To moderns the most familiar of all the shrines of Bœotia is that of the Muses on Mount Helicon. So familiar, indeed, has it become through tradition and poetry that its geographical position is as unimportant as that of Raphael’s Parnassus. It almost perplexes us to localize Helicon as the eastern peak, now called Zagora, of the southern portion of the group of mountains that lie between the Copaic plain and the Gulf of Corinth; and to know that at the northern foot of this peak still nestles the valley, green and shady and traversed by a mountain stream, where once foregathered the iris-haired, golden-snooded Muses. Hippocrene even, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus as he flew toward heaven, is identified with the modern Kryopegadi, a very cold and clear perennial spring high up on the eastern side of the mountain within a little green glade encircled by fir trees. Helicon is still the home of fir-woods, oak groves and strawberry shrubs. Pausanias said that nowhere else could the goats find sweeter berries, and nowhere else could be found so many healing herbs. Hellebore, the ancient cure for madness, grew here in abundance. In spite of the almost incalculable importance of the worship of the Muses and their pervasive presence in poetry, Greek literature scarcely concerns itself with their localized abode. Sophocles breaks the strain of the “Œdipus Tyrannus” by a fleeting vision of the nymphs sporting with Dionysus on the far-off heights of Helicon. And Hesiod was inspired to write his “Theogony” by a vision of the Muses that came to him as he slept on the mountain “majestical, sacred:”— “High on the summit of Helicon chorals they sing to their dancing, Lovely, desire-enchaining, yet strong and with supple feet glancing. Thence in tumultuous riot, with veils of the darkness enringing, Onward they fare in the night, and lovely the voice of their singing.” For the most part it is only in Alexandrian poetry, from which Roman poetry derived a large part of the material which it passed on to modern poetry, that we find Helicon and Hippocrene figuratively used as sources of inspiration.