Sketch from the Messageries steamer Nerthe.
afterwards, by the Roman Consul Flamininus. A little way south, on a plateau about 300 feet high, are extensive remains of a city built out of the rock, which may have been the prehistoric city of the isthmus, referred to by Homer as “wealthy Ephyra.” Some twenty miles to the south-west, on the way to Mycenæ, lies the secluded vale of Nemea, where games were also celebrated every second year, consecrated by the erection of a temple of Zeus, of which a number of beautiful columns are still standing, while others lie prostrate on the ground. It was in this woody district that the lion which Heracles slew, as the first of the Twelve Labours imposed upon him by Eurysthenes, was supposed to have had his lair.
CHAPTER VIII
ATHENS AND ITS ACROPOLIS
NOWHERE in Greece, nowhere perhaps in the ancient world, were the geographical conditions more favourable to the growth of a genial, intelligent, and energetic community than in Athens. The sky was bright, the air pure, and the climate temperate. The soil, while not so rich as to demoralise the inhabitants or to offer much inducement to an invader, yielded its cultivators the means of subsistence in the form of figs, olives, corn, and wine. At the same time the city enjoyed the advantage of easy communication with other countries both by land and sea, being situated on a plain which formed part of the continent of Europe, and having on its projecting coast three safe and commodious harbours, which gave it facilities for traffic in many different directions. For the purpose of defence, its Acropolis, facing the sea a few miles off, and backed at a considerable distance by a well-defined mountain frontier, provided it with a natural stronghold in case of attack.
The Acropolis is only one of a number of heights
