304 GREECE. 



above the level of its waters, while the ridges of Parnassus towered 

 over all, covered with snow, and broken into the most Alpine forms. 



The lake is about four miles distant from the source of the Larmi, 

 and several circumstances corroborate the opinion of Strabo, that it 

 has a subterranean outlet. At the foot of these hills its waters 

 fall into a deep hollow called by the Greeks >c«Ta,Go'^pa, and the 

 volume of water which rises at the source of the Larmi is so great, 

 that it seems beyond the quantity supplied by any common spring, 

 and to be rather the re-appearance than the commencement of a 

 river. Near the lake, and in the supposed direction of this under- 

 ground stream, square pits are cut in the rock. It is probable that 

 these are remains of the great work undertaken in the time of 

 Alexander, when a miner was employed to clear away some ob- 

 structions in this outlet of the waters, in order to check the inunda- 

 tions of the lake. ' . • 



The Copaic lake is, in fact, nothing more than a lower division of 

 the great plain which formed the territories of Haliartus, Livadea, 

 Chaeronea, Orchomenus, and other towns of Boeotia. The river 

 Cephissus*, flowing through this plain, stagnated in the lower 

 extremity of it, and formed there a wide but shallow lake by the 

 accumulation of its waters, which must have risen still higher, had 

 not one of those fissures common in mountains of limestone 

 received them, and carried them off through the Ka.Txl2o6(>a. 



The river having no other discharge for its streams, (for the whole 

 of the plain, like all the interior plains of Greece, is entirely 

 surrounded by mountains f,) every obstruction in this subterraneous 



* The Permessus, Olmiiis, and Cephissus were the rivers that contributed to swell the 

 Copais, (Strabo, lib. ix.) as well as the Melas, (Paus. ix.) This latter writer docs not 

 mention the lake Hylica; did he consider it, as Heyne supposes, as part of the Copais? 



t " The plains of Boeotia are bounded to the north by the mountains of Phocis, to the 

 south by those of Attica, and to the west by Cithasron." — Strabo, lib, ix. Citha;ron is 

 the modern Elateas, so called from the name of the silver fir, a tree which is found in 

 many parts of it. 



