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gallery, where we might enjoy the grateful Inbat, with a full view of the shipping and of the long fair canal within Karabornu, which is bordered by woody mountains and dusky olivegroves; the surface of the water shining, and smooth; or ruffled by the wind; the waves then coming toward Smyrna as it were in regular progression, and breaking on the beach.

Among the new objects, which first attracted our attention, were two live cameleons, one of the size of a large lizard. They were confined each on a long narrow piece of board suspended between two strings, and had for security twisted their tails several times round. We were much amused with the changes in the colour of these reptiles, and with seeing them feed. A fly, deprived of its wings, being put on the board, the cameleon soon perceives its prey, and untwirling its tail, moves towards it very gently and deliberately. When within distance, it suddenly seizes the poor insect, darting forward its tongue, a small long tube furnished with glutinous matter at the end, to which the fly adheres. This is done so nimbly and quietly, that we did not wonder it remained unobserved for ages, while the creature was idly supposed to subsist on air. One of these made its escape, the other perished with hunger.

CHAP. XVIII.

Origin of Smyrna--The site—Its prosperity-Ruined--The citadel repaired-The Mahometan and Christian_towns—Success of Tamerlane-Smyrna reduced by the Sultans--The present town--The citadel-The stadium and theatre-The port--The walls-The sepulchres--Consumption of the old materials-Tomb of St. Polycarp.

It is related of Alexander the Great, that after hunting he fell asleep on Mount Pagus beneath a plane tree, which grew

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by a fountain, near a temple of the Nemeses; and that the goddesses directed him in a vision to found there a city for the Smyrnéans, a people from Ephesus, then living in villages. The work was begun by Antigonus, and finished by Lysimachus. The Clarian oracle was consulted on the removal of the Smyrnéans,* and answered in an heroic couplet, that those, who should dwell on mount Pagus, beyond the sacred Meles, would experience great prosperity. Afterwards the Ephesians, remembering their common origin, procured, with the concurrence of king Attalus and of Arsinoe his queen, their admission as members of the Ionic body; an honour, which they had coveted long before, when it was first constituted. The Smyrnéans acknowledged more than one Nemeses; and two are represented as appearing to the warrior on a medallion in the Vatican.+

The site selected by Alexander for this people was such as the ancient founders commonly preferred. Their cities in general were seated by some hill or mountain, which, as this did, supplied them with marble, and was commodious as well for defence as ornament. The side or slope afforded a secure foundation for the seats of the Stadium and Theatres, lessening both the labour and expense. It displayed the public and private structures, which rose from its quarry, to advantage; and rendered the view as captivating as noble. The Greeks were of old accounted happy in chusing their situations. They had been studious to unite beauty with strength, and good ports with a fertile soil. The Romans were attentive to articles neglected by them, to the paving of the ways, to the building of aqueducts, and to the common sewers.

* Pausanius, p. 210. + Vitruvius, p. 55. See Museum C. Albani. v. 1. pl. 32.

Smyrna flourished, as Apollo had foretold; and, under the Romans, was esteemed the most beautiful of the Ionian cities. The wall comprised a portion of Mount Pagus, but more of the plain by the port, by the Metroum or temple of Cybele, and by the Gymnasium. The streets were as strait as the site would admit, and excellently disposed. The ways were paved. Both above and below were large quadrangular Stoas or porticoes. There was also a library, and, besides the other requisites of a noble city, a port which shut up; but from an omission of the architects, the want of sewers occasioned a great nuisance. It was much frequented by the sophists, and, with Ephesus, became renowned as a school of oratory and science. It has been exalted with high encomiums, and stiled the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the ornament of Asia.

In the year 1084, Tzachas, a Turkish malcontent, who assumed the title of king, seized and made Smyrna his capital. His fleet took Clazomene, Phocea, Scio, Samos, Mytilene, and other places. In 1097 this city was besieged by John Ducas, the Greek admiral; and on its surrender, Caspaces, who had been sent to attack it by sea, was appointed govenor; but a Turk stabbed him, and his death was revenged by the massacre of ten thousand inhabitants. The whole coast of Asia, from Smyrna to Attalia, had been desolated by the wars, when the Greek emperor sent Philokales, in 1106, to restore its cities. Adramytium, which had been utterly destroyed, was then rebuilt, and peopled with peasants and strangers,

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Smyrna lay in ruins, except the acropolis or citadel, which then served as a fortress. This was repaired and beautified by the emperor John Angelus Comnenus,* who died in 1224. Smyrna, thus

* Ducas, c. 7.

restored, was a small town chiefly on the summit of Mount Pagus, or within the present castle.

In 1313, Atin had subdued Lydia, and extended his conquests to this place. In 1332, Amir or Homur, his son and successor, was Sultan of Smyrna. In 1845, while he was absent with his fleet, ravaging the coasts of the Propontis, some gallies of the Latins, and of the knights of Rhodes burnt several vessels in the port. Amir arrived in time to save the town, but could not dislodge the enemy from a fort, which they had seized, nor prevent their making a settlement at the mouth of the port, at a distance from the Turkish town. The next year, the pope sent thither a nominal patriarch of Constantinople, escorted by twelve gallies; but Amir, while mass was celebrating in the church, attacked and drove the Italians into their citadel, called fort St. Peter, before which he was afterwards killed by an arrow.

Tamerlane, who ravaged Anatolia, or Asia Minor, in 1402, hearing that the Christians and Mahometans had each a strong hold at Smyrna, and were always at war, required the former to change their religion; but the governor soliciting aid from the European princes, Tamerlane marched in person to subdue a place, which Sultan Morat had attempted in vain, and which his son Bajazet had besieged or blockaded for seven years. He attacked it by sea and land; and, to ruin the port, ordered each soldier to throw a stone into the mouth, which was soon filled up; but the ships had got away. He took the town in fourteen days, with great slaughter of the inhabitants, and demolished the houses. The knights had fled into the castle of St. Peter, and thence to their gallies, which lay near. He is said to have cut off the heads of a thousand prisoners, and to have caused a tower to be erected with stones and their heads intermixed.

Cineis, who had long been governor of the Turkish town, continued in possession, when it was thus freed from its enemy and rival. He was much esteemed by the Ionians, and, after a variety of fortune, rose to be a sovereign in Asia. Sultan Mohammed the first, marched against him in 1419, and deprived him of Nymphéum, the city Cyme, and a fortress in the field of Menomen. He was assisted by the governors of the islands, who hated Cineis, by several princes on the continent, hisneighbours, and even by the Grand Master of Rhodes, who was then rebuilding fort St. Peter, which Tamerlane had destroyed. He demolished the fortifications of Smyrna, but spared the inhabitants; and, on a complaint that the Ionian slaves, who escaped from their owners, found shelter in the fort, ordered it to be ruined; permitting another to be erected on the borders of Lycia and Caria. Smyrna was again taken in 1424 by Sultan Morat, Cineis retiring to the mountains..

When the conquering Turk had gained complete possession of the Greek empire, and peace was restored, commerce revived, and again settled at Smyrna. The inhabitants, delivered from their apprehensions of danger, by degrees abandoned the castle, and the town slid, as it were, down the slope towards the sea; leaving behind it a naked space, where they now dig for old materials, and also some ordinary ruins below the castle, which overlooks the buildings and the bay, at a distance.

The reader will not be surprised if few traces of the ancient city remain. From a survey of the castle, which is extensive, we collect, that after being re-edified by John Angelus Comnehus, its condition, though less ruinous than before, was far more mean and ignoble. The old wall, of which many rem-nants may be discovered, is of a solid massive construction,,

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