Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/390

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338
APPENDIX.

valley, found a small mediæeval tower, now used as a chapel. In a valley beyond this were some carefully squared Hellenic blocks, near which is a monastery. We then rounded the hill. On the plain were several ancient blocks, and by the mountain side the remains of a built tomb for two people. It must have been a lofty structure, but, even while I was there, some boys were engaged in breaking up the blocks and carrying them away for some more modern building.

Saturday, 18th.—From Castel Rosso to Antiphellus (Antiphilo) is a pleasant sail across a land-locked bay. Before ns rose the tine mountainous coast of Asia Minor, with the beautiful bays of Vathy (the deep) and Sevedo; behind us were the rocky mountains of Castel Rosso. As we passed on, we made out first the ruins of the theatre, then some Hellenic walls, and as we neared the shore groups of sarcophagi were visible.

The modern village of Antiphilo consists of a few cottages and storehouses for the Valonea which is brought down for exportation from the forest of Œnium. The ancient ruins consist of the theatre, which is of Hellenic architecture, and contains twenty-six rows of well-finished seats. It is built of large squared blocks of limestone well fitted together, and has no proscenium. Large limestone sarcophagi are scattered all over the valley: sometimes they are hewn out of the rock itself The only ornament on them is a square tablet with a Greek inscription, setting forth the name and titles of the deceased, whose bones have long since been scattered to the winds, for all these sarcophagi have been broken open. On the side of the hill facing the sea are two rock tombs—one is square, and entirely hewn out of the rock. On either side, as you enter the tomb, is the couch for the dead, having an ornament in bas-relief round the recess. At the head of the tomb is a frieze of little figures about 6 inches high, holding each other's hands. The other tomb is cut out in the ordinary Lycian style, with a projecting roof The rock is cut so as to represent a beam supported on logs of wood, an imitation, probably, of the ordinary houses of the period. The houses of the modern peasants, in many instances, are built on the same plan. Below, on the front of the tomb, panels are cut in the rock with projecting mullions on either side. On this tomb is an inscription in Lycian as well as Greek. In the valley near Port Vathy are two more tombs; the largest of Ionic, the second of Lycian character. To the east of the modern village are other groups of sarcophagi in picturesque posi-