Beotia

Beotia, one of the ancient political divisions of Greece, extended between Attica and Megara on the south, and Locris and Phocis on the north, with an area estimated at 1120 sq. m., or a little larger than Cheshire. The mountain-closed country falls naturally into five divisions—the basin of the Lake Copais, now called Topolias, that of the Asopus, the plain of Thebes, and the coast-districts on the Eubœan and the Corinthian Gulf. The principal stream was anciently called the Cephissus; which in the spring, when swollen by the rains, almost converted the Copaic plain into a lake. There were several subterranean channels for the outlet of the waters towards the Eubœan Sea, but they were not sufficient to carry them off; and in the days of Alexander the Great a vast tunnel was cut in the rock for the discharge of the water. After this fell into ruin, the district became marshy and unwholesome; and it was not till 1886 that it was once more properly drained. The draining operations, carried on for five years by a French company, drained 60,000 acres of arable land, of which in 1896 17,000 acres were cultivated, 6000 were occupied by adjacent proprietors, while 35,000 were still partly in reeds, partly in pasture. Beotia has always been fertile. Of the earliest inhabitants, the most powerful were the Minyæ, who were dislodged by the Beotians, an Æolian people from Thessaly. The Beotians excelled as cultivators of the soil, and were brave soldiers both on foot and horseback; but they were rude and unsociable, and took little part in the gradual refinement of manners and intellectual development of the rest of Greece, so that the name became proverbial for illiterate dullness. This was usually ascribed to their thick damp atmosphere. Yet their generals include Epaminondas; and among their poets and historians were Hesiod, Pindar, and Plutarch. The fourteen greater cities formed the Beotian League, with Thebes at its head. Of this league, a shadow still remained down to the times of the Roman empire. See PLATÆA, and THEBES.—Along with Attica, Beotia now forms a province of the kingdom of Greece, with an area of 2425 sq. m., and a pop. (1879) of 185,364.