CONTENTS (continued 3)

First, then, let us take the things mentioned by both Polemo and Pausanias.

Polemo and Pausanias compared.

Fragment ii. In his description of the Acropolis at Athens, Polemo mentioned a sculptor Lycius, son of Myron. So does 136Pausanias in his description of the Acropolis.

Fragment iii. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned a decree forbidding women of loose character to take the names of any of the great quadriennial festivals. Pausanias mentions no such decree, but among the paintings which he describes in the Propylaea is one of Alcibiades “containing emblems of the victory won by his team at Nemea.” Now we know from other writers that in this picture Alcibiades was portrayed reclining in the lap of Nemea. The model who sat for the personification of Nemea was probably a woman of the sort who were forbidden by the decree to take the name of a quadriennial festival, and the sight of the picture may have led Polemo to mention the decree. If this was so—and the reasoning though a little circuitous is plausible—it becomes probable that Polemo saw and described the picture of Alcibiades to which Pausanias refers. The probability is strengthened, almost to the point of certainty, by our knowledge that Polemo did describe the paintings in the Propylaea, though no details of his description have survived.

Fragment iv. In his description of the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned that Thucydides was buried at the Melitian gate. So does Pausanias in his description of the Acropolis.

137Fragment vi. In his description of the pictures in the Propylaea, which probably formed part of his treatise in four books on the Acropolis, Polemo mentioned three Athenian festivals at which torch-races were held, namely the Panathenian festival, the festival of Hephaestus, and the festival of Prometheus. Pausanias in his description of the Academy mentions that torch-races were run from an altar of Prometheus in the Academy to the city.

Fragment x. Polemo told the story of the capture of Aphidna in Attica by the Dioscuri, and mentioned that in the affair Castor was wounded by king Aphidnus in the right thigh. Pausanias repeatedly refers to the capture of Aphidna by the Dioscuri, but he expresses a belief that the place was taken without fighting, and he gives reasons for thinking so.

Fragment xi. In one of his works which is cited as The Greek History Polemo mentioned that Poseidon contended with Hera for the possession of Argos and was worsted, and that the two deities did not exhibit tokens in support of their claims as they did at Athens. Pausanias in his description of Argolis twice mentions the defeat of Poseidon in his dispute with Hera for the possession of the land, but he says nothing about the absence of tokens.

Fragment xii. According to Polemo, the Argives related how the first corn sown in 138Argolis had been fetched by Argus from Libya. According to Pausanias, they asserted that they had received the first corn from Demeter.

Fragment xviii. In his work on the votive offerings at Lacedaemon, Polemo mentioned “a chapel of Cottina, close to Colone, where is the sanctuary of Dionysus, a splendid edifice known to many in the city.” Pausanias in his description of Sparta mentions “the place named Colona, and a temple of Dionysus Colonatas.”

Fragment xxii. Polemo mentioned at Olympia the old temple of Hera, the temple of the Metapontines, and the temple of the Byzantines. Pausanias describes all three buildings, but he designates the two latter correctly as treasuries, not temples.

Fragment xxiii. Polemo related that for a time a race had been run at Olympia between carts drawn by mules, but that after thirteen victories had been won the race was abolished in Ol. 84. He further said that the name for a mule-cart (apene) was a Tegean word. Pausanias mentions that the race between mule-carts at Olympia was instituted in Ol. 70 and abolished in Ol. 84. He says nothing about the name for a mule-cart being Tegean.

Fragment xxiv. Polemo said that Athena was wounded by Ornytus. Pausanias says that 139she was wounded by Teuthis, but that some people called her assailant Ornytus.

Fragment xxvii. In his work on the treasuries at Delphi, Polemo mentioned the Sicyonian treasury. So does Pausanias in his description of Delphi.

Fragment xxix. Polemo told how the Delphians honoured the wolf because a wolf had discovered a sacred jewel of gold that had been stolen from Delphi and buried on Mount Parnassus. Pausanias says that the Delphians dedicated a bronze figure of a wolf in the sanctuary of Apollo, because a man who had stolen some sacred treasures and hidden them in the forest on Parnassus was killed by a wolf, which then went daily to the city and howled, till people followed it and so found the stolen treasure.

Fragment xxxii. Polemo told how Palamedes invented dice to amuse the Greek army before Troy when they were distressed by famine. Pausanias says simply that dice were an invention of Palamedes.

Fragment xli. Polemo said that at Athens there were three images of the Furies, two made by Scopas out of the stone called luchneus (probably Parian marble), and the middle one made by Calamis. Pausanias notices the images of the Furies without mentioning their number, their material, or the artists who made them.

140Fragment xlii. In speaking of wineless libations Polemo remarked on the scrupulousness of the Athenians in matters of ritual. Pausanias observes, in different connexions, that the Athenians were more pious and more zealous in religious matters than other people.

Fragment xliv. Polemo said that Lais was born at Hyccara in Sicily and was murdered in Thessaly, whither she had gone for love of a Thessalian named Pausanias; and he described her grave beside the Peneus with the epitaph and the urn on the tombstone. Pausanias says that Lais was a native of Hycara (sic) in Sicily and that her grave was at Corinth, where it was surmounted by the figure of a lion holding a ram in its paws. He adds that in Thessaly, whither she had gone for the love of a certain Hippostratus, there was another tomb which claimed to be hers.

Fragment xlviii. Polemo said that copies of the laws of Solon were kept in the Prytaneum engraved on square wooden tablets which revolved on pivots in such a way that when the tablets were turned at an angle they seemed to be triangular. Pausanias says briefly that the laws of Solon were inscribed in the Prytaneum.

Fragment lv. Polemo said that wrestling was invented by Phorbas. Pausanias says that it was invented by Theseus.

Fragment lxxviii. Polemo mentioned the 141sanctuary of Hercules at Cynosarges. So does Pausanias.

Fragment lxxxiii. Polemo described two pools in Sicily, beside which the Sicilians took their most solemn oaths, perjury being followed by death. Pausanias describes how people threw offerings into the craters of Etna and watched whether the offerings sank or were ejected by the volcanic fires. Some modern writers have supposed that Pausanias meant to describe the place and the oath described by Polemo, but that he mistook the water for fire and the offering for an oath. The supposition is very unlikely.

Fragment lxxxvi. Polemo mentioned the Tiasa, a river near Sparta. So does Pausanias.

No evidence that Pausanias copied Polemo.

These are, I believe, all the existing fragments of Polemo in which he mentions the same things as Pausanias. Not one of them supports the theory that Pausanias copied from Polemo. In some of them the writer mentions the same places, buildings, and works of art that are mentioned by Pausanias. But this was almost inevitable. When two men describe the same places correctly they can hardly help mentioning some of the same things. In no case does the coincidence go beyond a bare mention. Again, Polemo sometimes referred to the same myth or legend as Pausanias; but this is no proof that Pausanias copied from 142Polemo. A multitude of myths and legends were the commonplaces of every educated Greek, whether he had read Polemo or not. The passage of Polemo as to the race between mule-carts at Olympia agrees in substance, not in language, with the corresponding passage of Pausanias. Both writers, it may be assumed, derived their information from the best source, the Olympic register, which, as we have seen, was published and accessible to all. The Delphian story of the wolf that disclosed the stolen treasure may have been narrated by both writers in the same way, though from the abridged form in which Polemo’s version is reported by Aelian we cannot be sure of this. No doubt the story was told in much the same way by the Delphian guides to all visitors, who may have been surprised to find a statue of a wolf dedicated to Apollo, the old mythical relationship of the god with wolves having long fallen into the background. Again, Polemo, like Pausanias, remarked on the scrupulous piety of the Athenians. So, too, for that matter did St. Paul, but nobody suspects him of having borrowed the remark from Polemo. The mention of the sculptor Lycius, of the grave of Thucydides, and of the torch-race by the two writers proves nothing as to the dependence of the one on the other. Some of the fragments of Polemo show that he described in 143minute detail things which Pausanias has merely mentioned. Finally, in a number of the fragments Polemo makes statements which are explicitly or implicitly contradicted by Pausanias. This proves that if Pausanias was acquainted with the works of Polemo, he at least exercised complete freedom of judgment in accepting or rejecting the opinions of his predecessor. Another proof of his independence is furnished by his speaking of the treasuries at Olympia as treasuries, whereas Polemo had designated the same buildings less correctly as temples.

Things mentioned by Polemo but not by Pausanias.

