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RAMBLES IN GREECE
[Illustration: The Acropolis, Athens]
SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE;
A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE;
GREEK LIFE AND THOUGHT FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER;
THE GREEK WORLD UNDER ROMAN SWAY,ETC.
HUNC LIBRUM
Edmundo Wyatt Edgell
OB INSIGNEM
INTER CASTRA ITINERA OTIA NEGOTIA LITTERARUM AMOREM
OLIM DEDICATUM
Few men there are who having once visited Greece
do not contrive to visit it again. And yet when the
returned traveller meets the ordinary friend who asks
him where he has been, the next remark is generally,
Dear me! have you not been there before? How is
it you are so fond of going to Greece?
There are
even people who imagine a trip to America far more
interesting, and who at all events look upon a trip
to Spain as the same kind of thing—southern climate,
bad food, dirty inns, and general discomfort, odious
to bear, though pleasant to describe afterward in a
comfortable English home.
This is a very ignorant way of looking at the
matter, for excepting Southern Italy, there is no
country which can compare with Greece in beauty
and interest to the intelligent traveller. It is not
a land for creature comforts, though the climate is
splendid, and though the hotels in Athens are as
good as those in most European towns. It is not a
land for society, though the society at Athens is
excellent, and far easier of access than that of most
European capitals. But if a man is fond of the large
Need I add that as to Cicero the whole land was
one vast shrine of hallowed memories—quocunque
incedis, historia est—so to the man of culture this
splendor of associations has only increased with the
lapse of time and the greater appreciation of human
The traveller who revisits the country now after
a lapse of four or five years will find at Athens the
Schliemann museum set up and in order, where the
unmatched treasures of Mycenæ are now displayed
before his astonished eyes. He will find an Egyptian
museum of extraordinary merit—the gift of a
patriotic merchant of Alexandria—in which there
And these are only the most salient novelties. It is indeed plain that were not the new city covering the site of the old, discoveries at Athens might be made perhaps every year, which would reform and enlarge our knowledge of Greek life and history.
But Athens is rapidly becoming a great and rich
city. It already numbers 110,000, without counting
the Peiræus; accordingly, except in digging foundations
for new houses, it is not possible to find room
for any serious excavations. House rent is enormously
high, and building is so urgent that the ordinary
mason receives eight to ten francs per day.
This rapid increase ought to be followed by an equal
increase in the wealth of the surrounding country,
where all the little proprietors ought to turn their
land into market-gardens. I found that either they
could not, or (as I was told) they would not, keep
pace with the increased wants of the city. They
are content with a little, and allow the city to be
supplied—badly and at great cost—from Salonica,
But this is a digression into vulgar matters, when I had merely intended to inform the reader what intellectual novelties he would find in revisiting Athens. For nothing is more slavish in modern travel than the inability the student feels, for want of time in long journeys, or want of control over his conveyance, to stop and examine something which strikes him beside his path. And that is the main reason why Oriental—and as yet Greek—travelling is the best and most instructive of all.
You can stop your pony or mule, you can turn
aside from the track which is called your road, you
are not compelled to catch a train or a steamer at a
fixed moment. When roads and rails have been
brought into Greece, hundreds of people will go to
see its beauty and its monuments, and will congratulate
themselves that the country is at last accessible.
But the real charm will be gone. There will be no
more riding at dawn through orchards of oranges
and lemons, with the rich fruit lying on the ground,
and the nightingales, that will not end their exuberant
melody, still outsinging from the deep-green
gloom the sounds of opening day. There will be no
more watching the glowing east cross the silver-gray
glitter of dewy meadows; no more wandering along
grassy slopes, where the scarlet anemones, all
I will conclude with a warning to the archæologist,
and one which applies to all amateurs who go to visit
excavations, and cannot see what has been reported
by the actual excavators. As no one is able to see
what the evidences of digging are, except the trained
man, who knows not only archæology, but architecture,
and who has studied the accumulation of soil
in various places and forms, so the observer who
comes to the spot after some years, and expects to
find all the evidences unchanged, commits a blunder
of the gravest kind. As Dr. Dörpfeld, now one of
the highest living authorities on such matters, observed
to me, if you went to Hissarlik expecting to
find there clearly marked the various strata of successive
occupations, you would show that you were
In passing on I cannot but remark how strange it is that among the many rich men in the world who profess an interest in archæology, not one can be found to take up the work as Dr. Schliemann did, to enrich science with splendid fields of new evidence, and illustrate art, not only with the naïve efforts of its infancy, but with forgotten models of perfect and peerless form.
This New Edition is framed with a view of still
satisfying the demand for the book as a traveller’s
handbook, somewhat less didactic than the official
guide-books, somewhat also, I hope, more picturesque.
For that purpose I have added a new chapter
on mediæval Greece, as well as many paragraphs
with new information, especially the ride over
Mount Erymanthus, pp. 343, sqq. I have corrected
many statements which are now antiquated by recent
discoveries, and I have obliterated the traces of
controversy borne by the Second Edition. For the
criticisms on the book are dead, while the book survives.
To me it is very pleasant to know that
many visitors to Greece have found it an agreeable
companion.
Photogravures by A. W. Elson & Co.
GREECE.
A voyage to Greece does not at first sight seem
a great undertaking. We all go to and fro to Italy
as we used to go to France. A trip to Rome, or
even to Naples, is now an Easter holiday affair.
And is not Greece very close to Italy on the map?
What signifies the narrow sea that divides them?
This is what a man might say who only considered
geography, and did not regard the teaching of
history. For the student of history cannot look
upon these two peninsulas without being struck
with the fact that they are, historically speaking,
turned back to back; that while the face of Italy
is turned westward, and looks towards France and
Spain, and across to us, the face of Greece looks
eastward, towards Asia Minor and towards Egypt.
Every great city in Italy, except Venice, approaches
or borders the Western Sea—Genoa, Pisa, Florence,
Rome, Naples. All the older history of Rome, its
So it happens that the coasts of Italy and Greece,
which look so near, are outlying and out-of-the way
parts of the countries to which they belong; and if
you want to go straight from real Italy to real
Greece, the longest way is that from Brindisi to
Corfu, for you must still journey across Italy to
Brindisi, and from Corfu to Athens. The shortest
way is to take ship at Naples, and to be carried
round Italy and round Greece, from the centres of
culture on the west of Italy to the centres of culture
(such as they are) on the east of Greece. But this
I may anticipate for a moment here, and say that even now the face of Athens is turned, as of old, to the East. Her trade and her communications are through the Levant. Her chief intercourse is with Constantinople, and Smyrna, and Syra, and Alexandria.
This curious parallel between ancient and modern geographical attitudes in Greece is, no doubt, greatly due to the now bygone Turkish rule. In addition to other contrasts, Mohammedan rule and Eastern jealousy—long unknown in Western Europe—first jarred upon the traveller when he touched the coasts of Greece; and this dependency was once really part of a great Asiatic Empire, where all the interests and communications gravitated eastward, and away from the Christian and better civilized West. The revolution which expelled the Turks was unable to root out the ideas which their subjects had learned; and so, in spite of Greek hatred of the Turk, his influence still lives through Greece in a thousand ways.
For many hours after the coasts of Calabria had
faded into the night, and even after the snowy dome
of Etna was lost to view, our ship steamed through
the open sea, with no land in sight; but we were
told that early in the morning, at the very break of
dawn, the coasts of Greece would be visible. So,
while others slept, I started up at half-past three,
eager to get the earliest possible sight of the land
which still occupies so large a place in our thoughts.
It was a soft gray morning; the sky was covered
with light, broken clouds; the deck was wet with a
passing shower, of which the last drops were still
flying in the air; and before us, some ten miles
away, the coasts and promontories of the Peloponnesus
were reaching southward into the quiet sea.
These long serrated ridges did not look lofty, in
spite of their snow-clad peaks, nor did they look
inhospitable, in spite of their rough outline, but
were all toned in harmonious color—a deep purple
blue, with here and there, on the far Arcadian peaks,
and on the ridge of Mount Taygetus, patches of
pure snow. In contrast to the large sweeps of the
Italian coast, its open seas, its long waves of mountain,
all was here broken, and rugged, and varied.
The sea was studded with rocky islands, and the land
indented with deep, narrow bays. I can never forget
the strong and peculiar impression of that first
sight of Greece; nor can I cease to wonder at the
strange likeness which rose in my mind, and which
I stood there, I know not how long—without
guide or map—telling myself the name of each
mountain and promontory, and so filling out the idle
names and outlines of many books with the fresh
reality itself. There was the west coast of Elis, as
far north as the eye could reach—the least interesting
part of the view, as it was of the history, of
Greece; then the richer and more varied outline of
Messene, with its bay, thrice famous at great intervals,
and yet for long ages feeding idly on that
fame; Pylos, Sphacteria, Navarino—each a foremost
name in Hellenic history. Above the bay could be
seen those rich slopes which the Spartans coveted of
its plane-leaf form,
rugged
nurse of liberty.
For the nearer the ship approaches, the more this
feature comes out; increased, no doubt, greatly in
later days by depopulation and general decay, when
many arable tracts have lain desolate, but still at all
times necessary, when a large proportion of the
country consists of rocky peaks and precipices,
where a goat may graze, but where the eagle builds
secure from the hand of man. The coast, once
teeming with traffic, is now lonely and deserted. A
single sail in the large gulf of Koron, and a few
miserable huts, discernible with a telescope, only
added to the feeling of solitude. It was, indeed,
Greece, but living Greece no more.
Even the
pirates, who sheltered in these creeks and moun
But as we crossed the mouth of the gulf, the eye
fastened with delight on distant white houses along
the high ground of the eastern side—in other words,
along the mountain slopes which run out into the
promontory of Tainaron; and a telescope soon
brought them into distinctness, and gave us the
first opportunity of discussing modern Greek life.
We stood off the coast of Maina—the home of those
Mainotes whom Byron has made so famous as pirates,
as heroes, as lovers, as murderers; and even
now, when the stirring days of war and of piracy have
passed away, the whole district retains the aspect of
a country in a state of siege or of perpetual danger.
Instead of villages surrounded by peaceful homesteads,
each Mainote house, though standing alone,
was walled in, and in the centre was a high square
tower, in which, according to trustworthy travellers,
the Mainote men used to spend their day watching
their enemies, while only the women and children
ventured out to till the fields. For these fierce
mountaineers were not only perpetually defying the
vendettaColomba.
They are considered the purest in blood of all the Greeks, though it does not appear that their dialect approaches old Greek nearer than those of their neighbors; but for beauty of person, and independence of spirit, they rank first among the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, and most certainly they must have among them a good deal of the old Messenian blood. Most of the country is barren, but there are orange woods, which yield the most delicious fruit—a fruit so large and rich that it makes all other oranges appear small and tasteless. The country is now perfectly safe for visitors, and the people extremely hospitable, though the diet is not very palatable to the northern traveller.
So with talk and anecdote about the Mainotes—for every one was now upon deck and sight-seeing—we neared the classic headland of Tainaron, almost the southern point of Europe, once the site of a great temple of Poseidon—not preserved to us, like its sister monument on Sunium—and once, too, the entry to the regions of the dead. And, as if to remind us of its most beautiful legend, the dolphins, which had befriended Arion of old, and carried him here to land, rose in the calm summer sea, and came playing round the ship, showing their quaint forms above the water, and keeping with our course, as it were an escort into the homely seas and islands of truer Greece. Strangely enough, in many other journeys through Greek waters, once again only did we see these dolphins; and here as elsewhere, the old legend, I suppose, based itself upon the fact that this, of all their wide domain, was the favorite resort of these creatures, with which the poets of old felt so strong a sympathy.
But, while the dolphins have been occupying our
attention, we have cleared Cape Matapan, and the
deep Gulf of Asine and Gythium—in fact, the Gulf
of Sparta is open to our view. We strained our
eyes to discover the features of hollow Lacedæmon,
and to take in all the outline of this famous
bay, through which so many Spartans had held their
course in the days of their greatness. The site of
Sparta is far from the sea, probably twelve or fifteen
wet ways,
and that sea once covered with boats,
which a Greek comic poet has called the ants of
the sea,
have been deserted.
