Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/701

 PYLUS. the enstern side or towards the lagoon; while on the western side or towards the open sea it slopes gra- dually, particularly on the SW., where Demosthenes succeeded in preventing the landing of Brasidas and the Lacedaemonians. The promontory is higher at the northern end. Below the ruined fortress at the northern end there is a fine cavern, called Void/to- Kilid (Bor5d-(coiA.ia'), " the ox's belly," which gives name to the small circular port immediately below it, which liiis been already spoken of. This cavern is 60 feet long, 40 wide, and 40 high, having a roof like a Gothic arch. The entrance is triangular, 30 feet long and 12 high; at the top of the cavern there is an opening in the surface of the hill above. This cave was, according to the Peloponnesian tra- dition, the one into which the infant Hermes drove the cattle he had stolen from Apollo. It is men- tioned in the Homeric hymn to Hermes as situated upon the sea-side (v. 341); but in Antoninus Li- beralis (c. 23) it is expressly said to have been at Corypha.sium. In Ovid {Met. ii. 684) Mercury is represented as beholding from Mt. Cyllene the un- guarded cattle proceeding into the fields of Pylus. The bay of Voidho-Kilid is separated by a low semicircular ridge of sand from the large shallow lagoon of Osmyn-Aga. As neither Thucydides nor Pausanias says a word about this lagoon, which now forms so striking a feature in the topography of this district, we may confidently conclude, with Leake, that it is of recent formation. The peninsula must, in that case, have been surrounded with a sandy plain, as Pausanias describes it; and accordingly, if we suppose this to have been the site of the Homeric Pylus, the epithet riixa66fis, which the poet constantly gives to it, would be perfectly ap- plicable. The Athenians did not surrender their fortress at Pylus to the Lacedaemonians in accordance with the treaty made in b. c. 421 (Time. v. 35), but retained possession of it for fifteen years, and only lost it towards the close of the Peloponnesian AV'ar. (Diod. siii. 64.) On the restoration of the Mes- senLans to their country by Epaminondas, Pylus again appears in history. The remains of the walls already described belong to this period. On more than one occasion there was a dispute between the Wessenians and Achaeans respecting the possession of this place. (Liv. xxvii. 30; Polyb. xviii. 25.) It was visited by Pausanias, who saw there a temple of Athena Coryphasia, the so-named house of Nestor, containing a picture of him, his tomb, and a cavern said to have been the stable of the oxen of Neleus and Nestor. He describes the latter as within the city ; which must therefore have extended nearly to the northern end of the promontory, as this cave is evidently the one described above. (I'aus. v. 36.) There are imperial coins of this city bearing the epigraph nvXiuv, belonging to the time of Severus. (Eckhel, vol. ii. p. 277.) It would appear from Leake that the restored city was also called Cory- phasium, since he says that " at the time of the Achaean League there was a town of Coryphasium, as we learn from a coin, which shows that Cory- pliasium was a member of that confederacy." {Pe- loponnesiaca, p. 191.) Ihe modern name Avarino, corrupted, as already said, into Navarino, is probably due to the Avars, who settled there in the sixth century of the Chris- tian era. The mediaeval castle was built by the widow of the Prankish chieftain William de la Koche. Her descendants sought a more convenient PYLUS. 685 place for their residence, and erected on the southern side of the harbour the Neokastro or modern Na- varino. It commanded the southern end of the harbour, which became more and more important as the northern entrance became choked up. Con- taining, as it does, the best harbour in the Pelopon- nesus, Navarino constantly appears in modern his- tory. It was taken by the Turks in 1500. In 1685 it was wrested from them by the Venetian commander Morosini, and remained in the hands of the Venetians till 1715. In more recent times it is memorable by the great battle fought in its bay, on the 20th of October, 1827, between the Turkish fleet and the combined fleets of England, France, and Russia. (Curtius, Peloponnesos, vol. ii. p. 181.) It remains to speak of the site of the Homeric Pylos. According to a generally received tradition, Neleus, the son of Poseidon, migrated from lolcos in Thessaly, and founded on the west coast of Peloponnesus a kingdom extending westward as far as that of the Atridae, and northward as far as the Alpheius, or even beyond this river. Neleus incurred the indignation of Hercules for refusing to purify him after the murder of his son Iphitus. The hero took Pylus and killed Neleus, together with eleven of his twelve sons. But his surviving son Nestor upheld the fame of his house, and, after distinguishing himself by his exploits in youth and manhood, accompanied in his old age the Grecian chiefs in their expedition against Troy. Upon the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, three gene- rations after Nestor, the Neleids quitted Pylus and removed to Athens, where they obtained the kingly power. The situation of this Pylus — the TliiKos NrjKifios, as it was called — was a subject of much dispute among the Grecian geographers and gram- marians. Strabo (viii. p. 339) quotes a proverbial verse, in which three towns of this name were mentioned — f(TTL riuAos TTfih TliKoio' Tivos y4 fxiv ia-Ti koI &Aos, — of which the former half — "'Effri TlvXos irph UvAoio — was at least as old as the time of Aristo- phanes, when Pylus became famous by the cajiture of the Spartans at Sphacteria. (Aristoph. Jiquit. 1059.) The claims of the Eleian Pylus to be the city of Nestor may be safely set on one side ; and the choice lies between the towns in Trijihylia and Messenia. The ancients usually decided in favour of the Messeiiian Pylos. This is the opinion of Pausanias (iv. 36), who unhesitatingly places the city of Nestor on the promontory of Coryphasium, although, as we have already seen, he agrees with the people of Elis that Homer, in describing the Alpheius as flowing through the land of the Pylians (//. v. 545), had a view to the Eleian city. (Paus. vi. 22. § 6.) It is however, much more probable that the "land of the Pylians" was used by the poet to .Mgnify the whole kingdom of the Neleian Pylus, since he describes both Thryoessa on the Alpheius and the cities on the Mcsscnian gulf as the extreme or frontier places of Pylus. (0pu- decraa iv6is . . . veaTij YlvKav i}iJ.a66(VTOs, II. xi. 712; viarai XlxiKov v/j.addd'Tos, IL ix. 153.) In this sense these expressions were understood by Strabo (viii. jip. 337, 350). It is curious that Pausanias, who paid so nmch attention to Homeric antiijuitics, docs not even allude to the existence of the Trij-hylian I'ylus. Pindar calls Nestor " the Messenian old man." {l''jth. vi. 35.) Isotratcs