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In June 1833, Willis was invited by the officers of an American frigate to accompany them on a six months' cruise in the Mediterranean. This was far too good an offer to be refused, since it would have been impossible to get a peep at the East under more ideal conditions of travel. In the island of AEgina he was introduced to Byron's Maid of Athens, once the beautiful Teresa Makri, now plain Mrs.
It was soon joined by Troezen, Epidaurus, Hermione and other cities; and ultimately embraced Athens, Megara, AEgina, Salamis, and the whole Peloponnesus, with the exception of Sparta, Elis, and some of the Arcadian towns. Sparta, it is true, still continued to retain her independence, but without a shadow of her former greatness and power.
The Athenians forestalled the attack made a descent on Haliae, in Argolis were met by the Corinthians and Epidaurians, and the result of battle was the victory of the latter. This defeat the Athenians speedily retrieved at sea. Off Cecryphalea, in the Saronic gulf, they attacked and utterly routed the Peloponnesian fleet. And now Aegina openly declared war and joined the hostile league.
Herodes Atticus, that remarkable figure who traced his descent to the very beginnings of Athenian history and the semi-mythical Aeacidae of Aegina, and who was consul of Rome under Antoninus Pius, had taken up his permanent residence in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to the architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a munificent patronage of letters.
Next year Darius sent to all the Greek cities demanding earth and water, the tokens of submission. The islanders obeyed including Aegina, the deadly foe of Athens. A protest made by the latter led to a war between the two states in which Athens was worsted.
XV. Aegina reduced, the Athenian fleet of fifty galleys, manned by four thousand men , under the command of Tolmides, circumnavigated the Peloponnesus the armistice of four months had expired and, landing in Laconia, Tolmides burnt Gythium, a dock of the Lacedaemonians; took Chalcis, a town belonging to Corinth, and, debarking at Sicyon, engaged and defeated the Sicyonians.
On my way back from Asia, as I was sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina, before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth; towns all of them that were once at the very height of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes.
The Rhodians, of course, retained their Carian possessions, and the Pergamenes retained Aegina. The remaining allies were only indirectly rewarded by the accession of the newly-liberated cities to the several confederacies.
In the eastern chamber of the Parthenon, the smallness of the diameter of the columns leaves little doubt that there was an upper range, as in the temples of Paestum and AEgina. It is to be lamented that no remains of any of them have been found, as they might have presented some new proofs of the taste and invention of the architects of the time of Pericles.
Cephalus, king of Athens, arrived in the island of Aegina to seek assistance of his old friend and ally Aeacus, the king, in his war with Minos, king of Crete. Cephalus was most kindly received, and the desired assistance readily promised. "I have people enough," said Aeacus, "to protect myself and spare you such a force as you need."
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