Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/223

Rh lies Platæa, its soil enriched with the blood of Mardonius and his Persians; and not far away Leuctra, fatal to Sparta's power, and Cadmean Thebes, home of Œdipus and of Antigone, birthplace of Heracles and of Dionysus, where Amphion sang and the Epigoni fought.

The Copaic basin itself and its surrounding hills are dotted with ruined cities. On the west shore of the lake Minyean Orchonienus, from whose colony of lolcus sailed Jason and the Argonauts, still dominates the plain with its acropolis, its walls two miles in circuit. Its temple of the Graces, with its musical festivals, drew thither poets and singers from all the Hellenic world. Homer compares its wealth with that of the Egyptian Thebes, and so powerful was it that it held subject all the surrounding region until Heracles slew its king and made it vassal to Thebes. A little west of it is fatal Chæronea, where Philip of Macedon rang the deathknell of Greece, and where, two and a half centuries later, Sulla overthrew Mithridates. Between it and Helicon lies Lebadea, where Crœsus and Mardonius sought their fate from the oracle of Zeus Trophonius; and hard by is Coronea, famous for its temple of the Itonian Artemis and the Pamboeotian festival. Near the lake is Tilphusium, with its fountain of Tilphusa, where blind Tiresias drank and died; Alalcomenae, which claimed to be the birthplace of Athene; Haliartus, under whose walls Ly Sander fell; Onchestus, founded by Poseidon's son, meeting -place of the Amphictyonic Council; Acrsephise, noted for its oracle of Apollo; and Medeon, Copæ, Holmones, Hyettus, Hyle, Peteon, and Ocalea, each famous in ancient story, and most of which sent ships and troops to Troy.

With all these evidences of pre-Homeric prosperity, one is tempted to ask, What has changed the conditions in this once favored and still fertile land, which to-day supports but a few thousand souls in scattered villages and hamlets? We find the answer in Strabo, who says: "The spot which the present Lake Copais occupies was formerly, it is said, dry ground, and was cultivated in various ways by the Orchomenians, who lived near it." This traditional account, about the only record of the prehistoric condition of the Copaic basin we possess, would seem to imply that it was kept dry artificially, and we find a partial explanation in other passages in which he describes certain subterraneous caverns and fissures through which the waters were carried off. "If the subterranean passages are stopped up, the waters of the lake increase so as to inundate and cover cities and whole districts, which become uncovered if the same or other passages are again opened." The memory of such a catastrophe, caused by the stoppage of the natural conduits, the result of seismic disturbances, as Strabo intimates, or from want of care in consequence of political