Eurytanians, as its greatest tribes; but these names are uncertain, at least the first two. Within these limits the Aetolians were united during the Peloponnesian war. Their union may be conceived as a relation of isopolity, in which each nation formed an independent community, but on certain emergencies they united and acted as one state. They seem to have met in common sanctuaries, and to have mutually had the perfect right of isopolity, a connection which was however extremely loose, and did not oblige the several members to join one another in offensive operations. In the Peloponnesian war, the Aetolians resisted the Athenians; they were hostile to Naupactus and allied with Ampracia⁠[62]⁠; but beyond their own territory they were weak, and the expedition of the Athenians into Aetolia did the country much harm. The Aetolians showed themselves equally independent towards the Spartans, for when the latter, after the battle of Leuctra, wanted to interfere in their affairs, they were repulsed by the Aetolians. They did not, however, rise to any importance till after the death of Alexander. During the latter part of his life, they took Oeniadae, expelled its inhabitants, and colonised the place anew. Alexander, whose fate was that of all other conquerors, did not know in the end whither to turn; he conceived the unfortunate idea of interfering, from Babylon, in the affairs of Greece, and of coming forward as mediator. Whether it was that he actually wished to restore peace, or whether he had any other motives, in short he issued a proclamation ordering the Greeks to restore all φυγάδες in the widest sense of the term; and the order was even made retrospective, so as to embrace the φυγάδες who had been in exile for many years, and in many cases, as in that of Oeniadae, the φυγάδες consisted of the entire population of a town. This measure, perhaps adopted with a good intention, threw the firebrand of war into Greece. All were in consternation, because it was expected that the exiles would return with their old pretensions, and that the tranquillity which had only just been restored, would be disturbed again. The Athenians were exasperated because the amnesty was in favour of many who had been exiled as traitors and partisans of Macedonia, and whose banishment they had effected with great determination, and under circumstances which rendered the recall scarcely possible. The Aetolians were called upon to evacuate Oeniadae, and this led them to ally themselves with the Athenians in the Lamian war, and to display the greatest perseverance. When the allied army in Thessaly was broken and the Athenians were disabled, the Aetolians alone held out, resisting the great power of the Macedonians, a perseverance which ever after remained the great object of their national pride. All the Macedonian forces under Polysperchon and Antipater now turned against them: with moveable columns they entered the country, and carried on a very cruel war, devastating the country in the same fearful manner as the barbarians did in Peloponnesus, and as the French have frequently done in modern times: they advanced gradually chasing the whole population before them, and all who fell into their hands were either murdered or sold as slaves; all the cultivation of the country was destroyed, towns were reduced to ashes, and all trees rooted out. In this manner, they drove the inhabitants from one valley into another, and into the highest mountains, where they maintained themselves. But here they would have perished from cold, hunger and snow, had not a change of circumstances produced a diversion in their favour: the feuds among the Macedonian generals in Asia saved them. Antipater, who envied Perdiccas for his power, thought it advisable for the present to conclude a truce with the Aetolians, with the intention of completing the devastation of their country afterwards. But God disposed things differently. Amid the perplexities in Asia, Antipater forgot the Aetolians, and the war was not resumed. They now returned from their mountains, and this forms the commencement of a new era in their history.

Several of the nations of Greece had, even as early as that time, begun to feel an instinctive want of uniting with each other for the purpose of increasing their strength. Such had been the case in Arcadia and Thessaly (where Jason of Pherae fostered the feeling) before, and it was now awakened among several other nations. From this time forward two political terms acquired importance in history; the relations they designate were not indeed new, but their import in an extended sense was. At an earlier period, I mean at the time of the Peloponnesian war, this tendency to unite had shown itself at Olynthus on the coast of Thrace, where the Chalcidian and Bottian towns, which until then had stood isolated, united with that city which had become great; and thus they became καθάπερ δῆμος. This is the relation called by later writers ἰσοπολιτεία⁠[63]⁠, which two towns established between each other, as was the case in Switzerland and in the league of the Swabian towns; in former times it had been called πολιτεία. A citizen of such a place was entitled to take up his abode in the other, without becoming a mere resident alien; the ancient Italian law was of the same kind. There can be no doubt that in earlier times the Aetolian tribes were united only by the relation of a common πολιτεία; but they did not form one state, the establishment of which, with one common strategus and one common council (ἀπόκλητοι), belongs to a much later period; it was probably not till after the war with Antipater that the Aetolian state was constituted; but we do not know much about its origin.

The relation of συμπολιτεία was different; it is very necessary to distinguish the two, and great attention is required not to confound them. Sympolity was the relation subsisting between Rome and its municipia, it was the connection of one place with another on a footing of inequality; the citizens of the subordinate state had not the same rights with those of the chief state, their advantage consisting in the close alliance with a powerful head, but they had no share in the election of magistrates (civitas sine suffragio), and the relation was altogether one-sided. Isopolite states, on the other hand, generally stood to each other in a relation of perfect equality, and were quite independent in their transactions with foreign countries; it is only in a very few instances that in later times we find them in a subordinate relation to a chief state. Sympolite states could not, on their own responsibility, enter into negociations with foreign countries, as had been the case of isopolite states only in earlier times. It may perhaps be assumed that all sympolite places were at one time in the relation of isopolity, and that their citizens were entitled to the general franchise in every one of the allied states. Isopolity, therefore, may have existed with several states, which among themselves had no isopolity, as, for example, the Hernicans were in a relation of isopolity with the Romans and also with the Samnites.

At that time the Aetolians increased their connections in both ways, and many distant towns joined them and became Aetolians. Of this we have evident proofs in inscriptions, in which the Aetolians grant to the inhabitants of such places letters of safety against robbery, as for example to the inhabitants of Crete, Carthaea in the island of Ceos, and others, ὡς ὄντων Αἰτωλῶν. Others, seeking the direct protection of the Aetolians, entered the relation of sympolity; but this must not be understood, as if they had taken upon themselves duties as subjects towards the Aetolians; the towns were too distant; but if they did, the great distance at least prevented the relation from becoming oppressive. In the case of isopolity a town could not claim to be protected by the more powerful one. Aetolia thus extended chiefly through the relation of sympolity, and Cephallenia, e.g., joined it. In the earlier times, and down to the sixth century of Rome, Olymp. 135, we can trace the extension only with difficulty; we cannot indeed doubt that the Aetolians extended beyond their own frontiers, but we are unable to say how or how far. The newly added part was called Αἰτωλία ἐπίκτητος, but it is wrongly marked in our maps, for the part beyond the Aetolian mountains, on the coast of Locris, belongs to ancient Aetolia.

The first accession gained by the Aetolians consisted in the alliance with Alexander of Epirus, the son of Pyrrhus (not to be confounded with Alexander the Molottian, the brother of Olympias), against the Acarnanians. On his unfortunate death, Pyrrhus had left to his son a still splendid empire. The two allies divided Acarnania between themselves, and from this time a large portion of that country belongs to Aetolia, especially Stratos, a very important town, the ruins of which still attest its former greatness. I cannot say, whether the acquisition of Naupactus and perhaps the whole country of the Ozolian Locrians belongs to this or to a later period; but Naupactus certainly was united with Aetolia, for about Olymp. 140, a strategus is mentioned who was a native of that town. During the decay of the Macedonian empire, that is, in the latter years of Antigonus Gonatas, the Aetolians greatly extended their empire; a part of Phocis appears to have been in their hands, and in alliance with the Achaeans they carried on a successful war against his son Demetrius, the father of the last Philip; they conquered Phthiotis and a part of Thessaly proper which then became united with them partly by isopolity, and partly by sympolity. The nations on this side of Thermopylae, the Trachinians and Aenianians, became so completely incorporated with them, that Heraclea even was one of their chief cities. At the same time they extended their power in Epirus, after the Epirots had murdered the last member of the royal family of the Aeacidae; they did not, however, confine themselves to that country, but also took possession of Cephallenia, Zacynthus and probably Ithaca also, nay, they even crossed over into Peloponnesus. Elis stood in the relation of isopolity, and several places in western Arcadia, as Phigalea, Heraea, Psophis and others, were connected with them by sympolity. Many towns also stood to them in the relation of isopolity, even the Athenians did so for a time. Aetolia reached the highest point of its power about Olymp. 140, where Polybius commences his history: that was the time of the outbreak of the social war, which the last Philip, in conjunction with the Achaeans, carried on against the Aetolians, who then lost their possessions in Thessaly and Phthiotis. But they were still very powerful, ruling over the country as far as the Spercheus, over the greater part of Acarnania, and Cephallenia, besides being on terms of isopolity with many places. Afterwards, in the second Philippic war, they lost still more, but we know nothing definite about it. In the third war of the Romans against Philip, which ended in the battle of Cynoscephalae, they again recovered many places, but the Romans, contrary to the compact entered into, deprived them of some which belonged to them. The claims they then made led to the war with Antiochus, in which they lost Cephallenia, Heraclea, and other places. They now lived in a state of nominal independence, for they did not, like the Achaeans, form a Roman province; but in point of fact they were dependent upon the Romans, though they did not lose their autonomy, that is their own political constitution and jurisdiction. Their frontiers were very much narrowed, though their territory was still greater than it had ever been during the best period of Greek history. Such is a brief sketch of the various vicissitudes of that remarkable people.

