LXIII. THE SPRINGS OF THE LADON.—The Ladon of Arcadia, the greatest of

the tributaries of the Alpheus, rises in the middle of a valley on the

western side of Mount Saita, the ancient Oryxis. The valley is of some

breadth, and its bottom is furrowed on both sides by the dry beds of two

watercourses. Between the two watercourses there rises in the midst of

the valley a low hill of reddish rock, which ends on the south in a

precipitous face some hundred and fifty feet high. At the foot of this

red precipitous rock lies a large still pool of opaque dark-blue water,

fringed by sharp-pointed grasses and other water plants, while a few

stunted willows, holly-oaks, and plane-trees grow among the rocks beside

it. This pool is the source of the Ladon, which rushes from it in a

brawling impetuous stream of dark-blue water, its margin fringed with

willows. The water enters the pool, not from the rocks above, but from a

deep chasm in the earth which is only visible when, as sometimes

happens, the source dries up. A peasant, who was beside the pool when I

visited it in 1895, told my dragoman that three years before, after a

violent earthquake, the water ceased to flow for three hours, and the

chasm in the bottom of the pool was exposed, and fish were seen lying on

the dry ground. After three hours the spring began to flow a little, and

three days later there was a loud explosion and the water burst forth in

immense volume. Mr. Philippson was informed on the spot of a like event

which had taken place in 1880. Similar sudden eruptions of water at the

source of the Ladon have been reported earlier in the present century

and in antiquity. The stoppage of the water and its abrupt reappearance

are doubtless due to the alternate obstruction and clearance of the

subterranean passages by which the Lake of Pheneus is drained. For the

ancients were right in supposing that the water which rises at the

source of the Ladon comes directly underground from the Lake of Pheneus.

It has the same deep greenish-blue tinge as the water of the lake, and

is flat and tepid to the taste like standing water, not cold and fresh

like the water of a mountain spring. The source is distant only about

five miles from the lake, from which it is divided by the high range of

Mount Saita. The hills on the opposite or western side of the valley are

much lower; their slopes of reddish rock are partly covered with low

green bushes. Numbers of peasant women may be seen washing clothes

beside the pool in the usual Greek fashion; after soaking the clothes in

water they beat them with a sort of broad paddle in a wooden trough.

LXIV. THE GORGE OF THE LADON.—The path from the village of Stretzova

leads across bushy and rocky slopes, and then through bare stony fields

to the northern bank of the river. Indian corn is here grown in the

valley of the Ladon; wooded mountains rise from its southern bank, and

higher mountains of imposing contour close the view on the south-east.

At the point where we strike the river two springs gush from under rocks

and form a pool shaded by fine spreading plane-trees, whence a stream

flows into the Ladon after a course of a few yards. From this point to

the bridge of Spathari, a ride of about five hours, the scenery is

unsurpassed in Greece. The river here forces its way along the bottom of

a profound gorge hemmed in by high wooded mountains, which in places

descend in immense precipices, feathered with trees and bushes in their

crevices, to the brink of the rapid stream. The narrow path runs high up

on the right or northern side of the gorge, sometimes overhung by

beetling crags, and affording views, now grand now almost appalling,

down into the depths of the tremendous gorge, and across it to the high

wooded slopes or precipices on the farther side.

The gorge may be said to be divided in two at the village of Divritsa,

where the mountains recede a little from the river, and the scenery of

the two parts is somewhat different. In the first half, ending a little

above the village of Divritsa, the river sweeps round the base of high

steep mountains, which on the south side of the gorge are wooded to

their summits and broken every now and then by a profound glen, the

sides of which are also wooded from top to bottom. The mountains on the

north side are in general not wooded, but bare or overgrown with bushes.

This would detract from the beauty of the scenery if the path ran on the

south side of the gorge, from which the barer slopes of the mountains on

the north would be visible. As it is, the path runs along the steep

sides of the mountains on the north side, and the eye rests continually

on the mighty wall of verdure that rises on the other side of the river.

I had the good fortune to traverse this wonderful gorge on a bright

October day, when the beautiful woods were just touched here and there

with the first tints of autumn. Far below the river was seen and heard

rushing along, now as a smooth swirling stream of opaque green water

with a murmurous sound, now tumbling, with a mighty roar, down great

rocks and boulders in sheets of greenish-white foam.

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.

LXXXVI. THE CLEFT WAY.—About five miles to the south-west of Daulis the

road, after skirting the eastern foot of the mighty mass of Mount

Parnassus, turns sharply to the west and begins to ascend through the

long, narrow, and profound valley which leads to Delphi. Just at the

point where the road turns westward and before it begins the long ascent

it is joined from the south-east by the direct road from Lebadea and

Thebes. The meeting of the three roads—the road from Daulis, the road

from Delphi, and the road from Thebes—is the Cleft Way or Triple Road,

the scene of the legendary murder of Laius by Oedipus. It is now known

as the Cross Road of Megas, after the gallant Johannes Megas, who met

his death here in July 1856, while exterminating a band of brigands with

a small troop of soldiers. His monument, on a rock at the meeting of the

roads, bears a few verses in modern Greek. Apart from any legendary

associations the scene is one of the wildest and grandest in Greece,

recalling in its general features, though on a vastly greater scale, the

mouth of Glencoe. On both sides of the valley the mountains tower

abruptly in huge precipices; the cliffs of Parnassus on the northern

side of the valley are truly sublime. Not a trace of human habitation is

to be seen. All is desolation and silence. A more fitting spot could

hardly be found for the scene of a memorable tragedy.

LXXXVII. DELPHI.—The site of Delphi, till lately occupied by the modern

village of Kastri, is in the highest degree striking and impressive. The

city lay at the southern foot of the tremendous cliffs of Parnassus,

which form a sheer wall of rock, about eight hundred feet high. Over

these frightful precipices Philomelus drove some of the defeated

Locrians. Just at the angle where this vast wall of rock bends round

towards the south it is rent from top to bottom by a deep and gloomy

gorge, some twenty feet wide, where there is a fine echo. Facing each

other across this narrow chasm rise two stupendous cliffs, whose peaked

summits tower considerably above the rest of the line of cliffs. They

are nearly perpendicular in front, and perfectly so where they fall

sheer down into the gorge. The eastern of the two cliffs was called

Hyampia in antiquity; from its top Aesop is said to have been hurled by

the Delphians. It has been suggested, though perhaps without sufficient

reason, that when the later writers of antiquity, especially the Roman

poets, speak of the two summits of Parnassus, they are really referring

to these two cliffs. In point of fact the cliffs are far indeed from

being near the summit of Parnassus; but seen from Delphi they completely

hide the higher slopes of the mountain. In winter or wet weather a

torrent comes foaming down the gorge in a cascade about two hundred feet

high, bringing down the water from the higher slopes of the mountain. At

the mouth of the gorge, under the eastern cliff, is the rock-cut basin

of the perennial Castalian spring, a few paces above the highway. The

water from the spring joins the stream from the gorge, which, after

passing over the road, plunges into a deep rocky lyn or glen, which it

has scooped out for itself in the steep side of the mountain. Down this

glen the stream descends to join the Plistus, which flows along the

bottom of the Delphic valley from east to west, at a great depth below

the town.

