XXXIII. The Springs of the Erasinus.—

From Argos the road to Tegea goes south-west. At first it skirts the foot of the steep Larisa, and then runs through the southern part of the Argolic plain. On the right rise the mountains, of no great height, which bound the plain on the west. About three miles from Argos we quit the highway and strike westward towards the hills through a beautiful avenue of fine silver poplars, plane-trees, and oleanders. It soon brings us to the springs.

The spot is very picturesque. A rugged mountain here descends in precipices of yellowish limestone to the plain, and at its foot a body of clear sparkling water comes rushing impetuously in several streams from the rocks, partly issuing from a low cavern, partly welling up from the ground. Under the rocks the water forms a pellucid but shallow pool, where water-plants of a vivid green grow thickly; then flowing through the arches of a wall, which partially dams up the pool, it is diverted into several channels shaded by tall poplars, willows, and mulberries, and so turns in a short space a dozen mills—the Mills of Argos, as they are called. After watering the rice-fields, the channels unite once more into a river, which finds its way into the sea through swampy ground, among thick tangled beds of reeds and sedge, some three miles only from its source at the foot of the hills. This river, the modern Kephalari, is the Erasinus (‘the lovely river’) of antiquity. It is the only river of the Argolic plain which flows summer and winter alike; and the opinion both of the ancient and the modern Greeks that it is an outlet of the Stymphalian lake in Arcadia appears to be well founded.

In the face of the limestone cliff, a few feet above the springs of the river, are the mouths of two caves. A staircase leads up to them. Passing through the mouth of the larger we find ourselves in a lofty dimly-lighted cavern with an arched roof, like a Gothic cathedral, which extends into the mountain for a distance of two hundred feet or more. Water drips from the roof, forming long stalactites. Some light penetrates into the cave from its narrow mouth, but even at high noon it is but a dim twilight. Bats, the natural inhabitants of the gloomy cavern, whir past our heads, as if resenting the intrusion. Several branches open off the main cave. The longest of them, opening to the left, communicates at its inmost end with the upper air by means of a windowlike aperture. In another branch, also to the left, there is a low, narrow, pitch-dark opening, which, if explored with a light, reveals at its far end a crevice descending apparently into the bowels of the mountain. The smaller of the two caves, to the north, is walled off and forms a chapel of the Panagia Kephalariotissa. The worship of Pan, which Pausanias mentions, may have been held in this or the neighbouring cavern; for Pan, the shepherd’s god, loved to haunt caves, and in these two caves shepherds with their flocks still seek shelter from rain and storm. The chapel of the Panagia, in which there are some ancient blocks, may very well have succeeded to a shrine of Pan, or perhaps of Dionysus, who was also worshipped here. A festival is still held annually on the spot on the eighteenth of April; it may be nothing but a continuation, in a changed form, of the festival of Dionysus called Tyrbe, which Pausanias mentions.

In summer the place is now a favourite resort of holiday-makers from Argos, who take their pleasure in a white-washed summer-house or covered shed at the mouth of the cave. The whole scene—the rocky precipices, the shady caverns, the crystal stream, the tranquil pool, the verdure and shade of the trees—is at once so beautiful and agreeable, that if it had been near Athens it would probably have been renowned in song and legend. But Argos had no Sophocles to sing its praises in immortal verse.