we can see but one
point of land which offers the indispensable requisites for a city of
the heroic ages, and that is the site of the modern Platania, midway
between Canea and the peninsula,--a bold hill with a nearly
perpendicular face to the north and east, and so abrupt on the west as
to be easily fortified, and connected with the hills on the south by a
narrow neck of hill,--such a site, in fact, as any one familiar with
Pelasgic remains would seek at once in a country where any such remains
existed. The fact that no remains exist to show that an ancient city
stood here proves no more than at Canea; while the fact that none of the
possible sites in the neighborhood show any such remains is conclusive
against them, as no modern cities are there to consume the ancient
masonry. In our researches in the island, we shall almost invariably
find that, where there are remains of ancient cities, there is no modern
town, and that, where a modern town stands on an ancient site
determined, there are few, if any, antique vestiges. The reason is
evident,--the ruins serve as quarry. The change of name even proves more
for our hypothesis than against it. The plane-tree was not in ancient
times so rare in the island as now, and would hardly have then given a
name to a city, while now it not only names Platania, but the river
even,--a grove of plane-trees occupying the valley between the city and
the mouth of the river. The probability is, then, that the names of both
are synchronous; and it would be useless to look for any Platania in
ancient times, or any vestige of the name "Pergamos" in modern times,
while, if the ancient city stood on a site now abandoned, we should in
all probability find both ruins and name to indicate the locality.

The conjecture of Spratt, that Pergamos was near Pyrgos Pori is only a
conjecture, Pyrgos being too common a name for any strongly situated
village or ruin to have any significance. A city at that locality would,
moreover, have been cut off from all sea approach by the Iardanos in its
ancient course; and as Pergamos was one of those cities founded by the
wanderers from Troy,--either, they say, by Agamemnon or AEneas,--it would
probably not have been founded on an inland site, or even on a river
navigable, as the Iardanos must have been, for small craft, the access
to which would be commanded by Aptera, Minoa, and Cydonia. So far as
conjecture goes, it seems to me much more likely that Hagia Irene-