1133 



BCEOTIA. 



BOGLIPORE. 



1134 



shafts, but these are now choked up. The second tunnel unites lakes 

 Copais and Hylike, running under the plain of Acrajphium, and is 

 much shorter. These two great works are supposed to have been 

 accomplished by the Minya? of Orchomenus, and are among the oldest 

 existing memorials of the civilisation of the country. The conduits 

 having become choked up from neglect, Crates of Chalcis, in the time 

 of Alexander partially succeeded in clearing them out. The basin of 

 the Copais contains a large amount of fertile land, capable of growing 

 cotton and other products in abundance. 



According to Dicasarchus, the length of Bosotia was 500 stadia, its 

 breadth 270 stadia. Its surface is 1119 square miles, according to 

 Mr. Clinton's deductions. (' Fast. Hell.' ii. 399.) Bosotia was remark- 

 able in ancient times for its extraordinary fertility, and for the dul- 

 ' >f its inhabitants, which some ascribe to the dampness and thick- 

 ness of the atmosphere ; but others, with more probability, to the 

 sensuality in which their teeming soil enabled them to indulge. That 

 they did not universally pay more attention, however, to the develop- 

 ment <>( their bodies than to the cultivation of their minds, the works 

 of Hemod, Pindar, and Plutarch (who were natives of Bccotia) afford 

 irrefra;.'!ible evidence. The linen fabrics of Bccotia were held in great 

 estimation, and the iron-mines which were anciently worked in the 

 eastern chain of mountains supplied the material for the famed 

 Boeotian cutlery ; hence we read in ancient writers of Aonian iron, 

 Aonian weapons, and helmets of Bccotian workmanship, when excel- 

 lence is meant to be described. 



Bceotia was originally peopled by various barbarous tribes belonging 

 partly to the stock of the Leleges and partly to the Pelasgians. But 

 in addition to these there were two tribes who ruled the country in 

 the heroic age, namely, the Minyae, whose city was Orchomenus ; and 

 the Oadmeones, whose capital was Thebes, and who are commonly 

 regarded to have been of Phoenician origin and to have derived their 

 name from Cadmus, the brother of the fabled Europa. From the 

 Cadmeones the country was originally called Cadmeis. 



The Cadineans and the Minyans occupied Cadmeis till about sixty 

 years after the taking of Troy, when they were partly driven out by 

 and partly incorporated with the jEolian Boeotians, a Thessalian 

 people, who had been forced to leave their settlements in the upper 

 vale of the Apidanus and in the neighbourhood of the Pagasetic bay, 

 by the Thessalian immigration from Thesprotia, and who gave their 

 name to the country. Thucydides, who records this invasion from 

 Theasaly (i. 12), adds, parenthetically, " There was however a portion 

 of them (the Bceotians) in this country even before that time, and to 

 this belong the Boeotians who took part in the expedition against 

 Troy." The Boeotians having thus expelled the Minyans from Orcho- 

 menul, and the Cadmeans from Thebes, the former fled to Laconia, 

 whence they were driven by the Dorian invasion twenty years after- 

 wards, and took refuge some of them hi Triphylia, others in Thera, 

 and these at a later period went with the colony to Cyrene. The 

 Gephyraeans and the ^Egids, who were priest-families of the Cad- 

 means, proceeded to Athens and Sparta ; but the old Pelasgic people, 

 the Cadmean commonalty, first went to Athens and thence to Lem- 

 nos, Samothrace, and the coasts of jEolis. Twenty years after the 

 ..Eolian conquest of Bceotia, the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus 

 took place, and the expelled Pelopids and Achaeans, on their way to 

 Asia through Bceotia, were joined by so many of the ^Eolian Boeotians 

 that the settlement is generally known by the name of the ^Eolian or 

 Boeotian colony. (Strabo, 402, c.) 



