Travels in the Morea
By William Martin Leake, published at London in 1830.
Volume II, Chapter XXI, pages 431-442. Aegina.
 

    From Epidaurus Pausanias proceeds to Ægina, once a dependence of that city.  Strabo describes Ægina with his usual elegance of expression, and with an accuracy for which he is not so often remarkable. “Why need we say”, exclaims the Geographer, “that Ægina is one of the most celebrated of islands – the native country of Æacus and the Æacidæ, which once enjoyed the dominion of the seas, and contended with Athens itself for the prize of superior glory in the battle with the Persian fleet at Salamis?  The circumference of the island is said to be 180 stades.  The city, which bears the same name as the island, is on the south-western side.  The island is surrounded by Attica, Megaris, and the parts of the Peloponnesus towards Epidaurus, and is distant about 100 stades from each.  Its eastern and southern sides are washed by the Myrtoan and Cretan seas.  Many small islands lie between it and the continent: towards the sea, Belbina only.  Its land possesses a deep soil, but is stony on the surface, particularly in the plain; hence it is generally naked [of trees,] but sufficiently productive of barley.  It was anciently called Oenone.”  Pausanias justly remarks, that “The numerous rocks and shallows which surround Ægina, render it difficult and hazardous of approach.”  They were fabled to have been provisions of Æacus against the approach of pirates and enemies.
    The effect of industry excited by necessity, in raising to opulence places the least favoured by nature, has been exemplified in the islands of Greece in every age.  The present commercial importance of Ydhra, Psara, and Petza, is not less surprising than that of Ægina in the early periods of Grecian history, though, as the wealth of states so situated, must in great measure be proportionate to that of the surrounding countries, the commercial islands of the modern Greeks are poor compared with ancient Ægina, which rivalled the most opulent of the Hellenic republics.  Before the Athenians had begun to coin a metallic medium of commercial exchange, and when their navy was in its infancy the Æginetæ possessed silver money, had acquired the command of the Grecian seas by their ships, and shaking off their ancient dependence upon Epidaurus, were sufficiently powerful to insult the neighbouring coasts, as well those of their late metropolis on the Peloponnesian side, as those of the people on the opposite shore of the Saronic Gulf, who were thereafter to be their masters.  According to Thucydides, one of the most important events in Grecian history, the Peloponnesian war, originated in great measure in the impatience of the Æginetæ, under the alleged injustice of their neighbours of Athens, combined with the temptation to enter into a war with Athens, which was excited at Corinth and Sparta by the hope of assistance from the Æginetan fleet.
    Like the majority of the islands of the Ægean sea, Ægina preserves its ancient name unaltered.  Its western half consists of a stony plain, well cultivated with corn.  The remainder is mountainous, and may be divided into two parts; a very remarkable conical hill, now called the Oros, which occupies all the southern extremity, and the ridge of Panhellenium, on the north-eastern side.  Between the latter and the plain there are some narrow cultivated slopes, lying amidst a clutter of irregular hills.  It is among these heights, on a pointed hill towards the northern coast, that the modern town, or rather village, is situated.