From the cliffs at the back of Delphi the ground slopes away so steeply

to the bed of the Plistus that it is only by means of a succession of

artificial terraces, rising in tiers above each other, that the soil can

be cultivated and made fit for habitation. There are about thirty of

these terraces, supported by stone walls, mostly of polygonal masonry.

The sanctuary of Apollo occupies only the five or six highest terraces

at the foot of the cliffs, on the western side of the Castalian gorge.

So high does it stand above the bottom of the valley that twenty minutes

are needed to descend the steep terraced slope to the bed of the

Plistus. Corn is grown on the terraces below the sanctuary; and the

slopes on the eastern side of the Castalian gorge are wooded with fine

olive and mulberry trees. Across the valley, on the southern side of the

Plistus, rise the bare precipitous cliffs of Mount Cirphis, capped with

fir-woods. From the western end of the precipices which rise at the back

of Delphi a high rocky ridge projects southward toward the bed of the

Plistus. This ridge closes the valley of Delphi on the west, shutting

out all view of the Crisaean plain and the gulf of Corinth, though a

glimpse of the waters of the gulf is obtained from the stadium, the

highest part of Delphi.

Thus, enclosed by a rocky ridge on the west, by tremendous precipices on

the north and east, and faced on the south, across the valley of the

Plistus, by the lower but still precipitous sides of Mount Cirphis,

Delphi lay in a secluded mountain valley; and rising on terraces in a

semicircular shape, it resembled an immense theatre, to which it has

justly been compared by ancient and modern writers. The whole scene is

one of stern and awful majesty, well fitted to be the seat of a great

religious capital. In respect of natural scenery no contrast could well

be more striking than that between the two great religious capitals of

ancient Greece, Delphi and Olympia—Delphi clinging to the rugged side of

barren mountains, with frowning precipices above and a profound glen

below; Olympia stretched out on the level margin of a river that winds

in stately curves among the corn-fields and vineyards of a smiling

valley set between soft wooded hills.

LXXXVIII. AESCHINES AT DELPHI.—That the place of assembly of the

Amphictyonic Council at Delphi must have been situated near the chapel

of St. Elias is shown by a passage of Aeschines, in which he says that

the Cirrhaean plain lay spread beneath and in full view of the

meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council. The orator himself, he tells

us, was one of the Athenian representatives at a meeting of the Council.

Addressing it he pointed to the smiling and peaceful plain stretched at

their feet, with its olive-groves and corn-fields, its cottages and

potteries, and in the distance the shining waters of the gulf, with the

port-town visible beside it. “You see,” he cried, “yonder plain tilled

by the men of Amphissa and the potteries and cottages they have built.

You see with your eyes the fortifications of the cursed and execrated

port. You know for yourselves that these men levy tolls and take money

from the sacred harbour.” He then reminded his hearers of the oath sworn

by their ancestors that this fair plain should lie a wilderness for

ever. His words were received with a tumult of applause, and next day at

dawn the men of Delphi, armed with shovels and mattocks, marched down

into the plain, razed the fortifications of the port to the ground, and

gave the houses to the flames. It is refreshing to know that on their

way back they were hotly pursued by the Amphissaeans in arms and had to

run for their lives. This was the beginning of the chain of events which

in a few months more brought Philip at the head of a Macedonian army

into Greece and ended in the overthrow of Greek freedom at Chaeronea.

The view described by the orator, whose ill-omened eloquence brought all

these miseries and disasters in its train, is to be obtained, not from

the platform on which the chapel of St. Elias stands, but from a point a

little way to the south-west of it, where the traveller coming from

Delphi reaches the end of the high ridge that shuts in the valley of

Delphi on the west. Here as he turns the corner the whole Crisaean

plain, now covered with luxuriant olive-woods, comes suddenly into

sight. The scene is again as rich and peaceful as it was before

Aeschines raised his voice, like the scream of some foul bird snuffing

the carrion afar off, and turned it into a desert. We may suppose either

that in his time the Amphictyonic Council met at this point, or, what is

far likelier, that the orator’s description of that day’s doings is more

graphic than correct.

LXXXIX. THE PYTHIAN TUNE.—Sacadas was said to be the first who played

the Pythian air on the flute at Delphi. The tune has been described for

us by Pollux and Strabo. The melody, intended to represent musically

Apollo’s combat with the dragon, was played by a single flute, but now

and then the trumpets and fifes struck in. First Apollo was heard

preparing for the fight and choosing his ground. Then followed the

challenge to the dragon, then the battle, indicated by an iambic

measure. Here probably the music imitated the twanging of the silver bow

and the swish of the arrows as they sped to their mark. It is expressly

said that the gnashing of the monster’s teeth was heard, as he ground

them together in his agony. Here the trumpets came in, not in long-drawn

winding bouts, but in short single blasts, one perhaps for each

arrow-shot, every flourish marking a hit. The shrill wailing notes of

the fifes mimicked the dragon’s dying screams. Then the flute broke into

a light lilting air, beating time to the triumphal measure trodden by

the victorious god.

XC. THE LACEDAEMONIAN TROPHY AT DELPHI.—The many statues of gods,

admirals, and generals which formed the proud trophy of the

Lacedaemonians at Delphi appear to have stood like soldiers in stiff

formal rows at different heights on the steps of the pedestal, scowling

at the Athenian trophy which probably faced them on the opposite side of

the road.

This Lacedaemonian trophy, commemorative of the great naval victory of

Aegospotami, is repeatedly referred to by Plutarch. He says that from

the spoils of the battle Lysander set up bronze statues of himself and

of all the admirals, together with golden stars of the Dioscuri; and

elsewhere he tells us that in his time these old bronze statues of the

admirals were covered with a beautiful blue patina, the growth of ages,

so that people spoke of them as being true blue salts. Cicero specially

mentions the statue of Lysander at Delphi. The reason for dedicating

golden stars of the Dioscuri would seem to have been that Castor and

Pollux were said to have appeared on the side of the Lacedaemonians at

the battle of Aegospotami, just as they appeared on the Roman side at

the battle of Lake Regillus. It is related that after the battle of

Leuctra, which gave the death-blow to Spartan prestige and power, the

golden stars disappeared from Delphi and were never seen again, as if in

token that the star of Sparta’s fortunes had set. The dedication of the

stars in memory of the appearance of the Dioscuri is an interesting

confirmation of the view that the twins Castor and Pollux were the

Morning and Evening Star, the equivalents of the Sanscrit Aśvins. It is

notable that in Roman history the appearances of the Dioscuri as

messengers of victory seem always to have taken place in the same season

of the year, namely at the summer solstice or the first full moon after

it. By a curious coincidence the old chronicler Holinshed reports that

on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn, which was also Midsummer Eve,

two men appeared at Glastonbury saying they were going to help the Scots

in a battle next day; and a single knight in bright armour rode into

Aberdeen on the afternoon of the battle and was seen to pass over into

the Orkneys in the evening.[9]

-----

Footnote 9:

For this modern instance I have to thank my friend Mr. R. A. Neil, of

Pembroke College.

