7. Pho'cis.—On the east of Locris, Ætolia, and Doris was Phocis, a mountainous region, bordered on the south by the Corinthian Gulf. In the northern central part of its territory was the famed Mount Parnassus, covered the greater part of the year with snow, with its sacred cave, and its Castalian fount gushing forth between two of its lofty rocks. The waters were said to inspire those who drank of them with the gift of poetry. Hence both mountain and fount were sacred to the Muses, and their names have come down to our own times as synonymous with poetry and song. BYRON thus writes of Parnassus, in lines almost of veneration, as he first viewed it from Delphi, on the southern base of the mountain:
Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!
Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
And now I view thee, 'tis, alas! with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
In silent joy to think at last I look on thee!
The city of Delphi was the seat of the celebrated temple and oracle of that name. Here the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, pronounced the prophetic responses, in extempore prose or verse; and here the Pythian Games were celebrated in honor of Apollo.
Here, thought-entranced, we wander, where of old
From Delphi's chasm the mystic vapor rose,
And trembling nations heard their doom foretold
By the dread spirit throned 'midst rocks and snows.
Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust,
And silence now the hallowed haunt possess,
Still is the scene of ancient rites august,
Magnificent in mountain loneliness;
Still Inspiration hovers o'er the ground,
Where Greece her councils held, her Pythian victors crowned.
—MRS. HEMANS.
8. Bœo'tia.—Bœotia, lying to the east of Phocis, bordering on the Euri'pus, or "Euboe'an Sea," a narrow strait which separates it from the Island of Euboe'a, and touching the Corinthian Gulf on the south-west, is mostly one large basin enclosed by mountain ranges, and having a soil exceedingly fertile. It was the most thickly settled part of Greece; it abounded in cities of historic interest, of which Thebes, the capital, was the chief—whose walls were built, according to the fable, to the sound of the Muses:
With their ninefold symphonies
There the chiming Muses throng;
Stone on stone the walls arise
To the choral Music-song.
—SCHILLER.
Bœotia was the scene of many of the legends celebrated by the poets, and especially of those upon which were founded the plays of the Greek tragedians. Near a fountain on Mount Cithæ'ron, on its southern border, the hunter Actæ'on, having been changed into a stag by the goddess Diana, was hunted down and killed by his own hounds. Pen'theus, an early king of Thebes, having ascended Cithæron to witness the orgies of the Bacchanals, was torn in pieces by his own mother and aunts, to whom Bacchus made him appear as a wild beast. On this same mountain range also occurred the exposure of OEd'ipus, the hero of the most famous tragedy of Sophocles. Near the Corinthian Gulf was Mount Hel'icon, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Its slopes and valleys were renowned for their fertility; it had its sacred grove, and near it was the famous fountain of Aganip'pe, which was believed to inspire with oracular powers those who drank of its waters. Nearer the summit was the fountain Hippocre'ne, which is said to have burst forth when the winged horse Peg'asus, the favorite of the Muses, struck the ground with his hoofs, and which Venus, accompanied by her constant attendants, the doves, delighted to visit. Here, we are told,
Her darling doves, light-hovering round their Queen,
Dipped their red beaks in rills from Hippocrene.
[Footnote: Always Hip-po-cre'ne in prose; but it is allowable to contract it into three syllables in poetry, as in the example above.]
It was here, also—