Chapter VII: Part 7

XIII. MEGARA.—From Eleusis to Megara by road or railway is about fourteen miles. The road first passes along the northern side of the low ridge which formed the acropolis of Eleusis; then it turns down to the sea and follows the shore. The plain of Eleusis is divided from the plain of Megara by a chain of wooded hills which advances southward from Mount Cithaeron to the shore of the bay. The road skirts the foot of these hills, ascending and descending, traversing olive-groves, and winding round little bays and headlands, commanding views, ever shifting but ever beautiful, of the coast of Salamis across the blue and blue-green waters of the lake-like bay, which is here so narrow that the white monastery of Phaneromene, with its clustered domes and turrets, can be plainly seen standing among green fields on the opposite shore. Then, when the last spur of the hills is rounded, the plain of Megara, covered with olives and vines, and backed by high mountains, opens out before us. In the distance can be distinguished the picturesque oriental-looking town of Megara, with its white houses rising in terraces, one above the other, on the sides of two isolated hills in the far corner of the plain: the higher of the two hills used to be crowned by a square mediaeval tower.

The modern town is chiefly confined to the western hill, the southern slope of which it occupies to the summit. Its narrow steep streets, and white-washed, flat-roofed, windowless houses, with low doorways opening into courts shaded here and there by a fig-tree, have much the appearance of an Arab village. The dazzlingly white walls make, in the brilliant sunshine, an excellent background for the gay costumes of the women, the bright colours of which (red, green, blue, violet) add to the Eastern effect of the scene.

XIV. THE SCIRONIAN ROAD.—The famous pass along the sea-cliffs, known in antiquity as the Scironian Road, is thus described by Strabo: “The Scironian cliffs leave no passage between them and the sea. The road from the Isthmus to Megara and Attica runs along the top of them; indeed in many places it is compelled by the beetling mountain, which is high and inaccessible, to skirt the brink of the precipices.” The dread of robbers, who here lay in wait for travellers, enhanced the natural horrors of the pass in ancient as well as in modern times. In recent years these horrors have been dissipated by the construction of a highroad and a railway along the coast; but down to the middle of the present century, if we may trust the descriptions of travellers, the cliff-path well deserved its modern name of Kake Skala or ‘the Evil Staircase.’ For six miles it ran along a narrow crumbling ledge half-way up the face of an almost sheer cliff, at a height of six to seven hundred feet above the sea. On the right rose the rock like a wall; on the left yawned the dizzy abyss, where, far below, the waves broke at the foot of the precipices in a broad sheet of white curdling foam. So narrow was the path that only a single sure-footed beast could make its way with tolerable security along it. In stormy or gusty weather it was dangerous; a single slip or stumble would have been fatal. When two trains of mules met, the difficulty of passing each other was extreme. Indeed at the beginning of the present century Colonel Leake pronounced the path impassable for horses; and at a later time, when it had been somewhat mended, another distinguished traveller, himself a Swiss, declared that he knew of no such giddy track, used by horses, in all Switzerland. In many places the narrow path had been narrowed still further by its outer edge having given way and slid into the depths, so that it was only by using the utmost caution that the traveller was able to scramble along at all. At one point, where it crossed the mouth of a gully, the road had completely disappeared, having either fallen into the sea or, according to another account, been blown up in the War of Independence. Here therefore the wayfarer was obliged to pick his steps down a breakneck track which zigzagged down to the narrow strip of beach, from which he had laboriously to clamber up by a similar track on the opposite side of the gully. One traveller has graphically described how his baggage-horses slid and slipped on their hind feet down one of these tracks, while their drivers hung on to the tails of the animals to check their too precipitate descent. Last century the path had ceased to be used even by foot-passengers. Chandler took boat at Nisaea and coasted along the foot of the cliffs, looking up with amazement at the narrow path carried along the edge of perpendicular precipices above the breakers and supported so slenderly beneath “that a spectator may reasonably shudder with horror at the idea of crossing.”

Nothing was easier than to make such a path impassable. Accordingly when word reached Peloponnese that Leonidas and his men had been annihilated by the Persians at Thermopylae, the Peloponnesians hurried to the Isthmus, blocked up the Scironian road, and built a fortification wall across the Isthmus. In modern times, though the path had fallen into decay, it still showed traces of having been used and cared for in antiquity. In many places the marks of the chariot-wheels were visible in the rock; in other places there were remains of massive substructions of masonry which had once supported and widened the road; and here and there pieces of ancient pavement were to be seen. These were probably vestiges of the carriage road which, as Pausanias tells us, the emperor Hadrian constructed along this wild and beautiful coast. At the present day, as the traveller is whirled along it in the train, he is struck chiefly by the blueness of the sea and the greenness of the thick pine-woods which mantle the steep shelving sides of the mountains.

XV. THE ISTHMUS OF CORINTH.—The Isthmus of Corinth, which unites Peloponnese on the south to the mountainous district of Megara and Central Greece on the north, is a low flat neck of land about three and a half miles wide at the narrowest part and about two hundred and sixty feet high at the lowest point, stretching roughly in a direction from south-west to north-east. The central part is a flat tableland, which shelves away in steep terraces to the sea on the southern side. Its surface is rugged, barren, and waterless; where it is not quite bare and stony, it is mostly overgrown with stunted shrubs and dwarf pines, or with thistles and other prickly plants of a grey arid aspect. There is no underwood and no turf. In spring some grass and herbage sprout in patches among the thistles and afford pasture to flocks. The niggard soil, where soil exists, is cultivated in a rude imperfect way, and yields some scanty crops, mostly of wheat and barley. But in the drought of summer every green blade disappears, and the fields are little more than a bare stony wilderness swept by whirling clouds of dust. This rugged barren quality of the soil was equally characteristic of the Isthmus in antiquity. It seems to have been customary to gather the stones from the fields before sowing the seed.