-----

XCI. THE GODS IN BATTLE.—Apollo,

Artemis, and Athena are said to have appeared in person fighting for the

Greeks against the Gauls. The heroes Theseus and Echetlus were seen

combating on the Greek side at Marathon. In the great sea-fight of

Salamis phantoms of armed men were perceived stretching out their hands

from Aegina to protect the Greek ships; they were believed to be the

Aeacids, who had been prayed to for help before the battle. The spirit

of Aristomenes was said to have fought for the Thebans against his old

foes the Spartans at Leuctra. The Mantineans fancied they saw Poseidon

warring on their side against the Lacedaemonians. In a battle between

the people of Crotona and the people of Locri, two unknown youths, of

wondrous stature, in strange armour, clad in scarlet and riding white

horses, were seen fighting on the wings of the Locrian army; after the

battle they disappeared. These two youths were probably regarded as

Castor and Pollux, whose reported appearance at the battle of the Lake

Regillus, charging with lances in rest at the head of the Roman cavalry,

is well known. It is said that when Alaric approached Athens he beheld

Athena in full armour patrolling the walls, and Achilles guarding them

with the same fiery valour with which he had avenged the death of

Patroclus; terrified by the vision, the fierce barbarian gave up all

thought of attacking the city. Similarly in the battles between the

Spaniards and the Indians of Mexico it is affirmed by grave historians

that St. James, the patron Saint of Spain, was seen tilting on his

milk-white steed at the head of the Christian chivalry. In one of these

battles a lady robed in white, supposed to be the Virgin, was visible by

the side of St. James, throwing dust in the eyes of the infidels. The

stout old chronicler Bernal Diaz, who fought in these wars, confesses

that for his sins he was not found worthy to behold the glorious

Apostle.[10]

-----

Footnote 10:

For these Spanish parallels I am indebted to my lamented friend the

late W. Robertson Smith. Niebuhr had previously made exactly the same

comparison.

-----

XCII. THE SIBYL’S WISH.—The author of the _Exhortation to the Greeks_

was shown at Cumae a bronze bottle in which the remains of the Sibyl

were said to be preserved. Trimalchio in Petronius says: “At Cumae I saw

with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the children said

to her, ‘Sibyl, what do you wish?’ she used to answer, 'I wish to die.'”

Ampelius tells us that the Sibyl was said to be shut up in an iron cage

which hung from a pillar in an ancient temple of Hercules at Argyrus. It

has been pointed out by Dr. M. R. James that parallels to the story of

the Sibyl’s wish are to be found in German folk-tales. One of these

tales runs as follows: “Once upon a time there was a girl in London who

wished to live for ever, so they say:

‘London, London is a fine town.

A maiden prayed to live for ever.’

And still she lives and hangs in a basket in a church, and every St.

John’s Day about noon she eats a roll of bread.” Another story tells of

a lady who resided at Danzig and was so rich and so blest with all that

life can give that she wished to live always. So when she came to her

latter end, she did not really die but only looked like dead, and very

soon they found her in a hollow of a pillar in the church, half standing

and half sitting, motionless. She stirred never a limb, but they saw

quite plainly that she was alive, and she sits there down to this

blessed day. Every New Year’s Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel

of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on.

Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above

the eternal joys of heaven. A third story relates how a noble damsel

cherished the same foolish wish for immortality. So they put her in a

basket and hung her up in a church, and there she hangs and never dies,

though many, many a year has come and gone since they put her there. But

every year on a certain day they give her a roll and she eats it and

cries out “For ever! for ever! for ever!” And when she has so cried she

falls silent again till the same time next year, and so it will go on

for ever and for ever. A fourth story, taken down, near Oldenburg in

Holstein, tells of a jolly dame that ate and drank and lived right

merrily and had all that heart could desire, and she wished to live

always. For the first hundred years all went well, but after that she

began to shrink and shrivel up till at last she could neither walk nor

stand nor eat nor drink. But die she could not. At first they fed her as

if she were a little child, but when she grew smaller and smaller they

put her in a glass bottle and hung her up in the church. And there she

still hangs, in the church of St. Mary at Lübeck. She is as small as a

mouse, but once a year she stirs.

XCIII. ORPHEUS IN HELL.—Why in his picture of hell the painter

Polygnotus should have depicted Orpheus touching the branches of a

willow-tree is not clear. Pausanias has himself rightly pointed out that

willows grew in the grove of Proserpine, but that does not suffice to

explain the gesture of Orpheus in the picture. Mr. J. Six ingeniously

suggests that when Orpheus went to hell to fetch the soul of his lost

Eurydice he may have carried in his hand a willow-branch, just as Aeneas

carried the Golden Bough, to serve as a passport or ‘open Sesame’ to

unlock the gates of Death to a living man, and that in memory of this

former deed the painter may have depicted the bard touching the willow.

Virgil tells how at sight of the Golden Bough, “not seen for long,” the

surly Charon turned his crazy bark to shore and received Aeneas on

board. Mr. Six surmises that here the words “not seen for long” refer to

the time when Orpheus, like Aeneas, had passed the ferry with the Golden

Bough in his hand. If he is right, Polygnotus took a different view of

that mystic branch from Virgil, who certainly regarded it as a glorified

mistletoe. Professor C. Robert accepts Mr. Six’s explanation. Formerly

he held that Pausanias had misinterpreted the gesture of Orpheus. The

bard, on Professor Robert’s earlier view, was depicted merely holding

the lyre with one hand and playing on it with the other, and a branch of

the willow under which he sat drooped down and touched the hand that

swept the strings. This view, which Professor Robert has wisely

abandoned, is open to several objections. It substitutes a commonplace

gesture, which Pausanias could hardly have so grossly mistaken, for a

remarkable one which, however it is to be explained, had clearly struck

Pausanias as unusual and significant. Again, if Orpheus had been

depicted playing, would not some one have been represented listening?

But, so far as appears from Pausanias’s description, not a soul was

paying any heed to the magic strains of the great minstrel. It seems

better, therefore, to suppose that, like blind Thamyris, he sat sad and

silent, dreaming of life in the bright world, of love and music.

XCIV. THE ACHERON.—The Acheron is the river now known as the Suliotiko

or Phanariotiko which comes down from the mountains of the once famous

Suli and winds, a sluggish, turbid, and weedy stream, through the wide

plain of Phanari, traversing some swamps or meres before it reaches the

sea. These swamps, which extend nearly to the sea, and never dry up

though they shrink in summer, are the Acherusian lake. The plain, where

it is not too marshy, is covered with fields of maize and rice and

meadows where herds of buffaloes browse. A few plane-trees and low

tamarisks fringe the margin of the winding river. Otherwise the plain is

mostly treeless. On its eastern side rise, like a huge grey wall, the

wild and barren mountains of Suli.