It is difficult to say how we should judge of the character of the Aetolians; it is not easy to arrive at a clear and precise result. But it is a point beyond all dispute that at the period during which we know them, they show a great resemblance in character to the Greek Clephths: they never were a regularly organised people with a civil constitution; their state was only of a military character, and their whole government was military; in the interior, there must necessarily have been great anarchy. Alexander is the only Aetolian whose name occurs in the whole range of Greek literature, and he lived at Alexandria; but he deserves no more to be despised than Callimachus. It is a well-founded charge that the Aetolians were faithless, so that treaties concluded with them were not safe,—hence the disgraceful attack upon the Pamboeotians,—that they disregarded the public law established among the Greeks, which ordained that in the midst of war a truce should be observed during the celebration of the national games. In war they indulged in devastation and robbery, the latter always being the principal motive of their undertakings. It must also be said, to their disgrace, that in regular and open battles they were good for nothing. Their cavalry was excellent, which, considering the nature of their country, is rather surprising; but they never formed a regular phalanx, and their peltasts were no better than the most ordinary ones; if these latter had been well trained, they might have become very efficient, but they never went beyond the first steps of military training.

In geography we treat of Aetolia within its ancient boundaries, and without regard to its later acquisitions. Aetolia has the largest river in Greece within Mount Oeta and Thermopylae: I allude to the Achelous, which for Greece is a very considerable river, though in other countries it would not be so. Its sources are in Mount Pindus, and it is properly a χειμάῤῥους, for although it has always water, yet in winter, during the rainy season, and in spring, after the melting of the snow in the mountains, it is much larger. During these latter seasons of πλήμμυρα it is a mighty river, whereas in summer it may be forded in several places without danger. Where it comes forth from the Dolopian mountains, its bed is very broad and covered with gravel, over which it flows in many arms; at Stratos it is divided, at the season of high water, into seven arms, and in summer perhaps into three or four, which flow between high islands. Its modern name is Aspropotamo, the white river, perhaps from the white mud which during the rainy season it carries with it, and not from its clear water as is commonly supposed. In summer its water is clear, but in spring it is θολερός or muddy, whence it formed a Delta which was constantly increasing. The Echinades were islands at the mouth of the river, but owing to the continual deposits they are now parts of the main land; in like manner Ravenna, in the time of the Roman emperors, was surrounded by the sea, whereas at present it is a few miles distant from it. Such alluvial land as that formed by the Achelous is in modern Greek called βάλτος. A little to the side of the mouth of the river, we have the town of Oeniadae, whose position was as strong as that of Missolunghi, which is situated in the same lagoons, but somewhat more towards the cape and the river Evenus.

In the ancient Greek legends, the Achelous is celebrated on account of the contest with Heracles, in which the river-god metamorphosed himself into a bull, and Heracles broke one of his horns. Some very silly allegorical explanations of this mythus have been proposed.

Evenus, the second river of Aetolia, is much smaller, and flows from the north; it discharges its waters at the point where the Achelous formed its deposits. It is in itself not of much consequence, but the country about its mouth, that is, the district of Calydon and Pleuron, is the ancient and original Aetolia, which is called Aeolis by Thucydides, and perhaps also by Herodotus. This certainly is an ancient and remarkable name, though for our history it is a matter of indifference. Calydon and Pleuron are among the most ancient towns in Greek history, but in later times they were decayed and insignificant, and in the days of Strabo they were completely destroyed. Modern travellers assure us that they have discovered the Cyclopian walls of both towns, but I cannot say whether they are right: their site is indicated with tolerable precision by the ancients; it was not very far inland.

Respecting Dulichion, which occurs in the Odyssey, nothing can be ascertained. The opinion of modern geographers, that it was an ancient Delta, and afterwards disappeared in consequence of further deposits, is erroneous. The modern Greeks are probably no less mistaken in their belief that it was swallowed up by the earth; the sand-banks are in a different place. It is possible that Dulichion may have been the coast of Acarnania, which the Homeric poet, who was not altogether well informed about the western countries, erroneously called an island.

Thermon, the later capital of the Aetolians in Polybius, was situated in the interior. The building of this place pre-supposes that Aetolia at the time was a more extensive country, so that the more ancient towns were situated too near the frontier. Its site cannot be mistaken. No traveller has yet visited it, and I do not believe that any considerable ruins are to be found unless excavations be made; inscriptions do not exist there any more than in Epirus. It was about three miles distant from the great lake, which is situated in the centre of Aetolia in a hollow surrounded by mountains, and separates the waters of the Achelous and Evenus. This lake, which is upwards of twenty-five English miles in length and tolerably broad, now consists of several smaller lakes, which are connected by marshes. Polybius calls it Trichonis, and it forms the receptacle for the waters which flow from the neighbouring mountains and are not carried off by the Evenus. Thermon was not fortified, but was an open place like Sparta; Philip, the son of Demetrius, ravaged it twice, without the Aetolians attempting to defend it. It was there that the Aetolian people assembled and held their general diets: the hot springs were another and still more direct temptation to build the place. Aetolia is, in general, rich in hot sulphureous springs, and I here remind you of what I said on a former occasion respecting the volcanic veins which extend from the Corinthian gulf to Epirus, and especially to Thesprotia. The account of Polybius does not enable us to say whether it was a large city, but I am inclined to believe that it was not very important as a town. It contained a temple of Apollo, government-buildings, and extensive halls, probably adorned with works of art and other costly decorations, being destined as places of meeting for the Παναιτώλιον. These public buildings were set on fire by Philip. After this first conflagration, they were restored by the inhabitants, but ten or twelve years later they were destroyed a second time, and afterwards the place is no longer mentioned.

The walls of the other towns noticed by Polybius still show that they must have been very strong places; they were of considerable extent, but as there are no inscriptions, it is very difficult to determine their names, and it cannot be done without acting in an arbitrary manner.

According to Polybius, the Aetolians were joined by nations which Thucydides still distinguishes from them; some of them are pure Epirot tribes, such as the Amphilochians and Agraeans. I shall speak of them afterwards when I come to Epirus, to which they belong, both ethnographically and geographically. They were probably the first that joined the Aetolians, although in the time of Pyrrhus they still belonged to Epirus, to which they had been ceded by Macedonia.

Acarnania.

Acarnania is the country on the western bank of the Achelous. The earliest notices of the Acarnanians in Thucydides down to those of the latest times, exhibit them in constant collision with the more powerful Aetolians, who endeavoured to unite them with themselves, and, as they resisted, tried to destroy them. They are not mentioned in the Homeric Catalogue; they regarded themselves as the youngest among the Greek peoples, and set it forth as a merit of their own, that they had taken no part in the expedition against the Trojans, the ancestors of the Romans. But we must not infer too much from this: it is certain that at the time when the Catalogue was composed, the interior, or principal part, of the country was inhabited by Epirots, that is, Pelasgians, while the coast was, in my opinion, occupied by Greeks. The people over whom Odysseus ruled were certainly not confined to the little island of Ithaca; they extended far and wide, and their common name was Cephallenians, which also embraced those who lived on the ἤπειρος, that is, in Acarnania, on the coast near the Echinades, in Leucas, and in the Echinades themselves. In the ante-historic times they are mentioned under the name of the Taphians, who afterwards disappear, but seem to have equalled the Minyans in greatness and power. Whether, on the destruction of the empire of Odysseus, the Cephallenians and Arcananians separated, whether they gained strength to extend their dominion towards the interior, or whether a Hellenic immigration peopled the country, are questions on which we cannot decide. The last, however, is the most probable, and is supported by the mythus about Alcmaeon, who is said to have gone to the Echinades; but, however this may be, in the earliest times they are not mentioned under the name Acarnanians. Herodotus speaks of Acarnanians (Ἀκαρνὴν ἀνήρ) even before the time of the Persian wars, in which they took no more part than the Aetolians: their distance seems to have separated them from the rest of the Greeks, so as to prevent their having any share in their doings. Afterwards, in the Peloponnesian war, they sided with the Ionians against the Dorians, being the allies of the Athenians from hatred of the Corinthians, who had established themselves on the coast of Acarnania, had there founded the colonies of Leucas, Anactorion, Alyzia, and the powerful town of Ambracia on the opposite coast, and were severely oppressive to the Acarnanians. This induced the latter to seek the assistance of the Athenians, which was effective, also, against the Aetolians, and brought on the war against them. The Aetolians themselves thereby became connected with the Ambraciots and the Dorians.

