V. Prasiae.—

The township of Prasiae was situated on the spacious and beautiful bay now called Porto Raphti, on the east coast of Attica, about sixteen miles north-east of Sunium. From the fertile valley of Cephale (now Keratea) a path leads north-eastward through a very deep and narrow glen to the shore of the bay. In the depths of this romantic glen there winds the bed of a stream which is sometimes nearly or wholly dry. The sides of the glen, seamed with the beds of torrents and rifted rocks, are so thickly wooded and overhung with pine-trees and bushes that in many places it is hard to force a passage along it. Flocks of sheep and goats browsing, and in spring the warbling of numerous nightingales in the thickets, alone relieve the solitude. At the end of the glen, which is about three miles long, the view of the wide bay, enclosed by barren mountains, suddenly bursts on us. On the north Mount Peratia, with its jagged ridge and bold beautiful outline, descends in precipices almost sheer into the water, its sides bare except for here and there a thin patch of pinewood. On the south rises, dark and massive, the loftier Mavronori (‘the black mountain’). From its base the rocky headland of Koroni runs far out into the sea, sheltering the bay on the east and narrowing its entrance to about a mile and a quarter. Right in the middle of the entrance, breaking the force of the waves when the wind blows from the east, a rocky islet in the shape of a sugar-loaf or pyramid rises abruptly from the sea to the height of about three hundred feet. Its sides, clothed with lentisk bushes and dwarf pines, are so steep that it can be scaled only on one side, the north. On its summit, looking seaward, sits a colossal but headless and armless statue of white marble on a high pedestal, the blocks of which were falling to ruin at the time of Dodwell’s visit but are now held together by iron clamps. This statue, which, to judge from its style, dates from the time of the Roman empire, is popularly supposed to resemble a tailor (raphti) seated at his work; hence it has given its present name of Porto Raphti to the bay. It has been plausibly conjectured that this is the monument described by Pausanias as the tomb of Erysichthon who died at sea on his way home from Delos. The striking monument, looking out from its high lonely isle across the blue sea, may have been erected on the traditionary site of the hero’s grave by some wealthy patron of art in Roman days, perhaps by Herodes Atticus himself.

The inner part of the bay is divided into two by a rocky spit jutting out from the shore, to which it is attached by a low isthmus. The promontory takes its name from a chapel of St. Nicholas which stands on the isthmus; a small island off the promontory still bears the name of Prasonisi or ‘Isle of Prasiae.’ The anchorage for fishing boats is on the north side of the isthmus, and here are the few wretched hovels which make up the hamlet of Porto Raphti. The hamlet is not permanently inhabited. For the bay, though one of the finest harbours in Greece, is desolate and hardly frequented except in summer. By day peasants may be met at work in the fields or carting fish to the neighbouring villages. But all through the colder seasons of the year and even on summer evenings a profound stillness, broken only by the lapping of the waves on the beach, reigns on the shores of this beautiful bay, one of the fairest scenes in Attica.

On the northern shore of the bay there are a few scanty remains of antiquity which seem to have belonged to the township of Stiria. Prasiae lay on the southern shore, which still bears the ancient name. Here, between the sandy and in part marshy beach and the hills, there stretches a strip of level cornland interspersed with olives and stately cork-oaks. Some vestiges of ancient wall may be traced at a garden not far from the shore, where there is also an ancient well. But the sand is gaining so fast here that a few years ago the ruins of a chapel with some Christian graves were discovered buried in the downs. The citadel of Prasiae occupied the rocky headland of Koroni (probably the ancient Coronea), which, as we have seen, shelters the bay on the east. This bold headland, joined to the mainland by a low sandy isthmus, has obviously been at one time an island; indeed the whole of the southern part of the bay is being gradually sanded up. The fortification walls, six feet thick and built without mortar, may be followed all round the summit of the headland, which is besides so well protected by its steep cliffs that an attack from the side of the sea must have been nearly impracticable. Another wall, eight to ten feet thick, which seems to have been strengthened with towers or bastions, runs down in a south-westerly direction from the ring-wall of the citadel. It probably served as an outwork and may have reached as far as the shore, though now it disappears some distance above the water. Within the ring-wall of the citadel are the remains of a number of cross-walls extending at right angles to it; but they are now so overgrown by dense underwood that it is almost impossible to trace them. From the summit of the headland there is a fine prospect, on the one side over the noble bay with its rocky islets, on the other side across the sea to Euboea, Andros, and Ceos. The white houses which are seen gleaming in Ceos are those of the modern town which occupies the site of the ancient Julis.