Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History / Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'

by James George Frazer

LV. The Road from Argos to Arcadia.—From Argos two main passes lead westward over the chain of Mount Artemisius to Mantinea. The southern and more direct of the two is for the greater part of the way nothing but a rough bridle-path; in places it crosses the deep beds of torrents, which at the time of my journey were dry. The path turns round the northern foot of the lofty acropolis of Argos, and skirting the wide Argolic plain enters the valley of the Charadrus or Xerias, as it is now called. This is a long narrow valley of somewhat monotonous aspect, enclosed by barren and rocky hills, and barred at the farther end by a steep mountain, on which, when I saw it far away on a bright April morning, purple shadows rested. The bed of the river is broad and stony, sometimes several hundred yards in width; it is generally dry, but after heavy rains the spates that come roaring down it from the mountains are much dreaded. Flocks of sheep and goats feed in the valley; the herdsmen carry the usual long staves tipped with crooks, and sometimes a gun. Trains of laden mules or asses, conducted by peasants, also met us. The head of the valley, immediately under the mountain barrier, is very picturesque. The bottom is partly covered with shrubs and trees, among which (for the place was then in its spring beauty) I noticed the broom and the hawthorn, both in flower, also wild roses, and a tree with a lovely purple bloom, which I believe to have been the Judas-tree. Beyond the small hamlet of Mazi, consisting of a few wretched stone cottages, the path begins the long ascent and winds up the face of the mountain-wall in a series of zigzags. The view backward from the summit of the pass is magnificent, embracing a wilderness of mountains with the sea and the islands of Hydra and Spetsa in the distance. From the top of the pass the path drops down very steeply, almost precipitously, into the flat sodden expanse of the Fallow Plain, across which we look to a bleak chain of grey limestone hills. The village of Tsipiana stands at the foot of the pass, its red-roofed houses, with a large church in their midst, rising in tiers on the steep mountain-side. On a ledge high above the village is a monastery among cypresses, and higher still there shoots up a huge fantastic pinnacle of rock. The traveller who has reached Tsipiana is in Arcadia, and if this is his first glimpse of that poetical land, he may find the reality to answer to his expectations, if not to his dreams.

From a low rocky hillock, which runs out like a promontory into the flat, he looks northward over the Fallow Plain, fallow no longer, but covered with a patchwork of maize-fields, and intersected by a stream meandering through it in serpentine curves. Southward the eye ranges away over the level expanse to where it terminates in low blue hills, at the foot of which, dimly perceptible in the distance, lies the town of Tripolitza. In the middle distance, on a projecting hill, appears a ruined mediaeval castle. The rural solitude of the landscape with its green spreading plain, its winding river, its lonely hills, and the silence and peace brooding over all, is not unworthy of Arcadia.

LVI. Mantinea.—The ruins of Mantinea are situated in a flat, marshy, and treeless plain about nine miles north of the present town of Tripolitza. The plain is about seven miles long from north to south, but in the latter direction it melts into the plain of Tegea; the division between the two is marked only by the protrusion of rocky hills on either side, which here narrows the plain to about a mile in width. On the east the plain is bounded by the chain of Mount Alesius, bare and high on the north, low and bushy on the south; between the two sections of the chain thus marked off from each other is the dip through which the path goes to Nestane and so by the Prinus route to Argos. On the west of the plain rises the high rugged range of Mount Maenalus, its lower slopes bare or overgrown with bushes, its higher slopes belted with dark pine-woods. Seen from the plain to the north of Mantinea on a bright autumn day, this fine range, with its dark blue lights and purple shadows, presents the appearance of a tossing sea of billows petrified by magic. Finally, on the north the plain of Mantinea is divided from that of Orchomenus by a low chain of reddish hills.

A great part of the plain, including almost all the southern part, is covered with vineyards, the rich green foliage of which, when the vines are in leaf, contrasts with the grey arid slopes of the surrounding mountains. But the site of Mantinea itself is now mostly cornland. Not a single house stands within the wide area, and hardly one is within sight. In spring the swampy plain is traversed by sluggish streams, little better than ditches, the haunts of countless frogs, which sun themselves on the banks and squatter into the water with loud flops at the approach of the wayfarer. The whole scene is one of melancholy and desolation. As the plain stands about two thousand feet above the sea, the climate is piercingly cold in winter as well as burning hot in summer. The marshes now render the site unhealthy at all times, but in antiquity it was doubtless better drained. Of the oak-forest, through which the road ran from Mantinea to Tegea in the days of Pausanias, nothing is left. Indeed the oak has long ago retreated from the plains to the mountains of Arcadia.

LVII. The Road to Stymphalus.—The road to Stymphalus, after diverging from the road to Pheneus, continues to skirt the foot of the mountains in a north-easterly direction. Behind us we leave Mount Trachy, which seen from the north is an imposing mountain, its steep sides rent by parallel gullies. Gradually the hill and plain of Orchomenus disappear behind us, and the path leads into a savage glen, hemmed in by wild rocky mountains, bare and desolate, towering high on either side. Away up in the face of a precipice on the right of the path is seen the little monastery of Kandyla, hanging in what appears an almost inaccessible position. In winter a torrent flows down the middle of the glen to swell the marsh in the plain of Orchomenus. A mile or so beyond the monastery we reach the village of Kandyla, straggling in the wide gravelly bed of the torrent, shaded by plane-trees and mulberry-trees, and shut in on all sides by high rocky mountains, their sides covered with fir-woods and their summits tipped with snow for a good part of the year. From the upper end of the village a pass leads eastward over the mountains to Bougiati and the ancient Alea; the path, which is very rough and steep, ascends a wild gully overhung on the south by a huge beetling crag; the descent on the eastern side of the mountains, towards Bougiati, is so steep as to be almost impassable for horses.

