Chapter X: Part 10

Below Divritsa the grandeur of the gorge increases to the point of being almost overpowering. Wooded mountains rising steeply from the river have now given place to enormous perpendicular or beetling crags tufted with trees and bushes in their crevices wherever a tree or a bush can find a footing, and overhanging the ravine till there is hardly room to pass under them, and they seem as if they would shut out the sky and meet above the river. Add to this that the path is narrow and runs high above the stream along the brink of precipices where a slip or a stumble of the horse might precipitate his rider into the dreadful depths below. We seem therefore to breathe more freely when, a little above the bridge of Spathari, we at last issue from the gorge and see a great free expanse of sky above us, lower hills, and the river winding between them through woodland scenery of a pretty but commonplace type.

LXV. ALIPHERA.—From the citadel, and indeed from the whole summit of the ridge, there is a glorious prospect over the valley of the Alpheus for miles and miles. All the mountains of northern Arcadia are spread out like a panorama; and through the broad valley that intervenes between them and the height on which we stand, the Alpheus is seen winding far away and far below. The air blows fresh and sweet on the height, and the peacefulness, the stillness, the remoteness from the world of this little mountain-citadel remind one irresistibly of Keats’s lines in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:

What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

LXVI. DIMITSANA.—The ancient Teuthis perhaps occupied the site of the modern Dimitsana, a village which stands very picturesquely on a high ridge on the left or eastern bank of the Gortynius river, surrounded on all sides by steep and lofty mountains. The river sweeps in a semicircle at the bottom of a deep gully round the western part of the town, which thus stands on a high rocky promontory jutting into the ravine. The steep and narrow streets, which are little better than rocky staircases, are lined with shops and present a busy and animated scene. The air is cool and healthy. To the south the eye ranges over the vine-clad hills on both sides of the river, to the green plain of Megalopolis threaded by the silver stream of the Alpheus, and bounded far away to the south by the snowy range of Taygetus. A steep, rugged, and zigzag path leads down through terraced vineyards to the bed of the river at the southern foot of the hill. Here a bridge spans the stream, just below a point where the river descends fifty feet in a space of as many yards, tumbling over huge masses of rock between lofty precipices overhung with shrubs. The hill on the opposite or western side of the ravine is even steeper and higher than that of Dimitsana.

All round the crest of the ridge occupied by the town are the remains of an ancient wall, parts of it being intermixed with the yards, walls, and foundations of private houses. In some places there are several courses of masonry standing. The style of masonry is rectangular at the east, but polygonal at the west end of the ridge. The blocks at the latter end are enormous. Here too are the foundations of an imposing edifice, turned east and west, and built of fine squared blocks. It was doubtless a temple. Some ancient foundations may also be seen among the terraced vineyards on the southern slope of the hill.

LXVII. GORTYS.—On the right bank of the Gortynius, or river of Dimitsana, about two and a half miles from its junction with the Alpheus, are the ruins of Gortys. They occupy the fairly spacious summit of a hill which falls away on the east in lofty precipices to the river. A visit to them may be most conveniently paid from Karytaena. From this picturesque town, perched high on the right or eastern bank of the Alpheus, we descend northward by a very rugged and stony path into the deep glen of the Alpheus. Steep arid mountains enclose the glen, and behind us towers the imposing rock of Karytaena with its ruined mediaeval castle. In about half an hour we reach the junction of the Gortynius river with the Alpheus. We now quit the glen of the Alpheus and follow that of the Gortynius river in a north-easterly direction, keeping at first along the left bank of the stream. The glen, though shut in by barren stony mountains, is rather less gloomy and forbidding than the glen of the Alpheus which we have left. In less than half an hour we descend into the bed of the Gortynius, a rushing stream of clear bluish-green water, and cross it by a stone bridge which is carried on a high pointed arch and paved, in the usual fashion of such bridges in Greece, with cobbles of the most agonising shapes and sizes. Just above the bridge the glen deepens and narrows into a ravine with steep rocky sides, and the view looking up it, with the old high-arched bridge in the foreground and the rushing stream of green water below, is highly picturesque. I drank of the water here and found it by no means cold, in spite of what Pausanias says as to the exceeding coldness of the water of the Gortynius. But it was hot autumn weather when I passed this way. Pausanias may have seen the river in winter or spring, when its current was chilled by ice or melting snow. From the bridge a steep and rugged path ascends the right or western side of the glen. We follow it and continue to ride up hill and down dale along the side of the barren mountains, with the river rolling along in the bottom of the deep ravine on our right. Half-way up the precipices which rise on this side of the ravine hangs a little red-roofed monastery. In about three-quarters of an hour from crossing the bridge we reach the ruins of Gortys.

