Mycenae-Epidaurus [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONLAND AND HISTORYInhabited without interruption since the very beginnings of prehistory, the Argoiid has been sometimes the cradle and sometimes a mere vehicle of the successive civilizations that flourished in Greece. It was also the centre of all those great myths of antiquity that found expression in the epic poetry, drama and art of the ancient Greeks and coloured their intellectual life and political thought. Danaos and his fifty daughters, the adventures of Perseus, founder of Mycenae, the tragic dynasty of the Atreids, the labours of Heracles, the Trojan war all these ancient tales which made up the sacred history of the Greeks in classical times and survive to this day at the root of innumerable aspects of western culture, had as their natural setting and starting-point the "horse- breeding" and arid plain of Argos and the barren mountains that surround it.The Argoiid consists of a small triangular plain by the sea, about 14 km. wide along the shore and 21 km. deep. Politically and culturally it also includes a rather irregular peninsula, Hermionis, which is situated south-east of the Argive plain and consists of Mount Didymon and some lesser mountains. Hermionis is divided into small valleys; surrounded by the barren islands of Hydra, Dokos and Spetsae, it serves on the eastern side as a breakwater to the deep, narrow sheltered bay of Argoiid and its relatively shallow waters and sandy inlets, which provided ideal anchorage for the ships of antiquity.The plain of Argos is surrounded by a series of mountain-ranges that separate it from Corinthia and the plateaus of Arcadia, and cut off the Hermionis peninsula from the Isthmus region and the deepest recess of the Saronic gulf. On the western side, its borders are defined by the steep slopes of Mount Ktenias (Krios), Mount Malevo (Artemission), Mount Lyrkeion and Mount Pharmaca. On the northern side, there are Mounts Megavouni and Tretos, and on the north-eastern side Mount Arachnaion.The passes connecting Argoiid to the surrounding regions of the Pelopon-nese are few and rugged: a coastal road along the site now called Kyveri, leading to Thyreatis and Kynouria; two western passages leading to Tegea and Man-tineia; the Mount Tretos pass (Dervenakia) leading to Corinthia; and the road that follows the southern slope of Mount Arachnaion, leading to Epidaurus and the Saronic gulf. The mountains gradually dissolve into lesser eminences, ending up in rocky hills on the fringes of the plain, such as Prophet Elias and Zara (Mycenae), or protruding suddenly like solitary islands in the midst of the plain, such as Larisa and Aspida, near Argos, or as the hills of Midea and Tiryns.The plain is stony along the fringes and reaches to the coast, which is even today marshy is several places. The soil is thin and deficient in iron. From the start this determined two basic features of the Argive plain which remained