HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTER I.

GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINES OF GREECE.

*

group (the Sporades) which borders the Asiatic coast. Southward of these the interval belarger islands Crete and Rhodes. From the Isle tween the two continents is broken by the nel from Laconia, the snowy summits of the of Cythera, which is parted by a narrow chanCretan Ida are clearly visible, and from them the eye can probably reach the Rhodian Atabyrus, and the mountains of Asia Minor; smaller islands occupy a part of the boundary which this line of view may be conceived to fix to the Egean. The sea which divides Greece from Italy is contracted, between the Iapygian Peninsula and the coast of Epirus, into a channel only thirty geographical miles in breadth; and the Italian coast may be seen not only from the Mountains of Corcyra, but from the low headland of the Ceraunian Hills.

THE character of every people is more or less closely connected with that of its land. tation which the Greeks filled among nations, The 'he part which they acted, and the works which they accomplished, depended in a great measare on the position which they occupied on the Jace of the globe. The manner and degree in which the nature of the country affected the bodily and mental frame, and the social institutions of its inhabitants, may not be so easily determined; but its physical aspect is certainly not less important in an historical point of view than it is striking and interesting in itself. An attentive survey of the geographical site of Greece, of its general divisions, and of the most prominent points on its surface, is an indispensable preparation for the study of its narrow sea; but towards the north its limits Thus on two sides Greece is bounded by a history. In the following sketch nothing more were never precisely defined. The word Helwill be attempted than to guide the reader's las did not convey to the Greeks the notion of eye over an accurate map of the country, and a certain geographical surface, determined by to direct his attention to some of those indeli-natural or conventional boundaries: it denoted ble features which have survived all the revo- the country of the Hellenes, and was variously lutions by which it has been desolated. The land which its sons called Hellas, and tained of the people which was entitled to that applied, according to the different views enterfor which we have adopted the Roman name name. Greece, lies on the southeast verge of Europe, territory of a little tribe in the south of ThessaThe original Hellas was included in the and in length extends no farther than from the ly. When these Hellenes had imparted their thirty-sixth to the fortieth degree of latitude. name to other tribes, with which they were It is distinguished among European countries allied by a community of language and manby the same character which distinguishes Eu- ners, Hellas might properly be said to extend rope itself from the other continents-the great as far as these national features prevailed. range of its coast compared with the extent of Ephorus regarded Acarnania, including probaits surface; so that while in the latter respect bly the southern coast of the Ambracian Gulf it is considerably less than Portugal, in the up to Ambracia, as the first Grecian territory former it exceeds the whole Pyrenean penin- on the west.t Northward of the gulf the irrupsula. The great eastern limb which projects tion of barbarous hordes had stifled the germs from the main trunk of the Continent of Europe of the Greek character in the ancient inhabigrows more and more finely articulated as it tants of Epirus, and had transformed it into a advances towards the south, and terminates in foreign land; and it must have been rather the the peninsula of Peloponnesus, the smaller half recollection of its ancient fame, as the primitive of Greece, which bears some resemblance to abode of the Hellenes, than the condition of its an outspread palm. Its southern extremity is tribes after the Persian war, that induced Herodat a nearly equal distance from the two neigh- otus to speak of Thesprotia as part of Hellas.‡ bouring continents: it fronts one of the most On the east, Greece was commonly held to terbeautiful and fertile regions of Africa, and is minate with Mount Homole at the mouth of the separated from the nearest point of Asia by the Peneus; the more scrupulous, however, exsouthern outlet of the Egean Sea; the sea, by cluded even Thessaly from the honour of the the Greeks familiarly called their own, which, Hellenic name, while Strabo, with consistent after being contracted into a narrow stream by laxity, admitted Macedonia. But from Ambrathe approach of the opposite shores at the Helles-cia to the mouth of the Peneus, when these pont, suddenly finds its liberty in an ample basin as they recede towards the east and the west, and at length, escaping between Cape Malea and Crete, confounds its waters with the broader main of the Mediterranean. Over that part of this sea which washes the coast of Greece, a chain of islands, beginning from the southern headland of Attica, Cape Sunium, first girds at which objects may be distinguished in the atmosphere Diodorus, v., 59. Apollod., iii., 21. On the distance Delos with an irregular belt, the Cyclades, and of the Archipelago, see Dodwell, Travels in Greece, vol. i., then, in a waving line, links itself to a scattered

VOL. I.-E

were taken as the extreme northern points, it was still impossible to draw a precise line of demarcation; for the same reason which justified the exclusion of Epirus applied, perhaps much more forcibly, to the mountaineers in the

p. 194.