Before entering the plain, on its passage from these rugged highlands,

the Acheron flows through a profound and gloomy gorge, one of the

darkest and deepest of the glens of Greece. On either side precipices

rise sheer from the water’s edge to a height of hundreds of feet, their

ledges and crannies tufted with dwarf oaks and shrubs. Higher up, where

the sides of the glen recede from the perpendicular, the mountains rise

to a height of over three thousand feet, the black pine-woods which

cling to their precipitous sides adding to the sombre magnificence of

the scene. A precarious footpath leads along a perilous ledge high up on

the mountain-side, from which the traveller gazes down into the depths

of the tremendous ravine, where the deep and rapid river may be seen

rushing and foaming along, often plunging in a cascade into a dark

abyss, but so far below him that even the roar of the waterfall is lost

in mid-air before it can reach his ear.

At the point where the river emerges from the defile into the plain,

there are a few cottages with some ruins of a church and fortress on the

right bank. The place is called Glyky. The church seems to have occupied

the site of an ancient temple; some fragments of granite columns and

pieces of a white marble cornice, adorned with a pattern of acanthus

leaves, may be seen lying about. Here, perhaps, was the seat of that

Oracle of the Dead where the envoys of Periander, tyrant of Corinth,

summoned up the ghost of his murdered wife Melissa, and where Orpheus

vainly sought to bring back his lost Eurydice from the world of shades.

XCV. A RIDE ACROSS PARNASSUS.—We left the new village of Delphi, which

stands a little to the south-west of the ancient sanctuary, shortly

after eight o’clock, and at once struck up the mountain-side at the back

of the village. The path for a good way is the same as that to the

Corycian cave. It climbs the bare rocky face of the mountain in a series

of zigzags, from which as we rose higher and higher a wide prospect

opened up behind us to the Gulf of Corinth and the distant mountains of

Peloponnese. On reaching the top of this long and steep declivity we

found ourselves on the edge of an expanse of comparatively level though

broken ground, sparsely wooded with pines, beyond which soared the upper

slopes of Parnassus, its summit lightly capped with snow. The high

plateau on which we now stood is bounded on the north by an outlying

spur of Parnassus, clothed with pine-forest, in the southern face of

which is the Corycian cave. Instead of crossing the tableland in the

direction of the cave, we skirted its south-western corner, keeping the

wooded mountain on our right. The path continued to wind for hours along

grey rocky slopes where pines grew more or less thickly. On either hand

rose sombre mountains of the same general character—grey and rocky with

patches of pine-forest on their sides. Now and then a little moss

relieved with its verdure the barrenness of the rocks, and a stony glade

through which we passed was speckled with pale purple crocuses. On these

heights the air felt chilly, for the season was late October, and a

little snow—the first of autumn—had fallen in the night, just touching

with white the peaks of Parnassus and the high Locrian mountains in the

west. The morning had been bright when we left Delphi, but as the day

wore on the sky became overcast, its cold and lowering aspect

harmonising well with the wild and desolate scenery through which we

rode. The jingling of the mule-bells and the cries of the muleteers were

almost the only sounds that broke the silence, though once in the forest

to the right we heard the clapper-like note of a pelican, and once in an

open glade we passed some woodmen hewing pine-logs. In time, the path

beginning to descend, the rocks gave place to earthy slopes; a little

pale thin grass and some withered ferns grew in the glades; the sun

shone out between the clouds, and as we descended into the warmer

lowlands it seemed as if we were pursuing the departing summer.

In about four hours from Delphi high purple mountains, sunlit and

flecked with cloud-shadows, appeared in the north through and above the

pine-forest. Farther down the forest grew thin and then disappeared from

the stony bottom of the valley, though the upper slopes of the mountains

on either side were still wrapped in their dark mantle of pines. It was

near one o’clock when we reached Ano-Agoriani, a village nestling among

trees in a hollow of the mountains and traversed by a murmuring brook.

After a halt of about an hour we quitted the village and descended into

the deep bed of the stream; then ascending steeply its western bank we

pursued our way along the rocky mountain-side high above the glen. In

three-quarters of an hour we came in sight of the broad valley of the

Cephisus lying stretched below us and backed by mountains on the north.

By steep, rocky, winding paths we now descended into the valley, and at

a quarter to four reached Kato-Agoriani. The village stands just at the

foot of Parnassus. About a mile to the east the grey ruined walls and

towers of Lilaea climb a steep and rugged hill-side—the last fall of

Parnassus to the plain. The situation of the place at the northern foot

of the mountain is such that it can receive very little sun at any time

of the year, which, though an advantage in the torrid heat of a Greek

summer, must render the winter climate severe. As we rode downwards to

Kato-Agoriani the sun set behind the mountains at our back soon after

three o’clock, but it was not till nearly two hours afterwards that his

light faded from the hills on the opposite or northern side of the

valley. This may illustrate the remarks of Pausanias as to the climate

of Lilaea.

XCVI. PERICLES.—Pericles, a great Athenian statesman, and one of the

most remarkable men of antiquity, was the son of Xanthippus, who

commanded the Greeks at the battle of Mycale. By his mother Agariste,

niece of Clisthenes, who reformed the democracy at Athens after the

expulsion of the Pisistratidae, he was connected both with the old

princely line of Sicyon and with the great but unfortunate house of the

Alcmaeonidae. The date of his birth is unknown, but his youth must have

fallen in the stirring times of the great Persian war. From his

friendship with the poet Anacreon, his father would seem to have been a

man of taste, and as he stood in relations of hospitality to the Spartan

kings his house was no doubt a political as well as literary centre.

Pericles received the best education which the age could supply. For

masters he had Pythoclides and the distinguished musician Damon, who

infused into his music lessons a tincture of philosophy, whereby he

incurred the suspicions of the vulgar, and received the honour of

ostracism. Pericles listened also to the subtle dialectics of the

Eleatic Zeno. But the man who swayed him most deeply and permanently was

the philosopher Anaxagoras. The influence of the speculative genius and

dignified and gentle character of the philosopher who resigned his

property that he might turn his thoughts more steadily to heaven, which

he called his home, and who begged as his last honour that the

school-children might have a holiday on the day he died, can be traced

alike in the intellectual breadth and the elevated moral tone of the

pupil, in his superiority to vulgar superstitions, and in the unruffled

serenity which he preserved throughout the storms of political life. It

was probably the grand manner of Pericles even more than his eloquence

that won him the surname of Olympian Zeus.[11]

-----

Footnote 11:

It is said that once, when Pericles was transacting business in

public, a low fellow railed at him all day long, and at nightfall

dogged him to his house, reviling him in the foulest language.

Pericles took no notice of him till he reached his own door, when he

bade one of the servants take a torch and light the man home.

-----

In his youth he distinguished himself in the field, but eschewed

politics, fearing, it is said, the suspicions which might be excited in

the populace not only by his wealth, high birth, and powerful friends,

but by the striking resemblance to the tyrant Pisistratus which old men

traced in his personal appearance, musical voice, and flowing speech.

