Livadeia

Livadeia has an unusual position in Greek archaeology, because the thing that makes it famous is almost entirely underground.

At Lebadeia — which is the ancient name of this town, not a place nearby — there was an oracle of Trophonius, and it was one of the five oracles Herodotus bothers to name when he lists where Croesus sent his messengers in 496 BC. It is also the oracle Herodotus says Mardonius had someone visit in 480 BC, though not quite honestly: the man he sent, Mys of Europus, bribed a local to go down the cave rather than risk it himself.

The ancient shrine is in the ground, in a cave under the Kerykeion grove. What can actually be visited is modest — foundations, a marble ring, a rectangular chamber cut into the rock — and it needs an imagination. But the ritual Pausanias wrote down is the part that lingers: a man who wanted to consult the oracle had to drink first from the spring of Forgetfulness so that he would forget what he had been thinking about, and then from the spring of Memory so that he would remember what he saw when he came back up. He was carried out afterwards paralysed, by people who had to lift him, and only gradually recovered the power to laugh.

The town above is ordinary and pleasant — a market town under a castle, on the edge of the Boeotian plain, with the Gulf of Corinth about thirty kilometres away at the bottom of the run.

Pausanias, who went down himself in the second century AD, is quite clear that he is not repeating hearsay: 'What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonius and seen other inquirers.'

Lebadeia was a substantial Boeotian city throughout antiquity. Its ruling house traced itself to the Orestid line of Argos, a line that claimed descent from the Atreidae, and the town struck its own coins — silver staters of the Boeotian shield with a thunderbolt and the letters ΛΕΒΑ, between 386 and 374 BC.

The oracle of Trophonius was the reason any of it mattered. Pausanias explains how it was found: a drought had left Greece without rain for more than a year, so the cities sent delegations to Delphi, and the Pythia told them to go to Trophonius at Lebadeia instead. An envoy named Saon, the oldest of them, followed a swarm of bees into the ground and found the chasm.

The sanctuary was rebuilt and enlarged over the Hellenistic period, and its rebuilding was paid for out of the booty of the campaigns against the Persians. Under the Romans the city was a prosperous member of the Boeotian League, and the oracle kept being consulted.

The medieval and Ottoman town was a smaller place on the same site. The castle above it is a Catalan fortress of the fourteenth century, one of the few of its kind left in Greece. It passed to the Ottomans, and in 1821 it was the scene of one of the bloodiest incidents of the revolution thereabouts. Livadeia is today the capital of Boeotia.

Livadeia is inland — the nearest coast of its own regional unit, Paralia Distomou, is roughly thirty kilometres away — and the region it sits in is one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Greece.

The nearest and most obvious is Orchomenos, about eleven kilometres south, with the enormous beehive Tomb of Minyas, an ancient theatre, and the church of Panagia Skripou built into the rock of the acropolis. Distomo, at about eighteen kilometres, leads on to Hosios Loukas, the great eleventh-century monastery that is one of the most important pieces of Byzantine architecture in the world and part of a UNESCO listing.

North and east the drained Lake Copais plain opens out, and it is worth remembering what it was: the Boeotians cut canals and dikes and built the fortress of Gla as an island in the lake to drain it, and the result is now a flat agricultural plain crossed by earthworks. Mount Helikon is immediately to the south, the mountain of the Muses, and Parnassus is off to the north-west.

If you do want the sea, Antikyra on the Gulf of Corinth is about half an hour and makes a perfectly good swim; it is the coast that belongs to this region, as the coast of this region is.

One thing to be clear of: Lebadeia is not a place near Livadeia. Lebadeia is Livadeia, the ancient name of the town itself, and the oracle is in the town.

This is Boeotia, and the food is honest rather than famous. The local speciality that outsiders actually come for is the local smoked sausage and the grilled meats, but the region around the Copais plain produces genuinely good fruit and vegetables.

Livadeia's own signature dish is souvlaki, which is a rather modest thing for a guide to build a page around — and it is the case that the town's cooking is simple, meat-based and reliable rather than remarkable. The nearby village of Distomo is better known in Greece for what happened there in 1943 than for its kitchen.

The honest recommendation is to eat well and cheaply rather than hunt for a signature dish, and to be in Boeotia in autumn, when the orchards and the vines are doing their best work.

April to June is the best time for Livadeia: the plain is green, the Copais country is at its best and the weather is warm without being oppressive. October and November are excellent, with the vines and the orchards in and the light low and warm on the hills. July and August are hot but the town is a good base and the archaeological sites are manageable early in the day. Winter is cool and wet, with snow occasionally on Helikon, and the town is very quiet.

Livadeia lies on the main road and rail corridor between Athens and Thessaloniki, and is easy to reach by train or by bus. By car it is reached on the A1 motorway or the national road.

A car is worth having for Orchomenos, Distomo and Hosios Loukas, which are not otherwise connected by frequent public transport. The oracle site is small and needs a guide or prior reading — Pausanias 9.37 to 9.40 is the place to read first, because walking in without knowing what you are looking at is a disappointment. Go in the morning or late afternoon; there is no shade. And if you are heading north, Delphi is about an hour and it is worth the detour rather than driving past it.