We were a motley company on board—Russians,
Greeks, Turks, French, English; and it was not
hard to find pleasant companions and diverting conversation
among them all. I turned to a Turkish
gentleman, who spoke French indifferently. Is it
not,
said I, a great pity to see this fair coast so
desolate?
A great pity, indeed,
said he; but
what can you expect from these Greeks? They are
all pirates and robbers; they are all liars and
knaves. Had the Turks been allowed to hold possession
of the country they would have improved it
and developed its resources; but since the Greeks
became independent everything has gone to ruin.
Roads are broken up, communications abandoned;
Presently, I got beside a Greek gentleman, from
whom I was anxiously picking up the first necessary
phrases and politenesses of modern Greek, and, by
way of amusement, put to him the same question.
I got the answer I expected. Ah!
said he, the
Turks, the Turks! When I think how these miscreants
have ruined our beautiful country! How
could a land thrive or prosper under such odious
tyranny?
I ventured to suggest that the Turks
were now gone five and forty years, and that it was
high time to see the fruits of recovered liberty in
the Greeks. No, it was still too soon. The Turks
had cut down all the woods, and so ruined the
climate; they had destroyed the cities, broken up
the roads, encouraged the bandits—in fact, they had
left the country in such a state that centuries would
not cure it.
The verdict of Europe is in favor of the Greek
gentleman; but it might have been suggested, had
we been so disposed, that the greatest and the most
hopeless of all these sorrows—the utter depopulation
of the country—is not due to either modern Greeks
or Turks, nor even to the Slav hordes of the Middle
Ages. It was a calamity which came upon Greece
almost suddenly, immediately after the loss of her
independence, and which historians and physGreek Life and
Thought, from Alexander to the Roman Conquest.
Of this very coast upon which we were then gazing,
the geographer Strabo, about the time of Christ,
says, that of old, Lacedæmon had numbered one
hundred cities; in his day there were but ten remaining.
So, then, the sum of the crimes of both
Greeks and Turks may be diminished by one. But
I, perceiving that each of them would have been
extremely indignant at this historical palliation of
the other’s guilt, kept silence, even from good
words.
These dialogues beguiled us till we found ourselves,
almost suddenly, facing the promontory of Malea,
with the island of Cythera (Cerigo) on our right.
The island is little celebrated in history. The
Phœnicians seem, in very old times, to have had a
settlement there for the working of their purple
shell-fishery, for which the coasts of Laconia were
celebrated; and they doubtless founded there the
worship of the Sidonian goddess, who was transformed
by the Greeks into Aphrodite (Venus).
During the Peloponnesian War we hear of the
Athenians using it as a station for their fleet, when
they were ravaging the adjacent coasts. It was, in
fact, used by their naval power as the same sort of
Cape Malea is more famous. It was in olden
days the limit of the homely Greek waters, the bar
to all fair weather and regular winds—a place of
storms and wrecks, and the portal to an inhospitable
open sea; and we can well imagine the delight of
the adventurous trader who had dared to cross the
Western Seas, to gather silver and lead in the mines
of Spain, when he rounded the dreaded Cape, homeward
bound in his heavy-laden ship, and looked
back from the quiet Ægean. The barren and rocky
Cape has its new feature now. On the very extremity
there is a little platform, at some elevation
over the water, and only accessible with great difficulty
from the land by a steep goat-path. Here a
hermit built himself a tiny hut, cultivated his little
plot of corn, and lived out in the lone seas, with no
society but stray passing ships.
So we passed into the Ægean, the real thoroughfare
of the Greeks, the mainstay of their communication—a
sea, and yet not a sea, but the frame of
countless headlands and islands, which are ever in
view to give confidence to the sailor in the smallest
boat. The most striking feature in our view was the
serrated outline of the mountains of Crete, far away
to the S. E. Though the day was gray and cloudy,
the atmosphere was perfectly clear, and allowed us to
see these very distant Alps, on which the snow still
lay in great fields. The chain of Ida brought back
to us the old legends of Minos and his island kingdom,
nor could any safer seat of empire be imagined
for a power coming from the south than this
great long bar of mountains, to which half the
islands of the Ægean could pass a fire signal in times
of war or piracy.
The nearer islands were small, and of no reputation,
but each like a mountain top reaching out of
a submerged valley, stony and bare. Melos was
farther off, but quite distinct—the old scene of
Athenian violence and cruelty, to Thucydides so
impressive, that he dramatizes the incidents, and
passes from cold narrative and set oration to a
dialogue between the oppressors and the oppressed.
Melian starvation was long proverbial among the
Greeks, and there the fashionable and aristocratic
Alcibiades applied the arguments and carried out
the very policy which the tanner Cleon could not
propose without being pilloried by the great histoVenus victrix, as she is called,
found at Capua, and now in the Museum of Naples.
Another remark should be made in justice to the
islands, that the groups of Therasia and Santorin,
which lie round the crater of a great active volcano,
have supplied us not only with the oldest forms of
the Greek alphabet in their inscriptions, but with
far the oldest vestiges of inhabitants in any part of
Greece. In these, beneath the lava slopes formed
by a great eruption—an eruption earlier than any
history, except, perhaps, Egyptian—have been found
the dwellings, the implements, and the bones of men
who cannot have lived there much later than 2000
B. C. The arts, as well as the implements, of these
old dwellers in their Stone Age, have shown us how
very ancient Greek forms, and even Greek decorations,
are in the world’s history: and we may yet
from them and from further researches, such as
Schliemann’s, be able to reconstruct the state of
things in Greece before the Greeks came from their
Eastern homes. The special reason why these
inquiries seem to me likely to lead to good result
is this, that what is called neo-barbarism is less likely
to mislead us here than elsewhere. Neo-barbarism
means the occurrence in later times of the manners
and customs which generally mark very old and
primitive times. Some few things of this kind
survive everywhere; thus, in the Irish Island of
Arran, a group of famous savants mistook a stone
donkey-shed of two years’ standing for the building
of an extinct race in gray antiquity: as a
matter of fact, the construction had not changed
from the oldest type. But the spread of culture,
and the fulness of population in the good days of
Greece, make it certain that every spot about the
thoroughfares was improved and civilized; and so,
as I have said, there is less chance here than anywhere
of our being deceived into mistaking rudeness
for oldness, and raising a modern savage to the dignity
of a primæval man.
But we must not allow speculations to spoil our
observations, nor waste the precious moments given
But these Attic waters, if I may so call them, will
be mentioned again and again in the course of our
voyage, and need not now be described in detail.
The reader will, I think, get the clearest notion of
the size of Greece by reflecting upon the time
required to sail round the Peloponnesus in a good
steamer. The ship in which we made the journey—the
Donnai, of the French Messagerie Company,—made
about eight miles an hour. Coming within
close range of the coast of Messene, about five
o’clock in the morning, we rounded all the headlands,
and arrived at the Peiræus about eleven
o’clock the same night. So, then, the Peloponnesus
is a small peninsula, but even to an outside view
very large for its size;
for the actual climbing
up and down of constant mountains, in any land
It may be well to add a word here upon the other
route into Greece, that by Brindisi and the Ionian
Islands. It is fully as picturesque, in some respects
more so, for there is no more beautiful bay than the
long fiord leading up to Corinth, which passes Patras,
Vostitza, and Itea, the port of Delphi. The Akrokeraunian
mountains, which are the first point of
the Albanian coast seen by the traveller, are also
very striking, and no one can forget the charms and
beauties of Corfu. I think a market-day in Corfu,
with those royal-looking peasant lads, who come
clothed in sheepskins from the coast, and spend their
day handling knives and revolvers with peculiar
interest at the stalls, is among the most picturesque
sights to be seen in Europe. The lofty mountains
of Ithaca and its greater sister, and then the rich
belt of verdure along the east side of Zante—all
these features make this journey one of surpassing
beauty and interest. Yet notwithstanding all these
advantages, there is not the same excitement in first
approaching semi-Greek or outlying Greek settlements,
and only gradually arriving at the real centres
of historic interest. Such at least was the feeling
(shared by other observers) which I had in approach
The modern Patras, still a thriving port, is now
the main point of contact between Greece and the
rest of Europe. For, as a railway has now been
opened from Patras to Athens, all the steamers from
Brindisi, Venice, and Trieste put in there, and from
thence the stream of travellers proceeds by the new
line to the capital. The old plan of steaming up the
long fiord to Corinth is abandoned; still more the once
popular route round the Morea, which, if somewhat
slower, at least saved the unshipping at Lechæum,
the drive in omnibuses across the isthmus, and reshipment
at Cenchreæ—all done with much confusion,
and with loss and damage to luggage and temper.
Not that there is no longer confusion. The railway
station at Patras, and that at Athens, are the most
curious bear-gardens in which business ever was
At last the train steams out of the station, and
takes its deliberate way along the coast, through
woods of fir trees, bushes of arbutus and mastic,
and the many flowers which stud the earth. And
here already the traveller, looking out of the
window, can form an idea of the delights of real
Greek travel, by which he must understand mounting
a mule or pony, and making his way along
woody paths, or beside the quiet sea, or up the steep
side of a rocky defile. Every half-hour the train
crosses torrents coming from the mountains, which
in flood times color the sea for some distance with
the brilliant brick-red of the clay they carry with
them from their banks. The peacock blue of the
open sea bounds this red water with a definite line,
and the contrast in the bright sun is something very
startling. Shallow banks of sand also reflect their
pale yellow in many places, so that the brilliancy of
this gulf exceeds anything I had ever seen in sea or
lake. We pass the sites of Ægion, now Vostitza,
All that we have passed through hitherto may be
classed under the title of first impressions.
The
wild northern coast shows us but one inlet, of the
Gulf of Salona, with a little port of Itea at its
mouth. This was the old highway to ascend to the
oracle of Delphi on the snowy Parnassus, which we
shall approach better from the Bœotian side. But
now we strain our eyes to behold the great rock of
I will add a word upon the form and scope of the
following work. My aim is to bring the living
features of Greece home to the student, by connecting
them, as far as possible, with the facts of older history,
which are so familiar to most of us. I shall also
have a good deal to say about the modern politics of
Greece, and the character of the modern population.
A long and careful survey of the extant literature
of ancient Greece has convinced me that the pictures
usually drawn of the old Greeks are idealized, and
that the real people were of a very different—if you
please, of a much lower—type. I may mention, as
a very remarkable confirmation of my judgment,
that intelligent people at Athens, who had read my
opinions elsewhere set forth upon the subject,Social Life in Greece, from Homer to Menander.
I feel much fortified in my judgment of Greek
character by finding that a very smart, though too
sarcastic, observer, M. E. About, in his well-known
Grèce contemporaine, estimates the people very
nearly as I am disposed to estimate the common
people of ancient Greece. He notices, in the
second and succeeding chapters of his book, a
series of features which make this nationality a very
distinct one in Europe. Starting from the question
of national beauty, and holding rightly that the
beauty of the men is greater than that of the women,
he touches on a point which told very deeply upon
all the history of Greek art. At the present day,
the Greek men are much more particular about their
appearance, and more vain of it, than the women.
The most striking beauty among them is that of
young men; and as to the care of figure, as About
well observes, in Greece it is the men who pinch
They are, probably, as clever a people as can be
found in the world, and fit for any mental work
whatever. This they have proved, not only by getting
into their hands all the trade of the Eastern
Mediterranean, but by holding their own perfectly
among English merchants in England. As yet they
have not found any encouragement in other directions;
but there can be no doubt that, if settled
among a great people, and weaned from the follies
and jealousies of Greek politics, they would (like
the Jews) outrun many of us, both in politics and in
science. However that may be—and perhaps such
a development requires moral qualities in which
they seem deficient—it is certain that their work
Besides this, they have great national pride, and, as M. About remarks, we need never despair of a people who are at the same time intelligent and proud. They are very fond of displaying their knowledge on all points—I noted especially their pride in exhibiting their acquaintance with old Greek history and legend. When I asked them whether they believed the old mythical stories which they repeated, they seemed afraid of being thought simple if they confessed that they did, and of injuring the reputation of their ancestors if they declared they did not. So they used to preserve a discreet neutrality.
