rainy winter and spring, as snow melted off the mountains,
only to dry to trickles or dry up altogether during the dry
summer. Th is lack of rivers, combined with the mountain-
ous terrain, made commerce and communication by land
extremely diffi cult and expensive. Travel by land tended to
hug the coasts, moving north and south along the Ionian and
Aegean coasts and east and west along the coast north of the
Gulf of Corinth. Th is restriction of land travel to a few routes
helps explain why battles occurred in the same places, cen-
tury aft er century. Th ermopylae, for example, a site where the
north-south road from Boeotia and Th essaly passes through
a narrow pass between the mountains on the west and the sea
on the east, was the site of battles between Greeks and Per-
sians in the fi ft h century b.c.e., among Greeks in the fourth
century b.c.e., and between Romans and Seleucids in the sec-
ond century b.c.e. During the Roman Empire the main Ro-
man roads bypassed the Greek peninsula altogether, passing
to the north.
THE IONIAN SEA
Along the western coast of the Greek peninsula, the Ionian
Sea off ered the least hospitable waters for travel. Close to the
coast, protected by the chain of islands just off Epirus, the
sea off ered relatively predictable winds—blowing toward the
land during the day and blowing out to sea at night. Th e is-
lands off ered many protected harbors, and there was easy en-
try to the protected waters of the Gulf of Corinth.
But to the west, beyond the single chain of islands off the
coast, there are no islands between Greece and Italy and none
south between the Peloponnese and Africa. To the north the
Ionian Sea joins the Adriatic where the latter narrows, like
a funnel, between the heel of Italy and what is now Albania.
Because of this narrow passage between the seas, the same
Etesian winds that brought cool, dry summers could whip up
sharp storms in the channel. Th e passage between Italy and
Greece, between Greek Corcyra (modern Corfu) and Italian
Brundusium (modern Brindisi), was notoriously dangerous,
both because of these sudden storms and because ships would
lose sight of land, both to the east and to the west, at the mid-
point of the passage.
A letter from the Roman Cicero to his friend Tiro, writ-
ten in November 50 b.c.e., illustrates the fi ckle nature of the
sea here, which could aff ord an easy passage or sudden death.
Cicero wrote in Epistulae ad familiares (Letters to Friends),
“At Corcyra we were detained by bad weather till the 15th.
On the 16th we continued our voyage to Cassiope, a harbor of
Corcyra, a distance of 120 stades [about 12 miles]. Th ere we
were detained by winds until the 22nd. Many of those who in
this interval impatiently attempted the crossing suff ered ship-
wreck. On the 22nd, aft er dinner, we weighed anchor. Th ence
with a very gentle south wind and a clear sky, in the course
of that night and the next day we arrived in high spirits on
Italian soil at Hydrus, and with the same wind next day—that
is, the 24th of November—at 10 o’clock in the morning we
reached Brundisium.”
THE AEGEAN SEA
Th e Aegean Sea, to the east of the Greek peninsula, is more
hospitable. Th e Etesian winds are predictable out at sea dur-
ing the summer, and the inshore and off shore breezes during
the day and night are predictable near the coast. Th e many
islands of the Aegean serve to reduce fetch, the distance wind
travels over water unimpeded, reducing the maximum size
of waves. Th e eastern coast of Greece is protected for a long
stretch by the island of Euboea, and that coast, as well as the
coasts of the many islands, provides innumerable protected
harbors. Th e dry summer ensures good visibility by day and
night for navigation (which was not a highly developed sci-
ence among the Greeks of antiquity).
Storms, when they did arise, could be treacherous, pro-
ducing sharp, unpredictable waves in the shallow waters and
arising without much evident warning in the landlocked sea.
Ships at sea could fi nd themselves being blown downwind to-
ward a lee shore, which oft en was rocky and steep. During
the rainy, and windier, winter months the ancient Greeks re-
garded the sea as mostly impassible. Th e festival of Dionysia
at Athens, for example, which was that city’s occasion to show
itself off to people from the rest of Greece, was held in March,
specifi cally because that month marked the beginning of the
“sailing season.” But despite the unfriendly winter months,
the Aegean served as a crossroads of commerce between the
Greeks and the peoples of Asia and Africa. Greeks have been
famous for their trade by sea, from Odysseus of Homer’s Od-
yssey to the Onassis dynasty of the present.EPIRUS (NORTHWESTERN GREECE)
Epirus was the northwestern territory of Greece, west of the
Pindus Mountains. It enjoyed heavy rainfall and was known
in antiquity for its rich forests and ample pasturage for graz-
ing livestock. Dodona, a fl at plateau, in Epirus was the site
of a famous sanctuary of Zeus, who was said to utter oracles
from within an oak tree. According to Homer’s Odyssey, the
hero Odysseus’s wealth was largely in the form of livestock,
which grazed on the mainland, in Epirus and Amphilochia,
just to the south, while the hero’s own home was on the island
of Ithaca.MACEDONIA (NORTHEASTERN GREECE)
To the east of the Pindus Mountains was Macedonia. High
and rugged in the west, it descended to fertile plains near
the Th ermaic Gulf, which opens into the northwest Aegean.
Macedonians were looked on as only semicivilized by the
southern Greeks during antiquity, but by the end of the fi ft h
century b.c.e. the people of Macedonia had embraced high
Greek culture. Th e Athenian poet Euripides retired to the
Macedonian court, and 50 years later Philip II hired the phi-
losopher Aristotle to tutor his son, Alexander. To the south
of Macedonia was Mount Olympus, almost 9,600 feet high,
whose summit, oft en wrapped in clouds, was the mythologi-
cal home of the Greek gods.258 climate and geography: Greece