In this condition the Acarnanians remained until the time of the Macedonian supremacy; but when the Macedonian empire gained consistency, the Acarnanians thoughtlessly placed themselves under its protection. Philip favored them greatly, and assigned to them Oeniadae, which had previously belonged to the Achaeans, and also Leucas; whether the latter place remained in their possession or not, we do not know. Fresh hostilities now arose with the Aetolians, who were enemies of the Macedonians. The severest blow was inflicted upon the Acarnanians in the reign of Alexander of Epirus, the son of Pyrrhus, for their country was divided between him and the Aetolians. The latter retained the possession of the principal towns which they received; but at the time of the disputes about the succession among the Aeacidae, the Epirot dominion was shaken off, and the Acarnanians again threw themselves into the arms of Macedonia. We must distinguish Acarnania in its earlier and in its later condition: Acarnania in Polybius is considerably reduced on the east near the Achelous, for it there possessed only Oeniadae, but on the coast it was increased through the Corinthian colonies. In this condition it remained, until, in the war between the Romans and Macedonians, its population, having sided with the latter, had to suffer greatly. Leucas was taken and separated from Acarnania. But although the Acarnanians were pardoned by the Romans, they thenceforward completely disappear in history.

The country forms no contrasts, and has no deep valleys with lakes like Aetolia; it has no high mountains, but is a fertile hilly country, with alluvial soil, though not to any great extent, on the coast and the Achelous: the soil is throughout light and good. As regards the political constitution of the Acarnanians, even Polybius speaks of the κοινὸν τῶν Ἀκαρνάνων, so that they must have formed a regularly organised state, no doubt with a common strategus. As far as their manners are concerned, the same historian classes them among the less civilised tribes, for they went about in arms. They did not, like the Aetolians, consist of tribes that were essentially foreign to each other, but of kindred settlers in towns. Nations which, like the Aetolians, are destined by nature to lead a pastoral life, cannot have any important settlements in towns any more than the little cantons of Switzerland; but Acarnania is a thoroughly agricultural country, producing corn and olives, and towns accordingly arose from the nature of circumstances; pastoral life prevailed only in the mountains. These towns had no separate existence independently of the common government of the state; each of them had no doubt its own municipal freedom, but in their relation to foreign countries, they were dependent. This is implied in the term τὸ κοινόν, Latin, commune.

In the Peloponnesian war, Stratos was the capital of the country, but it was taken by the Aetolians, to whom it belonged in the time of Polybius. Its walls are still preserved, and they not only show that, as Thucydides says, it was the largest town of Acarnania, but absolutely a large town of an astonishing circumference. But these countries are so different from those of the intellectual Greeks, that no ruins are found attesting the existence of splendid buildings. Stratos is the only one among the genuine Acarnanian towns, that deserves to be noticed.

Oeniadae, at the mouth of the Achelous, is often mentioned as an Achaean town, and its true character is therefore a real puzzle. Xenophon calls it Achaean, and Scylax of Caryanda applies the name Ἀχαιοί and Ἀχαία to the whole coast from Cape Rhion as far as the Achelous, so that not only Oeniadae, but the other coast-towns, as for example, the little Chalcis, were connected with the Achaeans. Afterwards Oeniadae was taken by the Aetolians; it recovered indeed its independence, but was then conquered by the Acarnanians, and finally taken from them by the Romans. Whether on this last occasion the Achaeans again established their claims, cannot be ascertained. It is not impossible that it may have been an Achaean colony, as we find another in Zacynthos.

The Corinthian colonies, the most remarkable of which were Leucas, Anactorion, Alyzia, and Action, were separated from Acarnania proper at an early period.

Leucas, according to the opinion of the Alexandrian grammarians, who are great authorities in these matters, is mentioned in the Odyssey and the Homeric Catalogue under the name of Neriton, and was at that time still inhabited by Cephallenians. At a later period it was a Doric settlement of Corinth, when this latter city founded colonies on the Ambracian gulf, in Corcyra, and other islands, with a care which shows that it intended to establish its maritime supremacy in those parts. Those settlements belong partly to the period of the Bacchiadae, and partly to that of Cypselus and Periander. Leucas was formerly connected with the mainland by an isthmus, which was cut through by the Corinthians when they established themselves there. Afterwards the isthmus was sometimes restored and sometimes broken through; and these changes frequently occur, even in the middle ages, for the rivers which flow into the Ambracian gulf, carry with them as much mud as the Achelous, and as Leucas was situated close to the shore, and was separated from the mainland only by a very narrow channel, the mud there accumulated by the current which is very strong in that part. This isthmus was very inconvenient to the navigation of the Leucadians to the Ambracian gulf, as they had to sail round the whole promontory; nothing therefore is more natural than that the canal should have been re-opened from time to time. The opinion of those who imagine that the isthmus was an artificially constructed causeway is absurd, though it is quite conceivable that at the time when the isthmus was uninterrupted, a road may have been made upon it; but this has quite a different meaning. The name Leucas has a double nominative, Leucas and Leucata, of which so many instances occur in Latin in the case of Greek proper names,⁠[64] as Croton and Crotona, Ancon and Ancona, the latter of which is the genuine Latin form. It is said that ὁ Λευκάτας was the rock of Leucas; but there is no foundation for this, it is a mere expedient to get over a difficulty. On Cape Leucas stood the temple of Apollo, and from its precipitous cliff Sappho and others are said to have leapt into the sea because their passionate love was not returned.

Anactorion was a very small and insignificant place, as we see from the notices about it during the Peloponnesian war, for it furnished only one trireme.

Action can scarcely be called a town, and is remarkable only for the battle fought there, and the temple of Apollo.

Alyzia was likewise unimportant, and deserves to be noticed only as a Corinthian colony, and as an example of the manner in which the Corinthians detached the coast from Acarnania.

By the side of Action, on the spot afterwards occupied by Prevesa, there arose Nicopolis, which was built by Augustus as a monument of his victory. The Greek population was then so reduced, and the violence of the Roman generals so truly oriental, that Augustus transplanted to Nicopolis the nation of the Aetolians and most of the Acarnanians; for I have no doubt that, to a certain extent, this was really the case. Owing to its situation, the place was during the middle ages regarded as a fortress, and new buildings were erected, whence the ancient ones have for the most part disappeared. The ruins of Nicopolis however are extensive, for Augustus adorned it with splendid buildings. The Byzantine emperors defended it for a long time against the conquests of the Bulgarians, who had subdued a great part of Epirus and the adjoining countries of Greece. We cannot say at what time the name Nicopolis disappears; in the tenth century it still existed, and is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

The Cephallenian Islands.

Under this name, following the example of the Alexandrian grammarians, we comprise those islands which in Homer form the empire of Odysseus, namely, Ithaca, Cephallenia or Same, and Zacynthos; I have already intimated that I have nothing to say about Dulichion. This empire of Odysseus entirely disappears in our history. If we had Ephorus or ample extracts from his work, we should be able to proceed more safely. The Greeks had ancient records about many places and subjects connected with their early history, as we see from Thucydides, but they cannot be called history; Ephorus, however, anxiously endeavoured to collect them all, and all that is quoted from them, is excellent. After the time of the Odyssey those islands are scarcely mentioned at all. Cephallenia is noticed in a passing remark at the time of the Peloponnesian war, Zacynthos too is mentioned once, and in the war of the Romans and Aetolians they are brought forward more particularly; Ithaca, on the other hand, does not occur at all in ancient history. Mythology says, that after Odysseus was slain by Telegonus, his own son by Circe, Telemachus and Penelope quitted the island from fear of the vengeance of the relations of the suitors. This statement when translated into history, means, that the empire was completely broken up, and the dynasty of Odysseus disappeared.