Second, let us take the things mentioned by Polemo, but not by Pausanias. They include at Munychia the worship of the hero Acratopotes; at Athens a picture of the marriage of Pirithous, an inscription relating to the sacrifices offered to Hercules at Cynosarges, and cups dedicated by a certain Neoptolemus, apparently on the Acropolis; in Attica a township called Crius; at Sicyon the Painted Colonnade (to which Polemo seems to have devoted a special treatise), pictures by the painters Aristides, Pausanias, and Nicophanes, a portrait of the tyrant Aristratus partly painted by Apelles, and an obscene worship of Dionysus; at Phlius a colonnade called the Colonnade of the Polemarch and containing a painting or paintings by Sillax of Rhegium; at Argos a sanctuary 144of Libyan Demeter; at Sparta a chapel and bronze statue of Cottina, a bronze ox dedicated by her, a sanctuary of Corythallian Artemis, a festival called kopis (described by Polemo in detail), and the worship of two heroes Matton and Ceraon; at Olympia a hundred and thirty-two silver cups, two silver wine-jugs, one silver sacrificial vessel, and three gilt cups, all preserved in the treasury of the Metapontines, a cedar-wood figure of a Triton holding a silver cup, a silver siren, three silver cups of various shapes, a golden wine-jug, and two drinking-horns, all preserved in the treasury of the Byzantines, thirty-three silver cups of various shapes, a silver pot, a golden sacrificial vessel, and a golden bowl, all preserved in the temple of Hera, and a statue of a Lacedaemonian named Leon who won a victory in the chariot-race; at Elis the worship of Gourmand Apollo; at Scolus in Boeotia the worship of Big-loaf Demeter; at Thebes a temple of Aphrodite Lamia, a statue of the bard Cleon (about which Polemo told an anecdote), and games held in honour of Hercules; and finally at Delphi a golden book of the poetess Aristomache in the Sicyonian treasury, a treasury of the Spinatians containing two marble statues of boys, a sanctuary of Demeter Hermuchus, and a curious custom of offering to Latona at the festival of the Theoxenia the largest leek that was to be found.

145All these are mentioned by Polemo as things existing or customs practised within that portion of Greece which Pausanias has described. When we remember that the mention of them occurs in a few brief fragments, which are all that remain to us of the voluminous works of Polemo, we can imagine what a multitude of things must have been described by Polemo, which are passed over in total silence by Pausanias.

Result of comparison between Polemo and Pausanias.

To sum up the result of this comparison of Polemo with Pausanias, we find that both writers mention some of the same things and record some of the same traditions, but that this agreement never amounts to a verbal coincidence; that Polemo mentions many things which are not noticed by Pausanias; and that Pausanias repeatedly adopts views which differ from or contradict views expressed by Polemo. Thus there is nothing in the remains of Polemo to show that Pausanias, treading as he so often did in Polemo’s footsteps, copied the works of his predecessor; on the contrary, the very frequent omission by Pausanias of things mentioned by Polemo, and the not infrequent adoption by him of opinions which contradict those of Polemo, go to prove either that he was unacquainted with Polemo’s writings, or that he deliberately disregarded and tacitly controverted them.

Theory that Pausanias copied from Polemo or from writers of Polemo’s date.

146Yet in recent years it has been maintained that Pausanias slavishly copied from Polemo the best part of his descriptions of Athens, Olympia, and Delphi, and a good deal besides, and that he described these places substantially not as they were in his own age but as they had been in the time of Polemo, about three hundred years before; for it is a part of the same theory that Pausanias had travelled and seen very little in Greece, had compiled the bulk of his book from the works of earlier writers, and had added only a few hasty jottings of his own to give the book a modern air.

As to the proposition that Pausanias borrowed largely from Polemo it is not needful to say any more. We have seen that it has no foundation in the existing remains of Polemo. Whether it would be established or refuted by the lost works of Polemo we cannot say. It will be time to consider the question when these lost works are found, if that should ever be.

Theory that Pausanias did not describe Greece as it was in his own time.

On the other hand, the proposition that Pausanias described Greece not as it was in his own time, but as it had been in an earlier age, while it is of wider scope than the former is also more susceptible of verification. It could be established very simply by proving that he spoke of things as existing which from other sources are known to have ceased to exist before his time. It could not, of course, 147be established merely by showing that he mentions little or nothing of later date than say the age of Polemo, about 170 B.C., unless it could be further shown that the things he mentions had ceased to exist between that age and his own. For obviously all the things he notices might have existed in 170 B.C. and still be in existence when he wrote, and in describing them he would be as truly describing the Greece of his own time as a writer of the present day who, professing to record the most notable things in Athens at the end of the nineteenth century A.D., should choose to mention no building or statue later than the time of Pausanias, or even of Polemo himself. Thus all the attempts that have been made to invalidate the testimony of Pausanias as to the state of Greece in the second century A.D. by demonstrating merely that the things he describes were in existence in the second century B.C. must be dismissed as irrelevant. Even if the premises be admitted, the conclusion which it is sought to establish would not follow from them. It remains, therefore, to examine the evidence which has been thought to prove that some of the things mentioned by Pausanias as existing had ceased to exist before his time. If this were indeed proved, then the proposition that he did not describe Greece as it was in his own time would be proved also, and we 148should be sure that his descriptions were borrowed either wholly or in part from earlier writers, even if we could not hazard any guess as to who these writers were.

His description of Piraeus.

In the first place, then, it has been maintained that the description which Pausanias gives of the state of Piraeus did not apply to his own time. His account of the ship-sheds, the two market-places, the sanctuaries, the images, and so on, implies, it is said, that the port was in a fairly thriving state when he wrote about the middle of the second century A.D., and this cannot have been the case since Piraeus was burnt by Sulla in 86 B.C., and still lay in a forlorn condition when Strabo wrote in the age of Augustus. This remarkable criticism entirely overlooks the fact that between the destruction of Piraeus by Sulla and the time of Pausanias more than two hundred years had elapsed, during the greater part of which Greece had enjoyed profound peace and had been treated with special favour and indulgence by the Roman emperors. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that during these two centuries the blackened ruins should have been cleared away? that new buildings should have sprung up, and population should have gathered once more around the harbour? Does the Palatinate, we may ask by analogy, remain to this day the wilderness to which it 149was reduced by the armies of Louis XIV. two centuries ago? But such questions need no answer. In the case of Piraeus, fortunately, we are not left merely to balance probabilities or improbabilities against each other. We have positive evidence of a great revival of the port after its destruction by Sulla. A single inscription of the first century B.C. or the second century A.D. testifies to the existence of the dockyards, the colonnades, the Exchange, the government buildings, the sanctuaries. Another, contemporary with Pausanias, proves that Roman merchants were then settled in the port. A third deals with the regulation of traffic in the market. Portraits of Roman emperors found on the spot speak of gratitude for imperial favour, and remains of Roman villas and Roman baths bear witness to the return not merely of prosperity but of wealth and luxury. In short, if Pausanias had described Piraeus as lying in ruins, as his critic thinks he should have done, he might have described it as it was in the early part of the first century B.C., but he certainly would not have described it as it was in his own time two hundred years later.

His description of Arcadia.

Again, it has been argued that Pausanias copied his description of Arcadia from much older writers because, it is said, he pictures the country as in a flourishing state, whereas 150Strabo says that most of the famous cities of Arcadia had either ceased to exist or had left hardly a trace of themselves behind. How little the testimony of Strabo is worth when he speaks of the interior of Greece is shown by his famous statement that not a vestige of Mycenae remained. Contrast this statement with the brief but accurate description which Pausanias gives of the walls and the lion-gate of Mycenae as they were in his day and as they remain down to this; then say whether the testimony of Strabo is to outweigh that of Pausanias on questions of Greek topography. In fact it is generally recognised that Strabo had visited very few parts of Greece, perhaps none but Corinth. We may therefore well hesitate to confide in his vague sweeping assertion as to the desolation of Arcadia. A simple fact suffices to upset it. Coins of the Roman period prove that seven out of the eleven cities, which he says had ceased to exist or had left hardly a trace behind, were still inhabited and doing business long after the agreeable, but not too scrupulously accurate, geographer had been gathered to his fathers. Nor, again, is it true to say that Pausanias describes Arcadia as if it were in a prosperous state. On the contrary, the long array of ruined or shrunken cities, deserted villages, and roofless shrines, which he has not failed 151to chronicle, leave on the reader, as they left on the writer himself, a melancholy impression of desolation and decay. The only two cities which from his description we should gather to have been in a tolerably thriving condition are Tegea and Mantinea. As to the former we have the precious testimony of Strabo himself that “it kept pretty well together.” As to Mantinea, if we cannot trust the evidence of Pausanias, we can surely trust the architectural and inscriptional evidence which proves that in the Roman period the theatre was rebuilt, and that not many years before Pausanias was born Roman merchants resided in the city, great reconstructions were carried out in the market-place, a marble colonnade added to it, banqueting-halls and treasuries built, a bazaar surrounded with workshops erected, and a semicircular hall reared which, in the words of an inscription referring to it, “would by itself be an ornament of the city.” The remains of these buildings, together with the ancient walls and gates of the city almost in their entire extent though not to their full height, were visible down to the year 1890 A.D. at least. ^[5] All this in a city which, if we were to believe Strabo, had vanished from the 152earth before his time leaving little or no traces of it behind. So much for the comparative value of the testimony of Strabo and Pausanias with regard to Arcadia.

Grove of Poseidon at Onchestus.

Again, in Boeotia our author is accused of describing things that were not as if they were, and the witness for the prosecution is again Strabo. Pausanias says that the grove of Poseidon at Onchestus existed in his time. Strabo says that there were no trees in it. Where is the inconsistency between these statements? Strabo wrote in the reign of Augustus; Pausanias wrote in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Did trees cease to grow after the time of Strabo?

Limnae and Thuria in Messenia.

