white speck over the outer waters of the Thermaic Gulf. The sailors, looking back from the deck, saw the great Olympus rising close above them in snowy majesty. The more distant mountains beyond Thessalonica are already growing faint and indistinct. As the vessel approaches the Thessalian archipelago, Mount Athos begins to detach itself from the isthmus that binds it to the main, and, with a few other heights of Northern Macedonia, appears like an island floating in the hori

1 Compare p. 272, n. 1, and p. 272, n. 5. See also Purdy's Sailing Directory, p. 148: "To the N. W. of the Thessalian Isles the extensive Gulf of Salonica extends thirty leagues to the north-westward, before it changes its direction to the north-eastward and forms the port. The country on the west, part of the ancient Thessaly, and now the province of Tricala, exhibits a magnificent range of mountains, which include Pelion, now Patras, Ossa, now Kissova, and Olympus, now Elymbo. The summit of the latter is six thousand feet above the level of the sea."

The group of islands off the north end of Euboea, consisting of Sciathos, Scopelos, Peparethos, &c. For an account of them, see Purdy, pp. 145-148.

* Cousinéry somewhere gives this description of the appearance of heights near Saloniki, as seen from the Thessalian islands. For an instance of a very unfavorable voyage in these seas, in the month of December, thirteen days being spent at sea between Salonica and Zeitun, the reader may consult Holland's Travels, ch. xvi.

• From Rich's Dictionary of Greek and Ro man Antiquities.

CHAPTER X.

Arrival on the Coast of Attica. —Scenery round Athens.-The Piraeus and the "Long Walls."―The Agora. — The Acropolis. — The "Painted Porch" and the "Garden.”. The Apostle alone in Athens. -Greek Religion. - The Unknown God.

Greek Philoso

phy. The Stoics and Epicureans.-Later Period of the Schools. St. Paul in the Agora. The Areopagus.-Speech of St. Paul. - Departure from Athens.

IN

N the life of Apollonius of Tyana,' there occurs a passage to the following effect:-"Having come to anchor in the Piræus, he went up from the Harbor to the City. Advancing onward, he met several of the Philosophers. In his first conversation, finding the Athenians much devoted to Religion, he discoursed on sacred subjects. This was at Athens, where also altars of Unknown Divinities are set up." To draw a parallel between a holy Apostle and an itinerant Magician would be unmeaning and profane: but this extract from the biography of Apollonius would be a suitable and comprehensive motto to that passage in St. Paul's biography on which we are now entering. The sailing into the Piræus, the entrance into the city of Athens, philosophers, the devotion of the Athenians to

the interviews with religious ceremonies

-the discourse concerning the worship of the Deity, the ignorance

1 He has been alluded to before, p. 112, n. 3. "His life by Philostratus is a mass of incongruities and fables;" but it is an important book as reflecting the opinions of the age in which it was written. Apollonius himself produced a great excitement in the Apostolic age. See Neander's General Church History (Eng. Trans.), pp. 40-43, and pp. 236-238. It was the fashion among the anti-Christian writers of the third century to adduce him as a rival of our Blessed Lord; and the same profane comparison has been renewed by some of our English freethinkers. Without alluding to this any further, we may safely find some interest in putting his life by the side of that of St. Paul. They lived at the same time, and travelled through the same countries; and the life of the magician illus

trates that peculiar state of philosophy and superstition which the Gospel preached by St. Paul had to encounter. Apollonius was partly educated at Tarsus; he travelled from city to city in Asia Minor; from Greece he went to Rome, in the reign of Nero, about the time when the magicians had lately been expelled; he visited Athens and Alexandria, where he had a singular meeting with Vespasian on a second visit to Italy he vanished miraculously from Puteoli: the last scene of his life was Ephesus, or, possibly, Crete or Rhodes. See the Life in Smith's Dictionary of Biography. It is thought by many that St. Paul and Apollonius actually met in Ephesus and Rome. Burton's Lectures on Ecclesiastical History, pp. 157, 240.

implied by the altars to unknown Gods,' - these are exactly the subjects which are now before us. If a summary of the contents of the seventeenth chapter of the Acts had been required, it could not have been more conveniently expressed. The city visited by Apollonius was the Athens which was visited by St. Paul: the topics of discussion - the character of the people addressed the aspect of every thing around — were identically the same. The difference was this, that the Apostle could give to his hearers what the philosopher could not give. The God whom Paul" declared" was worshipped by Apollonius himself as " ignorantly" as by the Athenians.

3

We left St. Paul on that voyage which his friends induced him to undertake on the flight from Berca. The vessel was last seen among the Thessalian islands. About that point the highest land in Northern Macedonia began to be lost to view. Gradually the nearer heights of the snowy Olympus itself receded into the distance as the vessel on her progress approached more and more near to the centre of all the interest of classical Greece. All the land and water in sight becomes more eloquent as we advance; the lights and shadows, both of poetry and history, are on every side; every rock is a monument; every current is animated with some memory of the past. For a distance of ninety miles, from the confines of Thessaly to the middle part of the coast of Attica, the shore is protected, as it were, by the long island of Euboea. Deep in the innermost gulf, where the waters of the Ægean retreat far within the land, over against the northern parts of this island, is the pass of Thermopyla, where a handful of Greek warriors had defied all the hosts of Asia. In the crescent-like bay on the shore of Attica, near the southern extremity of the same island, is the maritime sanctuary of Marathon, where the battle was fought which decided that Greece was never to be a Per sian Satrapy. When the island of Euboea is left behind, we soon reach the southern extremity of Attica, Cape Colonna, - Sunium's high promontory, still crowned with the white columns of that temple of Minerva, which was the landmark to Greek sailors, and which asserted the presence of Athens at the very vestibule of her country."

