“The winding valleys deep-withdrawn and ridgèd crests of Arcady.” PINDAR. Of the temples that once adorned the mainland and the islands of Greece only a brave few now rear columns from the ground. Among these the Temple of Apollo at Bassæ constrains the traveller to penetrate to the heart of Arcadia. The rewards of the difficult journey are many, and are enhanced by a general knowledge of the whole Arcadian territory, into which the detached impressions of a brief stay may be sympathetically fitted. Homer says that the Arcadians went to Troy in vessels borrowed from Agamemnon, because they had none of their own. The most potent fact in the history and development of Arcadia is its isolated position as the one inland country (save little Doris) of Greece. Only from the heights of the encircling mountains could her people catch sight of distant seas. Those whom the sea-spell lured with irresistible magic left their hills to seek foreign coasts and enlist in foreign navies. The Arcadians have rightly been called the mercenaries of Greece. Those who stayed at home lived the restricted life of a population cut off from intercourse with the larger world. The entire territory is composed of high land, its lowest elevation from the sea being more than two thousand feet. In the east are great plains of swampy ground, and lakes drained by underground channels. Towards the west the land becomes an irregular, hilly plateau intersected by rivers. In antiquity superb forests of oaks and pines, coverts for many a wild beast, contributed to that general physical wildness which prevented a people untouched by foreign ideas from uniting in a progressive political life. Even against the background of Greek individualism their history is conspicuously one of separate towns. And of these towns few attained to any eminence. Arcadia contained the oldest and the youngest of all Greek cities. The latter, Megalopolis, is still in civic existence, and is the terminus of the modern railroad ride from Athens for those who are on their way to Bassæ. It was the last town founded in free Greece, and its establishment originated in the ardent hope of Epaminondas to unite the scattered Arcadians under one government. In the same southwestern portion of Arcadia, near the young Megalopolis and easily reached from it on horses, lie the ruins of old Lycosura, believed by the Greeks to be the most ancient of all their cities and to have served as a model for later foundations.