But when the banishment of Themistocles and the death of Aristides had

somewhat cleared the political stage, Pericles came forward as the

champion of the democratic or progressive party, in opposition to Cimon,

the leader of the aristocratic or conservative party. The two leaders

differed hardly less than their policies. Both indeed were men of

aristocratic birth and temper, honourable, brave, and generous, faithful

and laborious in the service of Athens. But Cimon was a true sailor,

blunt, jovial, free-handed, who sang a capital song, and was always

equally ready to drink or fight, to whose artless mind (he was innocent

of even a smattering of letters[12]) the barrack-room life of the

barbarous Spartans seemed the type of human perfectibility, and whose

simple programme was summed up in the maxim “fight the Persians.”

Naturally the new ideas of political progress and intellectual

development had no place in his honest head; naturally he was a sturdy

supporter of the good old times of which, to the popular mind, he was

the best embodiment. Pericles, grave, studious, reserved, was himself

penetrated by those ideas of progress and culture which he undertook to

convert into political and social realities; philosophy was his

recreation; during the whole course of his political career he never

accepted but once an invitation to dinner, and he was never to be seen

walking except between his house and the popular assembly and

senate-house. He husbanded his patrimony and regulated his domestic

affairs with rigid economy that he might escape both the temptation and

the suspicion of enriching himself at the public expense.

-----

Footnote 12:

It is amusing to read in Plutarch of this stout old salt sitting in

judgment on the respective merits of Aeschylus and Sophocles.

-----

The steps by which he rose to the commanding position which he occupied

in later life cannot be traced with certainty. According to Plutarch,

Pericles, whose fortune did not allow him to imitate the profuse

hospitality by which Cimon endeared himself to the people, sought to

outbid him by a lavish distribution of the public moneys among the

poorer classes; this device was suggested to him by Damonides, says

Plutarch on the authority of Aristotle. We may doubt the motive alleged

by Plutarch, but we cannot doubt the fact that Pericles did extend, if

not originate, the practice of distributing large sums among the

citizens either as gratuities or as payment for services rendered—a

practice which afterwards attained most mischievous proportions.

According to Plato, it was a common saying that Pericles, by the system

of payments which he introduced, had corrupted the Athenians, rendering

them idle, cowardly, talkative, and avaricious. It was Pericles who

introduced the payment of jurymen, and, as there were six thousand of

them told off annually for duty, of whom a great part sat daily, the

disbursement from the treasury was great, while the poor and idle were

encouraged to live at the public expense. But the payment for attendance

on the public assembly or parliament (of which all citizens of mature

age were members), though probably suggested by the payment of the

jurymen, was not introduced by Pericles, and indeed does not seem to

have existed during his lifetime. It was he who instituted the payment

of the citizens for military service—a measure but for which the

Athenians would probably not have prolonged the Peloponnesian War as

they did, and in particular would not have been so ready to embark on

the fatal Sicilian expedition.

There was more justification, perhaps, for the practice, originated by

Pericles, of supplying the poorer citizens from the public treasury with

the price of admission to the theatre. For in an age when the study of

the poets formed a chief element of education, and when the great dramas

of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were being put on the stage in

all their freshness, such a measure might almost be regarded as a state

provision for the education of the citizens. It was part of the policy

of Pericles at once to educate and delight the people by numerous and

splendid festivals, processions, and shows. But the good was mixed with

seeds of evil, which took root and spread, till, in the days of

Demosthenes, the money which should have been spent in fighting the

enemies of Athens was squandered in spectacles and pageants. The

Spectacular Fund or _Theorikon_ has been called the cancer of Athens.

Vast sums were further spent by Pericles in adorning the city with those

buildings, which even in their ruins are the wonder of the world.

Amongst these were the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgin, and the

Erechtheum, both on the acropolis, the former completed in 438 B.C., the

latter left unfinished at Pericles’s death; the magnificent Propylaea or

vestibule to the acropolis, built between 437 and 432; and the Odeum or

music-hall, on the south-eastern slope of the acropolis, completed

before 444. The musical contests instituted by Pericles, and for which

he himself laid down the rules and acted as judge, took place in the

Odeum. Many artists and architects were entrusted with the execution of

these great works, but under the direction of the mastermind of Phidias,

sculptor, architect, painter—the Michelangelo of antiquity.

But Pericles fortified as well as beautified Athens. It had been the

policy of Themistocles to make her primarily a naval and commercial

power, and to do so he strengthened the marine, and gave to the city as

far as possible the advantages of an insular situation by means of

fortifications, which rendered both it and its port impregnable on the

land side. By thus basing the Athenian state on commerce instead of,

like Solon, on agriculture, he at the same time transferred the

political predominance to the democratic or progressive party, which is

as naturally recruited from a commercial as a conservative or

aristocratic party is from an agricultural population. This policy was

fully accepted and carried out by Pericles. It was in his time and

probably by his advice that the Long Walls were built, which, connecting

Athens with Piraeus, converted the capital and its seaport into one vast

fortress. Further, in order to train the Athenians in seamanship, he

kept a fleet of sixty ships at sea eight months out of every year.

The expenses entailed by these great schemes were chiefly defrayed by

the annual tribute, which the confederates of Athens originally

furnished for the purpose of waging war against Persia, but which

Athens, as head of the league, subsequently applied to her own purposes.

If, as seems likely, the transference of the treasury of the league from

Delos to Athens, which sealed the conversion of the Athenian headship

into an empire, took place between 460 and 454, the step was probably

suggested or supported by Pericles, and at all events he managed the

fund after its transference. But, though the diversion of the fund from

its original purpose probably did not begin with Pericles, yet, once

established, he maintained it unwaveringly. The Athenians, he held,

fulfilled the trust committed to them by defending their allies against

all comers, and the tribute was their wages, which it was their right

and privilege to expend in works which by employing labour and

stimulating commerce were a present benefit, and by their beauty would

be “a joy for ever.” That Athens ruled by force, that her empire was in

fact a tyranny, he fully admitted, but he justified that tyranny by the

high and glorious ends which it subserved.

The rise of Pericles to power, though it cannot be followed step by

step, has an obvious and sufficient explanation in his combined wisdom

and eloquence. Plato traces his eloquence largely to the influence of

Anaxagoras; intercourse with that philosopher, he says, filled the mind

of Pericles with lofty speculations and a true conception of the nature

of intelligence, and hence his oratory possessed the intellectual

grandeur and artistic finish characteristic of the highest eloquence.

The range and compass of his rhetoric were wonderful, extending from the

most winning persuasion to the most overwhelming denunciation. The comic

poets of the day, in general very unfriendly to him, speak with

admiration of his oratory: “greatest of Grecian tongues,” says Cratinus;

“persuasion sat on his lips, such was his charm,” and “he alone of the

orators left his sting in his hearers,” says Eupolis; “he lightened, he

thundered,” says Aristophanes. His speeches were prepared with

conscientious care; before rising to speak he used to pray that no

inappropriate word might fall from his lips. He left no written

speeches, but the few sayings of his which have come down to us reveal a

passionate imagination such as breathes in the fragments of Sappho.