In ancient times ships of small burden were regularly dragged on rollers or waggons across the narrowest part of the Isthmus in order to avoid the long voyage round Peloponnese; hence this part of the Isthmus was known as the _Diolkos_ or Portage. The Portage began on the east at Schoenus, near the modern Kalamaki; its western termination is not mentioned by ancient writers, but was probably near the west end of the modern canal. We read of fleets of warships being transported across the Isthmus; for example after the battle of Actium the victorious Augustus thus conveyed his ships across the Isthmus in pursuit of Antony and Cleopatra, and in 883 A.D. the Greek admiral Nicetas Oriphas transported a fleet across it to repel an attack of the Saracens. Some remains of the ancient Portage, which seems to have been a sort of tramway, may still be seen near a guard-house, at the point where the road from Kalamaki to Corinth crosses the northern of the two ancient fortification walls.

The lowest and narrowest part of the Isthmus, through which the Portage went in antiquity and the modern canal now runs, is bounded on the south by a line of low cliffs. Along the crest of these cliffs may be traced the remains of an ancient fortification wall stretching right across the Isthmus from sea to sea. It is built of large blocks laid in fairly regular courses, and is flanked by square towers which project from the curtain at regular intervals of about a hundred yards on the north side, showing that the wall was meant to protect the Corinthian end of the Isthmus against invasion from the north. The wall does not extend in a straight line, but follows the crest of the cliffs, wherever this natural advantage presented itself.

XVI. THE BATH OF APHRODITE.—The lower spring, which Pausanias took to be Pirene, has sometimes been identified with the copious springs now known as ‘the bath of Aphrodite.’ They issue just below the steep northern edge of the broad terrace on which the old city of Corinth stood. Here the rocks curve round in a semicircle and overhang so as to form grottoes under their beetling brows. From these rocks, overgrown with moss and rank creepers, the clear water bubbles and trickles in copious rills, which nourish a rich vegetation in the open ground through which they flow. The grotto, which is always fresh and cool, commands an uninterrupted view over the Gulf to the mountains beyond. Here in the days of the Turkish dominion the bey of Corinth had his gardens, where he led a life of Asiatic luxury. A staircase still leads from the grotto to the terrace above, on the edge of which stood his seraglio. All is now ruin and desolation. A few pieces of ancient columns of green and white streaked marble mark the site of the seraglio. The spring is frequented only by washerwomen, and its streams water only vegetable gardens and orchards. But the water is as sweet as in Pausanias’s time, and the grottoes under the overhanging ledge of rock might pass for “the chambers made like grottoes” of which he makes mention.[6]

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Footnote 6:

However, the true Pirene described by Pausanias has lately been
discovered elsewhere by the American archaeologists who are now
excavating the site of ancient Corinth.

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XVII. THE PROSPECT FROM ACRO-CORINTH.—The view from the summit of Acro-Corinth has been famous since the days of Strabo, who has accurately described it. The brilliant foreground, indeed, on which he looked down has vanished. The stately city with its temples, its terraced gardens, its colonnades, its fountains, is no more. In its place there is spread out at our feet the flat yellowish expanse of the Isthmus, stretching like a bridge across the sea to the point where the Geranian mountains, their slopes clothed with the sombre green of the pine-forests, rise abruptly like a massive barrier at its farther end, sending out on their western side a long promontory, which cuts far into the blue waters of the Corinthian Gulf. Across the Gulf tower on the north the bold sharp peaks of Cithaeron and Helicon in Boeotia. On the north-west Parnassus lifts its mighty head, glistering with snow into late spring, but grey and bare in summer. In the far west loom the Locrian and Aetolian mountains, seeming to unite with the mountains of Peloponnese on the south, and thus apparently converting the Gulf of Corinth into an inland mountain-girdled lake. To the south-west, above ranges of grey limestone hills dotted with dark pines, soar the snowy peaks of Cyllene and Aroania in Arcadia. On the south the prospect is shut in by the high tablelands and hills of Argolis, range beyond range, the lower slopes of the valleys covered in spring with corn-fields, their upper slopes with tracts of brushwood. Eastward Salamis and the sharp-peaked Aegina are conspicuous. In this direction the view is bounded by the hills of Attica—the long ridge of Hymettus and the more pointed summits of Pentelicus and Parnes, while below them in clear weather the Parthenon is distinctly visible on the Acropolis nearly fifty miles away, the pinnacle of Lycabettus rising over it crowned with its white far-gleaming chapel.

