beauty or historical importance.[280] Footnote 275: Leake, Topog. p. 215. Footnote 276: About half a mile from Athens in this direction was a temple of Artemis (Ἄγρα), on the Ilissos, with an altar to Boreas; where, according to the fable, the god carried away Orithyia while playing on the rock with Pharmacia.—Plat. Phæd. i. 7. In consequence of the alliance thus contracted Boreas always felt a particular friendship for the Athenians, to whose succour he hastened with his aërial forces during the Median war.—Herod, vii. 189. Footnote 277: Antigone, in Sophocles, (Œdip. Col. 14-18) speaks of the towers of Athens as seen from Colonos, and describes that village, the birth-place of the poet, as rendered beautiful by the sacred grove of the Eumenides, consisting of the laurel, the olive, and the vine, in which a choir of nightingales showered their music on the ear. Footnote 278: Near this road stood the Hiera Suke. Athen. iii. 6. Footnote 279: Κεραμεικός, ἀπὸ τοῦ κεραμεύς. Etym. Mag. 504. 16. Cf. Suid. et Harpocrat. in voce. Paris, in like manner, has given the name of Tuileries to its principal palaces and gardens, from the tiles (_tuiles_) which were anciently manufactured on the spot. Footnote 280: Strab. ix. 1. 239–241. CHAPTER V. CAPITAL CITIES OF GREECE.—SPARTA. From what has been said, the reader will, perhaps, have acquired a tolerably correct idea of the city of Athens, its splendour and extent. But the remaining fragments of Hellenic literature do not enable us to be equally clear or copious in our account of Sparta.[281] In fact so imperfect and confused is the information that has come down to us respecting it, so vague, unsatisfactory, and in many respects contradictory are the opinions of modern scholars and travellers, that after diligently and patiently examining their accounts, and comparing them with the descriptions of Pausanias, the hints of Xenophon, Livy, Polybius, and Plutarch, with the casual references of the poets, I am enabled to offer the following picture only as a series of what appear to me probable conjectures based upon a few indisputable facts. Footnote 281: