Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/249

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 231 'sylvan reign of Amycus, who defied the son of Leda to C H A P. the combat of the cestus*. The straits of the Bos- ^^^^' phorus are terminated by the Cyanean rocks, which, according to the description of the poets, had once floated on the face of the waters; and were destined by the gods to protect the entrance of the Euxine against the eye of profane curiosity ^ From the Cya- nean rocks to the ])oint and harbour of Byzantium, the winding length of the Bosphorus extends about sixteen miles ^, and its most ordinary breadth may be computed at about one mile and a half. The new castles of Eu- rope and Asia are constructed, on either continent, upon the foundations of two celebrated temples, of Serapis and of Jupiter Urius. The old castles, a work of the Greek emperors, command the narrowest part of the channel, in a place where the opposite banks ad- vance within five hundred paces of each other. These fortresses were restored and strengthened by Mahomet the second, when he meditated the siege of Constanti- nople'': but the Turkish conqueror was most probably ignorant, that near two thousand years before his reign, Darius had chosen the same situation to connect the two continents by a bridge of boats'. At a small dis- tance from the old castles we discover the little town of flight, the stench and devastation which they occasion, and the north wind which drives them into the sea, all contribute to form this striking resem- blance. castles, at a place called Laurus Insana. That of Phiaeus was in Europe, near the village of Mauromole and the Black sea. See Gyllius de Bosph. 1. ii. c. '23. Tournefort, Lettre xv. ' The deception was occasioned by several pointed rocks, alternately co- vered and abandoned by the waves. At present there are two small islands, one towards either shore : that of Europe is distinguished by the column of Pompey. >>' The ancients computed one hundred and twenty stadia, or fifteen Ro- man miles. They measured only from the new castles, but they carried the straits as far as the town of Chalcedon. '' Ducas, Hist. c. 34. Leunclavius, Hist. Turcica Musulmanica, 1. xv. p. 577. Under the Greek empire these castles were used as state prisons, under the tremendous name of Lethe, or towers of oblivion. ' Darius engraved in Greek and Assyrian letters on two marble columns, the names of Ids subject nations, and the amazing numbers of his land and sea forces. The Byzantines afterwards transported these columns into the city, and used them for the altars of their tutelar deities. Herodotus, 1. iv. c. 87.
 * The residence of Amycus was in Asia, between the old and the new ^