XVIII. THE CAPTURE OF CORINTH BY ARATUS.—The story of the capture of Corinth by Aratus has been told by Plutarch with a wealth of picturesque details which he doubtless took from the Memoirs written by Aratus himself. The city, and especially the lofty and precipitous acropolis of Corinth, was held for King Antigonus by a Macedonian garrison. Aratus resolved to take the place by a night surprise. For this perilous service he picked out four hundred men, and led them to one of the city-gates. It was midsummer: a full moon rode in a cloudless sky, and the assailants feared that its bright beams, reflected from so many helmets and spears, might betray their approach to the sentinels on the walls. But just as the head of the column neared the gate, a heavy bank of clouds came scudding up from the sea and veiled the moon, blotting out the line of walls and shrouding the storming-party in darkness. Favoured by the gloom eight men, in the guise of travellers, crept up to the gate and put the sentinels to the sword. Ordering the rest of his men to follow him at the best speed they could make, Aratus now advanced at the head of a forlorn hope of one hundred men, planted the ladders, scaled the wall, and descended into the city. Not a soul was stirring in the streets, and Aratus hurried along in the direction of the acropolis, congratulating himself on escaping observation, when a patrol of four men was seen coming down the street with flaring torches. The moon shone full on them, but Aratus and his men were in shadow. Aratus whispered his men to stand close in the shadow of the houses. The unsuspecting patrol came on: in a minute three of them were cut down, and the fourth escaped with a gash on his head, crying out that the enemy were within the walls. A few minutes more and the trumpets rang out and the whole city was up. The streets, lately silent and deserted, were thronged with crowds hurrying to and fro; lights glanced at the windows; and high above the city a line of twinkling points of fire marked the summit of the acropolis. At the same time a confused hum of voices broke on the ear from all sides. Undeterred by these symptoms of the gathering storm, Aratus pressed up the winding path towards the acropolis as fast as the steep and rugged nature of the ground allowed.

Meantime the three hundred men whom he had left behind, bewildered by the sudden uproar, the flashing of multitudinous lights, and all the tumult of the rudely awakened city, missed the path up the acropolis and, knowing not whither to turn, halted under an overhanging crag at the foot of the mountain. Here they remained in a state of the utmost anxiety and alarm. For by this time Aratus was hotly engaged with the garrison on the summit, and the noise of battle and of distant cheering came floating down to them, but so faint with distance, so broken and distorted by the reverberation of the cliffs, that the men below, listening intently, could not tell from which direction the sounds proceeded. While they were still crouching under the shadow of the precipice, they were startled by a loud peal of trumpets close at hand, and peering through the gloom they perceived a large body of men marching past them up the slope. It was the king’s troops hastening to the relief of the garrison on the acropolis. Instantly the three hundred charged out from their lurking-place, and taking the enemy completely by surprise, broke them and drove them in confusion towards the city. They were still flushed with victory when a messenger came hurrying down at breakneck speed from the citadel, telling them that Aratus was at it, cut and thrust, with the garrison, who stood bravely to their arms, and imploring them to hasten to his assistance. They bade him lead the way; and as they toiled upwards they shouted to let their comrades know that help was at hand. By this time the clouds had passed over and the sky was again clear; and so all up the weary ascent they could see the weapons of friend and foe glittering in the moonlight, as the fight swayed this way and that, and could hear their hoarse cries, multiplied apparently a thousandfold as they rolled down on the night air from crag to crag. At last they reached the top, and charging side by side with their friends, forced the enemy from the walls. Day was beginning to break when Aratus and his men stood victorious on the summit.

XIX. SICYON.—Few ancient cities were more advantageously or beautifully situated than Sicyon. Built on a spacious and level tableland, defended on every side by cliffs, abundantly supplied with water, at a distance both safe and convenient from the sea, which, lying beyond a strip of fertile plain, sends its cool refreshing breezes to temper the summer heat, the city possessed a site secure, wholesome, and adapted both for agriculture and commerce. Nor are the natural beauties of the site less remarkable than its more material advantages. Behind it rise wooded mountains and in front of it, across the narrow plain, is stretched the wonderful panorama of the Corinthian Gulf, with Helicon, Cithaeron, and Parnassus towering beyond it to the north, and the mighty rock of Acro-Corinth barring the prospect on the east. At sunrise and sunset especially the scene is one of indescribable loveliness. The ancients themselves were not insensible to the charms of Sicyon. “A lovely and fruitful city, adapted to every recreation,” says a scholiast on Homer, and Diodorus speaks of Sicyon as a place “for peaceful enjoyment.”

XX. PHLIASIA.—The valley of the Asopus above Sicyon is a deep and narrow glen shut in on either hand by mountains, the steep sides of which are thickly overgrown with bushes. In some places, where the road is hemmed in between the roots of the mountain and the white, turbid, rushing river, the bank is occasionally undermined and swept away by the stream, and the path disappears altogether. In its upper reaches the glen widens so as to admit of here and there a small riverside meadow, prettily situated among oaks and shrubbery, with now and then a patch of ploughed land. After we have followed the glen upwards from Sicyon for about four hours, it opens out into a broad and fertile plain, encircled by steep mountains, down which brooks flow on all sides to join the Asopus. This upland plain, some four miles long and standing about a thousand feet above the sea, is Phliasia, the district of which Phlius was the ancient capital. On the west its level expanse is bounded by the picturesque, rugged, woody mass of Mount Gavria (about five thousand feet high), above which appears the snowy top of the lofty Cyllene in Arcadia. The eastern side of the valley is bounded by the Tricaranian range, which with its three flat summits divides the Phliasian valley from the vale of Nemea. The Asopus rises among the southern hills and flows northward through the valley in a deep grassy bed. It is here a clear and tranquil stream, very different from the rapid and turbid river which it becomes in the glen below, where it takes its colour from the soil which is washed down into it by the numerous torrents from the white argillaceous mountains through which it threads its way. About the middle of the plain it is joined by a tributary, longer than the Asopus itself, flowing from the mountains which enclose the south-western corner of the plain. The soil of the Phliasian valley is excellent; the central part of it is given up almost exclusively to vineyards which furnish now, as they did in antiquity, a fine fiery wine like Burgundy. In autumn the red and golden foliage of the fading vines lends a richer glow of colour to the beautiful landscape.

