Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/288

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238
TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES

behind. The mule which carried the panniers had fallen in the dry bed of a torrent; but I was happy to find that my treasures had been so well packed that nothing was broken.

From Kalavarda homewards, the landscape along the shore resumes the same verdant and luxriant character as in the environs of Rhodes. At Theologos, now pronounced Tholóos, I purchased a fragment of an inscription from the temple of Apollo Erethimios, the site of which Ross identified by excavation here. The spot which he explored is in the plain, at the distance of about eight minutes' walk from the village. In the church here is an inscription giving a list of the priests of Apollo Erethimios, and in front of the church a square block of blue marble inscribed with a similar list. The name Erethimios is only another form of Erysibios, "the averter of mildew," corresponding with the Latin deity Robigus.111

At Villa Nova we made a halt, and I examined some Hellenic remains on the shore below the town. Lying here on the sand were great quantities of the inscribed handles of Rhodian diotæ, similar to those found by Mr. Stoddart at Alexandria, and published by him in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature.112 The traces of Hellenic remains extended for some hundred yards along the shore. Over the door of a church recently built in this village part of a sepulchral relief is let into the wall. This represents a draped middle-aged figure, seated. In front stands a youthful male figure; behind, another figure. The legs only of these figures remain. Below is an enriched moulding.