Methoni

Su aislamiento y el perfil rocoso han preservado una identidad única con sus pueblos de piedra, cerca de 800 torreones defensivos, siete castillos y un millar de iglesias bizantinas repartidas entre gargantas y olivares.

El escritor Patrick Leigh Fermor retrató en Mani ese aislamiento absoluto y a sus rebeldes pobladores mientras recorría sus senderos encarpados y aparece una fotografía de Modona.

Su inexpugnable castillo se remonta a la época de los cruzados, escala habitual en el camino a Tierra Santa y se alcanza a ver este castillo en medio de la mar con esta cúpula.

En el fondo se alcanza a ver la ciudad y un mar que está rompiendo las olas en una formación rocosa.

La tradición sitúa una escala del Telemaco en busca de Ulises.

Muy cerca de allí, la laguna de Gialova es lugar privilegiado para el avistamiento de aves y el camaleón africano.

La huella veneciana pervive en Pilos, Corona y Modona, con fortalezas frente al mar.

Pilos se asoma a la histórica bahía de Navarino, escenario clave durante la guerra de independencia griega.

Nor does the list of Hellenic colonies end here.

Besides a host of minor towns, there was Methoni, Thermi, Olynthos, Akanthos, Amphipolis, all colonized by men of Dorian race, and two of them occupying positions of first-rate importance.

Amphipolis, strongly situated in an angle of the Strymon, commanded the passage of the river and the road from west to east.

To be master of Amphipolis was to be master also of Mount Pangaios and its valuable gold and silver mines.

Yet the difficulties of Alexander did not cease, but rather increased, when danger no longer threatened Greece from the side of Persia.

He had removed his capital from Aegae to Pydna, a step nearer to the Hellenes, whom he admired so much.

But close to Pydna lay Methoni, an independent Greek city, while to the eastward in Chalcidice, as far as the Strymon, were numerous Hellenic colonies, whose sympathies drew them naturally to the south rather than the west, to Hellas, not to Macedon, and which after the Persian wars recognized in the maritime Athens their natural leader and protectress.

It was a difficult position, and for a century it tried the utmost of the skill of the Macedonian kings.