XXV. Mount Arachnaeus.—

Mount Arachnaeus is the high naked range on the left or northern side of the road as you go to the Epidaurian sanctuary from Argos. The most remarkable peak is Mount Arna, the pointed rocky summit which rises immediately above the village of Ligourio to a height of over three thousand five hundred feet. The western summit, Mount St. Elias, is somewhat higher. From the summit of Mount Arna the mountains of Megara and Attica are visible. It might well have been on its top that the beacon was lighted which flashed to Argos the news of the fall of Troy. The name Arachnaea is said to have been still used by the peasantry in the early part of this century. The altars of Zeus and Hera upon which, according to Pausanias, the people sacrificed for rain, appear to have stood in the hollow between the two peaks, for there is here a square enclosure of Cyclopean masonry which would appear to have been an ancient place of worship.

Mount Arachnaeus and the mountains of the Argolic peninsula in general are little better than a stony waterless wilderness. The climate is very dry, and the beds of all the streams are waterless except after heavy rain. The hardy little holly-oak and a few dun-coloured shrubs are almost the only representatives of plant life. The eye of the traveller is wearied by the grey monotony of these arid mountains and desert tablelands, and his feet are cut and bruised by the sharp stones over which he has painfully to pick his steps. Nowhere else in Greece, probably, is the scenery so desolate and forbidding.