Norwich bulletin., 1917-01-30
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Totoi, Greeee-The National Geo. graphic society issues the following war geography bulletin on Tatoi. the village in which King Constantine's s summer palace is located and which 1 will pass into other hands if the Greek ruler is later deposed by the entente allies:
 '1n the new summer palace of Tatoi, 16 miles north of Athens by way of Kephisia, King Constantine has spent l much of the last few uneasy months. In strong contrast to the harsh and stormy political situation which has encompassed the members of the royal family their physical environment has been wholly delightful, for Tatoi Is one of the most beautiful spots of At tica, neStling almost at the foot of the ParneS mountains, while in the dis< tance towers the famous Pentelikon, finest view to be had from any of the Attic hills.
 'If Constantine has allowed his mind to revert to the ancient history of his distraught adopted country, he could not have found a spot more freighted with unhappy associations than Tatoi for in this vicinity stand the ruins of an old fort, known as the Kastro. which marks the center of the deme Township of Decelea-
 Tt was at Decelea, 12 miles in an airline north of Athens, that the traitor Alcibiades, he of whom Aristophanes wrote that they (the Athenian sol d1ers) love, they hate, but cannot live without him. counseled the Spartans to construct strong Qualifications in order to intercept the caravans of grain from Euboea, which supplied the capital with food. Alcfbiades, by his betrayal of the Athenian navy, which had invested Syracuse in Sicily, had already fulfilled the prophecy of the miSanthrope Timon, who had said upon one of the many occasions when the young Athenian's rash proposals had been indorsed by the populace. Go on, prosperity will bring on the ruin of all this crowd His advice to seize and fortify Decelea in 413 B. c. brought irretrievable ruin on his native loss to the human race. for it crushed Athens.
 "By one of the strange whims of the crowd the Athenian army in its dark est hour sent message to Alcibiades inviting him to desert the Spartans, into whose power he had betrayed his own people. And by an equally strange wh1m Alcibiades accepted the invita- ton, rushing to Samos to assume command of his old associates. But it was too late. Athens was doomed. Lysander, commanding the Spartan navy, administered a crushing defeat to Athenian sea power at Aegospotami, On the Hellespont. Three thousand of
 
 and Xenophon, the historian, with tragic simplicity, relates that when the news reached the capital That night no man slept
 'Lycander's subsequent operations against Athens were effected with the aid of Spartan army whose base was In the neighborhood of modern Tatoi. When the city finally fell (4o4 B. O there were many Hellenic cities which urged the conQuerors to destroy the capital completely and convert the site into pasture land, just as they had done at Plataea, but the Spartans de- clared with seeming magnanimity, but secretly, perhaps, with the shrewd de- sire to maintain check against The bes and Corinth, that they could not put out one of the eyes of Greece So the ruins of the Parthenon, of the temple of the Olympian Zeus, of the Theatre of Dionysos and other price less remains were presedved to guide modern students of Attic civilization and to amaze the eSthetfc sense of countless generations.
 Perhaps Tatoi would never have had such rueful associations had the impetuous young Alcibiades only Iis- tened to the teachings of his master, Socrates, but the boy, as he himself relates. was forced to stop his ears and flee away, that he might not sit down by the side of the great teacher and grow old in listening
 Tatoi is reached today by a railway journey of eight and a half miles to Kephisia, and a carriage drive of seven and a half miles from that point. The new summer palace is occupied by the king and the old palace is the resi- dence of the crown prince. A beauti- full park and a venerable oak grove surround the royal homes. A short distance to the north is the barracks of the rural police, known as the Chorophylakes."