Œdipus on his way from Delphi and Laius on his way from Thebes met at the Forked Roads—the “Cleft Way”—in a lonely valley. The traveller who wishes to see the scene of the ensuing tragedy will have the opportunity to pass through a country of extraordinary beauty and variety and also to know the leisured charm of travel by horse or mule. With the multiplication of railroads these opportunities are growing rarer year by year, except for those whom adventure or professional interests lead into the less famous parts of Greece. The major portion of the country that attracts students of Greek life at its highest is as easy to traverse as Italy. It is true that the days which there have long since receded into historical perspective seem in Greece strangely mingled with the present, because the same traveller who to-day can take the train from Athens to Thebes was forced, ten years ago, to ride or drive over the passes of Cithæron. But already in the books of Greek travel written in the second half of the nineteenth century we begin to perceive that delicate aroma of a more primitive past which pervades Goethe’s “Italienische Reise.” In addition to railroads, the matured police power of the government has been a transforming agency. Not only between Athens and Corinth but practically everywhere in Greece brigandage is now unknown. And, finally, the onslaughts of dirt and vermin have been greatly modified, both by the increasing number of creditable inns in the larger places and by the ability of the peasants in remoter villages to understand the prejudices of foreigners. Not very long ago a request for information about almost any route that led away from Athens might have been couched in the words of Dionysus asking about the trip to Hades:—

Now, in villages which are near important sites of antiquity, the rough and ready traveller may meet with nothing more unfamiliar to him than the Aristophanic flea that hops in the blankets like a dancing girl, while those who take a dragoman, at a moderate price, and mattresses and supplies from Athens may escape even this enemy, as well as beds of hard boards and coarsely cooked food. A knowledge of modern Greek enables the true PhilhellenePhilhellene to dispense with a middleman and to receive proofs in unexpected places of the unfailing hospitality and the alternating integrity and guile of the Greek peasant.

Perched on the crest that forms the watershed between the eastern and western lengths of the valley of the Plistus, the lovely village of Arachova serves as a way-station on the pilgrimage from Kastri to the Forked Roads. The first part of the road leads familiarly through the precinct of Delphi, past the clump of plane trees which keep green the memory of their ancestor planted by Agamemnon, and past Castalia, whose waters, emerging from the gorge below the Shining Rocks, are as “sweet to drink” as Pausanias found them and as clear as when they purified the suppliants at the oracle and the ministering hands of the priests, or laved the golden hair of the god himself.

Along the road that now stretches eastward the Persians streamed toward Delphi at the time of Xerxes’s invasion. But near the temple of Athena Pronaia, on the lower terrace, they were repulsed by terrible portents. A storm of thunder burst over their heads; at the same time two crags split off from Mount Parnassus and rolled down upon them with a loud noise, crushing vast numbers beneath their weight, while from the temple there went up the war cry and the shout of victory. The Delphians, who were hiding in the Corycian Cave, seeing their terror, rushed down upon them, causing great slaughter. And barbarian survivors declared afterwards that two armed warriors, of a stature more than human, pursued after their flying ranks, pressing them close and slaying them. These supernatural warriors were two heroes who belonged to Delphi, by name Phylacus and Autonous. For their timely aid they received precincts and worship, Autonous by the Castalian spring, his comrade hard by the road, practically identical with the modern highway, which ran above the temple of Athena. The traces of this Heroon may yet be seen, faint reminders of old-time tumults amid to-day’s oblivious silence. A little farther is the so-called “Logari,” or likeness of a great door chiselled in the face of a rock, representing, perhaps, the Gate of Hell. At least it seems to have marked the entrance to an ancient cemetery which lay below the road along the southern slopes now given over to orchards and to tillage. Through them a road winds down toward the silvery Plistus, twisting in and out among the gray-green olives and the almond trees. In antiquity this was the road to the bustling town of Ambrosus by the pass of Dhesphina over Mount Cirphis. Now the donkeys that saunter along it are bearing peasant girls and their bags to the mills by the river.

