330 ESTIMATES OF MOUNTAINS IN ANTIQUITY. [CHAP.
country from Attica (4629 ft.); (7) Mt. Aegiplanctus, in the range
of Geraneia to the northward of the Isthmus of Corinth (3465 ft.) •
and, finally, (8) Mt. Arachnaeus in Argolis, which is visible from
Argos (3934 ft). All these, with the exception of the Mons
Hermaeus in Lemnos, which was chosen on account of its
intermediate position between Ida and Athos, are conspicuous
summits; and it will be seen that the line of beacon-fires which
were lighted upon them traversed the northern and western sides
of the Aegean. The points thus chosen are visible, successively,
one from the other. The longest interval is that from Athos to
Macistus; but this is considerably less than that between Samo-
thrace and Pelion or Scyros, both which places can clearly be
seen from the former island1. It has also been proved that a
fire-beacon can be seen by the naked eye at a much greater
distance than that here implied8. The whole description in
Aeschylus is, no doubt, imaginary; but the choice of the
stations was determined by the knowledge of the writer's own
time, and all this geographical detail would hardly have been
given, had the audience not been supposed to be in some
degree acquainted with it. That they were so follows almost
necessarily from the fact that the islands of Iinbros and Lemnos,
which lay in the remotest part of this area, had for some time
been in the possession of the Athenians, and were in constant
communication with Athens. It is, moreover, by no means
improbable that a line of signalling stations,
corresponding more or less closely to that of
of sution^!ne which we are sPeatin& was actually used before
this date. Herodotus, in his account of the
commencement of the campaign of Mardonius in Greece which
ended in the battle of Plataea, states that one of the chief
causes which rendered that general anxious to capture Athens
a second time was, that he might be able to report to Xerxes
1 See the author's Islands of the Aegean, p. 348.
8 See the late Mr A. C. Merriam's paper on, 'Telegraphing among the
Ancients,1 p. *6, in the Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America-,
Classical Series, in. No. i. The present writer is indebted to this valuable
essay for most of the information on that subject which is given in the follow-
ing paragraphs.