the Thespians. St. Nicholas is a church and small convent beautifully situated in a theatre-shaped hollow at the foot of Mt. Marandali, which is one of the summits of Helicon. In the time of Pausanias the Grove of the Muses contained a larger number of statues than any other place in Bœotia; and this writer has given an account of many of them. The statues of the Muses were removed by Constantine-from this place to his new capital (Constantinople), where they were destroyed by fire in A. D. 404.
Twenty stadia (about 2½ miles) above the Grove of the Muses was the Fountain Hippocrene, which was said to have been produced by the horse Pegasus striking the ground with his feet. Hippocrene was probably at Makariotissa, which is noted for a fine spring of water, although, as Leake remarks, the twenty stadia of Pausanias accord better with the direct distance than with that by the road. The two fountains of Aganippe and Hippocrene supplied the streams called Olmeius and Permessus, which, after uniting their waters, flowed by Haliartus into the lake Copais.
Another part of Helicon, also sacred to the Muses, bore the name of Mt. Leiberthrion. It is described by Pausanias as distant forty stadia from Coroneia, and is therefore probably the mountain of Zagara, which is completely separated from the great heights of Helicon by an elevated valley, in which are two villages named Zagara, and above them, on the rugged mountain, a monastery. This is Leake's opinion; but Dodwell and Gell identify it with Granitza, which is, however, more probably Laphystium. On Mt. Leibethrion there were statues of the Muses and of the Leibethrian nymphs, and two fountains called Leibethrias and Petra, resembling the breasts of a woman, and pouring forth water like milk. There was a grotto of the Leibethrian nymphs.
