Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/338

 31 G HISTORY OF GREECE. But Eurymedon and Sophokles decidedly rejected all proposi- tion of delay ; and with much reason, since they had been in- formed (though seemingly without truth) that the Peloponnesian fleet had actually reached Korkyra: they might well have remembered the mischief which had ensued three years before Dr. Arnold has himself raised a still graver doubt ; whether the island now called Sphagia be really the same as Sphakteria, and whether the buy of Navarino be the real harbor of Pylus. He suspects that the Pale-Nava rino which has been generally understood to be Pylus, was in reality the ancient Sphakteria, separated from the mainland in ancient times by a channel at the north as well as by another at the southeast, though now it is not an island at all. He farther suspects that the lake or lagoon called Lake of Osmyn Aga, north of the harbor of Navarino, and immediately under that which he supposes to have been Sphakteria, was the ancient harbor of Pylus, in which the sea-fight between the Athenians and Lacedae- monians took place. He does not, indeed, assert this as a positive opinion, but leans to it as the most probable, admitting that there are difficulties either way. Dr. Arnold has stated some of the difficulties which beset this hypothesis (p. 447), but there was one which he has not stated, which appears to ma the most formidable of all, and quite fatal to the admissibility of his opin- ion. If the Paleokastro of Navarino was the real ancient Sphakteria, it must have been a second island situated to the northward of Sphagia. There must therefore have been two islands close together off the coast and near the scene. Now if the reader will follow the account of Thucydides, he will see that there certainly was no more than one island, Sphakteria, without any other near or adjoining to it; see especially c. 13: the Athe- nian fleet under Eurymedon, on first arriving, was obliged to go back some distance to the island of Prote, because the island of Sphakteria was full of Lacedaemonian hoplites : if Dr. Arnold's hypothesis were admitted, there would have been nothing to hinder them from landing on Sphagia itself, the s0ane inference may be deduced from c. 8. The statement of Pliny (II, N. iv, 12) that there were tres Sphagice off Pylus, unless we suppose with Hard<Miin that two of them were mere rocks, appears to me inconsistent with the account of Thucydides. I think that there is no alternative except to suppose that a great altera- tion has taken place in the two passages which separate Sphagia from the mainland, during the interval of two thousand four hundred years which seja!Mtcs us from Thucydides. The mainland to the south of Navarino must have been much nearer than it is now to the southern portion of Spbagia, while the northern passage also must have been then both nar- rower and clearer. To suppose a change in the configuration of the coasl to this extent, seems noway extravagant : any other hypothesis which may be started will be found involved in much greater difficulty.