And bluest skies that harmonize the whole.
Beneath, the distant torrent’s rushing sound
Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll
Between those hanging rocks which shock yet please the soul.
Clusters of islands clothed with poetical verdure stretch along the coast thickly indented by diminutive bays and embouchures of rivers. On a point of the Acarnanian shore[[178]] in the mouth of the Ambracian gulf, the Commonwealth of Rome which had foundered so many rival states suffered final shipwreck, and the shores of avenged Hellas were strewed with the wrecks of Roman freedom. Ætolia, Doris, Locris, Phocis, in which was the mystic navel of Gaia,[[179]] and the deep valley of Bœotia, divided from each other by mountains or by considerable rivers, minutely intersected by streams, and broken up into a perpetual succession of hill and dale, conduct us southward to the Corinthian Gulf and the borders of Attica.
Reserving this illustrious division of Hellas, and Megaris which originally formed a part of it, for the close of our rapid outline, we enter the Peloponnesos,—a country remarkable both for its physical configuration, and for the races which anciently inhabited it. Connected with the continent by the narrow isthmus of Corinth it immediately expands westward and southward into a peninsula of large dimensions, in form resembling a ragged plantain leaf or outstretched palm.[[180]] Like the northern division of Hellas the Peloponnesos is rough with mountain chains, and belted round with cliffs. Towards the centre it swells into a lofty plateau, known to antiquity under the name of Arcadia. Foreign poets, misapprehending the nature of the country, have described this province as a succession of soft pastoral scenes.[[181]] But its real character is very different, consisting chiefly of an extensive table-land, supported by vast mountain buttresses, which in some places tower into peaks of extraordinary elevation. It is broken up into innumerable valleys and deep glens, overhung with wild precipitous rocks, clothed with gloomy forests, and buried during a great part of the year in clouds and snow. The inhabitants were rough and unpromising as the soil, distinguished like the modern Swiss for no quality but bravery, which, like them too, they sold with a mercenary recklessness to the best bidder.[[182]] Achaia is a slip of sea-coast sloping towards the north. Elis, a succession of beautiful plains with few eminences intervening, well watered and renowned for their fine breed of mares. This, the Holy land of the Hellenes, sacred every rood to Zeus, was to the Greeks a place of pilgrimage, as Mecca to the Arabs and Palestine to the Christians of the West. In the Homeric age it was confined within narrow limits, its sea-coast only extending from Buprasion to the promontory of Hyrminè, scarcely indeed, so far, as Myrsinos is said to be its last city towards the north, and Buprasion is mentioned rather as a separate state. It was divided from Achaia by Mount Scollis, which Homer calls “the rock Olenia,” and Aleision is the boundary to the south; consequently, neither Mount Pholöe nor Olympia, nor the Alpheios was then included in Elis, still less Triphylia.
Argolis, on the opposite side of the peninsula, is traversed by a broad ridge of hills, which, branching off from Mount Cyllene and Parthenion in Arcadia, abounds in deep ravines and spacious natural caverns. It contains, however, several plains of much fertility; but, though marshy and subject to malaria, the neighbourhood of the capital is deficient in good water. The fame of Argos[[183]] rests almost wholly on a fabulous basis: it was great in the infancy of Greece; it took the lead in the Trojan war; but, with the irruption of the half-barbarous Dorians into the Peloponnesos, the glory of the old heroic race
“that fought at Thebes and Ilion,”
waned visibly, and Argos and its twin city, Mycenæ, sank into comparative insignificance.
Laconia consists of a hollow valley, enclosed between two mountain chains, proceeding from the great Arcadian barrier, Parnon and Kronios, and stretching southward to the sea. Down the centre of this vale flows the Eurotas, whose sources lie above Belemina, among the steep recesses of Taygetos.[[184]] Though enlarged by several tributary brooks, it preserves, until some way below Sparta, the character of a mountain torrent; but after precipitating itself in a romantic sparkling cascade, appears for some time to be lost in a morass. Escaping, however, from the swamp, it flows during the remainder of its course over a firm gravelly bed to the Laconian gulf. Immediately above Sparta the valley narrows exceedingly; but, at this point, the hills receding suddenly on both sides, sweep round a small circular plain, and, a short distance below the city, again approach, and press upon the bed of the Eurotas.[[185]] The site of Sparta, therefore, resembles on a small scale that of the Egyptian Thebes, which is similarly hemmed round by the Arabian and Libyan mountains. It follows, too, that the condition of the atmosphere must to a certain extent be alike in both places; for the ridges of Taygetos and Thornax rising to a great height, not only intercept the cooler breezes from the west and north, but, bending amphitheatrically round the plain, concentrate the sun’s rays, which, being bare and rocky, they reflect with great force. In summer, therefore, the heat is intense: in winter, on the other hand, their great elevation suffices morning and evening to exclude the slanting beams, thus causing a degree of cold little inferior, perhaps, to what is felt in the highlands of Arcadia.