The ruins, as we have seen, occupy the summit of a hill which overhangs the right or western bank of the Gortynius river. At its eastern extremity the hill falls down in sheer precipices of great height into the glen of the river. It is in looking down these immense precipices that we appreciate the height of the hill. On the other hand, seen from the south, as you approach it from Karytaena, the hill presents the appearance merely of a gently-swelling down. The reason of this is that from the bridge over the river we have been gradually rising, and that the ground immediately to the south of Gortys is itself a hill as high as the hill of Gortys, from which it is divided only by a slight hollow now chiefly occupied with vineyards. But when we have ascended what appears to be the gentle eminence occupied by the ruins of Gortys we see that the hill descends in a long slope north-eastward to the glen of the Gortynius river, which curves round the hill in a great bend on the north-east and east. The summit of the hill extends in the form of a rather narrow ridge from south-east to north-west, gradually rising to its highest point on the north-west. Towards this end the hill is naturally defended on the side of the south by masses of rugged rocks, of which the ancient engineers took advantage, interposing pieces of walls in the intervals between the rocks. In the crannies of the rocks bushes have now rooted themselves.

The long slope of the hill down to the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east is bare and stony. Stony and barren, too, are the mountains that surround Gortys on all sides. In a grey cold light or under a cloudy sky they would be exceedingly bleak and dreary; but under the warm sunshine of Greece they are only bare and desolate. The most pleasing view is down into the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east, where the river emerges from a narrow defile between high precipices, above which the mountains rise on both sides. At the mouth of the defile there is a house or two among trees. In spite of its height above the river, Gortys lies essentially in a basin shut in on all sides by mountains. The summer heat here must consequently be very great. Even in October, when I visited the place, though a fresh breeze was blowing, it was drowsily hot among the ruins. The sweet smell of the thyme, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the barking of dogs, and the cries of shepherds in the distance seemed to enhance the feeling of summer and to invite to slumber in the shade. But it was pleasant and almost cooling to hear the roar of the river, and to see its blue-green water and greenish-white foam away down in the glen.

LXVIII. THE PLAIN OF MEGALOPOLIS.—Megalopolis stood in the great western plain of Arcadia, which, like the great eastern plain of Mantinea and Tegea, extends in a direction from north to south. In natural beauty the plain of Megalopolis is far superior to its eastern neighbour. The latter is a bare monotonous flat, unrelieved by trees or rivers, and enclosed by barren mountains, so that its general aspect is somewhat dreary and depressing; only towards its northern end do the mountains rise in grander masses and with more picturesque outlines. The plain of Megalopolis, on the other hand, is surrounded by mountains of fine and varied outlines, some of the slopes of which are clothed with wood, and the surface of the plain itself is diversified with copses and undulating downs and hillocks, refreshed by numerous streams shaded with plane-trees, and watered by the broad though shallow stream of the Alpheus winding through its midst. The scenery, in contrast to that of the eastern plain, is eminently bright, smiling, and cheerful. It is, perhaps, seen at its best after rain on a fine morning in early summer. The vegetation is then green, the air pellucid, the outlines of the environing mountains are sharp and clear, and their tints vary from deep purple to lilac.

LXIX. THE CAVE OF THE BLACK DEMETER.—The cave of the Black Demeter has been identified with a small cavern in the glen of the Neda, about an hour’s walk to the west of Phigalia. The place is known in the neighbourhood as the _stomion tes Panagias_ or Gully of the Virgin. To reach the cavern it is necessary to descend into the ravine by a steep and narrow path which affords very little foothold and overhangs depths which might turn a weak head. At the awkward places, however, it is generally possible to hold on to bushes or rocks with the hands. Thus we descend to the bed of the river, which here rushes roaring along at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine, the precipitous sides of which tower up on either hand to an immense height. The cave is situated in the face of a prodigious cliff on the north side of the ravine, about a hundred feet or so above the bed of the river, from which it is accessible only by a narrow and difficult footpath. The ravine at this point sweeps round in a sharp curve, and the cavern is placed just at the elbow of the bend. On the opposite side of the lyn, some fifty feet or so away, a great crag, its sides green with grass and trees wherever they can find a footing, soars up to a height about as far above the cavern as the cavern is above the stream. Hills close the view both up and down the glen; those at the upper end are high, steep, and wooded.

The cavern itself, originally a mere shallow depression or hollow in the side of the cliff, has been artificially closed by a rough wall of masonry, apparently of recent date; the plaster seemed to me fresh. In the cavern thus formed a rough floor of boards has been run across at a height of about four feet above the ground. Thus the grotto is divided into two compartments, the upper of which has been converted into a tiny chapel with an altar at the end and two holy pictures of Christ and John the Baptist. On one of the walls are some faded frescoes. Light enters the little cave by a small window in the wall beside the altar. At least half of the roof is artificial, being built of the same rough masonry as the wall. Close beside this tiny cavern, to the east of it, may be seen a still tinier grotto, separated from the former by a slight protuberance in the rock. The same ledge of rock gives access to both grottoes.

What is called the Gully of the Virgin is a tunnel, some hundred yards long, formed of fallen rocks and earth, through which the Neda rushes in the ravine below the cavern. In winter the swollen stream flows over the roof of the tunnel, but in summer, when the river is low, you may walk through the tunnel and admire the stalactites which hang from its roof.