    The following are the remarks of Pausanias upon the ports and city of Ægina:  Near the port principally frequented by shipping, there was a temple of Venus, and in the most conspicuous part of the city the Æaceium, a quadrangular inclosure built of white marble, containing some old olive trees:  in the entrance stood statues of the deputies sent by the Greeks to Æacus, to prevail upon him to sacrifice and pray for rain to Jupiter Panhellenius.  Near the Æaceium was the tomb of Phocus; it was a barrow surrounded with a circular basis, and was crowned with a rude stone; with this stone Phocus was said to have been killed by his half brother Peleus, whose own brother Telamon, afterwards entering the port called Secret by night, raised the tomb to Phocus.  Not far from the Secret port there was a handsome theatre, greatly resembling that of the Epidaurii in magnitude and workmanship.  Behind it was the Stadium, which, with one of its sides, supported the theatre.  There were temples at no great distance from one another, dedicated to Apollo, to Diana, and to Bacchus.  That of Apollo had a naked wooden statue, of Æginetan workmanship, the Diana was draped, the Bacchus clothed and bearded.  In a different part of the city was a temple of Æsculapius, with a seated statue of stone.  But of all the deities worshipped by the Æginetæ, the greatest veneration was paid to Hecate.  Her temple, which stood within a peribolus, contained a wooden statue by Myron, who had represented the goddess with a single head and body; the Athenians, in the opinion of Pausanias, were the first to give her a triple form, as Alcamenes had done in the Hecate Epipyrgidia, which stood near the temple of ‘Victory without wings,’ in the Acropolis of Athens.  On the road towards the mountain of Jupiter Panhellenius there was a temple of Aphæa, to whom Pindar wrote a hymn for the Æginetæ.”  She was the same as Britomartis, and the Dictynna of the Cretans.  Herodotus speaks of a temple of Minerva at Ægina, which has not been noticed by Pausanias.
    To the traveller who approaches Ægina from the westward, the position of the ancient city is indicated by a tumulus near the northwestern cape, not far to the southward of which rise two Doric columns, of the most elegant form, one wanting the capital and the upper part of the shaft, the other complete, with part of the architrave.  The column is twenty-five feet in height, including the capital, and three feet nine inches in diameter at the base.  At the foot of the hill, to the southward of where these columns stand, is an oval port, sheltered by two ancient moles, which leave only a narrow passage in the middle, between the remains of towers, which stood on either side of the entrance.  Pursuing the same direction, we find another oval port, twice as large as the former.  Its entrance is protected in the same manner by ancient walls or moles, fifteen or twenty feet thick, which, though now in many places below the surface of the water, still shelter these two little bays, and furnish a commodious protection to the small vessels which navigate the gulf.  Between the two harbours there appear to have been a succession of small basins, separated from the sea by a wall, and communicating with the two harbours.  On the northern side of the promontory, upon which stand the two columns, there was an open harbour or roadsted, protected to the north by a breakwater, on which there appears to have stood a wall, which formed a prolongation of the walls of the land-front of the city.  There is no more remarkable example in Greece of the labour and expense bestowed by the ancients in forming and protecting their artificial harbours.
    The walls of the city are still traced through their whole extent on the land side.  They were about ten feet thick, and constructed with towers at intervals not always equal.  There appear to have been three principal entrances, of which that near the middle of the land front, leading to the Panhellenium, was constructed apparently like the chief gate of the city of Platæa, with a retired wall between two round towers.  To the southward the town walls abutted upon the mole of the great harbour, which formed a continuation of the city wall, in the same manner as I have just stated that wall to have terminated in the northern roadsted.  This appears indeed to have been the usual mode among the Greeks of fortifying their maritime towns, as instanced at Athens, Eleusis, and many other places.  The ports were thus “kleistoi limenes,” were placed within the walls of the town, and might be closed by a chain.
    At the head of the larger port stand some modern houses and magazines; the rest of the ground inclosed within the ancient walls in uneven, and retains traces of buildings, though none of the remains, except the extant columns, can be referred to any of the buildings described by Pausanias.  That no vestiges should be seen of the stadium and theatre, the latter of which was almost equal in size to that of Epidaurus, can only be accounted for by their proximity to the harbour, and the convenience of the wrought masses of the seats for modern constructions.  It can hardly be doubted that the larger harbour is that which Pausanias describes as “the port chiefly frequented by ships”, and near which stood the temple of Venus.  The smaller, consequently, is in all probability the secret port, near which was the theatre, the stadium, and temples of Apollo, Diana, and Bacchus.  The Æaceium, situated in the most conspicuous part of the city, may have been upon the elevated level towards the plain.
    The temple to which the existing columns belonged was of such large dimensions, that we may infer from this circumstance alone, that it was the temple of Hecate, the principal deity of the Æginetæ.  There are considerable remains of the peribolus, within which it stood; and these walls are prolonged beyond the temple so as to inclose all the cape, and form a kind of citadel.
