in chasms, which swallow up the rivers, as do Bœotia and the western
portion of the whole of the Balkan peninsula. Some of these katavothras
are mere sieves, hidden beneath herbage and pebbles, but others are
wide chasms and caverns, through which the course of the underground
waters may be readily traced. In winter wild birds post themselves
at the entrances of these caverns, in expectation of the prey which
the river is certain to carry towards them; in summer, after the
waters have retired, foxes and jackals again take possession of their
accustomed dens. The water swallowed up by these chasms on the plateau
reappears on the other side of the mountains in the shape of springs,
or _kephalaria_ (_kephalovrysis_). The water of these springs has been
purified by its passage through the earth, and its temperature is that
of the soil. It bursts forth sometimes from a crevice in the rocks,
sometimes in an alluvial plain, and sometimes even from the bottom of
the sea. The subterranean geography of Greece is not yet sufficiently
known to enable us to trace each of these kephalaria to the katavothras
which feed them.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.—LAKES PHENEA AND STYMPHALUS.
From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 500,000.]
The ancients were most careful in keeping open these natural funnels,
for, by facilitating the passage of the water, they prevented the
formation of swamps. These precautions, however, were neglected during
the centuries of barbarism which overcame Greece, and the waters were
permitted to accumulate in many places at the expense of the salubrity
of the country. The plain of Pheneus, or Phonia, a vast chasm between
the Aroanian Mountains and the Cyllene, has thus repeatedly been
converted into a lake. In the middle of last century the whole of this
basin {61} was filled with water to a depth of more than 300 feet.
In 1828, when this sheet of water had already become considerably
reduced, it was still 6 miles long and 150 feet in depth. At length,
a few years afterwards, the subterranean sluices opened, the waters
disappeared, and there remained only two small marshes near the places
of exit. But in 1850 the lake was again 200 feet in depth. Hercules, we
are told, constructed a canal to drain this valley and to cleanse its
subterranean outlets, but the inhabitants content themselves now with
placing a grating above the “sink-holes,” to prevent the admission of
trunks of trees and of other large objects carried along by the floods.
To the east of the valley of Pheneus, and on the southern foot of Mount
Cyllene, there is another lake basin, celebrated in antiquity because
of the man-eating birds which infested it, until they were exterminated
by Hercules. This is the Stymphalus, alternately lake and cultivated
land. During winter the waters cover about one-third of the basin; but
it happens occasionally, after heavy rains, that the lake resumes its
ancient dimensions. There is only one katavothra through which the
waters can escape, and this, instead of being near the shore, as usual,
is at the bottom of the lake. It swallows up not only the water of
the lake, but likewise the vegetable remains carried into it, and the
mud formed at its bottom; and this detritus is conveyed through it to
some subterranean cavity, where it putrefies slowly, as may be judged
from the fetid exhalations proceeding from the katavothra. The water,
however, is purified, and when it reappears on the surface, close to
the seashore, it is as clear as crystal.
There are many other lake basins of the same kind between the mountains
of Arcadia and the chain of the Gaurias. They all have their swamps
or temporary lakes, but the katavothras, in every instance, are
sufficiently numerous to prevent an inundation of the entire valley.
The most important of these lake basins is formed by the famous plain
of Mantinea, upon which many a battle was fought. From an hydrological
point of view this is one of the most curious places in the world;
for the waters which collect there are discharged into two opposite
seas—the Gulf of Nauplia on the east, and in the direction of the
Alpheus and the Ionian Sea towards the west. There may exist even some
subterranean rivulet which discharges itself, towards the south, into
the Eurotas and the Gulf of Laconia.
The disappearance of the waters underground has condemned to sterility
several parts of the Peloponnesus, which a little water would convert
into the most fertile regions of the globe. The surface waters quickly
suck up and form subterranean rivers, hidden from sight, which only
see the light again, in most instances, near the seashore, when it is
impossible to utilise them. The plain of Argos, though surrounded by a
majestic amphitheatre of well-watered hills, is more sterile and arid
even than are Megara and Attica. Its soil is always dry, and soaks
up water like a sieve, which may have given rise to the fable of the
Danaids. But to the south of that plain, where there is but a narrow
cultivable strip of land between the mountains and the seashore, a
great river bursts forth from the rocks. This is the Erasinus.