As to Ithaca, we do not even know what was the name of its town; near the port distinct traces of a town and Cyclopian walls are still visible; and a modern English traveller, Sir William Gell, I do not know whether in joke or in earnest, states that they are the remains of the palace of Odysseus. It cannot be ascertained whether the island existed by itself, or whether it was connected with Cephallenia.

Cephallenia had four towns which are mentioned at the time of the Peloponnesian war under the names of Pale, Cranii, Same, and Proni; they were quite independent of one another and allied with Athens. In later times we find them in the relation of sympolity with the Aetolians. The name Cephallenia is of more recent origin, the island being, in early times, called Same. During the Aetolian war, the Romans completely subdued it on account of its situation, which was favourable to navigation. Its inhabitants were notorious as pirates even in very early times.

Zacynthos (the Z must be pronounced as softly as possible), the southernmost of these islands, is entirely of a volcanic nature, and remarkable for its springs of naphtha; it has suffered much from earthquakes, which have continued even in modern times. Otherwise it is a real paradise, and must have been the same in antiquity: its fertility, beauty, and climate are almost fabulous. During the Peloponnesian war, it was taken by the Athenians; it is mentioned at that time as an Achaean colony, so that the Achaeans must have established themselves there as they did at Oeniadae, and thus extended the boundaries of their own country. Afterwards it fell into the hands of the Macedonians, and ultimately into those of the Romans. The Achaeans wanted to unite it again with Peloponnesus, but Flamininus resisted them; but whether they, nevertheless, carried their plan, is unknown, for all information is wanting.

Thessaly.

The name Thessaly is used in two senses: in its proper sense, for example in Scylax, it comprises the country of the ruling tribes of the Thessalians dwelling within their natural boundaries, a circumstance of which no notice at all is taken in our maps and geographical manuals. In this sense Thessaly touches upon the sea only by a line of coast thirty stadia in length, and the remaining coast which we are in the habit of calling Thessalian, does not belong to it. In the ordinary or wider sense, in which the name can be proved to have been used even by Herodotus, Thessaly extended as far as the Aenianians and Malians, perhaps even as far as the Dolopians, in the south. The tribes inhabiting it, the Phthiotans, the Magnetes, Peraebi, and others, were subjects of the Thessalians, and in so far the use of the name which comprises them also is well founded, for they belonged to the state of the Thessalians.

In its narrower sense, Thessaly is the valley of the Peneus, which is said, in Herodotus, to have once been one continuous lake, but afterwards discharged its waters into the sea by breaking through the heights between Ossa and Olympus. This clearly shews that the tradition applies to the valley of the Peneus alone, for the valley south of mount Othrys, for example, could not have been inundated, whereas the fertile plains of Pherae about lake Boebeis as far as the Pagasaean gulf, from which it is separated only by a few hills, may very easily have been inundated. The statement, therefore, is evidently correct; its truth may even now be seen, and the ancients judged correctly. However, to refer the draining, which cannot have been the work of human hands, but must have been effected by revolutions of the earth, to the historical ages is a mistake, because we are accustomed to compress the events of many centuries within the small space of our historical knowledge. The opposite mistake consists in assuming, within the sphere of history, longer intervals than really exist. The duration of a century seems to be very short, but if we examine it more minutely, it is a long period for historical changes. If, for example, we look at Germany and our ancestors 150 or 160 years ago, how different do we find them from ourselves in their mode of living, in their ideas, their occupations, and maxims, and that too in the highest as well as in the lowest classes of society! People have imagined that Rome, from the time of Servius Tullius to that of Cicero, remained in its forms essentially the same; but this is quite impossible, and the difference must have been enormous. Even when we look at nations which seem to admit of no change, for example, the Hindoos, great differences are still manifest at different times: life is ever changeable. I do not believe that this remark is superfluous; it is very important to the historian to have it always present before his mind; it is impossible successfully to treat of ancient history without a thorough knowledge of modern history.

In its wider sense, Thessaly presents the immense contrasts of the excellent plain (τὸ Θεσσαλικὸν πεδίον) and the mountains. On its western side, we have mount Pindus (now Mezzowo, probably a Wallachian name), the highest of all the Greek mountains, which has only very few passes; that of Gomphi, leading from Epirus into Thessaly, is the most convenient, and very easy to defend, on account of the nature of the country. On the south of the Peneus we have mount Othrys, a tame mountain, to use a Swiss expression, which is, indeed, covered with wood, but is, nevertheless, capable of being cultivated, and is used in some parts as pasture to a very great height; it is a smiling and beautiful mountain, with excellent underwood, whereas the higher parts of Pindus produce only firs. Pindus, consisting only of rocks and forests, is a lofty mountain, and a continuation of the great Illyrian Scardus, which extends from the Julian Alps in Carniola, through Bosnia and Dalmatia, as far as Constantinople, rising higher and higher, until, on the coast near Scutari, it reaches its highest point, and forms its real central knot. Although Scardus is not covered with snow all the year round, it is, at any rate, very close to the region of perpetual snow; its ravines and summits are covered with it during the greater part of the year. The mountain then suddenly sinks down, and geographically, though not ethnographically, separates Illyricum from Macedonia, and runs out into Pindus and Othrys. At this point Pindus begins, which is joined in the east by mount Othrys. The Dolopian and Aetolian mountains, for which no general names are mentioned by the ancients, run parallel with mount Othrys, and mount Parnassus is an off-shoot of them. On the southern frontier of Thessaly, in its widest sense, we meet with mount Oeta, which is not so much a mountain as a series of separate hills; the name Oeta is not applicable to it in the interior of the country; the pass of Thermopylae runs between its foot and the Euboean sea. Oeta is a sublime mountain, and renowned in Greek mythology on account of the death of Heracles.

In the north of the valley of the Peneus, a range of very high mountains, some of which are not distinguished by particular names, extends towards Olympus; a part of them is called by Livy montes Cambunii, but we have no distinct information as to the extent to which this name is applicable, though from our maps it would seem as if we had. These mountains issue from the high ranges which, on the extreme borders of Thessaly, in its widest sense, proceed from Macedonia, and form another ramification of the Illyrian Scardus, terminating in mount Olympus, which towers far above the clouds, and is always covered with snow. Every one knows that Olympus is the abode of the Homeric gods; but it is not so generally known, that the Roman poets, Ennius, Virgil, and others, when applying the name Olympus to the vault of heaven, confound Greek mythology and Roman theology. The Greeks conceived the gods as dwelling on the top of the mountain, while the Romans imagined that they lived beyond the heavenly vault, whence Ennius has the expression maxima porta Olympi, a conception quite foreign to the Greeks. I shall hereafter explain why the Greeks called this mountain the centre of the earth, and that, too, before Delphi was described in these terms; for it is strange indeed, Olympus being properly beyond the boundaries of Greece.

Mount Ossa, opposite to Olympus, is not quite so high; the river Peneus flows between these two mountains through the valley of Tempe into the sea. This valley, τὰ Θεσσαλικὰ Τέμπη, was celebrated in antiquity for its beauty. The ancients, on the whole, do not often speak of the beauties of nature, for they are not sentimental; and if they do so, it is always in reference to pleasing and smiling scenery. The description of Tempe in Aelian, taken from Theopompus, is perhaps the most accurate we have in any ancient writer. Dodwell also describes it as equally wonderful; it is from four to five miles in length, and forms not a smooth and splendid district with a luxuriant vegetation, but majestic scenery, resembling, for example, that on the Eisak between Botzen and Brixen in the Tyrol, or that grand scenery in the valley of the Inn: its beauty is manly and sublime.

Mount Pelion extends to the south-east of Ossa, and is one of the most beautiful mountains in the world: it is lovely and fertile up to its top; it is covered with chesnut-trees, and is probably the place from which they have spread over the world, for their nuts are called nuces Castaneae, from the town of Castanea on the Pagasaean gulf. Among the Greek botanists, Pelion is celebrated for its richness in medicinal plants, and for the variety of its trees. Previously to the present wretched state of the country, many large villages existed about mount Pelion; it was the happiest district; its inhabitants enjoyed great privileges, and as they were very industrious and under the special protection of the sultans to whom the district belonged as a fief, they were enabled to pay a large tribute, but lived in the interior quite undisturbed and without suffering any ill usage. Their excellent warehouses, which were known also to German merchants, are now entirely destroyed, although the inhabitants have not risen against the Porte.

