e or external attriip, it is probable Dr. Wordsworth's he shore of Oropos been the harbour nd (Athens, 23); his horse, on the aps suggest a conA whilst the name still preserved in f saints to pagan Eacus (Words be learned from revailed in Italy have prevailed es; and as the a Fata, from the d afterwards in places and objects accidental circum barian minds, to ased to have any aco, from the lion probably from the erection of a lighthouse; Prasiæ, Port Raphte, from the imagined resemblance of the statue of a Roman emperor to the attitude of a tailor; Salamis, Colouri, from the similarity between its twisted shape and that of the small circular cakes, so common at Greek meals. "Colonna," or "Palaio Castro," or "Hellenica," or TOUS rous σrúλovs, are the universal answers by which an uneducated Greek describes any of the vestiges of antiquity. And it is still more necessary to observe, that hopeless as it is to extract any truth from this profound ignorance, it is equally hopeless to extract any from the apparent knowledge which we sometimes meet in its place. This knowledge, wherever it exists, is almost always the result merely of later traditions, which have been introduced by the conjectures of travellers, eagerly caught up and propagated by the native Greeks, but resting themselves on no historical basis whatever. Such were the names given to almost all the great ruins of Athens in the middle ages, in which it is difficult whether most to wonder at the undoubting confidence or the utter inappropriateness with which they are applied. Every thing was a palace or a school, unless they made an exception in order to find in the Parthenon the Temple of the Unknown God 24; and so tenacious a hold did these fancies retain over the mind of the inhabitants of Athens, that the broken landmark at the mouth of the Piraeus is still known as the Tomb of Themistocles, and the Monument of Lysicrates as the Lantern of Demosthenes. Even in the case of towns, which seem to retain the existing names, it is necessary to be on our guard against hasty inferences; for, first, it is easy sometimes to fall into the snare of confounding an Albanian with a Greek word-as e. g. "Liopeshi," which is a common Albanian name for a village, has sometimes led travellers to identify it with Alopece, the birth-place of Socrates; secondly, in the course of ages it has happened that the inhabitants of a village have migrated, carrying the name of their old residence with them-as is thought to have been the case with the name of Marathon, 24 See the curious description of Athens by a Greek in the 15th century, given in the Appendix to Col. Leake's 2nd edi tion of his Topography of Athens, (Vol. I. 479.) which seems to have moved from the southern side of on which the town stood to the northern (Leake's 89); thirdly, the use of the ancient instead of the mode in all the official acts of the government, is so rapid tuting the former for the latter in the mouths of th that it will daily become more difficult to believe that of recent introduction. But when from the darkness or uncertainty which external evidence in Greek topography, we turn to the and certainty of all its internal evidence, the change is factory. The general outline and physical features of t are but little altered. Wood doubtless has diminished wood the rivers. Hymettus was indeed as bare in the day as it is now; but the remains of the bridge over the Il that when its banks were shaded by plane-trees, it must a fuller stream than it has at present. At Thermopyla fir is said so far to have driven out the oak, that it recognise the forest, the trampling of whose leaves by t army first aroused the Greeks; and the pass itself has be such by the retiring of the sea from the coast. And of Athens, which Demosthenes enjoyed from the isla laurea has since been intercepted by the volcanic e the ridge of Methana (Leake's Morea, 11. 453). Bu exceptions: and one of the greatest delights of travelling is still to be found in the consciousness that we have the same general outline of landscape which was seen and Plato. At Athens this delight is enhanced by th with which all the most interesting points are fixed: spect a most pleasing contrast to the Roman Forum certainty the rocky character of the soil has greatly c no lapse of time can efface the vestiges of the Pnyx, pagus, and the Dionysiac theatre-or of the sanctuari Apollo, Dionysus, Demeter, and the Furies; now red to their original condition as natural caverns. And t of buildings, though they have often disappeared e some, such as the Temple of Triptolemus on the II within the last century; and though (as Col. Leake there is hardly a Greek village that does not bea n side of the plain Leake's Athens, 11. the modern names, so rapidly substi ths of the people, lieve that they are having been built or repaired with the materials of ancient edifices (Athens, 1. 