MOUNT ATHOS. 



231 



raised near Cardia and Pactyas, and between these two places, as 

 Pausanias informs us, his tumulus was seen. (Lib. i. p. 19.) 



The most ancient form of tumuli is the simplest, namely, a heap of 

 earth with a stele on the top, terreno ex aggere bustum. In parts of 

 Western Scythia they are found encompassed with a square wall of 

 large square stones. This defence or maceria was added to the se- 

 pulchres of Greece and Asia in early times ; it surrounded that 

 of Opheltes at Cleonae (Paus. lib. ii.) ; of Alyattes in Lydia 

 (Herod, lib. i.) ; of Auge at Pergamus ; of iEpytus in Arcadia (Paus. 

 viii.) ; of Phocus in iEgina. (Ib. lib. ii.) One with a circular wall 

 near the ancient Pergamus has been described by Choiseul ; another 

 has been opened within a few years near Smyrna, in which galleries 

 and chambers have been found. 



The custom of raising temples, altars, statues, or shrines over tombs, 

 attached, certainly, a greater degree of religious respect to the places 

 where the dead were deposited. The prevalence of it is evident from 

 that remarkable expression of Athenagoras, who calls the temples of 

 the ancients Toc<pct, tombs. (Apol. c. xxv.) This name was after- 

 wards retorted by Libanius, Julian, Eunapius, and other Pagans upon 

 the Christians, when they began to practise the custom of burying the 

 bones of martyrs in their churches. 



Although one class and form of sepulchre, the raised mound, were 

 common both to Greece and Asia, yet there is a remarkable differ- 

 ence in the manner adopted by the inhabitants of the two countries in 

 constructing other monuments in honor of the dead. We see nothing 

 in Greece to equal those great and numerous excavations in the rock, 

 which strike the traveller's attention in Asia and Syria. They are 

 seen at Telmessus, at Myra*, at Antiphellos, at Amasia, where are 

 the supposed tombs of the Kings of Pontus, and in parts of Palestine. 

 Some of them are mentioned by Pococke in Phrygia, Lycia, 



* Nunc eversae multa vestigia extant, praecipue monumenta mortuorum in vivo saxo 

 cavata, quas columnis et aliis signis ex eodem saxo incisis atque insculptis, ornata sunt. — 

 Coriol. Cepion. 



