derived their distinguishing epithets, the Epicnemidian and Opuntian, from Mount Cnemis and the town of Opus, till it sinks into the vale of the Boeotian Asopus. Another branch, issuing from the same part of Pindus, connects it with the loftier summits of Parnassus, and afterward skirting the Corinthian gulf, under the names of Cirphis and Helicon, proceeds to form the northern boundary of Attica, under those of Citharon and Parnes.

At the parting of these two great branches, the head of the vale through which the Cephisus flows into the lake Copais, lies the little country of Doris, obscure and insignificant in itself, but interesting as the fostermother of a race of conquerors who became the masters of Greece. It is described as a narrow plain, gently undulating between the rugged precipices and shaggy glens of Eta and Parnassus, which, by their vicinity, render its winters comparatively rude and long, but the soil is fertile in grain and pastures. It is watered by several little streams, which swell the Cephisus into a considerable river, even before the valley has begun to open into the broader plains of Phocis. Two passes afford an entrance into Doris from the north; one, the more narrow and difficult, leading across the eastern end of Eta, the other crossing the same ridge farther to the west. Southward, a mountain track traverses the heights of Parnassus, and descends on the vale of Crissa; a more circuitous, but less difficult, route leads through the heart of Ætolia, to the shores of the Corinthian gulf near Naupactus. Phocis, which, though it once possessed a port on the Eubœan channel, was, in the later period of its history, entirely parted from the sea by Locris, includes some narrow but fertile plains on the banks of the Cephisus, stretching to the skirts of Parnassus on the one side, and to the Locrian mountains on the other. The passes to the north across Mount Chemis are steep and difficult;

Dodwell, however (vol. ii, p. 132.), found the corn nearly ripe on the 11th of June. His description teaches us to qualify the epithet Aurçóxwgos, which Strabo (ix. 427.) applies to the Dorian towns.

but the range which separates Phocis from the coast of Opus sinks into a hollow of easy ascent. Parnassus itself and the adjacent mass of Cirphis, between which the valley of Crissa descends upon the Corinthian gulf, belonged to the Phocian territory. The basin of the Cephisus is suddenly contracted, by a ridge jutting out from Parnassus toward Mount Edylion, into a narrow outlet, which is the entrance to Boeotia, and opens on the spacious level which extends to the edge of the lake Copais.

The mountains which inclose the inland territory which formed the main part of Boeotia, and separate it from the narrow maritime districts on the Eubœan sea and the Corinthian gulf, have been already described. The interior of the country is by no means a uniform tract, but is broken into several distinct valleys and plains. A ridge of hills, which joins Helicon with the eastern range, and parts the lake of Cope (Copais) from that of Hylica, may be considered as dividing Boeotia into two great portions. The northern contains the lower vale of the Cephisus, and the Copaic lake, into which it flows. The hills which rise from the southern and eastern edges of the lake afford no vişible outlet for its waters; and the influx of the Cephisus, and the smaller streams that spring from the side of Helicon, seem to threaten to reduce this part of Boeotia to the state from which Thessaly was said to have been delivered by the trident of Poseidon. The tradition of the Ogygian deluge appears to preserve the recollection of a period when the whole plain was one vast lake ; and it is highly probable that it first became capable of cultivation, when one of those convulsions by which Greece was frequently visited, had opened a subterraneous channel for the flood through the rocky barrier which confined it. The eastern end of the lake is contracted into a narrow cove, which is closed by the craggy skirts of Mount Ptöon: a ridge of three or four miles in breadth parts it from the plain on the shore of the Euboean channel. The art and industry of the

:

people which inhabited the borders of the lake in the earliest times of which any account remains, would perhaps have been equal to the task of piercing the bowels of the rock even to this extent; but since the land could scarcely have been habitable before such a passage had been formed, the origin of that which actually exists must clearly be ascribed to the hand of nature and this conclusion is confirmed by the appearance of every part that has yet been explored. Several natural chasms open on the lake; but it would seem that all these clefts convey their streams into one main current, which is discharged through a single mouth on the eastern side of the hill, whence it rushes rapidly to the sea. The passage, however, was liable to be blocked up by causes similar to that which appears to have produced it; and tradition and history have recorded some instances of such a stoppage. One in the mythical period was attributed, like the severing of Tempe, to the strength of Hercules, who was said to have adopted this expedient to humble the pride of the wealthy city of Orchomenus, which stood near the lake. A still earlier calamity of the same nature is intimated by the tradition that some ancient towns, among them a Boeotian Athens and Eleusis, had been destroyed by the rising of the lake. The removal of such obstructions was unquestionably not left to time and chance, but was speedily effected by the industry of the people, whose fruitful fields had been laid under water. A natural perpendicular chasm, which descends to the surface of one of the subterraneous streams, might suggest the possibility of seconding the process of nature. During the better days of Greece, the level of the lake appears to have been kept regularly low, though it might be occasionally raised by extraordinary floods; but in the time of Alexander, either long neglect, or some inward convulsion, again choked up the channel, and produced an inundation. An engineer, named Crates, was employed to clear the passage, and he

