The great headland to the right, crowned by the fortress of Palamidi, overlooks the town of Nauplia. The golden-brown hill to the left is the ancient acropolis or fortress of Tiryns, the exploration of which by Dr. Schliemann was an event of hardly less importance than his famous discoveries at Mycenæ.] hardly wonder at the great hygienic reputation of the place. The dog and the serpent are almost always associated with Asclepios in pictorial representations, the serpent entwined around his staff, and both animals figure prominently in the stories of miraculous cure, the dog sometimes licking the sores of the patient. How the serpent was so highly esteemed is not very clear. But it became the great emblem of the healing art, perhaps owing to the silence and subtlety of its movements and its connection with the underground world. The Epidaurians always took it with them when they went to found a colony; and on one occasion, when ambassadors, in obedience to an oracle, came from Rome in a time of pestilence, seeking the help of the god, the serpent was sent back with them as his representative. One of the most interesting ruins of the place is the _Tholos_, a kind of rotunda, more than 100 feet in diameter, of which only the ground parts are standing. These consist of six concentric walls, the three innermost of which supported a circular floor or platform, paved with black and white marble, with a hole in the centre, the purpose of which is not very clear, whether for offering sacrifice, which is suggested by the name of _Thumela_ applied to the building, or for drawing water from beneath. The fourth of the circular walls just mentioned, counting from the centre, supported fourteen Corinthian pillars of marble, the fifth a wall above the ground, the sixth an exterior colonnade with twenty-six columns. The three underground walls nearest the centre, forming a vault, have doors in them by which you can pass from one to the other, but so arranged as to form a labyrinth. An inscription shows that the building was erected by contract and took twenty-one years to finish. The contract was in the hands of two sets of commissioners, the one having charge of giving it out, the other being entrusted with the duty of seeing that the work was properly done. The list of contractors shows that many different cities had an interest in the undertaking. [Illustration: THE THEATRE OF EPIDAURUS