I took the most intelligent Turk in the place as my cicerone.... Immediately around me were the ruins, extending for miles, undisturbed by any living creature except the goats and kids. On every side lay columns, triglyphs and friezes, of beautiful sculpture, every object speaking of the grandeur of this ancient city. In one place I saw thirty Doric capitals placed up in a line for a fence.” Sir Charles Fellows gives a drawing of one of the friezes now in Paris, and adds, “I then entered the Via Sacra, or Street of Tombs, extending for miles. Some of these tombs still stand in their original beautiful forms, but most have been opened, and the lids are lying near the walls they covered, curiosity or avarice having been satisfied by displacing them.... These ruins are on a considerably larger scale than those of the Roman city, and many of the remains are equally perfect. Several are highly ornamented and have inscriptions; others are as large as a temple, being twenty to thirty feet square; the usual height of the sarcophagus is from ten to twelve feet.”[6] Footnote 5: The character of the position of Assus led to a joke of the musician Stratonicus, who applied to it a line of Homer (Il. vii. 144), playing on the meaning of the word Ἆσσον, viz. Ἅσσον ἴθ’, ὡς κεν θᾶσσον ὀλέθρου πείραθ’ ἵκηαι, Come more quickly (or come to Assus), “that ye may the more quickly come to utter destruction.” At Assus, St. Luke, and other companions of St. Paul, rejoined him with their ship, the Apostle having walked on foot from Alexandria Troas (Acts xx. 13). Footnote 6: The popular story of the “Lapis Assius,” with its supposed power of destroying the flesh of bodies buried in it (whence the name _sarkophagus_, or “flesh-consuming,”) is noticed by Dioskorides and Pliny. But this Greek word is rarely used for a tomb, the more usual word being σορός (soros). By the Romans, however, it was used, as in Juv. x. 170. Colonel Leake observes of the ruins of Assos, “The whole gives, perhaps, the most perfect idea of a Greek city that anywhere exists” (Asia Minor, p. 128). See also R. P. Pullan, “Ruins of Asia Minor,” p. 19.