Attica

the southern peninsula and the most famous district of ancient Greece. It is still a land of mountain and plain, of the olive tree and the grape, of oil and wine. It was noted among the ancients for "inhabitants ever seeking some new thing." The political supremacy of ancient Greece was due largely to the seafaring enterprise of the inhabitants of Attica. It is still a geographical division on the map of modern Europe, but its glory lies in the past. No other area so diminutive in size is associated with so much of the world's art, literature, and history. Mt. Pentelicus, noted for its marble; Mt. Hymettus, for its honey; the Plain of Marathon, for the defeat of Darius' army; Eleusis with its mysteries; "the rocky brow which looks o'er sea-born Salamis"; and Athens, itself, "the eye of the world," are some of the names which make Attica famous. It has an area of 2,000 square miles, and a present population of 250,000 engaged in wresting a living from rather barren mountain slopes and a thin, sandy, stony soil. The complete destruction of forests has allowed freshets and torrents to carry away the soil and leave many a hillside bare. Historic fountains and vales, noted in myth and poetry, are reduced to prosaic, dry, rocky gullies. See Greece