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Helikon in History: A Study in Greek Mountain Topography1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Extract

People who walk in mountains grow accustomed to finding their movements facilitated from time to time by what the mountaineering books call ‘corridors’ or ‘high-level routes,’ in places where one might have expected nothing but large stones. There is a famous one from Zermatt to Arolla. There is a little one between Stye Head and Sea Fell, running from Skew Ghyll to the Ling Mell col above Hollow Stones. There is another—improved but not created by man—along the north face of Pillar Mountain. Of the same nature, and equally unexpected at first, are the ‘rakes’ and ledges which sometimes run right across a rock face, and assist, as one might say, the tactics of the mountaineer, just as the major high-level routes assist him in his strategy. They may even assist the faint-hearted to get off a face altogether. Or, of course, such a ledge may be upside down, and then it is not so good.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1949

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References

2 Herodotos' earlier mention of the ravine (διάσφαξ VII. 199), compared with his account of the path (VII, 216), surely makes it perfectly clear that the path did not go up the ravine. The Germans in 1941 attacked up the spur.

3 German troops, in 1944, provoked by the massacre of a small isolated group, carried out here one of their most revolting massacres.

4 On the general matter of routes in Boeotia, see Gomme's well-known article in BSA XVIII (reprinted in his Studies in Greek History and Literature, 1937).

5 Cf. Heurtley, W. A., ‘Notes on the Harbours of S. Boeotia, and Sea-Trade between Boeotia and Corinth in Prehistoric Times’, in BSA XXVIGoogle Scholar, for other Mycenaean finds here and at Kreusis (Livadostro) and at Thisbe and Haliké.