This is the physical outline of the mountains. Phthiotis is an entirely mountainous country between Othrys, the Euboean sea and the gulf of Iolcus; but the mountains are not high. The remaining part of Thessaly is not absolutely a plain, for the mountains rise gradually, and the country is intersected by ranges of hills. Thessaly has two gulfs, that near Thermopylae called Μαλιακός or Πυλαϊκός, and the Παγασητικός or Ἰωλκίτης.

I shall now proceed to consider the population. According to the most ancient traditions, Thessaly was inhabited by all kinds of people of quite different names. The poets are fond of applying to the country, in the ancient mythical period, the name Aemonia, which in those times is not an inappropriate name for Thessaly.⁠[65] Among its earliest inhabitants, we have mention of the Lapithae, who dwelt on mount Pelion, I do not exactly know where, and are said to have expelled the Centauri. It is quite clear that the Greeks, in their mythology, conceived the Centaurs only as mythical beings; the explanation of a race of men living on horseback, is of late origin, and altogether uncertain; such a race, moreover, belongs to a plain and not to the mountains.

The only river, besides the Peneus, which is of any historical importance, is the Sperchius or Spercheus in the south, which falls into the Euboean sea about four miles north of Thermopylae. Of poetical interest are the Apidanus and the Anaurus near Iolcus, on the banks of which Jason is said to have lost his shoe. In the west, in the territory of Pherae, we may notice lake Boebeis.

The Thessalians are regarded as an Epirot people, that is, as Thesprotians, who, under their chief Thessalus, conquered Aemonia. Along with the Lapithae, it is said, Aeolian tribes occupied the country, Boeotians living in the valley of Arne, and others elsewhere. Thessaly is sometimes also regarded as the real Αἰολίς. It is impossible to ascertain the true history of the Thesprotians, for our accounts of them directly contradict each other. Thessalians are said to have migrated from Dodona into Thessaly, and Peraebi again are reported to have penetrated from Thessaly into the mountains of Epirus, whence it is probable that here too the identity of the nations gave rise to the traditions about immigration. I do not mean to deny the immigration, but our accounts of it are completely devoid of authenticity. I lay, however, great stress upon the fact, that Thessalians and Pelasgians are synonymous in the ancient poems and genealogies, which are known to us, at least substantially, from the scholiasts on Apollonius Rhodius and the Iliad. This is a grand discovery, and one from which new treasures are still to be gathered: the Alexandrian school always deserves to be spoken of with the greatest respect; the statements contained in these scholia make up for the loss of the poetical lays. At Cyzicus Thessalians and Pelasgians are mentioned; in Lemnos we find Thessalian Minyans, and the Pelasgians of Ravenna and Agylla are likewise called Thessalians. Somewhat later genealogists, as Hellanicus in his Phoronis, account for the Pelasgians dwelling in the most distant countries by emigration from Thessaly under Pelasgus and his son⁠[66] Nanas, which is to us only a hint. But the statement that the Thessalians in the valley of Thessaly were foreign immigrants, is credible on account of their internal constitution and their system of servitude, which suggests the subjugation of the ancient population. A system of servitude so fully developed as in the Wendish parts of Germany, occurs nowhere in Greece except in Thessaly; I do not mean to say, that it did not exist in many other parts also, for traces of it are found in the notes of Ruhnkenius on Timaeus. In Greece proper helotism is well known; at Athens it never existed, though we find it in Ionia, Chios, Argos, Crete, Syracuse, and Magna Graecia; but it was nowhere so permanent as in Thessaly, where it continued down to the time of the Romans. Its name is πενεστεία, which expresses both the body of the serfs and the relation in which they lived; it does not seem to have originally been the name of a nation, but must probably be derived, as was done by the ancients, from πένομαι, and πένης, a poor man.⁠[67]⁠

There existed in Thessaly a number of towns forming independent states by themselves; but that at the same time they were united by political bonds, is evident partly from the coins with the inscription κοινὸν Θεσσαλῶν, and partly from the fact, that in the πεντηκοντετηρίς, before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, kings of Thessaly, such as Orestes and Echecratides, are mentioned. We must, therefore, infer, that Thessaly formed one state; but at times the inhabitants of Larissa, Pharsalus, Pherae, and Cranon appear as citizens of independent towns, whence we may conclude that the bonds which connected them were extremely loose.

Thessaly, in its narrower sense, was divided into four parts, Phthiotis, Hestiaeotis, Thessaliotis, and Pelasgiotis. The principal passage on this subject is Strabo, ix. p. 430, b. and c.; which, however, as printed in our editions, is senseless, and the beginning alone is correct. I will, therefore, mention to you the emendation I have made, for even the unrivalled Casaubonus was mistaken here. Instead of καλούμενοι δὲ Πελασγιῶται, we must read, in accordance with the MSS. cited by Casaubonus, καλούμενοι δὲ Θεσσαλιῶται; and immediately after this we must read, συνάπτοντες ἤδη τοῖς κάτω Μακεδόσι, καὶ οἱ Πελασγιῶται ἐφεξῆς τὰ μέχρι Μαγνητικῆς παραλίας ἐκπληροῦντες χωρία, so that Πελασγιῶται is restored in the latter passage. Strabo, however, here confounds Phthiotis, the country of the Phthiotian Achaeans, with that part of Thessaly which the Thessalians had separated from the ancient Phthia and united with Thessaly. Phthia, in the sense of the Achaean country, is never any other than the district between the Malian gulf and the valley of the Peneus; but if we take it as the portion of Thessaly which the Thessalians had torn from it, and incorporated with their own country, it cannot have extended down to the gulf. Thessaly embraced the land from Pharsalus as far as Hestiaeotis, that is, as far as the upper part of the valley of the Peneus, in the neighbourhood of Tricca. The extent of Phthia was not rightly understood by the ancients themselves in their explanation of Homer. The passage in the Βοιωτία:—

reads entirely as if Phthia and Hellas were towns. This fancy, for it is nothing but a fancy, took a firm hold even of the Alexandrian grammarians; but the verses must be transposed, οἵ τ’ εἶχον must follow directly after the line beginning with Νῦν αὖ. Both Hellas and Phthia are countries, and stand in apposition to the Pelasgian Argos.

This division into four parts applies only to Thessaly in the narrower sense, and is not so much of geographical interest, as it is of real political importance: there must at one time have existed four real Thessalian states standing to one another in the relation of isopolity, like the Romans and Hernicans, and the Samnite nations among one another. But this point, like all that concerns Thessaly, is involved in very great obscurity. This much, however, is certain, that the division was restored under Philip of Macedonia, who, for the purpose of breaking the power of Thessaly cut it up into four different states, just as afterwards the Romans did with Macedonia, and as, in 1812, Napoleon, while making the Poles believe that he was restoring their state, divided their country into three parts, in order to prevent its rising, at a great distance from him, to the rank of a powerful state. This is the tetrarchy of which Theopompus in Harpocration gives the well known explanation. Demosthenes (Philip. ii. p. 71, ed. Reiske), however, states that Philip divided Thessaly into decadarchies: this reading occurs indeed in all the MSS., but they are of little authority, as all of them are founded upon a single recension, and are perhaps derived from one original manuscript. From Harpocration, too, an author of the second century, we see that in his time this reading already existed, and puzzled him as well as other archaeologists. It is historically certain, that the Lacedaemonians, in every town that became subject to them, established a decadarchy, as at first they did at Athens, though they there increased the number to thirty; but how we have to view the statement in regard to Thessaly, is, as Harpocration admits, a matter of doubt. The explanation, however, is not so very difficult. The δεκαδαρχίαι in the second Philippic are, if we examine the context, quite the same as the tetrarchies in the third (p. 117). The fault arose from the compendious mode of writing: Δ in ancient Greek writing has, as a number, a double meaning; according to the common Phoenician practice it signified four, and according to the Attic system of writing ten. In nearly all the earlier inscriptions, where it occurs as a number, Δ signifies ten, as Π signifies fifty; when, therefore, Δ with a line (Δʹ) occurred before ἀρχία (ΔʹΑΡΧΙΑ), the reader knew that it indicated a number, but he made it either ten or four, according as he imagined that he had before him an Attic or a common number; and if he was familiar with the Lacedaemonian decadarchy, he read in this passage also δεκαδαρχία. This division into tetrarchies, then, existed in the Macedonian period, but we do not know how long.

