Byron was especially fascinated by
the firelight dance and song of the robber band, which he describes and
reproduces in _Childe Harold_. On the 21st of November he reached
Mesolonghi, whore, fifteen years later, he died. Here he dismissed most of
his escort, proceeded to Patras, and on to Vostizza, caught sight of
Parnassus, and accepted a flight of eagles near Delphi as a favouring sign
of Apollo. "The last bird," he writes, "I ever fired at was an eaglet on
the shore of the Gulf of Lepanto. It was only wounded and I tried to save
it--the eye was so bright. But it pined and died in a few days: and I
never did since, and never will, attempt the life of another bird." From
Livadia the travellers proceeded to Thebes, visited the cave of
Trophonius, Diana's fountain, the so-called ruins of Pindar's house, and
the field of Cheronea, crossed Cithaeron, and on Christmas, 1809, arrived
before the defile, near the ruins of Phyle, where, he had his first
glimpse of Athens, which evoked the famous lines:--
Ancient of days, august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone, glimmering through the dream of things that were.
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