Other springs burst forth at the southern extremity of the plain,
close to the defile {62} of Lerna, which, like that of the Erasinus,
are supposed to be fed from Lake Stymphalus. Close to them is a chasm
filled with water, said to be unfathomable. It abounds in tortoises,
and venomous serpents inhabit the adjoining marsh. These are the
_kephalaria_, or “heads,” of the ancient hydra of Lerna, which Hercules
found it so difficult to seize hold of. Still farther south there is
another spring which rises from the bottom of the sea, more than three
hundred yards from the shore. This spring—the Doinæ of the ancients,
and Anavula of modern Greek mariners—is, in reality, but the mouth of
one of the rivers swallowed up by the katavothras of Mantinea. When the
sea is still it throws up a jet rising to a height of fifty feet.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.—THE PLATEAU OF MANTINEA.
From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 400,000.
K. Katavothras.]
Analogous phenomena may be witnessed in the two southern valleys of
the peninsula, those of Sparta and Messenia. The Iri, or Eurotas, is,
in reality, but a large rivulet, which discharges itself into the
Gulf of Marathonisi, at the end of a gorge, {63} through which the
waters of the Lake of Sparta forced themselves a passage during some
ancient deluge; but it is only on rare occasions that its volume of
water is sufficient to remove the bar which obstructs its mouth. The
Vasili-Potamo (“royal river”), on the other hand, which bursts forth at
the foot of a rock a short distance from the Eurotas, though its whole
course does not exceed five miles, discharges a considerable volume of
water throughout the year, and its mouth is at all times open. As to
the river of Messenia, the ancient Pamisus, now called Pirnatza, it is
the only river of Greece, besides the Alpheus, which forms a harbour
at its mouth, and it can be ascended by small vessels for a distance
of eight miles; but this advantage it owes exclusively to the powerful
springs of Hagios Floros, which are fed by the mountains on the east.
These springs, which form a large swamp where they rise to the surface,
are the real river, if volume of water is to be decisive, and the
country watered and fertilised by them was called the “Happy” by the
ancients, on account of its fertility.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.—BIFURCATION OF THE GASTUNI.
From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 400,000.]
The western regions of the Peloponnesus receive more rain, and they are
likewise in the possession of the most considerable river, the Alpheus,
now called Ruphia, from one of its tributaries. The latter, the ancient
Ladon, conveys a larger volume of water towards the sea than the
Alpheus. It was as celebrated amongst the Greeks as was the Peneus
of Thessaly, on account of the transparency of its waters, and the
smiling scenery along its banks. It is partly fed by the snows of Mount
Erymanthus, and, like most rivers of the Morea, derives a portion of
its waters from subterranean tributaries rising on the central plateau.
The Ladon thus receives the waters of Lake Phenea, whilst the Alpheus
proper {64} is fed in its upper course from katavothras on the shores
of the ancient lakes of Orchomenus and Mantinea. Having traversed the
basin of Megalopolis, anciently a lake, it passes through a series of
picturesque gorges, and reaches its lower valley. A charming tradition,
illustrative of the ties of amity which existed between Elis and
Syracuse, makes this river plunge beneath the sea and reappear in
Sicily, close to the fountain of his beloved Arethusa. The ancient
Greeks, who witnessed the disappearance of so many rivers, would hardly
have looked upon this submarine course of the Alpheus as a thing to
wonder at.
The Alpheus and all other rivers of Elis carry down towards the sea
immense masses of detritus, which they spread over the plains extending
from the foot of the mountains to the seashore. The ruins of Olympia
disappeared in this manner beneath alluvial deposits. They have all
frequently changed their beds, and not one amongst them has done
so more frequently than the Peneus, or river of Gastuni. Anciently
it discharged its waters to the north of the rocky promontory of
Chelonatas, whilst in the present day it turns abruptly to the south,
and enters the sea at a distance of fifteen miles from its ancient
mouth. Works of irrigation may partly account for this change, but
there can be no doubt that nature unaided has by degrees much modified
the aspect of this portion of Greece. Islands originally far in the
sea have been joined to the land; numerous open bays have gradually
been cut off from the sea by natural embankments, and transformed into
swamps or lagoons. One of the latter extends for several leagues to the
south of the Alpheus, and is divided from the sea by a fine forest of
pines. These majestic forests, in which the Triphylians paid honour to
their dead, the surrounding hills dotted over with clumps of trees, and
Mount Lycæus, from whose flanks are precipitated the cascades dedicated
to Neda, the nurse of Jupiter, render this the most attractive district
of all the Morea to a lover of nature.
