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GEOGRAPHICAL VIEW OF GREECE. 9its territory,with its temples, its theatres, and its aqueducts. 1Its two harbours, Lechseum on the western bay, Cenchreseon the eastern, filled with ships, and the two bays themselves,with the isthmus between them, were all in sight. Thepeaks of Helicon, and of Parnassus itself, were seen at adistance; and a strong eye could distinguish on the easternside the Acropolis of Athens. What images and emotionsare excited by this prospect !Beyond the isthmus of the Peloponnesus, which the Grecians, acquainted for a long time with no other, were accustomed to call simply the Isthmus, lay the tract of Hellas.Its southern half, stretchingas far as the chain of (Eta, wasdivided into eight, or, if Locris, of which there were twoparts, be twice counted, into nine districts; of these, the extent was but small, as their number indicates. Next to theisthmus, on which may still be seen the ruins of a stadiumand a 2theatre, and that temple of Neptune, in the grove offir trees, where all Greece assembled to celebrate the Isthmiangames, the small but fruitful territory of Megara * began ;and through this, along the high rocky shore, where the-robber Sciron is said to have exercised his profession, theroad conducted to the favourite land of the gods, to Attica. 4A neck of land or peninsula, opposite to that of Argolis,extends in a south-easterly direction about fifty-six miles intothe -SSgean Sea, and forms this country. "Where it is connected with the main land, its greatest breadth may betwenty-four miles; but it tapers more and more to a point,tilHt ends in the high cape of Sunium, on the summit ofwhich the temple of Minerva announced to the traveller, ashe arrived from sea, the land which was protected by thegoddess of courage and wisdom. It was not endowed withluxuriant fruitfulness ;it never produced so much corn aswould supplyits own inhabitants; and for this, neither thehoney of Hymettus, nor the marble of the Pentelic mountains, nor even the silver mines of Laurium, could have1Corinth is famous, even with the poets, for being- well supplied witli water?compare Euripides in Strabo, 1. c. Pausanias enumerates, I. ii. 117, its manytemples and aqueducts.2Clarke's Travels, ii. p. 752. Even the sacred grove of firs still exists,from which, according to Pausanias, the crowns of the victors were taken.8Like that of Corinth, not more than eight miles in length and breadth.4 On Attica, see the criticalmap of Profesor 0. Miiller.