It has been mentioned elsewhere, that there were probably two roads leading from Athens, to each of which the name of the Sacred Way was given, one issuing from the gate called Dipylum, and the other from the Sacred Gate, and that these two roads united shortly after quitting Athens, and formed the one Sacred Way. [Athenae, p. 263, a.] Pausanias, in his journey along the Sacred Way, left Athens by Dipylum. The first monument, which was immediately outside this gate, was that of the herald Anthemocritus. Next came the tomb of Molossus, and then the place Scirum, already described. [See above, No. 18.] After some monuments mentioned by Pausanias there was the demus Laciadae [see No. 19], and shortly afterwards the Cephissus was crossed by a bridge, which Pausanias has omitted to mention, but which is celebrated as the place at which the initiated assailed passengers with vulgar abuse and raillery, hence called γεφυρισμοί. (Strab. ix. p. 400; Suid. s. v. Γεφυρίζων; Hesych. s. v. Γεφυρίσταί.) After crossing the Cephissus, Pausanias describes several other monuments, of which he specifies two as the most remarkable for magnitude and ornament, one of a Rhodian who dwelt at Athens, and the other built by Harpalus in honour of his wife Pythionioe. The latter, as we have already seen, was situated at the demus Hermus. [See above. No. 15.] The next most important object on the road was the temple of Apollo on Mount Poecilum, the site of which is now marked by a church of St. Elias. In one the the walls of this church there were formerly throe fluted Ionic columns, which were removed by the Earl of Elgin in 1801: the capitals of these columns, a base, and a part of one of the shafts, are now in the British Museum. It was situated in the principal pass between the Eleusinian and Thriasian plains. This pass is now called Dhafni; at its summit is a convent of the same name. [See p. 322, a.] Beyond the temple of Apollo was a temple of Aphrodite, of which the foundations are found at a distance of less than a mile from Dhafni. That these foundations are those of the ancient temple of Aphrodite appears from the fact that doves of white marble have been discovered at the foot of the rocks, and that in the inscriptions still visible under the niches the words Φίλη Άφροδίτη may be read. This was the Philaeum or the temple of Phila Aphrodite, built by one of the flatterers of Demetrius Poliorcetes in honour of his wife Phila (Athen. vii. pp. 254, a. 255, c); but Pausanias, whose pious feelings were shocked by such a profanation, calls it simply a temple of Aphrodite. Pausanias says that before the temple was "a wall of rude stones worthy of observation" of which, according to Leake, the remains may still be seen ; the stones have an appearance of remote antiquity, resembling the irregular masses of the walls of Tiryns. At the bottom of the pass close to the sea were the Rheiti (Ρειτοί), or salt-springs, which formed the boundaries of the Athenians and Eleasinians at the time of the twelve cities. "The same copious springs are still to be observed at the foot of Mt. Aegaleos; but the water, instead of being permitted to take its natural course to the sea, is now collected into an artificial reservoir, formed by a stone wall towards the road. This work has been constructed for the purpose of turning two mills, below which |
Half a mile beyond the Rheiti, where the road to Eleutherae branches off to the right, was the Tomb of Strato, situated on the right-hand side of the road. There are still ruins of this monument with an inscription, from which we learn its object; but it is not mentioned by Pausanias. The Way then ran along the low ground on the shore of the bay, crossed the Eleusinian Cephissus, and shortly afterwards reached Eleusis. Leake found traces of the ancient causeway in several places in the Eleusinian plain, but more recent travellers relate that they have now disappeared. (Mure, vol. ii. p. 31.) Respecting the Sacred Way in general, see Leake, p. 134, and Preller, De Via Sacra Eleusinia, Dorpat 1841. 40. Eleusis (Έλευσίς), is noticed separately. [Eleusis.] 41. Thria (Θρία), an important demus, from which the Eleusinian plain, or, at all events, the central or eastern part of it, was called the Thriasian Plain. When Attica was invaded from the west, the Thriasian Plain was the first to suffer from the ravages of the enemy. (Θριάσιον πεδίον, Strab. ix. p. 395; Herod, ix. 7; Thuc. i. 114, ii. 19.) A portion of the Eleusinian plain was also called the Rharian Plain (Ράριον, Hom. Hymn, Cer. 450) in ancient times, but its site is unknown. The territory of Thria appears to have been extended as far as the salt-springs Rheiti, since the temple of Aphrodite Phila is said to have been in Thria. (Athen. vi. p. 255, c.) Thria is placed by Leake at a height called Magúla, on the Eleusinian Cephissus, about three miles above Eleusis, but it is much more probable that it stood upon the coast somewhere between Eleusis and the promontory Amphiale (είτα [after Eleusis] τό Θριάσιον πεδίον καί όμώνυμος αίγιαλός καί δήμος είθ ή άκρα ή Άμφίαλη, Strab. l. c.). Fiedler mentions the ruins of a demus, probably Thria, situated on the coast, at the distance of scarcely ten minutes after leaving the pass of Dhafni. (Fiedler, Reise, &c. vol. i. p. 81.) 42. Idaria (Ίκαρία), the demus, in which Icarius received Dionysus, who taught him the art of making wine. (For the legend, see Dict. of Biogr. and Myth., art Icarius.) The position of this demus and of Mount Icarius (Plin. iv. 7. s. 11) has been variously fixed by modern scholars. Leake has identified Icarius with Mount Argaliki, on the south side of the Marathonian plain, since Icarius is said by Statius (Theb. xi. 644) to have been slain in the Marathonian forest. But, as Ross has observed, Marathonian is here used only in the sense of Attican; and the argument derived from this passage of Statius is entirely overthrown by another passage of the same poet, in which the abodes of Icarius and of Celeus (i. e. Icaria and Eleusis) and Melaenae are mentioned together as three adjacent places. ("Icarii Celeique domus viridesque Melaenae," Stat. Theb. xii, 619.) Ross, with greater probability, places Icaria in the west of Attica, because all the legends respecting the introduction of the worship of Dionysus into Attica represent it as coming from Thebes by way of Eleutherae, and because the Parian chronicle represents men from Icaria as instituting the first chorus at Athens, while the invention of comedy b assigned to the Megarian Susarion. From the latter circumstance, Ross conjectures that Icaria was near the frontiers of Megara; and he supposes that the range of moun |
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