LXXXV. Daulis.—

The situation of ancient Daulis is exceedingly beautiful. It occupied the broad but somewhat uneven summit of a fine massive hill, which rises abruptly from the glens at the eastern foot of Parnassus. Everywhere the sides of the hill—which in the grandeur of its outlines deserves almost to rank as a mountain—are high and steep, except at a single point on the west where a narrow ridge connects it with the main mass of Parnassus. On the south the hill falls away in sheer and lofty precipices of grey rock into a deep romantic glen, the sides of which, where they are not precipitous, are mantled with dark green shrubbery. Beyond the ridge to the west soar the immense grey precipitous slopes of Parnassus, mottled here and there with dark pines. High up on its side is seen a white monastery at the mouth of a dark gorge, through which a path ascends to the summit. In the hollow between the hill of Daulis and these great slopes, a mill nestles picturesquely among trees; the water is led to it in a mill-race. Northward the ruined walls of Daulis, here thickly overgrown with ivy and holly-oak, look across a deep dell to the pretty village of Davlia, embowered among trees and gardens on the opposite hill-side. The descent to the valley on this side is steep and bushy, but not precipitous, except where a line of rocks runs obliquely up it on the north-west. Here and there in the valley the last slopes of the hill are terraced and planted with vines. At the eastern foot of the hill begins the great plain—the scene of so many famous battles—which stretches away for miles past the ruins of Panopeus and Chaeronea until at Orchomenus it melts into the still vaster expanse of the Copaic plain. To the south-east, beyond an intervening range of low hills, appears the sharp outline of Helicon. In this direction, at the southern end of the narrow valley which divides these low hills from the mighty steeps of Parnassus, is the famous Cleft Way, where Oedipus is said to have done the dark deed that was the beginning of all his woes.

Altogether few places in Greece surpass Daulis in romantic beauty of situation and the wealth of historical and legendary memories which the landscape, both near and far, is fitted to evoke. Standing on the brow of its precipices we feel that this mountain fastness, frowning on the rich champaign country below, was well fitted to be the hold of a wild wicked lord like Tereus, of whose bad deeds the peasants might tell tales of horror to their children’s children. But now all is very peaceful and solitary in Daulis, for the tide of life has long rolled away from it. Parnassus still looks down on it as of old; but ivy mantles the ruins, the wild thyme smells sweet on the hill, and the tinkle of goat-bells comes up musically from the glen. Only the shadow of ancient crime and sorrow rests on the fair landscape.