POROS, or Poro (“The Ford ”), an island off the east coast of the Morea, separated at its western extremity by only a narrow channel from the mainland at Troezen, and consisting of a mass of limestone rock and of a mass of trachyte connected by a slight sandy isthmus. The town, which is at the head of an eparchy with 5414 inhabitants (1879), has its “houses perched among the volcanic rocks,” and looks down on the beautiful harbour between the island and the mainland on the south, which between 1830 and 1877 was the seat of a national arsenal.

The ancient Calauria, with which Poros is identified, was given, according to the myth, by Apollo to Poseidon in exchange for Delos; and it became in historic times famous for a temple of the sea-god, which formed the centre of an amphictyony of seven maritime states—Hermione, Epidaurus, Aegina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and Orchomenus. It was there that Demosthenes took sanctuary with “gracious Poseidon,” and, when this threatened to fail him, sought the more inviolable asylum of death. The building was of Doric architecture and lay on a plateau near the middle of the limestone part of the island, which now contains a monastery. In the neighbourhood of Poros-Calauria are two small islands, the more westerly of which contains the ruins of a small temple, and is probably the ancient Sphaeria or Hiera mentioned by Pausanias as the seat of a temple of Athena Apaturia. It was at Poros that the English, French, and Russian plenipotentiaries met in 1828 to discuss the basis of the Greek government....