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

by James George Frazer

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

LXVI. Dimitsana.—The ancient Teuthis perhaps occupied the site of the modern Dimitsana, a village which stands very picturesquely on a high ridge on the left or eastern bank of the Gortynius river, surrounded on all sides by steep and lofty mountains. The river sweeps in a semicircle at the bottom of a deep gully round the western part of the town, which thus stands on a high rocky promontory jutting into the ravine. The steep and narrow streets, which are little better than rocky staircases, are lined with shops and present a busy and animated scene. The air is cool and healthy. To the south the eye ranges over the vine-clad hills on both sides of the river, to the green plain of Megalopolis threaded by the silver stream of the Alpheus, and bounded far away to the south by the snowy range of Taygetus. A steep, rugged, and zigzag path leads down through terraced vineyards to the bed of the river at the southern foot of the hill. Here a bridge spans the stream, just below a point where the river descends fifty feet in a space of as many yards, tumbling over huge masses of rock between lofty precipices overhung with shrubs. The hill on the opposite or western side of the ravine is even steeper and higher than that of Dimitsana.

All round the crest of the ridge occupied by the town are the remains of an ancient wall, parts of it being intermixed with the yards, walls, and foundations of private houses. In some places there are several courses of masonry standing. The style of masonry is rectangular at the east, but polygonal at the west end of the ridge. The blocks at the latter end are enormous. Here too are the foundations of an imposing edifice, turned east and west, and built of fine squared blocks. It was doubtless a temple. Some ancient foundations may also be seen among the terraced vineyards on the southern slope of the hill.

LXVII. Gortys.—On the right bank of the Gortynius, or river of Dimitsana, about two and a half miles from its junction with the Alpheus, are the ruins of Gortys. They occupy the fairly spacious summit of a hill which falls away on the east in lofty precipices to the river. A visit to them may be most conveniently paid from Karytaena. From this picturesque town, perched high on the right or eastern bank of the Alpheus, we descend northward by a very rugged and stony path into the deep glen of the Alpheus. Steep arid mountains enclose the glen, and behind us towers the imposing rock of Karytaena with its ruined mediaeval castle. In about half an hour we reach the junction of the Gortynius river with the Alpheus. We now quit the glen of the Alpheus and follow that of the Gortynius river in a north-easterly direction, keeping at first along the left bank of the stream. The glen, though shut in by barren stony mountains, is rather less gloomy and forbidding than the glen of the Alpheus which we have left. In less than half an hour we descend into the bed of the Gortynius, a rushing stream of clear bluish-green water, and cross it by a stone bridge which is carried on a high pointed arch and paved, in the usual fashion of such bridges in Greece, with cobbles of the most agonising shapes and sizes. Just above the bridge the glen deepens and narrows into a ravine with steep rocky sides, and the view looking up it, with the old high-arched bridge in the foreground and the rushing stream of green water below, is highly picturesque. I drank of the water here and found it by no means cold, in spite of what Pausanias says as to the exceeding coldness of the water of the Gortynius. But it was hot autumn weather when I passed this way. Pausanias may have seen the river in winter or spring, when its current was chilled by ice or melting snow. From the bridge a steep and rugged path ascends the right or western side of the glen. We follow it and continue to ride up hill and down dale along the side of the barren mountains, with the river rolling along in the bottom of the deep ravine on our right. Half-way up the precipices which rise on this side of the ravine hangs a little red-roofed monastery. In about three-quarters of an hour from crossing the bridge we reach the ruins of Gortys.

The ruins, as we have seen, occupy the summit of a hill which overhangs the right or western bank of the Gortynius river. At its eastern extremity the hill falls down in sheer precipices of great height into the glen of the river. It is in looking down these immense precipices that we appreciate the height of the hill. On the other hand, seen from the south, as you approach it from Karytaena, the hill presents the appearance merely of a gently-swelling down. The reason of this is that from the bridge over the river we have been gradually rising, and that the ground immediately to the south of Gortys is itself a hill as high as the hill of Gortys, from which it is divided only by a slight hollow now chiefly occupied with vineyards. But when we have ascended what appears to be the gentle eminence occupied by the ruins of Gortys we see that the hill descends in a long slope north-eastward to the glen of the Gortynius river, which curves round the hill in a great bend on the north-east and east. The summit of the hill extends in the form of a rather narrow ridge from south-east to north-west, gradually rising to its highest point on the north-west. Towards this end the hill is naturally defended on the side of the south by masses of rugged rocks, of which the ancient engineers took advantage, interposing pieces of walls in the intervals between the rocks. In the crannies of the rocks bushes have now rooted themselves.