+ In Strabo, viii., 334.

ii., 56.

interior of Ætolia, whose barbarous origin, or in the opinion of the ancients, be defended by

utter degeneracy, was proved by their savage manners, and a language which Thucydides describes as unintelligible. When the Etolians bade the last Philip withdraw from Hellas, the Macedonian king could justly retort, by asking where they would fix its boundaries, and by reminding them that of their own body a very small part was within the pale from which they wished to exclude him. "The tribe of the Agræans, of the Apodotians, and the Amphilochians," he emphatically observed, "is not Hellas."*

ten men against a host. But Tempe is at least equally interesting as the only channel which nature has provided for discharging the waters which descend from the Thessalian Mountains into the sea. An opinion, grounded, perhaps, rather on observation and reflection than on tradition, prevailed among the ancients, that these waters had once been imprisoned, and had covered the country with a vast lake, of which those of Nessonis and Babais, at the foot of Pelion, were considered as remains, till an outlet was opened for them by a sudden shock which rent the rocks of Tempe asunder. This beneficent convulsion was ascribed by the legends to the arm of Hercules, or the trident of the god Poseidon or Neptune: the appear

modern travellers with a similar conviction of the fact. The Peneus itself, though it is fed by all the most considerable rivers of Thessaly, is a very diminutive stream; and though, when swollen by the melting of the snows, it sometimes floods the surrounding plains, in its ordithrough which it flows from the northwest corner of Thessaly is contracted in its upper part between the lower ridges of Pindus and an extensive range of hills branching off from the Cambunian chain, the highlands of Hestiaotis. Near the rocks of Meteora, in the neighbourhood of Homer's craggy Ithomé, the basin of the Peneus expands into a vast level towards the southeast. At Tricca the river takes an easterly direction, and the plain widens on the right, but is still confined by the hills on the left until within about ten miles from Larissa, where it is bounded on the north only by the skirts of Olympus, and extends a gently-undulating surface southward to the foot of Othrys: a tract not less than fifty miles in length, comprehending, as its central part, the districts called Thessaliotis and Pelasgiotis, or the Pelasgian Argos; the territory of the Perrhabians in the north, and in the south the inland part of Achaia, or Phthiotis, the region which included the ancient Hellas. On the eastern side of the ridge which stretches from Tempe to the Gulf of Pagase, a narrow strip of land, called Magnesia, is intercepted between the mountains and the sea, broken by lofty headlands and the beds of torrents, and exposed without a harbour to the fury of the northeast gales. A chain of rocky islands, beginning near the eastern cape of

The northern part of Greece is traversed in its whole length by a range of mountains, the Greek Apennines, which issue from the same mighty root, the Thracian Scomius, in which Hamus, and Rhodopé, and the Illyrian Alps like-ance of the plain and of the pass has impressed wise meet. This ridge first takes the name of Pindus, where it intersects the northern boundary of Greece, at a point where an ancient route still affords the least difficult passage from Epirus into Thessaly.+ From Pindus two huge arms stretch towards the eastern sea, and enclose the vale of Thessaly, the largest and rich-nary state is sluggish and shallow. The vale est plain in Greece: on the north the Cambunian Hills, after making a bend towards the south, terminate in the loftier heights of Olympus, which are scarcely ever entirely free from snow; the opposite and lower chain of Othrys parting, with its eastern extremity, the Malian from the Pagasæan Gulf, sinks gently towards the coast. A fourth rampart, which runs parallel to Pindus, is formed by the range which includes the celebrated heights of Pelion and Ossa; the first a broad and nearly even ridge, the other towering into a steep, conical peak, the neighbour and rival of Olympus, with which, in the songs of the country, it is said to dispute the pre-eminence in the depth and duration of its snows. The mountain barrier with which Thessaly is thus encompassed is broken only at the northeast corner by a deep and narrow cleft, which parts Ossa from Olympus; the defile so renowned in poetry as the vale, in history as the pass, of Tempe. The imagination of the ancient poets and declaimers delighted to dwell on the natural beauties of this romantic glen and on the sanctity of the site, from which Apollo had transplanted his laurel to Delphi. From other points of view the same spot no less forcibly claims the attention of the historian. It is the only pass through which an army can invade Thessaly from the north without scaling the high and rugged ridges of its northern frontier. The whole glen is something less than five miles long, and opens gradually to the east into a spacious plain, stretching to the shore of the Thermaic Gulf. On each side the rocks rise precipitously from the bed of the Peneus, and in some places only leave room between them for the stream; and the road, which at the narrowest point is cut in the rock, might,

*Polybius, xvii., 5.

That of Metzovo, particularly well described by Dr. Holland, Travels, p. 216-218.

Holland, p. 348. Clarke, vol. iv., p. 278. Elian's description, V. H., iii., 1, may be compared with those of Clarke, vol. iv., p. 290-297; Holland, p. 291295; Dodwell, p. 109-117, who prefers Elian's description to Pliny's, not only as more beautiful, but more faithful. Holland compares the scenery of Tempe to that of St. Vincent's Rocks at Clifton, Gell (Itin. of Greece, p. 280) to that

of Matlock.

Dr. Cramer (Description of Ancient Greece, vol. i., p. 379) conceives, from Livy's description, xliv., 6, that, before the time of Julius Caesar, the road through Tempe was carried along the heights on the left bank of the Peneus, and that the modern road was constructed by the proconsul L. Cassius Longinus, of whom an inscription, cut in the face of the rock, by the roadside near the narrowest part, reconfounded this L. Cassius with the C. Cassius who was cords, "Tempe munivit." Gell (Itin. of Greece, p. 278) has consul A.U.C. 581. But I do not find that any traveller has been struck by the same thought with Dr. Cramer, and it seems scarcely credible that the ancient road on the northern side should have continued till now entirely forgotten. Dodwell's interpretation of the inscription, according to which Longinus repaired the forts of Tempe, is at least quite as probable; and since the remains of a fort exactly answering to one of those mentioned by Livy are still visi ble on the right of the river (Dodwell, vol. ii., p. 112. Gell, p. 278), it can hardly be doubted that they all stood on the same side. If it had been otherwise, how could Livy have avoided noticing the new southern road, which must have rendered his description ambiguous, and, in fact, incorrect?

Magnesia, and in full view of Mount Athos, of Crissa; a more circuitous, but less difficult seems to point the way towards Lemnos and route leads through the heart of Etolia to the the Hellespont. The shores of the Gulf of Pa- shores of the Corinthian Gulf near Naupactus. gasæ, which open into some rich plains bound- Phocis, which, though it once possessed a port ed by a range of low hills which link Pelion on the Euboean Channel, was, in the later period with Othrys, may be considered as one of the of its history, entirely parted from the sea by most favoured regions of Greece; and its nat- Locris, includes some narrow but fertile plains ural beauty and singular advantages, which fit- on the banks of the Cephisus, stretching to the ted it to become the cradle of Greek navigation, skirts of Parnassus on the one side, and to the were undoubtedly associated by more than an Locrian Mountains on the other. The passes accidental connexion with its mythical glories. to the north, across Mount Cnemis, are steep In the overhanging forests of Pelion the fated and difficult; but the range which separates tree was felled, which first found a way through Phocis from the coast of Opus sinks into a holthe Cyanean rocks to revive the dormant feud low of easy ascent. Parnassus itself and the between Europe and Asia; and on the same adjacent mass of Cirphis, between which the ground the Muses met at the marriage of Pele-valley of Crissa descends upon the Corinthian us and Thetis, to predict the birth of Achilles Gulf, belonged to the Phocian territory. The and the ruin of Troy.* basin of the Cephisus is suddenly contracted, South of this gulf the coast is again deeply by a ridge jutting out from Parnassus towards indented by that of Malia, into which the Sper-Mount Edylion, into a narrow outlet, which is cheius, rising from Mount Tymphrestus, a con- the entrance to Boeotia, and opens on the spatinuation of Pindus, winds through a long, nar- cious level which extends to the edge of the row vale, which, though considered as a part of Lake Copais. Thessaly, forms a separate region, widely distinguished from the rest by its physical features. It is intercepted between Othrys and Eta, a huge, rugged pile, which, stretching from Pin-tricts on the Euboean Sea and the Corinthian dus to the sea at Thermopyla, forms the inner Gulf, have been already described. The interibarrier of Greece, as the Cambunian range is or of the country is by no means a uniform the outer, to which it corresponds in direction, tract, but is broken into several distinct valleys and is nearly equal in height. From Mount and plains. A ridge of hills, which joins HeliCallidromus, a southern limb of Eta, the same con with the eastern range, and parts the lake range is continued without interruption, though of Capa (Copais) from that of Hylica, may be under various names and different degrees of considered as dividing Boeotia into two great elevation, along the coast of the Eubaan Sea, portions. The northern contains the lower vale passing through the countries of the Locrian of the Cephisus, and the Copaic Lake, into which tribes, which derived their distinguishing epi- it flows. The hills which rise from the souththets, the Epicnemidian and Opuntian, from ern and eastern edges of the lake afford no visMount Cnemis and the town of Opus, till it sinks ible outlet for its waters; and the influx of the into the vale of the Boeotian Asopus. Another Cephisus, and the smaller streams that spring branch, issuing from the same part of Pindus, from the side of Helicon, seem to threaten to connects it with the loftier summits of Parnas- reduce this part of Boeotia to the state from sus, and afterward skirting the Corinthian Gulf which Thessaly was said to have been deliverunder the names of Cirphis and Helicon, pro-ed by the trident of Poseidon. The tradition ceeds 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 foster-mother 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 ta, the other crossing the same ridge farther to the west. Southward a mountain track traverses the heights of Parnassus, and descends on the vale