Further, Pausanias has been reproached with not knowing that Limnae in Messenia belonged to the Messenians in his time. This is a strange reproach. He treats of Limnae under Messenia, and does not say that it belonged to anybody but the Messenians. What more could he do? Was it needful for him to say of every place in Messenia that it belonged to the Messenians? of every town in Arcadia that it belonged to the Arcadians? of every temple in Athens that it belonged to the Athenians? The ground of the offence is Pausanias’s statement that the neighbouring town of Thuria in Messenia had been bestowed by Augustus on the Lacedaemonians. The truth of this statement is not 153disputed. It is confirmed by coins which prove that in the reign of Septimius Severus, long after the time of Pausanias, Thuria continued to belong to the Lacedaemonians. But the critics have assumed quite gratuitously that along with Thuria the emperor Augustus transferred Limnae also to the Lacedaemonians, and that Pausanias believed Limnae to belong to them still in his time, although we know from the evidence of Tacitus and of boundary stones that in his time Limnae belonged to Messenia. Both these assumptions are baseless. We have no reason to suppose that Augustus gave Limnae to the Lacedaemonians, none to suppose that Pausanias believed it to belong to them. On the contrary, we have, as I have just pointed out, the best of grounds for supposing that he held it to belong to Messenia. The truth is, the critics have confused two distinct, though neighbouring districts, and have shifted the burden of this confusion to the shoulders of the innocent Pausanias, in whose work not a shadow of it can be detected.

Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Lastly, it has been assumed that Pausanias’s account of the temple of Apollo at Delphi is irreconcileable with the remains of the building and with inscriptions relating to it which have recently been discovered by the French at Delphi. The combined evidence of architecture and inscriptions proves conclusively that 154the temple built by the Alcmaeonids in the sixth century B.C. was afterwards destroyed, probably by an earthquake, and that it was rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. Yet Pausanias, it is said, describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. as if it still existed in his time. Let us look at the facts in the light of the French discoveries. Observe, then, that Pausanias mentions the Gallic shields hanging on the architrave of the temple. These shields were captured in 279 B.C. Hence the temple which he describes cannot have been the old one built in the sixth century B.C., since that temple, as we now know, was afterwards destroyed and rebuilt in the fourth century B.C. But did Pausanias believe it to be the old one? There is nothing to show that he did, but on the contrary there is a good deal to show that he did not. In the first place, he does not say that the temple was built by the Alcmaeonids. He says it was built for the Amphictyons by the architect Spintharus. The date of Spintharus is otherwise unknown, but we have no reason to suppose that he lived in the sixth rather than in the fourth century B.C. In the second place, Pausanias tells us that the first sculptures for the gables of the temple were executed by Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, but that as the building lasted some time, Praxias died before it was finished, and the rest of the 155sculptures were executed by another artist. Now we have the evidence of Pausanias himself that the sculptor Calamis was at work as late as 427 B.C. His pupil Praxias may therefore easily, at least in the opinion of Pausanias, have been at work at the end of the fifth century B.C. or in the early part of the fourth century B.C., and this is precisely the time when, if we may judge from the historical and inscriptional evidence, the old temple was destroyed and preparations at least for rebuilding it were being made. At all events, Pausanias cannot possibly have supposed that the pupil of a man who was at work in 427 B.C. can have executed sculptures for a temple that was built in the sixth century B.C. In short, neither was the temple which Pausanias describes the temple of the sixth century B.C. nor can he possibly have supposed it to be so. The temple he describes was in all probability the temple of the fourth century B.C. His statement that the temple was long in building is amply confirmed by the inscriptions, which prove that the process of reconstruction dragged on over a period of many years.

Thus in every case an analysis of the evidence adduced to prove that Pausanias described a state of things which had passed away before his time, reveals only some oversight or misapprehension on the part of his critics. We 156might take it, therefore, without further discussion that he described Greece as it was in his own age. But if any reader is still sceptical, still blinded by the phantom Polemo, let him turn to Pausanias’s description of new Corinth |New Corinth.| and read it with attention. Here was a city built in 44 B.C., more than a century after the time of Polemo, upon whom Pausanias is supposed by some to have been slavishly dependent. Yet he describes the city minutely and in topographical order, following up each street as it led out of the market-place. Amongst the many temples he mentions in it is one of Octavia and another of Capitolian Jupiter; among the many waterworks is the aqueduct by which Hadrian, the author’s contemporary, brought the water of the Stymphalian Lake to Corinth. And his description of the city with its temples, images, fountains, and portals is amply borne out by coins of the Imperial age. In the face of this single instance it is impossible to maintain that Pausanias must needs have borrowed most of his descriptions from writers who lived before 170 B.C. If he could describe Corinth so well without their aid, why should he not have described Athens, Olympia, and Delphi for himself? Nor does his power of description fail him when he comes down to works which were produced in his own lifetime. Not to mention his many notices of the works 157of Hadrian, such as the Olympieum at Athens with its colossal image of gold and ivory, and the library with its columns of Phrygian marble, its gilded roof, its alabaster ornaments, its statues and paintings, he has given us a minute account of the images dedicated by his contemporary Herodes Atticus in the temple of Poseidon at the Isthmus. |Images dedicated by Herodes Atticus at the Isthmus.| He describes the images of Amphitrite and Poseidon, made of gold and ivory, standing erect in a car drawn by gilt horses with ivory hoofs; the image of Palaemon, also made of gold and ivory, standing on a dolphin; the two Tritons beside the horses, each of them made of gold from the waist upward and of ivory from the waist downward; and the reliefs on the pedestal of the images, comprising a figure of the Sea holding up the infant Aphrodite, with Nereids and the Dioscuri on either side. If he could describe in such detail the work of an obscure contemporary artist whom he does not condescend to mention, what reason have we to think that he could not describe for himself the famous images by the great hand of Phidias, the image of the Virgin at Athens and the image of Zeus at Olympia? In short, if Pausanias copied his descriptions from a book, it must have been from a book written in his own lifetime, perhaps by another man of the same name. The theory of the copyist Pausanias reduces itself to an absurdity.

Pausanias and the existing monuments.

158The best proof that Pausanias has pictured for us Greece as it was in his own day and not as it had ceased to be long before, is supplied by the monuments. In all parts of the country the truthfulness of his descriptions has been attested by remains of the buildings which he describes, and wherever these remains are most numerous, as for example at Olympia, Delphi, and Lycosura, we have most reason to admire his minute and painstaking accuracy. That he was infallible has never been maintained, and if it had been, the excavations would have refuted so foolish a contention, for they have enabled us to detect some errors into which he fell. For example, he mistook the figure of a girl for that of a man in the eastern gable of the temple of Zeus at Olympia; he misinterpreted the attitude of Hercules and Atlas in one of the metopes of the same temple; he affirmed that the colossal images at Lycosura were made of a single block of marble, whereas we know that they were made of several blocks fitted together; and he described the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea as the largest in Peloponnese, though in fact it was much smaller than the temple of Zeus at Olympia. These and similar mistakes, like the slips he sometimes made in reading inscriptions, do not lend any colour to an imputation of bad faith. All they show is that he shared the common weaknesses of humanity, 159that his eye sometimes deceived him, that his attention sometimes flagged, that occasionally he may have lent too ready an ear to the talk of the local guides. If these are sins, they are surely not unpardonable. Those who have followed in his footsteps in Greece and have formed from personal experience some idea, necessarily slight, of the magnitude of the task he set himself and of the difficulties he had to overcome in accomplishing it, will probably be the readiest to make allowance for inevitable imperfections, will be most grateful to him for what he has done, and least disposed to censure him for what he has left undone. Without him the ruins of Greece would for the most part be a labyrinth without a clue, a riddle without an answer. His book furnishes the clue to the labyrinth, the answer to many riddles. It will be read and studied so long as ancient Greece shall continue to engage the attention and awaken the interest of mankind; and if it is allowable to forecast the results of research in the future from those of research in the past we may venture to predict that, while they will correct the descriptions of Pausanias on some minor points, they will confirm them on many more, and will bring to light nothing to shake the confidence of reasonable and fair-minded men in his honour and good faith.

160

II. Oropus.—The plain of Oropus extends along the shore for about five miles; inland it narrows to a point, two or three miles from the shore, where the Asopus issues from a beautiful defile. At this inner angle of the plain stand the modern villages of Oropo and Sykamino on opposite sides of the river. But the territory of Oropus included some at least of the low hills which environ the plain, for the hills of Oropus were at one time divided between two Attic tribes. Moreover, the sanctuary of Amphiaraus, which belonged to Oropus, stands in hilly ground to the east of the plain. The whole of this district, lying between the Euripus and the northern declivities of Mount Parnes, is of great natural beauty. It is an undulating and richly wooded country, where the road runs between soft green hills and knolls, with charming and varied prospects across the winding waters of the Euripus to the blue mountains of Euboea, among which the lofty Delph may be seen glistering white with snow even in the hot days of summer. The traveller who comes direct from the monotonous and sterile plain of Athens is struck, on emerging from the wooded pass of Decelea, by the contrast between the scene which he has left behind and that which is suddenly unrolled at his feet. In antiquity this road, which went by Aphidna and could be traversed on foot in a day, was noted for the 161number and excellence of its inns, a distinction which it certainly does not enjoy now.

The country between Oropus and Rhamnus, through which Pausanias conducts his readers, is of similar character. Parallel chains of hills run from Mount Parnes to the high steep coast; and between them are fruitful valleys watered by pleasant brooks and embowered in luxuriant vegetation, with thickets where the song of the nightingale may be heard.

