Mosaics of Grecian History | Page 8

To the choral Music-song. --SCHILLER.
Boeotia 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 Cith?'ron, on its southern border, the hunter Act?'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 Cith?ron 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--
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 Boeotia 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 Cith?ron 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