The instinct of liberty appears to me as strong in
the nation now as it ever was. In fact, the people
have never been really enslaved. The eternal refuge
for liberty afforded by the sea and the mountains
has saved them from this fate; and, even
beneath the heavy yoke of the Turks, a large part
of the nation was not subdued, but, in the guise of
bandits and pirates, enjoyed the great privilege for
which their ancestors had contended so earnestly.
The Mainotes, for example, of whom I have just
handed to a trembling tax-collector a
little purse of gold pieces, hung on the end of a
naked sword.
M. About has earned the profound hatred and contempt of the nation by his picture, and I do not wonder at it, seeing that the tone in which he writes is flippant and ill-natured, and seems to betoken certain private animosities, of which the Greeks tell numerous anecdotes.
I have no such excuse for being severe or ill-natured, as I found nothing but kindness and hospitality everywhere, and sincerely hope that my free judgments may not hurt any sensitive Greek who may chance to see them. Even the great Finlay—one of their best friends—is constantly censured by them for his writings about Modern Greece.
But, surely, any real lover of Greece must feel
that plain speaking about the faults of the nation is
much wanted. The worship lavished upon them by
Byron and his school has done its good, and can now
only do harm. On the other hand, I must confess
that a longer and more intimate intercourse with the
Greeks of the interior and of the mountains leads a
fair observer to change his earlier estimate, and
think more highly of the nation than at first acquaintance.
Unfortunately, the Greeks known to
most of us are sailors—mongrel villains from the ports
of the Levant, having very little in common with the
bold, honest, independent peasant who lives under
his vine and his fig-tree in the valleys of Arcadia
There is probably no more exciting voyage, to
any educated man, than the approach to Athens
from the sea. Every promontory, every island,
every bay, has its history. If he knows the map of
Greece, he needs no guide-book or guide to distract
him; if he does not, he needs little Greek to ask of
any one near him the name of this or that object;
and the mere names are sufficient to stir up all his
classical recollections. But he must make up his
mind not to be shocked at Ægina or Phalerum, and
even to be told that he is utterly wrong in his way
of pronouncing them.
It was our fortune to come into Greece by night,
with a splendid moon shining upon the summer sea.
The varied outlines of Sunium on the one side, and
Ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep
shadows there was mystery enough to feed the burning
impatience to see it all in the light of common
day; and though we had passed Ægina, and had
come over against the rocky Salamis, as yet there
was no sign of Peiræus. Then came the light on
Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right
[Illustration: Along the Coast from the Throne of Xerxes]
It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors
in the noise and confusion of disembarking; in the
delays of its custom house; in the extortion and
insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato’s
day, the haunt of sailors, where good manners are
unknown.
But when we had escaped the turmoil,
and were seated silently on the way to Athens,
almost along the very road of classical days, all our
Turkish delight
and water. There is no exception made to
this custom, and the traveller is bound to submit.
At last we entered the unpretending ill-built streets
at the west of Athens.
The stillness of the night is a phenomenon hardly
known in that city. No sooner have men and
horses gone to rest than all the dogs and cats of the
town come out to bark and yell about the thoroughfares.
Athens, like all parts of modern Greece,
abounds in dogs. You cannot pass a sailing boat
in the Levant without seeing a dog looking angrily
So the night wore away under rapidly growing adverse impressions. How is a man to admire art and revere antiquity if he is robbed of his repose? The Greeks sleep so much in the day that they seem indifferent about nightly disturbances; and, perhaps, after many years’ habit, even Athenian caterwauling may fail to rouse the sleeper. But what chance has the passing traveller? Even the strongest ejaculations are but a narrow outlet for his feelings.
In this state of mind, then, I rose at the break of
dawn to see whether the window would afford any
prospect to serve as a requital for angry sleeplessness.
And there, right opposite, stood the rock which of
all rocks in the world’s history has done most
for literature and art—the rock which poets, and
orators, and architects, and historians have ever
glorified, and cannot stay their praise—which is
ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay, ever
When I saw my dream and longing of many years fulfilled, the first rays of the rising sun had just touched the heights, while the town below was still hid in gloom. Rock, and rampart, and ruined fanes—all were colored in uniform tints; the lights were of a deep rich orange, and the shadows of dark crimson, with the deeper lines of purple. There was no variety in color between what nature and what man had set there. No whiteness shone from the marble, no smoothness showed upon the hewn and polished blocks; but the whole mass of orange and crimson stood out together into the pale, pure Attic air. There it stood, surrounded by lanes and hovels, still perpetuating the great old contrast in Greek history, of magnificence and meanness—of loftiness and lowness—as well in outer life as in inward motive. And, as it were in illustration of that art of which it was the most perfect bloom, and which lasted in perfection but a day of history, I saw it again and again, in sunlight and in shade, in daylight and at night, but never again in this perfect and singular beauty.
If we except the Acropolis, there are only two
striking buildings of classical antiquity within the
modern town of Athens—the Temple of Theseus and
the few standing columns of Hadrian’s great temple
to Zeus. The latter is, indeed, very remarkable.
Athenæum, who corrected several faults of spelling in the first
edition, that this is the form of the name warranted by inscriptions,
and now to be received by scholars: cf. Wachsmuth’s Stadt
Athen, i. p. 49.Capillus Veneris, which seems to find out and
frame with its delicate green every natural spring
in Greece.
But the pillars of the Temple of Zeus, though
very stately and massive, and with their summits
bridged together by huge blocks of architrave, are
still not Athenian, not Attic, not (if I may say so)
genuine Greek work; for the Corinthian capitals,
which are here seen perhaps in their greatest perfection,
cannot be called pure Greek taste. As is
well known, they were hardly ever used, and never
used prominently, till the Græco-Roman stage of
[Illustration: The Erechtheum from the West, Athens]
But to return to the pillars of Hadrian’s Temple. They are about fifty-five feet high, by six and a half feet in diameter, and no Corinthian pillar of this colossal size would ever have been set up by the Greeks in their better days. So, then, in spite of the grandeur of these isolated remains—a grandeur not destroyed, perhaps even not diminished, by coffee tables, and inquiring waiters, and military bands, and a vulgar crowd about their base—to the student of really Greek art they are not of the highest interest; nay, they even suggest to him what the Periclean Greeks would have done had they, with such resources, completed the great temple due to the munificence of the Roman Emperor.
Let us turn, in preference, to the Temple of
Theseus, at the opposite extremity of the town, it
too standing upon a clear platform, and striking the
traveller with its symmetry and its completeness, as
he approaches from the Peiræus. It is in every
way a contrast to the temple of which we have just
spoken. It is very small—in fact so small in comparison
with the Parthenon, or the great temple at
Pæstum, that we are disappointed with it; and yet
it is built, not in the richly-decorated Ionic style of
Such,
says Bishop
Wordsworth, is the integrity of its structure, and
the distinctness of its details, that it requires no
description beyond that which a few glances might
supply. Its beauty defies all: its solid yet graceful
form is, indeed, admirable; and the loveliness of
its coloring is such that, from the rich mellow hue
which the marble has now assumed, it looks as if it
had been quarried, not from the bed of a rocky mountain,
but from the golden light of an Athenian sunset.
And in like terms many others have spoken.
I have only one reservation to make. The Doric Order being essentially massive, it seems to me that this beautiful temple lacks one essential feature of that order, and therefore, after the first survey, after a single walk about it, it loses to the traveller who has seen Pæstum, and who presently cannot fail to see the Parthenon, that peculiar effect of massiveness—of almost Egyptian solidity—which is ever present, and ever imposing, in these huger Doric temples. It seems as if the Athenians themselves felt this—that the plain simplicity of its style was not effective without size—and accordingly decorated this structure with colors more richly than their other temples. All the reliefs and raised ornaments seem to have been painted; other decorations were added in color on the flat surfaces, so that the whole temple must have been a mass of rich variegated hues, of which blue, green, and red are still distinguishable—or were in Stuart’s time—and in which bronze and gilding certainly played an important part.
We are thus brought naturally face to face with
one of the peculiarities of old Greek art most difficult
to realize, and still more to appreciate.
But in Greek art—in the perfect symmetry of the
Greek temple, in the perfect grace of the Greek
statue—we come to think form of such paramount
importance, that we look on the beautiful Parian and
Pentelic marbles as specially suited for the expression
of form apart from color. There is even something
in unity of tone that delights the modern eye.
Thus, though we feel that the old Greek temples
have lost all their original brightness, yet, as I have
myself said, and as I have quoted from Bishop
Wordsworth, the rich mellow hue which tones all
these ruins has to us its peculiar charm. The same
rich yellow brown, almost the color of the Roman
travertine, is one of the most striking features in the
splendid remains which have made Pæstum unique
in all Italy. This color contrasts beautifully with
the blue sky of southern Europe; it lights up with
extraordinary richness in the rising or setting sun.
We can easily conceive that were it proposed to
restore the Attic temples to their pristine whiteness,
we should feel a severe shock, and beg to have these
venerable buildings left in the soberness of their
When we first come to realize these things, we
are likely to exclaim against such a jumble, as we
should call it, of painting and architecture—still
worse, of painting and sculpture. Nor is it possible
or reasonable that we should at once submit to such
a revolution in our artistic ideas, and bow without
criticism to these shocking features in Greek art.
But if blind obedience to these our great masters in
the laws of beauty is not to be commended, neither
is an absolute resistance to all argument on the
question to be respected; nor do I acknowledge the
good sense or the good taste of that critic who insists
that nothing can possibly equal the color and texture
of white marble, and that all coloring of such a substance
is the mere remains of barbarism. For, say
what we will, the Greeks were certainly, as a nation,
the best judges of beauty the world has yet seen.
And this is not all. The beauty of which they were
evidently the most fond was beauty of form—harmony
of proportions, symmetry of design. They
always hated the tawdry and the extravagant. As
to their literature, there is no poetry, no oratory, no
To any one who has seen the country, and thought
about the question there, many such reasons present
themselves. In the first place, all through southern
Europe, and more especially in Greece, there is an
amount of bright color in nature, which prevents
almost any artificial coloring from producing a startling
effect. Where all the landscape, the sea, and
the air are exceedingly bright, we find the inhabitants
increasing the brightness of their dress and
houses, as it were to correspond with nature. Thus,
in Italy, they paint their houses green, and pink,
and yellow, and so give to their towns and villas
that rich and warm effect which we miss so keenly
among the gray and sooty streets of northern
Europe. So also in their dress, these people wear
scarlet, and white, and rich blue, not so much in
patterns as in large patches, and a festival in Sicily
or Greece fills the streets with intense color. We
know that the coloring of the old Greek dress was
quite of the same character as that of the modern,
But I will not seek to persuade; let us merely state the case fairly, and put the reader in a position to judge for himself. So much for the painted architecture. I will but add, the most remarkable specimen of a richly painted front to which we can now appeal is also really one of the most beautiful in Europe—the front of S. Mark’s at Venice. The rich frescoes and profuse gilding on this splendid front, of which photographs give a very false idea, should be studied by all who desire to judge fairly of this side of Greek taste.
But I must say a word, before passing on, concerning
the statues. No doubt, the painting of
I will go further, and say we can point out cases
where coloring greatly heightens the effect and
beauty of sculpture. The first is from the bronzes
found at Herculaneum, now in the museum at
Naples. Though they are not marble, they are
suitable for our purpose, being naturally of a single
ex voto offered for a recovery from some
disease of the eyes. This marble face also has its
eyes colored in the most striking and lifelike way,
and is one of the most curious objects found in the
late excavations.
I will add one remarkable modern example—the
monument at Florence to a young Indian prince,
who visited England and this country some years
ago, and died of fever during his homeward voyage.
They have set up to him a richly colored and gilded
baldachin, in the open air, and in a quiet, wooded
park. Under this covering is a life-sized bust of
the prince, in his richest state dress. The whole
bust—the turban, the face, the drapery—all is colored
to the life, and the dress, of course, of the most
gorgeous variety. The turban is chiefly white,
striped with gold, in strong contrast to the mahogany
complexion and raven hair of the actual head;
the robe is gold and green, and covered with ornament.
The general effect is, from the very first
But these archæological discussions are truly
Temple of Theseus
is more
than doubtful. The building fronts towards the east. This is
proved by the greater size and more elaborate decoration of the
eastern portal. It is almost certain, according to an old scholion
on Pindar, that the temples of heroes like Theseus faced west,
while those only of the Olympian gods faced the rising sun. The
temple, therefore, was the temple, not of a hero, but of a god.
Probably the Temple of Heracles, worshipped as a god at Athens,
which is mentioned in the scholia of Aristophanes as situated in
this part of Athens, is to be identified with the building in question.
But I suppose for years to come we must be content to abide
by the old name of Theseon, which is now too long in general use
to be easily disturbed.B. C.) at Athens. There
is the later Temple of the Winds, as it is called—a
sort of public clock, with sundials and fine reliefs
of the Wind-gods on its outward surfaces, and arrangements
for a water-clock within. There are
two portals, or gateways—one leading into the old
agora, or market-place, the other leading from old
Athens into the Athens of Hadrian.
But all these buildings are either miserably defaced,
or of such late date and decayed taste as to
make them unworthy specimens of pure Greek art.
A single century ago there was much to be seen and
admired which has since disappeared; and even
to-day the majority of the population are careless
as to the treatment of ancient monuments, and sometimes
even mischievous in wantonly defacing them.
Thus, I saw the marble tombs of Ottfried Müller
and Charles Lenormant—tombs which, though modern,
were yet erected at the cost of the nation to
men who were eminent lovers and students of Greek
art—I saw these tombs used as common targets by
These unhappy examples of the defacing of architectural
monuments,
On this point it seems to me that we have gone
to one extreme, and the Greeks to the other, and
In the last century many private persons—many
noblemen of wealth and culture—possessed remarkable
collections of antiquities. These have
mostly been swallowed up by what is called the
nation,
and new private collections are very rare
indeed.
In Greece the very opposite course is being now
pursued. By a special law it is forbidden to sell out
of the country, or even to remove from a district,
any antiquities whatever; and in consequence little
museums have been established in every village in
Greece—nay, sometimes even in places where there
is no village, in order that every district may
pos
The traveller is at first disposed to complain that
even the portable antiquities found in various parts
of Greece are not brought to Athens, and gathered
into one vast national museum. Further reflection
shows such a proceeding to be not only impossible,
but highly inexpedient. I will not speak of the
great waste of objects of interest when they are
brought together in such vast masses that the visitor
is rather oppressed than enlightened. Any one who
has gone to the British Museum will know what I
mean. Nor will I give the smallest weight to the
selfish local argument, that compelling visitors to
In such a town as Athens, on the contrary, it
seems to me that the true solution of the problem
has been attained, though it will probably be shortly
abandoned for a central museum. There are (or
were) at Athens at least six separate museums of
antiquities—one at the University, one called the
Varvakion, one in the Theseum, one, or rather two,
on the Acropolis, one in the Ministry of Public Instruction,
and lastly, the new National Museum,
It may be said that all this digression about the mere placing of monuments is delaying the reader too long from what he desires to know—something about the monuments themselves. But this little book, to copy an expression of Herodotus, particularly affects digressions. I desire to wander through the subject exactly in the way which naturally suggests itself to me. After all, the reflections on a journey ought to be more valuable than its mere description.
Before passing into Attica and leaving Athens, something more must, of course, be said of the museums, then of the newer diggings, and especially of the splendid tombs found in the Kerameikus. We will then mount the Acropolis, and wander leisurely about its marvellous ruins. From it we can look out upon the general shape and disposition of Attica, and plan our shorter excursions.
As some of the suggestions in my first edition
have found favor at Athens, I venture to point out
here the great benefit which the Greek archæologists
would confer on all Europe if they would publish an
official guide to Athens, with some moderately complete
account of the immense riches of its museums.
Such a book, which might appear under the sanction
of M. Rousopoulos, or Professor Koumanoudis,
might be promoted either by the Greek Parliament
or the University of Athens. Were it even published
in modern Greek, its sale must be large and
certain; and, by appendices, or new editions, it
could be kept up to the level of the new discoveries.
The catalogues of Kekulé and of Heydemann are
already wholly inadequate, and unless one has the
privilege of knowing personally one of the gentlemen
above named, it is very difficult indeed to
obtain any proper notion of the history, or of the
original sites, of the various objects which excite
curiosity or admiration at every step. Such a book
as I suggest would be hailed by every Hellenist in
Handbook
for Greece by Dr. Lolling (Bædeker). The new edition of
Murray’s Handbook is very dear and not very satisfactory. There
is a small Greek Catalogue published by Stanford, translated by
Miss Agnes Smith. The Mycenæan antiquities are described in a
separate book by Schliemann, and by Schuchhardt.
Nothing is more melancholy and more disappointing
than the first view of the Athenian museums.
Almost every traveller sees them after passing
through Italy, where everything—indeed far too
much—has been done to make the relics of antiquity
perfect and complete. Missing noses, and arms, and
feet have been restored; probable or possible names
have been assigned to every statue; they are set up,
generally, in handsome galleries, with suitable decoration;
the visitor is provided with full descriptive
catalogues. Nothing of all this is found in Greece.
The fragments are merely sorted: many of the
mutilated statues are lying prostrate, and, of course,
in no way restored. Everything is, however, in process
of being arranged. But there is room to apprehend
that in fifty years things will still be found
changing their places, and still in process of being
arranged. It is not fair to complain of these things
in a nation which is fully occupied with its political
and commercial development, and where new classical
remains are constantly added to the museums.
Every nerve is being strained by the Greeks to obtain
But I am bound to add that every patient observer
who sets to work in spite of his disappointment, and
examines with honest care these disjecta membra
of Attic art—any one who will replace in imagination
the tips of noses—any one who will stoop over
lying statues, and guess at the context of broken
limbs—such an observer will find his vexation gradually
changing into wonder, and will at last come to
see that all the smoothly-restored Greek work in
Italian museums is not worth a tithe of the shattered
fragments in the real home and citadel of pure art.
This is especially true of the museum on the Acropolis.
It is, however, also true of the other
museums, and more obviously true of the reliefs
where each discovery
is to be announced; so that often the professedly
archæological journals contain no mention of such
things, while the common daily papers secure the
information.
Here, again, we feel the want of some stronger
government—some despotic assertion of a law of
gravitation to a common centre—to counteract the
strong centrifugal forces acting all through Greek
society. The old autonomy of the Greeks—that old
assertion of local independence which was at once
their greatness and their ruin—this strong instinct
has lasted undiminished to the present day. They
seem even now to hate pulling together, as we say.
They seem always ready to assert their individual
rights and claims against those of the community
or the public. The old Greeks had as a safeguard
So, then, the Greeks will not even agree to tell
us where we may find a complete list of newly-discovered
antiquities. Nor, indeed, does the Athenian
à
l’ Eugénie, as
we used to say when we were young. Many hold
in their hands large fans, like those which we make
of peacocks’ feathers. No conclusive theory has
yet been started, so far as I know, concerning the
There is an equal difficulty as to their age. The
B. C., and it is,
indeed, hard to conceive at what later period there
was enough wealth and art to produce such often
elegant, and often costly, results. Tanagra and
Thespiæ were, indeed, in Strabo’s day (lib. ix. 2) the
only remaining cities of Bœotia; the rest, he says,
were but ruins and names. But we may be certain
that in that time of universal decay the remaining
towns must have been as poor and insignificant as
they now are. Thus, we seem thrown back into
classical or Alexandrian days for the origin of these
figures, which in their bright coloring—pink and
blue dresses, often gilded fringes, the hair always
fair, so far as I could find—are, indeed, like what
we know of old Greek statuary, but in other respects
surprisingly modern.B. C. or A. D., thus bringing
them down to about the time of Strabo.
But it is necessary to suspend our judgment, and wait for further and closer investigation. The workmen at Tanagra are now forbidden to sell these objects to private fanciers; and in consequence, their price has risen so enormously, that those in the market, if of real elegance and artistic merit, cannot be obtained for less than from £40 to £60. As much as 2000 francs has been paid for one, when they were less common. From this price downward they can still be bought in Athens, the rude and badly finished specimens being cheap enough. The only other method of procuring them, or of procuring them more cheaply, is to make diligent inquiries when travelling in the interior, where they may often be bought from poor people, either at Megara, Tanagra, or elsewhere, who have chanced to find them, and are willing enough to part with them after a certain amount of bargaining.
It is convenient to dispose of this peculiar and
distinct kind of Greek antiquities, because they
seem foreign to the rest, and cannot be brought
under any other head. These figurines have now
found their way into most European museums.e. g. Vase Room I., case 35, where there are many
of these figures from Tanagra. In Room II. there is a whole case
of them, chiefly from Cyrene, and from Cnidus.
I pass to the public collections at Athens, in
which we find few of these figures, and which
There is, indeed, one—a naked athlete, with his
cloak hanging over the left shoulder, and coiled
round the left forearm—which seems almost as good
as any strong male figure which we now possess.
While it has almost exactly the same treatment of
the cloak on the left arm which we see in the celebrated
Hermes of the Vatican,Apollo Belvedere
and Laocoon.Discobolus (numbered
126, Braccio Nuovo). There are two other
copies at Florence, and one at Naples. These repetitions
point to some very celebrated original, which
the critics consider to be of the older school of Polycletus,
and even imagine may possibly be a copy of
his Doryphorus, which was called the Canon statue,
or model of the perfect manly form. The Hermes
has too strong a likeness to Lysippus’s Apoxyomenos
not to be recognized as of the newer school. What
There can, however, be no doubt that it does not
date from the older and severer age of sculpture, of
which Phidias and Polycletus were the highest representatives.
Any one who studies Greek art perceives
how remarkably not only the style of dress
and ornament, but even the proportions of the figure
change, as we come down from generation to generation
in the long line of Greek sculptors. The
friezes of Selinus (now at Palermo), and those of
Ægina (now in Munich), which are among our earliest
classical specimens, are remarkable for short,
thick-set forms. The men are men five feet seven,
or, at most, eight inches high, and their figures are
squat even for that height. In the specimens we
have of the days of Phidias and Polycletus these
proportions are altered. The head of the Doryphorus,
if we can depend upon our supposed copies,
is still heavy, and the figure bulky, though taller
in proportion. He looks a man of five feet ten
inches at least. The statue we are just considering
is even taller, and is like the copies we have of
Lysippus’s work, the figure apparently of a man
of six feet high; but his head is not so small, nor
is he so slender and light as this type is usually
found.
It is not very easy to give a full account of this change. There is, of course, one general reason well known—the art of the Greeks, like almost all such developments, went through stiffness and clumsiness into dignity and strength, to which it presently added that grace which raises strength into majesty. But in time the seeking after grace becomes too prominent, and so strength, and with it, of course, the majesty which requires strength as well as grace, is gradually lost. Thus we arrive at a period when the forms are merely elegant or voluptuous, without any assertion of power. I will speak of a similar development among female figures in connection with another subject which will naturally suggest it.
This can only be made plain by a series of illustrations.
Of course, the difficulty of obtaining
really archaic statues was very great.archaistic, as the critics call it—imitations or copies
of archaic statues. With these we need now no
longer be content. And we may pause a moment
on the question of archaic Greek art, because, apart
from the imitations of the time of Augustus and
Hadrian, we had already some really genuine fragments
in the little museum in the Acropolis—fragments
saved, not from the present Parthenon, but
rather from about the ruins of the older Parthenon.
This temple was destroyed by the Persians, and the
materials were built into the surrounding wall of
the Acropolis by the Athenians, when they began to
strengthen and beautify it at the opening of their
career of dominion and wealth. The stains of fire
are said to be still visible on these drums of pillars
now built into the fortification, and there can be no
doubt of their belonging to the old temple, as it is
well attested.
A fair specimen of the old sculptures first found is a very stiff, and, to us, comical figure, which has lost its legs, but is otherwise fairly preserved, and which depicts a male figure with curious conventional hair, and still more conventional beard, holding by its four legs a bull or calf, which he is carrying on his shoulders. The eyes are now hollow, and were evidently once filled with something different from the marble of which the statue is made. The whole pose and style of the work is stiff and expressionless, and it is one of the most characteristic remains of the older Attic art still in existence.
