40 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



the varying operations of the stream itself. The 

 stories of the river-god assuming the form of a bull 

 and of a serpent, his contests with Hercules, and 

 the loss of his horn, are obviously only personifica- 

 tions of a rapid stream, rushing impetuously from its 

 mountainous birthplace and winding in twisteci curves 

 across the plain ; now strewing the meadows with 

 gravel, now curbed by the laborious construction of 

 embankments, and now bursting forth again to 

 resume its old wayward course. 1 The river still 

 retains the character which prompted its ancient 

 legends. It is now called the Aspropotamo or white 

 river, from the abundance of white silt suspended in 

 its water and lying on its bed. While in winter, fed 

 by the rains and melting snows of distant Pindus, 

 it often fills its channel from bank to bank, it shrinks 

 in summer into a number of lesser streams, which 

 wind about in a broad gravelly channel. 



In the myths that grew round other rivers of ancient 

 Greece, we may recognise similar early attempts to 

 account for striking features of local typography. 

 When, for instance, Hercules is fabled to have barred 

 back the river Cephissus and to have submerged and 

 destroyed the country about Orchomenos in Bosotia, 2 

 we may doubtless recognise the traditional record of 

 some prehistoric inundation, perhaps an abnormal rise 

 of the singularly variable Lake Copais, whereby a 



1 See Strabo, x. 458. Diodorus also (iv. 35), giving a similar 

 interpretation of the legends, tells us how Hercules hollowed out 

 a new bed for the Achelous, thereby reclaiming a vast tract of 

 exceedingly fertile land. 



2 Diod. Sic., iv. 18. 



