Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/78

52 sculpture and painted pottery. To the south of the castle is a platform where stand the Turkish prison and the kiosk of the Pasha. Between this platform and the castle is a hollow, on the sloping sides of which are found many fragments of Greek painted vases of all periods. An ancient cemetery may, therefore, have stood here.

The part of the rocky peninsula nearest the castle has not been encroached upon by modern buildings, which would have interfered with the rans-e of the guns. On the strip of land to the south, lying between a small fort and the harbour, is a little group of houses, the residences of the different Vice-Consuls. This constitutes the Frank quarter.

Though the natural features of the ground are so strongly marked, no traces remain of the ancient city, and the whole aspect of the site is so changed by modern occupation that it is difficult to imagine that here once stood one of the most beautiful cities of the Hellenic would, which Horace thought worthy to be named in the same stanza in which he celebrates Rhodes, Ephesus, and Corinth. From the few notices of Mytilene in ancient authors, we know that the canal called Euripus by the Greeks was crossed by bridges of white marble, and that here was a theatre the plan of which excited the admiration of Pompey, and which he wished to imitate at Rome.$23$ Vitruvius, admitting the magnificence of the architecture, points out how badly the plan of the city was arranged in reference to the prevailing wands. It was so exposed, he says, to the north, and south that the sirocco made the inhabitants ill, the north-west wind