The site of the city of Oropus is now occupied by Skala Oropou, that is, ‘the port of Oropo,’ a small hamlet prettily situated among gardens, meadows, and springs, on the shore of a bay which is formed by two low projecting points a couple of miles asunder. Across the water the white houses of Eretria are clearly visible on the shore of Euboea; the mountains above them, when seen at evening from Oropus, are of a deep azure blue. In the sea are the remains of an ancient breakwater extending parallel to the shore. Among the remains of antiquity which have been found here is a beautiful marble relief of the best period of Greek sculpture, representing Amphiaraus and his charioteer Baton driving in a car drawn by four horses; the moment chosen by the sculptor is that when the earth gaped to receive the prophet; the horses are starting back in terror at the sight of the abyss which yawns at their feet.

162The sanctuary of Amphiaraus, described by Pausanias, lies in a pleasant little glen, neither wide nor deep, among low hills partially wooded with pine. The place, now called Mavrodhilisi, is distant about four miles south-east of Skala Oropou; Pausanias has greatly understated the distance. The path to it first goes through corn-fields near the sea, then turns inland and ascends through woods. A brook flows through the glen and finds its way between banks fringed by plane-trees and oleanders to the sea, which is more than a mile off. The clumps of trees and shrubs which tuft the sides of the glen and in which the nightingale warbles, the stretch of green meadow at the bottom, the stillness and seclusion of the place, and its sheltered and sunny aspect, all fitted it to be the resort of invalids, who thronged thither to consult the healing god. So sheltered indeed is the spot that even on a May morning the heat in the airless glen, with the Greek sun beating down out of a cloudless sky, is apt to be felt by a northerner as somewhat overpowering. But to a Greek it was no doubt agreeable. The oracle, we know, was open only in summer; and Livy speaks of “the ancient temple delightfully situated among springs and brooks”. The ruins of the sanctuary, excavated some years ago by the Greek Archaeological Society, lie on the narrow strip 163of flat ground on the northern or left bank of the stream.

III. Rhamnus.—Rhamnus is one of the loneliest and most secluded, but at the same time most picturesque and verdant spots in all Attica. It lies on the north-east coast of Attica, about six and a half miles north of Kato-Souli, the village which occupies the site of the ancient Tricorythus. The distance agrees well with the sixty Greek furlongs (nearly seven miles) at which Pausanias estimates it. The road from Kato-Souli first goes north-east across the northern portion of the Marathonian plain, which it quits by a pass leading northward through the hills. The pass soon opens into an upland valley, three miles long from south to north by one mile wide, enclosed on both sides by wild and barren hills. The upper slopes of these hills are scantily wooded with firs; their lower slopes are overgrown with myrtle, lentisk, and many sorts of thorny shrubs, especially the one called rhamnus, which gave the district its ancient name. The soil of the valley is partly under cultivation, but most of it is covered with dense underwood and oaks of the valanidia species. On a low flat ridge which runs across the valley from east to west there are some ancient ruins, consisting of walls 164and foundations of houses. There are now no permanent inhabitations in the whole valley. A few dirty hamlets, tenanted from time to time by peasants for the purpose of looking after their fields, lie at its eastern edge. The general aspect of the country is lonesome and desolate.

Towards the northern end of the valley the ground gradually rises; and where it terminates the scenery changes. Here, at the northern extremity of the valley, a narrow woody glen, about half a mile long, descends rapidly in a north-easterly direction to the sea-shore. At the head of the glen, commanding a magnificent view down its wooded depths and across the narrow channel of the Euripus to the lofty mountains of Euboea, rises a stately terrace supported by exquisitely constructed walls of white marble, which are embowered in a luxuriant growth of dark-green shrubbery and fir-trees. In this superb situation, crowning the terrace, stand side by side the ruins of two temples, the famous temple of Nemesis and a smaller temple, probably of Themis. Below, where the glen opens on the shore, an isolated rocky hill juts out into the sea; and on its sides, half buried in thickly clustering masses of evergreens, are the white marble walls and towers of Rhamnus.

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IV. Marathon.—The plain of Marathon, the scene of the memorable defeat of the Persians by the Athenians in 490 B.C., is a crescent-shaped stretch of flat land curving round the shore of a spacious bay and bounded on the landward side by a semicircle of steep mountains, with bare rocky sides, which rise abruptly from the plain. In its north-eastern corner the plain is terminated by a narrow rocky promontory running southward far into the sea and sheltering the bay on the north-east; in antiquity this promontory was called Cynosura (‘dog’s tail’), it is now called Cape Stomi or Cape Marathon. At its southern end the plain is terminated by Mount Agrieliki, a spur of Mount Pentelicus, which here advances so far eastward as to leave only a narrow strip of flat land between it and the sea. Through this strip of flat land at the foot of Mount Agrieliki runs the only carriage road which connects Marathon with Athens. The length of the plain of Marathon from north-east to south-west is about six miles; its breadth varies from one and a half to two and a half miles. The shore is a shelving sandy beach, free from rocks and shoals, and well suited for the disembarkation of troops. A great swamp, covered with sharp reed-grass and divided from the sea by a narrow strip of sandy beach overgrown with pine-trees, occupies most of the 166northern end of the plain. It never dries wholly up even in the heat of summer; two canals constructed by General Sutzos have only partially drained it. Tamarisk bushes grow in the drier parts of the marsh; their scarlet blossoms are conspicuous in spring. The swamp is deepest at its western side, where it is separated only by a narrow passage, hardly wide enough for two horses to pass each other, from the steep rocky slope of Mount Stavrokoraki. The ancient road which led northward from the plain of Marathon to Rhamnus ran along this narrow passage, between the marsh on the one hand and the slope of the mountain on the other. Leake noticed traces of ancient chariot-wheels here; and till a few years ago a long line of stones, a little farther to the south, marked the line of the ancient road. At the northern end of this defile between the marsh and the mountain stands the modern village of Kato-Souli. About a quarter of a mile to the south of it, close to the road and to the foot of the mountain, are the deepest pools of the swamp; they are easily distinguished by the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds them, the tall reeds being particularly noticeable. These pools, beside which cattle find green pasture in summer when the plains are scorched and brown with heat, are fed by powerful subterranean sources, the Macaria of the ancients, 167about which Pausanias tells us the legend of Macaria, daughter of Hercules, who gave her name to the spring. Strabo says that the head of Eurystheus was cut off and buried by Iolaus beside the spring Macaria, under the highroad, and that hence the place was called ‘the head of Eurystheus.’ At Kato-Souli, about half-way up the slope of the hill which rises above the village, there are some shallow niche-like excavations in the rock, not unlike mangers. It may have been these niches to which popular fancy gave the name of ‘the mangers of the horses of Artaphernes.’ On its opposite or eastern side the great swamp ends in a small salt-water lake, now called Drakonera, that is ‘the dragon-water’ or ‘the enchanted water.’ This lake discharges itself into the sea by a stream which flows exactly at the point where the sandy beach of the bay ends and the rocks of Cape Cynosura begin. Sea fish are caught in the lake, and eels in the fresh-water pools of the marsh. The salt lake has perhaps been formed since the time of Pausanias, for he describes only the marsh and a stream flowing from it into the sea. At the southern end of the plain of Marathon there is another, but much smaller, swamp called Vrexisa between the sea and the foot of Mount Agrieliki. Its greatest breadth is about half a mile. It is covered with reedy grass and 168shrubs, and is separated from the sea by a strip of sand. The highroad to Athens runs betwixt this marsh and the foot of the mountains.

Between these two marshes, the one on the north, the other on the south, the plain of Marathon is now chiefly covered with corn-fields. But towards its southern end there is a stretch of vineyards mixed with olives and fruit-trees and dotted with a few pines and cypresses. Farther north, an isolated oak-tree rising here and there, and a green belt of currant-plantations stretching from the foot of the hills to the shore of the bay, break the uniformity of the endless corn-fields. The plain is uninhabited. The villages lie at the foot of the mountains or in the neighbouring glens. On a still autumn day, under a lowering sky, the wide expanse of the solitary plain presents a chilling and dreary aspect. Not a living creature is to be seen, except perhaps a few peasants in the distance ploughing with teams of slow-paced oxen.

In this vast sweep of level ground the eye is caught, at no great distance, by a single solitary object rising inconspicuously above it. This is the famous mound, now called Soros, which covers the remains of the Athenians who fell in the battle. It rises from the plain a mile from the foot of the hills, half a mile from the sea, 169and about three-quarters of a mile north of the marsh of Vrexisa. It is a conical mound of light, reddish mould, some thirty feet high and two hundred paces in circumference. Its top has been somewhat flattened by excavations; its sides are overgrown with low brushwood. A wild pear-tree grows at its foot. In April-June 1890 the mound was excavated under the superintendence of Mr. Staes for the Greek Government. Trenches were cut into it, and at the depth of about nine feet below the present surface of the plain there was found an artificial floor, constructed of sand and other materials, about eighty-five feet long and twenty feet broad. On this floor there rested a layer of ashes, charcoal, and human bones, charred by fire and mouldering away with damp. Mixed with this layer of ashes and bones were about thirty earthenware vases, most of them broken in pieces. These vases are painted in the common black-figured style; the subjects represented are generally chariots, but in some cases horsemen and foot-soldiers. Besides these vases there was found a long-necked amphora adorned with friezes of beasts and monsters in the oriental style, and a winged figure of the oriental Artemis; and another two-handled vase of reddish-brown clay, with decorations somewhat in the Mycenaean style, was found to contain charred bones, perhaps those of a 170general. Further excavations made in the following year laid bare a sacrificial pit or trench extending diagonally under the mound from north to south. This trench is cased with burnt bricks, and contained ashes, charcoal, and the bones of animals and birds, mixed with fragments of black-figured vases. It had originally been roofed with bricks, which had fallen in. The bones found in this trench are clearly those of the victims sacrificed to the heroic dead before the mound was heaped over their remains; and the broken vases discovered along with them may have been those which were used at the funeral banquet. The Greek archaeologists further detected some vestiges which led them to believe that, even after the mound had been raised, sacrifices continued to be annually offered at it. This confirms Pausanias’s statement that the men who fell in the battle were worshipped as heroes by the people of Marathon. From an inscription we learn that the Athenian lads went to the tomb, laid wreaths on it, and sacrificed to the dead.