* * * * *
The Peloponnesus presents us with one of the most striking instances
of the influence exercised by the nature of the country upon the
historical development of its inhabitants. Held to Greece by a mere
thread, and defended at its entrance by a double bulwark of mountains,
this “isle of Pelops” naturally became the seat of independent tribes
at a time when armies still recoiled from natural obstacles. The
isthmus was open as a commercial high-road, but it was closed against
invaders.
The relief of the peninsula satisfactorily explains the distribution
of the tribes inhabiting it, and the part they played in history. The
whole of the interior basin, which has no visible outlets towards the
sea, naturally became the home of a tribe who, like the Arcadians,
held no intercourse with their neighbours, and hardly any amongst
themselves. Corinth, Sicyon, and Achaia occupied the seashore on
the northern slopes of the mountains, but were separated by high
transversal chains. The inhabitants of these isolated valleys long
remained strangers to each other, and when at length they combined to
resist the invader, it was too late. Elis, in the west, with its wide
valleys and its insalubrious plains extending along a coast having no
havens, naturally played but a secondary part {65} in the history of
the peninsula. Its inhabitants, exposed to invasions, owing to their
country being without natural defences, would soon have been enslaved,
had they not placed themselves under the protection of all the rest of
Greece by converting their plain of Olympia into a place of meeting,
where the Hellenes of Europe and of Asia, from the continent and from
the islands, met for a few days’ festival to forget their rivalries and
animosities. The basin of Argos and the mountain peninsula of Argolis,
on the eastern side of the Peloponnesus, on the other hand, are
districts having natural boundaries, and are easily defended. Hence the
Argolians were able to maintain their autonomy for centuries, and even
in the Homeric age they exercised a sort of hegemony over the remainder
of Greece. The Spartans were their successors. The country in which
they established themselves possessed the double advantage of being
secure against every attack, and of furnishing all they stood in need
of. Having firmly established themselves in the beautiful valley of
the Eurotas, they found no difficulty in extending their power to the
seashore, and to the unfortunate Helos. At a later date they crossed
the heights of the Taygetus, and descended into the plains of Messenia.
That portion of Greece likewise formed a natural basin, protected by
elevated mountain ramparts; and the Messenians, who were kinsmen of
the Spartans and their equals in bravery, were thus able to resist
for a century. At length they fell, and all the Southern Peloponnesus
acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, which was now in a position to
assert its authority over the whole of Greece. Then it was that the
mountain-girt plateau on the road from Lacedæmonia to Corinth, upon
which stood the cities of Tegea and Mantinea, and which was made by
nature for a field of Mars, became the scene of strife.
The Peloponnesus, with its sinuous shores, forms a remarkable contrast
to Attica. Its characteristics are essentially those of a continent,
and anciently the Peloponnesians were mountaineers rather than
mariners. Except in Corinth, where the two seas nearly join, and a few
towns of Argolis, which is another Attica, there were no inducements
for the inhabitants to engage in maritime commerce; and in their
mountain valleys and upland plains they were entirely dependent upon
the rearing of cattle and husbandry. Arcadia, in the centre of the
peninsula, was inhabited only by herdsmen and labourers; and its name,
which originally meant “country of bears,” has become the general
designation for an eminently pastoral country. The Laconians also,
separated from the sea by rocky mountains which hem in the valley
of the Eurotas at its point of issue, preserved for a long time the
customs of warriors and of cultivators of the soil, and took to the sea
only with reluctance. “When the Spartans placed Eurotas and Taygetus
at the head of their heroes,” says Edgar Quinet, “they distinctly
connected the features of the valley with the destinies of the people
by whom it was occupied.”
In the very earliest ages the Phœnicians already occupied important
factories on the coasts of the Peloponnesus. They had established
themselves at Nauplia, in the Gulf of Argos; and at Cranaæ, the modern
Marathonisi or Gythion, in Laconia, they purchased the shells which
they required to dye their purple {66} cloths. The Greeks themselves
were in possession of a few busy ports, amongst which was “sandy
Pylos,” the capital of Nestor, whose position is now held by Navarino,
on the other side of the gulf. At a subsequent date, when Greece had
become the centre of Mediterranean commerce, Corinth, so favourably
situated between the two seas, rose into importance, not because of its
political influence, its cultivation of the arts, or love of liberty,
but through the number and wealth of its inhabitants. It is said that
it had a population of three hundred thousand souls within its walls.