Happily there is little doubt what the statue means.
It is the votive offering of the Marathonians, which
Pausanias saw in the Acropolis, and which commemorated
the legend of Theseus having driven the wild
There are two full-length reliefs—one which I
first saw in a little church near Orchomenus, and a
couple more at Athens in the Theseon—which are
plainly of the same epoch and style of art. The
most complete Athenian one is ascribed as the
stele of Aristion, and as the work of Aristocles,
Unfortunately, the museums of Athens show us
Vultum ab antiquo rigore variare.
—Plin. xxxv. 35.
But now at last we can show the reader how far
the antiquarians of later days were able to imitate
B. C.). They were so broken and spoiled that
the Athenians, when restoring and rebuilding their
temples, determined to use them for rubbish. Thus
we have now a perfectly authentic group of works
showing us the art of the older Athens before the Persian
Wars. They are each made of several pieces
of marble, apparently Parian, dowelled together like
wooden work, and the figure here reproduced has a
bronze pin protruding from the head, apparently to
hold a nimbus or covering of metal. They were all
richly colored, as many traces upon them still show.C’étaient surtout de nouvelles statues de jeunes femmes,
au mystérieux sourire, à la parure étincelante, de ces idoles fardées
et peintes, bien faites, par leur saveur étrange, pour tenter le pinceau
d’un Gustave Moreau ou la plume d’un Pierre Loti. Comme leurs
sœurs, ces nouvelles venues ont la même attitude et le même
costume, les mêmes coquetteries de parure, le même soin de leur
chevelure, la même expression aussi; pourtant à la série déjà
connue elles out ajouté quelques œuvres exquises, et trois d’entre
elles en particulier méritent d’être signalées. L’une est une
merveille de coloris; sa tunique à large bande rouge, sa chemisette
d’un vert foncé, bordée de pourpre, son manteau orné de méandres
du dessin le plus fin, ses vêtements parsemés de croix rouges ou
vertes, qui se retrouvent sur le diadème de ses cheveux, sont d’un
incomparable éclat. Sous les tons chauds de ces riches couleurs
disposées avec un goût exquis, il semble que le marbre s’anime et
fasse la chair vivante; et un charme étrange émane de cette figure.
Celle-ci (cf. Plate) d’une date plus récente, probablement l’une des
plus jeunes de la série, montre l’effort d’un artiste habile pour créer
une œuvre originale. Dans ces formes élancées, dans cette tête
petite et fine, dans ces bras jetés en avant du corps, on sent la
volonté du maître qui cherche à faire autrement que ses devanciers;
le sourire traditionnel est devenu presque imperceptible, les yeux,
qui souriaient jadis à l’unison des levres, out cessé de se relever
vers les tempes; les joues creuses se remplissent et s’arrondissent;
avec des œuvres de cette sorte, l’archaisme est prêt à finir.... La
troisième enfin est une des œuvres les plus remarquables de l’art
attique. Plus ancienne que la précédente, elle est d’une valeur
artistique bien supérieure. Le modelé en est exquis, et son irréprochable
finesse fait un contraste singulier avec les procédés qui
sentent encore les conventions de l’école. Suivant les traditions de
l’art antique, les yeux sont obliques et bridés, le sourire fait toujours
grimacer les levres; mais dans les yeux le regard n’est plus indifférent
et fixe; il brille d’une lueur de vie et de pensée; le sourire
de ces levres n’est plus sec et dur, il semble avoir une douceur
attendrie. Certes il n’y a dans cette sculpture nul effort pour
chercher des chemins nouveaux; mais parmi les œuvres de l’art
archaïque, parmi celles où le maître a docilement suivi la route
frayée et battue, cette sculpture à l’expression candide et presque
attristée est l’une des plus admirables.
—Excursions archéologiques
en Grèce, p. 104.
Let us now leave this archaic art and go to the
street of tombs, where we can find such specimens
as the world can hardly equal, and in such condition
I pass, therefore, from the museums to the street
of tombs, which Thucydides tells us to find in the
fairest suburb of the city, as we go out westward
towards the groves of Academe, and before we
turn slightly to the south on our way to the Peiræus.
Thucydides has described with some care
the funeral ceremonies held in this famous place,
and has composed for us a very noble funeral oration,
which he has put in the mouth of Pericles.Menexenus of Plato,
that of Hypereides, and those ascribed (justly) to Lysias and
(falsely) to Demosthenes. That of Hypereides, very mutilated as
it is, seems to me the finest next to that of Thucydides. But they
are all built upon the same lines, showing even here that strict
conservatism in every branch of Greek art which never varied,
for variety’s sake, from a type once recognized as really good.bazaars and dirty markets, which abut upon the
main street. Amid all this squalor and poverty, all
this complete denial of art and leisure, there are
We then come on to the railway station, which is, indeed, in this place, as elsewhere, very offensive. With its grimy smoke, its shrill sounds, and all its other hard unloveliness, it is not a meet neighbor for the tombs of the old Greeks, which are close to it on all sides.
They lie—as almost all old ruins do—far below the present level of the ground, and have, therefore, to be exhumed by careful digging. When this has been done they are covered with a rude door, to protect their sculptured face; and when I first saw them were standing about, without any order or regularity, close to the spots where they had been found.
A proper estimate of these tombs cannot be attained
without appreciating the feelings with which
the survivors set them up. And we must consider
not only the general attitude of Greek literature on
the all-important question of the state of man after
death, but also the thousands of inscriptions upon
We know from Homer and from Mimnermus that
in the earlier periods, though the Greeks were unable
to shake off a belief in life after death, they could not
conceive that state as anything but a shadowy and
wretched echo of the real life upon earth. It was
a gloomy existence, burdened with the memory of
lost happiness and the longing for lost enjoyment.
To the Homeric Greeks death was a dark unavoidable
fate, without hope and without reward. It is,
indeed, true that we find in Pindar thoughts and aspirations
of a very different kind. We have in the
fragments of his poetry more than one passage asserting
the rewards of the just, and the splendors of
a future life far happier than that which we now
enjoy. But, notwithstanding these noble visions,
such high expectation laid no hold upon the imagination
of the Greek world. The poems of
Pindar, we are told, soon ceased to be popular, and
his visions are but a streak of light amid general
gloom. The kingdom of the dead in Æschylus is
evidently, as in Homer, but a weary echo of this
life, where honor can only be attained by the pious
service of loving kinsfolk, whose duty paid to the
dead affects him in his gloomier state, and raises
him in the esteem of his less-remembered fellows.
Sophocles says nothing to clear away the night; nay
It is plain, from this evidence, that the Greeks
must have looked upon the death of those they
loved with unmixed sorrow. It was the final parting,
when all the good and pleasant things are remembered;
when men seek, as it were, to increase
the pang, by clothing the dead in all his sweetest
and dearest presence. But this was not done by
pompous inscriptions, or by a vain enumeration of
all the deceased had performed—inscriptions which,
among us, tell more of the vanity than of the grief
of the survivors. The commonest epitaph was a
simple
Nevertheless, what strikes us forcibly in these remarkable
monuments is the chastened modest expression
of sorrow which they display. There is no
violence, no despair, no extravagance—all is simple
and noble; thus combining purity of art with a far
deeper pathos—a far nobler grief—than that of the
[Illustration: A Tomb from the Via Sacra, Athens]
I know not that any other remnants of Greek art bring home to us more plainly one of its eternal and divine features—or shall I rather say, one of its eternal and human features?—the greatest, if not the main feature, which has made it the ever new and ever lasting lawgiver to men in their efforts to represent the ideal.
If I am to permit myself any digression whatever,
we cannot do better than conclude this chapter with
some reflections on this subject, and we may
therereserve of Greek art—I
mean the reserve in the displaying emotion, in the
portraying of the fierce outbursts of joy or grief;
and again, more generally, the reserve in the exhibiting
of peculiar or personal features, passing interests,
or momentary emotions.
In a philosophy now rather forgotten than extinct,
and which once commanded no small attention,
Adam Smith was led to analyze the indirect effects
of sympathy, from which, as a single principle, he
desired to deduce all the rules of ethics. While
straining many points unduly, he must be confessed
to have explained with great justice the
origin of good taste or tact in ordinary life, which
he saw to be the careful watching of the interest of
others in our own affairs, and the feeling that we
must not force upon them what concerns ourselves,
except we are sure to carry with us their active
sympathy. Good breeding, he says, consists in a
delicate perception how far this will go, and in suppressing
those of our feelings which, though they
affect us strongly, cannot be expected to affect in
like manner our neighbor, whose sympathy should be
the measure and limit of our outspokenness. There
can be no doubt that whatever other elements come
in, this analysis is true, so far as it goes, and recommends
itself at once to the convictions of any educated
man. The very same principle applies still more
Let us dispose at once of an apparent exception—the mediæval pictures of the Passion of Christ, and the sorrows of the Virgin Mary. Here the artist allowed himself the most extreme treatment, because the objects were necessarily the centre of the very highest sympathy. No expression of the grief of Christ could be thought exaggerated in the Middle Ages, because in this very exaggeration lay the centre point of men’s religion. But when no such object of universal and all-absorbing sympathy can be found (and there was none such in pagan life), then the Greek artist must attain by his treatment of the object what the Christian artist obtained by the object itself. Assuming, then, a mastery over his material, and sufficient power of execution, the next feature to be looked for in Greek art, and especially in Greek sculpture, is a certain modesty and reserve in expression, which will not portray slight defects in picturing a man, but represent that eternal or ideal character in him which remains in our memory when he is gone. Such, for example, is the famous portrait-statue of Sophocles.
Such are also all that great series of ideal figures
which meet us in the galleries of ancient art. They
seldom show us any violent emotion; they are seldom
even in so special an attitude that critics cannot
interpret it in several different ways, or as suitable
to several myths. It is not passing states of feeling,
but the eternal and ideal beauty of human nature,
which Greek sculpture seeks to represent; and for
this reason it has held its sway through all the centuries
which have since gone by. This was the
calm art of Phidias, and Polycletus, and Polygnotus,
in sentiment not differing from the rigid awkwardness
of their predecessors, but in mastery of proportions
and of difficulties attaining the grace in which
the others had failed. To this general law there
are, no doubt, exceptions, and perhaps very brilliant
ones; yet they are exceptions, and even in them,
if we consider them attentively, we can see the universal
features and the points of sympathy for all
mankind. But if the appeal for sympathy is indeed
overstrained, then, however successful in its own
society and its own social atmosphere, the work of
art loses power when offered to another generation.
Thus Euripides, though justly considered in his own
society the most tragic of poets, has for this very
reason ceased to appeal to us as Æschylus still appeals.
For Æschylus kept within the proper bounds
dictated by the reserve of art; Euripides often did
It seems to me that the tombs before us are remarkable
as exemplifying, with the tact of genius,
this true and perfect reserve. They are simple pictures
of the grief of parting—of the recollection of
pleasant days of love and friendship—of the gloom of
the unknown future. But there is no exaggeration,
nor speciality—no individuality, I had almost said—in
the picture. I feel no curiosity to inquire who
these people are—what were their names—even
what was the relationship of the deceased.action in Greek sculpture, and even with the draping
of their statues—in all of which the calm and
chaste reserve of the better Greek art contrasts
strangely with the Michael Angelos, and Berninis,
But, in concluding this digression, I will call attention
to a modern parallel in the portraiture of
grief, and of grief at final parting. This parallel is
not a piece of sculpture, but a poem, perhaps the
most remarkable poem of our generation—the In
Memoriam of Lord Tennyson. Though written
from personal feeling, and to commemorate a special
person—Arthur Hallam—whom some of us even
knew, has this poem laid hold of the imagination of
men strongly and lastingly owing to the poet’s
special loss? Certainly not. I do not even think
that this great dirge—this magnificent funeral poem—has
excited in most of us any strong interest in
Arthur Hallam. In fact, any other friend of the
poet’s would have suited the general reader equally
well as the exciting cause of a poem, which we delight
in because it puts into great words the ever-recurring
and permanent features in such grief—those
dark longings about the future; those suggestions
of despair, of discontent with the providence
of the world, of wild speculation about its laws;
those struggles to reconcile our own loss, and that of
the human race, with some larger law of wisdom
and of benevolence. To the poet, of course, his
own particular friend was the great centre point of
the whole. But to us, in reading it, there is a wide
By this illustration, then, the distinction between
the universal and the personal features of grief can
be clearly seen; and the reader will admit that,
though it would be most unreasonable to dictate to
the poet, or to imagine that he should have omitted
the stanzas which refer specially to his friend, and
which were to him of vital importance, yet to us it
is no loss to forget that name and those
circumAdonais, Shelley affords a curious contrast to the somewhat
morbid prominence of the poet in the case before us. The
self-effacement of Shelley has centred all our interest on his lost
friend.
