The Alpheus and all other rivers of Elis carry down towards the sea immense masses of detritus, which they spread over the plains extending from the foot of the mountains to the seashore. The ruins of Olympia disappeared in this manner beneath alluvial deposits. They have all frequently changed their beds, and not one amongst them has done so more frequently than the Peneus, or river of Gastuni. Anciently it discharged its waters to the north of the rocky promontory of Chelonatas, whilst in the present day it turns abruptly to the south, and enters the sea at a distance of fifteen miles from its ancient mouth. Works of irrigation may partly account for this change, but there can be no doubt that nature unaided has by degrees much modified the aspect of this portion of Greece. Islands originally far in the sea have been joined to the land; numerous open bays have gradually been cut off from the sea by natural embankments, and transformed into swamps or lagoons. One of the latter extends for several leagues to the south of the Alpheus, and is divided from the sea by a fine forest of pines. These majestic forests, in which the Triphylians paid honour to their dead, the surrounding hills dotted over with clumps of trees, and Mount Lycæus, from whose flanks are precipitated the cascades dedicated to Neda, the nurse of Jupiter, render this the most attractive district of all the Morea to a lover of nature.

The Peloponnesus presents us with one of the most striking instances of the influence exercised by the nature of the country upon the historical development of its inhabitants. Held to Greece by a mere thread, and defended at its entrance by a double bulwark of mountains, this “isle of Pelops” naturally became the seat of independent tribes at a time when armies still recoiled from natural obstacles. The isthmus was open as a commercial high-road, but it was closed against invaders.

The relief of the peninsula satisfactorily explains the distribution of the tribes inhabiting it, and the part they played in history. The whole of the interior basin, which has no visible outlets towards the sea, naturally became the home of a tribe who, like the Arcadians, held no intercourse with their neighbours, and hardly any amongst themselves. Corinth, Sicyon, and Achaia occupied the seashore on the northern slopes of the mountains, but were separated by high transversal chains. The inhabitants of these isolated valleys long remained strangers to each other, and when at length they combined to resist the invader, it was too late. Elis, in the west, with its wide valleys and its insalubrious plains extending along a coast having no havens, naturally played but a secondary part {65} in the history of the peninsula. Its inhabitants, exposed to invasions, owing to their country being without natural defences, would soon have been enslaved, had they not placed themselves under the protection of all the rest of Greece by converting their plain of Olympia into a place of meeting, where the Hellenes of Europe and of Asia, from the continent and from the islands, met for a few days’ festival to forget their rivalries and animosities. The basin of Argos and the mountain peninsula of Argolis, on the eastern side of the Peloponnesus, on the other hand, are districts having natural boundaries, and are easily defended. Hence the Argolians were able to maintain their autonomy for centuries, and even in the Homeric age they exercised a sort of hegemony over the remainder of Greece. The Spartans were their successors. The country in which they established themselves possessed the double advantage of being secure against every attack, and of furnishing all they stood in need of. Having firmly established themselves in the beautiful valley of the Eurotas, they found no difficulty in extending their power to the seashore, and to the unfortunate Helos. At a later date they crossed the heights of the Taygetus, and descended into the plains of Messenia. That portion of Greece likewise formed a natural basin, protected by elevated mountain ramparts; and the Messenians, who were kinsmen of the Spartans and their equals in bravery, were thus able to resist for a century. At length they fell, and all the Southern Peloponnesus acknowledged the supremacy of Sparta, which was now in a position to assert its authority over the whole of Greece. Then it was that the mountain-girt plateau on the road from Lacedæmonia to Corinth, upon which stood the cities of Tegea and Mantinea, and which was made by nature for a field of Mars, became the scene of strife.