Euripides, Med., 3. Iphig. A., 1040.

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

The mountains which enclose the inland territory which formed the main part of Bœotia, and separate it from the narrow maritime dis

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 Ptoon: 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 pas

tains 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 this account as on account of its vicinity to Eubaa. 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 mainland, between Aulis and Chalcis, is but a few paces in width, t 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.

sage, 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 Baotian 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, The peculiar conformation of the principal or some inward convulsion, again choked up the Baotian valleys, the barriers opposed to the eschannel, and produced an inundation. An en-cape of the streams, and the consequent accugineer, named Crates,* was employed to clear mulation of the rich deposites brought down the passage, and he succeeded so far as to rem- from the surrounding mountains, may be conedy the temporary evil; but political disturban-sidered as a main cause of the extraordinary ces prevented him from completing his work, fertility of the land. The vale of the Cephisus which would perhaps have afforded permanent especially, with its periodical inundations, exsecurity. At present, however, the lake is lit-hibits a resemblance, on a small scale, to the tle more than a marsh, containing some deep banks of the Nile-a resemblance which some pools. In summer it is nearly dry; but after of the ancients observed in the peculiar characheavy rains it still overflows its natural bound-ter of its vegetation. The profusion in which aries.t

the ordinary gifts of Nature were spread over The southern portion of Boeotia is broken the face of Boeotia, the abundant returns of its into several distinct plains by low ridges, which grain, the richness of its pastures, the materials branch out from the principal chain. The lar- of luxury furnished by its woods and waters, gest and richest stretches from the foot of the are chiefly remarkable, in an historical point of hills on which Thebes occupies an insulated em- view, from the unfavourable effect they produinence to the Lake of Hylica, which receives a ced on the character of the race, which finally part of the waters of the northern lake by a sub-established itself in this envied territory. It terraneous channel, and is believed to send its was this cause, more than the dampness and own by a similar outlet to the Euboean Sea. thickness of their atmosphere, that depressed The Theban plain rises gradually westward into the intellectual and moral energies of the Booa higher marshy level, the district of Thespia, tians, and justified the ridicule which their temfrom which two narrow glens, parted by a lofty perate and witty neighbours so freely poured mountain (Korombile) between Helicon and Ci-on their proverbial failing. The Attic satire thæron, descend to the Baotian ports on the might have been suspected, and large abateCorinthian Gulf, the only break in the southern ment might have been thought necessary for barrier. The plain of Leuctra connects that of national prejudice, as well as for poetical exThespia with the table-land of Plataa, which aggeration, had it not been confirmed by the is raised sufficiently to part the source of the grave evidence of Polybius, who records that, Eroé, a little stream which falls into the Corin-after a short effort of vigorous ambition, the thian 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 con

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

Boeotians sank into a depth of grovelling sensuality, which has no parallel in the history of any Grecian people. Yet they were warm lovers of poetry and music, and carried some branches of both arts to eminent perfection.

A wild and rugged, though not a lofty range of mountains, bearing the name of Citharon on the west, of Parnes towards the east, divides