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

by James George Frazer

At its eastern end the ridge descends in a long and gentle slope, expanding fan-like as it descends to the Copaic plain. This long slope was the site of Orchomenus. The position is one of great natural strength. On the south and north it is protected by the steep and rugged sides of the ridge which form, as it were, a first line of defence. At the foot of these declivities the waters of the Cephisus on the south and of the Melas on the north constitute a second line of defence; while on the east, where the descent to the plain is gradual, the site was till lately rendered secure by the great Copaic swamp which advanced to within a few hundred yards of the end of the slope. The ancient walls, of which considerable remains exist, started from the broad eastern foot of the hill, and followed its northern and southern brows upwards, converging more and more as they rose till at the upper end of the slope they were within about thirty yards of each other. Here at the head of the slope the walls end at the foot of a cliff which rises like a wall to a considerable height. Its small summit, reached by a long, steep, and narrow staircase hewn out of the rock, was the ancient acropolis. Yet this cliff, which presents such an imposing appearance on the east, is separated on the west only by a shallow depression of a few feet from the long rugged ridge of the hills. This, therefore, was the weak point in the circuit; and art had to be called in to supply the want of a natural defence. Accordingly the little citadel, protected by precipices on the east and north, was fortified on the west and south by immense walls of massive masonry, the remains of which are amongst the finest specimens of ancient Greek fortification in existence. The fortress thus formed is so small that it resembles a castle rather than an acropolis of the ordinary Greek type. But the splendid style of the masonry leaves no room to doubt that it is a Greek fortress of the very best period, probably of the fourth century B.C.—the golden age of Greek military engineering.

LXXX. The Plain of Chaeronea.—The plain of Chaeronea—one of the largest plains in Greece—stretches in an unbroken sweep from the foot of Mount Parnassus eastward to what used to be the Copaic Lake. Its length from east to west is about twelve miles, and its breadth from north to south about two. The plain is a dead flat, covered with fields of cotton and maize, and enclosed by bare, stony, barren hills both on the north and on the south. Seen on a bright summer day, with the mountains beyond the Copaic plain appearing blue in the distance and Parnassus towering grandly on the west, the scene is beautiful enough; but on a grey November morning, with the mists down on the distant mountains, it wears a cheerless aspect that well becomes a battlefield where a nation’s freedom was lost.

LXXXI. Panopeus.—The space enclosed by the fortification walls and by the rocky crests shows but few signs of habitation. On the highest point of the hill, among some holly-oaks, are the scanty tumble-down ruins of a mediaeval tower, built in the usual way of small stones with bricks and mortar in the chinks. A little lower down, and farther to the east, is a small chapel with remains of faded paintings on the walls. Scattered about the hill, especially round the chapel, is a good deal of broken pottery. A fine grove of beautiful holly-oaks now shades part of the summit, growing on a grassy slope amid low plants and shrubs. It is pleasant in the heat of the day to rest in the shade of these trees, to smell the wild thyme which grows abundantly on the hill, and to enjoy the distant prospects. To the north, across the broad Chaeronean plain, we look straight into the defile through which the Cephisus flows from Phocis into Boeotia; at the northern end of the defile the low hill is visible on which are the scanty ruins of Parapotamii. To the west Parnassus lifts his mighty head at no great distance from us, his middle slopes darkened by pine-forests that look like the shadows of clouds resting on the mountain-side.

LXXXII. Near Hyampolis.—From the ledge of rocks which bounds the plateau on the south, near a ruined chapel, a spring of beautifully clear water gushes forth. Some ancient blocks lie tumbled about the spring, and a tall poplar-tree grows opposite it. The day was very hot when I passed it on my way to and from the ruins of Hyampolis; but the leaves of the poplar rustled in the breeze, and the water flowed from under the rocks with a soothing murmur. Parnassus loomed dim in the distance through a haze of heat. On my return from the ruins I found a shepherd boy at the spring who offered to share his bread with me. This picturesque spot, on which a poet of the Anthology might have written an epigram, is perhaps the site of the temple of Artemis mentioned by Pausanias.

LXXXIII. Tithorea.—The site of Tithorea, first identified by Clarke in 1801, is occupied by the modern village of Velitsa, which stands very picturesquely among trees on the north-eastern slopes of Parnassus, overlooking the broad valley of the Cephisus. About two-thirds of the village are enclosed within the ancient ivy-mantled walls, which rank with those of Messene and Eleutherae as among the finest existing specimens of Greek fortifications. At the back of the village to the south rises a huge mountainous cliff of grey rock, its ledges tufted with pines. Between the foot of this great cliff and the village there intervenes a very steep slope, mostly overgrown with holly-oak bushes. On the east the village as well as the site of the ancient city is bounded by a very deep rocky ravine, which winds southward into the heart of the mountains. At the bottom of the ravine a torrent flows from Parnassus over a broad gravelly bed to join the Cephisus in the plain below. This torrent, now called Kakorevma or Evil Stream, is the ancient Cachales. In the time of Pausanias, the townspeople, he tells us, had to fetch their water in buckets from the depths of the lyn. Nowadays a portion of the water of the stream is diverted higher up the glen and brought in a conduit to the village, where it turns two mills and waters the gardens and orchards. As Tithorea was thus naturally defended on two sides, namely by the great cliff on the south and by the deep ravine on the east, it needed walls on two sides only, the west and the north. These walls, starting from the foot of the cliff, first descend the steep slope in a straight line above the village, then follow the gentler slope within the village, still in a direction due north, till they turn round at an obtuse angle and run eastward to the brink of the ravine. Here they stop. Along the edge of the ravine a number of ancient blocks may be observed, but whether they are the remains of an ancient fortification wall is not clear. Perhaps the deep precipitous side of the ravine may have been considered a sufficient defence by itself. The walls so far as they exist are finely and solidly built of regular ashlar masonry, and are flanked by massive square towers constructed in the same style. Walls and towers are best preserved in the lower ground among the houses and gardens of the village, but on the steep slope above the village the remains are also considerable.