Strabo's account of the operations of Crates, ix. 407., admits of va rious interpretations. That of Kruse (Hellas, vol. ii. p. 454.) seems pre

succeeded so far as to remedy the temporary evil; but political disturbances prevented him from completing his work, which would perhaps have afforded permanent security. At present, however, the lake is little more than a marsh, containing some deep pools. In summer it is nearly dry; but after heavy rains it still overflows its natural boundaries.1

The southern portion of Boeotia is broken into several distinct plains by low ridges, which branch out from the principal chain. The largest and richest stretches from the foot of the hills on which Thebes occupies an insulated eminence to the lake of Hylica, which receives a part of the waters of the northern lake by a subterraneous channel, and is believed to send its own by a similar outlet to the Euboean sea. The Theban plain rises gradually westward into a higher marshy level, the district of Thespia, from which two narrow glens, parted by a lofty mountain (Korombile) between Helicon and Cithæron 2, descend to the Boeotian ports on the Corinthian gulf: the only break in the southern barrier. The plain of Leuctra connects that of Thespia with the table land of Platea, which is raised sufficiently to part the source of the Oeroé, a little stream which falls into the Corinthian gulf, from the basin of the Asopus, a weak and sluggish river, which, unless swollen by rains, scarcely finds its way to the sea. The long winding vale through which it flows contains several spacious plains, among which those of Tanagra and Oropus are distinguished by extraordinary fertility and beauty. Oropus was an object worth the contests to which it gave rise between the states on whose confines it lay, as well on

ferable to Mueller's (Orchomenos, p. 59.), which requires an alteration of Strabo's text, and in the present state of our knowledge seems not reconcilable with the local phenomena. He supposes the chasm mentioned by Strabo, the mouth of which is now visible on the eastern side of the hill, to have been opened by a shock which happened in or before the time of Crates, and to have been quite distinct from the passage which Crates attempted to clear.

Dodwell, vol. i. p. 235.

2 Leake, Morea, vol. iii. p. 381. Dodwell, vol. i. p. 258. Gell, It. of Greece, p. 117., conjectures that this remarkable mountain may have been anciently called Tipha.

this account as on account of its vicinity to Eubœa. That large and important island, which at a very early period attracted the Phoenicians by its copper mines, and in later times became almost indispensable to the subsistence of Athens, though it covers the whole eastern coast of Locris and Boeotia, is more closely connected with the latter of these countries. The channel of the Euripus which parts it from the main land, between Aulis and Chalcis, is but a few paces in width 2, and is broken by a rocky islet, which now forms the middle pier of a bridge. The ancients believed, what the aspect of the coast appears to confirm, that one of those convulsions, which seem to have produced other momentous changes in the adjacent regions, also opened a passage for the impetuous and irregular current of the straits.3

The peculiar conformation of the principal Boeotian valleys, the barriers opposed to the escape of the streams, and the consequent accumulation of the rich deposits brought down from the surrounding mountains, may be considered as a main cause of the extraordinary fertility of the land. The vale of the Cephisus especially, with its periodical inundations, exhibits a resemblance, on a small scale, to the banks of the Nile,-a resemblance which some of the ancients observed in the peculiar character of its vegetation. The profusion in which the ordinary gifts of nature were spread over the face of Boeotia, the abundant returns of its grain, the richness of its pastures, the materials of luxury furnished by its woods and waters, are chiefly remarkable, in a historical point of view, from the unfavourable effect they produced on the character of the race, which finally established itself in this envied territory. It was this cause, more than the dampness and thickness of their atmosphere, that depressed the intellectual and moral

1 See Mr. Hawkins, in Walpole's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 545.

2 Thirty on one side of the rock, and twenty on the other. Gell, It. of Greece, p. 130.

3 According to Gell (It. of Greece, p. 131.), the tide of the Euripus is regular for about eighteen or nineteen days each month; but for eleven days the current changes from eleven to fourteen times in the day.