Even after it had been razed by the Romans it again recovered its
ancient pre-eminence. But the exposed position of the town has caused
it to be ravaged so many times that all commerce has fled from it. In
1858, when an earthquake destroyed Corinth, that once famous city had
dwindled down into a poor village. The city has been rebuilt about five
miles from its ancient site, on the shore of the gulf named after it,
but we doubt whether it will ever resume its ancient importance unless
a canal be dug to connect the two seas. The high-roads from Marseilles
and Trieste to Smyrna and Constantinople would then lead across the
Isthmus of Corinth, and this canal might attract an amount of shipping
equal to that which frequents other ocean channels or canals similarly
situated. But for the present the isthmus is almost deserted, and only
the passengers who are conveyed by Greek steamers to the small ports
on its opposite shores cross it. The ancients, who had failed in the
construction of a canal, and who made no further effort after the time
of Nero, because they imagined one of the two seas to be at a higher
level than the other, had provided, at all events, a kind of tramway,
by means of which their small vessels could be conveyed from the Gulf
of Corinth to the Ægean Sea.[17]
After the Crusades, when the powerful Republic of Venice had gained
a footing upon the coasts of Morea, flourishing commercial colonies
arose along them, in Arcadia, on the island of Prodano (Prote), at
Navarino, Modon, Coron, Calamata, Malvoisie, and Nauplia in Argolis.
At the call of these Venetian merchants the Peloponnesus again became
a seat of trade, and resumed, to some extent, that part in maritime
enterprise which it had enjoyed in the time of the Phœnicians. But
the advent of the Turk, the impoverishment of the soil, and the civil
wars which resulted therefrom, again forced the inhabitants to break
off all intercourse with the outer world, and to shut themselves up
in their island as in a prison. Tripolis, or Tripolitza, in the very
centre of the peninsula, and called thus, it is said, because it
is the representative of three ancient cities—Mantinea, Tegea, and
Pallantium—then became the most populous place. Since the Greeks have
regained their independence life again fluctuates towards the seashore
as by a sort of natural sequence. Patras, close to the entrance of the
Gulf of Corinth, and near the most fertile and best-cultivated plains
on the eastern shore, is by far the most important city at present,
and, in anticipation of its future extension, the streets of a new town
have been laid out, in the firm belief that it will some day rival
Smyrna and Trieste in extent. {67}
[Illustration: Fig. 22.—THE VALLEY OF THE EUROTAS.
From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 370,000.]
The other towns of the peninsula, even those which exhibited the
greatest activity during the dominion of the Venetians, are but of very
secondary importance, if we compare them with this emporium of the
Peloponnesus. Ægium, or Vostitza, on the Gulf of Corinth, is a poor
port, less celebrated on account of its commerce than in consequence
of a magnificent plane-tree, more than fifty feet in girth, the hollow
trunk of which was formerly used as a prison. Pyrgos, close to the
Alpheus, has no port at all. The fine roadstead of Navarino, defended
against winds and waves by the rocky islet of Sphacteria, is but
little frequented, and the merchantmen riding at anchor there never
outnumber the Turkish men-of-war at the bottom, where they have lain
since the battle fought in 1828. Modon and Coron have likewise fallen
off. Calamata, at the mouth of the fertile valleys of Messenia, has an
open roadstead only, and vessels cannot always ride in safety upon it.
The celebrated Malvoisie, now called Monemvasia, is hardly more than a
heap of ruins, and the vineyards in its neighbourhood, which furnished
the exquisite wine named after the town, have long ceased to exist.
Nauplia, which was the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece during
the first few years of its existence, possesses the advantage of a {68}
well-sheltered port; but its walls, its bastions, and its forts give
it the character of a military town rather than of a commercial one.