    To judge by the many ruined churches upon the site of the city of Ægina, the place was once occupied by a Christian town of some importance; in later times it became an useful station to the ships of the Venetians, as we find by an inscription which still remained towards the close of the last century on a tower at the entrance of the great port which had been erected by Aloys Mocenigo, by order of the Doge, F. Morosini, a short time before his death, in the year 1693.  After the Venetians had restored the Morea to the Turks in 1715, the maritime parts of Greece were again cruelly pillaged by the pirates of various nations, who have in all ages found the rocky coasts and islands of this country propitious to their lawless pursuits.  It was probably the fear of these robbers, that drove the people of Ægina from the site of the ancient city into the present town.
    It does not appear from Pausanias on what part of the road the ancient city to the Panhellenium the temple of Aphæa stood, nor do any remains of it exist to supply his deficiency.  Its most probable position, I think, is that of the modern town itself.
    There was also in Ægina a temple or sanctuary, containing statues of Lamia and Auxesia in a kneeling posture, made of Athenian olive-wood.  The place was called Oea; it was twenty stades distant from the city, in the inland part of the island.  Herodotus, who has given this description of Oea, confirms its inland position, by relating that the Æginetæ and Argives affirmed, that when the Athenians sent an  expedition to Ægina to carry off the statues of Lamia and Auxesia, their retreat from Oea to the coast of the island was cut off by the Argive forces, who destroyed them all.  Pausanias, alluding to this passage in the history of Herodotus, adds, that he himself sacrificed to the statues, and that the ceremony was similar to that of Eleusis.  He agrees with Herodotus in shewing that the figures were made of olive-wood, but he does not mention their kneeling posture, although there was an absurd fable attached to this peculiarity of statues, precisely of the kind in which Pausanias delighted.
    Of the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, Pausanias, as in the case of some others of the most important buildings in Greece, has told us scarcely any thing, having considered, perhaps, any particular description of such great edifices as not forming a part of the design of his work, and hence, by a natural consequence, being more brief than usual upon such subjects.  He remarks only, that Mount Panhellenium contained nothing worthy of notice, except the temple which Æacus was said to have erected to Jupiter.  Without our experience of his brevity upon similar occasions, it would be difficult to imagine that by these few words he intended to refer to the great temple, of which the magnificent ruins will continue, as long as they exist, to attract persons of taste to Greece from every civilized nation of the globe.
    The temple is situated in the midst of a forest of pines upon the summit of a mountain, separated by a narrow valley from the hill upon which stands the modern town of Eghina.  At the foot of the mountain there is a small port near the north-eastern cape of the island.  The port, the cape, and a small neighbouring island, are all known by the name of Turla.  The length of the temple upon the stylobate, or upper step of the “krepis,” is ninety-four feet, the breadth forty-five.  The columns of the peristyle are three feet inches in diameter at the base, and seventeen feet two inches high, including the capital.  Of these columns there were thirty-two when the temple was complete:  six at the ends, and twelve on the sides.  The cell had a door at either end, opening into the pronaos and posticum, in each of which were two columns of three feet two inches in diameter between antæ.  Within the cell were columns, two feet four inches in diameter, standing in a double row.  There are now standing twenty-one columns of the peristyle, with their architraves; six of the eastern front, and five of the  northern side, are continuous without any interruption.  The four columns of the pronaos and posticum are all standing, and the lower parts of five within the cell.  The temple was erected upon a large paved platform or peribolus, and must, when complete, have been one of the most remarkable examples in Greece of the majesty and beauty of its sacred edifices, as well as of the admirable taste with which the Greeks enhanced those qualities by an attention to local situation and surrounding scenery.  It is not only in itself one of the finest specimens of Grecian architecture, but is the more curious as being in all probability the most ancient example of the Doric order in Greece, with the exception of the columns at Corinth.