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FOUNDATION AND SITE

from all quarters, temples rising, and streets stretching along the vacant space; and a new MESSENE grew up on the site of the old, like a fabled city charmed into life by the sound of the Orphean Lyre. In order to connect themselves with their Progenitors, and also with the Powers of Heaven, they invited to come and dwell among them, by special invocations, their own Heroes of ancient time-Eurytus, Aphareus, Cresphontes, Epytus, and above all, with the unanimous voice of the whole city, the great Aristomenes and those gods who were believed to wish well to the Messenian State. The work of building was carried on, as it had begun, with the sound of the Argive and Boeotian flute.

The present aspect of MESSENE is not surpassed in interest and beauty by that of any ancient city in the Peloponnesus. The scene is grand and solitary. On the north and east of it rise the magnificent cliffs of Mounts ITHOME and EVAN; towards the west stretch fine plains of arable and pasture land, varied with coppices of shrubs in rich profusion. This level site was selected by Epaminondas, on account of the water with which it was well supplied.

WALLS AND TOWERS OF MESSENE.

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The Walls of the city, which, together with the public buildings originally existing at Messene, although not less than four miles in circumference, were erected in the course of eighty-five days, present one of the most remarkable specimens of military architecture to be found upon the soil of Greece. We look upon them with a feeling of deeper interest in consequence of the fact that they were raised from the plans and under the direction of Epaminondas; they make us as it were his contemporaries, by exhibiting to us a model of the system of fortification adopted in his age. The walls are built in horizontal courses, and generally with rectangular

stones. They consist of an exterior and interior facing of such masonry, the bays between the facings being filled with rubble. At distances, varying from seven to ten feet, the two faces are tied together by transverse courses of stone. This method of construction corresponds to the Roman emplecton. Applied to the walls at different intervals, are Towers of stone: their groundplan is generally rectangular, but on the north-east of the city are two instances with circular fronts; they seem to have possessed flat roofs, from which missiles might be discharged on the besieger: one, which remains in a nearly perfect state, was divided into two stories, in each of which are windows and embrasures, those in the lower story being splayed, to admit more light and to afford a freer range for the emission of projectiles from within. At certain distances are flights of stone steps, ascending from the

326

ANCIENT GATE-ROAD-THEATRE AND STADIUM.

interior of the city nearly to the battlements of the walls, so as to afford an opportunity of assailing the besieger beneath them; and thence similar flights lead into the towers which have been described.

One of the most remarkable features in the fortifications of Messene is the Gate in the north-west part of the walls through which the road passed which led to Megalopolis. It consisted of an outer area, thirty-one feet in breadth, and flanked by two massy projections; within this was an outer door, which led into a circular court sixty-three feet in diameter, and through this court to an inner door, which opened into the city itself. A paved Road, formed of parallel slabs lying transversely, succeeds to the gate and descends rapidly towards the interior of the town. The marks of ancient wheels are still visible in the court-yard, and the road itself is one of the very few specimens of ancient paving which remain in Greece; it shows a method of road-making very different from that adopted by the Romans, of which we have still many examples in the closely-wedged strata of polygonal blocks in the Appian, Prænestine, and Latin Ways.

LATER HISTORY OF MESSENIA.

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Toward the southern part of the city are the remains of a small THEATRE, looking to the south, and also of a STADIUM with a similar aspect, which was environed on three sides by a colonnade.

For some time after their restoration, the Messenians maintained an alliance with their neighbours the Arcadians, according to the advice of Epaminondas: they afterwards joined the Achæan League, but seem in a short time to have been alienated from that confederacy by the encroachments of their allies. In the year B. c. 183 the Achæan General Philopomen fighting before these walls, was taken prisoner and cast into a dungeon, where he died. The city was soon afterwards stormed and taken by Lycortas the successor of Philopomen, and Messene was again united to the Achæan Confederacy, with which it maintained its connection till the dissolution of the League. Thus the second existence of Messene lasted for two hundred and twenty-four years. It still retained the evidence of its former power in the third century of the Christian æra, and Pausanias, who then visited it, asserts that he could not indeed compare these fortifications, of which the vestiges still remain, with the walls of Babylon or the Memnonian bulwarks of Susa, for these he had never seen; but cities such as Ambrysus, Byzantium,

and Rhodes, which in his judgment were more strongly defended than any others, could not bear a comparison with Messene.

There is but one harbour of any excellence on the western coast of the Peloponnesus. As might have been presupposed from such a circumstance, it is a spot connected with many interesting recollections.

This, the port of PYLUS in Messenia, has

from the time of the Trojan war to our

own days, enjoyed a celebrity superior to that of any other similar place in the peninsula, with the exception of Corinth. Let us imagine a semicircular bay two miles and a half in diameter, lying from north-east to south-west.