LXX. THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT BASSAE.—This temple, by far the best preserved of all ancient temples in Peloponnese, stands in a strikingly wild and secluded situation at a height of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, with a wide prospect southward to the distant mountains of Messenia and Laconia. The ground on which the temple is built is a narrow platform on the southern side of a hill, the Mount Cotilius of the ancients. The rocky slopes of this hill, rising rapidly behind the temple, shut out all distant views on the north and north-east. But to the south the slope descends gradually towards the valley of the Neda. Due south, through a dip in the hills, is seen the apparently flat-topped summit of Ithome. To the south-east, through another gap, appears the range of Taygetus, with its beautiful outlines and sharp snowy peaks. In the nearer foreground, between Ithome and Taygetus, rises Mount Ira, the last stronghold of the Messenian race in its struggle for freedom with Sparta. To the east are bare rough hills, dotted with oak-trees, the western spurs of Mount Lycaeus, while farther to the south appears the high round-topped Tetrasi, perhaps the Nomian mountains of the ancients. The sea is not visible, but it may be seen by ascending the slope at the back of the temple. The bleak desolate mountains form a striking background to the solitary temple which, built of the same cold grey limestone which composes the surrounding rocks, tends to deepen rather than relieve the melancholy of the scene, the ruined fane witnessing silently to the transitoriness of human greatness and the vanity of human faith.

LXXI. THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS AT AULIS.—From the head of the Bay of Aulis a small valley, sloping gently upwards, runs inland between hills for something over a mile. It is watered by a brook which falls into the bay. About a mile up the valley from the shore is a ruined Byzantine chapel of St. Nicholas, which is supposed to occupy the site of the temple of Artemis, mentioned by Pausanias, where Iphigenia was led to the altar to be sacrificed before the Greek fleet set sail for Troy. The scene, if it indeed be so, of this famous event in Greek legend was somewhat bleak and cheerless as I saw it under a leaden sky on a dull November afternoon. The ruined chapel, with its fallen dome and roofless walls, had a forlorn air, standing solitary in a bare, stony, ploughed field on the slope of the low hills that enclose the little valley on the south. Similar hills—low, stony, and treeless—with higher hills rising above them on the north and west, shut in the valley on all sides except the east, where appeared, of a pale blue-green colour under the wintry sky, a bit of the Bay of Aulis, beyond it the open channel of the Euripus, and still farther off, bathed in a gloomy purple, the coast and mountains of Euboea. Bare ploughed fields, with a small tree dotted here and there among them, occupied all the bottom of the valley, and formed the foreground of the melancholy scene. Yet bare fields, stony hills, leaden sky, cold steely sea, and purple mountains glooming in the distance, seemed a fitting framework for the ruined shrine, with its memories of departed glory.

LXXII. GLAUCUS’S LEAP.—Immediately beyond the flat-topped hillock which probably marks the site of Salganeus, the plain comes abruptly to an end and the path runs along the steep, bushy, but not precipitous slope of Mount Messapius at some height above the sea, which on a bright sunshiny day is of a beautiful green colour, clear as crystal and dappled with patches of purple. Thus proceeding along the steep mountain-side for about a mile we find ourselves opposite a pretty rocky island, wooded with pines, which lies a little way off the shore. On the island is a ruin which, so far as I could judge by the eye from the shore, seemed to be mediaeval or modern. Hereabouts, too, a row of large stones may be observed lying at the bottom of the clear water, but they appear to be boulders rather than hewn stones. Farther on a high cliff, which seen from the east reminds one of the Lorelei Rock on the Rhine, rises close to the shore. The path here descends and runs along the narrow beach at the foot of the cliff, from which a very copious spring of water rushes into the sea. This high cliff is probably what the ancients called Glaucus’s Leap. On the morning when I passed it, the clear, sunlit, greenish-blue water at its foot looked very inviting; one could fancy the sea-god taking his plunge into its cool delicious depths. Beyond the cliff the path again runs along the foot of the long slope, covered with lentisk and holly-oak bushes, which descends from the high, bold, pointed summit of Mount Messapius in an unbroken sweep to the sea.

LXXIII. EVENING ON THE EURIPUS.—The views from Anthedon across the beautiful Euripus are charming, especially at sunset when the opposite mountains of Euboea glow with delicate pink and lilac hues, and flakes of golden and rosy clouds are reflected in the mirror-like surface of the strait, which, apparently landlocked on all sides, resembles a calm lake. The effect is heightened if a fishing-boat, its russet sails aglow in the warm evening light, chances to glide along at the time, and a snatch of song comes wafted from it across the water.

LXXIV. THE COPAIC LAKE.—Like other lakes which are drained not by rivers but by natural subterranean passages in the limestone mountains which surround them, the level of the Copaic Lake varied greatly from time to time. Such variations depend upon two different sets of causes, first the varying capacity of the emissaries, and second the varying amount of water poured into the lake.

