Threads
Travellers
Myloi through the eyes of those who passed by.
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c. 160
Pausanias visits Lerna and Mount Pontinos
The Greek travel writer Pausanias describes the sacred grove of plane trees that began at Mount Pontinos, the mysteries held there for Lernaean Demeter, the spring of Amymone and the bottomless Alcyonian lake. On the…
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1703
'The ruins of Tyrea near the mills'
In his description of the Morea of 1703, Alessandro Pini writes that across the sea from Nafplio one can see 'the ruins of the city of Tyrea towards the mills'. People then called those ruins the Tower of Helen, and the…
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21 July 1715 – 4 August 1715
The Ottoman army camps at the mills of Tziveri
On 21 July 1715, the day after Nafplio fell to the Ottomans, Grand Vizier Damat Ali Pasha moved his army away from the stench of the dead to the western end of the gulf, below a hill with the remains of an ancient city.…
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4 August 1715
The army leaves over the pass towards Achladokampos
On 4 August 1715 the Grand Vizier left the camp at Tziveri for Modon (Methoni). Brue describes an hour through fairly flat land and then three hours over a narrow, difficult pass through rocky mountains: the road from…
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1729
Fourmont sketches the 'fountain of Lerna'
The French scholar Michel Fourmont, sent to Greece by King Louis XV to search for inscriptions and manuscripts, drew a sketch of the Argive plain in 1729. On it he marked the 'fontaine de Lerna', a 'temple of Diana' and…
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1775–1799
'Les Moulins', a junction on the road to Tripolitsa
In the late 18th century 'les Moulins' was a junction of roads in the northeastern Peloponnese. From Tripolitsa a road came down via Achladokampos to the Mills and went on to Argos and Nafplio, while another road ran…
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1804–1806
Gell: the lake has become a mill dam
The English topographer William Gell, who travelled the Morea in 1804–1806, wrote that the ancient Alcyonian lake 'is now become a species of mill dam', turning mills 'which give the name of Myli to the spot'. 'There are…
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1806
A khan below the Amymone spring
'Just below the fountain Amymone is a khan,' Leake noted, an inn for travellers; beyond it a road to Achladokampos branched off to the right, passing another, ruined khan. Further south he passed Kiveri, a hamlet of six…
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1806
The gardens of the Kapudan Pasha and the mill dam
South of the mills Leake saw a stone dam 250 yards long along the beach, with two shorter cross walls, built to hold water for the mills. Next to it lay gardens full of orange and other fruit trees, which 'formerly…
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1806
Leake: the 'Afendiki Myli' are government mills of Nafplio
The British officer and topographer William Martin Leake visited the mills in 1806. He called them the Afendiki Myli, 'mills of Anapli [Nafplio], to which town they belong', and explained the Greek term as 'government…
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1806
A ship from Smyrna unloads iron at the wharf
Leake found the southern mills close to the shore and to 'a small wharf where vessels load or disembark their cargoes'. A ship from Smyrna lay at anchor, unloading iron, and a row of storehouses stretched from the mills…
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19 August 1806
Chateaubriand spends a feverish night in the marsh
The French writer Chateaubriand, travelling from Argos in August 1806, got lost in the marshes at night. He found 'a farm in the middle of the marsh, near the village of Lerne', where the harvest had just been brought in…
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1810
Barbié du Bocage notes six mills
In 1810 the French geographer Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage recorded six mills at Lerna. It is the same number that Benjamin Brue had seen turning on six channels in 1715.
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c. 1815
Ottoman frigates anchor off 'the Mills'
Pouqueville noted that the frigates of the Kapudan Pasha, the Ottoman admiral, had to anchor off the beach of Lerna, 'commonly called the Mills', and that ships calling there took on fresh water. A century after the…
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c. 1815
Pouqueville: about thirty houses at the foot of Pontinos
The French consul and traveller François Pouqueville arrived after sunset and, once someone had fetched the key, spent the night in the khan on bare planks, plagued by mosquitoes. 'Lerna or Milos', he wrote, consisted of…
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1816
'The mills of Nauplia', two hours from Nafplio and from Argos
In his critical notes on Chateaubriand's travels, printed in Padua in 1816, the Argos physician Avramiotti wrote that 'everyone knows' Lerna is the marsh a hundred paces from 'the mills of Nauplia', at the foot of Mount…
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1822–1826
A German volunteer describes fortified Myli
The philhellene Gottfried Müller from Bremen wrote that Myli had several long houses along the sea and a former Turkish garden with a high wall, which the Greeks had turned into a stronghold. The spring drove a mill with…
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25 April 1824
Colonel Stanhope comes ashore at the mills
The British philhellene Colonel Leicester Stanhope landed at the mills and went on to Kiveri, where he addressed the Greek senate.
