Who drank my father’s blood—my own—from these my hands,
Do ye, perchance, remember what ye saw me do?”
Sophocles, Œdipus Tyrannus.
Œdipus on his way from Delphi and Laius on his way from Thebes met at the Forked Roads—the “Cleft Way”—in a lonely valley. The traveller who wishes to see the scene of the ensuing tragedy will have the opportunity to pass through a country of extraordinary beauty and variety and also to know the leisured charm of travel by horse or mule. With the multiplication of railroads these opportunities are growing rarer year by year, except for those whom adventure or professional interests lead into the less famous parts of Greece. The major portion of the country that attracts students of Greek life at its highest is as easy to traverse as Italy. It is true that the days which there have long since receded into historical perspective seem in Greece strangely mingled with the present, because the same traveller who to-day can take the train from Athens to Thebes was forced, ten years ago, to ride or drive over the passes of Cithæron. But already in the books of Greek travel written in the second half of the nineteenth century we begin to perceive that delicate aroma of a more primitive past which pervades Goethe’s “Italienische Reise.” In addition to railroads, the matured police power of the government has been a transforming agency. Not only between Athens and Corinth but practically everywhere in Greece brigandage is now unknown. And, finally, the onslaughts of dirt and vermin have been greatly modified, both by the increasing number of creditable inns in the larger places and by the ability of the peasants in remoter villages to understand the prejudices of foreigners. Not very long ago a request for information about almost any route that led away from Athens might have been couched in the words of Dionysus asking about the trip to Hades:—
“And tell me too the havens, fountains, shops,
Roads, resting places, and refreshment rooms,
Towns, lodgings, hostesses with whom are found
The fewest bugs.”[[28]]
DELPHI AND THE ROAD TO ARACHOVA