The road to Arachova leads in a gentle ascent close along the lower reaches of Parnassus on the left and high above the deep valley on the right. The muleteers may turn aside to shorter mountain paths, but the easy highway tempts to leisure while the sun is still warm in the west and the brilliant pageant of the valley is but lightly subdued by the delicate reserves of the approaching evening. Either route leads in less than three hours to the foot of high precipices rising at the back of windy Arachova, the representative of Homer’s Anemoreia (Windswept Town). These cliffs, now called Petrites, are, perhaps, the Look-Out Place often alluded to in ancient literature, the point of vantage from which Apollo, the Far-Darter, shot his arrow at the dragon in Delphi. The town itself, two thousand feet above the sea-level, is one of the most typical of modern Greece both in situation and in those racial characteristics which are forming a new nation out of the roots of the old. The houses, interspersed with vivid green trees, gather about each other in terraces up the hill to the high-poised church of St. George, that other dragon slayer, while in its turn the little Christian edifice is frowned down upon by the rocky mountain-side. The stony, twisted streets, alive with children, often become staircases of rock, up and down which the mules indifferently clatter. Stone courtyards lead to doorways out of which handsome men and women smile an hospitable welcome. The inhabitants of Arachova, perhaps because they live near the Muses of Parnassus, possess a charm and courtesy of manner that is not duplicated among the rougher peasants of the Peloponnesus. They are also famous for their beauty, the gift of the Greeks from the time of Helen and Achilles through all admixtures of foreign blood. The men are tall and slim, with the dignity of carriage and chiselled fineness of feature which distinguishes the Greek peasantry from the livelier Italian, and the beauty of the women is grave and tranquil. The traveller may find himself served by a fair mother and fairer daughter, whose name of Sappho is belied by the shy, cool loveliness of her parted hair and innocent eyes.

The Arachovans cherish brave traditions of their part in the War of Independence, but their relation to antiquity is revealed in certain elements of their imaginative life. Now, as of old, natural forces are identified with the activities of divine beings. The snowstorms and icy winds of winter are attributed to furious battles waged high up on the peaks of Parnassus by the spirits of the mountain. Gentler spirits of forest and fountain seem to have descended directly from antique prototypes. The Corycian Cave, once the haunt of Pan and his nymphs, is still a favourite resort of the Nereids. And these “Maidens,” as the modern like the ancient Greek often calls them, dwell in many other pleasant places, lingering in the old trunks of olive or fig trees, like hamadryads, or tumbling sportively in mill streams and mountain torrents, like the daughters of ancient Nereus among the waves of the sea. Primarily, indeed, the Nereids are still water nymphs, and the modern Greek word for water, nero, so often upon the tourist’s tongue, echoes their immortal play. Nor has the fashion of their garments greatly changed since the pictures of antiquity represented them with long veils, now bound upon the head, now fluttering freely in the hand. The peasants say that their Nereids wear a head cloth, always of the finest quality but in style like the cloths worn by their own women, hanging down over the neck and shoulders. At Arachova the Nereids go with uncovered head and swing the cloth in their hands, as Leucothea loosened her veil to give it to Odysseus when she rose like a sea-gull from the depths of ocean to save his life. The Nereids have pipe-playing lovers known as demons, in whom Pan and the satyrs seem to live on. And Pan has his own special representative in the protective Lord of Hares and Wild Goats, who still ranges the slopes of Parnassus. An evil spirit in the shape of a he-goat with long beard, who leaps on the goats to their destruction, hints at that other aspect of Pan revealed in the malignant power of nature.

Another inheritance from antiquity are the Lamiæ. One of these female monsters dwelt in a large cavern in the side of Mount Cirphis, still accessible at the end of a blind path beyond the Plistus, and ravaged the country all about until a brave hero put her to death. She, and others of her ilk, were the bugbears of children, and they still live among the Greek peasantry as vampirish demons. The name is also used as a term of reproach for scolding women. But in Arachova, oddly enough, the Lamia has been transformed by some kindly alchemy into a good spirit, and is often seen in the dusk striding through the village streets, or spinning at a huge distaff by a fountain’s rim. Her name is given to handsome, well-behaved women, as beautiful girls are said to be Nereid-descended or Nereid-eyed.

The modern Greeks also believe in the Fates or Moiræ, either as three dread sisters or as a hierarchy of twelve who delegate the care of a specified number of men to a smaller committee. At Arachova three fates appear within three days of an infant’s birth, two known as the bearers of good and of ill fortune, who fight the matter out and agree upon a destiny, and the third called the Spinner, who will weave the strands into the web of life.