Thus, in speaking of those who had died in war, he said that the youth

had perished from the city like the spring from the year. He called the

hostile island of Aegina “the eyesore of the Piraeus,” and declared that

he saw war “lowering from Peloponnese.” Three of his speeches have been

reported by Thucydides, who may have heard them, but, though their

substance may be correctly recorded, in passing through the medium of

the historian’s dispassionate mind they have been shorn of the orator’s

imaginative glow, and in their cold iron logic are hardly to be

distinguished from the other speeches in Thucydides. An exception to

this is the speech which Thucydides reports as having been delivered by

Pericles over the slain in the first year of the Peloponnesian War. This

speech stands quite apart from the others; and as well in particular

touches (for example, in the saying that “the grave of great men is the

world”) as in its whole tenor we catch the ring of a great orator, such

as Thucydides with all his genius was not. It is probably a fairly close

report of the speech actually delivered by Pericles.

The first public appearance of Pericles of which we have record probably

fell about 463. When Cimon, on his return from the expedition to Thasos,

was tried on the utterly improbable charge of having been bribed by the

Macedonian king to betray the interests of Athens, Pericles was

appointed by the people to assist in conducting the prosecution; but,

more perhaps from a conviction of the innocence of the accused than, as

was said, in compliance with the entreaties of Cimon’s sister Elpinice,

he did not press the charge, and Cimon was acquitted. Not long

afterwards Pericles struck a blow at the conservative party by attacking

the Areopagus, a council composed of life-members who had worthily

discharged the duties of archon. The nature of the functions of the

Areopagus at this period is but little known; it seems to have had a

general supervision over the magistrates, the popular assembly, and the

citizens, and to have exercised this supervision in an eminently

conservative spirit. It sat also as a court for the trial of certain

crimes, especially murder. Pericles appears to have deprived it of

nearly all its functions, except its jurisdiction in cases of murder.

The poet Aeschylus composed his _Eumenides_ in vindication of the

ancient privileges of the Areopagus. Though Pericles was the real author

of the attack on the Areopagus, the measure was nominally carried by

Ephialtes. It was, indeed, part of Pericles’s policy to keep in the

background, and to act as far as possible through agents, reserving

himself for great occasions. Ephialtes, a friend of Pericles, and a

patriot of inflexible integrity, paid dearly for the distinction; he

fell by the hand of an assassin employed by the oligarchical party—an

event the more striking from the rarity of political assassinations in

Greek history. The popular party seems to have immediately followed up

its victory over the Areopagus by procuring the ostracism of Cimon,

which strengthened the hands of Pericles by removing his most

influential opponent. Pericles took part in the battle of Tanagra and

bore himself with desperate bravery. After the battle Cimon was recalled

from banishment, and it was Pericles who proposed and carried the decree

for his recall.

In 454 Pericles led an Athenian squadron from the port of Pegae on the

Corinthian Gulf, landed at Sicyon, and defeated the inhabitants who

ventured to oppose him; then, taking with him a body of Achaeans, he

crossed to Acarnania, and besieged the town of Oeniadae, but had to

return home without capturing it. Not long afterwards he conducted a

successful expedition to the Thracian Chersonese, where he not only

strengthened the Greek cities by the addition of a thousand Athenian

colonists, but also protected them against the incursions of the

barbarians by fortifying the isthmus from sea to sea. This was only one

of Pericles’s many measures for extending and strengthening the naval

empire of Athens. Colonies were established by him at various times in

Naxos, Andros, Oreus in Euboea, Brea in Macedonia, and Aegina. They

served the double purpose of establishing the Athenian power in distant

parts and of relieving the pressure of population at home by providing

the poorer citizens with lands. Somewhat different were the famous

colonies established under Pericles’s influence at Thurii in Italy, on

the site of the ancient Sybaris, and at Amphipolis on the Strymon, for,

though planted under the conduct of Athens, they were not exclusively

Athenian colonies, other Greeks being allowed, and even invited, to take

part in them. This was especially true of Thurii, which was in a manner

a national Greek colony, and never stood in a relation of subjection to

Athens. On one occasion Pericles sailed at the head of a splendid

armament to the Black Sea, where he helped and encouraged the Greek

cities and overawed the barbarians. At Sinope he left a force of ships

and men, under the gallant Lamachus, to co-operate with the inhabitants

against the tyrant Timesileus, and on the expulsion of the tyrant and

his party he carried a decree for the despatch of six hundred Athenian

colonists to Sinope, to occupy the lands vacated by the exiles. But,

with the sober wisdom which characterised him, Pericles never allowed

his plans to exceed the bounds of the possible; he was no political

dreamer like Alcibiades, to be dazzled with the vision of a universal

Athenian empire in Greece, Italy, and Africa, such as floated before the

minds of many in that and the following generations. The disastrous

expedition which the Athenians sent to Egypt, to support the rebel

Inarus against Persia, received no countenance from Pericles.

When Cimon died in 449 the aristocratical party sought to counterbalance

the power of Pericles by putting forward Thucydides, son of Melesias, as

the new head of the party. He seems to have been an honest patriot, but,

as the event proved, he was no match for Pericles. The Sacred War in 448

showed once more that Pericles knew how to defend the interests of

Athens. The Phocians, under the protection of Athens, had wrested the

control of the Delphic oracle from their enemies the Delphians. The

latter were friendly to Sparta, and accordingly the Spartans marched

into Phocis and restored the oracle to the Delphians. When they had

departed, Pericles, at the head of an Athenian force, placed the oracle

once more in the hands of the Phocians. As the seat of the great oracle,

Delphi was to ancient Greece much what Rome was to mediaeval Europe, and

the friendship of the god, or of his priests, was no small political

advantage.

When the Athenians despatched a small force under Tolmides to crush a

rising in Boeotia, they did so in spite of the warnings of Pericles.

These warnings were soon justified by the unfortunate battle of Coronea,

which deprived Athens at a blow of the continental dominion she had

acquired a few years before by the battle of Oenophyta. The island of

Euboea now revolted from Athens, and hardly had Pericles crossed over

with an army to reduce it when word came that the Megarians had

massacred the Athenian garrison, and, in league with Corinth, Sicyon,

and Epidaurus, were up in arms, while a Peloponnesian army under King

Plistoanax was on the point of invading Attica. Pericles recrossed in

haste to Attica. The Peloponnesians returned home, having advanced no

farther than Eleusis and Thria. It was said that Pericles had bribed

Cleandridas; certain it is that both Cleandridas and Plistoanax were

charged at Sparta with having misconducted the expedition and were found

guilty. Having saved Attica, Pericles returned to Euboea, reduced it to

subjection, expelled the Histiaeans, and settled the Athenian colony of

Oreus on their lands.

The thirty years’ peace, concluded soon afterwards with Sparta, was

probably in large measure the work of Pericles. The Athenians had

evacuated Boeotia immediately after the battle of Coronea, and by the

terms of the peace they now renounced their other continental

possessions—Achaia, Troezen, Nisaea, and Pegae. The peace left Pericles

at liberty to develop his schemes for promoting the internal welfare of

Athens, and for making it the centre of the intellectual and artistic

life of Greece. But first he had to settle accounts with his political

rival Thucydides; the struggle was soon decided by the ostracism of the

latter in 444. Thenceforward to the end of his life Pericles guided the

destinies of Athens alone; in the words of the historian Thucydides, the

government was in name a democracy, but in fact it was the rule of the

first citizen. The unparalleled ascendency which he wielded so long over

the fickle people is one of the best proofs of his extraordinary genius.

