332 ESTIMATES OF MOUNTAINS IN ANTIQUITY. [CHAP.
of the Peloponnesian war, when the Lacedaemonians in 429 B.C.
had planned an attack on the Piraeus by sea, taking Nisaea the
port of Megara as their starting-point. This project they failed to
accomplish, either through faint-heartedness, or—as they them-
selves asserted by way of excuse—owing to an unfavourable wind;
and instead, they made a descent on Salamis and ravaged that
island In order to convey the intelligence of this to Athens (we
are told), fire-signals of an enemy's approach were displayed1;
and the position of these, there can be little doubt, was on the
north-eastern heights of the island, which are in view from the
Acropolis. Xenophon also mentions that in 367 B.C.
the city of Phlius, which lies in the upland country
that intervenes between the territory of Sicyon and the Argive plain,
was attacked by a hostile force aided by some exiles from their own
state; but that the citizens were on their guard, having been fore-
warned by watchers on Mt. Tricaranonj the neighbouring height
towards the east, who signalled to them that the enemy were
advancing2. It is noticeable that Aeneas Tacticus—the writer on
the art of war, whose probable date corresponds closely with that
of the event just mentioned—in his work on the defence of
besieged cities, or Commentarim Poliorceticus^ recommends that
such look-out men—three at least in number, and experienced
persons—should be stationed on a height in the neighbourhood of
a city, when there was a prospect of an attack, in order that they
might signal the numbers and movements of the enemy. He adds,
that the signals should be changed from time to time, lest the
enemy should come to understand them8. At a later period again
we hear of a system of beacon-stations which was
and Polybius. . /
organised by Philip V. of Macedon in 207 B.C., when
he was opposed by the forces of the Aetolians on one side, and by
the fleet of the Romans and Attalus in the Aegean on the other.
Polybius informs us that that monarch, in order to obtain informa-
tion with regard to the movements of his adversaries, had given
orders to the Phocians, to the inhabitants of Euboea, and to the
natives of Peparethus—the furthermost of those islands stretching
from the extremity of Pelion—that they should acquaint him,
1 Thuc. 2. 94 j cp. Diodor. i«. 49.
* Xen. ffdfa., 7. *. 5. 8 Commetit. Poliorc.> 6. i,