And silence now the hallowed haunt possess,
Still is the scene of ancient rites august,
Magnificent in mountain loneliness;
Still Inspiration hovers o'er the ground,
Where Greece her councils held, her Pythian victors crowned.
--MRS. HEMANS.

8. Boeo'tia.--Boeotia, lying to the east of Phocis, bordering
on the Euri'pus, or "Euboe'an Sea," a narrow strait which separates
it from the Island of Euboe'a, and touching the Corinthian Gulf
on the south-west, is mostly one large basin enclosed by mountain
ranges, and having a soil exceedingly fertile. It was the most
thickly settled part of Greece; it abounded in cities of historic
interest, of which Thebes, the capital, was the chief--whose walls
were built, according to the fable, to the sound of the Muses:

With their ninefold symphonies
There the chiming Muses throng;
Stone on stone the walls arise
To the choral Music-song.
--SCHILLER.

Boeotia was the scene of many of the legends celebrated by the
poets, and especially of those upon which were founded the plays
of the Greek tragedians. Near a fountain on Mount Cithae'ron, on
its southern border, the hunter Actae'on, having been changed into
a stag by the goddess Diana, was hunted down and killed by his
own hounds. Pen'theus, an early king of Thebes, having ascended
Cithaeron to witness the orgies of the Bacchanals, was torn in
pieces by his own mother and aunts, to whom Bacchus made him