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

by James George Frazer

LXX. The Temple of Apollo At Bassae.—This temple, by far the best preserved of all ancient temples in Peloponnese, stands in a strikingly wild and secluded situation at a height of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, with a wide prospect southward to the distant mountains of Messenia and Laconia. The ground on which the temple is built is a narrow platform on the southern side of a hill, the Mount Cotilius of the ancients. The rocky slopes of this hill, rising rapidly behind the temple, shut out all distant views on the north and north-east. But to the south the slope descends gradually towards the valley of the Neda. Due south, through a dip in the hills, is seen the apparently flat-topped summit of Ithome. To the south-east, through another gap, appears the range of Taygetus, with its beautiful outlines and sharp snowy peaks. In the nearer foreground, between Ithome and Taygetus, rises Mount Ira, the last stronghold of the Messenian race in its struggle for freedom with Sparta. To the east are bare rough hills, dotted with oak-trees, the western spurs of Mount Lycaeus, while farther to the south appears the high round-topped Tetrasi, perhaps the Nomian mountains of the ancients. The sea is not visible, but it may be seen by ascending the slope at the back of the temple. The bleak desolate mountains form a striking background to the solitary temple which, built of the same cold grey limestone which composes the surrounding rocks, tends to deepen rather than relieve the melancholy of the scene, the ruined fane witnessing silently to the transitoriness of human greatness and the vanity of human faith.

LXXI. The Temple of Artemis at Aulis.—From the head of the Bay of Aulis a small valley, sloping gently upwards, runs inland between hills for something over a mile. It is watered by a brook which falls into the bay. About a mile up the valley from the shore is a ruined Byzantine chapel of St. Nicholas, which is supposed to occupy the site of the temple of Artemis, mentioned by Pausanias, where Iphigenia was led to the altar to be sacrificed before the Greek fleet set sail for Troy. The scene, if it indeed be so, of this famous event in Greek legend was somewhat bleak and cheerless as I saw it under a leaden sky on a dull November afternoon. The ruined chapel, with its fallen dome and roofless walls, had a forlorn air, standing solitary in a bare, stony, ploughed field on the slope of the low hills that enclose the little valley on the south. Similar hills—low, stony, and treeless—with higher hills rising above them on the north and west, shut in the valley on all sides except the east, where appeared, of a pale blue-green colour under the wintry sky, a bit of the Bay of Aulis, beyond it the open channel of the Euripus, and still farther off, bathed in a gloomy purple, the coast and mountains of Euboea. Bare ploughed fields, with a small tree dotted here and there among them, occupied all the bottom of the valley, and formed the foreground of the melancholy scene. Yet bare fields, stony hills, leaden sky, cold steely sea, and purple mountains glooming in the distance, seemed a fitting framework for the ruined shrine, with its memories of departed glory.

LXXII. Glaucus’s Leap.—Immediately beyond the flat-topped hillock which probably marks the site of Salganeus, the plain comes abruptly to an end and the path runs along the steep, bushy, but not precipitous slope of Mount Messapius at some height above the sea, which on a bright sunshiny day is of a beautiful green colour, clear as crystal and dappled with patches of purple. Thus proceeding along the steep mountain-side for about a mile we find ourselves opposite a pretty rocky island, wooded with pines, which lies a little way off the shore. On the island is a ruin which, so far as I could judge by the eye from the shore, seemed to be mediaeval or modern. Hereabouts, too, a row of large stones may be observed lying at the bottom of the clear water, but they appear to be boulders rather than hewn stones. Farther on a high cliff, which seen from the east reminds one of the Lorelei Rock on the Rhine, rises close to the shore. The path here descends and runs along the narrow beach at the foot of the cliff, from which a very copious spring of water rushes into the sea. This high cliff is probably what the ancients called Glaucus’s Leap. On the morning when I passed it, the clear, sunlit, greenish-blue water at its foot looked very inviting; one could fancy the sea-god taking his plunge into its cool delicious depths. Beyond the cliff the path again runs along the foot of the long slope, covered with lentisk and holly-oak bushes, which descends from the high, bold, pointed summit of Mount Messapius in an unbroken sweep to the sea.

LXXIII. Evening on the Euripus.—The views from Anthedon across the beautiful Euripus are charming, especially at sunset when the opposite mountains of Euboea glow with delicate pink and lilac hues, and flakes of golden and rosy clouds are reflected in the mirror-like surface of the strait, which, apparently landlocked on all sides, resembles a calm lake. The effect is heightened if a fishing-boat, its russet sails aglow in the warm evening light, chances to glide along at the time, and a snatch of song comes wafted from it across the water.

LXXIV. The Copaic Lake.—Like other lakes which are drained not by rivers but by natural subterranean passages in the limestone mountains which surround them, the level of the Copaic Lake varied greatly from time to time. Such variations depend upon two different sets of causes, first the varying capacity of the emissaries, and second the varying amount of water poured into the lake.

In the first place, not only are the emissaries subject to a gradual and regular process of change, their passages being slowly clogged and their mouths choked up by the alluvial deposits which in the course of ages raise the bed of the lake; but they are also exposed to sudden and incalculable changes, wrought by earthquakes, landslips, floating logs, and so on, which may in a few minutes either widen the passages or block them up altogether. In the second place, while these changes, whether gradual or sudden, affect the outflow of the water, others not less marked influence its inflow. For the rainfall, on which the inflow ultimately depends, varies not only with the year but with the season. In the sub-tropical climate of the Mediterranean rain hardly falls in summer, and as a consequence the streams in that season either flow with diminished volume or dry up entirely.

