Fig. 13.—THERMOPYLÆ.

From the French Staff Map (1852). Scale 1 : 330,000.

The Achelous, which the ancients likened to a savage bull, owing to its rapid current and great volume, is by far the most important river of Greece. One of the great feats ascribed to Hercules consisted in breaking off one of the horns of this bull; that is to say, he embanked the river, and thus protected the lands which it used to inundate. The neighbours of the Achelous, the rapid Fidari (Evenus, on the banks of which Hercules killed the centaur Nessus, for offering violence to Dejanira) and the Mornos, which rises in the snows of the Œta, cannot compare with it. Still less is it equalled by the Oropus, the Cephissus, and the Ilissus, “wet only when it rains,” which flow eastward into the Ægean Sea. The principal river of Eastern Greece, the Sperchius, is inferior to the Achelous, but, like it, has extensively changed the aspect of the plain near its mouth. When Leonidas and his three hundred heroes guarded the defiles of Thermopylæ against the Persians, the Gulf of Lamia extended much farther into the land than it does now. But the alluvial deposits of the river have extended its delta, and several rivulets which formerly flowed {51} directly into the sea have now to be numbered amongst its tributaries; the sea has retired from the foot of the Callidromus for a distance of several miles; and the narrow pass of Thermopylæ has been converted into a plain sufficiently wide to enable an entire army to manœuvre upon it. The hot springs which gush from the rocks, by forming deposits of calcareous tufa, may likewise have contributed towards this change of coast-line; nor are more violent convulsions of nature precluded in a volcanic region like this, subject to frequent earthquakes. Sailors still point out a small island in this neighbourhood, formed of scoriæ, from which the incensed Hercules hurled his companion, Lichas, into the ocean. Hot springs abound on the opposite coast of Eubœa, and the incrustations formed by them are so considerable as to assume the appearance of glaciers when seen from a distance. A bathing establishment exists now near the hot sulphur springs of Thermopylæ, and strangers are thus enabled to explore this region, so rich in memories of a great past. The pedestal, however, upon which reposed the figure of a marble lion, placed there in honour of Leonidas, has been destroyed by ruthless hands, and utilised in the construction of a mill !

The basin of the Cephissus, enclosed by the chains of the Œta and Parnassus, is one of the most remarkable from an hydrological point of view. The river first flows through a bottom-land formerly a lake, and then, forcing for itself a passage through a narrow defile commanded by the spurs of Mount Parnassus, it winds round the rock upon which stood the ancient city of Orchomenus, and enters upon a vast plain, where swamps and lakes are embedded amidst cultivated fields and reed-banks. These swamps are fed, likewise, by numerous torrents descending from the Helicon and other mountains in its vicinity. One of these is the torrent of Livadia, into which the bounteous springs of Memory and Oblivion—Mnemosyne and Lethe—discharge themselves. In summer a large portion of the plain is dry, and it yields a bountiful harvest of maize, the stalks of which are sweet like sugar-cane. But after the heavy rains of autumn and winter the waters rise twenty, and even twenty-five feet, and the plain is converted into a vast lake, ninety-six square miles in extent. The myth of the deluge of Ogyges almost leads us to believe that the rising floods occasionally invaded every valley which debouches into this basin. To the ancients the shallower part of this lake was known as Cephissus, and its deep eastern portion as Copais, from Copæ, a town occupying a promontory on its northern shore, and now called Topolias.

[Μ]

Fig. 14.—LAKE COPAIS

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 500,000.

The importance of regulating the floods just referred to, and of preventing the sudden overflow of the waters to the destruction of the cultivated fields, may readily be imagined. The ancient Greeks made an effort to accomplish this task. To the east of the large Lake of Copais there is another lake basin, about one hundred and thirty feet lower, and encompassed by precipitous rocks, incapable of cultivation. This basin, the Hylice of the Bœotians, appears to be made by nature for receiving the superabundant waters of the Copais. The remains of a canal may still be traced in the plain, which was evidently intended to convey into {52} it the floods of the Copais, but it appears never to have been completed. No doubt care was taken to keep open the various katavothras, or subterranean channels, through which the waters of the Copaic lake discharge themselves into the sea. One of these, on the north-western shore of the lake, and close to the rock of Orchomenus, swallowed up the river Melas, and conveyed its waters to the Gulf of Atalanta. Farther to the east other subterranean channels flow towards Lakes Hylice and Paralimni, but the most important of these channels are towards the north-east, in the Gulf of Kokkino. In that extreme angle of the lake, the veritable Copais, the waters of the Cephissus rush against the foot of Mount Skroponeri, and are swallowed up by the ground so as to form a subterranean delta. To the south there is a cavernous opening in the rock, but this is merely a sort of tunnel passing underneath a promontory, and, except during the rainy season, it may be traversed dry-shod. Beyond this, another opening swallows up one of the most important branches of the Cephissus, which makes its reappearance in the shape of bounteous springs pouring their waters into the sea. Two other branches of the river disappear in the rocks about a mile farther north. They join soon afterwards, and flow northwards beneath the bottom of a sinuous valley. The old Greek engineers dug pits in this valley, which enabled them to descend to the subterranean waters, and to clear away obstructions interfering with their flow. Sixteen of these pits have been discovered between the opening of the katavothra and the place where the waters reappear. Some of these are still thirty to one hundred feet in depth; but most of them have become choked up with stones and earth. These ancient engineering works, which Crates vainly endeavoured to restore in the time of Alexander, may possibly date {53} from the mythical age of King Minyas of Orchomenus,[15] and the successful draining of these marshes may account for the well-filled treasury of that king spoken of by Homer. Thus the ingenuity of the Homeric age had succeeded in accomplishing a work of the engineering art which baffles our modern men of science !