He owed it entirely to his personal character, and he used it for the

wisest and purest purposes. He was neither a vulgar demagogue to truckle

to the passions and caprices of the mob, nor a vulgar despot to cow it

by a hireling soldiery; he was a citizen among citizens, who obeyed him

because they trusted him, because they knew that in his hands the honour

and interests of Athens were safe. The period during which he ruled

Athens was the happiest and greatest in her history, as it was one of

the greatest ages of the world. Other ages have had their bright

particular stars; the age of Pericles is the Milky Way of great men. In

his lifetime there lived and worked at Athens the poets Aeschylus,

Sophocles, Euripides, Cratinus, Crates, the philosophers Anaxagoras,

Zeno, Protagoras, Socrates, the astronomer Meton, the painter

Polygnotus, and the sculptors Myron and Phidias. Contemporary with

these, though not resident at Athens, were Herodotus, the father of

history; Hippocrates, the father of medicine; Pindar, “the Theban

eagle”; the sculptor Polyclitus; and the philosophers Empedocles and

Democritus, the latter joint author with Leucippus of the atomic theory.

When Pericles died, other stars were rising or soon to rise above the

horizon—the historians Thucydides and Xenophon, the poets Eupolis and

Aristophanes, the orators Lysias and Isocrates, and the gifted but

unscrupulous Alcibiades. Plato was born shortly before or after the

death of Pericles. Of this brilliant circle Pericles was the centre. His

generous and richly-endowed nature responded to all that was beautiful

and noble not only in literature and art but in life, and it is with

justice that the age of Pericles has received its name from the man in

whom, more than in any other, all the various lines of Greek culture met

and were harmonised. In this perfect harmony and completeness of nature,

and in the classic calm which was the fruit of it, Pericles is the type

of the ideal spirit, not of his own age only, but of antiquity.

It seems to have been shortly after the ostracism of Thucydides that

Pericles conceived the plan of summoning a general congress of all the

Greek states to be held at Athens. Its objects were the restoration of

the temples which the Persians had destroyed, the fulfilment of the vows

made during the war, and the establishment of a general peace and the

security of the sea. Invitations were sent to the Greeks of Asia, the

islands from Lesbos to Rhodes, the Hellespont, Thrace, Byzantium,

Boeotia, Phocis, Peloponnese, Locris, Acarnania, Ambrada, and Thessaly.

The aim of Pericles seems to have been to draw the bonds of union closer

between the Greeks and to form a national federation. The beneficent

project was defeated by the short-sighted opposition of the Spartans.

But if in this scheme Pericles rose above the petty jealousies of Greek

politics, another of his measures proves that he shared the Greek

prejudices as to birth. At an early period of his career he enacted, or

perhaps only revived, a law confining the rights of Athenian citizenship

to persons both of whose parents were Athenian citizens. In the year

444, on the occasion of a scrutiny of the list of citizens, nearly five

thousand persons claiming to be citizens were proved to be aliens under

this law, and were ruthlessly sold into slavery.

The period of the thirty years’ peace was not one of uninterrupted

tranquillity for Athens. In 440 a war broke out between the island of

Samos (a leading member of the Athenian confederacy) and Miletus. Athens

sided with Miletus; Pericles sailed to Samos with an Athenian squadron,

and established a democracy in place of the previous oligarchy. After

his departure, however, some of the exiled oligarchs, in league with

Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardes, collected troops and, crossing over to

Samos, overpowered the popular party and revolted from Athens. In this

revolt they were joined by Byzantium. The situation was critical; the

example set by Samos and Byzantium might be followed by the other

confederates. Pericles discerned the danger and met it promptly. He led

a squadron of sixty ships against Samos; and, after detaching some

vessels to summon reinforcements from Chios and Lesbos, and others to

look out for the Phoenician fleet which the Persians were expected to

send to the help of Samos, he gave battle with forty-four ships to the

Samian fleet of seventy sail and defeated it. Having received

reinforcements of sixty-five ships, he landed in Samos and laid siege to

the capital. But when he sailed with sixty ships to meet the Phoenician

vessels which were reported to be near, the Samians sallied out with

their vessels, defeated the besiegers, and remained masters of the sea

for fourteen days. On his return, however, they were again blockaded and

were compelled to surrender, nine months after the outbreak of the war.

Though Pericles enjoyed the confidence of the people as a whole, his

policy and opinions could not fail to rouse the dislike and suspicions

of many, and in the last years of his life his enemies combined to

assail him. Two points in particular were singled out for attack, his

administration of the public moneys and his religious opinions. With

regard to the former, there must always be a certain number of persons

who will not believe that others can resist and despise a temptation

which to themselves would be irresistible; with regard to the latter,

the suspicion that Pericles held heretical views on the national

religion was doubtless well grounded. At first, however, his enemies did

not venture to impeach himself, but struck at him in the persons of his

friends. In 432 Phidias was accused of having appropriated some of the

gold destined for the adornment of the statue of Athena in the

Parthenon. But by the prudent advice of Pericles the golden ornaments

had been so attached that they could be taken off and weighed, and when

Pericles challenged the accusers to have recourse to this test the

accusation fell to the ground. More dangerous, for more true, was the

charge against Phidias of having introduced portraits of himself and

Pericles into the battle of the Amazons, depicted on the shield of the

goddess: the sculptor appeared as a bald old man lifting a stone, while

Pericles was represented as fighting an Amazon, his face partly

concealed by his raised spear. To the pious Athenians this seemed a

desecration of the temple, and accordingly Phidias was clapped into

gaol. Whether he died there or at Elis is uncertain.

Even more deeply was Pericles wounded by the accusation levelled at the

woman he loved. This was the famous Aspasia, a native of Miletus, whose

talents won for her general admiration at Athens. Pericles divorced his

wife, a lady of good birth who had borne him two sons, Xanthippus and

Paralus, but with whom he was unhappy, and attached himself to Aspasia.

With her he lived on terms of devoted affection to the end of his life,

though, as she was a foreigner, their union was not a legal marriage.

She enjoyed a high reputation as a teacher of rhetoric, and seems to

have been the centre of a brilliant intellectual society, which included

Socrates and his friends. The comic poet, Hermippus, brought her to

trial on the double charge of impiety and of corrupting Athenian women

for the gratification of Pericles. A decree was further carried by a

religious fanatic named Diopithes, whereby all who denied the existence

of the gods or discussed the nature of the heavenly bodies were to be

tried as criminals. This blow was aimed directly at the aged philosopher

Anaxagoras, but indirectly at his pupil Pericles as well as at Aspasia.

When this decree was passed, and apparently while the trial of Aspasia

was still pending, Pericles himself was called upon by a decree of the

people to render an account of the money which had passed through his

hands. The result is not mentioned, but we cannot doubt that the matter

either was dropped or ended in an acquittal. The perfect integrity of

Pericles is proved by the unimpeachable evidence of his contemporary,

the historian Thucydides. Aspasia was acquitted, but not before Pericles

had exerted all his eloquence in her behalf. Anaxagoras, tried on the

charge of impiety, was obliged to quit the city.

