W e embarked again three hours before day, and rowed by a
bold rocky fhore until near feven. We then landed at Enekioi,
or New ‘Town, now a Greek village, fo miferable, as fcarcely to
furnifh grapes, wine, eggs and oil to fry them, fufficient for our
breakfaft. It Hands very high, and has been more confiderable.
By the church-door is a Latin fepulchral infcription, and Pliny
mentions a town in the Troad, called Nea, or New Town, which
perhaps was on this fpot. There was an image of Minerva, on
which no rain ever fell; and it was'faid that facrifices left there
did not putrefy.
W e left Enekioi, and landed again about midday on the
beach without the Hellelpont, not far from the Sigean promontory,
and afcended by a fteep track to Giaurkioi a Greek village,
once Sigeum, high above the fea, and now refembling
Enekioi in wretchednefs as well as in fituation. We were here
accommodated with a fmall apartment in one of the cottages,
but it required caution to avoid falling through the floor. The
family to which it belonged was as poor as opprefled. The thinvoiced
women fcolding and howling in the court, we enquired
the reafon, and were told, they had paid a piafter for the privilege
of keeping a hog; that the Turk, who collefted this money
for the Aga, demanded ten Peraus as his fee, that they were
unable or unwilling to gratify him, and he was carrying the fon
to prifon.
T he city Sigeum flood antiently on a Hope oppolite to the
part where we afcended. The high hill of Giaurkioi was the
acropolis or citadel: and a mean church on the brow, toward
Mount Ida, occupies the fite of the Atheneum or temple of
Minerva; of which the flattered marbles by it are remains.
The famous Sigean infcription lies on the right hand, as you
enter i t ; and on the left is part of a pedeftal, of fine white
marble,
37
marble, with flulpture in baflo-relievo 1 ■, of which the fubjedt
is the prefentation of young children, with the^accuftomed offerings,
to Minerva. Within the fame building was found a marble,
once repofited in the precindis of the temple, and now pre-
flrved in the library of Trinity college in Cambridge. It contains
a decree made by the Sigeans two hundred and feventy
eight years before the chriftian aera j and enadts, among other
articles, the eredting in the temple an equeftrian ftatue of king.
Antiochus on a pedeftal of white marble, with an infcription,
in which his religious regard for the temple is mentioned, and
he is Ailed the faviour of the people. It remained on the fpot
to the year 1718, when it was purchafed of the Papas or Greek
prieft by Edward Wortley Montague efqr, then going embafla-
dor to Conftantinople. The place in the wall, from which it was
removed, is ftill vifible.
T he city Sigeum was founded by the Mityleneans- of Leibos,
The Athenians feized it under Phryno. Pittacus failed after him,
and was defeated in a battle. It was then the poet Alcaeus fled,
throwing away his fhield, which the Athenians fufpended in the
temple. Periander of Corinth was chofln umpire. The Mityleneans
afterwards recovered Sigeum, but it was taken from them
by Pififtratus, who made his fon Hegefiftratus tyrant there. The
llieans then got pofleflion of it, and by them it was fubverted,
perhaps about the time of Antiochus, as the name of the Sigean-
people has been purpofely erafed in the decree above-mentioned.
T he temple at Sigeum was of remote antiquity, i f not coeval
with the city, which is faid to have been built from the ruins
of Troy. The llieans probably fpared that edifice from a reverence
for the deity, or no fragments would have now remained.
The celebrated infcription is on part of a pilafter, eight feet fe-
1 It is about five feet nine inches long. See Lady Mary W . Montague. Letters
XliV. and a plate in the Ionian Antiquities.
ven>