Naupactus

“ Philip II. of Macedon gave Naupactus to the Aetolians, who held it till 191, when after an obstinate siege it was surrendered to the Romans. It was still flourishing about A.D. 170, but in Justinian's reign was destroyed by an earthquake. In the middle ages it fell into the hands of the Venetians, who fortified it so strongly that in 1477 it successfully resisted a four months' siege by a Turkish army thirty thousand strong ”

“ K. O. Müller thinks only about twenty thousand crossed at Naupactus, and that they never were in great numerical force. Yet they overturned Peloponnesus. Their mode of warfare was to fortify themselves in some place, and make excursions round. As soon as possible, they built temples to Apollo, and won the people by their superior cultivation. In the course of time, they won Laconia entirely: Messenia was a later conquest. The Ionians fled before them to Attica, and across the Archipelago; while the Achæans of Sparta and Argos retreated to the northern shores, just deserted by the Ionians. ”

“ The invasion was commonly believed to have proceeded by way of Aetolia and Elis, and the name Naupactus was interpreted as an allusion to the needful “shipbuilding” on the Corinthian Gulf. One legend made Dorus himself originally an Aetolian prince; the participation of Oxylus, and the Aetolian claim to Elis, appear first in Ephorus (4th century) . The conquest of Laconia at least is represented in 5th-century tradition as immediate and complete, though one legend admits the previous death of the Heracleid leader Aristodemus, and another describes a protracted struggle in the case of Corinth. ”

“ The Athenians pursued them closely, and took six of the ships nearest to them, and recovered their own, which the enemy had disabled near the shore and at the beginning of the engagement, and had taken in tow. Of the men, they put some to death, and made others prisoners. Now on board the Leucadian ship, which went down off the merchant vessel, was Timocrates the Lacedæmonian; who, when the ship was destroyed, killed himself, and falling overboard was floated into the harbour of Naupactus. ”

“ A sluggish serpent was in his way—it was not a serpent that [pg 175] would strike at one who turned from it. Nauplius trod upon it, and the serpent lifted its head up and bit his foot. They raised him on their shoulders and they hurried back with him. But his limbs became numb, and when they laid him down on the shore of the lake he stayed moveless. Soon he grew cold. They dug a grave for Nauplius beside the lake, and in that desert land they set up his helmsman’s oar in the middle of his tomb of heaped stones. ”

“ When the Greeks returned from the Trojan war, Nauplius saw them with pleasure distressed in a storm on the coasts of Eubœa, and to make their disaster still more universal, he lighted fires on such places as were surrounded with the most dangerous rocks, that the fleet might be shipwrecked upon the coast. This succeeded, but Nauplius was so disappointed when he saw Ulysses and Diomedes escape from the general calamity, that he threw himself into the sea. According to some mythologists, there were two persons of this name.――A native of Argos, who went to Colchis with Jason. ”

“ The fine open space along the water front makes a tempting parade-ground, and at other hours an attractive place for general assemblage, especially at evening, when the people of Nauplia are to be seen lounging along the wharves or drinking their coffee in the shade under the white line of buildings. The quay curves for a long distance around the bay, and alongside it are moored many of those curious hollow schooners that do the coastwise carrying in Greece. Nauplia appears still to be something of a port, although infinitely smaller and less busy than either the Piræus or Patras. ”

“ Naupaktus, with a large circuit of wall and thinly defended, was in the greatest danger, and would certainly have been taken, had it not been saved by the efforts of the Athenian Demosthenês, who had remained there ever since the unfortunate Ætolian expedition. Apprized of the coming march of Eurylochus, he went personally to the Akarnanians, and persuaded them to send a force to aid in the defence of Naupaktus: for a long time they turned a deaf ear to his solicitations, in consequence of the refusal to blockade Leukas, but they were at length induced to consent. ”

