Part 4

The peninsula of Peloponnesus is properly a system of mountains of very different kinds; those by which it is connected with the main land of Greece, the Geranean and Oenean mountains, are of very different formation from the rest: they are more rugged and barren, and have little or no vegetation; those in the interior of the peninsula display the most luxuriant vegetation, and are far more fertile than the mountains of Italy. Few countries are equal to Peloponnesus in the abundance and beauty of its vegetation, which in spite of all devastations always revives with youthful vigour. Its mountains, although they contain districts without water, are on the whole abundantly supplied with it, especially in Arcadia, and it is this circumstance that makes the vegetation so splendid. I have been told by persons who had been in Arcadia, that no country on earth can compete with it in beauty on account of the forms of its mountains, its trees, etc., and the most magnificent Alpine vegetation is not richer than that of Arcadia. The highest points of the peninsula are the mountains which separate the maritime country of Achaia from Arcadia, in the neighbourhood of Stymphalus. In the ravines of those mountains snow is found even in summer, though not on the tops of the mountains, and there is not one mountain in all the peninsula, which is capped with snow. All Arcadia is a conglomeration of mountains, which, even with the assistance of maps can hardly be divided into their elements; whence it is a vain and useless attempt to fix the definite names which are mentioned by the ancients. We cannot, for example, define Mount Maenalus, and what is generally described as the site of Erymanthus, is only conjectural. All we can say, is that Maenalus was perhaps the central, and Lycaeus the southern range of Arcadian mountains. All these mountains and rivers now have different names: a proof that the Slavonians entirely changed the ancient population. The traveller asks in vain where the Alpheus is; Mount Taygetus is now called Pentadactylon, and all the other names are barbarous. Taygetus is very high, but not quite so high as the highest Arcadian mountains; the name belongs to the whole range from the frontiers of Arcadia down to Cape Taenarus, now Cape Matapan.

Peloponnesus has but few plains which do not almost deserve the name of valleys: those of Elis and Argos—perhaps that of Sicyon also, though it is not quite plain—are the only ones which deserve special notice. Elis is a plain, encircled by a range of hills which are not high; Argos is properly still more spacious and less enclosed, though the mountains of Corinth are continued along the Acte. The district of Calamata, in Messenia, is a real valley, the work of the river Pamisus; and Laconia, along the Eurotas is a real river-valley. All these valleys are of extraordinary fertility, and the only barren portions of Peloponnesus are about Corinth, where the ground is very rocky, and the district in Argolis between ancient Mycenae, Epidaurus and Troezen; the plain of Sicyon is undulating and capable of cultivation. Achaia, on the northern slope of the Arcadian mountains is less hilly, if we except Cape Rhion; it has only low hills, but considerable valleys along the rivers.

Wherever in Peloponnesus the plough can be applied, the soil rewards the labour; the trees are magnificent, and most of them are fruit trees. The heights are rich in chesnuts and eatable acorns; the olive tree grows admirably in Peloponnesus, and for it the peninsula seems specially created; it is found upon all the lower hills, and extends even high up into the mountains; hence, the cultivation of olives was the principal object of agriculture; the vine was not so much cultivated, though many districts produce good wine. When Peloponnesus was thickly peopled, it did not produce grain sufficient for its inhabitants, whence corn had to be imported from Sicily, and this necessity easily explains the settlements in Sicily and Italy. The Arcadian Alps afford very excellent pasturage, and although the Arcadian shepherd little answers to the ideas which were entertained of him some seventy or eighty years ago, yet the inhabitants, a strong and robust race of men, are still chiefly occupied in sheep breeding. Mutton is still eaten there in great quantity as in the East, while beef is a luxury. Cattle-breeding was also carried on on mount Taygetus, in Laconia, but with this difference, that the shepherds in Arcadia were free men, while those in Laconia were serfs.

The political division of Peloponnesus, or the geography of the population, as might be expected, was different at different periods, from the age of the poetical mythus down to that of the decay of ancient life. If I wanted to confine myself to the intermediate or really classical period, I should render an accurate survey a matter of considerable difficulty, as I should constantly have to refer to earlier and later states of things. I shall therefore notice the different divisions of Peloponnesus from the earliest times, beginning with the mythical geography so far as it is mentioned with any degree of certainty, and then pass on to that of the historical period. We shall accordingly commence with the survey given by Homer in the second book of the Iliad.

