and painted, as it appears from the following curious passage of Pindar', thus rendered by the author's learned friend the Rev. Charles James Blomfield, when corresponding with him upon the subject of this truly archaïc inscription:

"The songs have twice proclaimed him victor "in the festivals of the ATHENIANS; and the pro“duce of the olive, contained in burned earth, has "come to ARGOs in the variegated circumference "of vases."

It is not unlikely that the word AOENEON alludes to this great festival; called Athenæa before the title of τὰ ̓Αθηναῖα was changed to τὰ Παναθήναια. This is said to have happened after the time of Theseus or Ericthonius; although the term τὰ ̓Αθηναῖα occurs in the modern Scholiast on Aristophanes. According to Mr. Blomfield, the word in question is the old genitive, from 'Alva. Yet it must be

(1) Vid. Nem. X. 67.

(2) Where see the Scholiast.

(3) Ister in Harpocrat. v. Пavabvaia, et Pausanias viii. 2. See Meursius Panath. p. 2. et Schol. Platon. p. 59.

(4) Hom. Od. y. 278.

Aristoph. Nub. 400. (See Porson's Coll. of

the MS. Harl. p. 14.) Σούνιον ἄκρον ̓Αθηνέων. Euphorio ap. Hermog.

π. ί. p. 248. ἀτρία δῆμον ̓Αθηνῶν.

which is the true reading.

MS. Caio Gonv. Αθηναίων, i. e. Αθηνέων,
Note by Mr. Blomfield.

observed, that the use of AOAON with the genitive of a city is very unusual; and another learned Hellenist, R. P. Knight, Esq. believes that it never was thus used, nor with any other 'Aywvoters. Mr. Knight adheres to the opinion that AOENEON means the festival; but he does not carry back the antiquity of the vase much beyond the sixtieth Olympiad, five hundred and thirty-six years before the Christian æra: allowing, however, for the age of this remarkable vase, a period equal to two thousand three hundred and fifty-one years.

It remains now to add a few words respecting the other subjects treated of in this and the preceding Sections of PART THE SECOND. A casual reader, who has not considered the importance of attending to every object likely to serve as a land-mark in fixing the topography and geography of GREECE, may perhaps think that too much attention has sometimes been bestowed upon the existence of a fountain; or of a bridge over an insignificant stream; or of a tumulus; or of the capital or shaft of a Doric or of an Ionic column; or any other apparently trivial relic connected with the antient history of the country;-not being

aware, that, in very many cases, these remains are the only beacons we can have, to guide our course, in penetrating the thick darkness now covering this "land of lost Gods and men;" and in adapting passages from antient authors for the illustration of its antiquities and history. Such objects, noticed by one traveller, are afterwards made use of by another, as clues to discoveries of much greater importance. It sometimes happens, that a large portion of antient history may be proved to have a connection with the meanest vestige of a former age. This is particularly true of Inscriptions: the scholar, who seeks only the gratification of his literary taste by the archaïcal characters, or by the sense conveyed in an inscription, may deem the insertion of such poor fragments as contain only a single name, or an imperfect legend (perhaps consisting of half a line, and sometimes of half a word), altogether unnecessary. He will be ready to ask, wherefore an inscription at Marathon, containing only the letters KAIN, and these too in very large capitals, was deemed worthy of a place in this work? To which there is this answer: It was necessary to prove that the ruins, where these letters appeared, were truly Grecian; and to afford, by an accurate specimen of the

characters, as much information respecting their antiquity as it was possible to afford ;—for by attention to such circumstances, more intelligence is frequently conveyed by a few letters, than by whole pages of dissertation.

In the examination of this Last Section of PART THE SECOND, the Reader will find many things unnoticed by former travellers; although some of the discoveries made by the author have found their way into other publications, without any notice of the person from whom they were originally derived. Owing to the unavoidable delay that has attended the publication of this part of his work, it was natural to expect that this would happen: having never withheld what he knew, when applied to for information respecting the country, he may attribute to his own disregard of anticipation any use that subsequent travellers have made of his observations. Before he visited Greece, the sites of several places, famous in antiquity, were as much unknown as many that still remain to be pointed out. He succeeded in ascertaining some of them for the first time; for example, the cities of TITHOREA and PLATEA; the Corycian Cave, near DELPHI, &c.: and by his discovery of an Inscription in the

DEFILE OF TEMPE', the exact locality of that celebrated PASS can never again become a subject of dispute.

With regard to subjects of Natural History, such as Botany and Mineralogy, the author has kept these, as much as possible, from interrupting his narrative, where it related either to statistical or to classical information. But as it is important to mark the situation of newlydiscovered and non-descript plants, he has introduced the new species only, as they happened to occur, in the Notes; always accompanying their insertion with a description of their discriminative characters, as in former instances;—an entire List of all the Plants found during these travels in GREECE, EGYPT, and the HOLY LAND, being added in the Appendix to this Section. His mineralogical remarks would have been more ample, had the appearance of simple minerals been more frequent; but it is chiefly in a geological view that there is any thing yet worthy of observation in the LEVANT; and even to the geologist, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and those of the Archipelago, exhibit little variety. The mountains are so uniformly of

(1) See Chap. IX. of this Volume.