“ Water is scarce, and the air dry and hot. The inhabitants, however, contrive to cultivate patches of ground, supported by terraces, high up on the mountain sides. The contrast is great between this desolate and arid mountain-mass, and the rich and well-watered plain of Troezen which adjoins it on the south.
XXXII. Nauplia.—Nauplia, now a busy flourishing seaport, and one of the chief towns of Greece, occupies the northern side of a rocky peninsula which juts out westward into the Argolic Gulf, near the head of the gulf and on its eastern side. ”

“ In those Crustacea in which the series of larval stages is most complete, the starting-point is the form already mentioned under the name of nauplius. The typical nauplius (fig. 12) has an oval unsegmented body and three pairs of limbs corresponding to the antennules, antennae and mandibles of the adult. The antennules are uniramous, the others biramous, and all three pairs are used in swimming. The antennae have a spiniform or hooked masticatory process at the base, and share with the mandibles, which have a similar process, the function of seizing and masticating the food. ”

“ The Messenian force from Naupaktus attended him, and served on land. But he kept on the outside of the gulf, anxious to fight in a large and open breadth of sea, which was essential to Athenian manœuvring: while his adversaries on their side remained on the inside of the Achaic cape, from the corresponding reason,—feeling that to them the narrow sea was advantageous, as making the naval battle like to a land battle, effacing all superiority of nautical skill. ”

“ The shell named Nautilus by Pliny is the Argonauta of modern authors, a thin shell, not chambered. The Nautili are known from the Ammonites by the septa being simple, not sinuated as in the latter genus, and in general the volutions of the spire are not visible. Three or four species are known inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean and Australian Ocean. The fossil species are found in the tertiary, and also in the secondary strata, as low down as the Mountain limestone. ”

“ And Nausicaa made answer: "Thou seemest, stranger, to be neither evil nor foolish. Thou shalt not lack clothing or food, and I will take thee to the city. Know also that this land is Phaeacia, and that I am daughter to Alcinous, who is king thereof."
Then she called to her maidens: "What mean ye to flee when ye see a man? No enemy comes hither to harm us, for we are dear to the gods, and also we live in an island of the sea, so that men may not approach to work us wrong. If one cometh here overcome by trouble, it is well to help him. ”

“ So we were not reluctant to swing away from old Argos, with her shouting villagers and high-walled gardens, and to skirt the harbor, now close at hand along the dusty Nauplia road. Across the dancing waters lay Nauplia herself, a white patch at the foot of a prodigious cliff far around the bay. By the roadside the country seaward was marshy, while inland rolled the great plain back to the gray hills which showed the northern bounds of the old kingdom, and the lofty rock of Mycenæ from which the sons of Atreus had looked down over their broad acres. ”

“ For a Nautilus, you must know, is made like a cuttlefish, with eyes, and strong jaws for biting, and arms round them; and has a heart, and gills, and a stomach; and is altogether a very well-made beast, and, I suspect, a terrible tyrant to little fish and sea-slugs, just as the cuttlefish is. But the creatures which live in these little shells are about the least finished of Madam How’s works. They have neither mouth nor stomach, eyes nor limbs. ”

“ There is no call for a fine highway from Naupaktos to the lake. The great interior basin of Ætolia is provided with a good course for its traffic via Messolonghi; and no power on earth can force it to come this way. It is useless for some silly people in Naupaktos to complain that favoritism was shown in not laying out the Northwestern Railroad with their town as a starting-point. For a town doomed to decline, a steamer stopping two or three times a week, supplemented by sail-boats to and from the more lively and more important southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, may well suffice. ”

“ In Mysis there is still a trace of the Nauplius-stage; being transferred back to a period when it had not to provide for itself, the Nauplius has become degraded into a mere skin; in Ligia (Figs. 36, 37) this larva-skin has lost the last traces of limbs, and in Philoscia (Fig. 38) it is scarcely demonstrable.
Like the spinous processes of the Zoëæ, the chelæ on the penultimate pair of feet of the young Brachyscelus are to be regarded as acquired by the larva itself. The adult animals swim admirably and are not confined to their host ”

