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

by James George Frazer

LXXV. The Great Katavothra.—To reach Larymna from the sanctuary of Apollo on Mount Ptous, we quit the trough or little mountain-girdled valley in which the remains of the sanctuary are to be seen and ascend the ridge that bounds it on the north-west, forming a saddle between Mount Tsoukourieli and Mount Megalo Vouno. From the summit of the ridge or saddle we take a last look backwards at the vale of Apollo with its ruined sanctuary and the beautiful Lake Likeri, with its winding shores, beyond and below it to the south; then turning northwards we descend somewhat steeply a narrow glen with high bushy sides, which leads us straight down to the north-eastern corner of the great Copaic plain. Across this corner of the plain, which until a few years ago was a marsh or even a lake for many months of the year, but is now under cultivation, we ride to the Great Katavothra, the largest of the natural chasms in the line of cliffs through which the water of the Copaic Lake found its way to the sea. It is a great cave with a high-arched roof opening in the face of a cliff of creamy white limestone. Unlike most of the other chasms or emissaries, it is still in use; the river Melas (the modern Mavropotamos or Black River), after traversing all the northern edge of the Copaic plain in a canal-like bed, pours its water in a steady stream into the cave and vanishes in the depths. A little way inward from the mouth of the cave there is an opening in the roof. When the sunshine streams down through this aperture, lighting up the back of the gloomy cavern with its hanging rocky roof and hurrying river, the effect is very picturesque; it is like a fairy grotto, and we could almost fancy that we stood

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

But alas! the women who may be seen any day washing their dirty linen at the mouth of the cave break the spell.

LXXVI. The Vale of the Muses.—The grove of the Muses lay at the northern foot of Mount Helicon in a valley which is traversed by a stream flowing from west to east. Towards its western end the valley contracts, being hemmed in between the steep, lofty, and wooded slopes of Helicon on the south and another rugged but less lofty mountain on the north. The saddle which joins the two mountains bounds the Vale of the Muses on the west. A fine view of the valley is to be had from a ruined mediaeval tower which surmounts a rocky hill of no great height on the northern side of the vale, about midway between Ascra and the village of Palaeo-Panagia. Across the valley to the south rise the steep slopes of Helicon, rocky below and wooded with pines above. In a glen at the foot of these great declivities are seen the trees that hide the secluded monastery of St. Nicholas, below which dark myrtle-bushes extend far down the slope. At the head of the valley in the west the serrated top of Helicon appears foreshortened, and a little on this side of the highest point the monastery of Zagara peeps out, delightfully situated on a woody slope that falls away into the sequestered dale where stand the two villages also called Zagara. To the left of the summit the snowy top of Parnassus just shows itself in the distance. In the nearer foreground, on the hither side of the valley, the conical hill of Ascra, crowned with its ruined tower, stands out boldly. Vineyards cover the gently-swelling hills on the northern side of the vale, and down the middle of it the brook Archontitza (probably the ancient Termesus or Permessus), fed by many springs, flows through fields of maize and corn.

LXXVII. Hippocrene.—To reach the far-famed Hippocrene (‘the Horse’s Fount’) from the sanctuary of the Muses we ascend the steep eastern side of Helicon over moss-grown rocks, through a thick forest of tall firs. After a toilsome ascent of about two hours we emerge from the wood upon a tiny open glade of circular shape, covered with loose stones and overgrown with grass and ferns. All around rises the dark fir-wood. Here, in the glade, is Hippocrene, now called Kryopegadi, or ‘cold spring.’ It is a well with a triangular opening, enclosed by ancient masonry. The clear ice-cold water stands at a depth of about ten feet below the coping of the well. But it is possible to climb down to the water by means of foot-holes cut in the side, or by holding on to the sturdy ivy, which, growing from a rock in the water, mantles the sides of the well. The coldness and clearness of the water of this perennial spring are famous in the neighbourhood, especially among the herdsmen, who love to fill their skin bottles at it.

