84

PHYLE AND THRASYBULUS.

an equal time in the realms of light and joy. Above all, they were invited to view the spectacle of that happy state in which they themselves, the initiated, were to exist hereafter. These revelations contained the greatest happiness to which man could aspire in this life, and assured him of such bliss as nothing could exceed or diminish, in the next.

We retrace our steps eastward to our station on Mount Egaleos, and pursuing its range in a northerly direction, we arrive at the north-west angle of the plain of Athens, and at the road which leads from it into Boeotia through a narrow defile formed by Mount Egaleos on the south, and Parnes on the north

The fortress of PHYLE, which guarded this pass, still preserves its ancient name. Its walls and towers remain in nearly the same state as when it received, in the month of September, B. c. 404, the future deliverer of Athens, Thrasybulus, who was here besieged by his opponents, and who sallied forth from its gates with his small force to eject the Thirty Tyrants from the city, and to raise Athens from the state of degradation to which it had been reduced by the Lacedæmonians at the close of the Peloponnesian war. From the lofty eminence on which this castle stands, the eye enjoys a magnificent prospect of the Plain and Citadel of Athens,-from which Phyle is distant

ACHARNIANS OF ARISTOPHANES.

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about ten miles-objects which, thus presented to their gaze, doubtless inspired Thrasybulus and his followers, when they were stationed here, with fresh patriotism and courage, and stimulated them with an enthusiastic desire to liberate their country from the unworthy bondage in which it was enthralled. From Phyle, Thrasybulus descended into the Athenian Plain, with a band of seven hundred men. His first aim was the town of Acharnæ, which lies at the south-east of that fortress. It is six miles from Athens, and was the largest and most important of the one hundred and seventy-four Demi or Boroughs of Attica. Here he defeated his antagonists; this victory enabled him to proceed without interruption to the harbour of Athens, the Peiræus, from which

he expelled the forces of the Tyrants, and was thus furnished with the means of effecting an entrance into the city itself, and of rescuing it from their hands. The name of Acharnæ is connected with one of the earliest and most agreeable of the surviving productions of the great comic poet of Athens. Its size and its situation, the former placing it, as has been said, at the head of the municipal towns of Attica, the latter exposing it to aggression from all the routes which led the Lacedæmonians across the Athenian

frontier, and which converged, as it were, at the walls of Acharnæ,-were no doubt the reasons which suggested to Aristophanes the choice of inhabitants of Acharnæ as fit representatives of the sufferings which were undergone by the agricultural population of his country at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and which the citizens of this place were so eager to avenge. The view which is presented to us from our position at Phyle, reminds us very significantly of the particular privations which were sustained by them, when compelled, as they then were, to quit their farms and homes, and to take up their abode in a confined lodging within the walls of the city. It shows us, beneath this hill, the vineyards which they cultivated, which supplied them both with occupation and refreshment, and which were rudely laid waste by the violence of the invader it exhibits to us the estates which supplied them with all the necessaries of life; it shows us the site of the rural shrines and altars before which, at the season of the vintage or of harvest, they paid their grateful homage to the protecting Deities of the soil; while, above us, we look upon the mountain which they often ascended, to collect among its thickets the freight of holmoak, of lentisk, and other shrubs and brushwood, which served, when converted into charcoal, as an important object to the Acharnians both of traffic and of use.

Resuming our position on Mount Parnes, we pursue our course along the ridge of that mountain in an easterly direction.

We are now following the line of the northern frontier of Attica. To compare smaller things with great, Mount Parnes was to this country what the Alps are to Italy. But not merely was this mountain range a line of natural demarcation, which severed the land of Attica on the south from the vale of Boeotia on the north-so that in all the political revolutions which this country underwent during the period of its independence, this distinction was never erased-but also, what is more remarkable, it served, if we may so say,

as one of the degrees or parallels of latitude which were drawn on the surface of the intellectual Map of Greece. It was like a long and lofty Wall built in a beautiful garden, and stretching from east to west, along and up the south side of which fruit-trees and flowering plants are trained, which deck it with their bright blossoms of white, red, and purple, with their luxuriant foliage, and their golden produce, all of which are rendered more beautiful by the cheerfulness of the sun beaming upon them in full lustre; while the north side of the same wall is cold and blank. So, while in Attica-the south side of Mount Parnes-every thing flowered and ripened which is fair and excellent

in the intellect of man,-while there a Phæacian garden, teeming with mental produce, flourished in a perpetual spring, on the other side of the same hill the picture was reversed. Boeotia, the country on the north of Mount Parnes, was as remarkable for its intellectual barrenness, as Attica was for its fertility: it was the bare side of the mountain wall. It seemed as if Nature, which made Attica a country of sterile hills and cliffs, and gave rich fields and pastures to Boeotia, had desired to adjust the balance, by denying intellectual wealth in the one case, where she had conferred physical, and by compensating for the absence of physical, by the abundance of intellectual, in the other.

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CLOUDS OF ARISTOPHANES.

Aristophanes, in his Play of the NEPHELE, brings his goddesses, the CLOUDS, from the heights of Mount Parnes, when, in compliance with the invocation of Socrates, they descend to visit the earth. Quitting their aerial station on this lofty mountain, they soar over the Athenian Plain, and floating across the peaked hill of LYCABETTUS, at the north-east extremity of the city, and above the town itself, and the rock of the Acropolis, they fly over the PARTHENON, and at last alight on the stage of the Theatre on the south side of the citadel. Before they commence their flight, they join their voices in a choral strain, replete with poetical beauty, which furnishes conclusive evidence that the poet who composed it might have been as distinguished for lyrical as he was for his dramatic excellence; that, in a word, he might have been a Pindar, if he had not been an Aristophanes.

While listening to the beautiful language and melodious harmony of this song, the audience might almost imagine itself to be placed in the same elevated position as was occupied by those who united in giving it utterance; and thence it might seem to contemplate all the noble and fair spectacles which they there sce and describe. Together with the Chorus of Clouds, it might appear to look down upon the objects of which they speak as then visible to themselves to see the land of Pallas stretched out before them, and the lofty Temples and Statues of Athens at their feet; to trace the long trains of worshippers in festal array going over the hills to the Sacred Mysteries of Eleusis; to follow the sacred processions winding through the streets to the Acropolis of the Athenian city; to witness the banquets and sacrifices on solemn holidays; to behold the crowds seated in the Theatre at the beginning of spring, and viewing the dances and listening to the melodies which there gave an additional charm to that season of festivity and joy.

Mount Parnes was the natural barrier which protected the Athenian territory from foreign invasion on the north. But, as a military fortress, when it falls into the hands of an enemy, becomes then the cause of danger to those whom it was before accustomed to defend, so this mountain, when the foes of Attica had obtained possession of a stronghold upon it, proved as much fraught with peril to the Athenians, as it had before been productive of advantage.

For, pursuing our course eastward along its heights, we arrive at a point, about ten miles distant from the fortress of Phyle, above described, and discover the ruins of some ancient walls on a circular and isolated hill, near the little village of TATOI, and which projects from the mountain where