Within a few minutes’ walk of these splendid
records of the dead, the traveller who returns to the
town across the Observatory Hill will find a very
different cemetery. For here he suddenly comes up
to a long cleft in the rock, running parallel with the
road below, and therefore quite invisible from it.
The rising ground towards the city hides it equally
from the Acropolis, and accordingly from all Athens.
This gorge, some two hundred yards long, sixty
wide, and over thirty feet deep, is the notorious
Barathrum, the place of execution in old days; the
place where criminals were cast out, and where the
public executioner resided. It has been falsely inferred
by the old scholiasts that the Athenians cast
men alive into the pit. It is not nearly deep
enough now to cause death in this way, and there
seems no reason why its original depth should have
been diminished by any accumulation of rubbish,
such as is common on inhabited sites. Casting
referred rather to the refusing
the rights of burial to executed criminals—an additional
disgrace, and to the Greeks a grave additional
penalty. Honor among the dead was held to
follow in exact proportion to the continued honors
paid by surviving friends.
Here, then, out of view of all the temples and
hallowed sites of the city, dwelt the public slave,
with his instruments of death, perhaps in a cave or
grotto, still to be seen in the higher wall of the
gorge, and situated close to the point where an old
path leads over the hill towards the city. Plato
speaks of young men turning aside, as they came
from Peiræus, to see the dead lying in charge of
this official; and there must have been times in the
older history of Athens when this cleft in the rock
was a place of carnage and of horror. The gentler
law of later days seems to have felt this outrage on
human feeling, and instead of casting the dead into
the Barathrum, it was merely added to the sentence
that the body should not be buried within the
boundaries of Attica. Yet, though the Barathrum
may have been no longer used, the accursed gate
(
In the present day, all traces of this hideous
hisAceldama of Athens.
But even now there seemed a certain loneliness and
weirdness about the place—silent and deserted in
the midst of thoroughfares, hidden from the haunts
of men, and hiding them from view by its massive
walls. Nay, as if to bring back the dark memories
of the past, great scarlet poppies stained the ground
in patches as it were with slaughter, and hawks and
ravens were still circling about overhead, as their
ancestors did in the days of blood; attached, I suppose,
by hereditary instinct to this fatal place, for
where the carcase is, there shall the eagles be
gathered together.
I suppose there can be no doubt whatever that
the ruins on the Acropolis of Athens are the most
remarkable in the world. There are ruins far
larger, such as the pyramids, and the remains of
Karnak. There are ruins far more perfectly preserved,
such as the great Temple at Pæstum.
There are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy-clad
walls of mediæval abbeys beside the rivers in
the rich valleys of England. But there is no ruin,
all the world over, which combines so much striking
beauty, so distinct a type, so vast a volume of history,
so great a pageant of immortal memories.
There is, in fact, no building on earth which can
sustain the burden of such greatness, and so the first
visit to the Acropolis is and must be disappointing.
When the traveller reflects how all the Old World’s
culture culminated in Greece—all Greece in Athens—all
Athens in its Acropolis—all the Acropolis in
the Parthenon—so much crowds upon the mind confusedly
that we look for some enduring monument
whereupon we can fasten our thoughts, and from
which we can pass as from a visible starting-point
Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection,
how lately these splendid remains have been reduced
to their present state. The Parthenon, being
used as a Greek church, remained untouched and
perfect all through the Middle Ages. Then it became
a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and
in this way survived with little damage till 1687,
when, in the bombardment by the Venetians under
Morosini, a shell dropped into the Parthenon, where
the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out the
whole centre of the building. Eight or nine pillars
at each side have been thrown down, and have left a
large gap, which so severs the front and rear of the
temple, that from the city below they look like the
remains of two different buildings. The great drums
of these pillars are yet lying there, in their order,
just as they fell, and some money and care might
set them all up again in their places; yet there is
not in Greece the patriotism or even the common
But the Venetians were not content with their exploit. They were, about this time, when they held possession of most of Greece, emulating the Pisan taste for Greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the gate of the arsenal at Venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home Greek trophies to adorn their capital. Morosini wished to take down the sculptures of Phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place, and were dashed to pieces on the ground. The Italians also left their lasting mark on the place by building a high square tower of wretched patched masonry at the right side of the entrance gate, which had of late years become such an eyesore to the better educated public, that when I was first at Athens there was a subscription on foot to have it taken down—not only in order to remove an obtrusive reminiscence of the invaders, but in the hope of bringing to light some pillars of the Propylæa built into it, as well as many inscribed stones, broken off and carried away from their places as building material. This expectation has not been verified by the results. The tower was taken down by the liberality of M. Schliemann, and there were hardly any inscriptions or sculptures discovered.
A writer in the Saturday Review (No. 1134)
If this great man will not silence us with his
authority, but let us argue with him, we might suggest
that there are, no doubt, cases where the interests
of art and of history are conflicting, and where
a restoration of pristine beauty must take away
from the evidences of later history. The real question
is then, whether the gain in art is greater than
the loss in history. In the case of the Parthenon
I think it is, now especially, when records and
drawings of the inferior additions can be secured.
Of course, artistic restorations are often carried too far; a certain age may be arbitrarily assumed as the canon of perfection, and everything else destroyed to make way for it. There are few ages which can lay claim to such pre-eminence as the age of Pericles; yet even in this case, were the mediæval additions really beautiful, we should, of course, hesitate to disturb them. But the Venetian tower, though a picturesque addition to the rock when seen from a distance, so much so, that I felt its loss when I saw the Acropolis again, had no claim to architectural beauty; it was set up in a place sacred to greater associations, and besides there was every reasonable prospect that its removal would subserve historical ends of far more importance than the Venetian occupation of the Acropolis. A few inscriptions of the date of Pericles, containing treaties or other such public matter, would, in my opinion, have perfectly justified its removal, even though it did signify a victory of Christians over Turks.
In any case, it seems to me unfair that if every
generation is to express its knowledge by material
results, we should not be permitted to record our conviction
that old Greek art or old Greek history is far
greater and nobler than either Turkish or Venetian
history, and to testify this opinion by making their
monuments give way to it. This is the mark of our
generation on the earth. Thus the eighteenth century
was, no doubt, a most important time in the
history even of art, but where noble thirteenth century
churches have been dressed up and loaded with
eighteenth century additions, I cannot think the
historical value of these additions, as evidence of
the taste or the history of their age, counterbalances
their artistic mischievousness, and I sympathize with
the nations who take them away. Of course, this
principle may be overdriven, and has been often
abused. Against such abuses the remarks of the
great critic to whom I refer are a very salutary
protest. But that any barbarous or unsightly deforming
of great artistic monuments is to be protected
on historical grounds—this is a principle of
which neither his genius nor his sneers will convince
me. As for the charge of pedantry, no charge is
more easily made, but no charge is more easily
retorted.
Strangely enough, his theory of the absolute
sanctity of old brick and mortar nearly agrees in
results with the absolute carelessness about such
But the same traveller was also present when a
far more determined and systematic attack was made
upon the remaining ruins of the Parthenon. While
he was travelling in the interior, Lord Elgin had
obtained his famous firman from the Sultan to take
down and remove any antiquities or sculptured
stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell
the person
who
defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this
person been at Athens himself, his underlings could
hardly have behaved in the reckless way they did,
pulling down more than they wanted, and taking no
care to prop up and save the work from which they
had taken the supports.
He especially notices their scandalous proceeding
upon taking up one of the great white marble blocks
which form the floor or stylobate of the temple.
They wanted to see what was underneath, and Dod
The question has often been discussed, whether
Lord Elgin was justified in carrying off this pediment,
the metopes, and the friezes, from their place;
and the Greeks of to-day hope confidently that the
day will come when England will restore these treasures
to their place. This is, of course, absurd, and
it may fairly be argued that people who would bombard
their antiquities in a revolution are not fit
custodians of them in the intervals of domestic
quiet. This was my reply to an old Greek gentleman
who assailed the memory of Lord Elgin with
reproaches. I told him that I was credibly informed
the Greeks had themselves bombarded the
Turks in the Acropolis during the war of liberation,
as several great pieces knocked out and starred on
the western front testify. He confessed, to my
amusement, that he had himself been one of the
I confess I approved of this removal until I came
home from Greece, and went again to see the spoil
in its place in our great Museum. Though there
treated with every care—though shown to the best
advantage, and explained by excellent models of the
whole building, and clear descriptions of their place
on it—notwithstanding all this, the loss that these
wonderful fragments had sustained by being separated
from their place was so terribly manifest—they
looked so unmeaning in an English room, away
from their temple, their country, and their lovely
atmosphere,—that one earnestly wished they had
never been taken from their place, even at the risk
of being made a target by the Greeks or the Turks.
I am convinced, too, that the few who would have
seen them, as intelligent travellers, on their famous
rock, would have gained in quality the advantage
now diffused among many, but weakened and almost
destroyed by the wrench in associations, when the
There are, indeed, preserved in the little museum on the Acropolis the broken remains of the figures of the eastern pediment, which Morosini and his Venetians endeavored to take down, as I have already told. They are little more than pieces of drapery, of some use in reconstructing the composition, but of none in judging the effect of that famous group.
But we must not yet enter into this little museum,
which is most properly put out of sight, at the lowest
or east corner of the rock, and which we do not
reach till we have passed through all the ruins. As
the traveller stands at the inner gate of the Propylæa,
he notices at once all the perfect features of
the buildings. Over his head are the enormous
architrave-stones of the Propylæa—blocks of white
marble over twenty-two feet long, which span the
gateway from pillar to pillar. Opposite, above him
For the more we study old Athenian art—nay,
even old Athenian character generally—the more
are we convinced that its greatness consists in the
combination of Doric sternness and Ionic grace.
It is hardly a mediation between them; it is the
adoption of the finer elements of both, and the
union of them into a higher harmony. The most
obvious illustration of this is the drama, where the
Discobolus of Myron, a contemporary of
Phidias, and the Apollo Musagetes of Scopas, who
lived somewhat later.
In fact, all Athenian character, in its best days,
combined the versatility, and luxury, and fondness
of pleasure, which marked the Ionian, with the
energy, the public spirit, and the simplicity which
was said to mark the better Doric states. The Parthenon
and Erechtheum express all this in visible
clearness. The Athenians felt that the Ionic elegance
and luxury of style was best suited to a small
It is worth while to consult the professional architects,
like Revett,Principles of Athenian
Architecture, has recently been republished. Among the many
newer works, I would call special attention to the first volume of
Viollet-le-duc’s Entretiens sur l’Architecture, already translated into
English, which is full of most instructing and suggestive observations
on Greek architecture; also to M. E. Bournouf’s Acropole
d’Athènes.
The sculptures of the Parthenon have given rise
to a very considerable literature—so considerable
that the books and treatises upon them now amount
to a respectable library. The example was set by
the architect of the building itself, Ictinus, who wrote
a special treatise on his masterpiece. As is well
known, it was sketched in chalk by the French
painter, Jacques Carrey, a few years before the explosion
of 1687; and though he had but very imperfect
notions of Greek art, and introduced a good
deal of seventeenth century style into the chaste
designs of Phidias, still these drawings, of which
there are copies in the British Museum, are of great
Parthenon.