The Peloponnesus, with its sinuous shores, forms a remarkable contrast to Attica. Its characteristics are essentially those of a continent, and anciently the Peloponnesians were mountaineers rather than mariners. Except in Corinth, where the two seas nearly join, and a few towns of Argolis, which is another Attica, there were no inducements for the inhabitants to engage in maritime commerce; and in their mountain valleys and upland plains they were entirely dependent upon the rearing of cattle and husbandry. Arcadia, in the centre of the peninsula, was inhabited only by herdsmen and labourers; and its name, which originally meant “country of bears,” has become the general designation for an eminently pastoral country. The Laconians also, separated from the sea by rocky mountains which hem in the valley of the Eurotas at its point of issue, preserved for a long time the customs of warriors and of cultivators of the soil, and took to the sea only with reluctance. “When the Spartans placed Eurotas and Taygetus at the head of their heroes,” says Edgar Quinet, “they distinctly connected the features of the valley with the destinies of the people by whom it was occupied.”

In the very earliest ages the Phœnicians already occupied important factories on the coasts of the Peloponnesus. They had established themselves at Nauplia, in the Gulf of Argos; and at Cranaæ, the modern Marathonisi or Gythion, in Laconia, they purchased the shells which they required to dye their purple {66} cloths. The Greeks themselves were in possession of a few busy ports, amongst which was “sandy Pylos,” the capital of Nestor, whose position is now held by Navarino, on the other side of the gulf. At a subsequent date, when Greece had become the centre of Me­di­ter­ra­nean commerce, Corinth, so favourably situated between the two seas, rose into importance, not because of its political influence, its cultivation of the arts, or love of liberty, but through the number and wealth of its inhabitants. It is said that it had a population of three hundred thousand souls within its walls. Even after it had been razed by the Romans it again recovered its ancient pre-eminence. But the exposed position of the town has caused it to be ravaged so many times that all commerce has fled from it. In 1858, when an earthquake destroyed Corinth, that once famous city had dwindled down into a poor village. The city has been rebuilt about five miles from its ancient site, on the shore of the gulf named after it, but we doubt whether it will ever resume its ancient importance unless a canal be dug to connect the two seas. The high-roads from Marseilles and Trieste to Smyrna and Constantinople would then lead across the Isthmus of Corinth, and this canal might attract an amount of shipping equal to that which frequents other ocean channels or canals similarly situated. But for the present the isthmus is almost deserted, and only the passengers who are conveyed by Greek steamers to the small ports on its opposite shores cross it. The ancients, who had failed in the construction of a canal, and who made no further effort after the time of Nero, because they imagined one of the two seas to be at a higher level than the other, had provided, at all events, a kind of tramway, by means of which their small vessels could be conveyed from the Gulf of Corinth to the Ægean Sea.[17]

After the Crusades, when the powerful Republic of Venice had gained a footing upon the coasts of Morea, flourishing commercial colonies arose along them, in Arcadia, on the island of Prodano (Prote), at Navarino, Modon, Coron, Calamata, Malvoisie, and Nauplia in Argolis. At the call of these Venetian merchants the Peloponnesus again became a seat of trade, and resumed, to some extent, that part in maritime enterprise which it had enjoyed in the time of the Phœnicians. But the advent of the Turk, the impoverishment of the soil, and the civil wars which resulted therefrom, again forced the inhabitants to break off all intercourse with the outer world, and to shut themselves up in their island as in a prison. Tripolis, or Tripolitza, in the very centre of the peninsula, and called thus, it is said, because it is the representative of three ancient cities—Mantinea, Tegea, and Pallantium—then became the most populous place. Since the Greeks have regained their independence life again fluctuates towards the seashore as by a sort of natural sequence. Patras, close to the entrance of the Gulf of Corinth, and near the most fertile and best-cultivated plains on the eastern shore, is by far the most important city at present, and, in anticipation of its future extension, the streets of a new town have been laid out, in the firm belief that it will some day rival Smyrna and Trieste in extent. {67}

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Fig. 22.—THE VALLEY OF THE EUROTAS.

From the French Staff Map. Scale 1 : 370,000.