Samuel Gridley Howe describes the landscape near the center of the Peloponnese as a high‑altitude plain encircled by mountains that rise around it in a circular formation, with only two or three narrow passes providing access. As he notes, “a plain surrounded by mountains… with only two or three narrow passages,” this was the very landscape where the ancient cities of Mantineia, Tegea, and Pallantion once stood, and where Tripolitsa was later built.
Samuel Grindley Howe (1801–1876), an American physician and philhellene, visited revolutionary Greece between 1825 and 1830.