The plan which accompanies the present chapter, based on the description of Pausanias, agrees in many of the main points with that given by Mr. Müller in his map of the Peloponnesos. M. Barbie du Bocage’s Essay on the Topography of Sparta, upon the whole faulty, is, nevertheless, in my opinion, right with respect to the portion of the bridge Babyx which Mr. Müller throws over the Tiasa, contrary to all the reasonable inferences to be derived from history. Colonel Leake’s plan, given in his travels in the Morea, conveys a different idea of Spartan topography; but I am unable to reconcile his views with the account of the city in Pausanias, though I very much regret that the plan I have adopted should not be recommended by the support of a writer so learned and so ingenious. The reader who has endeavoured to discover anything like order in Pausanias’ topography of Sparta,[282] will fully comprehend the difficulty of constructing from his information anything like an intelligible plan of the city. Nevertheless, by setting out from a fixed point, by laboriously studying the thread of his narration, by divining the secret order he seems to follow in enumerating and delineating the various public buildings of which he speaks, and by comparing his fragmentary disclosures with the present physiognomy of the site, I have formed a conception of the features of ancient Sparta which may, perhaps, be found to bear some resemblance to the original. Footnote 282: III. 11–20. Cf. Polyb. v. 22. Liv. xxxiv. 26. seq. We will suppose ourselves to have passed the Eurotas, and to be standing on the summit of the loftiest building of the Acropolis, the Alpion for example, or the temple of Athena Chalciœcos,[283] from which we can command a view of the whole site of Sparta from the Eurotas, where it flows between banks shaded with reeds and lofty rose laurels[284] on the east, to the brisk sparkling stream of the Tiasa, and the roots of the Taygetos on the west. North and south the eye ranges up and down the valley,[285] discovering in the latter direction the ancient cities of Therapne[286] and Amyclæ,[287] celebrated for their poetical and heroic associations. Beyond the Eurotas eastward, occupying the green and well-wooded acclivities upwards, from the banks of the stream towards the barren and red-tinted heights of the Menelaion,[288] lay scattered the villas of the noble Spartans, filled with costly furniture and every other token of wealth,[289] while here and there, on all sides, embosomed in groves or thickets, arose the temples and chapels of the gods surrounded by a halo of sanctity and communicating peculiar beauty to the landscape. Footnote 283: In the precincts of this temple, evidently the strongest place in the city, the Ætolian mercenaries took refuge after the assassination of Nabis.—Liv. xxxv. 36. Footnote 284: