ABSTRACT
The Peloponnese is a complex mountain region. The folds which are to be observed there belong to the different systems of the lEgeid. The Argolic peninsula forms part of the eastern folded zone ; the coastal chain of Messenia is a piece of the western folded zone ; the central chains are the end of a great arc which runs through Crete and forms the southern lEgean system. The peninsula owes its landscape and its plan more to breaks and subsidences than to these folds-to the great fault along the Ionian Sea in the west, to the series of fractures which formed the Corinthian Gulf in the north, to the sea trenches into which the mountain folds suddenly disappear in the south, and, in the east, to the dislocations which dug the Saronic Gulf and awakened a volcanic activity to which the hot springs of Methana and the sulphur-pits of the Isthmus still bear witness.