99),—yet have escaped wonderfully the wholesale destruction and depredation which in Italy turned the Colosseum into a quarry, and has swept away the vast city of Capua, without leaving a trace of any building except its amphitheatre. Nor have the actual discoveries been disproportionate to these advantages. There is no case perhaps where knowledge advances with more rapid and sure steps than where scientific and sensible research is first applied to the topography of an interesting but imperfectly known country. Let any one compare the account of Athens by a Greek of the 15th century, (in Leake's Athens, I. 479) in which not one single ruin is called by its right name— or again the Travels of Spon and Wheler in the year 1676, in which the only ruins rightly designated are those in the Acropolis and the Theseum, and the Tower of the Winds-with the first edition of Col. Leake's work; in which the only doubtful names affixed are the gate of the New Agora, and the Stoa of Hadrian. ty which besets all ared entirely, and the Ilissus, eren Leake observes) ot bear marks of But it will be sufficient to indicate the discoveries made within the last twenty years. Those of Col. Leake, Ulrichs, and Müller, with regard to Delphi, and of General Gordon with regard to the Heræum of Argos, have been already mentioned. The ruins of the fortress of Decelea were accidentally found only two years ago by the French surveyors of Greece, though the general locality had long been known. And with regard to Athens itself, it may be of some use, as well as of some interest to point out the chief improvements of the 2nd edition of Col. Leake's Athens in detail. (1) He has adopted the true site of Lycabettus, as fixed on the hill of St. George by Dr. Forchhammer and Dr. Wordsworth (comp. 1st ed. 70, 2nd ed. 1. 204). (2) The account of Callirhoe is much enlarged and elucidated (1st ed. 47. 2nd ed. 1. 70). (3) Some of the most striking features of the Areopagus-the church of St. Dionysius-the hewn steps in the rock-and the cavern of the Eumenides-are here supplied (2nd ed. 1. 356. 1st ed. 289). (4) The subterraneous passage in the Stadium, apparently for the purpose of Roman spectacles, is here first mentioned (1st ed. 51, 2nd ed. 1. 194). (5) The accounts of the Pnyx and the Olympieum are much amplified and enriched, (1st ed. 40. 43. 2nd ed. 183. 513). (6) The Eleusinium is transposed from the isla Ilissus (1st ed. 113), (to which position he was led only doubtful passage of Pausanias) to the large (and hitherto cavern under the east end of the Acropolis, which was the of the caves not accounted for, and which exactly acco its size and form, with the mystery and seclusion in Eleusinium was involved. This (considering that the of Lycabettus, is not his own discovery) appears to us important detail which occurs in this edition (2nd ed. 29 much of this Dr. Wordsworth had indeed prepared the book on Athens and Attica, which probably as a pict actual place, and as illustrating it from ancient writers, w possess more interest for the general reader than the more work of Col. Leake. There are still many points to be d and which we trust will ere long be determined; the re the hill behind the Areopagus, formerly called by "Lycabettus;" the true position of the Colonus Agora an ingenious conjecture has identified with this very seems to us, with some plausibility; the true site of A if indeed any further data can be procured than the dently insufficient ones; the object of the structure above called by Dr. Wordsworth the Bema of Themistocles Greece generally what may we not expect from greater in the plain of Olympia, where the Alpheus may in course have embedded much of the ruins in its chan badea, where the cave of Trophonius has certainly n discovered, yet almost as certainly has not yet been the right direction; at Mycenae, where the rubbish of heaped up under the very gate of the Lions itself 25? Some of the questions of Greek geography bel rather to the scholar than the topographer. The respecting the third long wall of Athens, and the éykápo Thucydides' account of the fortifications of Syracuse solved, if at all, not by any existing vestiges, but by pected, see Col. Leake's Athens, 1. 100. ed. 183.518.18. om the island in the led only by a very ; the real name of hill, as it han the present eri- the true meaning of the passages in question. But as a general graphy," it was well observed by Dr. Arnold, "is full of difficul- And if in the foregoing remarks anything like justice has been done either to the subject of which they treat, or to the several works from which they have been for the most part derived, it will be clear that the interest and importance of the study is not unequal to any labour that is likely to be bestowed upon it. A. P. STANLEY. Leake's 2nd edition, I. 6 |