But at present we are following the path to Stymphalus, which, leaving the village of Kandyla in a northerly direction, ascends the mountain by zigzags along the edge of precipices. The snow sometimes lies deep here as late as March, making the ascent difficult and dangerous. The pass runs north-east between the lofty Mount Skipieza, nearly six thousand feet high, on the left, and the sharp-peaked Mount St. Constantine, crowned with a Frankish castle, on the right. From the first summit of the pass a path branches off to the right, descending into the narrow valley of Skotini which we see stretching eastward beneath us. Half an hour more takes us to a second summit, whence we look down on the plain and lake of Stymphalus and across to the majestic mass of Mount Cyllene towering on the farther side of the valley. The way now goes down a ravine shut in on both sides by lofty fir-clad mountains and known as the Wolf’s Ravine from the wolves that are said to abound in it. Thus descending we reach the valley of Stymphalus and the western end of the lake.

LVIII. The Lake and Valley of Stymphalus.—The valley of Stymphalus lies immediately to the east of the valley and lake of Pheneus, from which it is divided only by the ridge of Mount Geronteum. The general features of both valleys are alike. Both are shut in so closely on all sides by mountains and hills that the water which accumulates in them has no outlet except by underground chasms, and forms in the bottom of each valley a lake which shrinks in summer. But the valley of Stymphalus is smaller and narrower than the valley of Pheneus, and its lake is quite different. Instead of a deep sea-like expanse of blue water, we have here a small lake of the most limpid clearness, the shallowness of which is proved to the eye by the patches of reeds and other water-plants that emerge from the surface of the water even in the middle of the lake. The palm of beauty is generally, I believe, awarded to the lake of Pheneus; but the charms of Stymphalus are of a rarer and subtler sort. Blue lakes encircled by steep pine-clad mountains may be found in many lands; but where shall we look for the harmonious blending of grand mountains and sombre pine-forests with a still, pellucid, shallow, but not marshy lake, tufted with graceful water-plants, such as meets us in Stymphalus?

The lake of Stymphalus may be a mile and a half long by half a mile wide. On the north it bathes the foot of a ridge or chain of low heights, covered with rugged grey rocks and overgrown with prickly shrubs, which reaches its highest point on the west and descends gradually in terraces to the east, where its last rocks are elevated above the plain and lake by only a few feet. On the crest of this rocky ridge, towards its eastern end, are some remains of the citadel of Stymphalus. At the back of the ridge a stretch of level ground divides it from the steep slopes of the majestic Cyllene, which rises like a wall on the northern side of the valley. The sides of this great mountain are mostly bare and of a reddish-grey hue; but the grey shoulder of its sister peak on the east, joined to it by a high ridge, is mottled with black pines. The mountains on the southern side of the lake are also steep and high; low bushes mantle their lower and dark pine-forests their upper slopes. Conspicuous among them, between immense pine-covered slopes, is the deep glen known as the Wolfs Ravine, through which the road goes to Orchomenus.

Solitude and silence, broken by the strident cries of the water-fowl that haunt the mere, reign in the valley. A few hamlets nestle in the nooks and glens at the foot of the mountains; but in the wide strath and on the banks of the lake not a human habitation is to be seen. The impression left by the scenery on some minds is that of gloom and desolation. Yet on a hot day, when all the landscape is flooded with the intense sunlight of the south, it is pleasant to sit on the rocky ridge of Stymphalus, looking down on the cool clear water of the lake and listening to the cries of the water-fowl, the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkle of distant goat-bells. In such weather even the dark pine-forests on the mountains, gloomy as they must be under a bleak cloudy sky, suggest only ideas of coolness and shade; and we can well imagine that the ancient Stymphalus, with its colonnades and terraces rising from the lake, must have been a perfect place in which to lounge away the languid hours of a Greek summer. For the high upland character of the valley contributes with the expanse of water to temper the heat of the summer sun. The traveller who passes, as he may do, in a single day from the cool moist air of the valley to the sultry heat of the plain of Argos is struck by the contrast between the climates. In the morning he may have left the cherry-trees in blossom at Stymphalus; in the evening he may see the reapers getting in the harvest in the plain of Argos.

LIX. The Lake of Pheneus.—The lake of Pheneus (for what was a plain in the time of Pausanias is now a lake) is a broad and beautiful sheet of greenish-blue water encircled by lofty mountains which descend in rocky declivities or sheer precipices to the water’s edge, their upper slopes clothed with black pine-woods and their summits capped with snow for many months of the year. Right above the lake on the north-east towers the mighty cone of Cyllene, the loftiest mountain but one in Peloponnese; while on the north-west Dourdouvana rears its long serrated crest, culminating in a sharp bare peak of grey rock, at the foot of which, embowered in trees and gardens, nestles the village of Phonia, the representative of the ancient Pheneus. Here on the north, between the village and the lake, is the only stretch of level ground that breaks the mountain ring, and the luxuriant green of its vineyards and maize-fields contrasts pleasingly with the sombre hue of the pine-forests all around. The first sight of this blue lake embosomed among forest-clad mountains takes the traveller by surprise, so unlike is it to anything else in Greece; and he feels as if suddenly transported from the arid hills and the parched plains of Greece to a northern land—from the land of the olive, the vine, and the orange, to the land of the pine, the mountain, and the lake.