Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 1 of 2): With General and Particular Accounts of Their Rise, Fall, and Present ConditionBucke, Charles
History
Ruins of Ancient Cities (Vol. 1 of 2): With General and Particular Accounts of Their Rise, Fall, and Present Condition
Bucke, Charles
Cities and towns, Ancient
Megara has been greatly distinguished from the circumstance of Phocion
having been buried in its territories. The enemies of Phocion, not
satisfied with the punishment they had caused him to suffer, and
believing some particulars were still wanting to complete their triumph,
obtained an order from the people, that his body should be carried out
of the dominions of Attica, and that none of the Athenians should
contribute the least quantity of wood to honour his funeral pile: these
last offices were therefore rendered to him in the territories of
_Megara_. A lady of the country, who accidentally assisted at his
funeral with her servants, caused a cenotaph, or vacant tomb, to be
erected to his memory on the same spot; and, collecting into her robe
the bones of that great man, which she had carefully gathered up, she
conveyed them into her house by night, and buried them under her hearth,
with these expressions: "Dear and sacred hearth, I here confide to thee,
and deposit in thy bosom, these precious remains of a worthy man.
Preserve them with fidelity, in order to restore them hereafter to the
monument of his ancestors, when the Athenians shall become wiser than
they are at present."
Megara still retains it name: it has been greatly infested by corsairs;
insomuch that in 1676, the inhabitants were accustomed, on seeing a boat
approaching in the daytime, or hearing their dogs bark by night,
immediately to secrete their effects and run away. The Vaiwode, who
lived in a forsaken tower, above the village, was once carried off.
Besides two citadels, Megara had several magnificent structures and
ornaments. One was an aqueduct, distinguished for its grandeur and
beauty; another for a statue of Diana, the protectress; and to these
were added statues of the twelve great gods, of so much excellence, that
they were ascribed to Praxiteles;--a group, consecrated to Jupiter
Olympius, in which was a statue of that deity, with its face of gold and
ivory, and the rest of the body of burnt earth. There were also a temple
of Bacchus, and another of Venus; a third of Ceres, a fourth of Apollo,
a fifth of Diana, and a sixth of Minerva; in which last was a statue of
the goddess, the body of which was gilt, and the face, feet, and hands
of ivory. There was, also, a chapel dedicated to the Night. Pausanias
speaks, also, of several tombs; especially those of Hyllus, Alcmenes,
Therea, and Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.
In Wheler's time, Megara was a collection of pitiful cottages, whose
walls were sometimes only the broken stones of her ruins, or clay dried
in the sun, covered only with faggots; and these again spread over with
earth above them*.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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