From Thermopylæ Pococke proceeded through the country of the Opuntian
Locrians to the Euripus, into which Aristotle is absurdly reported by
vulgar tradition to have thrown himself, from a despair of discovering
the cause of its manifold tides. The ancients relate that the tide here
ebbs and flows seven times in the day; but our traveller learned that
the motions of the Euripus are irregular, sometimes ebbing and flowing
as often as fourteen times in the day, and at others not more than
twice. He next directed his course to the shores of the Copaic Lake, the
eels of which Aristophanes seems to have so passionately longed for
during the Peloponnesian war, visited Thebes, and then crossed Mount
Pentelicus into Attica. The ruins of Athens were then far less imperfect
than they are at present, and he examined them with the eye of a learned
antiquary; but extensive as was his learning, he does not seem to have
possessed that sort of reading which would have enabled him thoroughly
to enjoy a tour through Greece. It is for those who have entered deeply
into the private history, literature, and philosophy of the Greeks that
Attica has real charms. He should be able to determine or imagine the
exact spot where Socrates sat under the plane-tree with Phædrus in order
to discuss the merits of Lysias’s style; he should be interested in
discovering where the house of Callias stood, to which the impatient
Hippocrates would have led Socrates before day, that he might lose no
time in being introduced to Protagoras; he should walk up and down the
banks of the Ilyssus, that he might be sure of having visited the spot
where Sophocles nestled all night among the reeds to enjoy the song of
the nightingale: this is the sort of traveller who should visit Greece.
Otherwise, with Strabo, Pausanias, and Vitruvius in hand, he may
determine the sites of cities and measure the height of columns to a
hair; our feelings go not along with him, and his researches become
tiresome in proportion as they are circumstantial and exact.
From Athens Pococke proceeded westward, crossed the ancient territories
of Megara, visited Corinth, and continuing his journey along the
southern shores of the Gulf of Lepanto, arrived at Patras, where he
embarked for Sicily. He then crossed over into Italy, and hurried on
through Germany, Switzerland, and France, to England, and arrived in
London on the 30th of August, 1741, exactly eight years from the day of
his first departure for the Continent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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