Some light is thrown on the topography of Phlius by the events which followed the battle of Leuctra. The Phliasians had been friends of Sparta when Sparta was at the height of her power; and after the disastrous day of Leuctra, when Sparta was deserted by allies and subjects alike, the Phliasians stood loyally by their old friends. This drew down on them the hostility of the victorious Thebans and their allies. In 368 B.C. a body of Arcadians and Eleans, marching through the pass of Nemea to join the Thebans, were induced by some Phliasian exiles to make an attempt to surprise and capture Phlius. Six hundred men, supplied with ladders, being sent in advance, concealed themselves by night at the foot of the citadel walls. Next morning the sentinels on Mount Tricaranum, to the east of the town, signalled the approach of the enemy from the valley of Nemea. The eyes of the citizens were thus turned to the hills, over which they momentarily expected to see the enemy appearing. Taking advantage of their distraction the six hundred men under the acropolis planted their ladders and were soon masters of the almost deserted citadel. But the citizens rallied, and after a fierce struggle drove the enemy with fire and sword over the ramparts.

Next year the allies made a more determined attempt to get possession of Phlius. The Theban commander at Sicyon marched from that city against Phlius at the head of his garrison and of a body of Sicyonian and Pellenian troops. He was supported by Euphron, tyrant of Sicyon, with two thousand mercenaries. The attack was again made from the hills on the east of the town. On the neck of land which joins the citadel of Phlius with the hills a detachment of Sicyonians and Pellenians was posted, to prevent the Phliasians from ascending the hills and taking their enemies in the rear. The rest of the army then descended from the hills in the direction of a sanctuary of Hera, meaning to ravage the corn-fields and vineyards in the valley. But the Phliasian cavalry and infantry met them and prevented them from carrying out their intention. Skirmishing went on most of the day with varying fortune. At one time Euphron with his mercenaries drove the Phliasians over the broken ground. But as soon as they reached open ground, where the Phliasian cavalry could come into play, they were in turn driven back up the hills as far as the sanctuary of Hera. At last the assailants abandoned the attack and retreated up the hill, purposing to join the detachment of Sicyonians and Pellenians, which they had left on the neck of ground leading to the citadel. To reach them they had to make a long detour up the hill, for a ravine lay between them and their friends, the ravine namely along which the city walls were built. The Phliasians pursued them up hill a little way, then perceiving the enemy’s intention of forming a junction with the detachment on the neck they turned back, and taking a short cut close under the town walls hastened to attack the detachment of the enemy before the main body could come up to their assistance. In this race the cavalry outstripped the infantry and charged the Pellenians alone. The latter stood to their arms and repelled the cavalry, till the Phliasian infantry came running up. Then, attacked by horse and foot simultaneously, the Pellenians and Sicyonians gave way. The victorious Phliasians erected a trophy and sang a loud paean. The enemy watched the scene from the hills; then, drawing together his beaten and scattered forces, fell sullenly back on Sicyon.

XXI. NEMEA.—Between the valley of Cleonae on the east and the valley of Phlius or St. George on the west is interposed the valley of Nemea, running like its sister valleys from south to north. It is a narrow dale, some two or three miles long, and from half to three-quarters of a mile broad. At its northern end it contracts to a mere gully. Through the bottom of the valley, which is almost a dead flat, meanders like a thread the brook Nemea, fed by the numerous rills which descend from the neighbouring hills. When swollen by heavy rain, these tributaries, having an insufficient outlet through the gully at the north end, keep the bottom of the valley green, moist, and marshy. The dale is thus better adapted for pasturage than tillage; indeed from the rich pastures which clothe its bottom and the lower slopes of the hills it received its name of Nemea, ‘the pastoral vale.’ But if the valley itself, especially after rain, is green and smiling, the surrounding hills, scarred and seamed with the beds of torrents, are of a dark and melancholy hue, and, combined with the absolute solitude—not a human habitation being visible through the length and breadth of the dale—affect the mind with a sense of gloom and desolation.[7] The solitude is only broken by the wandering herds of cattle, and from time to time by a group of peasants, who come over from St. George to till their fields in this secluded valley. A white track winds up the western slope to the mouth of a glen which opens in the hill-side. Through this glen is the way to St. George and Phlius.

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Footnote 7:

The valley has been less solitary since the village of Herakleia was
founded near the ruined temple of Nemean Zeus.