“ Amongst these Nauplii—all belonging to the great [35] group Crustacea, which includes crabs and shrimps—is one which gives rise to an animal decidedly degenerate, but not precisely parasitic in its habits. This Nauplius is the young of the ship’s Barnacle, a curious stalked body, inclosed in a shell of many pieces (Fig. 9) . The egg of the Barnacle gives rise to an actively swimming Nauplius, the history of which is very astonishing. After swimming about for a time the Barnacle’s Nauplius fixes its head against a piece of wood, and takes to a perfectly fixed, immobile state of life (Fig. 10) . ”

“ A strong breeze drove them onward; darkness came down, and the Argo went on through the night. With the morning light those who were sleeping were awakened by the cry of Nauplius—"Lo! The Phasis, and the utmost bourne of the sea!" They sprang up, and looked with many strange feelings upon the broad river they had come to.
Here was the Phasis emptying itself into the Sea of Pontus! ”

“ When the Nautilus is at the bottom of the sea its movement is like that of a snail crawling along upon the ground with its shell above it. The shell, in proportion to the size of the animal that inhabits it, is a heavy one, and unless it were rendered semi-buoyant, its owner's strength would be severely taxed by the effort to drag it along. ”

“ The foot and head of Nautilus are in the adult inextricably grown together, the eye being the only part belonging primarily to the head which projects from the all-embracing foot. The fore-foot or front portion of the foot has the form of a number of lobes carrying tentacles and completely surrounding the mouth (figs. 2, 3) . The epipodia incline towards each other posteriorly so as to form an incomplete siphon (fig. 4) , a condition which is completed and rendered permanent in the tubular funnel of Dibranchiata. ”

“ Assuming, therefore, on the evidence of these analogies, that the inhabitants of the shells of the fossil Nautili and Ammonites were Cephalopods, of similar habits to those of the animal which constructs the shell of the N. Pompilius, we shall next endeavour to illustrate, by the organization and habits of the living Nautilus, the manner in which these fossil shells were adapted to the use of creatures, that sometimes moved and fed at the bottom of deep seas, and at other times rose and floated upon the surface. ”

“ And with this curt good-night, Nabonidus brushed past the priest, closed the curtain of his room, flung off his mantle and coronet, and threw himself down upon the chair that still stood before the brick table. He was in a state of tremulous anger, of discouragement, of heart-sickness, and his head drooped lower and lower, and his hands clasped themselves on the table before him in the tightness of mental pain. The light from the still burning lamp above his head fell over his white figure, and a ray of it glinted off a jewel that hung on a thin, golden chain from his neck. ”

“ The beautiful genesis myth of the Apache is complete; it does not reflect an incipient primitive culture, but one developed by age. The mythology and ceremonial of the Navaho exhibit unquestioned signs of being composite in origin. Their ceremonials are perhaps the most elaborate of any Indians except the Pueblos; indeed the very life of this people so teems with ceremony as almost to pass comprehension. The Navaho ritual probably reached its highest phase about the beginning of the nineteenth century. ”

“ A moment later four mysterious beings appeared to them.28 These were: Bĭtsís Lakaí, or White Body, a being like the god of this world whom the Navahoes call Hastséyalti; Bĭtsís Dotlĭ ́s, or Blue Body, who was like the present Navaho god T‘ónenĭli, or Water Sprinkler; Bĭtsís Lĭtsói, or Yellow Body; and Bĭtsís Lĭzĭ ́n, or Black Body, who was the same as the present Navaho god of fire, Hastsézĭni.
161. These beings, without speaking, made many signs to the people, as if instructing them; but the latter did not understand them. ”

“ It appears to be impossible to doubt that the lobes in question are the fore-portion of the foot, when their development is examined (see fig. 35) , further, when the fact is considered that they are innervated by the pedal ganglion.
The fore-foot of Nautilus completely surrounds the buccal cone (fig. 6, e) , so as to present an appearance with its expanded tentacles similar to that of the disk of a sea-anemone (Actinia) . A. G. Bourne, of University College, prepared from actual specimens the drawings of this part in the male and female Nautilus reproduced in fig. ”