All these various causes combine to produce secular and periodic as well as irregular and unforeseen variations in the level of lakes like the Copaic mere. In no lake, perhaps, have the annual changes been more regular and marked than in the Copaic; for while in winter it was a reedy mere, the haunt of thousands of wild fowl, in summer it was a more or less marshy plain where cattle browsed and crops were sown and reaped. So well recognised were these vicissitudes of the seasons that places on the bank of the lake such as Orchomenus, Lebadea, and Copae had summer roads and winter roads by which they communicated with each other, the winter roads following the sides of the hills, while the summer roads struck across the plain. With the setting in of the heavy autumn rains in November the lake began to rise and reached its greatest depth in February or March, by which time the mouths of the emissaries were completely submerged and betrayed their existence only by swirls on the surface of the mere. Yet even then the lake presented to the eye anything but an unbroken sheet of water. Viewed from a height such as the acropolis of Orchomenus it appeared as an immense fen, of a vivid green colour, stretching away for miles and miles, overgrown with sedge, reeds, and canes, through which the river Cephisus or Melas might be seen sluggishly oozing, while here and there a gleam of sunlit water, especially towards the north-east corner of the mere, directed the eye to what looked like ponds in the vast green swamp. Bare grey mountains rising on the north and east, and the beautiful wooded slopes of Helicon on the south, bounded the fen. In spring the water began to sink. Isolated brown patches, where no reeds grew, were the first to show as islands in the mere; and as the season advanced they expanded more and more till they met. By the middle of summer great stretches, especially in the middle and at the edges, were bare. In the higher parts the fat alluvial soil left by the retiring waters was sown by the peasants and produced crops of corn, rice, and cotton; while the lower parts, overgrown by rank grass and reeds, were grazed by herds of cattle and swine. In the deepest places of all the water often stagnated the whole summer, though there were years when it retreated even from these, leaving behind it only a bog or perhaps a stretch of white clayey soil, perfectly dry, which the summer heat seamed with a network of minute cracks and fissures. By the end of August the greater part of the basin was generally dry, though the water did not reach its lowest point till October. At that time what had lately been a fen was only a great brown expanse, broken here and there by a patch of green marsh, where reeds and other water plants grew. In November the lake began to fill again fast.

Such was the ordinary annual cycle of changes in the Copaic Lake in modern times, and we have no reason to suppose that it was essentially different in antiquity. But at all times the water of the lake has been liable to be raised above or depressed below its customary level by unusually heavy or scanty rainfall in winter or by the accidental clogging or opening of the chasms. As we read in ancient authors of drowned cities on the margin of the lake, so a modern traveller tells of villagers forced to flee before the rising flood, and of vineyards and corn-fields seen under water.

The plan of draining the Copaic Lake, which has been successfully accomplished within the last few years, was conceived and apparently executed at a very remote time in antiquity. Strabo reports a tradition that the whole basin of the lake had at one time been drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenus, and this tradition has been strikingly confirmed by the recent discovery of a complete and very ancient system of drainage works in the bed of the lake. The discovery was made by the engineers charged with the execution of the modern drainage works. As described by them, the ancient works were composed of an ingenious combination of dykes and canals, which completely encircled the lake and, receiving the waters of the streams which flowed into it on the west and south, conducted them to the chasms on the east and north-east banks. Where the canal skirted closely the precipitous rocky shore of the lake, a single dyke or embankment sufficed, the water being led between the dyke and the shore. But where the canal had to cross a bay, or where the bank of the lake was not high and steep enough to serve as one side of the canal, two parallel dykes were constructed and the water flowed between them. The remains of these ancient drainage works in the bed of the lake are of two sorts. In the first place we see them as low broad mounds, about five feet high and fifty to sixty yards wide, stretching for long distances across the plain, either in an unbroken line or with occasional gaps. Sometimes it is a single mound that we see, sometimes two parallel mounds at a short distance from each other. And between the two parallel mounds or beside the single one a long shallow depression marks the line of the ancient canal. These long, low, broad mounds are clearly the remains of the dykes which formerly enclosed the canals, and which have been gradually reduced to their present level by the ceaseless wash of the waters in the course of ages. In the second place, the line of the ancient canals may be traced by the walls built of great polygonal blocks which in many places support and case the inner side of the dykes. In some places these walls are well preserved, but in others nothing of them remains but a conspicuous line of white stones running for miles through the otherwise stoneless plain.

When the system of drainage by canals which has just been described was in full operation the basin of the Copaic Lake must have been nearly dry. But as we have no ground to suppose that in the historical period of antiquity the lake was ever drained, it would seem that we must refer these ancient drainage works to the prehistoric ages. Now Strabo, as we have seen, has preserved a tradition that the bed of the lake was at one time drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenus. We shall therefore hardly err in ascribing to the Minyans of Orchomenus—the Dutchmen of antiquity—the extensive system of dykes and canals by which the vast plain was reclaimed from the waters and converted into waving corn-fields and smiling vineyards, which poured wealth into the coffers of the burghers. This was the golden age of Orchomenus, when its riches vied with the treasures of Delphi and the wealth of Egyptian Thebes.