So at Platæa, Thebes, Mycena, Patræ, and Marathon the last-named place to have been at Branà,) the a polis is on a low eminence, at the foot of a higher hill; and though in the case of Charonea, Thoricus, Corinth, the greater elevation of the sites produces a cidence of the ancient with the modern notion, yet ev Acrocorinthus, which, from its height and strength, se the most remarkable exception to the general characte citadels, is, notwithstanding, so completely commanded bouring height as to be of little value for the purpose warfare 10; and at Charonea, Thoricus, and Argos, by the same unwarlike and primitive peculiarity w sented to us at Athens-the excavation of the rocky Acropolis into the seats of the theatre. The last remark suggests another general rule t from an enlarged acquaintance with Greek topogra position for the Greek theatres may have been part its solemnity, as placing their chief assemblies under of the ancestral gods of the country, partly alsomark applies especially to the theatres in Sicily and Greek construction-from the extensive prospect which thus command. Niebuhr (Vol. III. p. 311. note 5 has, with his usual insight into the feeling of ancient s this general characteristic of Greek theatres-to whi another-viz. that if possible, they overlooked the sea as instances, those of Fæsulæ, Tusculum, and Tarentur might be added Tauromenium and Syracuse, (where, hill, on whose slope the theatre is situated, is in neit citadel). Egesta, Athens, and Argos, are also exan theatre being turned to the sea; but in the two last ca not have been otherwise if it was on the citadel-hill at the only other alternative was the dark northern sid Athens especially, was so strictly regarded by the po stition as inapplicable to religious or public uses. as yet the Capitoline was unoccupied by its Sabine settlement, we shall be struck by the analogous habitation of the original people of Romulus on the square low hill of the Palatin hung by the Tarpeian r against it. 10 See Thirlwall's Gre and Marathon, (supposing ranà,) the ancient Aeroof a higher overhanging ea, Thoricus, Argos, and produces a greater cois ption, yet even here, the strength, seems to form ral character of ancient Commanded by a neigh the purposes of modern and Argos, we are met eculiarity which is pre the rocky sides of the neral rule to be drawn ek topography. This e been partly fixed by blies under the shadow tly also-and this reSicily and Italy, all of pect which they would 1. note 531, ancient states, caught -to which he adds the sea. He gives Tarentum. To these (where, however, the in neither case the 50 examples of the > last cases it could -hill at all, because ern side, which, at the popular superFrom the Palatine, almost over- brance of an accursed and hateful race, to make th dread the spot12. And if we follow the story of Hero he describes the same race dwelling on Hymettus, upon the Athenian women as they came to draw water crounos, (Herodotus, vi. 137), there, also, the wild mountain, with its deep ravines, up to the present day haunt of robbers, descending at once upon the stream present the exact image we should expect of the refuge riginal inhabitants, hovering on the outskirts of their an But though the natural localities may more fu the earlier history of Greece, yet the actual remains to throw considerable light on the more recent period of her fame. Here, again, the contrast with the reli antiquity is decidedly in favour of Greece. Of the narchy and republic, the only extant memorial undo nected with any actual event is the carving on th berina of the ship-head with the Æsculapian serpent other remnants there may be of the more primitive ti are interesting chiefly from their antiquity; whateve plete specimens of Roman architecture exist, belong paratively uninteresting period of the empire. Bu the existing vestiges of her most remarkable times those which we should most have cared to see. No the fact, that it is Athens, which, though so exposed its open position, and the fatal facility of maritime ex been left most untouched, and that of the Athenian b are still most perfect which were the chief glory glorious age-the Theseum, and the Parthenon wi paniments,-how remarkable it is to consider the nu 12 The north side of a churchyard is of course familiar to Englishmen, and this perhaps is the meaning of the cave, ર conversa ad aquilonem," down which Pluto carried Proserpine (Cic. Verr. IV. 48.). 13 We really cannot wonder that a heathen should have seen something providential in the remarkable preservation of the city of Athens amidst the general ruin of Greece; once in the earthquake under Valens, and ag - to make the Athenians story of Herodotus, when Hymettus, and falling draw water from Enneathe wild slopes of the present day the favourite he stream of the Ilissus, of the refuge of the abo s of their ancient homes ay more fully illustrate ual remains are enough ecent period of the acme with the relics of Roman ce. Of the Roman momorial undoubtedly con rving on the Insula T pian serpent. Whatever primitive times of Rome, y; whatever more comist, belong to the com pire. But in Greece able times are exactly Not to mention exposed to plunder b ritime exportation, h thenian buildings those ef glory of her mos enon with its accom r the number of com see. , and again when Alarie to have been deterred by which induced Spon to identify it with the Areop with the Odeum of Pericles, and Stuart with the T gilla. In these two monuments therefore we have which were occupied by the Athenian people on occasions at which they appeared in their collect and it is needless to observe what has been often p additional liveliness we gain in our conceptions, both cal and political assemblies of Greece, by knowing which was present to the Athenian spectators, as fr theatre they overlooked the Saronic gulf, or to orator, as he stood on the Bema, in front of the Pr Acropolis. But it is the general view of Athens itself which e any particular spot in it, however interesting, throws the spirit of the times, when her citizens loved h told, with the passionate love which nothing short of ing beauty could inspire (τὴν τὴς πόλεως δύναμιν κα θεωμένους καὶ ἐραστὰς γιγνομένους αὐτῆς. Thucyd. 1 a remarkable testimony to the singular appropriatenes to the ideas which it represents, that it would be i any one to describe the view from the summit of H truly than in the words in which Milton has set forth tion of Athens, not from ocular inspection, but such union of deep classical learning with his poetical fac gined it to have appeared in the vision from the "spec in the Paradise Regained. Such as it would hav semicircle of the Pnyx traces of the Bema of Themistocles looking to the sea, which the Thirty are said by Plutarch to have removed, or, as Dr. Wordsworth interprets the words, destroyed.-But the difficulties which must always have been objected to this hypothesis, from the small area in front of this upper Bema, and from the evident antiquity of what on Dr. Wordsworth's theory must have been the more recent Bema, become insuperable, when we remember the fact pointed out to us first by Professor Ross, and noticed, though without reference to this particular point by Col. Leake, (2nd. ed. 1. 182.) viz. that the sea, which the suppos |