The excavations have finally disproved a theory, broached by E. Curtius in 1853 and maintained by Professor Milchhöfer as late as 1889, that, the mound was prehistoric and had nothing to do with the battle of Marathon. For the black-figured vases found with the bones and ashes of the dead 171belong to the period of the Persian wars; the human remains can therefore be no other than those of the hundred and ninety-two Athenians who fell at Marathon. Curtius’s erroneous theory was apparently countenanced by some imperfect excavations made by Dr. Schliemann in 1884. Many bronze arrow-heads, about an inch long and pierced with a round hole at the top for the reception of the shaft, have been picked up at the mound; also a great number of black flints, rudely chipped into shape. It has been conjectured that these flints are parts of the stone-headed arrows discharged by the Ethiopian archers in the Persian army. But against this opinion it has been urged that similar flints have been found at other ancient sites in Attica and elsewhere, especially in the oldest graves on many Greek islands, and have not been found at Thermopylae and Plataea, where, if anywhere, the stone-headed arrows may be supposed to have flown in showers.

There are two main routes from the plain of Marathon to Athens; one of them goes by the south, the other by the north side of Mount Pentelicus. The first route leaves the plain at its southern extremity, and passing between the foot of Mount Agrieliki and the marsh of Vrexisa runs parallel with the coast for some distance. It then turns westward, and crossing the deep valley which divides Pentelicus on 172the north from Hymettus on the south enters the plain of Athens. This is by far the easiest road; it is the only one which vehicles can traverse. The distance by this road from the great mound at Marathon to Athens is about twenty-five or twenty-six miles. The other route, by the north side of Mount Pentelicus, goes from Oenoe (the modern Ninoi) by a very steep and toilsome path to Stamata, a village in a high situation, surrounded by a few barren fields, among woods of pine. In many places the path is so hemmed in between cliffs and precipices that there is room only for a single horse. Trees are rare, but the stony slopes of the mountain are overgrown with shrubs of many sorts, among which the Erica arborea is conspicuous. In spring its masses of white blossoms perfume the whole air with their fragrance. About half an hour short of Stamata, at a point where there is a spring shaded by fine plane-trees, the path is joined on the left by another path, also steep and toilsome, which comes up from Vrana. This latter path commands a magnificent view backward down the deep ravine through which the traveller has ascended. On either side of the ravine rise the mountains, their precipitous sides covered with straggling pine-forest or evergreen copse, and terminating in bold peaks; below is spread out the green 173expanse of the Marathonian plain, backed by the sea and Cape Cynosura curving into the blue water with the sweep of a scimitar. Farther off, bounding the prospect, stretches the long line of the mountains of Euboea.

From Stamata the path skirts the north-western shoulder of Mount Pentelicus and enters Kephisia, from which there is a good highroad through the plain to Athens. The distance by this route from the mound at Marathon to Athens is roughly about twenty-two miles.

A third route, intermediate between the two preceding routes and shorter than either of them, goes from Vrana up the wild romantic ravine of Rapentosa and crosses the southern shoulder of Mount Pentelicus, the highest summit of which is left about a mile to the westward. It is a rugged and precipitous path, hardly practicable even for heavy infantry. Within a distance of little more than nine miles the route ascends and descends a ridge which rises more than two thousand five hundred feet above the plain below.

Clearly the first of these routes is the only road by which a large army with cavalry and baggage-train could march. Therefore when the Persians landed at Marathon, under the guidance of the banished Athenian tyrant Hippias, who was of course familiar with the 174country, they must have intended to advance on Athens by the southern road, and consequently the Athenians must have marched to meet them by the same road; for had they taken the northern route the enemy might have given them the slip, and his cavalry might have been entering the streets of Athens at the time when the Athenians were emerging from the defiles of Pentelicus on the plain of Marathon. Thus the traveller who drives to Marathon by the carriage road may feel sure that he is following very closely the route by which the Athenian army advanced to the battle.

V. Prasiae.—The township of Prasiae was situated on the spacious and beautiful bay now called Porto Raphti, on the east coast of Attica, about sixteen miles north-east of Sunium. From the fertile valley of Cephale (now Keratea) a path leads north-eastward through a very deep and narrow glen to the shore of the bay. In the depths of this romantic glen there winds the bed of a stream which is sometimes nearly or wholly dry. The sides of the glen, seamed with the beds of torrents and rifted rocks, are so thickly wooded and overhung with pine-trees and bushes that in many places it is hard to force a passage along it. Flocks of sheep 175and goats browsing, and in spring the warbling of numerous nightingales in the thickets, alone relieve the solitude. At the end of the glen, which is about three miles long, the view of the wide bay, enclosed by barren mountains, suddenly bursts on us. On the north Mount Peratia, with its jagged ridge and bold beautiful outline, descends in precipices almost sheer into the water, its sides bare except for here and there a thin patch of pinewood. On the south rises, dark and massive, the loftier Mavronori (‘the black mountain’). From its base the rocky headland of Koroni runs far out into the sea, sheltering the bay on the east and narrowing its entrance to about a mile and a quarter. Right in the middle of the entrance, breaking the force of the waves when the wind blows from the east, a rocky islet in the shape of a sugar-loaf or pyramid rises abruptly from the sea to the height of about three hundred feet. Its sides, clothed with lentisk bushes and dwarf pines, are so steep that it can be scaled only on one side, the north. On its summit, looking seaward, sits a colossal but headless and armless statue of white marble on a high pedestal, the blocks of which were falling to ruin at the time of Dodwell’s visit but are now held together by iron clamps. This statue, which, to judge from its style, dates from the time of the Roman empire, is popularly supposed to resemble a 176tailor (raphti) seated at his work; hence it has given its present name of Porto Raphti to the bay. It has been plausibly conjectured that this is the monument described by Pausanias as the tomb of Erysichthon who died at sea on his way home from Delos. The striking monument, looking out from its high lonely isle across the blue sea, may have been erected on the traditionary site of the hero’s grave by some wealthy patron of art in Roman days, perhaps by Herodes Atticus himself.

The inner part of the bay is divided into two by a rocky spit jutting out from the shore, to which it is attached by a low isthmus. The promontory takes its name from a chapel of St. Nicholas which stands on the isthmus; a small island off the promontory still bears the name of Prasonisi or ‘Isle of Prasiae.’ The anchorage for fishing boats is on the north side of the isthmus, and here are the few wretched hovels which make up the hamlet of Porto Raphti. The hamlet is not permanently inhabited. For the bay, though one of the finest harbours in Greece, is desolate and hardly frequented except in summer. By day peasants may be met at work in the fields or carting fish to the neighbouring villages. But all through the colder seasons of the year and even on summer evenings a profound stillness, broken only by the lapping of the waves on the beach, reigns 177on the shores of this beautiful bay, one of the fairest scenes in Attica.

On the northern shore of the bay there are a few scanty remains of antiquity which seem to have belonged to the township of Stiria. Prasiae lay on the southern shore, which still bears the ancient name. Here, between the sandy and in part marshy beach and the hills, there stretches a strip of level cornland interspersed with olives and stately cork-oaks. Some vestiges of ancient wall may be traced at a garden not far from the shore, where there is also an ancient well. But the sand is gaining so fast here that a few years ago the ruins of a chapel with some Christian graves were discovered buried in the downs. The citadel of Prasiae occupied the rocky headland of Koroni (probably the ancient Coronea), which, as we have seen, shelters the bay on the east. This bold headland, joined to the mainland by a low sandy isthmus, has obviously been at one time an island; indeed the whole of the southern part of the bay is being gradually sanded up. The fortification walls, six feet thick and built without mortar, may be followed all round the summit of the headland, which is besides so well protected by its steep cliffs that an attack from the side of the sea must have been nearly impracticable. Another wall, eight to ten feet thick, which seems to have been strengthened 178with towers or bastions, runs down in a south-westerly direction from the ring-wall of the citadel. It probably served as an outwork and may have reached as far as the shore, though now it disappears some distance above the water. Within the ring-wall of the citadel are the remains of a number of cross-walls extending at right angles to it; but they are now so overgrown by dense underwood that it is almost impossible to trace them. From the summit of the headland there is a fine prospect, on the one side over the noble bay with its rocky islets, on the other side across the sea to Euboea, Andros, and Ceos. The white houses which are seen gleaming in Ceos are those of the modern town which occupies the site of the ancient Julis.

