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 pas-
sage had been formed, the origin of that which actu-
ally exists must clearly be ascribed to the hand of
nature: and this conclusion is confirmed by the ap-
pearance 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 ap-
pears 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.
of nature. During the
better days of Greece, the level of the lake appears to
have been kept regularly low, though it might be

CHAP.

I.

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 Crates1, was employed to clear the passage, and he 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.2

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 Eubœan 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 Citharon 3, descend to the Baotian 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 Platæa, which is raised sufficiently to part the source of the Oeroé, a little stream which falls into the Corin

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.

3 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.

CHAP.

I.

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 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 this account as on account of its vicinity to Euboea. That large and important island, which Eubœa. at a very early period attracted the Phoenicians by its copper mines, and in later times became almost indispensable to the subsistence of Athens1, 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 The Euriit from the main land, between Aulis and Chalcis, is pus. 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 an

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

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

" 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.

CHAP.

I.

Attica,

cients 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 energies of the Baotians, and justified the ridicule which their temperate and witty neighbours so freely poured on their proverbial failing.1 The Attic satire might have been suspected, and large abatement might have been thought necessary for national prejudice, as well as for poetical exaggeration, had it not been confirmed by the grave evidence of Polybius, who records that, after a short effort of vigorous ambition, the 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 toward the east, divides Bootia from Attica. Lower ridges, branching off to the south, and sending out arms toward the east, mark the limits of the principal districts which compose this little country, the least proportioned in extent of any on the face of the earth to its fame and its importance in the history of mankind. The most extensive of the Attic plains, though it is by no means a uniform level, but is broken by a number of low hills, is that in which

See Athenæus, x. c. 11.

Polyb. in Athen. x. 418.

I.

Athens itself lies, at the foot of a precipitous rock, and CHAP. in which, according to the Attic legend, the olive, still its most valuable production, first sprang up. It is bounded on the east by Pentelicus, and by the range which, under the names of the greater and lesser Hymettus 1, advances till it meets the sea at Cape Zoster. The upper part of Pentelicus, which rises to a greater height than Hymettus 2, was distinguished, under the name of Epacria, or Diacria, as the Attic Highlands. This range, which, after trending eastward, terminates at Cape Cynossema, forms with Parnes and the sea the boundary of the plain of Marathon. On the eastern side of Hymettus a comparatively level tract, separated from the coast by a lower range of hills, seems to have been that which was called Mesogæa, or the Midland. The hills which inclose it meet in the mountainous mine district of Laurium, and end with Cape Sunium, the southernmost foreland of Attica. The Attic mariner, as he sailed round Sunium, could discern the spear and the crest of his tutelary goddess in front of her temple on the Athenian rock. The tract on the coast between Sunium and Cape Zoster, a tract of low hills and undulating plains, was designated by the name of Paralia, as the maritime region of Attica, though the whole land was entitled to the appellation Acté, whence perhaps it derived the name of Attica, from the form in which it advanced into the sea. On the western side, the plain of Athens is bounded by a chain of hills, issuing from Parnes, and successively bearing the names of Icarius, Corydallus, and Egaleus, as it stretches toward the sea, which at Cape Amphialé separates it by a channel, a quarter of a mile in width, from the island of Salamis. It parts the plain of Athens from that of Eleusis, which contained

Called also Anudros, the waterless.

Gell, It. of Greece, p. 95.