I will now put together the few fragments of Thessalian history which have come down to us. The family of the Aleuadae, a Heracleid family, was the most celebrated of all, and ruled at Larissa; it formed an oligarchy even within the ruling nation; at the time of the Persian wars it was so powerful as to be in possession of the whole government, and it is probable that the Thessalian kings mentioned by Thucydides belonged to it. The Scopadae were another great and noble family at Pharsalus. The nobility of Thessaly, like that of the Sarmatians and that of the middle ages, were numerous, whence the best part of the Thessalian armies consisted of horsemen; they scarcely had any infantry at all; a Thessalian phalanx does not occur anywhere, and peltasts are not mentioned till later times. Notwithstanding the state of dissolution in which we find Thessaly, there still existed a bond among the different states, which embraced even the neighbouring nations, the Magnetes, the Achaeans of Phthia, and the Peraebians; it is possible that the Thessalians, may have ruled over the tribes which touched upon their borders, but the latter were never really subdued by them, and the Peraebians seem to have been under the direct supremacy of Larissa. About thirty or forty years after the Peloponnesian war, when the disorganisation had increased, the town of Pherae, which had formerly been insignificant, rose into importance, and Jason, a man of great parts, came forward there as tyrant, and was elected dictator by the whole of Thessaly under the title of ταγός, in which capacity he ruled over Thessaly and even over the countries dependent on it. He was succeeded by his brothers, and then by his nephew Alexander; but his dynasty, like those of all usurpers in Greece, passed away, and afterwards Thessaly was in a state of greater dissolution than ever. The Aleuadae now renewed their claims, but the Thessalians happened at the time, in common with the Boeotians, to be involved in the unfortunate war against the Phocians, and Magnesia on that occasion recovered its independence. In these circumstances, Philip of Macedonia appeared among them under the mask of a friend, pretending that he would assist them, that he would subdue the Phocians, and reduce Magnesia to obedience; he was accordingly appointed tagus, and intrusted with the administration of their revenues arising from port dues and the tribute of their dependencies. Philip abused this ridiculous confidence, which was in reality an act of treason of the Thessalians against themselves, and put himself in permanent possession of the common domain of which he had undertaken the management, especially the Thessalian port of Pagasae, from which the revenues were very large. Thessaly, which was now divided into four parts, henceforth belonged to the crown of Macedonia. Very feeble attempts only were made by the Thessalians to recover their independence: in the Lamian war they endeavoured in vain to shake off the yoke, and the same was attempted in the subsequent wars against Cassander and Demetrius Poliorcetes. Thessaly, in the narrower sense, however, remained subject to Macedonia until the second Roman war of Philip. Under Antigonus Gonatas and Demetrius, the father of Philip, the Aetolians gained Achaia Phthiotis, which thus became separated. Philip recovered indeed a portion of it (Olymp. 140), but the greater part remained in the hands of the Aetolians, who even conquered parts of Thessaly Proper, such as Pharsalus, which, though it was recovered by the Macedonians, yet remained for a time in the hands of the Aetolians. Thessaly, however, even in its connection with Macedonia, continued to form a state by itself, with the exception of Magnesia, which was regarded as part of Μακεδονία ἐπίκτητος, and where Demetrius Poliorcetes built the great fortress of Demetrias, which often served the Macedonian kings as a place of residence; it was very strong, and possessed a military port with arsenals for both the land army and the navy. When the Romans took Greece from Macedonia, Thessaly, as far as Mount Olympus and the Cambunian mountains, was separated from Macedonia, and obtained autonomy. It now formed a separate state, probably including the Peraebians and the Achaean Phthiotians; but Magnesia, which remained separate, surrendered to Antiochus, and afterwards remained in the possession of Philip, who had conquered it together with Demetrias, and with the sanction of the Romans retained it, a fact which has often been overlooked. Many believe that Philip was confined within the boundaries of Macedonia; but this is erroneous; his dominion extended over several other countries besides, for he was rewarded by the Romans with possessions, which afterwards they took from him. The fasti of the Thessalian strategi have come down to us in the Armenian translation of Eusebius; and from them we learn that the strategi were appointed for the whole of Thessaly in common, that Larissa not only had no privileges, but that they were sometimes chosen from smaller places, nay even from districts, as Phthiotis and Orestis, which had formerly been subject to Thessaly. One strategus belonged to Argos, which must have been Argos in Orestis, and not the Amphilochian Argos. During the war against Perseus, the Thessalians were in disgrace with the Romans; whether at that time they lost their autonomy cannot be proved with any degree of probability. In the war of the Pseudo-Philip, one part of the Thessalians joined him; but the history of that war is so obscure, that we cannot say whether they were independent or not. They seem, however, to have had, or at least to have recovered, a kind of autonomy, for during the war between Caesar and Pompey, the Thessalians appear as a state or κοινόν with a strategus (praetor). The Achaeans then had no common strategus, and this accordingly appears to prove the autonomy of the Thessalians. After this their history cannot be traced.

After the description I have already given of the physical features of Thessaly in the narrowest sense of the name, I have only to add a few remarks on some other points.

Larissa was the most important town of Thessaly both in antiquity and the middle ages; and it is so still. Its situation is extremely favourable, the district around it being unusually fertile. Neither Larissa nor any other Thessalian town has a distinct history.

Pherae, next to Larissa the greatest town, was situated in the plain towards the bay; it was not indeed as great as Larissa, but still a respectable town, and is renowned in mythology for the story of Admetus; in the historical times, Jason and his family gave a certain celebrity to it.

Pharsalus, remarkable for the ever memorable battle which decided the fate of Rome, belonged for a time to the Aetolians.

Tricca, a town of which considerable ruins still exist, was celebrated for the worship of Asclepius. At least twenty other Thessalian places are mentioned, but I will not detain you with an enumeration of their names, as they are not sufficiently known.

Pagasae was the sea-port of Thessaly. The country, in its narrower sense, extended only thirty stadia along the sea-coast, beginning with the gulf of Pagasae or Iolcos; the Thessalians, therefore, had no fleet, though they may have had a few ships to keep up their commerce by sea. Pagasae had been united with their country for the sake of commerce; in the earlier times it is mentioned on several occasions, but it disappears during the Macedonian period, as Demetrius Poliorcetes transplanted all the inhabitants of the towns in that neighbourhood to his new fortress of Demetrias.

Peraebia, one of the three countries subject to Thessaly, extended along the foot of mount Olympus towards Macedonia; its mountainous parts were for a time independent, but afterwards surrendered to Thessaly; they did so, however, on more favourable terms than the Aeolian inhabitants of the plains; for, though they lost their political independence, they did not become serfs. The inhabitants were Epirots of the tribe of the Peraebians dwelling in the neighbourhood of Dodona.

The Magnetes also belonged to the race of the Pelasgians. The Greek form of their name is Magnetes, though we are accustomed to say Magnesians, which is in reality incorrect. Their country embraced the whole coast of Thessaly from mount Ossa and the mouth of the Peneus down to the sea which separates Thessaly from Euboea, and the bay of Iolcos. The whole of mount Pelion belonged to Magnesia, which has few harbours on its coast, the most important being that in the bay of Iolcos. In the map of D’Anville and others of an earlier date, a considerable town of the name of Magnesia is marked near the end of the promontory; but this town never existed, it is a mere blunder, arising from a misunderstood passage of Apollonius Rhodius, who, in describing the voyage of the ship Argo along the coast, mentions Magnesia in such a manner that a person who is not a scholar might mistake it for a town. Scylax and Herodotus, who give a very accurate enumeration of the towns on that coast in their natural succession, do not mention one of the name of Magnesia, which they apply to the country alone. In Demosthenes, too, Magnesia is not a town.

According to their genealogy, the Magnetes belonged to the Pelasgians, but of their history nothing is known. In very early times, however, they also occur in Asia, either because they had emigrated thither, or because the Pelasgian races in Meonia bore the same name: and why should not the Magnetes in Europe have undertaken voyages from their coast to the East?

Iolcos on the Anaurus in Magnesia, is the place from which the Argonautic expedition is said to have sailed. In the ancient story it appears as an important place of the Minyans, but afterwards it was only a very small town, which subsequently disappears altogether.