VI. Mount Hymettus.—The outline of Hymettus, viewed from Athens, is even and regular; but its sides are furrowed by winter torrents and its base is broken into many small isolated hills of a conical form. Except towards its base the range is almost destitute of soil. Wild olives, myrtles, laurels, and oleanders are found only in some of the gullies at the foot of the mountain. Its steep rocky slopes are composed of grey marble seamed and cracked in all directions. Some stunted shrubs, 179however, including the lentisk, terebinth, and juniper, and sweet-smelling herbs, such as thyme, lavender, savory, and sage, grow in the clefts of the rocks, and, with flowers such as hyacinths and purple crocuses, furnish the bees with the food from which they still extract the famous Hymettian honey. Hymettus seems to have been as bare and treeless in classical antiquity as it is now; for Plato remarks that some of the Attic mountains, which now only provided food for bees, had at no very remote epoch furnished the timber with which some very large buildings were still roofed at the time when he wrote. The honey of Hymettus was renowned. It was said that when Plato was a babe the bees on Hymettus filled his mouth with honey. The story went that bees were first produced on the mountain. Poets spoke of the flowery and fragrant Hymettus. The thyme and the creeping thyme (serpyllum) of Hymettus are specially mentioned; the creeping thyme was transplanted to Athens and grown there. When ancient writers speak of Attic honey in general, they may have had Hymettian honey in view. Vitruvius compares Attic honey to resin in colour, which aptly describes the colour of the modern Hymettian honey. When Synesius visited Athens in the fifth century A.D. he found that the glory of its philosophers had departed, but that the glory 180of its bee-masters still remained. Opinions differ as to the quality of the modern Hymettian honey. Leake pronounced it superior to that of the rest of Attica and of the surrounding provinces of Greece. Others think it inferior to the honey of other parts of Greece, such as the Cyclades, Corinth, and Thebes, as well as to the heather honey of Scotland and Ireland. Most of the honey sold as Hymettian comes from Tourko Vouni, north of Athens, and from other parts of Attica.

Hymettus was also famous in antiquity for its marble, which seems to have been especially prized by the Romans. This marble, which is still quarried in large quantities on Hymettus, is a bluish-grey streaky marble, of finer and closer grain than the white Pentelic marble, but far inferior to it in beauty. The Greeks seem not to have used it commonly till the third century B.C. From that time onward we find it employed for tombstones, inscriptions, and the casing of buildings. The principal quarries are on the western side of the mountain, on the slopes which enclose the valley of St. George on the south and south-east and which on the other side descend nearly sheer into ‘the Devil’s Glen’ or ‘the Evil Glen,’ the deepest and wildest gorge in Hymettus. Vestiges of the ancient road or slide by which the blocks were brought down from the quarries 181may be seen about a hundred yards above the chapel of St. George; the road seems to have been led in serpentine curves down the slope, not in a straight line like the road from the quarries on Pentelicus. A great part of the upper ridge of Hymettus is composed of a white marble resembling the white marble of Pentelicus, but inferior to it in crystalline structure and of a duller white. The ancients apparently made little use of this white Hymettian marble.

Clouds on Hymettus were believed to prognosticate rain; if during a storm a long bank of clouds was seen lowering on the mountain, it meant that the storm would increase in fury. Hymettus is still as of old remarkable for the wonderful purple glow which comes over it as seen from Athens by evening light. When the sun is setting, a rosy flush spreads over the whole mountain, which, as the daylight fades and the shadows creep up the slope, passes by insensible transitions through all intermediate shades of colour into the deepest violet. This purple tinge is peculiar to Hymettus; none of the other mountains which encircle the plain of Athens assumes it at any hour of the day. It was when the sunset glow was on Hymettus that Socrates drained the poisoned cup.

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VII. Mount Pentelicus.—Pentelicus is the pyramid-like mountain, between three and four thousand feet high, which closes the Athenian plain on the north-east, at a distance of about ten miles from Athens. Its upper slopes, as seen from the Acropolis at Athens, have been aptly compared to the pediment or gable of a Greek temple. Through the clear air of Attica the unaided eye, looking from the Acropolis, can distinguish the white line of the ancient quarries descending, somewhat to the right of the highest peak, straight down into the valley where the monastery of Mendeli lies hidden by the intervening heights; to the left of the summit, half-way up the slope, may be discerned the large white patches which mark the site of the modern quarries.

But though the view of the pyramidal or gable-like summit is the one which chiefly strikes the observer at Athens, Pentelicus is really a range of mountains with a number of lesser summits, extending from north-west to south-east for a distance of about four and a half miles. The ancient quarries lie on the south-western side of the highest peak. Five-and-twenty of them may be counted, one above the other; the highest is situated not far beneath the highest ridge, at a height of over three thousand three hundred feet above the sea. They are reached from the monastery of 183Mendeli, the wealthiest monastic establishment in Attica, which nestles in a well-watered and wooded glade at the southern foot of the mountain, about twelve hundred feet above sea level. The ground in front of the monastery is shaded by gigantic white poplars, under which flows a spring of excellent water. The name Mendeli is the modern equivalent of Pentele, the name of the ancient township, the site of which is perhaps marked by some ancient blocks and traces of walls and terraces at the chapel of the Trinity, a little to the north-east of the monastery.

The quarries are situated in the gullies above the monastery. An ancient road, very steep and rugged, leads to them up the eastern side of the principal gully. The road is roughly paved; the blocks of marble were probably brought down it on wooden slides. Square holes may be seen at intervals cut in the rock at the side of the road; the beams which supported the wooden slides may have been fastened in these holes. The road appears to end at the principal quarry, a spot now called Spilia, two thousand three hundred feet above the sea. Here the rock has been quarried away so as to leave a smooth perpendicular wall of marble, the top of which is fringed with firs. The marks, delicate and regular, of the ancient chisels may be seen in 184horizontal rows on the face of the rock. At the foot of this wall of marble, overgrown with shrubs and mantled with creepers, is the low entrance to a stalactite grotto, well known to visitors, as the names cut and painted on the walls suffice to prove. The entrance is partly built up with walls of the Byzantine age; to the right, roofed by the rock, is a chapel of St. Nicholas. The grotto is spacious, cool, and dark; its floor descends somewhat from the mouth inwards. About sixty paces from the entrance there is a small side-grotto with a rocky basin full of cold spring-water.

An examination of the marks on the rock shows that the ancients regularly quarried the marble in rectangular blocks, first running a groove round each block with the chisel and then forcing it out with wedges. The effect of this has been to leave the quarries in the shape of huge rectangular cuttings in the side of the mountain.

The stone extracted from these quarries is a white marble of a close fine grain. It is readily distinguished from Parian marble—the other white marble commonly used by Greek sculptors and architects—by its finer grain and opaque milky whiteness; whereas the Parian marble is composed of large transparent crystals, and is of a glistering snowy whiteness. Parian marble resembles crystallised sugar; Pentelic 185marble resembles solidified milk, though its surface is of course more granular. Pentelic marble, alone among all Greek marbles, contains a slight tincture of iron; hence its surface, when long exposed to the weather, acquires that rich golden-brown patina which is so much admired on the columns of the Parthenon and other buildings constructed of Pentelic marble. The Parian marble, on the other hand, though it weathers more easily than the Pentelic on account of its coarser grain, always remains dazzlingly white. Pentelic marble is always clearly stratified, and in places it is streaked with veins of silvery white, green, and reddish-violet mica. Blocks so streaked were either thrown aside by the ancients or used by them for buildings, not sculpture. But even in architecture these veins of mica entailed this disadvantage that the surfaces containing them, when long exposed to the weather, split and pealed off in flakes, as we may see on the drums of the columns of the Olympieum or Parthenon.

Besides the fine white marble already described, which is commonly known simply as Pentelic marble, there occurs on Mount Pentelicus a grey, bluish-grey, and grey-streaked marble identical in kind with the marble known as Hymettian, because the ancients quarried it on Mount Hymettus. This grey or bluish-grey 186marble is of more recent geological formation than the white. It does not appear to have been quarried by the ancients on Pentelicus; at least no ancient quarries of it have been discovered on the mountain. But it is now obtained in great masses in the large modern quarries to the east of Kephisia, and furnishes Athens with building material for the better class of houses and public edifices; even paving-stones are made of it.

An hour’s climb from the great quarry at Spilia takes us to the summit of Pentelicus. The path ascends slopes which not many years ago were thickly wooded, but are now bare and stony. The view from the top is the clearest and most comprehensive that can be obtained of the Attic peninsula. Conspicuous below us on the north is the sickle-shaped bay of Marathon. The snowy peak of Parnassus closes the prospect on the west; the mountains of Euboea bound it on the north; and to the south, in clear weather, the island of Melos is faintly visible at a distance of ninety to a hundred miles. On the ridge, a little below and to the south-east of the summit of Pentelicus, there is a small platform, which on three sides shows traces of having been hewn out of the rock. It is exactly in the line of the ancient paved road, which, however, comes to an end considerably lower down, at the great quarry. On this 187platform probably stood the image of Athena mentioned by Pausanias.

