IN THE MOREA. 



55 



The volutes and ornaments were freely and beautifully executed : and 

 different in some degree from any I have elsewhere seen. The cord 

 which encircles the neck of the column is continued in a sort of bow- 

 knot round the scroll of the volutes at each side of the capital, and is 

 very freely carved. On the outside of the church are seen the found- 

 ations of a temple, to which these ornaments in all probability 

 belonged. 



CEtylos as well as Leuctra was, in the time of Pausanias, a city of 

 the Eleuthero-Lacones, who possessed by virtue of a grant from 

 Augustus some of the maritime towns of Laconia; of these, nine 

 were on the promontory of Taygetus, to the south and west of 

 Gythium, which also belonged to them. The names were Teuthrone, 

 Las, Pyrrhichus, on the eastern side ; Csenepolis near the point of 

 Taenarus (at Cape Grosso), CEtylos, Leuctra, Thalamae *, Alagonia, 

 and Gerenia. The rest were beyond the Laconian gulph on the 

 Malean promontory. Cardamyle, a city as ancient as the days of 

 Homer, had, by Augustus, been taken from the Messenians and an- 

 nexed to the dominion of Sparta. Gerenia appears to me to have 

 been situated near Kitrees ; the small town of Alagonia and Tha- 

 lamse are now lost among the numerous villages of the district. 

 Leuctra, Cardamyle, and Pephnos, we were enabled to fix by un- 

 doubted remains of antiquity, or coincidence of situation at Leutro, 

 Cardamoula, and Platsa. CEtylos was at Vitulo, and the temple 

 of which we found the remains was probably that of Serapis ; this, 

 with a statue of Apollo, is mentioned by Pausanias as the objects 

 most worthy of observation at CEtylos. -j - The name of this town is as 

 ancient as the sera of Homer (Iliad, ii. 585), but in the dialect of the 

 country the present pronunciation appears to have prevailed even in 

 the time of Ptolemy the geographer, who enumerates Bitula among the 



* Meletius and the geographers who place Thalamaa at Calamata, forget that it was 

 only eighty stadia from CEtylos, and consequently between Platsa and Vitulo. M. 



f Some formerly pronounced it Tylos ; lib. viii. Strabo : but they must have read the 

 verse of Homer, kou o\ TuAov atx.<psveiJ.ovTO. 



