A short distance to the south-east of Sparta, where the river Magoula joins the Eurotas, on the top of steep cliffs, reaching in some places a height of more than 700 feet, and approaching close to the east bank of the Eurotas, lies the site of the ancient Therapne, which is now generally identified with the Homeric Sparta. If the supposition be correct, these heights were once the scene of palatial state and splendour, with which the historic Sparta even in its best days had nothing to compare. The foundations of a temple sacred to Menelaus and Helen have been traced, and a great many little figures of lead have been discovered, which served no doubt as votive offerings, while fragments of unglazed Mycenæan pottery have also been found in the immediate neighbourhood. According to tradition, there was here also a temple to the Dioscuri--Castor and Pollux, half-brother and brother of Helen; and here they were said to lie buried every alternate day, Pollux having declined the offer of immortality from his father Zeus, unless it were shared by his brother. Two or three miles south of Sparta, on the west side of the river, in the midst of a country abounding in fine fruit trees and rich cereal crops, lay the ancient city of Amyclæ, which remained in the hands of the Achæans for centuries after the Dorian invasion. On the top of an adjoining hill the foundations of the [Illustration: MISTRA, NEAR SPARTA The eastern portico of the Pantanassa Church, with view over the valley of the Eurotas.] famous precinct of Apollo have been excavated, where the Hyacinthian festival was celebrated from an early period in memory of a beautiful youth whom Apollo was said to have accidentally killed in a game of quoits. His tomb is under the altar of Apollo, a fact to be explained perhaps by the worship of the Dorian Apollo having superseded the earlier rites, though the name of Hyacinthus still survived. This festival (connected with the vegetation of spring) and the Carnean celebration of Apollo, as the horned cattle god, are often mentioned in history as the cause of delay in military expeditions, no people being more punctilious than the Spartans in attending to religious ordinances, and paying heed to natural omens, such as earthquakes. On one occasion the attendance at the Hyacinthia of a few soldiers on service at Corinth cost the Spartan army the loss of a battalion which had been sent to convoy them part of the way home, and in returning was cut to pieces by the Athenian Iphicrates and his famous peltasts or slingers. The importance of the sanctuary at Amyclæ is seen in the fact that the treaty between Athens and Sparta in 421 B.C. was to be inscribed on a column there, and also in the temple of Athena on the Acropolis of Athens.