The Homeric Catalogue is a very remarkable document: it is a very ancient historical piece of composition, drawn up in the verse most favourable to being remembered, and in which the ancients preserved all their traditions; but it is quite foreign to poetry. Few subjects of the Iliad have engaged the attention of the learned in the same degree as this Catalogue; it was not Strabo alone that took it on every occasion as the text of his book, as we see from his work itself, but a number of other writers had done the same thing before him. But our point of view is different from that which was taken about the time of Ephorus. We see that there was a time when the Catalogue was regarded as a historical document, as a conscientious, careful, and learned account of the state of Greece at the time of the Trojan war. I have no doubt that this opinion was the prevailing one at the time of Ephorus, who was a contemporary of Demosthenes and Philip of Macedonia; that it was regarded in this light at an earlier period, is attested by the statement, that in the time of Solon, the Athenians and Megarians endeavoured to establish their claims to the possession of Salamis by appealing to the Catalogue, a fact which at least proves its early historical authority, even though the story should not be true. But since we have arrived at more unbiassed views about Homer, and no longer bind ourselves to the superstition of his undoubted authenticity—an advantage which, though it may possibly be abused, should never again be abandoned—our point of view in judging of this part of the Homeric poems is likewise changed. We find in this Catalogue several statements which are irreconcilable with each other, which refer to different times, and betray a different origin. Thus we meet, for example, with the Heracleido-Doric colonies in Rhodes and the neighbouring islands of Cos and Syme, while according to our traditions those settlements are of a more recent date than those of the Ionians in those parts, and probably the most recent of all, which even if it were not attested by tradition, would in itself be more credible. Here we have an evident interpolation, introduced in a Doric or Rhodian recension, which itself, however, is comparatively speaking, very ancient. We are naturally tempted to trace the geography laid down in the Catalogue to a definite period: but this is impossible without falling into contradictions; all we can say is, that the author of the Catalogue intended to describe Greece, its inhabitants and towns, as they were before the Doric migration, when the boundaries were indeed very different from what they were during the period subsequent to that migration. But although this intention of the author is manifest, yet it is not accurately carried out, and is opposed to other traditions. Such a contradiction occurs most strikingly in regard to the Ionians. The later country of Achaia on the Corinthian Gulf is said, in our traditions, to have been inhabited by Ionians, until the Achaeans, being expelled by the Heracleids from Argos and Mycenae, went to Aegialos, displaced the Ionians and established themselves in their country; in the Catalogue, on the other hand, we find a tradition which is irreconcilable with this account, the truth of which I must leave undecided.

Peloponnesus, in Homer—the name itself does not occur in his poems—is divided into six parts, as in later times, but in a different manner. The two principal parts are the kingdoms of the Atreids, that of Mycenae and that of Sparta: then follows the country of Diomedes and Sthenelus; the country of the Arcadians, that of the Epeans, and lastly that of the kings of Pylos of the house of the Nelids. The distribution of the countries is as follows:—

1st. The kingdom of Menelaus comprises the whole of Laconia, probably extending very far into Messene; it is possible that some verses of the Catalogue are lost, or that several towns were not mentioned at all.

2. The realm of Agamemnon, besides its capital of Mycenae with its territory, comprises Corinth, Sicyon and the whole of northern Achaia.

3. The dominion of the Persids, Diomedes and Sthenelus, embraces Argos, Tiryns and the Acte, together with Aegina.

4. Arcadia has the same boundaries as afterwards, except that Triphylia does not belong to it.

5. The kingdom of Nestor consists of western Messene, Triphylia, and the south of Elis as far as the Alpheus.

6. The country of the Epeans in the north of Elis.

The later province of Argolis thus contained the kingdom of Diomedes and a portion of that of Agamemnon; the kingdom of the Epeans afterwards becomes Elis, but includes a part of the Pylian kingdom.

The historical importance which we can attach to this division is extremely small. We might indulge in speculations about the causes which may have led the author of the Catalogue to make this division, and there is much that might seem to recommend such speculations. It would not be difficult to show that this Catalogue was composed at Sparta and belonged to what is called the Lycurgian recension, because it assigns favourable boundaries to Sparta and unfavourable ones to Argos, but this would certainly be an abuse of historical speculation.

With the Homeric division, we may compare another ante-Doric division of which traces have come down to us;[10] it differs greatly from the Homeric, and in all essential points agrees with that which became established in consequence of the Doric migration. Aegialos, afterwards called Achaia, is described as the country of the Ionians with its twelve towns; the remainder of the empire of Agamemnon and that of Diomedes already form one whole; Triphylia is separated from the Pylian kingdom of the Nelids and added to Arcadia, and the remainder of the kingdom of Nestor is united with that of Menelaus.

In regard to the division of Argolis Proper there are some difficulties. Homer says:—

Οἳ δ’ Ἄργος τ’ εἶχον Τίρυνθά τε τειχιόεσσαν.