In the first place, not only are the emissaries subject to a gradual and regular process of change, their passages being slowly clogged and their mouths choked up by the alluvial deposits which in the course of ages raise the bed of the lake; but they are also exposed to sudden and incalculable changes, wrought by earthquakes, landslips, floating logs, and so on, which may in a few minutes either widen the passages or block them up altogether. In the second place, while these changes, whether gradual or sudden, affect the outflow of the water, others not less marked influence its inflow. For the rainfall, on which the inflow ultimately depends, varies not only with the year but with the season. In the sub-tropical climate of the Mediterranean rain hardly falls in summer, and as a consequence the streams in that season either flow with diminished volume or dry up entirely.

All these various causes combine to produce secular and periodic as well as irregular and unforeseen variations in the level of lakes like the Copaic mere. In no lake, perhaps, have the annual changes been more regular and marked than in the Copaic; for while in winter it was a reedy mere, the haunt of thousands of wild fowl, in summer it was a more or less marshy plain where cattle browsed and crops were sown and reaped. So well recognised were these vicissitudes of the seasons that places on the bank of the lake such as Orchomenus, Lebadea, and Copae had summer roads and winter roads by which they communicated with each other, the winter roads following the sides of the hills, while the summer roads struck across the plain. With the setting in of the heavy autumn rains in November the lake began to rise and reached its greatest depth in February or March, by which time the mouths of the emissaries were completely submerged and betrayed their existence only by swirls on the surface of the mere. Yet even then the lake presented to the eye anything but an unbroken sheet of water. Viewed from a height such as the acropolis of Orchomenus it appeared as an immense fen, of a vivid green colour, stretching away for miles and miles, overgrown with sedge, reeds, and canes, through which the river Cephisus or Melas might be seen sluggishly oozing, while here and there a gleam of sunlit water, especially towards the north-east corner of the mere, directed the eye to what looked like ponds in the vast green swamp. Bare grey mountains rising on the north and east, and the beautiful wooded slopes of Helicon on the south, bounded the fen. In spring the water began to sink. Isolated brown patches, where no reeds grew, were the first to show as islands in the mere; and as the season advanced they expanded more and more till they met. By the middle of summer great stretches, especially in the middle and at the edges, were bare. In the higher parts the fat alluvial soil left by the retiring waters was sown by the peasants and produced crops of corn, rice, and cotton; while the lower parts, overgrown by rank grass and reeds, were grazed by herds of cattle and swine. In the deepest places of all the water often stagnated the whole summer, though there were years when it retreated even from these, leaving behind it only a bog or perhaps a stretch of white clayey soil, perfectly dry, which the summer heat seamed with a network of minute cracks and fissures. By the end of August the greater part of the basin was generally dry, though the water did not reach its lowest point till October. At that time what had lately been a fen was only a great brown expanse, broken here and there by a patch of green marsh, where reeds and other water plants grew. In November the lake began to fill again fast.

Such was the ordinary annual cycle of changes in the Copaic Lake in modern times, and we have no reason to suppose that it was essentially different in antiquity. But at all times the water of the lake has been liable to be raised above or depressed below its customary level by unusually heavy or scanty rainfall in winter or by the accidental clogging or opening of the chasms. As we read in ancient authors of drowned cities on the margin of the lake, so a modern traveller tells of villagers forced to flee before the rising flood, and of vineyards and corn-fields seen under water.

The plan of draining the Copaic Lake, which has been successfully accomplished within the last few years, was conceived and apparently executed at a very remote time in antiquity. Strabo reports a tradition that the whole basin of the lake had at one time been drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenus, and this tradition has been strikingly confirmed by the recent discovery of a complete and very ancient system of drainage works in the bed of the lake. The discovery was made by the engineers charged with the execution of the modern drainage works. As described by them, the ancient works were composed of an ingenious combination of dykes and canals, which completely encircled the lake and, receiving the waters of the streams which flowed into it on the west and south, conducted them to the chasms on the east and north-east banks. Where the canal skirted closely the precipitous rocky shore of the lake, a single dyke or embankment sufficed, the water being led between the dyke and the shore. But where the canal had to cross a bay, or where the bank of the lake was not high and steep enough to serve as one side of the canal, two parallel dykes were constructed and the water flowed between them. The remains of these ancient drainage works in the bed of the lake are of two sorts. In the first place we see them as low broad mounds, about five feet high and fifty to sixty yards wide, stretching for long distances across the plain, either in an unbroken line or with occasional gaps. Sometimes it is a single mound that we see, sometimes two parallel mounds at a short distance from each other. And between the two parallel mounds or beside the single one a long shallow depression marks the line of the ancient canal. These long, low, broad mounds are clearly the remains of the dykes which formerly enclosed the canals, and which have been gradually reduced to their present level by the ceaseless wash of the waters in the course of ages. In the second place, the line of the ancient canals may be traced by the walls built of great polygonal blocks which in many places support and case the inner side of the dykes. In some places these walls are well preserved, but in others nothing of them remains but a conspicuous line of white stones running for miles through the otherwise stoneless plain.

