Troezen, far down the eastern side of the peninsula, both geographically and by its associations, historical and mythological, turns our thoughts away from Dorian Argos and across the Saronic Gulf to Athens. It was here that some of the Athenian women and children found a place of refuge during the Persian invasion. In a colonnade of the market-place Pausanias saw portrait statues of those refugees whose rank and wealth permitted this expression of their gratitude. Here in the harbour the Greek fleet assembled before sailing to take its position in the Straits of Salamis. The ruined remains of the acropolis are insignificant, but our vision, like that of the refugees, may range over the wonderful landscape—Parnassus beyond the Isthmus and gulf, mountains and headlands, and the Ægean set with island jewels—back to the fertile plain below, which in modern times has welcomed the beauty of the orange and the lemon to replace the vanished glory of the kings and heroes of antiquity. Plutarch, in his “Life of Theseus,” relates the well-known story that the young prince in the dawning vigour of manhood is taken by his mother to test his strength on the great rock beneath which lie concealed the tokens left by his father to guarantee his royal birth. He lifts the rock and takes the sword and the sandals. Emulous of the fame of Heracles, he rejects the suggestion of the easy voyage across the Saronic Gulf, and by the dangerous land route, where wild beasts and giants must be met and slain, he makes his way past the ill-famed Scironian rocks to Athens, and claims the paternity of Ægeus and becomes the national hero of his father’s land.