The sculptured decorations of the building are of
three kinds, or applied in three distinct places. In
the first place, the two triangular pediments over the
east and west front were each filled with a group of
statues more than life-size—the one representing
the birth of Athene, and the other her contest with
Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. Some of the
figures from one of these are the great draped headless
women in the centre of the Parthenon room of
the British Museum: other fragments of those
broken by the Venetians are preserved at Athens.
There are, secondly, the metopes, or plaques of stone
inserted into the frieze between the triglyphs, and
carved in relief with a single small group on each.
The height of these surfaces does not exceed four
feet. There was, thirdly, a band of reliefs running
all around the external wall at the top of the cella,
inside the surrounding pillars, and opposite to them,
and this is known as the frieze of the cella. It consists
of a great Panathenaic procession, starting from
the western front, and proceeding in two divisions
along the parallel north and south walls, till they
meet on the eastern front, which was the proper
front of the temple. Among the Elgin marbles
there are a good many of the metopes, and also of
There seems to me the greatest possible difference in merit between the metopes and the other two parts of the ornament. The majority of the metopes which I have seen represent either a Greek and an Amazon or a Centaur and Lapith, in violent conflict. It appeared plainly to me that the main object of these contorted groups was to break in upon the squareness and straightness of all the other members of the Doric frieze and architrave. This is admirably done, as there is no conceivable design which more completely breaks the stiff rectangles of the entablature than the various and violent curves of wrestling figures. But, otherwise, these groups do not appear to me very interesting, except so far as everything in such a place, and the work of such hands, must be interesting.
It is very different with the others. Of these the
pediment sculptures—which were, of course, the
most important, and which were probably the finest
groups ever designed—are so much destroyed or
mutilated that the effect of the composition is entirely
lost, and we can only admire the matchless
power and grace of the torsos which remain. The
grouping of the figures was limited, and indicated
by the triangular shape of the surface to be decoDiscobolus of Myron
seems fully as great as that of any of the figures of
the Parthenon; but no other artist seems to have
possessed the same architectonic power of adapting
large subjects and processions of figures to their
places as Phidias.connoisseurs of china and
paintings, and theologians, and novelists—in fact,
everything under the sun. This many-sidedness,
as they now call it, which the Greeks called
The extraordinary power of grouping in the
designs of Phidias is, however, very completely
shown us in the better preserved band of the cella
frieze, along which the splendid Panathenaic procession
winds its triumphal way. Over the eastern
doorway were twelve noble sitting figures on either
side of the officiating priest, presenting the state
robe, or peplos, for the vestment of Athene. These
figures are explained as gods by the critics; but
they do not in either beauty or dignity, excel those
The greater number of the pieces carried away by
Lord Elgin seem taken from the equestrian portion,
in which groups of cantering and curveting horses,
and men in the act of mounting, and striving to
curb restive steeds, are brought together with
extra
But I confess that this equestrian procession does
not appear to me so beautiful as the rows of figures on
foot (carrying pitchers and other implements, leading
victims, and playing pipes), which seem to come
from the north wall, and of which the most beautiful
slabs are preserved at Athens. Here we can see
best of all that peculiar stamp which shows the age
of Phidias to have been the most perfect in the whole
[Illustration: Part of the West Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens]
Nevertheless, it will always be held by men who
have thought long enough on the subject, that the
epoch when Myron and Phidias, Polycletus and
Polygnotus, broke loose from archaic stiffness into
flowing grace was, indeed, the climax of the arts.
There seems a sort of natural law—of slow and
painful origin—of growing development—of sudden
bloom into perfection—of luxury and effeminacy—of
gradual debasement and decay—which affects
almost all the arts as well as most of the growths
of nature. In Greek art particularly this phenomenon
perpetually reappears. There can be little
doubt that the Iliad of Homer was the first and
earliest long creation in poetry, the first attempt,
possibly with the aid of writing, to rise from short
disconnected lays to the greatness of a formal epic.
And despite all its defects of plan, its want of firm
consistency, and its obvious incongruities, this greatest
of all poems has held its place against the more
finished and interesting Odyssey, the more elaborated
the tragic poet of the Greeks—the
poet who has reached beyond his age and
nation, and fascinated the greatest men even of our
century, who seek not to turn back upon his great
but not equal rivals. Shelley and Mr. Swinburne
have both made Æschylus their master, and to his
inspiration owe the most splendid of their works.
I will not prosecute these considerations further,
though there may be other examples in the history
of art. But I will say this much concerning the
psychological reasons of so strange a phenomenon.
It may, of course, be assumed that the man who
breaks through the old, stiff conventional style
which has bound his predecessors with its shackles
is necessarily a man of strong and original genius.
Thus, when we are distinctly told of Polygnotus that
Venus Genitrix
in Florence, made way for the splendid but yet more
human handling which we may see in the Venus of
Melos, now in the Louvre. This half-draped but
yet thoroughly new and chaste conception leads
naturally to the type said to have been first dared
by Praxiteles, who did not disguise the use of very
unworthy human models to produce his famous, or
perhaps infamous ideal, which is best known in the
Venus de Medici, but perhaps more perfectly
repre
Such reserve, as compared with the later phases
of the art, is nowhere so strongly shown as in the
matter of expression. This is, indeed, the rock on
which most arts have ultimately made shipwreck.
When the power over materials and effects becomes
complete, so that the artist can as it were perform
feats of conquest; when at the same time the feeling
has died out that he is treading upon holy ground,
we have splendid achievements in the way of intense
expression, whether physical or mental, of force, of
momentary action, of grief or joy, which are good
and great, but which lead imitators into a false
track, and so ruin the art which they were thought
to perfect. Thus over-reaching itself, art becomes
an anxious striving after display, and, like an
affected and meretricious woman, repels the sounder
natures which had else been attracted by her beauty.
In Greek art especially, as I have already noticed
in discussing the Attic tomb reliefs, this excess of
expression was long and well avoided, and there is
no stronger and more marked feature in its good
epochs than the reserve of which I have spoken.
It is the chief quality which makes the school of
Phidias matchless. There is in it beauty of form,
there is a good deal of action, there is in the frieze
We may say almost the same of the great temple
which he adorned with his genius. It is just that
perfection of the Doric temple which has escaped
from the somewhat ponderous massiveness and simplicity
of the older architecture, while it sacrificed
no element of majesty to that grace and delicacy
which marks, later and more developed Greek architecture.
On this Acropolis the Athenians determined
to show what architecture could reach in
majesty and what in delicacy. So they set up the
In its great days, and even as Pausanias saw it,
the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as
with shrines. It was not merely an Holy of Holies
in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art.
At every step and turn the traveller met new objects
of interest. There were archaic specimens, chiefly
interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee; there
were the great masterpieces which were the joint
admiration of the artist and the vulgar. Even all
the sides and slopes of the great rock were honeycombed
into sacred grottos, with their altars and
their gods, or studded with votive monuments. All
these lesser things are fallen away and gone; the
sacred caves are filled with rubbish and desecrated
with worse than neglect. The grotto of Pan and
Apollo is difficult of access, and was, when I first
The walls are particularly well worth studying, as there are to be found in them specimens of all kinds of building, beginning from prehistoric times. There is even plain evidence that the builders of the age of Pericles were not by any means the best wall builders; for the masonry of the wall called the Wall of Themistocles, which is well preserved in the lowest part of the course along the north slope, is by far the most beautifully finished work of the kind which can anywhere be seen: and it seems to correspond accurately to the lower strata of the foundations on which the Parthenon was built. The builders of Pericles’s time added a couple of layers of stone to raise the site of the temple, and their work contrasts curiously in its roughness with the older platform. Any one who will note the evident admiration of Thucydides for the walls built round the Peiræus by the men of an earlier generation will see good reason for this feeling when they examine these details.
The beautiful little temple of Athena Nike, though
outside the Propylæa—thrust out as it were on a
sort of great bastion high on the right as you enter—must
still be called a part, and a very striking
Of the two museums on the Acropolis, the principal
one requires little comment and is very easily
seen and appreciated. In an ante-room are the
I will venture to conclude this chapter with a curious
comparison. It was my good fortune, a few
The prospect from the Irish sanctuary has, indeed,
endless contrasts to that from the pagan stronghold,
but they are suggestive contrasts, and such as are
not without a certain harmony. The plains around
both are framed by mountains, of which the Irish
There are few recent excavations about Athens which have been so productive as those along the south slope of the Acropolis. In the conflicts and the wear of ages a vast quantity of earth, and walls, and fragments of buildings has either been cast, or has rolled, down this steep descent, so that it was with a certainty of good results that the Archæological Society of Athens undertook to clear this side of the rock of all the accumulated rubbish. Several precious inscriptions were found, which had been thrown down from the rock; and in April, 1884, the whole plan of the temple of Æsculapius had been uncovered, and another step attained in fixing the much disputed topography of this part of Athens.
And yet we can hardly call this a beginning.
Some twenty-five years ago, a very extensive and
splendidly successful excavation was made on an adjoining
site, when a party of German archæologists
laid bare the Theatre of Dionysus—the great theatre
in which Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides brought
[Illustration: Theatre of Dionysus, Athens]
But unfortunately all this sacerdotal prominence
is probably the work of the later restorers of the
theatre. For after having been first beautified and
adorned with statues by Lycurgus (in Demosthenes’s
time), it was again restored and embellished by
Herodes Atticus, or about his time, so that the theatre,
as we now have it, can only be called the
building of the second or third century after Christ.
The front wall of the stage, which is raised some
feet above the level of the empty pit, is adorned
with a row of very elegant sculptures, amongst
which one—a shaggy old man, in a stooping posture,
All these later additions and details are, I fear,
calculated to detract from the reader’s interest in
this theatre, which I should indeed regret—for
nothing can be more certain than that this is the
veritable stone theatre which was built when the
wooden one broke down, at the great competition of
Æschylus and Pratinas; and though front seats may
have been added, and slight modifications introduced,
the general structure can never have required alteration.
The main body of the curved rows of seats
have no backs, but are so deep as to leave plenty of
room for the feet of the people next above; and I
Apol. 26, E).
It is indeed very large, though exaggerated statements
have been made about its size. It is generally
stated that the enormous number of thirty
thousand people could fit into it—a statement I think
incredible; Bühnenalt., p. 47), is stated at 27,500. But I am convinced this is
a great exaggeration. I should rather give 15,000 as a liberal
estimate; and this agrees with the measurements made for me
by Dr. Dörpfeld in 1889. This mistake is also due to misunderstanding
a passage in Plato’s
Agathon, whom 30,000 citizens hear——. It is not said that they heard him at the same time.
In one respect, however, the voice must have been
more easily heard through the old house than it now
is through the ruins. The back of the stage was
built up with a high wooden structure to represent
fixed scenes, and even a sort of upper story on which
gods and flying figures sometimes appeared—an
arrangement which of course threw the voice forward
into the theatre. There used to be an old
idea, not perhaps yet extinct, that the Greek audiences
had the lovely natural scenery of their country
for their stage decoration, and that they embraced in
one view the characters on the stage, and the coasts
But even had the Athenians not been protected
by this arrangement from outer disturbance, I found
by personal investigation that there was no view for
them to enjoy! Except from the highest tiers, and
therefore from the worst places, the sea and islands
The back scenes of the Greek theatres were
painted as ours are, and at first, I suppose, very
rudely indeed, for we hear particularly of a certain
Agatharchus, who developed the art of scene-painting
by adopting perspective.Social Life in Greece.Œdipus of Sophocles. In fact, we cannot
It is indeed said of Euripides, the real father of
this new comedy, that he brought down the tragic
stage from ideal heroism to the passions and meannesses
of ordinary men; and Sophocles, his rival,
the supposed perfection of an Attic tragedian, is
reputed to have observed that he himself had represented
men as they ought to be, Euripides as they
were. But any honest reader of Euripides will see
at once how far he too is removed from the ordinary
realisms of life. He saw, indeed, that human passion
is the subject, of all others, which will permanently
interest human thought; he felt that the insoluble
problems of Free Will and Fate, of the mercy and
the cruelty of Providence, were too abstract on the
one hand, and too specially Greek on the other;
that, after all, human nature as such is the great
universal field on which any age can reach the
sympathy and the interest of its remotest successors.