When the system of drainage by canals which has just been described was in full operation the basin of the Copaic Lake must have been nearly dry. But as we have no ground to suppose that in the historical period of antiquity the lake was ever drained, it would seem that we must refer these ancient drainage works to the prehistoric ages. Now Strabo, as we have seen, has preserved a tradition that the bed of the lake was at one time drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenus. We shall therefore hardly err in ascribing to the Minyans of Orchomenus—the Dutchmen of antiquity—the extensive system of dykes and canals by which the vast plain was reclaimed from the waters and converted into waving corn-fields and smiling vineyards, which poured wealth into the coffers of the burghers. This was the golden age of Orchomenus, when its riches vied with the treasures of Delphi and the wealth of Egyptian Thebes.

LXXV. THE GREAT KATAVOTHRA.—To reach Larymna from the sanctuary of Apollo on Mount Ptous, we quit the trough or little mountain-girdled valley in which the remains of the sanctuary are to be seen and ascend the ridge that bounds it on the north-west, forming a saddle between Mount Tsoukourieli and Mount Megalo Vouno. From the summit of the ridge or saddle we take a last look backwards at the vale of Apollo with its ruined sanctuary and the beautiful Lake Likeri, with its winding shores, beyond and below it to the south; then turning northwards we descend somewhat steeply a narrow glen with high bushy sides, which leads us straight down to the north-eastern corner of the great Copaic plain. Across this corner of the plain, which until a few years ago was a marsh or even a lake for many months of the year, but is now under cultivation, we ride to the Great Katavothra, the largest of the natural chasms in the line of cliffs through which the water of the Copaic Lake found its way to the sea. It is a great cave with a high-arched roof opening in the face of a cliff of creamy white limestone. Unlike most of the other chasms or emissaries, it is still in use; the river Melas (the modern Mavropotamos or Black River), after traversing all the northern edge of the Copaic plain in a canal-like bed, pours its water in a steady stream into the cave and vanishes in the depths. A little way inward from the mouth of the cave there is an opening in the roof. When the sunshine streams down through this aperture, lighting up the back of the gloomy cavern with its hanging rocky roof and hurrying river, the effect is very picturesque; it is like a fairy grotto, and we could almost fancy that we stood

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

But alas! the women who may be seen any day washing their dirty linen at the mouth of the cave break the spell.

LXXVI. THE VALE OF THE MUSES.—The grove of the Muses lay at the northern foot of Mount Helicon in a valley which is traversed by a stream flowing from west to east. Towards its western end the valley contracts, being hemmed in between the steep, lofty, and wooded slopes of Helicon on the south and another rugged but less lofty mountain on the north. The saddle which joins the two mountains bounds the Vale of the Muses on the west. A fine view of the valley is to be had from a ruined mediaeval tower which surmounts a rocky hill of no great height on the northern side of the vale, about midway between Ascra and the village of Palaeo-Panagia. Across the valley to the south rise the steep slopes of Helicon, rocky below and wooded with pines above. In a glen at the foot of these great declivities are seen the trees that hide the secluded monastery of St. Nicholas, below which dark myrtle-bushes extend far down the slope. At the head of the valley in the west the serrated top of Helicon appears foreshortened, and a little on this side of the highest point the monastery of Zagara peeps out, delightfully situated on a woody slope that falls away into the sequestered dale where stand the two villages also called Zagara. To the left of the summit the snowy top of Parnassus just shows itself in the distance. In the nearer foreground, on the hither side of the valley, the conical hill of Ascra, crowned with its ruined tower, stands out boldly. Vineyards cover the gently-swelling hills on the northern side of the vale, and down the middle of it the brook Archontitza (probably the ancient Termesus or Permessus), fed by many springs, flows through fields of maize and corn.

LXXVII. HIPPOCRENE.—To reach the far-famed Hippocrene (‘the Horse’s Fount’) from the sanctuary of the Muses we ascend the steep eastern side of Helicon over moss-grown rocks, through a thick forest of tall firs. After a toilsome ascent of about two hours we emerge from the wood upon a tiny open glade of circular shape, covered with loose stones and overgrown with grass and ferns. All around rises the dark fir-wood. Here, in the glade, is Hippocrene, now called Kryopegadi, or ‘cold spring.’ It is a well with a triangular opening, enclosed by ancient masonry. The clear ice-cold water stands at a depth of about ten feet below the coping of the well. But it is possible to climb down to the water by means of foot-holes cut in the side, or by holding on to the sturdy ivy, which, growing from a rock in the water, mantles the sides of the well. The coldness and clearness of the water of this perennial spring are famous in the neighbourhood, especially among the herdsmen, who love to fill their skin bottles at it.

LXXVIII. LEBADEA.—The modern town of Livadia retains the ancient name of Lebadea but slightly altered. It stands very picturesquely at the mouth of a wild gorge in the mountains, facing northward across the plain. The white houses with their red roofs and wooden balconies climb the hill-sides on both banks of the Hercyna, a clear and copious stream, which issues from the gorge and rushes noisily through the streets in a rocky bed, turning some mills and spanned by several bridges. At the back of the town a steep rocky hill, crowned with the ruins of a great mediaeval castle, descends in sheer and lofty precipices into the gorge on the left bank of the stream. The houses extend down into the plain, scattered among gardens and clumps of trees which give the town, as seen from below, an agreeable aspect. The mountains at the foot of which Lebadea lies are the northern spurs of Mount Helicon; the high conical summit to the east is the ancient Mount Laphystius, now the mountain of Granitsa. The plain that lies spread out below the town on the north melts eastward into the great Copaic plain; on the north it is divided by a chain of low hills from the parallel plain of Chaeronea.