The Bceotians were members of the Amphictyonic Assembly, and 

 we are informed by various authors that the Boeotian towns soon 

 became members of a league of which Thebes was the head. The 

 deputies of the confederate states met in the plain before Coroneia, at 

 the temple of Athena of Iton ; and this meeting took place at the 

 festival of the Pambceotia. Every one of the confederate states was, as 

 mien, free, but several of them had smaller towns dependent upon 

 them. It is very difficult to determine the number of the independ- 

 ent states ; but as we are told that at the ancient festival of the Dsedala, 

 which wan celebrated every sixty years at Plataea, fourteen wooden 

 images were carried in procession to the summit of Cithasron ; and as 

 we know that seven was a holy number among the Boeotians, we may 

 infer that fourteen was originally the number of the members of the 

 confederacy, just as we find in other states that holy numbers are 

 the bases of political divisions. The representatives of the 

 different towns of the confederacy were styled Boeotarchs. The affairs 

 of the confederacy were debated at four national councils, the Bcco- 

 tarchs having the initiative authority, the members of the council 

 the power of confirmation. (Thucydides, v. 38.) The Bccotian con- 

 federacy wa diMolved in B.C. 171, after having undergone many 

 changes and fluctuations. 



With regard to the form of government which prevailed in the 

 several Boeotian towns, we have good reason for believing that it was 

 the same with that of Thebes, which was in the historical times gene- 

 rally a rigid oligarchy. By the v/iitoi 6 f ratal, or adoptive laws, intro- 

 duced by Philolaus soon after the 13th Olympiad, the adoption of 

 younger sons from other families was insisted upon in cases where a 

 T the ruling caste had no oflspring of his own, and so a 

 diminution of the numbers of the privileged order was obviated. The 

 it.ivii |iwr was vested in an Archon, chosen yearly by ballot. 

 With iiucU a government the Boeotians must naturally have been 



opposed to the neighbouring democratical state of Attica ; and accord- 

 ingly we find them about the year B.C. 507 joining the Peloponnesians 

 and Chalcidians in an attack upon the Athenians (Herod, v. 74, &c.), 

 and probably the same cause made them go over to the Persians in 

 B.C. 480. The victory at Platxa deprived them of their authority in 

 the Boeotian league, until the Lacedjemonians, from interested consi- 

 derations, acceded to the wishes of the oligarchical party in the lesser 

 states, and restored to them in B.C. 457 the power which they hiul 

 taken from them. In the year B.C. 455 the decisive battle of OZno- 

 phyta subjected all Bceotia to the Athenians, and Thebes became 

 democratical ; but a few years after (B.C. 447), in consequence of some 

 abuse of power on the part of the democracy, the oligarchical form of 

 government was restored (Aristot. ' Pol.' v. 2 ; v. 6), and the signal 

 defeat sustained by the Athenians at Coroueia freed Bceotia from her 

 foreign yoke. The Thebans were active partisans of Sparta in the 

 Pelopounesiau war, and contributed mainly to the downfal of Athens ; 

 but in the year B.C. 395 they became members of the confederacy 

 against Lacedasmon, which was broken up in the course of the fol- 

 lowing year by the victory which Agesilaus gained over them at 

 Coroneia. The peace of Antalcidas followed (B.C. 387), and five years 

 after the treacherous seizure of the Cadmeia or citadel of Thebes, by 

 Phcebidas the Lacedaemonian, and its subsequent recovery by Pelopidas, 

 brought about another war between Boootia and Lacedsenion, in which 

 the great abilities of the Theban generals, Epaminondas and Pelopi- 

 das, made Boootia the leading power in Greece. But the former fell 

 at Mautineia, and the power of Thebes fell with him. The Macedo- 

 nian influence now began to prevail ; Athens and Thebes were over- 

 thrown by Philip at Chseroneia (B.C. 338), and three years afterwards 

 Thebes was entirely destroyed by Alexander the Great, and its ter- 

 ritory divided among the Periccci. In the year B.C. 315, Cassander 

 rebuilt Thebes, with the zealous co-operation of the Athenians, but it 

 never regained its political importance. Thebes favoured the Roman 

 cause in the war with Perseus, but it dwindled away under the Roman 

 dominion. (Pausau. viii. 33. 1.) 