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25 June 1825
A French eyewitness describes the battle lines
According to Jourdain, the French general Roche met Ypsilantis and Mavromichalis in the mills that morning. He counted 227 Greeks: 100 to the right of the mills, 100 on the slope to the left and the rest behind the…
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25 June 1825
Two Americans among the defenders
Samuel Gridley Howe described the position as some mills on the seashore, surrounded by a wall, with a garden and an outer wall. A boat from Nafplio brought about twenty volunteers, among them three Swiss and two…
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1829
Myloi's landing stage becomes the zero point of the map
The French surveyors under Eugène Peytier, who made the first modern map of the Peloponnese, chose the landing stage of the mills at Lerna as the starting point for measuring heights, at 0.85 metres above the sea. The…
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30 May 1831
American sailors find 'a little collection of huts'
Officers of the American frigate USS Constellation visited Lerna. Enoch Wines wrote that the water from the spring was led away in a canal and turned a few mills, which gave the name Mylos to a little group of huts built…
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4 June 1831
A boat of USS Boston capsizes on the way back from Lerna
A few days after the visit of the Constellation's officers, a boat from the American sloop USS Boston capsized in the gulf on its way back from Lerna.
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1839?
An English book shows the marsh of Lerna
Christopher Wordsworth's illustrated book on Greece, first published around 1839, includes a wood engraving of the 'Lernæan Marsh': water, plain and mountains, with travellers and a mule in the foreground. It is one of…
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1858
'A landing-place, with a few poor houses'
The English scholar W. G. Clark went by boat from Nafplio to Myloi in one hour and twenty minutes, partly rowing and partly sailing. He found 'a landing-place, with a few poor houses about it', a pebble beach, quaking…
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1861
Two German archaeologists draw a plan of Lerna
Alexander Conze and Adolf Michaelis published a plate of sketch plans from their travels in the Argolid, including a plan of the Lerna area with Mount Pontinos and the gulf.
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1869
An early photograph across the plain to Lerna
Baron Paul des Granges photographed the gulf of Argos from Tiryns 'in the area of the Lernaean marsh'. On the horizon the west coast of the gulf with Lerna and Myloi can be made out below the mountains. It is one of the…
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1 April 1882
A Danish professor sees the spring by the chapel of Saint John
Travelling by carriage, Johan Louis Ussing wrote that the largest spring came out 'through seven openings by a small chapel of Saint John'. He also noted that at Myli the new carriage road turned west towards the…
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1883
Baedeker: the 'Skala' with the most important mill
The German Baedeker guide of 1883 described Myli as a village stretching along the road at the foot of Pontinos. Below the road, near the chapel of Agios Ioannis, a mighty spring broke out. Part of the village, the…
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May 1889
A German traveller sails from Myloi to Nauplia
In May 1889 Georg Behrmann found someone on the beach at Myloi who understood German and helped him hire a sailing boat, steered by 'two cheerful, talkative Myliots', to Nauplia. He noted that he could also have taken…
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June 1890
The mail coach from Myloi to Tripoli plunges into a ravine
Before the trains ran to Tripoli, passengers and mail went on by road from the station at Myloi. In June 1890 the mail coach from Myloi to Tripoli fell into a ravine near the bridge of Achladokampos; four people died.
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March 1891 – May 1891
'The railway only went as far as Myli'
A Bavarian teacher who toured Greece in the spring of 1891 wrote that 'the railway then only went as far as Myli'. From there his group continued in an open carriage along the excellent road towards Tripoli, resting at…
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1894
Baedeker: Myli, landing place for boats from Nauplia
The 1894 Baedeker guide told travellers that Myli 'is the landing-place for boats from Nauplia', with three or four trains a day to Myli and one or two on to Tripolitza.
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1908
Sailing directions: shallow water off Myloi
The Admiralty's Mediterranean Pilot of 1908 described Myli under Mount Pontinus. 'The shallow ground' prevented large vessels from coming close; the south wind was felt in full, though the holding ground was good. It…