XXII. The Pass of the Tretus.—

At the southern end of the valley of Cleonae there rises like a wall of rock the mountain of Tretus, which forms the watershed between the Corinthian and the Argolic gulfs. A straight toilsome path led from Cleonae in antiquity, and still leads past the village of Hagios Vasilios, over the mountain, descending into the Argolic plain at the ruins of Mycenae. But the more convenient way from the valley of Cleonae to the plain of Argos bends round to the west, where the mountain is not so high, and runs up a gradually ascending gully. This was the pass of the Tretus, the chief line of communication between Corinth and the south. In antiquity it was, as Pausanias tells us, a driving road, and the ruts worn by the chariot-wheels can still be seen in many places. The defile, though long and narrow, shut in by high mountains on either hand, is nowhere steep, and the rise is not considerable. The road runs by a deeply worn watercourse, at the bottom of which a clear and shallow stream finds its way amid luxuriant thickets of oleander, myrtle, and arbutus. The lower slopes of the mountains are also green with shrubs, but their upper slopes are grey and rocky.

The pass is easily defended. On both sides, towards Cleonae and towards the plain of Argos, may be seen traces of ancient works built to defend the defile. Near the highest point of the pass, where the road begins to descend towards Argos, there are low Turkish watch-towers called Derweni on both sides, and rough stone walls such as the Greeks threw up in many passes during the War of Independence. In 1822 the Turkish army under Dramali Pasha, retreating from the plain of Argos, was caught by the Greeks in the pass of the Tretus and nearly annihilated; for years afterwards the defile was strewed with skeletons and skulls of men and horses.

“Every part of the Argolic plain,” says Leake, “is considered unhealthy in summer, and the heat is excessive; that of the ravine of the Tretus, in the mid-day hours, is said to be something beyond bearing, which I can easily conceive, having passed through it in August, at an hour in the morning when the heat was comparatively moderate. Not long since a Tartar, after having drunk plentifully of wine and raki at Corinth, was found to be dead when the suriji held his stirrup to dismount at the khan of Kharvati (Mycenae), just beyond the exit of the Tretus.”

The name Tretus (‘perforated’) was supposed by the ancients to be derived from a great cave in the mountain where the Nemean lion had his lair. As to the ancient name of the pass, and the supposed wheel-marks in it, W. G. Clark says: “This is the road known by the name of Tretos, or ‘the perforated’; not, I conceive, in consequence of the caverns in the neighbouring rocks, which are not more numerous hereabouts than elsewhere, but because the glen is, as it were, drilled through the rock. And drilled it has been by the stream which flows at the bottom. We saw, or fancied we saw, frequent wheel-marks in the rocks, and we know that this was the direction of a carriage road. But from my subsequent observations I learned to distrust these marks. The ordinary mode of carrying wood in Greece is to tie the heavier ends of the poles on each side to the back of the horse or donkey, and suffer the other ends to trail along the ground, thus making two parallel ruts which in course of time may attain the depth of and be mistaken for wheel-tracks. When a depression is once made, it becomes a channel for the winter rains, and so is smoothed and deepened.”

The modern name of the defile is Dervenaki. The railway from Corinth to Argos runs through it. Towards the northern end of the pass the khan of Dervenaki stands in a little glade overshadowed by tall poplars, cypresses, and mulberry-trees, beside a murmuring spring. At the southern outlet of the pass the whole plain of Argos, with the mountains on either hand and the sea in the distance, bursts suddenly on the view. On the left, nestling at the foot of the hills, are Mycenae and Tiryns, with Nauplia and its towering acropolis rising from the sea and bounding the plain on this side. On the right is Argos with its mountain citadel, and beyond it the Lernaean lake glimmers faintly in the distance. In the centre of the picture, beyond the long foreground of level plain, stretches the blue line of the Argolic Gulf.