The ancients are of opinion that Diomedes and Sthenelus ruled at Argos, and that Argos along with Tiryns was their capital. The historical explanations in the Scholiasts and Eustathius are extremely poor; still, however, among what are called the Little Scholia, we find Argos in this line explained to mean Peloponnesus, and this opens quite a different view from that commonly entertained. It is inconceivable that Argos and Mycenae, the two capitals of two kingdoms, should have been only forty-three stadia, scarcely five English miles, distant from each other; and it is an equally unaccountable fact that scarcely anything is mentioned about Argos in the ancient legends. The above verse, therefore, must probably be taken as a general beginning of the description of Peloponnesus, to which is added a special account of the kingdom of Tiryns, as a reference to what afterwards follows:—

Νῦν δ’ αὖ τοὺς ὅσσοι τὸ Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος ἔναιον,

which is the designation of Thessaly. Argos, even in the opinion of many ancients, was only the name of a country. I am convinced, therefore, that, in the early times, it was nothing but the name of the country, and that, as the name of the city, it is of later origin. Just as Corinth was in reality newly built by the Dorians, and ought not, therefore, to be mentioned here, so Argos also was founded by Dorian settlers at a time when Mycenae and Tiryns had already fallen from their former eminence. Throughout all mythology, Tiryns alone is the capital of Diomedes and Sthenelus, and Mycenae that of the Atreids; these two cities alone are mentioned, no third ever occurs, and Argos is not spoken of until the Doric migration and conquest. In this manner it is clear that the tragedians, who, however, generally were not learned men, do not deserve the reproach which the Alexandrian grammarians made against them; as, for example, that Sophocles confounded Argos and Mycenae. Mycenae, before the existence of Argos, was a true Argos[11], the capital of the whole country, though by no means identical with the later Argos.[12] In this manner the outlines of those kingdoms acquire a more suitable shape: the Acte, or the eastern part of Argolis, was distinct from Argos Proper even at that time, just as it was afterwards; the capitals, Tiryns and Mycenae, were still near enough to each other. When, accordingly, the grammarians found such contradictions as in Sophocles, they endeavoured to mediate by means of more recent myths, or even by inventing new ones, and that often in the most singular manner. The whole story, for example, how Diomedes was forced to go to Italy, and how Sthenelus gave up his kingdom, arose only from the circumstance, that in later and seemingly better historical authorities, the statement was found that the capital of Tiryns was united with the kingdom of Agamemnon; and the difficulty of accounting for the manner in which that kingdom had disappeared, was removed by a fiction.

Through the immigration of the Heracleids, Peloponnesus acquired a new form: the countries and their inhabitants became changed; in Arcadia alone the ancient population remained the same; all other parts received either new inhabitants or new rulers. During that period there arose the three great Doric kingdoms of Messene, Sparta, and Argos, and the Aetolian kingdom of Elis; and Aegialea, which had been an Ionian country, became Achaean. This state of things remains the foundation of geography till after the Macedonian period, when it became completely changed; but although the principal divisions remained until that period, yet their boundaries underwent considerable modifications, which will be explained in the account of each particular country. The three Doric kingdoms in particular did not preserve the same boundaries, for Messene perished, and was united with Laconia; Argolis had originally a much greater extent in the south, but afterwards its frontier in that direction was narrowed, while, on the other side, the three or four cities on the Acte, as well as Corinth, Phlius, and Sicyon, also became separated from it. In this manner Argos, the greatest of those three kingdoms, extending from Malea to Sicyon, and containing one-third of all Peloponnesus, was greatly reduced. Afterwards Messene again rose from its ruins, Argos extended its frontier towards Sparta, Arcadia regained what it had lost, though the towns remained separate, and the boundaries of Achaia were again widened, until its name extended over all Peloponnesus.

ARGOLIS, ARGOS.

Argos, as I said before, was originally the largest of the three Doric states. The fact that Lacedaemon afterwards appears as the first state of Peloponnesus, is only owing to the good fortune and the pride of the Lacedaemonians, and to the circumstance that they retained their royal dynasty, while the others, especially Argos, lost theirs, in consequence of which the unity of their state was broken. But Argos never recognised the pretensions of Sparta, and this struggling against what was an actual fact, did great harm to Argos, and led it to form most hateful alliances against the rest of the Greeks.