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XXII. THE PASS OF THE TRETUS.—At the southern end of the valley of Cleonae there rises like a wall of rock the mountain of Tretus, which forms the watershed between the Corinthian and the Argolic gulfs. A straight toilsome path led from Cleonae in antiquity, and still leads past the village of Hagios Vasilios, over the mountain, descending into the Argolic plain at the ruins of Mycenae. But the more convenient way from the valley of Cleonae to the plain of Argos bends round to the west, where the mountain is not so high, and runs up a gradually ascending gully. This was the pass of the Tretus, the chief line of communication between Corinth and the south. In antiquity it was, as Pausanias tells us, a driving road, and the ruts worn by the chariot-wheels can still be seen in many places. The defile, though long and narrow, shut in by high mountains on either hand, is nowhere steep, and the rise is not considerable. The road runs by a deeply worn watercourse, at the bottom of which a clear and shallow stream finds its way amid luxuriant thickets of oleander, myrtle, and arbutus. The lower slopes of the mountains are also green with shrubs, but their upper slopes are grey and rocky.

The pass is easily defended. On both sides, towards Cleonae and towards the plain of Argos, may be seen traces of ancient works built to defend the defile. Near the highest point of the pass, where the road begins to descend towards Argos, there are low Turkish watch-towers called Derweni on both sides, and rough stone walls such as the Greeks threw up in many passes during the War of Independence. In 1822 the Turkish army under Dramali Pasha, retreating from the plain of Argos, was caught by the Greeks in the pass of the Tretus and nearly annihilated; for years afterwards the defile was strewed with skeletons and skulls of men and horses.

“Every part of the Argolic plain,” says Leake, “is considered unhealthy in summer, and the heat is excessive; that of the ravine of the Tretus, in the mid-day hours, is said to be something beyond bearing, which I can easily conceive, having passed through it in August, at an hour in the morning when the heat was comparatively moderate. Not long since a Tartar, after having drunk plentifully of wine and raki at Corinth, was found to be dead when the suriji held his stirrup to dismount at the khan of Kharvati (Mycenae), just beyond the exit of the Tretus.”

The name Tretus (‘perforated’) was supposed by the ancients to be derived from a great cave in the mountain where the Nemean lion had his lair. As to the ancient name of the pass, and the supposed wheel-marks in it, W. G. Clark says: “This is the road known by the name of Tretos, or ‘the perforated’; not, I conceive, in consequence of the caverns in the neighbouring rocks, which are not more numerous hereabouts than elsewhere, but because the glen is, as it were, _drilled_ through the rock. And drilled it has been by the stream which flows at the bottom. We saw, or fancied we saw, frequent wheel-marks in the rocks, and we know that this was the direction of a carriage road. But from my subsequent observations I learned to distrust these marks. The ordinary mode of carrying wood in Greece is to tie the heavier ends of the poles on each side to the back of the horse or donkey, and suffer the other ends to trail along the ground, thus making two parallel ruts which in course of time may attain the depth of and be mistaken for wheel-tracks. When a depression is once made, it becomes a channel for the winter rains, and so is smoothed and deepened.”

The modern name of the defile is Dervenaki. The railway from Corinth to Argos runs through it. Towards the northern end of the pass the khan of Dervenaki stands in a little glade overshadowed by tall poplars, cypresses, and mulberry-trees, beside a murmuring spring. At the southern outlet of the pass the whole plain of Argos, with the mountains on either hand and the sea in the distance, bursts suddenly on the view. On the left, nestling at the foot of the hills, are Mycenae and Tiryns, with Nauplia and its towering acropolis rising from the sea and bounding the plain on this side. On the right is Argos with its mountain citadel, and beyond it the Lernaean lake glimmers faintly in the distance. In the centre of the picture, beyond the long foreground of level plain, stretches the blue line of the Argolic Gulf.

XXIII. MYCENAE.—Passing southwards through the pass of the Tretus, we see the spacious plain of Argolis stretched out before us. Mycenae lies to our left at the roots of the mountains which bound the eastern side of the plain, not far from the point where the pass of the Tretus opens out on it. The Argolic plain may be roughly described as a great triangle, the base of which, on the south, is formed by the Argolic Gulf, while the eastern and western sides are enclosed by the ranges of mountains which converge northwards till they meet in Mount Tretus. The length of the plain from north to south is about twelve miles, the greatest breadth from east to west perhaps not much less. The mountains which shut it in are barren and rocky, the highest being those on the west which form the boundary between Argolis and Arcadia. The whole expanse appears to have been once a bay of the sea, which has been gradually filled up by the deposits brought down from the surrounding mountains. The Gulf of Argolis, a broad and beautiful sheet of water winding between mountains, must originally, before its upper waters were expelled by the alluvial deposit, have resembled still more closely, what it still recalls, a fine Scotch sea-loch or a Norwegian fiord.

This alluvial plain, situated at the head of a deep and sheltered frith or arm of the sea, which opening on the Aegean gave ready access to the islands of the Archipelago and the coasts of Asia, was naturally fitted to become one of the earliest seats of civilisation in Greece. And in point of fact legend and archaeology combine to show that in prehistoric times Greek civilisation reached a very high pitch in the plain of Argolis. It contained at least three fortified towns of great importance, of which remains exist to this day, Tiryns, Argos, and Mycenae (to mention them in the order in which they lie from south to north). Tiryns and Mycenae stand on the eastern, Argos on the western side of the plain. Of the three Tiryns is nearest to the sea, from which it is distant not much more than a mile. It, or rather its citadel, occupies a low rocky mound, not a hundred feet above the level of the sea, and rising in perfect isolation from the flat. Farther inland Argos lies at the foot of the last spur which projects into the western side of the plain from the range of Artemisius. Its citadel, the Larisa, is a fine bold peak nearly a thousand feet high.