The long slope of the hill down to the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east is bare and stony. Stony and barren, too, are the mountains that surround Gortys on all sides. In a grey cold light or under a cloudy sky they would be exceedingly bleak and dreary; but under the warm sunshine of Greece they are only bare and desolate. The most pleasing view is down into the glen of the Gortynius on the north-east, where the river emerges from a narrow defile between high precipices, above which the mountains rise on both sides. At the mouth of the defile there is a house or two among trees. In spite of its height above the river, Gortys lies essentially in a basin shut in on all sides by mountains. The summer heat here must consequently be very great. Even in October, when I visited the place, though a fresh breeze was blowing, it was drowsily hot among the ruins. The sweet smell of the thyme, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the barking of dogs, and the cries of shepherds in the distance seemed to enhance the feeling of summer and to invite to slumber in the shade. But it was pleasant and almost cooling to hear the roar of the river, and to see its blue-green water and greenish-white foam away down in the glen.

LXVIII. The Plain of Megalopolis.—Megalopolis stood in the great western plain of Arcadia, which, like the great eastern plain of Mantinea and Tegea, extends in a direction from north to south. In natural beauty the plain of Megalopolis is far superior to its eastern neighbour. The latter is a bare monotonous flat, unrelieved by trees or rivers, and enclosed by barren mountains, so that its general aspect is somewhat dreary and depressing; only towards its northern end do the mountains rise in grander masses and with more picturesque outlines. The plain of Megalopolis, on the other hand, is surrounded by mountains of fine and varied outlines, some of the slopes of which are clothed with wood, and the surface of the plain itself is diversified with copses and undulating downs and hillocks, refreshed by numerous streams shaded with plane-trees, and watered by the broad though shallow stream of the Alpheus winding through its midst. The scenery, in contrast to that of the eastern plain, is eminently bright, smiling, and cheerful. It is, perhaps, seen at its best after rain on a fine morning in early summer. The vegetation is then green, the air pellucid, the outlines of the environing mountains are sharp and clear, and their tints vary from deep purple to lilac.

LXIX. The Cave of the Black Demeter.—The cave of the Black Demeter has been identified with a small cavern in the glen of the Neda, about an hour’s walk to the west of Phigalia. The place is known in the neighbourhood as the stomion tes Panagias or Gully of the Virgin. To reach the cavern it is necessary to descend into the ravine by a steep and narrow path which affords very little foothold and overhangs depths which might turn a weak head. At the awkward places, however, it is generally possible to hold on to bushes or rocks with the hands. Thus we descend to the bed of the river, which here rushes roaring along at the bottom of the narrow wooded ravine, the precipitous sides of which tower up on either hand to an immense height. The cave is situated in the face of a prodigious cliff on the north side of the ravine, about a hundred feet or so above the bed of the river, from which it is accessible only by a narrow and difficult footpath. The ravine at this point sweeps round in a sharp curve, and the cavern is placed just at the elbow of the bend. On the opposite side of the lyn, some fifty feet or so away, a great crag, its sides green with grass and trees wherever they can find a footing, soars up to a height about as far above the cavern as the cavern is above the stream. Hills close the view both up and down the glen; those at the upper end are high, steep, and wooded.

The cavern itself, originally a mere shallow depression or hollow in the side of the cliff, has been artificially closed by a rough wall of masonry, apparently of recent date; the plaster seemed to me fresh. In the cavern thus formed a rough floor of boards has been run across at a height of about four feet above the ground. Thus the grotto is divided into two compartments, the upper of which has been converted into a tiny chapel with an altar at the end and two holy pictures of Christ and John the Baptist. On one of the walls are some faded frescoes. Light enters the little cave by a small window in the wall beside the altar. At least half of the roof is artificial, being built of the same rough masonry as the wall. Close beside this tiny cavern, to the east of it, may be seen a still tinier grotto, separated from the former by a slight protuberance in the rock. The same ledge of rock gives access to both grottoes.

What is called the Gully of the Virgin is a tunnel, some hundred yards long, formed of fallen rocks and earth, through which the Neda rushes in the ravine below the cavern. In winter the swollen stream flows over the roof of the tunnel, but in summer, when the river is low, you may walk through the tunnel and admire the stalactites which hang from its roof.