The greater part of the water of the Hercyna rises in the profound gorge immediately behind the town. Here, at the foot of the great precipice which is surmounted by the ruins of the castle, a cold spring called Kryo (‘cold’) issues from the rocks and is conducted into a small well-house. Some niches for holding votive offerings are cut in the face of the cliff above it. The largest of these cuttings is a square chamber hewn out of the rock, about six feet above the ground. Right and left, in the sides of the chamber, are benches cut in the rock. In this cool retreat the Turkish governor of Lebadea used to smoke his pipe in the heat of the day. On the opposite side of the ravine, a few paces off, near some plane-trees, several springs of clear but lukewarm water rush turbulently from the ground, and, united with the water of the Kryo, form the Hercyna. They turn a cotton-mill close to the spot where they rise. That some of these springs are the waters of Memory and Forgetfulness of which all who would consult Trophonius had to drink before descending into the oracular pit, is highly probable; but we have no means of identifying these mystic waters. An alteration in the flow of one of the springs is known to have occurred within the nineteenth century; and many such changes may have taken place since antiquity. The general features of the spot, however, have probably changed but little, and they are well fitted to impress the imagination. The many springs gurgling strongly from the ground, the verdant plane-trees, the caverned rocks, the great precipices soaring on three sides of us and overhung on the west by the ruins of the mediaeval castle, make up a scene which once seen is not easily forgotten. But the ravine of which this is after all only the mouth does not end here. Its deep, narrow, stony bed, sometimes dry, sometimes traversed by a raging torrent, winds far into the heart of the mountains, shut in on either hand like a cañon by tremendous crags. If you follow it upwards for some miles, the country begins to open up and you find yourself in bleak and desolate highlands. A profound silence reigns, broken only by the cry of a water-ouzel beside the torrent or the screaming of hawks far up the cliffs.

LXXIX. THE BOEOTIAN ORCHOMENUS.—Orchomenus, one of the oldest and most famous cities in Greece, occupied the eastern extremity of a sharply-marked chain of hills—the Mount Acontium (‘javelin’) of the ancients—which extends east and west for about six miles, bounding the broad level plain of the Cephisus on the north. Beginning nearly opposite to Chaeronea, which lies at the foot of the hills on the southern side of the plain, the ridge rises gradually to a considerable height, runs eastward at this level for some miles, and then slopes down into the Copaic plain. From beginning to end it is the stoniest, barest, barrenest, and most forbidding chain of hills that can well be conceived; looking up at it you wonder if the foot of man has ever trodden these rugged and pathless solitudes. Close to the southern base of these desolate hills the Cephisus—a fairly broad and deep stream of turbid whitish water—flows between low banks fringed with tall willows; ducks disport themselves on its surface, and pigs wallow in the mire on its banks. According as the weather has been dry or rainy, the current is sluggish or rapid. Riding beside it under the willows on a grey November day you might fancy yourself on the banks of an English Ouse or Avon, if the cotton-fields by the river-side and the towering ridge of naked rock beyond did not remind you that you are in a foreign land.

At its eastern end the ridge descends in a long and gentle slope, expanding fan-like as it descends to the Copaic plain. This long slope was the site of Orchomenus. The position is one of great natural strength. On the south and north it is protected by the steep and rugged sides of the ridge which form, as it were, a first line of defence. At the foot of these declivities the waters of the Cephisus on the south and of the Melas on the north constitute a second line of defence; while on the east, where the descent to the plain is gradual, the site was till lately rendered secure by the great Copaic swamp which advanced to within a few hundred yards of the end of the slope. The ancient walls, of which considerable remains exist, started from the broad eastern foot of the hill, and followed its northern and southern brows upwards, converging more and more as they rose till at the upper end of the slope they were within about thirty yards of each other. Here at the head of the slope the walls end at the foot of a cliff which rises like a wall to a considerable height. Its small summit, reached by a long, steep, and narrow staircase hewn out of the rock, was the ancient acropolis. Yet this cliff, which presents such an imposing appearance on the east, is separated on the west only by a shallow depression of a few feet from the long rugged ridge of the hills. This, therefore, was the weak point in the circuit; and art had to be called in to supply the want of a natural defence. Accordingly the little citadel, protected by precipices on the east and north, was fortified on the west and south by immense walls of massive masonry, the remains of which are amongst the finest specimens of ancient Greek fortification in existence. The fortress thus formed is so small that it resembles a castle rather than an acropolis of the ordinary Greek type. But the splendid style of the masonry leaves no room to doubt that it is a Greek fortress of the very best period, probably of the fourth century B.C.—the golden age of Greek military engineering.

