The Itinerary of Greece
by William Gell (9780217591362)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The thirst for information on the subject of those places which have been celebrated by the Latin historians, has occasioned the most diligent examination of every part of Italy, yet the supposed difficulty of the task, has prevented travellers from extending their researches to the classic ground beyond the Adriatic, so that we are at present as ignorant of Greece as of the interior of Africa. Greece differs most essentially from other countries, and even from Italy, in the infinite number of objects of curiosity which it offers to the traveller; not an hour passes without producing some new source of reflection, and the road at every turn presents some scene to which the Poets or the Historians have attached interest, and this too, generally marked with such precision that the spot cannot easily be mistaken. Although every nation changes its character with its government, yet notwithstanding the lapse of twenty centuries, and so many revolutions, it is very gratifying to observe, that in Greece the same physical causes which produced the original distinction between the inhabitants of neighbouring districts, still operate with such force, that no other country affords so many traces of ancient manners, or recalls so frequently the recollection of its former inhabitants. Thus Athens is now the most polished city of Greece; the Eleuthero Lacones still retain their independence and aversion to strangers; the stoutest men are yet to be found at Daulis, the Acarnanians and Epirots are yet the most lawless; and if Theseus cut off his hair at Delphi previous to his journey into Molossia, three thousand years ago, a stranger who wished to pass undiscovered as a native of that part of the country would be necessitated to follow his example at the present day. There i...

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