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will honour them for the famous deeds, which are truly, nay for those which are fabulously recorded of them. Remember it is Athens you approach." This city was now entirely dependent on Rome, and was reduced to sell Delos, and the islands in its possession.

Hadrian, who was at once emperor and an archon of Athens, gave the city laws compiled from Draco, Solon, and the codes of other legislators; and displayed his affection for it by unbounded liberality. Athens reflourished, and its` beauty was renewed. Antoninus Pius, who succeeded, and Antoninus the philosopher, were also benefactors.

The barbarians, in the reign of Valerian, besieging Thessalonica, all Greece was terrified, and the Athenians restored their city-wall, which had been dismantled by Sylla, and afterwards neglected.

Under the next emperor, who was the archon Gallienus, Athens was besieged, the archontic office ceased, and the strategus or general who had before acted as overseer of the agora, or market, then became their supreme magistrate. Under Claudius, his successor, the city was taken, but soon recovered.

It is related, that Constantine, when emperor, gloried in the title of general of Athens, and rejoiced exceedingly on obtaining, from this people, the honour of a statue with an inscription, which he acknowledged by a yearly gratuity of many bushels of grain. He conferred on the governor of Attica and Athens the title of grand duke, péyas dove. That office was at first annual, but afterwards hereditary. His son Constans bestowed several islands on the city, to supply it with corn.

In the time of Theodosius the First, three hundred and eighty years after Christ, the Goths laid waste Thessaly and

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Epirus; but Theodorus, general of the Achæans, by his prudent conduct, preserved the cities of Greece from pillage, and the inhabitants from being led into captivity. A statue of marble was erected to him at Athens by order of the city; and afterwards one of brass, by command of the emperor, as appears from an inscription in a church, dedicated to a saint of the same name, not far from the French convent. It is on a round pedestal, which supports a flat stone serving for the holy table. Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius the Second, was an Athenian.

The fatal period now approached, and Athens was about to experience a conqueror more savage even than Sylla. This was Alaric, king of the Goths; who, under the emperors Arcadius and Honorius, overran Greece and Italy, sacking, pillaging, and destroying. Then the Peloponnesian towns were overturned, Arcadia and Lacedæmon were laid waste, the two seas by the isthmus were burnished with the flames of Corinth, and the Athenian matrons were dragged in chains by barbarians. The invaluable treasures of antiquity, it is related, were removed; the stately and magnificent structures converted into piles of ruin; and Athens was stripped of every thing splendid or remarkable. Synesius, a writer of that age, compares the city to a victim, of which the body had been consumed, and the hide only remained.

After this event, Athens became an unimportant place, and as obscure as it once had been famous. We read that the cities of Hellas were put into a state of defence by Justinian, who repaired the walls, which at Corinth had been subverted by an earthquake, and at Athens and in Boeotia were impaired by age; and here we take a long farewell of this city. A

chasm of near seven hundred years ensues in its history, except that about the year 1130, it furnished Roger the First, king of Sicily, with a number of artificers, whom he settled at Palermo, where they introduced the culture of silk, which then passed into Italy. The worms had been brought from India to Constantinople in the reign of Justinian.

Athens, as it were, re-emerges from oblivion in the thirteenth century, under Baldwin, but besieged by a general of Theodorus Lascaris, the Greek emperor. It was taken in 1427 by Sultan Morat. Boniface, marquis of Montserrat, possessed it, with a garrison; after whom it was governed by Delves, of the house of Arragon. On his death, it was seized with Macedonia, Thessaly, Boeotia, Phocis, and the Peloponnesus, by Bajazet ; and then, with the island Zante, by the Spaniards of Catalonia in the reign of the Greek emperor Andronicus Palalogus the elder. These were dispossessed by Reinerius Acciaioli, a Florentine; who leaving no legitimate male issue, bequeathed it to the state of Venice. His natural son, Antony, to whom he had given Thebes with Boeotia, expelled the Venetians. He was succeeded in the dukedom by his kinsman Nerius, who was displaced by his own brother named Antony, but recovered the government, when he died. Nerius, leaving only an infant son, was succeeded by his wife. She was ejected by Mahomet, on a complaint from Francus, the son of the second Antony, who confined her at Megara, and made away with her ; but, her son accusing him to Mahomet the Second, the Turkish army under Omar advanced, and he surrendered the citadel in 1455; the Latins refusing to succour him, unless the Athenians would embrace their religious tenets, Mahomet, it is related, when he had finished the war with the despot of the Morea four

years after, surveyed the city and acropolis, with admiration. The janizaries informed him of a conspiracy, and Francus Acciaioli, who remained lord of Boeotia, was put to death. In 1464, the Venetians landed at the Piræus, surprised the city, and carried off their plunder and captives to Eubœa.

It is remarkable that after these events Athens was again in a manner forgotten. So lately as about the middle of the sixteenth century, the city was commonly believed to have been utterly destroyed, and not to exist, except a few huts of poor fishermen. Crusius, a learned and inquisitive German, procured more authentic information from his Greek correspondents residing in Turkey, which he published in 1584, to awaken curiosity, and to promote farther discoveries. One of these letters is from a native of Nauplia, a town near Argos in the Morea. The writer says, that he had been often at Athens, and that it still contained things worthy to be seen, some of which he enumerates, and then subjoins, "but why do I dwell on this place? It is as the skin of an animal, which has been long dead.”

The walls of Athens, when the city was in its prosperity, with the Piræus, were one hundred and ninety-five stadia, or twenty-four miles, a quarter, and a half, in circumference; the calculation being made as follows:

The wall encompassing the Piræus with Munychia, sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half.

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The long walls joining the Piræus to the city, north-side, forty stadia, or five miles; south-side, thirty stadia, or four miles, a quarter, and a half.

The exterior city wall joining the long walls, forty-three stadia, or five miles, a quarter, and a half.

The middle or interior wall, between the long walls, seventeen stadia, or two miles and half a quarter.

By this computation, the circuit of the city-wall alone was sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half. The part toward Hymettus and Pentele, the mountains on the east and northeast, was of brick. The plain also was then covered with demi or towns, and with villas richly furnished.

CHAP. VIII.

Of modern Athens-The antiquities-The citadel-Its ancient and present state--Remark.

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ATHENS is placed by geographers in fifty-three degrees of longitude. Its latitude was found by Mr. Vernon, an English traveller, to be thirty-eight degrees and five minutes. It is now called “'A0ývn" Athini, and is not inconsiderable, either in extent or the number of inhabitants. It enjoys a fine temperature, and a serene sky. The air is clear and wholesome, though not so delicately soft as in Ionia. The town stands. beneath the acropolis or citadel, not encompassing the rock, as formerly, but spreading into the plain, chiefly on the west and north-west. Corsairs infesting it, the avenues were secured, and in 1676 the gates were regularly shut after sunset. It is now open again, but several of the gateways remain, and a guard of Turks patroles at midnight. Some masses of brick-work, standing separate, without the town, belonged, perhaps, to the ancient wall, of which other traces also appear. The houses are mostly mean, and straggling;

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