shutting out at once the cold winds and hostile races from the north. Branching off at right angles to these mountains is the Pindus range, which runs south into Central Greece. In Northern Thessaly is Mount Olympus, the most celebrated mountain of the peninsula. The ancient Greeks thought it the highest mountain in the world (it is 9700 feet in height), and believed that its cloudy summit was the abode of the celestials.
South of Olympus, close by the sea, are Ossa and Peliom celebrated in fable as the mountains which the giants, in their war against the gods, piled one upon another, in order to scale Olympus.
Parnassus and Helicon, in Central Greece,—beautiful mountains clad with trees and vines and filled with fountains,—were believed to be the favorite haunts of the Muses. Near Athens are Hymettus, praised for its honey, and Pentelicus, renowned for its marbles.
The Peloponnesus is rugged with mountains that radiate in all directions from the central country of Arcadia,—"the Switzerland of Greece."
Islands about Greece.—Very much of the history of Greece is intertwined with the islands that lie about the mainland. On the east, in the Ægean Sea, are the Cyclades, so called because they form an irregular circle about the sacred isle of Delos, where was a very celebrated shrine of Apollo. Between the Cyclades and Asia Minor lie the Sporades, which islands, as the name implies, are sown irregularly over that portion of the Ægean.
Just off the coast of Attica is a large island called by the ancients Eubœa, but known to us as Negropont. Close to the Asian shores are the large islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes.
To the west of Greece lie the Ionian Islands, the largest of which was called Corcyra, now Corfu. The rugged island of Ithaca was the birthplace of Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey. Cythera, just south of the Peloponnesus, was sacred to Aphrodite (Venus), as it was here fable said she rose from the sea-foam.