VIII. Phyle.—An expedition to the ruins of Phyle is a favourite excursion of visitors to Athens. The distance by road is about fourteen miles. Diodorus indeed estimates the distance at a hundred Greek furlongs or eleven miles. But he is wrong. Demosthenes, more correctly, says that it was over a hundred and twenty Greek furlongs. A carriage road runs as far as Chasia, a large village on the southern slopes of Mount Parnes, about ten miles from Athens. Beyond this point the way is nothing but a steep and stony bridle-path. After ascending it for half an hour we come to the meeting of two deep and savage glens. In the glen to the right or east the little monastery of Our Lady of the Defile stands romantically at the foot of sheer precipices. The path to Phyle (which is at the same time the direct road to Thebes) winds rapidly up the narrow western glen through a thin forest of firs. In places the path is hewn in the rock, and the defile is so narrow that a handful of men might make it good against an army. Phyle is reached in about an hour and three-quarters from Chasia. The fortress with its massive walls and towers crowns a high precipitous crag 188on the southern side of the pass, which it completely dominates. A ridge connects the crag with the higher mountains on the east; and along this ridge is the only approach to the fortress. On the west and south the sides of the crag fall away abruptly into a deep ravine, which is broken by tremendous precipices, crested with firs and tufted with shrubs and underwood. The ruins of the fortress encircle a little plateau, scarcely three hundred feet long from east to west, on the summit of the crag. The walls and towers, built of fine quadrangular blocks without mortar, are best preserved on the north-east side, where they are still standing to a height of seventeen courses. The tower at the north-east angle is round; the other two remaining towers are square. The principal gate was on the east side, approached from the ridge. There was further a postern, also approached from the ridge, near the south-east corner. From the fortress, which stands more than two thousand feet above the sea, the view is magnificent, taking in the whole of the Athenian plain with Athens itself and Hymettus, and the sea with Salamis, Aegina, and the coast of Peloponnese.

The high peak, now named Mount Pagania, which towers immediately to the north-east of Phyle in the form of a crescent-shaped wall of naked rock is probably the ancient Harma, 189which the augurs at Athens watched till they saw lightning flash about its summit, whereupon they sent the sacrifice to Delphi. Strabo expressly says that Harma was near Phyle. On its eastern side the peak descends in precipices into the deep glen, already mentioned, at the entrance of which is the monastery of Our Lady of the Defile.

Farther up this glen than the monastery, at a height of some hundreds of feet above the torrent (the Potami) which traverses it, there is a cavern which is sometimes visited. The direct distance of this cavern from the monastery is only about a mile and a half. But in the glen the stream, hemmed in by precipices advancing from the mountains on both sides, has scooped out for itself between them a bed so profound and rugged that to scramble along it is impossible, even when the water is at its lowest. Hence in order to reach the cavern it is needful to make a long detour round the western flanks of Mount Pagania and to come down into the glen at a point a good deal higher up. Having done so we follow the glen downward past the place where another glen opens into it, bringing its tributary stream to swell the Potami. The cave is situated high up on the eastern side of the main glen, a little below the meeting of the waters. To clamber up the steep slope to it is far from easy. The 190mouth of the cave is so narrow that only one person can enter it at a time; it opens at the foot of a precipice darkened by overhanging trees and flanked by two crags which project like wings on either side. In the face of the rock to the right of the entrance into the cavern are some votive niches with worn inscriptions under them. Within the cave, which may be about a hundred paces deep, water dripping from the roof has formed large stalactites and has hollowed out basins in the floor. Broken lamps and potsherds have been found in it in considerable quantities, which, with the votive niches outside, prove that this secluded spot was an ancient sanctuary. It was most probably the Nymphaeum or sanctuary of the Nymphs, which Menander mentioned as being near Phyle. Here, too, the people of Phyle probably offered the sacrifices to Pan to which Aelian refers. For one of the inscriptions on the rock outside the cave sets forth that a certain Tychander caused workmen to put up the image of Pan beside the Celadon, and that sacrifices were offered by one Trophimianus. From this inscription we learn that the Potami, which flows in the depth of the glen below the cave, went in antiquity by the name of the Celadon or ‘Roaring Stream.’

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IX. The Port of Athens.—Piraeus, the port of Athens, is a rocky peninsula which runs out into the sea in a south-westerly direction for a distance of more than two miles. It is composed of two masses, each over a mile wide, which are united to each other by a somewhat low and narrow ridge or isthmus. The south-western mass, anciently known as the Acte, rises gradually on all sides to a height of nearly two hundred feet. The north-eastern mass attains a height of nearly three hundred feet in the steep rocky hill of Munychia. The ancients believed that the peninsula of Piraeus had formerly been an island, and that it had received its name because it was the land across (peran) the water. Modern observation confirms the belief that Piraeus was once an island. The peninsula is joined to the mainland by a stretch of low swampy ground, nowhere more than eight feet above the level of the sea. This stretch of low land, which the ancients called Halipedon, appears to be formed of alluvial soil brought down in the course of ages by the Cephisus, which falls into the sea a little to the east, and which has by its deposits gradually converted the rocky island into a peninsula.

Piraeus includes three distinct harbours, each opening to the sea by a separate mouth. These are the great harbour, technically known as Cantharus, on the north-west side of the peninsula, 192and the two smaller and nearly circular harbours of Zea and Munychia on the south-eastern side. The whole of the peninsula, with its three harbours, was strongly fortified in antiquity. The line of the fortification wall may still be traced almost all round it, and in most places the foundations are so well preserved that it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the fortress as a whole. The wall runs along the shore at such a distance as to be out of reach of the waves, and yet near enough the sea to prevent an enemy from bringing siege engines into play on the beach. It is from ten to twelve feet thick, and is very carefully built of squared blocks of the native limestone without mortar. The quarries in which the stones were hewn may be observed at many points both behind and in front of the wall. In places where the stones have been taken away from the wall to furnish building material for the modern town, we can see the grooves or channels cut in the rock in which the stones were originally bedded. These grooves are each about two and a half feet wide and run parallel to each other, showing that only the outer and inner faces of the wall were of solid masonry, and that the core must have been, as in many ancient Greek walls, filled up with rubble and earth. In the best preserved portions the wall is still standing to a height of five courses or more. It is flanked 193by towers which project from the curtain at intervals of sixty or seventy yards.

In addition to this sea-wall which skirted the coast, the mouths of the three harbours were contracted by moles of solid masonry that ran out to meet each other on either side, leaving only a narrow entrance between their extremities. The long moles which thus barred the mouth of the great harbour still exist, though the southern of the two has been washed away by the waves to a depth of some thirteen feet under the surface of the water. They now support the red and green lights which at night mark the entrance to the harbour. The haven of Zea is naturally stronger than the great harbour, and therefore needed less elaborate fortifications. It consists of a circular basin lying about two hundred yards inland from the sea, and is approached by a channel a hundred yards wide. Walls ran along this channel on either side, so that an enemy’s ships endeavouring to enter the harbour would have had to run the gauntlet of a cross fire. At its inner end the channel was flanked on either side by a tower of solid masonry built out into the water, but connected with the fortification walls. The third harbour, Munychia, the smallest of the three, is farthest removed from the business and bustle of the modern port town, and hence has, in some respects, best preserved the relics of antiquity. 194Originally it was a mere open bay, and therefore needed vast constructions of masonry to convert it into a war harbour. The moles built for this purpose are described by Lieutenant von Alten, who examined them with attention, as the most magnificent specimens of ancient Greek fortification which have survived. In some places on the outer edges of the moles the colossal blocks of which they are composed have been piled up in wild confusion by the heavy surf, and project like islets above the surface of the water. Each mole ended in a tower; and the narrow entrance to the harbour was between the towers. The tiny basin is commanded by the hill of Munychia which rises steeply from the shore. In time of danger each of the harbour mouths could be closed with a chain stretched between the two towers that flanked the entrance. The chain seems to have been coated with tar to prevent it from rusting in the water.

On the landward side the peninsula was defended by a wall, which started from the harbour of Munychia, ascended the hill, and after following the edge of the plateau for some distance gradually descended westward to the shallow northern bight of the great harbour, across which it appears to have been carried on a mole or dam. This landward wall, to judge from its existing remains, seems to have been a masterpiece of military engineering, every 195opportunity offered by the nature of the ground for strengthening the fortifications having been unerringly seized upon and turned to account. The naturally weakest spot in the whole circuit was where the wall crossed the flat between the hill of Munychia and the great harbour. Here accordingly we find the wall especially strong; it is twenty-six feet thick, and is constructed of solid masonry in large squared blocks without any core of rubble. Naturally the gates were placed in this landward wall and opened northward. Remains of four of them can be distinguished. The principal gate, flanked by two square towers on oval bases, stood in the flat ground between the north-east end of the great harbour and the heights of Munychia. Through it doubtless ran the highway to Athens; and here at a little side portal for foot-passengers probably stood the image of Hermes, which the nine archons dedicated when they set about fortifying Piraeus. A little to the east of this principal gate and on slightly higher ground is another gate, through which the road to Athens went between the two Long Walls. The gate is double, that is, it is composed of a court nearly square with a gate at each end. The reason of this construction, which is common in Greek fortifications, was that, if an enemy should force the outer gate, he would still have a second gate in front of him, and would in the meantime 196find himself pent in a narrow court, as in a trap, from the walls of which he would be assailed on all sides by the missiles of the defenders.

The docks at Piraeus were one of the glories of Athens. Demosthenes mentions them along with the Parthenon and the Propylaea. When the Athenian navy numbered about four hundred warships, we learn from inscriptions that the number of docks was three hundred and seventy-two. But this excess of ships over docks could scarcely have caused inconvenience, as some vessels must always have been in commission. Very considerable remains of the ancient docks are still to be seen in the harbours of Zea and Munychia. The flat beach all round the basin of Zea was enclosed by a wall of ashlar masonry, which ran round the harbour at a distance of fifty or sixty feet from the water’s edge. This formed the back wall of all the docks, which extended at right angles to it and parallel to each other down into the water. The average breadth of each dock or berth was about twenty feet. The docks were separated from each other by rows of columns, the foundations of which, bedded on the shelving rocky beach, descend in steps to the water, and are continued under it for some distance. These columns supported the roofs, which were probably wooden, for no remains of a stone roof 197have been found. Between these partition rows of columns the rock has been hollowed out and smoothed, so that it forms an inclined plane, descending gradually, like the rows of columns, to the sea, and continued under water for some way. Each of these inclined planes formed the floor of a dock. In the middle of each floor is built a stone pier about ten feet wide and a yard high; in some places the native rock, hewn out at the sides, has been left standing in the centre so as to form a pier of similar dimensions. On these piers, whether built or hewn out of the rock, the ancient ships were hauled up and down. Remains of them may still be seen all round the harbour of Zea running out under the clear water.

