On the very eve of the festival, however, the plot was discovered by one of the servants of Glycia, who, having incurred her mistress's displeasure, had been confined in a distant chamber, which happened to be immediately over that in which the Bosphorians were concealed. Lifting up a square of the flooring in search of her spindle, which had rolled into a hole near the wall, she beheld the conspirators beneath her, and immediately hastened to communicate her discovery to her mistress, who in return forgave her fault on condition of secrecy.
Glycia now summoned three delegates from the town to her councils, and, having made them swear to reward her patriotism by burying her, contrary to established custom, inside the town, concerted with them the course to be adopted in this emergency.
While the magistrates continued to celebrate the festival as if nothing was to happen, and in seeming "all went merry as a marriage-bell," Glycia
THE EAST.
drugged her husband, and, having collected her jewels, escaped with her maids from the house, which she then ordered to be fired with faggots collected for the purpose by her confederates, and the Bosphorean prince and his accomplices all perished in the flames. The citizens of Kherson wished to rebuild the house at the public expense, but this was strongly opposed by Glycia, who, on the contrary, caused them to heap up every kind of filth and refuse on the place stained by treachery. This was ever afterwards called the " Den of Lamachus," and the huge pile of rubbish still exists on the summit of the plain which borders Streletzka Bay, an imperishable record of guilt and its punishment.
The grateful Khersonians, however, raised two statues of brass on the public place in honour of Glycia, in one of which she was represented modestly attired, receiving the deputies of the town; and in the other, clothed in warrior garments, in the act of avenging the betrayed citizens.
During the Byzantine empire, Kherson occasionally bore a part in the frequent revolutions at Constantinople, and in the wars between the Russians and the Greek Emperors. At length in a.d. 988, the Russian Prince Vladimir, an idolator, besieged Kherson, and invested it on the land side. The inhabitants made an obstinate resistance, and destroyed the works of the besiegers as rapidly as they were carried on; until Vladimir, informed by treachery of the source of the sjjrings which supplied the town, cut off the pipes, and reduced the garrison to surrender by thirst. Vladimir had made a vow that, if the story about the springs proved correct, he would become a Christian, and he was accordingly baptised at Kherson in the church of the Holy Mother of God,. situated in the market-place. He had previously demanded of the Greek Emperors Basil and Constantine the hand of their sister Anne; the marriage ceremony immediately followed the baptism, and the city of Kherson was given him by the Greeks as the dowry of the princess. On his return to Kief, Vladimir compelled his people to embrace his newly-adopted religion, and the conversion of the Russian nation to Christianity dates from this period.
Kherson was finally destroyed after 2,000 years' existence by Olgerd, the Lithuanian conqueror of Kief and all southern Russia; and when the Turks in 1475 took possession of the Crimea they only found in Kherson empty houses and deserted churches. Still, when Bronovius, at the end of the sixteenth century, visited this " proud, delicate, and illustrious city," as he calls it, the ruins were even then wonderful. The wall and its towers, built of enormous blocks of hewn stone, were perfect, and a beautiful aqueduct still brought the purest water. The palace of the kings, itself as large as a city, with magnificent entrance-gates, continued to exist. The churches, however, had already been despoiled of their finest marbles by the Turks, and the largest Greek monastery alone remained entire. The work of destruction was completed by the Tartars and the Russians, who sought here their materials for building
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THE EEDAN, AND ADVANCED TRENCHES OF BRITISH RIGHT ATTACK. 211
Sebastopol. Still the lapse of ages and the Vandalism of successive races of barbarians have not sufficed to entirely eradicate the last traces of ancient magnificence. Lieutenant Kruse excavated three churches; one of them was remarkable as being evidently a beautiful Greek temple, metamorphosed into a Christian church, into whose walls the bases and capitals of Ionic columns and other parts of Greek architecture had been built. The promontory on which the Lighthouse now stands is entirely covered with the ruins of the first Kherson, and the whole of the Heracleatic Chersonese is filled with the remains of the villas and gardens belonging to the inhabitants of the town.