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was obscure within, but remarkable for perennial water, and stone bowls and vessels, bees depositing honey, and long stone looms, with nymphs weaving purple garments wonderful to behold. The poet here records real and imaginary resemblances, probably traced and reported by the islanders, and which, perhaps, he had likewise seen with admiration. It may be surmised, that ideal personages and representations were anciently found also in the Attic cave.

A cave in Paphlagonia was sacred to the nymphs, who inhabited the mountains about Heraclea. It was long and wide, and pervaded by cold water, clear as chrystal. There also were seen bowls of stone, and nymphs, and their webs, and distaffs, and curious work, exciting admiration. The poet,* who has described this grotto, deserves not to be regarded, as servilely copying Homer. He'may justly claim to rank as an original topographer.

The caves of Ithaca and Heraclea had cach two entrances, one toward the north, the other toward the south. At Ithaca men descended only by the northern aperture, the southern being accounted holy, and the way of the gods. In the second cave was also a track reserved for the superior beings, and this is described as both difficult and dangerous, lying on the brink of a deep pit. The same distinction, it is likely, prevailed in the Attic cave. The persons, who presided occasionally, and were benefited by the religion of the place, found perhaps a passage appropriated to their use both convenient and necessary, and obtained an exclusive right by establishing an idea of its sanctity.

The countryman and shepherd, as well as the sportsman,

* Q. Smyrnæus, 1. 6. v. 470.

has often repaired, it is likely, to this cave, to render the deities propitious by sacrificing a she-goat or lamb, by gifts of cakes or fruit, and by libations of milk, oil, and honey; simply believing, that this attention was pleasing to them, that they were present, though unseen, and partook without diminishing the offering; their appetites as well as passions, caprices and employments resembling the human. At noonday the pipe was silent on the mountains, lest it might happen to awake Pan, then reposing after the exercise of hunting, tired and peevish.

It is related, where Druidism prevailed, the houses were decked with evergreens in December, that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling abodes. The gods of Greece, at least the inferior class, were conceived liable to like sufferings. They were capable of dissolving with heat and shivering with cold. Among the punishments imprecated on Pan,* if he should prove unkind, are these; that in mid winter he might be exposed on the bleak mountains of Thrace, and during summer in the torrid regions of Æthiopia. The piety of Archidamus furnished a retreat for the nymphs, where they might find shelter and provision, if distressed; whether the sun parched up their trees, or Jupiter, enthroned in clouds upon the mountain-top, scared them with his red lightning and terrible thunder, pouring down a deluge of rain, or brightening the summits with his snow.

* Theocritus, Id. "'.

CHAP. XXXIII.

Towns on the eastern coast of Attica-Of Thoricus-Of Potamus-Of Prasia-Of the port Prasia or port Raphti-The road to it from Athens-Extract from Wheler continued.

ATTICA has the Ægean Sea on the east. The course coasting from Sunium, is to the north, inclining to the west. The towns on this side were Thoricus, Potamus, Prasiæ, Stiria, Bauron, Alæ of Araphen, Myrrhinus, Probalinthus, Marathon, Tricorythus, Rhamnus, and on the confines of Attica and Boeotia, Oropus. The land at first lies between two seas, and is narrow. Farther on, it widens. The coast toward Oropus, was gibbous, or rounded like a moon.

Thoricus was once a place of importance. It was fortified in the first year of the ninety-third Olympiad.* Xenophon was of opinion, that the workmen might continue their employment at the silver-mines in time of war, as this fortress was near them by the sea on the north, and Anaphylystus on the south; each distant from the other only about sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half; but recommended the eminence of Besa, which was mid-way between them, as a proper spot for a third fortress, where all might assemble on an alarm; though he did not apprehend the mines would be attacked; because the enemy, advancing either from Megara, which city was much above five hundred stadia, or sixty-two miles and a half, distant, or from Thebes, which exceeded six

*In the year before Christ, 406.

hundred stadia, or seventy-five miles, must pass Athens and leave their own country exposed. The failure of the mines was probably followed by the ruin both of Thoricus and Anaphlystus. Pausanias is silent concerning them; and Mela, who wrote under Claudius Cæsar, mentions the former as then but a name; which, however, is not yet disused. The ship, in which Mr. Le Roy sailed in 1754, was forced into the port by contrary winds. He describes it as opposite to Long Island, six miles north west of Sunium, and near a large plain surrounded with hills, which, on the south, are overtopped by a mountain, stretching toward the entrance of the gulf. This he supposes was Laurium. Among the thickets he discovered some ruins of a very ancient temple. Helene or Long Island extended along the coast from Thoricus as far as Sunium.

At Potamus was the monument of Ion, from whom the Ionians were named. The Athenians, when they provided a husband for a grand-daughter of Aristogiton, who had lived in poverty and obscurity at Lemnos, gave a farm there as her dowry.

At Prasie was a temple of Apollo. The ship named Theoris sailed from thence annually to Delos, with an unknown offering, packed in wheat straw, and transmitted from the Hyperboreans, a remote people. The monument of Erysichthon, who died on that voyage, was shewn there. Some ruins of the town were seen by Sir George Wheler, upon the shore near the haven, now called port Raphti.

The port of Prasiæ, or port Raphti, is described as a most. safe, commodious, and delightful harbour, almost encompassed with charming vales, rising gradually, and terminating in lofty mnuntains; the slopes covered with pine trees and

verdure. A sharp point of land, running out into the middle, divides the bay; and toward the mouth are two little islands or rocks. One of these, on the right hand sailing in, is high and steep, the shape exactly conical, the base about a mile in circumference. On the summit is a white marble colossal statue, the posture sedent, the head and arms broken off. It is supposed to have been twelve feet high, when unmutilated, and is placed on a pedestal near eight feet high. On the other island, which is farther in, is seen a maimed marble statue of a female.* These images perhaps represented Apollo and Diana, and were placed as sea-marks, or, holding lights, served each as a Pharos to assist vessels in finding the port in the night-time.

Wheler visited port Raphti from Athens. The road lay directly eastward. He passed by the mountain called St. George about a mile, and made toward the end of Hymettus, which he left on the right hand, about four miles from Athens. In about two miles more he saw, on his left, a village called Agopi, where the plain, which is between Hymettus and the Sunium promontory, begins. He dined at a metochi, or farm, belonging to the convent of St. Cyriani, and continuing his journey arrived at the port, which is reckoned eighteen miles from the city. A beautiful image of a marble lion, the body and neck and head entire, and three yards long, was seen, not many years ago, at the door of a church standing about midway, a mile on the left of the road from the port. The distant view of Athens on this side must prevent the most insensible traveller from approaching with indifference. Turning from port Raphti a little to the right, and riding

* See Perry's View of the Levant, p. 487; and Wheler's Travels, p. 447.

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