The only relics of ancient ships which have been found at Zea are some plates of Parian marble representing great eyes. Clearly these were the ship’s eyes which used to be fastened to the bows of ancient Greek vessels. Pollux tells us that the ship’s name was painted beside its eye. Philostratus describes the picture of an Etruscan pirate ship painted blue, with fierce eyes at the prow to frighten the enemy. In a list of missing or unserviceable ships’ furniture, preserved in an inscription, mention is twice made of a broken ship’s eye. Some of the eyes found at Zea show traces of red paint at the back; the paint probably adhered to them from 198the ships’ sides; for ships’ bows were often painted red. Modern Italian sailors sometimes still paint an eye on the bow of their vessel. In the East, too, every craft owned by a Chinaman, from a sampan up to an English-built screw-steamer, has a pair of eyes painted on the bows, that it may see its way and spy out sunken rocks and other dangers of the deep. Indeed, in all parts of eastern Asia where many Chinese travel, the local steamers, whether owned by Chinese or not, all have eyes; otherwise no Chinaman would travel in them, or send his goods by them.

Another famous structure in Piraeus was the arsenal, which formed a necessary adjunct to the docks of the navy. We know from ancient authors that it was built from designs furnished by the architect Zeno, who explained them to the people in a speech which won him a high reputation for eloquence. The building was admired for its elegance, and the Athenians were proud of it. However, it was finally burnt by the Romans under Sulla, and no certain vestiges of it have been as yet discovered. But by an extraordinary piece of good fortune the directions given to the contractor for its construction have been preserved to us. They were discovered in 1882 engraved on a slab of Hymettian marble at the foot of the hill of Munychia, not far from the harbour of Zea. 199The directions are so full, clear, and precise that we now know Philo’s arsenal from roof to foundation better than any other building of ancient Greece, though not a stone of it has been found. A brief description of the edifice, derived from the inscription, may not be uninteresting.

The arsenal was to be built at Zea, the principal war-harbour, and was to begin at the gateway which led from the market-place and to extend to the back of the docks. It was to be constructed of the hard reddish-grey Piraeic limestone, an excellent building material often mentioned in inscriptions and still much in use. In shape it was to be a sort of arcade, lit principally by rows of windows in the long sides, and divided into three aisles by two rows of columns running down its whole length. The central aisle, paved with flags, and entered by two bronze-plated doors at each end, was to be kept clear as a passage for the public; while the two side aisles were to serve for storing the ships’ tackle. For this purpose each of the side aisles was divided into two stories by a wooden flooring. On the ground floor the sails and other canvas gear were stowed away in presses; and in the upper galleries the ropes were coiled on open wooden shelves. Between the columns which flanked the central aisle there ran a stone balustrade with latticed gates 200opening into the side aisles between each pair of columns. The roof of the building was to be constructed of strong wooden rafters overlaid with boards, which were to be fastened on with iron nails; and the whole was to be covered with close-fitting Corinthian tiles. To secure that the building should be well aired, which was especially necessary in a magazine of this sort, lest the tackle should suffer from damp, slit-like openings were to be left in the walls between the joints of the stones, the number and situation of these air-holes being left to the discretion of the architect. Such was, in outline, the great arsenal of the Piraeus. Thither on hot summer days, we may suppose, crowds were glad to escape from the dust and glare of the streets and to promenade in the cool, lofty, and dimly-lighted arcade, often stopping to gaze with idle curiosity or patriotic pride at the long array of well-ordered tackle which spoke of the naval supremacy of Athens.

Before we quit the war-harbours we should note the Choma, as it was called, a quay near the mouth of the harbour on which, when an armament was fitting out for sea, the Council of the Five Hundred held their sittings daily till the squadron sailed. When all was ready, every captain was bound by law to lay his vessel alongside the quay to be inspected by the Council. The inspection over, the fleet 201weighed anchor and proceeded on its voyage. It must have been a heart-stirring sight to witness the departure of a fleet for the seat of war, as gallant ship after ship passed in long procession through the mouth of the harbour and stood out to sea, followed by the gazing eyes and by the hopes and fears and prayers of thousands assembled on the shore. When the last ship had glided from the smooth water of the harbour, and begun to breast the waves and shake out its sails to the freshening breeze, multitudes would rush from the shore to the heights, there to watch the galleys slowly lessening in the distance, till they could discern no longer the flash and sparkle of the oars as they rose and fell at the ships’ sides, and till even the white sails melted away like snow in the blaze of the sun on the far southern horizon.

A long line of colonnades extending along the eastern shore of the great harbour appears to have formed the public mart or emporium. One of the most important buildings in this commercial part of the harbour was a bazaar or exchange, where foreign merchants exhibited samples of their wares, and where bankers sat at the receipt of custom. It must have been close to the quays and the shipping, as we learn from the account of a successful raid which Alexander of Pherae once made on the bankers’ counters. One day a squadron was 202seen standing into the harbour. The loungers on the quays watched it with indolent curiosity till the ships drew up alongside the wharfs, when a crowd of armed men leaped from the ships’ sides, drew their swords, and with a flourish of trumpets made a rush for the bazaar, where they swept the counters clean and then returned with the booty to their vessels, without stopping to notice the panic-stricken crowds who were fleeing in all directions. In another ‘cutting-out’ expedition which the Lacedaemonians made with twelve ships into the harbour of Piraeus, a handful of daring men jumped ashore, laid hold of some merchants and skippers in the bazaar, and hurried them on board. It was in the bazaar that the Boastful Man in Theophrastus used to stand talking with foreigners about the great sums he had at sea, while he sent his page to the bank where he kept the sum of ten-pence.

Chief among the holy places of Piraeus was a sanctuary of Saviour Zeus. Fine paintings by distinguished artists adorned the cloisters attached to it, and statues stood in the open air. The festival of the god included a regatta and a procession through the streets. The expenses of the sanctuary were partly defrayed by a small tax levied on every vessel which put into the port. Moreover, persons who had escaped from danger—for example, seafaring men who 203had come safe to land—commonly brought thank-offerings to the shrine. From a fragment of an ancient comedy we learn that, among the long-shore sharks who lay in wait on the quays for sailors fresh from a voyage, there were cooks with an eye to business. For in the passage in question one of the fraternity tells us how, whenever he spied a jolly tar just stepping ashore, ready for a spree, with a bulging purse in his fist and an expansive smile on his sunburnt face, he used to rush up to him, shake him warmly by the hand, drop a delicate allusion to Saviour Zeus, and proffer his services at the sacrifice. The bait took, and soon he was to be seen heading for the sanctuary with the sailor man in tow.

Better known to English readers than the sanctuary of Saviour Zeus was the altar of the Unknown God which St. Paul, and after him Pausanias, saw at Phalerum, the old port of Athens. In a dialogue attributed to Lucian, a certain Critias raps out a number of oaths by the old heathen gods and goddesses, and for each of them he is gravely taken to task by his comrade Triephon, who has just been initiated into the sublime mysteries of the Christian theology by a person of a Hebrew cast of countenance, whom he describes as a bald-pated long-nosed Galilean. At last Critias swears by the Unknown God at Athens, 204and this oath is allowed to pass unchallenged by Triephon, who winds up the dialogue with this edifying advice: “Let us, having found out and worshipped the Unknown God at Athens, raise our hands to heaven and give him thanks that we have been found worthy to be subject unto so great a power; but let us leave other folk to babble, satisfied ourselves with applying to them the proverb 'Hippoclides doesn’t care.'”

A little way from the shore of the great harbour was the market-place named after the Milesian architect Hippodamus, who laid out Piraeus on a regular plan. It must have been a spacious open square, for we hear of troops mustering in it. The distinguished general Timotheus had a house on the market-place, and it was here that he lodged his two royal visitors, Jason of Pherae and Alcetas king of Epirus, when they came to give evidence at his trial. The general had impaired his private fortune by his exertions in the public service, and when his illustrious visitors arrived late one evening he had to send out his Caleb Balderstone in haste to borrow some bedding and silver plate. From the market-place a street led upwards to the sanctuary of Artemis on the hill of Munychia. It must have been a wide street; for in the street-fighting at the revolution which overturned the tyranny of the Thirty 205and restored the democracy, the troops of the tyrants formed in order of battle in the market-place and then marched up the street, while the democratic party, led by Thrasybulus, charged down the street in battle array and met them. At one time apparently the market-place fell into disrepair, and enjoyed the dubious privilege of what is popularly known in Scotland as a ‘free coup,’ the inhabitants of the neighbouring streets using it unceremoniously as a convenient dust-hole wherein to throw away their old rags and bones and other domestic refuse. At last the authorities felt constrained to interfere and put a stop to the nuisance. So they ordered that the market-place be levelled and put in good repair, and that for the future nobody should be allowed to shoot rubbish or dump down dung in it.