It was in the same year (432) that the great contest between Athens and

Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War, broke out. We may dismiss as a

vulgar calumny the statement, often repeated in antiquity, but quite

unsupported by Thucydides, that the war was brought about by Pericles

for the purpose of avoiding a prosecution. The war was in truth

inevitable; its real cause was Sparta’s jealousy of the growing power of

Athens; its immediate occasion was the help lent by Athens to Corcyra in

its war with Corinth. At first, with a hypocritical regard for religion,

the Spartans demanded as a condition of peace that the Athenians should

expel the race of the Alcmaeonidae (including, of course, Pericles),

whose ancestors had been guilty of sacrilege about two centuries before.

The Athenians retorted in kind, and, after a little more diplomatic

fencing, the Spartans were constrained to show their hand by demanding

bluntly that Athens should give back to the Greeks their independence—in

other words, renounce her empire and abandon herself to the tender

mercies of Sparta. Pericles encouraged the Athenians to reject the

demand. He pointed out that Athens possessed advantages over the

Peloponnesians in superior wealth and greater unity of counsels. He

advised the Athenians, in case of war, not to take the field against the

numerically superior forces of the Peloponnesians, but to allow the

enemy to ravage Attica at will, while they confined themselves to the

defence of the city. Through their fleet they would maintain

communication with their island empire, procure supplies, and harass the

enemy by sudden descents on his coasts. By pursuing this defensive

policy without attempting to extend their empire, he predicted that they

would be victorious. The people hearkened to him and replied to the

Spartan ultimatum by counter-demands, which they knew would not be

accepted. Pericles had not neglected in time of peace to prepare for

war, and Athens was now well equipped with men, money, and ships.

In June of the following summer a Peloponnesian army invaded Attica. By

the advice of Pericles the rural population, with their movables, had

taken refuge in the city, while the cattle had been sent for safety to

the neighbouring islands. The sight of their country ravaged under their

eyes excited in the Athenians a longing to march out and meet the enemy,

but in the teeth of popular clamour and obloquy Pericles steadily

adhered to his defensive policy, content to protect the suburbs of

Athens with cavalry. Meanwhile Athenian fleets retaliated upon the

enemy’s coasts. About the same time, as a punishment for the share that

they were supposed to have had in bringing on the war, the whole

population of Aegina was expelled from their island to make room for

Athenian colonists. This measure, directed by Pericles, relieved to some

extent the pressure in the overcrowded capital, and secured a strong

outpost on the side of Peloponnese. In the autumn, after the

Peloponnesian army had been obliged by want of provisions to quit Attica

and disband, Pericles conducted the whole available army of Athens into

the territory of Megara, and laid it waste.

It was a custom with the Athenians that at the end of a campaign the

bones of those who had fallen in battle should be buried with public

honours in the beautiful suburb of Ceramicus, the Westminster of Athens,

and the vast crowd of mourners and spectators gathered about the grave

was addressed by a citizen chosen for his character and abilities to pay

the last tribute of a grateful country to its departed brave. On the

present occasion the choice fell on Pericles. Once before, at the close

of the Samian War, it had been his lot to discharge a similar duty. The

speech which he now delivered, as reported to us by Thucydides, is one

of the noblest monuments of antiquity. It is indeed the creed of Athens

and of Greece. In its aristocratic republicanism—recognising at once the

equal legal rights and the unequal intrinsic merits of individuals—it

differs alike from the monarchical spirit of mediaeval and modern

Europe, with its artificial class distinctions, and from that

reactionary communism which preaches the natural as well as the legal

equality of men. In its frank admiration of art and letters and all the

social festivals which humanise and cheer life, it is as far from the

sullen asceticism and the wild debauchery of the East as the grave and

manly simplicity of its style is removed from the fanciful luxuriance of

Oriental rhetoric. Finally, in the words of comfort and exhortation

addressed to the bereaved, the speech—to adopt Thirlwall’s description

of another great effort of Athenian oratory—“ breathes the spirit of

that high philosophy which, whether learnt in the schools or from life,

has consoled the noblest of our kind in prisons, and on scaffolds, and

under every persecution of adverse fortune.”

The fortitude of the Athenians was put to a still severer test in the

following summer, when to the horrors of war (the Peloponnesians had

again invaded Attica) were added the horrors of the plague, which spread

havoc in the crowded city. Pericles himself escaped the scourge, but

many of his relations and best friends, amongst them his sister and his

two sons Xanthippus and Paralus, were struck down. With the elder of his

sons, Xanthippus, a worthless young man, the father had been on bad

terms, but the death of his surviving son, at an interval of a few days,

affected him deeply, and when he came to lay the wreath upon the corpse,

though he struggled hard to maintain his habitual calm, he broke down,

and for the first time in his public life burst into a passion of

weeping. But neither private grief nor public calamity shook for a

moment the lofty courage and resolution with which he continued to the

last to oppose a firm front alike to enemies without and to cravens

within. While refusing as before to risk a battle in Attica, which he

allowed the Peloponnesians to devastate at pleasure, he led in person a

powerful fleet against Peloponnese, ravaged the coast, and destroyed the

town of Prasiae in Laconia. But the Athenians were greatly disheartened;

they sued for peace, and when their suit was rejected by Sparta they

vented their ill-humour on Pericles, as the author of the war, by

subjecting him to a fine. However, they soon repented of this burst of

petulance, and atoned for it by re-electing him general and placing the

government once more in his hands. Further, they allowed him to

legitimate his son by Aspasia, that his house might not be without an

heir. He survived this reconciliation about a year, but his name is not

again mentioned in connexion with public affairs. In the autumn of 429

he died. We may well believe that the philosophy which had been the

recreation of his happier days supported and consoled him in the clouded

evening of his life. To his clement nature it was a peculiar consolation

to reflect that he had never carried political differences to the

shedding of blood. Indeed, his extraordinary, almost fatherly,

tenderness for the life of every Athenian citizen is attested by various

of his sayings. On his deathbed, when the friends about him were telling

his long roll of glory, rousing himself from a lethargy into which he

had fallen, he reminded them of his fairest title to honour: “No

Athenian,” he said, “ever put on black through me.”

He was buried amongst the illustrious dead in the Ceramicus, and in

after years Phormio, Thrasybulus, and Chabrias slept beside him. In

person he was graceful and well made, save for an unusual height of

head, which the comic poets were never weary of ridiculing. In the busts

of him which we possess, his regular features, with the straight Greek

nose and full lips, still preserve an expression of Olympian repose.

THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcriber’s Note

The hyphens used in compound words that span line or page breaks in the

original text are retained or removed based on the preponderance of

examples elsewhere. Several words (‘white-wash’, ‘river-side’,

‘sea-weed’, and ‘water-course’) appear midline both with and without

hyphenation, and are given here as printed.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and

are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.

49.13 darkest tragedies in Greek history[.] Added.

64.15 bear their country’s misfortunes with a noble Added.

[f]ortitude.

286.30 occupied by corn-fields, vineyards, and Added.

olive-groves[.]