But instead of it there arose Demetrias, on the modern bay of Volo, a splendid harbour in the neighbourhood of Iolcos: this town is one of those creations which shew the practical and keen eye of its founder. We have seen that the establishment of Megalopolis was an unsuccessful undertaking; Demetrias was a rude, immoral, detested, and odious man, but of uncommon ability, which he shewed in his great discoveries in mechanics and in the art of engineering; the same talent was manifested here also, for he chose a spot which had been neglected for centuries for the purpose of founding a capital of Greece, which he intended to govern as a kingdom. The fact that his son, Antigonus Gonatas, was enabled to maintain himself as king, without having a definite kingdom, was owing to Demetrias, for it was his place of residence, and his whole strength lay there; it became the capital of Magnesia which was governed by Macedonia as a province in a manner which is somewhat strange to us; for under those despotisms, small countries often had a republican form of government, in which the kings interfered but seldom. In like manner, the small islands of the Archipelago, before the outbreak of the present war, were governed by Constantinople: when a Turkish vessel appeared, the people trembled, the magistrates were called out, and if the commander was so minded, he put them to death. The relations in the Macedonian empire were of a similar kind; the provinces were bound to pay tribute and furnish troops, but otherwise they lived quite under democratic institutions; and when a king founded a city like Antioch or Alexandria, it received a mixed population of Greeks and Macedonians, and a republican municipal constitution. Demetrias, as I have already said, became the capital of Magnesia, when after the war of Philip the country became free, but it then threw itself into the arms of Antiochus. As a punishment for this, the Romans allowed it again to be subdued by Macedonia, and we find Perseus still in possession of it. We are perfectly ignorant as to the manner in which the Romans decided the fate of Magnesia and Demetrias because the last book of Livy has come down to us incomplete; it is not probable that they incorporated it with Thessaly or with Macedonia; it is more likely that, on account of the strength of Demetrias, they reserved for themselves the supremacy over it, and occupied it by a garrison.

The third dependent state was Achaia (Phthiotis). We are surprised to find this name here again; and the ancients unhesitatingly assume that emigrants from Peloponnesus had come to these parts, for which there is no authority at all. A thoughtful ethnographer is content with the observation that people of the same name lived in both countries, and that accordingly they were of the same origin, but he refrains from the attempt to explain the particular manner in which they were connected. Achaia formed a state under Thessalian supremacy, and it may have been somewhat more or less important than Brescia, Verona, or Padua under the supremacy of Venice. Brescia, e.g., was governed by a senate of forty persons, consisting of its own nobility; but the town was obliged to pay a certain tribute to Venice. The territory of Brescia again consisted of smaller states under the supremacy of Brescia. The government of Brescia in regard to the administration of justice, was subject to Venice, to which an appeal was open in criminal cases, and which, when appealed to, sent commissioners (proveditore) to re-examine the case. These gradations of dependence are quite obscure to us, and we cannot see our way clearly in them. We are apt to think only of a government from above, which makes the laws, but such was not the case in antiquity nor in the middle ages. Thus previously to the year 1798 there existed within the papal dominions several places, which stood indeed under the protection of the popes, but had their own laws, and even carried into execution sentences of death without the sanction of the sovereign. A person making himself familiar with the variety of the Swiss constitutions is going through an excellent course of preparation for a profound knowledge of ancient history.

The case of Achaia was precisely the same: it had the administration of its internal affairs, but no political independence; it was not allowed to carry on war on its own account, but was obliged to serve in the armies of Thessaly, and to pay a certain tribute according to the terms of its capitulation, and in extraordinary cases even more.

Thebe, the only important town of Phthiotis, was one of the strongest fortresses of Greece, being well fortified both by nature and by art. For a time it belonged, like the rest of Phthiotis, to the Aetolians, but was taken from them by Philip, and was one of the places out of which the Aetolians wanted to cheat the Romans, although the latter had well-founded claims to it. Hence their exasperation was natural enough, but the manner in which they gave vent to their rage and fury was senseless.

The Melians, a little people, dwelt on the Sperchius in the corner of the gulf called Μαλιακός or Πυλιακὸς κόλπος. It is strange to find a distinction made there between the Malians and Melians, though the difference appears to be only one of dialect. They are in reality but one people, and that too a very small one; the doubts cannot be satisfactorily solved. Trachis, the capital of the Melians, plays a prominent part in poetry for being the seat of Ceyx, and in the Heracleiae it was a place of great importance. In the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Lacedaemonians established there the colony of Heraclea; it was a Doric place and had Doric νόμιμα, although its population was a mass of people driven together from all quarters, but it had Spartan oecistae, that is, commanders who made the laws and established the constitution. This town of Heraclea maintained itself down to the latest times; during the Macedonico-Aetolian period, it belonged to Aetolia, and was called Ἡρακλεία ἡ ἐπὶ Τραχῖνι, but often simply Ἡρακλεία. It was taken by the Romans after the defeat of Antiochus.

The Oetaeans, likewise a very small people, lived in mount Oeta; they are generally overlooked in our geographical books and maps. But although they were a small people, they enjoyed perfect political independence, just like Jersey, with its 1,800 inhabitants previously to the revolution. They occur as an independent people even in Herodotus and Thucydides; but we know nothing further about them, for afterwards they disappear.

The Aenianians, a somewhat more important people, dwelt above the Melians and Oetaeans, but more to the west; they are called Αἰνιᾶνες in Thucydides, Xenophon and others, but Herodotus calls them Ἐνιῆνες. This is the most ancient instance of the Attic αι being expressed in another dialect by ε, which is the modern Greek pronunciation of αι. The termination αν is Pelasgic, and also appears in Italy as ans or as. The Aenianians, like the Melians, do not seem to have been among the subjects of Thessaly; for Aristotle, in speaking of the internal commotions among the Thessalian subjects does not mention them. Their small capital, Hypata, occurs in the wars of the Romans and Aetolians, and is also interesting, from the circumstance of its being the scene of the romance of Apuleius, who considers it as belonging to Thessaly. The Thessalian women were believed to be skilled in witchcraft; but this belief referred more particularly to the women of Hypata, and in this respect they are spoken of by Apuleius.

The Dolopians.

There remains one people, the Dolopians, who in the earliest history of Greece are scarcely mentioned at all. They must have occupied a very extensive country, but it was of an Alpine character, and embraced the part where mount Pindus turns round towards the Aetolian frontier: there they must have lived in the valleys in scattered villages. They are mentioned in the Iliad as by no means foreign to the Greeks, any more than Dodona in the Catalogue; but still the poet of the Iliad can scarcely have regarded them as real Hellenes: their name is one of those by which a branch of the multiform and undefinable race of the Pelasgians was designated. The passage in which Thucydides says (i. 2), that in the Iliad Hellenes and barbarians were not distinguished, and which refers to such nations as the Dolopians, must be understood to mean, that Homer mentioned as Hellenic, nations which Thucydides in a strict sense included among the barbarians, for the Homeric geography is based more upon geographical masses than upon the identity of nationality, the latter of which is more carefully attended to by Thucydides. Such also is the meaning of Strabo. Scyros is called Dolopian, and the inhabitants of Euboea and the neighbouring Cyclades are called Dryopians, who in point of origin are the same nation as the Dolopians. Here again we need not have recourse to a migration, which would have had to traverse the mountains and the territories of so many nations: the Dolopians on the Achelous and the Dryopians in the Aegean are names of the same nation, in the same manner in which we find Thessalians in Italy and in Greece.

The Dolopians are not mentioned in history except in a passage of Thucydides, where he says that the Achelous flows from mount Pindus through the country of the Dolopians, and in Xenophon’s Hellenica, where we find that they were governed by Jason of Pherae. Afterwards they appear alternately under the supremacy of Macedonia and the Aetolians, until in the end Philip, in his war against the Aetolians and Antiochus, again subdued them. In this condition they are found in the war of Perseus, afterwards they disappear in the general catastrophe of Greece.

We have now passed through Greece from the southernmost point of Peloponnesus as far as mount Olympus, the Thessalian mountains and Tempe.⁠[68] In casting our eyes back upon Greece, it is surprising to find how few of those nations share in the great renown of the Greeks in literature and the arts. In the earliest times poetry was the common property of all rather than of individuals: epic poetry was chiefly cultivated among the Ionians in Asia Minor; lyric poetry among the Aeolians, in Lesbos, Boeotia, Sicily, and Magna Graecia (Himera, Rhegium), and afterwards also among the Dorians; dramatic poetry was in reality confined to Athens. After Pindar, no part of Greece, except Athens, produced poets, prose writers, and orators, until the latest times again wrought a change; for then, after the real life and flourishing period of the arts had already disappeared, there came forward Polybius, a most respectable author indeed, though not beyond the point which we ourselves may attain. The renown in the plastic arts was shared by Corinth and Sicyon, at an earlier period also by Boeotia and Aegina, and in a less degree by Argos. Thessaly is a perfectly rude country, in which genius has created nothing.

