Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/310

 294 HISTORY OF GREECE. menian legends, the Catalogue, and other allusions in Homer, and the traces of past power and importance yet visible in the his- torical age, attest the early political existence of Orchomenus and its neighborhood apart from Boeotia. 1 The Amphiktyony in which Orchomenus participated, at the holy island of Kalauria near the Argolic peninsula, seems to show that it must once have possessed a naval force and commerce, and that its territory must have touched the sea at Halne and the lower town of Larymna, near the southern frontier of Lokris ; this sea is separated by a very narrow space from the range of mountains which join Knemis and Ptoon, and which inclose on the east both the basin of Orcho- menus, Aspledon, and Kopae, and the lake Kopais. The migration of the Boeotians out of Thessaly into Boeotia (which is repre- sented as a consequence of the conquest of the former country by the Thesprotians) is commonly assigned as the compulsory force which Boeotized Orchomenus. By whatever cause, or at what- ever time (whether before or after 77G B. c.) the transition may have been effected, we find Orchomenus completely Boeotian throughout the known historical age, yet still retaining its local Minyeian legends, and subject to the jealous rivalry 2 of Thebes, as being the second city in the Boeotian league. The direct road from the passes of Phokis southward into Boeotia went through Chasroneia, leaving Lebadeia on the right, and Orchomenus on the left hand, and passed the south-western edge of the lake 1 See an admirable topographical description of the north part of Boeotia, the lake Kopats and its environs, in Forchhammer's Hellenika, pp. 159- 1 86, with an explanatory map. The two long and laborious tunnels con- structed by the old Orchomenians for the drainage of the lake, as an aid to the insufficiency of the natural Katabothra, are there very clearly laid down : one goes to the sea, the other into the neighboring lake Hylika, which is surrounded by high rocky banks and can take more water without overflow- ing. The lake KopaYs is an inclosed basin, receiving all the water from Doris and Phokis through the Kephisus. A copy of Forchhammcr's map will be found at the end of the present volume. Forchhammer thinks that it was nothing but the similarity of the name Itonca (derived from Irea, a willow-tree) which gave rise to the tale of an emigration of people from the Thessalian to the Boeotian Itone (p. 148). The Homeric Catalogue presents Kopse, on the north of the lake, as Boeo- tian, but not Orchomenus nor Aspledon (Iliad, ii. 502).
 * See 0. Miiller, Orchomenos, cap. xx. p. 418, aeq.