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From the Egyptian Hall, we enter one containing the oldest remains of Grecian sculpture, before the artists won power to mould the marble to their conceptions. Then follow the celebrated Egina marbles, from the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius, on the island of Egina.
Of the commerce of this island we have no particulars detailed by ancient writers. Egina, in the Saronic Gulf, acquired great wealth from the cultivation of commerce: in the time of the Persian war, they equipped a very powerful and well-manned fleet for the defence of Greece; and at the battle of Salamis they were adjudged to have deserved the prize of valour.
In front of the gently recurved shore stretch the smooth waters of the Gulf of Salamis, while beyond rises range upon range of lofty mountain-peaks with strikingly varied outline, terminating on the one hand in the towering cone of Egina, and on the other in the pyramidal, fir-clad summit of Cithaeron.
But we have the express testimony of Thucydides, that even at a much earlier period, nearly 300 years before the Peloponnesian war, the Samians gave great encouragement to shipbuilding, and employed Aminodes, the Corinthian, who was esteemed the most skilful ship-builder of his time; and Herodotus speaks of them as trading to Egypt, Spain, &c., before any of the other Greeks, except Sostrates, of Egina, were acquainted with those countries.
The inhabitants of the isle of Egina are represented as the first people in Greece who were distinguished for their intelligence and success in maritime traffic: soon after the return of the Heraclidæ they possessed considerable commerce, and for a long time they are said to have held the empire of the adjoining sea.
In the course of the afternoon of the day after they had left Thebes, in attaining the summit of a mountain over which their road lay, the travellers beheld Athens at a distance, rising loftily, crowned with the Acropolis in the midst of the plain, the sea beyond, and the misty hills of Egina blue in the distance.
Yet much of what he sees is a revelation to him. The mountains are higher, more varied and more beautiful than he had supposed, Lycabettus and the Acropolis more imposing, Pentelicus farther away, and the plain larger, the gulf narrower, and Egina nearer and more mountainous, than he had fancied.
There, too, were found Ulrich of Eppenstein, Arnaud of Lentzburg, Ulrich of Bregenz, Lutold of Dillingen, the counts and prelates of the house of Welschneuenburg, Egina of Achalm, and Werner of Gruningen. But conspicuous, even amid that high-born and martial group, stood the Duke Godfrey of Bouillon and Frederick of Hohenstaufen.
"English, I think, sir. I could see to the head of her courses, and, I should not be surprised, from the look of her canvas, that she is the Vesta frigate, which was to be cruising somewhere off the Gulf of Egina." "I trust she may be.
Elfleda the sister of king Edward highlie commended for government, what a necessarie staie she was vnto him in hir life time, what townes she builded and repared, hir warlike exploits against the Danes, hir death and buriall; the greatest part of Britaine in K. Edwards dominion, he is a great builder and reparer of townes, his death, the dreame of his wife Egina, and the issue of the same, what children king Edward had by his wiues, and how they were emploied, the decay of the church by the meanes of troubles procured by the Danes, England first curssed and why; a prouinciall councell summoned for the reliefe of the churches ruine, Pleimond archbishop of Canturburie sent to Rome, bishops ordeined in sundrie prouinces; dissention among writers what pope should denounce the foresaid cursse; a succession of archbishops in the see of Canturburie, one brother killeth another.
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