LXXVIII. Lebadea.—The modern town of Livadia retains the ancient name of Lebadea but slightly altered. It stands very picturesquely at the mouth of a wild gorge in the mountains, facing northward across the plain. The white houses with their red roofs and wooden balconies climb the hill-sides on both banks of the Hercyna, a clear and copious stream, which issues from the gorge and rushes noisily through the streets in a rocky bed, turning some mills and spanned by several bridges. At the back of the town a steep rocky hill, crowned with the ruins of a great mediaeval castle, descends in sheer and lofty precipices into the gorge on the left bank of the stream. The houses extend down into the plain, scattered among gardens and clumps of trees which give the town, as seen from below, an agreeable aspect. The mountains at the foot of which Lebadea lies are the northern spurs of Mount Helicon; the high conical summit to the east is the ancient Mount Laphystius, now the mountain of Granitsa. The plain that lies spread out below the town on the north melts eastward into the great Copaic plain; on the north it is divided by a chain of low hills from the parallel plain of Chaeronea.

The greater part of the water of the Hercyna rises in the profound gorge immediately behind the town. Here, at the foot of the great precipice which is surmounted by the ruins of the castle, a cold spring called Kryo (‘cold’) issues from the rocks and is conducted into a small well-house. Some niches for holding votive offerings are cut in the face of the cliff above it. The largest of these cuttings is a square chamber hewn out of the rock, about six feet above the ground. Right and left, in the sides of the chamber, are benches cut in the rock. In this cool retreat the Turkish governor of Lebadea used to smoke his pipe in the heat of the day. On the opposite side of the ravine, a few paces off, near some plane-trees, several springs of clear but lukewarm water rush turbulently from the ground, and, united with the water of the Kryo, form the Hercyna. They turn a cotton-mill close to the spot where they rise. That some of these springs are the waters of Memory and Forgetfulness of which all who would consult Trophonius had to drink before descending into the oracular pit, is highly probable; but we have no means of identifying these mystic waters. An alteration in the flow of one of the springs is known to have occurred within the nineteenth century; and many such changes may have taken place since antiquity. The general features of the spot, however, have probably changed but little, and they are well fitted to impress the imagination. The many springs gurgling strongly from the ground, the verdant plane-trees, the caverned rocks, the great precipices soaring on three sides of us and overhung on the west by the ruins of the mediaeval castle, make up a scene which once seen is not easily forgotten. But the ravine of which this is after all only the mouth does not end here. Its deep, narrow, stony bed, sometimes dry, sometimes traversed by a raging torrent, winds far into the heart of the mountains, shut in on either hand like a cañon by tremendous crags. If you follow it upwards for some miles, the country begins to open up and you find yourself in bleak and desolate highlands. A profound silence reigns, broken only by the cry of a water-ouzel beside the torrent or the screaming of hawks far up the cliffs.

LXXIX. The Boeotian Orchomenus.—Orchomenus, one of the oldest and most famous cities in Greece, occupied the eastern extremity of a sharply-marked chain of hills—the Mount Acontium (‘javelin’) of the ancients—which extends east and west for about six miles, bounding the broad level plain of the Cephisus on the north. Beginning nearly opposite to Chaeronea, which lies at the foot of the hills on the southern side of the plain, the ridge rises gradually to a considerable height, runs eastward at this level for some miles, and then slopes down into the Copaic plain. From beginning to end it is the stoniest, barest, barrenest, and most forbidding chain of hills that can well be conceived; looking up at it you wonder if the foot of man has ever trodden these rugged and pathless solitudes. Close to the southern base of these desolate hills the Cephisus—a fairly broad and deep stream of turbid whitish water—flows between low banks fringed with tall willows; ducks disport themselves on its surface, and pigs wallow in the mire on its banks. According as the weather has been dry or rainy, the current is sluggish or rapid. Riding beside it under the willows on a grey November day you might fancy yourself on the banks of an English Ouse or Avon, if the cotton-fields by the river-side and the towering ridge of naked rock beyond did not remind you that you are in a foreign land.