Farther inland, nine miles from the nearest point of the sea, stands Mycenae, near the northern extremity of the plain, but on its eastern side. Its citadel, in respect of elevation and natural strength, occupies an intermediate position between the low citadel of Tiryns and the high mountainous one of Argos. It lies at the mouth of a wild and narrow glen, which here opens on the eastern side of the Argolic plain, between two lofty, steep, and rocky mountains. From the mouth of this glen two deep ravines diverge, one running due west, the other running south-west, and the triangular tableland which they enclose between them is the citadel of Mycenae. The whole scene, viewed from the citadel, is one of desolate grandeur. The ravines yawning to a great depth at our feet, the rugged utterly barren mountains towering immediately across them, the bleak highland glen winding away into the depth of these gloomy and forbidding hills, make up a stern impressive picture, the effect of which is heightened if one sees it, as the present writer chanced to do, on a rainy day. Then with a lowering sky overhead and the mist clinging to the slopes of the mountains, no sound heard but the patter of the rain and the tinkling of sheep-bells from the glen, the whole landscape seems to frown and assumes an aspect more in keeping with the mist-wrapt stronghold of some old robber chief in Skye or Lochaber, than with the conception which the traveller had formed of Agamemnon’s “golden city.”

XXIV. THE END OF THE MYCENAEAN AGE.—The catastrophe which put an end to the Mycenaean civilisation in Greece would seem to have been the Dorian invasion, which, according to the traditional Greek chronology, befell about the middle of the twelfth century B.C. That the end of Mycenae and Tiryns was sudden and violent is proved by the conclusive evidence which shows that the palaces were destroyed by fire and that, once destroyed, they were never rebuilt. The date, too, of the Dorian invasion, so far as we can determine it, harmonises well with this view; for the Egyptian evidence of the existence of Mycenae comes down to about the time of the Dorian invasion, and there significantly stops. The cessation also of the characteristic Mycenaean pottery about the same date points to the same conclusion. It is not indeed to be supposed that the Dorians swept over Greece in one unbroken wave of conquest. The tide of invasion probably ebbed and flowed; raids were met and repelled, but were followed by incursions of fresh swarms of invaders, the new-comers steadily gaining ground, encroaching on and enveloping the ancient Mycenaean kingdoms till, the last barrier giving way before them, the capitals themselves were stormed, their treasures plundered, and the palaces given to the flames. The conflict between civilisation and barbarism, the slow decline of the former and the gradual triumph of the latter, may have lasted many years. It is thus that many, if not most, permanent conquests have been effected. It was thus that the Saxons step by step ousted the Britons, and the Danes obtained a footing in England; it was thus that the Turks slowly strangled the Byzantine empire. Events like the fall of Constantinople and the expulsion of the Moors from Granada are only the last scenes in tragedies which have been acting for centuries.

To attribute, with some writers, the creation instead of the destruction of the Mycenaean civilisation to the Dorians is preposterous, since the Dorian immigration did not take place till the twelfth century B.C., while the Mycenaean civilisation is known from Egyptian evidence to have existed from the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. at least. But this attribution involves other than chronological difficulties. The typical Dorians were the Spartans, and no greater contrast can well be conceived than that between the luxurious semi-Oriental civilisation of Mycenae and the stern simplicity of Sparta. On the one side we see imposing fortifications, stately tombs, luxurious baths, magnificent palaces, their walls gay with bright frescoes or glittering with burnished bronze, their halls crowded with a profusion of precious objects of art and luxury, wrought by native craftsmen or brought by merchants from the bazaars of Egypt and Assyria; and in the midst of all a sultan, laden with golden jewellery, listening to minstrels singing the tale of Troy or the wanderings of Ulysses. On the other side we see an open unfortified city with insignificant buildings, where art and poetry never flourished, where gold and silver were banned, and where even the kings prided themselves on the meanness of their attire. The Dorians, if we may judge of them by the purest specimens of the breed, were just as incapable of creating the art of Mycenae as the Turks were of building the Parthenon and St. Sophia.

Of the Greeks who were rendered homeless by the Dorian invasion most fled to Asia. There, on the beautiful island-studded coast, under the soft Ionian sky, a new Greece arose which, in its splendid cities, its busy marts, its solemn fanes, combined Greek subtlety and refinement with much of Asiatic pomp and luxury. By this long and brilliant after-glow of the Mycenaean civilisation in Asia we may judge, as it has been well said, what its meridian splendour had been in Europe.

XXV. MOUNT ARACHNAEUS.—Mount Arachnaeus is the high naked range on the left or northern side of the road as you go to the Epidaurian sanctuary from Argos. The most remarkable peak is Mount Arna, the pointed rocky summit which rises immediately above the village of Ligourio to a height of over three thousand five hundred feet. The western summit, Mount St. Elias, is somewhat higher. From the summit of Mount Arna the mountains of Megara and Attica are visible. It might well have been on its top that the beacon was lighted which flashed to Argos the news of the fall of Troy. The name Arachnaea is said to have been still used by the peasantry in the early part of this century. The altars of Zeus and Hera upon which, according to Pausanias, the people sacrificed for rain, appear to have stood in the hollow between the two peaks, for there is here a square enclosure of Cyclopean masonry which would appear to have been an ancient place of worship.

