Strabo, Geography

This is best shown by the Cephissus, which fills lake Copais; for when the lake had increased so much that Copae¹ was in danger of being swallowed up (Copae is named by the poet,² and from it the lake took its name), a rent in the earth, which was formed by the lake near Copae, opened up a subterranean channel³ about thirty stadia in length and admitted the river; and then the river burst forth to the surface near Larymna in Locris; I mean the Upper Larymna, for there is another Larymna, which I have already mentioned,⁴ the Boeotian Larymna⁵ on the sea, to which the Romans annexed the Upper Larymna.⁶ The place is called Anchoe;⁷ and there is also a lake of the same name. And when it leaves this lake the Cephissus at last flows out to the sea. Now at that time, when the flooding of the lake ceased, there was also a cessation of danger to those who lived near it, except in the case of the cities which had already been swallowed up. And though the subterranean channels filled up again, Crates the mining engineer of Chalcis ceased clearing away the obstructions⁸ because of party strife among the Boeotians, although, as he himself says in the letter to Alexander, many places had already been drained. Among these places, some writers suppose, was the ancient site of Orchomenus, and others, those of Eleusis and Athens on the Triton River.⁹ These cities, it is said, were founded by Cecrops, when he ruled over Boeotia, then called Ogygia, but were later wiped out by inundations. And it is said that a fissure in the earth opened up near Orchomenus, also, and that it admitted the Melas River, which flowed through the territory of Hiliartus¹⁰ and formed there the marsh which produces the reed that is used for flutes.¹¹ But this river has completely disappeared, either because it is dispersed by the fissure into invisible channels or because it is used up beforehand by the marshes and lakes in the neighborhood of Haliartus, from which the poet calls the place "grassy," when he says, "and grassy Haliartus."¹²