After passing this headland, our course turns to the westward across the waters of the Saronic Gulf, with the mountains of the Morea on our left, and the islands of Ægina and Salamis in front. To one who travels

in classical lands no moment is more full of interest and excitement than when he has left the Cape of Sunium behind, and eagerly looks for the first glimpse of that city "built nobly on the Ægean shore," which was "the eye of Greece, mother of arts and eloquence." To the traveller in classical times its position was often revealed by the flashing of the light on the armor of Minerva's colossal statue, which stood with shield and spear on the summit of the citadel. At the very first sight of Athens, and even from the deck of the vessel, we obtain a vivid notion of the characteristics of its position. And the place where it stands is so remarkable its ancient inhabitants were so proud of its climate and its scenery that we may pause on our approach to say a few words on Attica and Athens, and their relation to the rest of Greece.

Attica is a triangular tract of country, the southern and eastern sides of which meet in the point of Sunium; its third side is defined by the high mountain ranges of Citharon and Parnes, which separate it by a strong barrier from Boeotia and Northern Greece. Hills of inferior ele vation connect these ranges with the mountainous surface of the southeast, which begins from Sunium itself, and rises on the south coast to the round summits of Hymettus, and the higher peak of Pentelicus near Marathon on the east. The rest of Attica is a plain, one reach of which comes down to the sea on the south, at the very base of Hymettus. Here, about five miles from the shore, an abrupt rock rises from the level, like the rock of Stirling Castle, bordered on the south by some lower eminences, and commanded by a high craggy peak on the north. This rock is the Acropolis of Athens. These lower eminences are the Areopagus, the Pnyx, and the Museum, which determined the rising and falling of the ground in the ancient city. That craggy peak is the hill of Lycabettus, from the summit of which the spectator sees all Athens at his feet, and looks freely over the intermediate plain to the Piræus and the

sea.

Athens and the Piræus must never be considered separately. One was the city, the other was its harbor. Once they were connected together by a continuous fortification. Those who looked down from Lycabettus in the time of Pericles could follow with the eye all the long line of wall from the temples on the Acropolis to the shipping in the port. Thus we are brought back to the point from which we digressed. We were approaching the Piræus; and, since we must land in maritime

Paradise Regained, iv. 240.

2 This is stated by Pausanias.

The relation of Lycabettus to the crowded buildings below, and to the surrounding landscape, is so like that of Arthur's Seat to Edin

burgh and its neighborhood, and there is so much resemblance between Edinburgh Castle and the Acropolis, that a comparison between the city of the Saronic gulf and the city of the Forth has become justly proverbial.

Athens before we can enter Athens itself, let us return once more to the vessel's deck, and look round on the land and the water. The island on our left, with steep cliffs at the water's edge, is Ægina. The distant heights beyond it are the mountains of the Morea. Before us is another island, the illustrious Salamis; though in the view it is hardly disentangled from the coast of Attica, for the strait where the battle was fought is narrow and winding. The high ranges behind stretch beyond Eleusis and Megara, to the left towards Corinth, and to the right along the frontier of Boeotia. This last ridge is the mountain-line of Parnes, of which we have spoken above. Clouds are often seen to rest on it at all seasons of the year, and in winter it is usually white with snow. The dark heavy mountain rising close to us on the right immediately from the sea is Hymettus. Between Parnes and Hymettus is the plain; and rising from the plain is the Acropolis, distinctly visible, with Lycabettus behind, and seeming in the clear atmosphere to be nearer than it is.

The outward aspect of this scene is now what it ever was. The lights and shadows on the rocks of Ægina and Salamis, the gleams on the distant mountains, the clouds or the snow on Parnes, the gloom in the deep dells of Hymettus, the temple-crowned rock and the plain beneath it, are natural features, which only vary with the alternations of morning and evening, and summer and winter. Some changes indeed have taken place but they are connected with the history of man. The vegetation is less abundant, the population is more scanty. In Greek and Roman times, bright villages enlivened the promontories of Sunium and Ægina, and all the inner reaches of the bay. Some readers will indeed remember a dreary picture which Sulpicius gave his friend Atticus of the desolation of these coasts when Greece had ceased to be free; but we must make some allowances for the exaggerations of a poetical regret, and must recollect that the writer had been accustomed to the gay and busy life of the Campanian shore. After the renovation of Corinth,5 and in the reign of Claudius, there is no doubt that all the signs of a far more numerous population than at present were evident around the Saronic Gulf, and that more white sails were to be seen in fine weather plying across its waters to the harbors of Cenchrea or Piræus.

Now there is indeed a certain desolation over this beautiful bay:

See the passage from the Clouds of Aristophanes quoted by Dr. Wordsworth. Athens and Attica, p. 58.

2 This is written under the recollection of the aspect of the coast on a cloudy morning in winter. It is perhaps more usually seen under the glare of a hot sky.

8 Athens was not always as bare as it is

now.

Plato complains that in his day the wood was diminishing.

Cic. Ep. Fam. iv. 5.

6 Corinth was in ruins in Cicero's time. For the results of its restoration, see the next chapter.

6 See Acts xviii. 18. Rom. xvi. 1.