LXXX. THE PLAIN OF CHAERONEA.—The plain of Chaeronea—one of the largest plains in Greece—stretches in an unbroken sweep from the foot of Mount Parnassus eastward to what used to be the Copaic Lake. Its length from east to west is about twelve miles, and its breadth from north to south about two. The plain is a dead flat, covered with fields of cotton and maize, and enclosed by bare, stony, barren hills both on the north and on the south. Seen on a bright summer day, with the mountains beyond the Copaic plain appearing blue in the distance and Parnassus towering grandly on the west, the scene is beautiful enough; but on a grey November morning, with the mists down on the distant mountains, it wears a cheerless aspect that well becomes a battlefield where a nation’s freedom was lost.

LXXXI. PANOPEUS.—The space enclosed by the fortification walls and by the rocky crests shows but few signs of habitation. On the highest point of the hill, among some holly-oaks, are the scanty tumble-down ruins of a mediaeval tower, built in the usual way of small stones with bricks and mortar in the chinks. A little lower down, and farther to the east, is a small chapel with remains of faded paintings on the walls. Scattered about the hill, especially round the chapel, is a good deal of broken pottery. A fine grove of beautiful holly-oaks now shades part of the summit, growing on a grassy slope amid low plants and shrubs. It is pleasant in the heat of the day to rest in the shade of these trees, to smell the wild thyme which grows abundantly on the hill, and to enjoy the distant prospects. To the north, across the broad Chaeronean plain, we look straight into the defile through which the Cephisus flows from Phocis into Boeotia; at the northern end of the defile the low hill is visible on which are the scanty ruins of Parapotamii. To the west Parnassus lifts his mighty head at no great distance from us, his middle slopes darkened by pine-forests that look like the shadows of clouds resting on the mountain-side.

LXXXII. NEAR HYAMPOLIS.—From the ledge of rocks which bounds the plateau on the south, near a ruined chapel, a spring of beautifully clear water gushes forth. Some ancient blocks lie tumbled about the spring, and a tall poplar-tree grows opposite it. The day was very hot when I passed it on my way to and from the ruins of Hyampolis; but the leaves of the poplar rustled in the breeze, and the water flowed from under the rocks with a soothing murmur. Parnassus loomed dim in the distance through a haze of heat. On my return from the ruins I found a shepherd boy at the spring who offered to share his bread with me. This picturesque spot, on which a poet of the Anthology might have written an epigram, is perhaps the site of the temple of Artemis mentioned by Pausanias.

LXXXIII. TITHOREA.—The site of Tithorea, first identified by Clarke in 1801, is occupied by the modern village of Velitsa, which stands very picturesquely among trees on the north-eastern slopes of Parnassus, overlooking the broad valley of the Cephisus. About two-thirds of the village are enclosed within the ancient ivy-mantled walls, which rank with those of Messene and Eleutherae as among the finest existing specimens of Greek fortifications. At the back of the village to the south rises a huge mountainous cliff of grey rock, its ledges tufted with pines. Between the foot of this great cliff and the village there intervenes a very steep slope, mostly overgrown with holly-oak bushes. On the east the village as well as the site of the ancient city is bounded by a very deep rocky ravine, which winds southward into the heart of the mountains. At the bottom of the ravine a torrent flows from Parnassus over a broad gravelly bed to join the Cephisus in the plain below. This torrent, now called Kakorevma or Evil Stream, is the ancient Cachales. In the time of Pausanias, the townspeople, he tells us, had to fetch their water in buckets from the depths of the lyn. Nowadays a portion of the water of the stream is diverted higher up the glen and brought in a conduit to the village, where it turns two mills and waters the gardens and orchards. As Tithorea was thus naturally defended on two sides, namely by the great cliff on the south and by the deep ravine on the east, it needed walls on two sides only, the west and the north. These walls, starting from the foot of the cliff, first descend the steep slope in a straight line above the village, then follow the gentler slope within the village, still in a direction due north, till they turn round at an obtuse angle and run eastward to the brink of the ravine. Here they stop. Along the edge of the ravine a number of ancient blocks may be observed, but whether they are the remains of an ancient fortification wall is not clear. Perhaps the deep precipitous side of the ravine may have been considered a sufficient defence by itself. The walls so far as they exist are finely and solidly built of regular ashlar masonry, and are flanked by massive square towers constructed in the same style. Walls and towers are best preserved in the lower ground among the houses and gardens of the village, but on the steep slope above the village the remains are also considerable.

The investigation of the ruined fortifications on this slope, it may be observed, is a matter of some difficulty, for the slope is not only very steep but overgrown with prickly shrubs and cumbered with huge fallen blocks. The antiquary who picks his way painfully among these obstacles is mortified by the contrast between his own slow progress and that of the village urchins who accompany him; for they climb and skip like goats on the top of the walls, now appearing suddenly on the highest pinnacles and then again leaping from stone to stone with wonderful confidence and agility.

The remains of the walls in the village, on the other hand, can be examined without discomfort, and they better repay study. Here on the north and north-west the wall, flanked by square towers, is standing in an unbroken line for a considerable distance. As a whole, the masonry of the walls and towers is splendid, massive, and almost quite regular, without being absolutely so. The beauty of these venerable walls is much enhanced by the thick green veil of ivy and other creepers which clothes their sides and droops in graceful festoons from their summits. Such a mantle of clinging verdure is very rare in Greece, where the ancient temples and fortresses, unlike the ivy-clad abbeys and castles of England, remain for the most part to this day as bare as when they were built, without even a patch of moss to soften their hard outlines and to tell of the lapse of ages.