I shall now pass on to the Greek islands, first to Euboea, next to the islands in the Aegean, and then to Tenedos and Lesbos, whose whole character is Asiatic, the Cyclades, Crete, and the Sporades. I shall then discuss the Ionic, Doric, and Aeolic settlements in Asia Minor, the colonies on the coast of Thrace, on the Euxine, and on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Of most of the islands very little can be said.

Euboea.

Euboea, the largest island in the Aegean, is situated close to the continent of Greece. This island is often mentioned, especially by later poets, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius (with his scholiast), and others under antiquated names. Such names, however, are not to be overlooked, for they are not fictitious or arbitrary designations, but must be dealt with cautiously, and neither too much nor too little importance ought to be attributed to them. But we must above all things be on our guard against drawing too hasty conclusions from them, as is done by a certain school of philologers, who from names and a few facts draw inferences which are repulsive to a strict philologer, especially when he considers that there is so much that is clear and true, if they would but take the trouble to search for it. Thus, e.g., it is not an unimportant statement, that Euboea was formerly called Macris, which contains an allusion to the Pelasgian Macrians on the Propontis, who are mentioned by Apollonius Rhodius; Corcyra also is said to have been called Macris. Such things must be known to us, as they were known to the Alexandrian grammarians. Dionysius Thrax⁠[69] mentions emendation and the interpretation of the writings of antiquity as the objects of a grammarian and philologer: a noble object, which you, too, must set before yourselves. Whoever wants to be a grammarian, sets before himself a high aim, which requires a knowledge of antiquity, of mythology, legends and traditions; in short, he must know everything that was known to Apollonius, Eratosthenes, and the grammarians of the second Alexandrian school. A philologer must strive to become master of all the legends and traditions to such a degree as to be able, after a moment’s thought, to give an account of what he finds in a poet. This knowledge also comprises that which is found in isolated notices of the scholiasts.

In the Homeric Catalogue, Euboea belongs to the group of Argive states, but Abantes also dwell in the island. Respecting the origin of these Abantes nothing can be ascertained. Afterwards we find the island divided into five states, three of which are called Ionic and regarded as Ionic colonies; the fourth is Dryopian, and the fifth, Hestiaean, both evidently of the same race as the ancient inhabitants of Thessaly about mount Pindus, that is, Pelasgian. Chalcis and Eretria are said to have been founded by Ionians from Athens; the former was situated on the Euripus, the latter, to the south-east of it. In the early history of Greece, between Olymp. 20 and 40, a period which is so much neglected, both places were of great importance. It is perfectly clear that, though we cannot explain how, they possessed a power far superior to that of Athens at the same time; the great power of the Colophonians also belongs to that period of which the history is lost to us. We only know accidentally, that those two states carried on a long, protracted, and fierce war against each other, in which nearly all the states of Greece joined either the one or the other of them. This shows but too plainly how little the history of Greece is known.

Both cities founded an endless number of colonies, and Chalcis more particularly on the Thracian coast (the Chalcidian towns in Epithrace), in Sicily and Italy (Cumae, Himera, Zancle, Catana, Naxos, Rhegium, and others). It cannot be supposed, that these numerous colonies contained an efflux of population commensurate with the size of the place, but only oecistae went out with a fleet under the protection of Chalcis, and a multitude of people then assembled from all parts of Greece, who were in want of a home; the Chalcidians however were the leaders, and the colony, out of gratitude, formed the noblest phyle from the Chalcidian oecistae, who made the laws. These colonies are another great proof of the deficiency of our knowledge of that stirring period, and show how much we should know, if we possessed Ephorus or only the portion of the work of Diodorus from the sixth to the tenth book. Our information is principally derived from Strabo and Heraclides Ponticus. The last occurrence in which Chalcis appears as a great state, is related by Herodotus, and belongs to the period subsequent to the expulsion of the Pisistratids. The Chalcidians, in conjunction with the Boeotians, carried on war against Athens, but were defeated. The numbers mentioned by Herodotus on that occasion show to what extent precision is lost and how delusive accounts become, even within the space of a century. But certain it is, that Chalcis was conquered by Athens, and that cleruchi were sent to it, of whom, however, subsequently not a trace appears, whence it must be supposed that they had been expelled. The Eretrians are mentioned as being in alliance with Athens; hence we may perhaps assume, that this alliance had existed even in the early times, when Chalcis and Eretria were at war with each other. During the Persian war, Chalcis was not a place of much consequence, and afterwards still less so.

Eretria sent out colonies to Corcyra even before the Corinthians, also to Ischia near Naples, and had its share in the colonisation of Naples itself. It maintained its power longer than Chalcis, and during the insurrection of Aristagoras, it had spirit enough to carry out the expedition against Sardes; but in the campaigns of Datis it was completely (ἄρδην) destroyed, and its inhabitants carried away as slaves into Persia; there the king of the barbarians assigned to them habitations in the distant interior of Bactria. The new Eretria, built under the protection of Athens, remained unimportant.

Carystos, the third town, is renowned for the beautiful striped marble found in its neighbourhood; it is white, with greenish veins, and occurs in large strata. The Italians, from its resemblance to the layers of an onion, call it cipollino. Mineralogy, metallurgy, and technology are studies which no philologer ought to neglect; they are extremely instructive to him.

Styra was quite insignificant; it is called Dryopian, that is, the ancient inhabitants remained there. It was situated on the southern extremity of the island.

Histiaea, on the north-eastern point of Euboea, had a Pelasgian population. In the time of Pericles, it was subdued by the Athenians; all Euboea had then renounced the connection with Athens, but was re-conquered; the Histiaeans were overpowered, and an Athenian colony was established among them. Athenian colonists are otherwise rarely mentioned, and wherever they occur, the expression is generally not to be taken in its proper sense, Ionian colonists alone being mostly meant by it. The new colony was called Oreos, and was founded for the purpose of keeping Euboea in obedience, and of preventing it from keeping up a connection with the northern part of the sea. These colonists, as well as the Attic inhabitants of Lemnos and Scyros, appear to have been expelled after the Peloponnesian war; whether they returned, is not known, but Oreos continued to exist as a town. In the maritime war of the Romans and Macedonians, it was ravaged and completely destroyed, so that it never recovered again.

The most interesting physical phenomenon connected with Euboea is the Euripus, the channel between Boeotia and Euboea; the sea there had its tides every day, but in a very irregular manner. This was a great puzzle to the natural philosophers among the Greeks, and would be so still, were it not that that part of Europe is so much withdrawn from the observation of the inquirer. The south-east of Euboea presents a rocky and dangerous coast; it may be said in general, that Euboea has no harbours, and the greater part of its coast is infamis duris naufragiis; the Capharean rocks deserve to be noticed in particular, for, according to tradition, the Greek fleet, on its return from Troy, was dashed against them, and Ajax, the son of Oileus, perished there. The northern part of this harbourless coast is called the κοῖλα of Euboea.

Chalcis, about whose ancient greatness I have already spoken, was situated to the north of the neck of land (στενά), which separates the northern from the southern portion of the island. It was for the most part deserted as early as the time of Dicaearchus; its walls enclosed a space of upwards of five miles in circumference, but the place was comparatively desolate. The Macedonian rulers soon made themselves masters of it for the purpose of keeping Greece in subjection. In the newly-discovered fragments of his work, Polybius speaks of an insurrection of Chalcis against Macedonia, of which the consequence was, that a Macedonian garrison was placed in the town. I have not yet been able to find out in which war this occurrence took place, though it was probably in the Lamian war, or perhaps at a later time, under Demetrius Poliorcetes. From the time of this Demetrius, the island was in the hands of the Macedonians, though not always as a part of the Macedonian empire. Under Antigonus Gonatas, his brother Craterus, and, after him, his son Alexander, were princes of Euboea. At a later period it was again dependent on Macedonia. In the war of Philip, Chalcis suffered severely during a predatory expedition of the Romans, for it was taken by surprise, plundered, and reduced to ashes. After this it rose again, for it was always easy for those Greek towns to be restored, if their public buildings were not destroyed, because the private dwellings were of a very humble nature and could easily be rebuilt. The city then became the head quarters of Antiochus. Such things were not forgotten by the Romans, for their hatred was implacable; they did indeed restore Chalcis to independence, because they had not yet gained as firm a footing in those parts as afterwards; but when Corinth had been taken, Chalcis was one of the towns which, according to the decision of the decem legati, were destroyed. It was not till several centuries later that it was partially restored; and its situation is so favourable, that, in the course of time, when the earlier circumstances had been forgotten, a new town again rose there under the name of Egribos, from which the modern name Negroponte has been formed.