A short distance to the south-east of Sparta, where the river Magoula joins the Eurotas, on the top of steep cliffs, reaching in some places a height of more than 700 feet, and approaching close to the east bank of the Eurotas, lies the site of the ancient Therapne, which is now generally identified with the Homeric Sparta. If the supposition be correct, these heights were once the scene of palatial state and splendour, with which the historic Sparta even in its best days had nothing to compare. The foundations of a temple sacred to Menelaus and Helen have been traced, and a great many little figures of lead have been discovered, which served no doubt as votive offerings, while fragments of unglazed Mycenæan pottery have also been found in the immediate neighbourhood. According to tradition, there was here also a temple to the Dioscuri—Castor and Pollux, half-brother and brother of Helen; and here they were said to lie buried every alternate day, Pollux having declined the offer of immortality from his father Zeus, unless it were shared by his brother.
Two or three miles south of Sparta, on the west side of the river, in the midst of a country abounding in fine fruit trees and rich cereal crops, lay the ancient city of Amyclæ, which remained in the hands of the Achæans for centuries after the Dorian invasion. On the top of an adjoining hill the foundations of the
The eastern portico of the Pantanassa Church, with view over the valley of the Eurotas.
famous precinct of Apollo have been excavated, where the Hyacinthian festival was celebrated from an early period in memory of a beautiful youth whom Apollo was said to have accidentally killed in a game of quoits. His tomb is under the altar of Apollo, a fact to be explained perhaps by the worship of the Dorian Apollo having superseded the earlier rites, though the name of Hyacinthus still survived. This festival (connected with the vegetation of spring) and the Carnean celebration of Apollo, as the horned cattle god, are often mentioned in history as the cause of delay in military expeditions, no people being more punctilious than the Spartans in attending to religious ordinances, and paying heed to natural omens, such as earthquakes. On one occasion the attendance at the Hyacinthia of a few soldiers on service at Corinth cost the Spartan army the loss of a battalion which had been sent to convoy them part of the way home, and in returning was cut to pieces by the Athenian Iphicrates and his famous peltasts or slingers. The importance of the sanctuary at Amyclæ is seen in the fact that the treaty between Athens and Sparta in 421 B.C. was to be inscribed on a column there, and also in the temple of Athena on the Acropolis of Athens.
A walk or ride of a few miles to the west, through an exuberant country, brings you to the foot of a mountain called Mistra, which springs like an offshoot from the roots of Taÿgetus. It looks small compared with the giant range behind, but it is 2000 feet high, and commands one of the most charming views in Greece, across the valley of the Eurotas and down towards the gorge opening on the sea. The mediæval buildings scattered over the mountain-side, and the well-cultivated fields and gardens and terraces all around and beneath it, present a pleasing contrast to the wild passes above, which include the famous Langada pass, leading into the plains of Messenia. On the top of the hill there is a citadel in a wonderfully good state of preservation, erected by the Frankish knight, William de Ville-hardouin, in the middle of the thirteenth century. Beneath it are the remains of a palace, once the residence of the Governor of the Morea (who ranked next to the Byzantine emperor), surrounded by a city which deprived Sparta of its importance until the present century. The city is now greatly decayed, and the buildings still in use are chiefly chapels and monasteries belonging to the Greek Church, which, here as elsewhere, has had to surrender to the Government much of its wealth to meet the educational needs of the country.