Chapter V: Part 5

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 of 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.

All 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Theory
that
Pausanias
copied
from
Polemo
or from
writers of
Polemo’s
date.]

Yet 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.

[Sidenote: 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, be 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 should 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.

[Sidenote: 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 was 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.

[Sidenote: 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 Strabo 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 to 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 earth 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.

-----

Footnote 5:

When I last visited Mantinea, in October 1895, most of the ruins about
the market-place, which were excavated by the French some ten years
ago, had again disappeared beneath the soil.

-----

[Sidenote: 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?

[Sidenote: 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 disputed. 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.

[Sidenote: Temple of
Apollo at
Delphi.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Pausanias
and the
existing
monuments.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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