Mount Arachnaeus and the mountains of the Argolic peninsula in general are little better than a stony waterless wilderness. The climate is very dry, and the beds of all the streams are waterless except after heavy rain. The hardy little holly-oak and a few dun-coloured shrubs are almost the only representatives of plant life. The eye of the traveller is wearied by the grey monotony of these arid mountains and desert tablelands, and his feet are cut and bruised by the sharp stones over which he has painfully to pick his steps. Nowhere else in Greece, probably, is the scenery so desolate and forbidding.

XXVI. EPIDAURUS.—The city of Epidaurus was five Roman miles distant from the sanctuary of Aesculapius. But it takes about two hours and a half to ride the distance, for the road is very rough. The scenery on the way is extremely beautiful—a great contrast to the dull road from Nauplia to the sanctuary. The path leaves the open valley by a narrow glen at its northern end, and leads down deeper and deeper through luxuriantly wooded dells into the bottom of a wild romantic ravine. Here we follow the rocky bed of the stream for some distance between lofty precipitous banks. Farther on the path ascends the right bank of the stream, and we ride along it, with the deep ravine below us on the left and a high wall of rock on the right. The whole glen, as far as the eye can reach, is densely wooded. Wild olives, pines, plane-trees, Agnus castus, laurel, and ivy mantle its steep sides with a robe of green. In half an hour from the sanctuary another valley opens on the left, down which comes the road from Ligourio. After joining it we continue to follow the glen along a path darkened by trees and the luxuriant foliage of the arbutus, while beside us the stream flows through thickets of myrtle and oleander. In about half an hour more the valley opens out, and we see the sea, with the bold rocky headland of Methana stretching out into it on the right, the islands of Salamis and Aegina in the distance, and farther off the Attic coast lying blue but clear on the northern horizon.

Emerging at last from the valley we cross a little maritime plain, covered with lemon-groves, and reach the site of the ancient Epidaurus. Its position is very lovely. From the little maritime plain, backed by high mountains with wooded sides, a rocky peninsula juts out into the sea, united to the mainland only by a narrow neck of low marshy ground. It divides two bays from each other: the northern bay is well sheltered and probably formed the ancient harbour; the southern bay is an open roadstead. The ancient city seems to have lain chiefly on the peninsula, but to have extended also to the shores of the two bays. The rocky sides of the peninsula fall steeply into the sea, and it rises in two peaks to a height of about two hundred and fifty feet; the eastern peak is somewhat the higher. On the edge of the cliffs may be seen in some places, especially on the southern side of the peninsula, remains of the strong walls which enclosed the city. They are built chiefly in the polygonal style, of large blocks well cut and jointed.

The peninsula, now mostly overgrown with brushwood and shrubs, commands fine views both seaward and landward. The coast southward in the direction of Troezen is very bold and grand, the mountains rising here abruptly to a great height from the sea. At the head of the bay, on the other hand, the hills, wooded with pines, are lower, and between them appears the mouth of the valley up which the path leads through thickly wooded glens to the sacred grove of Aesculapius.

XXVII. THE TEMPLE IN AEGINA.—The temple stands on the top of a hill towards the north-east corner of the island, commanding superb views over the sea and the coasts of Attica and Peloponnese. It is distant about two and a half hours from the town of Aegina. Travellers from Athens who wish to visit the temple commonly land in the fine rocky bay of Hagia Marina on the eastern side of the island. A steep declivity, sparsely wooded with pine-trees, leads up from the shore of the bay to the temple. I shall always remember how on a lovely day in spring we landed here and lay under the pine-trees, looking down on the intensely blue but crystalline waters of the bay. The air was full of the fragrance of the pines, the yellow broom was in flower at our feet, and visible across the sea was the coast of Attica. It was a scene such as Theocritus might have immortalised.

XXVIII. THE SANCTUARY OF POSEIDON IN CALAURIA.—The sanctuary is situated very picturesquely on a saddle between the two highest peaks of the island, both of which are covered with pine-woods. A walk of about an hour brings us to it from Poros, the modern capital of the island. The path at first skirts the southern shore of the island for a short way, then turns and ascends in a north-westerly direction through the pine-forest. From the sanctuary, which stands at a height of about six hundred feet above the sea, beautiful and wide prospects open between the wooded hills both to the north and the south. We look down on the sea with its multitudinous bays, creeks, promontories, and islands stretched out before us and framed as in a picture between the pine-clad hills on either hand. A fitter home could hardly have been found for the sea-god whose favourite tree—the pine—still mantles the greater part of the island.

