near this fresh fount,
On pleasant Helicon's umbrageous mount—
that occurred the celebrated contest between the nine daughters of Pie'rus, king of E-ma'thi-a (the ancient name of Macedonia), and the nine Muses. It is said that "at the song of the daughters of Pierus the sky became dark, and all nature was put out of harmony; but at that of the Muses the heavens themselves, the stars, the sea, and the rivers stood motionless, and Helicon swelled up with delight, so that its summit reached the sky." The Muses then, having turned the presumptuous maidens into chattering magpies, first took the name of Pi-er'i-des, from Pieria, their natal region.
9. Attica.—Bordering Bœotia on the south-east was the district of Attica, nearly in the form of a triangle, having two of its sides washed by the sea, and the other—the northern—shut off from the east of Central Greece by the mountain range of Cithæron on the north-west, and Par'nes on the east. Its other noted mountains were Pentel'icus (sometimes called Mende'li), so celebrated for its quarries of beautiful marble, and Hymet'tus, celebrated for its excellent honey, and the broad belt of flowers at its base, which scented the air with their delicious perfume. It could boast of its chief city, the favored seat of the goddess Minerva—
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence—
as surpassing all other cities in beauty and magnificence, and in the great number of its illustrious citizens. Yet the soil of Attica was, on the whole, exceedingly barren, with the exception of a few very fertile spots; but olive groves abounded, and the olive was the most valuable product.
The general sterility of Attica was the great safety of her people in their early history. "It drove them abroad; it filled them with a spirit of activity, which loved to grapple with danger and difficulty; it told them that, if they would maintain themselves in the dignity which became them, they must regard the resources of their own land as nothing, and those of other countries as their own." Added to this, the situation of Attica marked it out in an eminent manner for a commercial country; and it became distinguished beyond all the other states of Greece for its extensive commercial relations, while its climate was deemed the most favorable of all the regions of the civilized world for the physical and intellectual development of man. It was called "a sunny land," and, notwithstanding the infertility of its soil, it was full of picturesque beauty. The poet BYRON, in his apostrophe to Greece, makes many striking and beautiful allusions to the Attica of his own time:
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still its honeyed wealth Hymettus yields.
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
10. Entering now upon the isthmus which leads into Southern Greece, we find the little state of Corinth, with its famous city of the same name, keeping guard over the narrow pass, with one foot on the Corinthian Gulf and the other on the Saron'ic, thereby commanding both the Ionian and Æge'an seas, controlling the commerce that passed between them, and holding the keys of Peloponnesus. It was a mountainous and barren region, with the exception of a small plain north-west of the city. Thus situated, Corinth early became the seat of opulence and the arts, which rendered her the ornament of Greece. On a lofty eminence overhanging the city, forming a conspicuous object at a great distance, was her famous citadel—so important as to be styled by Philip of Macedon "the fetters of Greece." Rising abruptly nearly two thousand feet above the surrounding plain, the hill itself, in its natural defences, is the strongest mountain fortress in Europe.
The whirlwind's wrath, the earthquake's shock,
Have left untouched her hoary rock,
The key-stone of a land which still,
Though fallen, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide
That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
—BYRON.
The ascent to the citadel, in the days of Corinthian glory, was lined on both sides with temples and altars; but temples and altars are gone, and citadel and city alike are now in ruins. Antip'ater of Sidon describes the city as a scene of desolation after it had been conquered, plundered, and its walls thrown down by the Romans, 146 B.C. Although the city was partially rebuilt, the description is fully applicable to its present condition. A modern traveller thus describes the site of the ancient city: