The capital of Megara, like Athens, stood a short distance from the sea; but was joined by long walls to its harbour Nisæa, protected from the weather by the Minoan promontory. In sailing thence to the Peiræeus we pass several islands, none of which, however, are of any magnitude, save Salamis, in remote antiquity a separate state governed by its own laws. The old capital, already deserted in the time of Strabo, stood on the southern coast over against Ægina; but the principal town of later times was situated on a bay at the root of a tongue of land projecting toward that part of Attica[207] where Xerxes sat to behold his imperial armada annihilated by the republicans of Hellas. Salamis was known of old under various names,—Skiras, Cychræa and Pituoussa, from the Pitus, or pine tree, by which its rocks and glens were in many places shaded. Immediately before the engagement in which his navy was destroyed, the Persian monarch sought to unite Salamis to the continent by a dam two stadia in length; his project, had it succeeded, would have ruined the ferrymen of Amphialè, a class of individuals whose operations Solon judged of sufficient importance to be regulated by a particular article in his code. Of the smaller islets that form the outworks of the Attic coast, little need be said, since they were nearly all barren, and inhabited only by a few legendary traditions. The tomb of Circe was shown on the larger of the Pharmacoussæ; and the island of Helena, east of the Samian promontory obtained the reputation of having been the spot where the faithless queen of Menelaus consummated her guilt.[208] Footnote 207: On one of the projecting roots of Mount Ægaleus, which anciently, according to Statius, was well-wooded, and clothed like Hymettos with thyme.—Theb. xii. 631. Suid. _v._ Μᾶσσον. This mountain produced likewise an abundance of figs (Theoc. Eidyll. i. 147), which were considered the best in Attica.—Athen. xiv. 66. Meurs. Rel. Att. c. i. p. 4. seq. Cf. Leake, Topog. 71. Footnote 208: Il. γ. 445. where we find its ancient name to have been Kranäe.—Cf. Eurip. Helen. 1672. Strab. ix. 1. p. 245.—Pausanias (i. 35. 1) has preserved another tradition representing Helen as landing here on her return from Troy.—Chandler, ii. 7.