XXIX. TROEZEN.—The plain of Troezen lies between the sea and a range of rough and rocky hills, wooded with dark evergreens and stunted trees, which shut it in on the west and south. The northern part of the plain is marshy in places, and the marshes breed fever among the sallow inhabitants of Damala, the wretched hamlet which nestles among trees at the foot of the hills in the inmost corner of the plain, close to the ruins of Troezen. Stretches of pasture-land, however, and of vineyards alternate with the swamps; and eastward, toward the island of Calauria, the plain is well watered, cultivated like a garden, and verdant with vines, olives, lemon-groves, and fig-trees. Seen from the water of the beautiful almost landlocked bay the green of this rich vegetation, with the tall dark cypresses towering conspicuously over all, is refreshing to eyes accustomed to the arid plains and hills of Greece. At Damala groves of oranges and lemons yield the villagers a considerable return. On higher ground, to the north-west of the village, are the ruins of Troezen. The glorious prospect over plain and mountain and sea is unchanged; but of the city itself, which, if we may trust Pausanias, its people regarded with such fond patriotic pride, nothing is left but some insignificant ruins overgrown with weeds and dispersed amid a wilderness of bushes. An isolated craggy mountain, rising steeply on the farther side of a deep ravine, was the ancient acropolis. The ascent is toilsome, especially if it be made at noon on an airless summer day with the sun blazing pitilessly from a cloudless sky, the rocks so hot that you cannot touch them without pain, the loose stones slipping at every step, the dry withered shrubs and herbage crackling under foot and blinding you with clouds of dust and down. The wonderful view from the summit, however, makes amends for the labour of the ascent, ranging as it does across the green fertile plain at our feet and away beyond a bewildering maze of islands, capes, and bays to Sunium on the north-east and the snowy peak of Parnassus on the north-west.

Another picturesque bit of scenery, of a different kind, may be seen by following up the ravine to the point where at a great height it is spanned by a single small arch of grey stone, which the peasants call the Devil’s Bridge. It carries the path and a tiny aqueduct, hewn out of one block of stone, across the narrow but profound abyss. High beetling crags rise above the little bridge; ferns and ivy mantle thickly one of the rocky sides of the lyn beneath it; and trees droop over the stream that murmurs in the depths below. This is the stream which Pausanias calls the Golden River. Luxuriant lemon-groves now line its banks where it issues from the ravine on the plain of Troezen.

XXX. FROM TROEZEN TO EPIDAURUS.—We left the ruins of Troezen at half-past twelve in the afternoon, and rode northward across the broad flat neck of land which connects the mountainous peninsula of Methana with the mainland. In fifty minutes we reached the shore of the lagoon which is formed at the head of the Bay of Methana by the Potami river, the Golden River of Pausanias. After making a detour round the lagoon we came, at half-past one, to the beach at the point where the stream flows out of the lagoon into the sea. Thence we rode for some way along the beach, then over a rocky point, after which the path kept inland a little from the sea. But all through our journey from Troezen to Kato-Phanari the mountains rose at no great distance from us on the left. By half-past two we were opposite Lesia, a hamlet at the foot of a high rocky mountain, with a glen on its eastern side, down which comes a stream. But the bed of the stream, when we crossed it, was dry. Below the hamlet in the plain are olives. A little before four o’clock we came to a ruined mediaeval or modern tower perched on an eminence to our right, between us and the sea. Near it stands a small chapel beside a fine carob-tree. The mountains now advanced to the water’s edge, and our path led along their bushy and rocky slopes, winding round bays and headlands at a considerable height above the sea. Here we enjoyed fine views across the spacious bay to the high, mountainous, and rugged peninsula of Methana, which wears a sombre aspect due perhaps to the dark colour of its volcanic rocks. Farther on the path, though never far from the sea, trended inland and we passed over a great deal of stony ground mostly planted with olives. At many places along our route in the course of the day the peasants were at work gathering the olives from the trees. Another feature in the day’s ride was the great number of carob-trees we passed, some of them very fine trees, with dark, smooth, glossy leaves. Finally the path ascended a steep rocky slope and brought us at half-past four to the village of Kato-Phanari, very picturesquely situated high on the side of a mountain, which a short way above the village rises up in rugged precipices of grey rock. Twilight was coming on, but enough of daylight remained to allow me to appreciate the beauty of the prospect from the loftily situated village across the sea to the islands, the high conspicuous peninsula of Methana, and the long line of headlands stretching away towards Epidaurus, all bathed in the warm though fast fading light of a winter evening.

Next morning we left Kato-Phanari soon after eight o’clock. The path rose steeply up the mountain-side in view of the sea. In a little less than an hour we reached Ano-Phanari, a village overlooking the sea, situated far up the side of a lofty rocky mountain which faces southward to the still higher precipitous mountain on whose seaward face, below the precipices, stands the lower village of Kato-Phanari. On this latter mountain, or rather on the summit of the range to which it belongs, called Mount Ortholithion, certain ceremonies are said to have been performed, time out of mind, by the peasants in seasons of drought and pestilence.

At Ano-Phanari I heard of remains of an ancient fortress in the neighbourhood, and set off with a guide to visit them. A walk of a few minutes in a north-easterly direction brought us to the top of the mountain, where the remains are to be seen. The situation is a remarkably fine one. Precipices descending towards the sea encircle the summit on the north and north-east, and the views across the Saronic Gulf to Aegina, Salamis, and Megara are magnificent. Some mediaeval remains, comprising walls and two or more ruined chapels, are to be seen on the summit, and on its southern side, towards the village, there is a ruined fortification wall built of large irregular blocks. Thus the ancient fortress which occupied this commanding situation appears to have been repaired and inhabited in the Middle Ages. What the name of the place was in antiquity we do not know.

The villagers called my attention to several holes in the rocks between the fortress and the village from which streams of warm air issue. The air from one of the holes was hot enough to warm me, though the morning was cold. In this particular hole, too, I could hear a rumbling sound as of water boiling or wind blowing underground.