Thus under the very eyes of St. George pagan spirits make common cause with the angels and demons of Christianity. A hoof print on the edge of a crag may betray the presence of the lord of hares and goats or of the unmentionable Devil. An infant who dies unbaptised may claim to be the victim of the ruthless Spinner, or may go to join in the air the imps who war with the angels for the souls of men. Mountains and ether, springs and tree-trunks, are filled with the divine forces created, under the influence of two religions, by a people always sensitive to the intimacy between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Cleft Way lies two hours beyond Arachova, and six hours beyond that is Chæronea, battlefield and railroad station. On a morning in March the moon may be bright at six o’clock when the mules beat their way out of the rough streets of Arachova to the open. The road descends from the village and skirts the southern sides of Parnassus, leading through vineyards and gorges and winding over a bare and rocky valley. The amber moon grows white, and between the opening hills to the east the rising sun sets the sky aflame. Gradually the gold and rose give way to intense, brilliant blue. The twin peaks of Parnassus glisten in their covering of snow. A pastoral charm, reminiscent of Theocritus’s Sicilian uplands, mingles with the rugged impressiveness of mountain scenery. Steep hillsides alternate with pastures, and here and there cool streams curl about the heedless feet of mules and muleteers. Gradually the severity of the landscape predominates. The road from Delphi along which Œdipus, like ourselves, was coming, descends through a wild pass enclosed by the mighty precipices of Parnassus and Cirphis, and in a scene of impressive loneliness meets the roads from Daulis and Thebes.^[29] The spot is now called “Stavrodromi tou Mega,” or Cross-Roads of Megas, in memory of a hero who was killed here in the middle of the nineteenth century while destroying a band of brigands. The story of the ancient deed of violence is put by Sophocles into the mouth of Œdipus himself. The Delphic oracle had declared that Thebes could be healed of its pestilence only by the punishment of the murderer of Laius, the former king, and Œdipus had proclaimed the requisite sentence against the unknown. Now he has begun to realize that he was the slayer:—

From the Forked Roads travellers who must push on to Chæronea will look regretfully at the path that leads to “lone Daulis” in “the high Cephisian vale.” The little town is situated on the uneven summit of a massive hill which rises abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of Parnassus, and of its bowery loveliness among pomegranates and olives and almonds enticing tales are told. Here, according to a favourite Greek legend, was the first home of the nightingale and the scene of that “life enriched with sorrow, which her clear voice, insatiate, bemoans.” The savage Tereus, king of Daulis, had married Procne, a prehistoric princess of Athens, and after the birth of her son Itylus had cut out her tongue and claimed that she was dead. He then married her sister Philomela. The betrayed Procne, however, told Philomela the truth by means of a web into which she had embroidered her story, and the two sisters united in slaying the innocent Itylus and serving him up as a meal to his father. The gods, in anger, transformed Procne and Philomela into a nightingale and swallow, forever mourning Itylus, while Tereus became a pursuing hawk. When spring comes, whether in Daulis or Ithaca or by the “tranquil Thames,” the “pallid-olive” nightingale pours forth her music, “bewailing her dead child.”

The ride from the Cleft Way to Chæronea, winding through the valley of the Platania, a tributary of the Bœotian Cephisus, is rich in interest and variety. A little to the west of Chæronea, on the border between Phocis and Bœotia, lies Hagios Vlasis, a miserable village, known to fame only because of its position under the ancient acropolis of Panopeus. The importance of Panopeus was the subject of legend and poetry rather than of history. From its clay Prometheus fashioned the human race, and from its people sprang Epeios, the inventor at Troy of the wooden horse. Here also the giant Tityos lived and died. He had violated Leto as she went up to Delphi through Panopeus “of the fair dancing places,” and for this sin Odysseus found him in Hades sprawling over nine roods of levelled ground, his liver gnawed by vultures. Pausanias was perplexed by the Homeric epithet for the town until the inhabitants explained to him that the Mænads on their way to Parnassus stopped at Panopeus for preliminary dances. Dionysus may have passed this way with his mysterious quickening, as Apollo did with his ordered inspiration. Thus the insignificant town was the legendary scene of man’s birth and of important episodes in his mental and moral development.

Beyond Hagios Vlasis lies another modern village in the shadow of an ancient acropolis. Between Phocis and Bœotia there is no natural boundary, but the large plain of Chæronea sweeps westward into Phocis and eastward into Bœotia to what used to be the Copaic lake. On the north and south the plain is enclosed by barren mountains, and the town of Chæronea, unlike Panopeus, spread out from the base of its acropolis at the foot of the southern and lower hills. Its modern representative is the hamlet of Kapræna, which displays a few legacies of antiquity and from which can be seen the two peaks of Petrachus, the sharp and steep acropolis. The chapel of Panagia (the Virgin) contains a chair of white marble called the chair of Plutarch. The great biographer was born in Chæronea, and the worshipful preservation of his name in the little Christian church reminds one of the appearance of the equally respectable Plinies on the exterior of the cathedral of their native Como.

