Could the traveler have come to Assos during the excavations
of the American expedition, he would have heard, afar off, the chorus of the
workmen, as they sang together, sailor fashion, while rolling aside the shaft
of some column; he would have been guided to the site of the ancient temple or
theatre by the creaking of the dusty barrow wheels, and by the blows of the
heavy hammer breaking some stone too large to be lifted entire. Now the silence
of that hillside will be broken only by the roll of the waves upon the beach
beneath the cliff, and by the tinkling bells of the goats, as they twist their
necks to browse upon the tough shoots of the oak bushes which have again
overgrown the ruins of the Greek Bath, the Agora, and the Street of Tombs.
wrote Joseph Thacher Clarke on the Report on Investigations in Assos 1882-1883
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