Boeotia forms, together with Attica, a nome or department of the 

 modern kingdom of Greece. It is divided into two Eparchies or districts, 

 named from the chief towns in each Thebes and Livadia. Lirarliu, 

 or Lebadea, before the Greek revolution was a place of some 10,000 

 inhabitants ; it was then ruined, and is now an unimportant place. 

 It stands at the base of a rocky hill, the summit of which was occu- 

 pied by the ancient Lebadeia. The cave of Trophonius it is supposed 

 is covered up by ruins. The modern Thebes, or Thivai, occupies the 

 site of the ancient citadel or Cadmeia. It is a place of about 8000 

 inhabitants. The houses are chiefly of wood. The town was almost 

 entirely destroyed in the course of the present year (1853) by an 

 earthquake. [THEBES.] 



(Miiller, Orchomenos und die Minyer ; Klutz, De Fcedere Sceotico ; 

 Wachsmuth, Hellm. Altertliumik, I. i. 128; Thiersch, Etat Actnel de 

 la O'rece ; Thirlwall's History of Greece; Arnold's Thucydidei ; Clin- 

 ton, Fasti Hellenici ; Forchhammer, Hellenika.} 



BOG, or BUG, a river of Russia, the ancient Hypanis, rises to the 

 south-east of Tarnopol in Podolia, in the elevated plateau whi^h 

 extends from the Carpathian Mountains to Kieff. It receives the 

 waters of the Ingul, Balta, Tshertal, and Salonicha before it quits the 

 territory of Podolia. Thence it flows in a south-easterly direction 

 towards Nikolaieffsk, bounded on its right bank by high land. It 

 descends by a succession of falls in the vicinity of Sekolnie, into the 

 low country that lies between its left bank and the right bank of the 

 Dnieper, where it winds its way through a limau, formed by its own 

 inundations, nearly 50 miles in length, and falls into the actuary of 

 the Dnieper to the east of the town of Oczakoff, under the meridian 

 of 32 E. The Bog is about 480 miles in length, and in the latter 

 part of its course it attains a breadth of 500 feet ; but its bed is so 

 much obstructed by rocks and sandbanks that it is only navigable 

 when its waters are much swollen. The Senintha falls into the Bog 

 at Olviopol, * in the Russian province of Kherson, and the Yekul at 

 Nikolaieffsk, in the same province. By the treaty between Russia and 

 Turkey in the year 1774, the Bog became for a short time the frontier 

 between the two countries, from the mouth of the Seninka to the 

 Black Sea. The current of the Bog is extremely gentle, and its 

 waters, in its lower course, are of a saline taste. (Herod, iv. 52.) 

 The principal towns situated on its banks are Bratzlaff, Bobopol, 

 Olviopol, Vosnesensk, and Nikolaieffsk or Nicolaiev. 



BOGLIPO'RE (BHAGELPU'R), a district in the province of Bahar, 

 formerly known a the circar of Monghir, comprehending in its south- 

 east quarter the territory of Rajmahal, which forms a part of the Mogul 

 province of Bengal. The district lies between 24 and 26 N. lat., 86" 

 and 89 E. long. Its greatest lengthis about 133 miles, breadth80 miles. 



Boglipore district contains several chains and groups of hills, which 

 form part of the Vindhya Mountains. Much of the level laud is occu- 

 pied by mere rock, and is altogether incapable of cultivation. Other 

 portions consist of rich and productive soil. In the level lands over- 

 flowed by the Ganges are spots from which the washermen of the 

 vicinity collect carbonate of soda, which effloresces on the surface in 

 October, and which they call ' kurwa rnati.' 



The Ganges flows eastward through the district of Boglipore from 

 above Monghir (where it forms the boundary between this district and 

 Tirhut) to the north-eastern corner of the Rajmahal territory. The 