The investigation of the ruined fortifications on this slope, it may be observed, is a matter of some difficulty, for the slope is not only very steep but overgrown with prickly shrubs and cumbered with huge fallen blocks. The antiquary who picks his way painfully among these obstacles is mortified by the contrast between his own slow progress and that of the village urchins who accompany him; for they climb and skip like goats on the top of the walls, now appearing suddenly on the highest pinnacles and then again leaping from stone to stone with wonderful confidence and agility.

The remains of the walls in the village, on the other hand, can be examined without discomfort, and they better repay study. Here on the north and north-west the wall, flanked by square towers, is standing in an unbroken line for a considerable distance. As a whole, the masonry of the walls and towers is splendid, massive, and almost quite regular, without being absolutely so. The beauty of these venerable walls is much enhanced by the thick green veil of ivy and other creepers which clothes their sides and droops in graceful festoons from their summits. Such a mantle of clinging verdure is very rare in Greece, where the ancient temples and fortresses, unlike the ivy-clad abbeys and castles of England, remain for the most part to this day as bare as when they were built, without even a patch of moss to soften their hard outlines and to tell of the lapse of ages.

Distant views complete the charm of Tithorea. From its ivied walls, rising among the gardens and houses of the village, we look up at the huge grey crag that hides the higher slopes of Parnassus, or down the long gradual declivity to the wide valley of the Cephisus and across it to the hills, somewhat low and tame, at whose foot lie the scanty ruins of Elatea.

LXXXIV. From Amphissa to Gravia.—The smiling verdure of Amphissa and its neighbourhood forms a striking contrast to the stern, arid, and rocky scenery of Delphi, which is only ten miles off. At Amphissa, indeed, we are on the borders of almost Swiss scenery. For the fir-clad and torrent-rent mountains of Locris and Doris, which rise to the north-west, are the loftiest in the present kingdom of Greece. Two of the peaks exceed eight thousand feet in height. A fine specimen of this Alpine scenery may be obtained by following the mule-path which leads north from Amphissa over the mountains to the village of Gravia in the ancient canton of Doris. With the exception of the village of Topolia, which we leave on the right, and here and there a small farm far up on the mountain-side, not a human dwelling is to be seen. At first the path ascends the western declivities of Parnassus. Looking down to the left we see below us a narrow dale, where in early summer the course of the stream, now nearly dried up, is marked by the red oleander blossoms. Beyond the dale Mount Kiano rears its snowy head, the loftiest mountain in Greece; and behind it the long and almost equally lofty ridge of Vardousia is seen stretching north and south. The finest point on the route is at a clear spring which bubbles up at the top of the pass, just where the road surmounts the ridge that joins Parnassus to the mountains of Locris. Hitherto we have been ascending from the south; from this point the road begins to descend to the north. The valley now contracts. The snowy peaks in the west disappear, but their lower spurs form, with the western declivities of Parnassus, a narrow pass, down which a brook babbles over rocks and stones, its banks overhung with plane-trees. Pines and oaks of various kinds contrast pleasantly with the steep cliffs and bushy slopes; and now and then we come to a little grassy glade or a patch of corn. “It is,” says the Swiss traveller Vischer, whose description of the road I have borrowed, “almost a Swiss region, and I might have fancied myself transported to my native land, if the holly-oaks and oriental plane-trees had not reminded me that I was in the south.” Thus descending by a steep and rugged path we reach the village of Gravia at the northern end of the pass, in five or six hours from Amphissa.

LXXXV. Daulis.—The situation of ancient Daulis is exceedingly beautiful. It occupied the broad but somewhat uneven summit of a fine massive hill, which rises abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of Parnassus. Everywhere the sides of the hill—which in the grandeur of its outlines deserves almost to rank as a mountain—are high and steep, except at a single point on the west where a narrow ridge connects it with the main mass of Parnassus. On the south the hill falls away in sheer and lofty precipices of grey rock into a deep romantic glen, the sides of which, where they are not precipitous, are mantled with dark green shrubbery. Beyond the ridge to the west soar the immense grey precipitous slopes of Parnassus, mottled here and there with dark pines. High up on its side is seen a white monastery at the mouth of a dark gorge, through which a path ascends to the summit. In the hollow between the hill of Daulis and these great slopes, a mill nestles picturesquely among trees; the water is led to it in a mill-race. Northward the ruined walls of Daulis, here thickly overgrown with ivy and holly-oak, look across a deep dell to the pretty village of Davlia, embowered among trees and gardens on the opposite hill-side. The descent to the valley on this side is steep and bushy, but not precipitous, except where a line of rocks runs obliquely up it on the north-west. Here and there in the valley the last slopes of the hill are terraced and planted with vines. At the eastern foot of the hill begins the great plain—the scene of so many famous battles—which stretches away for miles past the ruins of Panopeus and Chaeronea until at Orchomenus it melts into the still vaster expanse of the Copaic plain. To the south-east, beyond an intervening range of low hills, appears the sharp outline of Helicon. In this direction, at the southern end of the narrow valley which divides these low hills from the mighty steeps of Parnassus, is the famous Cleft Way, where Oedipus is said to have done the dark deed that was the beginning of all his woes.