But the dominant interest of Chæronea is the battle which, in 338 B. C., was lost by the forces of Greece united against Philip of Macedon. No single account of the terrible defeat has been handed down by dramatist or historian, as Æschylus and Herodotus immortalized the victories of Salamis and Marathon, and only general facts in the struggle are known to us from lesser writers. Before the march to Chæronea Demosthenes had risen in the Assembly, at a terrified meeting in the cold and hopeless dawn, and persuaded the Athenians to make a hasty alliance with Thebes against the encroachments of Philip. In the battle the Athenians held the left wing while the right, the post of honour, was given to the famous Sacred Band of the Thebans. Between them were gathered the other allies. Against the Thebans at the crucial moment Philip turned his cavalry under the command of the young Alexander. As the struggle became hopeless the Athenians retreated, but the members of the Sacred Band fought until they fell, raising one last memorial to their great founder, Epaminondas, and offering one last atonement for the cowardice of Thebes in the Persian wars.

The victory of Macedon was not so much wrested from the Greek arms as it was due to ineradicable defects in the Greek political character. It was characteristic of all Greek history that the allies should have formed no united and harmonious army under one fully empowered leader. The intense individualism which made Greece supreme in the arts and in science and philosophy left her at the mercy of peoples able to subordinate single wills to a national purpose. In the presence of the architecture, sculpture, and literature of the Greeks it is impossible to deplore their unthwarted intellectual freedom, their keen sensibilities, their genius for personal development. But at Chæronea it is easy to see not only the disintegration, but also the demoralization of a national life which lacked the heroic sacrifice of self and the persistence of a common controlling ideal as much as it lacked administrative genius and political wisdom.

But it must be remembered that such inclusive strictures on the Greek character can be made only when we follow the prejudices of Philip’s enemies in excluding Macedon from the Greek states. In the perspective of history it is clear that Chæronea opened the way for a new Hellenic state to create a new national life in which discord should give way to unity and individualism to a world empire. Nevertheless the rise of Macedon was not continuous with the former life of Greece as were the successive hegemonies of the older states. The monarchy of Philip obliterated not only the existing commonwealths but their modes of government. Politically the loss was swallowed up in gain. Aristotle’s polity has rightly been called provincial in comparison with his pupil’s empire in which there was neither Greek nor barbarian. But in the world of ideas no substitution was an adequate atonement. The ideals of liberty which the older states had cherished and in which their intellectual and artistic life had been nurtured were lost at Chæronea. In this sense the Athenians were right in saying that here ended the freedom of Greece.

More than two centuries later a lesser victory was won at Chæronea by Sulla over the forces of Mithridates, king of Pontus. Two trophies were erected by the Roman general, and were afterwards seen by Pausanias. “But Philip, the son of Amyntas, set up no trophy, neither at Chæronea, nor for any other victory that he won over barbarians or Greeks, for it was not a Macedonian custom to erect trophies.” On this field the only trophy was the one erected by the defeated to the dead. The Athenians who fell were buried in the Cerameicus, and Demosthenes, who had fought in the ranks, pronounced over them a funeral oration. The Thebans were buried on the field. “No inscription,” says Pausanias, “is carved on the tomb, but a lion is placed on it, perhaps in allusion to the spirit of the men. The reason why there is no inscription I take to be that their fortune did not match their valour.”

This lion may be seen to-day about a quarter of a mile beyond Kapræna, just before one turns toward the modern railroad station of Chæronea. For centuries it had lain in fragments, but in 1902 the broken pieces were fitted together with a result extraordinarily impressive. Upon a pedestal ten feet high sits erect a great beast of gray stone, lifting into the free air a massive unbowed head, and rivalling in the guardianship of Chæronea the greater Inspector who, possibly after this same battle, was invoked by an unknown poet:—

The road turns at a sharp angle in front of the lion and runs in placid monotony to the station situated near the banks of the Cephisus. Pausanias closes his chapter on Chæronea by a rare reference to the common people of his own day, who gathered flowers and from them distilled “balms for the pains of men.” In a modern chapter the end comes, not with the haunting fragrance through summer fields of plucked lilies and healing roses, but with the scream of an engine as the Athens express breaks into the little station. The train goes straight through Bœotia to the bright city in the Attic plain. But on the way lies Thebes of the seven gates.