In the subsequent dismemberment of the Argive empire, we find the elements of its origin, which, in the two other Doric states, are indeed likewise visible, but produce the opposite effect. In all the three Doric states, the principle of the constitution is that of feudalism, a term which may be offensive to some, because it is not usually applied to the affairs of early Greece. These kingdoms were divided into several principalities, where Dorian chiefs had settled as vassal princes with a colony, or ruled over the ancient Achaean inhabitants; in some instances they were ancient Achaean principalities, whose rulers maintained themselves by submitting to the power of the Dorians. The number of such principalities seems to have been particularly great in Argolis, in consequence of which the country could afterwards be divided into so many separate towns. As such we find the two ancient capitals, Mycenae and Tiryns, Corinth, Sicyon, Troezen, Hermione, and Epidaurus, for even these smaller towns of the Acte had formerly had their own vassal princes, as is attested by the unanimous mythical accounts of their kings, especially in the case of Troezen and Epidaurus. It was essentially the same relation as that between the Lombard kings and their dukes; a parallel to the case of native princes occurs in the fact, that the Frankish kings, at the beginning of the middle ages, sometimes appointed Gauls and Romans as their vassal princes in Italy. The same system occurs in Laconia: the ruling tribe and the chief king settled in one town, but there existed six principalities. These constitutions, however, in their development, took quite opposite directions. In Laconia, as in France, the vassal princes disappear, and all the country becomes united under one government; while in Argos, as in Germany, the union is broken up into small principalities. Corinth, for example, which, before the Doric conquest, cannot be regarded as an independent state, is known to have risen to the rank of a state through the Dorians, and Prumnis, the father of Bacchis,[13] was the first Doric prince there. In like manner we know, from scanty notices of Ephorus, Scymnus, and others, that Doric chiefs were the founders of dynasties at Troezen and Epidaurus: Mycenae and Tiryns alone continued to exist as native Achaean states under the supremacy of the king of Argos. This kingdom of Argos was weaker than, for example, that of the Franks, for the Heracleids were only commanders in war, whose power was by no means unlimited; each tribe had its own king, and accordingly the three Doric tribes had three. It is clear that such a distribution of the country could not remain free from disturbances; hence the power of the kings of Argos could not last long, and a conflict necessarily arose as soon as one of them ventured to step beyond the bounds of his prerogatives. This was done by Pheidon, who ruled first as king, and afterwards as tyrant. He was indeed still ruler of all Argolis, but after him the state broke up into its parts. Several vassal princes then usurped the sovereignty, and for a time there existed in Argolis partly principalities and partly aristocracies. But Argos thereby became so weak as to be unable to defend the western coast of the Argolic gulf as far as Malea against Lacedaemon; Cythera also was lost, and not even the territory of Thyrea could be maintained. At the same time the Spartans extended their dominion farther and farther; the nominal dependence of Corinth and Sicyon had ceased long before, as well as that of the towns in the Acte and of Aegina, which had likewise belonged to Argos. Here we have another evidence showing that the Homeric Catalogue was composed after the Doric period, for it represents Aegina as belonging to the eastern part of Argos; Aegina was naturally foreign to Argos, and became connected with it only as a Doric colony.

The country about Argos is a plain, fully deserving the name πολυδίψιον Ἄργος which it bears in Homer, for in the autumn it usually has no water at all. This is the natural consequence of the physical structure of Peloponnesus. In the interior of Arcadia the waters accumulate, and there are in that part large natural reservoirs, as, for example, the lake of Mantinea, which discharges its waters through passages in the mountains which separate Arcadia from Argolis, into the plain of Argos. These passages, however, are not always open, nay, people in the Morea assert, that the waters find their way through them only once in five years, and then plentifully supply the rivers and springs of Argolis. This alleged regularity is probably fabulous. But on the whole, the territory of Argolis, in its widest extent, as far as the northern slope of the hills, is scantily supplied with water; in the neighbourhood of Sicyon there are some small streams, whence the plain there is rich and fertile. The whole of the central part of Argolis, however, that is, the hills between Mycenae and Tiryns on the one side, and the towns of the Acte on the other, which are traversed by the pass of Tretos, consists of very barren and rocky heights, which admit to some extent of the cultivation of olives only in the lower valleys. Argos, therefore, when confined to Mycenae and Tiryns, was but a weak state, a circumstance which, together with the recollection of its former greatness, placed it, in later times, in a false position.

The city of ARGOS, as I have already stated, was not founded till after the time of the Doric immigration; but its castle Larissa (Larissa is the Pelasgian name for castle) was older, and was situated on a considerable height; we may even now discern the Cyclopian walls described by Pausanias. The city had a great circumference, and was built around the castle of Larissa, stretching from that hill through a plain, and up another hill. It was not strongly fortified, nor is its natural position of any particular strength. Argos is one of those cities which did not suffer much from the calamities of Greece, if we except the one devastation by the Spartans under Cleomenes before the period of the Persian war. But it decayed, and appears to have suffered particularly during the war of Pyrrhus. Pausanias does not say, whether the Romans, after the destruction of Corinth, visited Argos in the same way, but the verse of Virgil[14] (_Eruet ille Argos_) leads us to believe that they did. Under the Roman emperors, it sank so low as to be obliged to petition the emperor Julian to exempt it from its contribution to the Isthmian games. In the middle ages, during the tenth and eleventh centuries, Argos was a considerable manufacturing town, and was particularly distinguished for the manufacture of silk. Afterwards it was destroyed by Robert Guiscard, and then a second time by the Turks. Subsequently a colony of Albanese established itself there, and last year (1826) it was completely reduced to ashes.