LXIII. The Springs of the Ladon.—The Ladon of Arcadia, the greatest of the tributaries of the Alpheus, rises in the middle of a valley on the western side of Mount Saita, the ancient Oryxis. The valley is of some breadth, and its bottom is furrowed on both sides by the dry beds of two watercourses. Between the two watercourses there rises in the midst of the valley a low hill of reddish rock, which ends on the south in a precipitous face some hundred and fifty feet high. At the foot of this red precipitous rock lies a large still pool of opaque dark-blue water, fringed by sharp-pointed grasses and other water plants, while a few stunted willows, holly-oaks, and plane-trees grow among the rocks beside it. This pool is the source of the Ladon, which rushes from it in a brawling impetuous stream of dark-blue water, its margin fringed with willows. The water enters the pool, not from the rocks above, but from a deep chasm in the earth which is only visible when, as sometimes happens, the source dries up. A peasant, who was beside the pool when I visited it in 1895, told my dragoman that three years before, after a violent earthquake, the water ceased to flow for three hours, and the chasm in the bottom of the pool was exposed, and fish were seen lying on the dry ground. After three hours the spring began to flow a little, and three days later there was a loud explosion and the water burst forth in immense volume. Mr. Philippson was informed on the spot of a like event which had taken place in 1880. Similar sudden eruptions of water at the source of the Ladon have been reported earlier in the present century and in antiquity. The stoppage of the water and its abrupt reappearance are doubtless due to the alternate obstruction and clearance of the subterranean passages by which the Lake of Pheneus is drained. For the ancients were right in supposing that the water which rises at the source of the Ladon comes directly underground from the Lake of Pheneus. It has the same deep greenish-blue tinge as the water of the lake, and is flat and tepid to the taste like standing water, not cold and fresh like the water of a mountain spring. The source is distant only about five miles from the lake, from which it is divided by the high range of Mount Saita. The hills on the opposite or western side of the valley are much lower; their slopes of reddish rock are partly covered with low green bushes. Numbers of peasant women may be seen washing clothes beside the pool in the usual Greek fashion; after soaking the clothes in water they beat them with a sort of broad paddle in a wooden trough.
Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History / Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'
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About This Book
This collection of concise sketches, drawn from the author's commentary on the ancient traveler Pausanias, offers on-the-spot descriptions of Greek landscape, ruins, sanctuaries, and local legends. Each chapter focuses on a particular site or region, combining topographical observation, architectural and artistic description, and summaries of associated myths and historical tradition. The author interweaves antiquarian detail with personal travel impressions, discussing temples, cult practices, notable monuments, and the surviving traces of classical antiquity, and provides contextual notes that guide readers through how landscape, legend, and history intersect across the Greek world.