The towns in the interior of the country, whatever glories may attach
to them, are hardly more now than large villages. The most celebrated
of all, Sparta, thanks to the fertility of its environs, promises
to become one of the most prosperous cities of the interior of the
Peloponnesus. Sparta—that is, the “scattered city,”—was named thus
because its houses were scattered over the plain, defended only by
the valour of their inhabitants, and not by walls. In the Middle Ages
Sparta was supplanted by the neighbouring Mistra, whose decayed Gothic
buildings and castles occupy a steep hill on the western side of the
Eurotas; but it has now recovered its supremacy amongst the towns of
Laconia. Argos, which is more ancient even than the city of Lacedæmon,
has likewise risen anew from its ruins; for the plain in which it lies,
though occasionally dried up, is of great natural fertility.
Strangers, however, who explore the countries of the Peloponnesus,
do not go in search of these newly risen cities, where a few stones
only remind them of the glories of the past, but are attracted by the
ancient monuments of art. In that respect Argolis is one of the richest
provinces of Greece. Near to Argos the seats of an amphitheatre are cut
into the steep flanks of the hill of Larissa. Between Argos and Nauplia
a small rock rises in the middle of the plain, which is surmounted
by the ancient Acropolis of Tiryns, the Cyclopean walls of which are
more than fifty feet in thickness. A few miles to the north of Argos
are the ruins of Mycenæ, the city of Agamemnon, where the celebrated
“Gate of Lions,” coarsely sculptured when Greek art first dawned,
and the vast vaults known as the Treasury of the Atrides, mainly
attract the attention of visitors. These vaults are amongst the oldest
and best-preserved antiquities of Greece. They exhibit most solid
workmanship, and one of the stones, which does duty as a lintel over
the entrance-gate, weighs no less than one hundred and sixty-nine tons.
At Epidaurus, in Argolis, on the shores of the Gulf of Ægina, and close
to the most famous temple of Æsculapius, we still meet with a theatre
which has suffered less from time than any other throughout Greece.
Shrubs, interspersed with small trees, surround it; but we can still
trace its fifty-four rows of white marble seats, capable of affording
accommodation to twelve thousand spectators. Amongst other famous ruins
of Argolis are the beautiful remains of a temple of Jupiter at Nemea,
and the seven Doric columns of Corinth, said to be the oldest in all
Greece. But the most beautiful edifice of the peninsula must be sought
for near Arcadian Phigalia, in the charming valley of the Neda. This is
the temple of Bassæ, erected by Ictinus in honour of Apollo Epicurius,
and its beauty is enhanced by the oaks and rocks which surround it.
Citadels, however, are the buildings we most frequently meet with;
and many a fortified place, with its walls and acropolis, yet
exists as in the days of ancient Greece. The walls of Phigalia and
Messenia still have their ancient towers, gates, and redoubts. Other
fortifications were utilised by the Crusaders, Venetians, or Turks,
and by them furnished with crenellated walls and keeps, which add
another picturesque feature to the landscape. One of these ancient {69}
fortresses, transformed during the Middle Ages, rises at the very
gates of the Peloponnesus—namely, the citadel of Corinth, the strongest
and most commanding of all.
* * * * *
Several of the islands of the Ægean Sea must be looked upon as natural
dependencies of the Peloponnesus, to which submarine ledges or shoals
attach them.
The islands along the coast of Argolis, which are inhabited by Albanian
seamen, who were amongst the foremost to fight the Turk during the
struggle for Hellenic independence, have lost much of their former
commercial importance. Poros, a small Albanian town on a volcanic
island of the same name, which the revolted people chose for their
capital, is, however, still a bustling place, for it has an excellent
harbour, and the Greek Government has made it the principal naval
station of the kingdom. Hydra, on the other hand, and the small
island of Spezzia, next to it, have lost their former importance.
They are both rocky islands, without arable soil, trees, or water,
and yet they formerly supported a population of fifty thousand souls.
About 1730 a colony of Albanians, weary of the exactions of some
Turkish pasha on the mainland, fled to the island of Hydra. They
were left in peace there, for they agreed to pay a trifling tribute.
Their commerce—leavened, to be sure, with a little piracy—assumed
large dimensions, and immediately before the war of independence the
Albanians of Hydra owned nearly 400 vessels of 100 to 200 tons each,
and they were able to send over 200 vessels, armed with 200 guns,
against the Turks. By engaging so enthusiastically in this struggle
for liberty, the Hydriotes, without suspecting it, wrought their own
ruin. No sooner was the cause of Greece triumphant than the commerce of
Hydra was transferred to Syra and the Piræus, which are more favourably
situated.