Distant views complete the charm of Tithorea. From its ivied walls, rising among the gardens and houses of the village, we look up at the huge grey crag that hides the higher slopes of Parnassus, or down the long gradual declivity to the wide valley of the Cephisus and across it to the hills, somewhat low and tame, at whose foot lie the scanty ruins of Elatea.

LXXXIV. FROM AMPHISSA TO GRAVIA.—The smiling verdure of Amphissa and its neighbourhood forms a striking contrast to the stern, arid, and rocky scenery of Delphi, which is only ten miles off. At Amphissa, indeed, we are on the borders of almost Swiss scenery. For the fir-clad and torrent-rent mountains of Locris and Doris, which rise to the north-west, are the loftiest in the present kingdom of Greece. Two of the peaks exceed eight thousand feet in height. A fine specimen of this Alpine scenery may be obtained by following the mule-path which leads north from Amphissa over the mountains to the village of Gravia in the ancient canton of Doris. With the exception of the village of Topolia, which we leave on the right, and here and there a small farm far up on the mountain-side, not a human dwelling is to be seen. At first the path ascends the western declivities of Parnassus. Looking down to the left we see below us a narrow dale, where in early summer the course of the stream, now nearly dried up, is marked by the red oleander blossoms. Beyond the dale Mount Kiano rears its snowy head, the loftiest mountain in Greece; and behind it the long and almost equally lofty ridge of Vardousia is seen stretching north and south. The finest point on the route is at a clear spring which bubbles up at the top of the pass, just where the road surmounts the ridge that joins Parnassus to the mountains of Locris. Hitherto we have been ascending from the south; from this point the road begins to descend to the north. The valley now contracts. The snowy peaks in the west disappear, but their lower spurs form, with the western declivities of Parnassus, a narrow pass, down which a brook babbles over rocks and stones, its banks overhung with plane-trees. Pines and oaks of various kinds contrast pleasantly with the steep cliffs and bushy slopes; and now and then we come to a little grassy glade or a patch of corn. “It is,” says the Swiss traveller Vischer, whose description of the road I have borrowed, “almost a Swiss region, and I might have fancied myself transported to my native land, if the holly-oaks and oriental plane-trees had not reminded me that I was in the south.” Thus descending by a steep and rugged path we reach the village of Gravia at the northern end of the pass, in five or six hours from Amphissa.

LXXXV. DAULIS.—The situation of ancient Daulis is exceedingly beautiful. It occupied the broad but somewhat uneven summit of a fine massive hill, which rises abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of Parnassus. Everywhere the sides of the hill—which in the grandeur of its outlines deserves almost to rank as a mountain—are high and steep, except at a single point on the west where a narrow ridge connects it with the main mass of Parnassus. On the south the hill falls away in sheer and lofty precipices of grey rock into a deep romantic glen, the sides of which, where they are not precipitous, are mantled with dark green shrubbery. Beyond the ridge to the west soar the immense grey precipitous slopes of Parnassus, mottled here and there with dark pines. High up on its side is seen a white monastery at the mouth of a dark gorge, through which a path ascends to the summit. In the hollow between the hill of Daulis and these great slopes, a mill nestles picturesquely among trees; the water is led to it in a mill-race. Northward the ruined walls of Daulis, here thickly overgrown with ivy and holly-oak, look across a deep dell to the pretty village of Davlia, embowered among trees and gardens on the opposite hill-side. The descent to the valley on this side is steep and bushy, but not precipitous, except where a line of rocks runs obliquely up it on the north-west. Here and there in the valley the last slopes of the hill are terraced and planted with vines. At the eastern foot of the hill begins the great plain—the scene of so many famous battles—which stretches away for miles past the ruins of Panopeus and Chaeronea until at Orchomenus it melts into the still vaster expanse of the Copaic plain. To the south-east, beyond an intervening range of low hills, appears the sharp outline of Helicon. In this direction, at the southern end of the narrow valley which divides these low hills from the mighty steeps of Parnassus, is the famous Cleft Way, where Oedipus is said to have done the dark deed that was the beginning of all his woes.

Altogether few places in Greece surpass Daulis in romantic beauty of situation and the wealth of historical and legendary memories which the landscape, both near and far, is fitted to evoke. Standing on the brow of its precipices we feel that this mountain fastness, frowning on the rich champaign country below, was well fitted to be the hold of a wild wicked lord like Tereus, of whose bad deeds the peasants might tell tales of horror to their children’s children. But now all is very peaceful and solitary in Daulis, for the tide of life has long rolled away from it. Parnassus still looks down on it as of old; but ivy mantles the ruins, the wild thyme smells sweet on the hill, and the tinkle of goat-bells comes up musically from the glen. Only the shadow of ancient crime and sorrow rests on the fair landscape.