view. He brings with him a complete and welldigested knowledge of the whole range of classical authors, and a powerful memory which can reproduce any passage at pleasure; but, even with all this, it is difficult to understand how, being first in the field, he was able to notice so much, and to draw such certain conclusions. Let us take one or two instances of his remarkable geographical insight, under circumstances which must have given an extraordinary zest to this first plunge into an almost unknown land. The first shall be his discovery of the Styx. Before arriving at the spot he had no means of knowing what the appearance of that famous stream would be : the ancient authorities seemed to differ concerning it, some of them, apparently, not having seen it themselves its position itself was not certain, all that he was able to discover being that it was a tributary of the Crathis, and flowed in a certain district in the north of Arcadia. What must have been his surprise and delight, on reaching the neighbourhood where he expected to find it, to see a waterfall 500 feet in height, completely justifying the Homeric description !52 And again, to take an instance of the application of the principle ex pede Herculem, let us see how from the fluting of a column he could reconstruct the temple of Jupiter at Olympia. When searching in the ruins of that place, he lighted on a single fragment of a Doric shaft of the friable limestone of which : 52 Leake, Travels in the Morea, iii. 160. D the neighbouring mountains are composed-the ἐπιχώριος πῶρος, of which Pausanias says the temple was built.53 The only measurable dimension of this was the chord of the fluting, which he found to exceed a foot; 54 and accordingly, judging from the ordinary number of flutings in the Doric order, he concluded that the shaft was at least seven feet in diameter. This led him to believe that the temple to which it belonged was the great temple of Jupiter, and that it was a hexastyle, i.e. that it had six columns in the front; for the dimensions which Pausanias assigns to that temple are such, that it could not rightly have admitted of more than six columns of that size. Subsequent excavation has fully confirmed this conclusion. Since Leake's time many able travellers have completed the work which he began; so that now little remains to be done except in the way of excavation. From this great results may be hoped within a few years it has restored to us the famous Dionysiac theatre at Athens, and sooner or later it may yield great discoveries in other parts of the country. *53 v. 10, § 3. 54 Travels in the Morea, i. 27. LECTURE II. PRIMARY FEATURES OF THE COUNTRY-MOUNTAINS, The Mountains of Greece-Chains of Northern Greece: of Central "Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around," he laid his finger on what is most distinctive in Greek landscape. The names of the mountains occur continually in the Greek poets from Homer downwards; a great part of the mythology gathers round them, as the homes of the gods, and the most frequent scene of their intercourse with men ; on them in great measure depends the character of the nation and of its several branches; and they constantly modify the tains of Chains of course of historical events, and especially of military operations. It may be well, therefore, to begin by considering them; and after tracing the principal lines that they follow, to attempt to give some idea of their appearance. The main chain of northern Greece, which chiefly determines the conformation of the country, is the well-defined backbone, which runs from north to south under the names of Scardus and Pindus. This remarkable mountain wall, which from every point of view presents a most imposing appearance, as it divides the continent into two equal halves, may not inaptly be compared to the spina of an ancient circus, with a meta or goal standing at either end. At its northern extremity, where it rises from the great central table-land of European Turkey, which in modern history has become famous as the field of Cossova, the scene of the great defeat of the Servians by the Turks, who then first established their power in Europe it reaches at one spring the height of between 7000 and 8000 feet in a peak which was unnamed in antiquity, but is now called, no doubt from its shape, by the Slavonic name of Liubatrin, or the "Lovely Thorn." At the further end it reaches a similar elevation in Mount Typhrestus-or, as it is more commonly but less accurately called, Tymphrestus1at the head waters of the Spercheius, 1 See on this point Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland, i. p. 88, note. which, from its pyramidal form and commanding situation, is one of the most conspicuous mountains of central Greece. The division between Scardus and Pindus is marked by the one break in the continuity of the chain, where the river now called Devol, rising on the eastern side, cuts through it to its very base on its way to the Adriatic. With this single exception, these mountains form a complete watershed between the two seas. At the centre of the Pindus stands Mount Lacmon, in every respect an important position, as being the point of divergence of the principal rivers and mountains of northern Greece. Here on the one side the Aous, the Arachthus, and the Achelous, on the other the Haliacmon and Peneius, take their rise; and at the same place the Cambunian range runs eastward towards Mount Olympus, and to the north-west, the chains of Tymphe and Ceraunia, which form the northern boundary of Epirus, make their way towards the Acro-Ceraunian promontory. The ground on the two sides of the great central barrier is wholly different in its formation. To the west, throughout Illyria, Epirus, and Acarnania, the whole of the country to the sea is occupied by a confused mass of rugged mountains, radiating in different directions, and dividing from one another a succession of irregular river-valleys; while on the opposite side the Scardus and Pindus are flanked by extensive plains, with rich alluvial soil, generally elevated themselves, though deeply sunk amid the |