They, too, had not despised human nature—how
could they? Both Æschylus and Sophocles were great
painters of human character, as well in its passions as in
its reasonings. But the former had made it accessory,
so to speak, to the great religious lessons which he
taught; the latter had at least affected to do so, or
imagined that he did, while really the labyrinths of
human character had enticed and held him in their
endless maze. Thus, all through Greek tragedy
there was on the one hand a strong element of conventional
stiffness, of adherence to fixed subjects,
and scenes, and masks, and dresses—of adherence
to fixed metres, and regular dialogues, where question
and answer were balanced line for line, and the
Such, then, were the general features of the
tragedy which the Athenian public, and the married
women, including many strangers, assembled to witness
in broad daylight under the Attic sky. They
were not sparing of their time. They ate a good
breakfast before they came. They ate sweetmeats
in the theatre when the acting was bad. Each play
was short, and there was doubtless an interval of
rest. But it is certain that each poet contended
as a rule with four plays against his competitors;
and as there were certainly three of them, there
must have been twelve plays acted; this seems to
exceed the endurance of any public, even allowing
two days for the performance. We are not fully
informed on these points. We do not even know
how Sophocles, who contended with single plays,
managed to compete against Euripides, who
conEumenides.
But besides all this, it seems that tragic poets were
regarded as the proper teachers of morality, and that
the stage among the Greeks occupied somewhat the
place of the modern pulpit. This is the very attitude
which Racine assumes in the Preface to his Phèdre.
He suggests that it ought to be considered the best
of his plays, because there is none in which he has
so strictly rewarded virtue and punished vice.Au reste, je n’ose
encore ajouter que cette pièce soit en effet la meilleure de mes
tragédies. Je laisse et aux lecteurs et au temps à décider de son
véritable prix. Ce que je puis assurer, c’est que je n’en ai point
fait où la vertu soit plus mise en jour que dans celle-ci; les
moindres fautes y sont sévèrement punies; la seule pensée du
crime y est regardée avec autant d’horreur que le crime même;
les faiblesses de l’amour y passent pour des vraies faiblesses; les
passions n’y sont présentées aux yeux que pour montrer tous les
désordres dont elles sont causes, et le vice y est peint partout avec
des couleurs qui en out fait connaître et haïr la difformité. C’est
là proprement le but que tout homme qui travaille pour le public
se doit proposer; et c’est que les premiers poètes tragiques avaient
en vue sur toute chose. Leur théâtre était une école où la vertu
n’était pas moins bien enseignée que dans les écoles des philosophes....
Il serait à souhaiter que nos ouvrages fussent aussi
solides et aussi pleins d’utiles instructions que ceux de ces poètes.
Ce serait peut-être un moyen de réconcilier la tragédie avec quantité
de personnes célèbres par leur piété et par leur doctrine, qui l’ont
condamnée dans ces derniers temps, et qui en jugeraient sans doute
plus favorablement, si les auteurs songeaient autant à instruire les
spectateurs qu’à les divertir, et s’ils suivaient en cela la véritable
intention de la tragédie.
Iphigénie, the Greek argument from
which he copied, because as he tells us (again in the
Preface) it would never do to have so virtuous a
person as Iphigenia sacrificed. This, however,
would not have been a stumbling-block to the
Greek poet, whose capricious and spiteful gods, or
whose deep conviction of the stain of an ancestral
curse, would justify catastrophies which the Christian
poet, with his trust in a benevolent Providence,
could not admit. But, indeed, in most other points
the so-called imitations of the Greek drama by
Racine and his school are anything but imitations.
The main characters and the general outline of the
plot are no doubt borrowed. The elegance and
power of the dialogue are more or less successfully
copied. But the natural and familiar scenes, which
would have been shocking to the court of Louis
XIV.—ces scenes entremêlées de bas comique, et
ces fréquents exemples de mauvais ton et d’une
as Barthélémy says—such
characters as the guard in the Antigone, the nurse
in the Choephorœ, the Phrygian in the Orestes, were
carefully expunged. Moreover, love affairs and
court intrigues were everywhere introduced, and
the language was never allowed to descend from its
pomp and grandeur. Most of the French dramatists
were indeed bad Greek scholars,
So the French of the seventeenth century, starting
from these half-understood models, and applying
rigidly the laws of tragedy which they had deduced,
with questionable logic, from that very untrustworthy
guide, our text of the Poetics of Aristotle, created
a drama which became so unlike what it professed
to imitate, that most good modern French critics
have occupied themselves with showing the contrasts
of old Greek tragedy to that of the modern stage.
They are always praising the naiveté, the familiarity,
the irregularity of the old dramatists; they are
always noting touches of common life and of ordinary
motive quite foreign to the dignity of Racine,
and Voltaire, and Alfieri.We are rather struck with its conventionalities,
with its strict adherence to fixed form,
with its somewhat stilted diction, and we wonder
how it came to be so great and natural within these
trammels.
Happily the tendency in our own day to reproduce
antiquity faithfully, and not in modern recasting, has
led to the translating, and even to the representing,
of Greek tragedies in their purity, and it does not
require a knowledge of Greek to obtain some real
acquaintance with these great masterpieces. Mr.
and Mrs. Browning, Dean Milman, Mr. Fitzgerald,
Mr. Whitelaw, and many others, have placed faithful
and elegant versions within our reach. But since
I have cautioned the reader not versed in Greek
against adopting Racine’s or Alfieri’s plays as adequate
substitutes, I venture to give the same advice
concerning the more Greek and antique plays of Mr.
Swinburne, which, in spite of their splendor, are
still not really Greek plays, but modern plays based
on Greek models. The relief produced by ordinary
Atalanta in Calydon. The Greek scholar sees
everywhere how thoroughly imbued the author is
with Greek models. But it will not give to the
mere English reader any accurate idea of a real
Greek tragedy. He must go to Balaustion’s Adventure,
or Aristophanes’s Apology, or some other professed
translation, and follow it line for line, adding
some such general reviews as the Etudes of M. Patin.
As for revivals of Greek plays, it seems to me
not likely that they will ever succeed. The French
imitations of Racine laid hold of the public because
they were not imitations. And as for us nowadays,
who are more familiar with the originals, a faithless
reproduction would shock us, while a literal one
would weary us. This at least is the effect which
the Antigone produces, even with the modern choruses
of Mendelssohn to relieve the slowness of the
action. But, of course, a reproduction of the old
chorus would be simply impossible. The whole pit
in the theatre of Dionysus seems to have been left
empty. A part somewhat larger than our orchestra
Hamlet. Above all, they constantly
prayed to their gods, and this religious side
of the performance has of course no effect upon us.
As to old Attic comedy, it would be even more impossible to recover it for a modern public. Its local and political allusions, its broad and coarse humor, its fantastic dresses, were features which made it not merely ancient and Greek, but Athenian, and Athenian of a certain epoch. Without the Alexandrian scholiasts, who came in time to recover and note down most of the allusions, these comedies would be to the Greek scholar of to-day hardly intelligible. The new Attic comedy, of which Terence is a copy, is indeed on a modern basis, and may be faithfully reproduced, if not admired, in our day. But here, alas! the great originals of Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus are lost to us, and we must be content with the Latin accommodations.
But I have delayed too long over these Greek
Plato makes Socrates say, in his Apologia (pro
vita sua), that a copy of Anaxagoras could be
bought on the orchestra, when very dear, for a
drachme, that is to say for about 9d. of our money,
which may then have represented our half-crown or
three shillings in value.Old Greek Life will see the grounds for assuming some such change
in the value of money between the fourth century B. C. in Greece
and the nineteenth A. D. in England.
If the reader will walk with me from the theatre
of Dionysus past the newly excavated site of the
temple of Æsculapius, and past the Roman-Greek
theatre which was erected by Hadrian or Herodes
Atticus, I will show him what Plato meant. Of
course, this later theatre, with its solid Roman back
scenes of masonry, is equally interesting with the
Theatre of Dionysus to the advocates of the unity
of history! But to us who are content to study
Greek Athens, it need not afford any irrelevant delays.
Passing round the approach to the Acropolis,
we come on to a lesser hill, separated from it by a
very short saddle, so that it looks like a sort of outpost
or spur sent out from the rock of the Acropolis.
This is the Areopagus—Mars’ Hill—which we can
ascend in a few minutes. There are marks of old
staircases cut in the rock. There are underneath,
on our left and right, as we go up, deep black caverns,
once the home of the Eumenides. On the flat
top there are still some signs of a rude smoothing
of the stone for seats. Under us, to the north-west,
is the site of the old agora, once surrounded with
colonnades, the crowded market-place of all those
orchestra, possibly the site of the oldest
theatre, but in historical times a sort of reserved
platform, where the Athenians, who had their town
bristling with statues, allowed no monument to be
erected save the figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton,
which were carried into Persia, replaced by
others, afterwards recovered, and of which we may
have a copy in the two fighting figures, of archaic
character, now in the Museum of Naples. It was
doubtless on this orchestra, just above the bustle and
thoroughfare of the agora, that booksellers kept their
stalls, and here it was that the book of
Here then was the place where that physical philosophy
was disseminated which first gained a few
advanced thinkers; then, through Euripides, leavened
the drama, once the exponent of ancient piety;
then, through the stage, the Athenian public, till we
arrive at those Stoics and Epicureans who came to
teach philosophy and religion not as a faith, but as a
system, and to spend their time with the rest of the
public in seeking out novelties of creed and of
opinion as mere fashions with which people choose
court of the Areopagus
that he was asked to expound his views.Supernatural Religion, when analyzing, in his third
volume, the Acts of the Apostles, is actually silent on this speech,
though he discusses at great length the speeches of S. Paul which he
thinks composed as parallels to those of S. Peter. Most German
critics look on the passage as introduced by the author, like the
speeches in Thucydides or Tacitus, as a literary ornament, as well as
an exposition of the Apostolic preaching of the early Church. They
also note its many contrasts to the teaching of such documents as
the Epistle to the Romans. I have assumed, as even M. Renan
seems to do, that the Apostle told Timothy, or Luke, or some other
follower, the main purport of this memorable visit, and also the
headings of the speech, which is too unlike his received writings
to be a probable forgery.blases philosophers, who
probably yawned over their own lectures, hearing of
a new lay preacher, eager to teach and apparently
convinced of the truth of what he said, thought the
novelty too delicious to be neglected, and brought
him forthwith out of the chatter and bustle of the
crowd, probably past the very orchestra where
Anaxagoras’s books had been proselytizing before
him, and where the stiff old heroes of Athenian history
stood, a monument of the escape from political
slavery. It is even possible that the curious knot
of idlers did not bring him higher than this platform,
which might well be called part of Mars’ Hill. But
if they choose to bring him to the top, there was no
hindrance, for the venerable court held its sittings
in the open air, on stone seats; and when not thus
occupied the top of the rock may well have been a
convenient place of retirement for people who did
not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances and
the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place.
[Illustration: Mars’ Hill, Athens]
It is, however, of far less import to know on what
spot of the Areopagus Paul stood, than to understand
clearly what he said, and how he sought to
conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who,
no doubt, looked down upon him as an intellectual
rather superstitious,
as the A. V. has it.unknown,
or perhaps unknowable.I find an altar,
he says, to an unknown
God. Whom then ye unknowingly worship,
But then he develops a
conception of the great One God, not at all from
the special Jewish, but from the Stoic point of view.
He was preaching to Epicureans and to Stoics—to
the advocates of prudence as the means, and pleasure
as the end, of a happy life, on the one hand;
on the other, to the advocates of duty, and of life in
harmony with the Providence which governs the
world for good. There could be no doubt to which
side the man of Tarsus must incline. Though the
Stoics of the market-place of Athens might be mere
dilettanti, mere talkers about the
Accordingly, S. Paul makes no secret of his
sympathy with its nobler features. He describes
the God whom he preaches as the benevolent Author
of the beauty and fruitfulness of Nature, the great
Benefactor of mankind by His providence, and not
without constant and obtrusive witnesses of His
greatness and His goodness. But he goes much
further, and treads close upon the Stoic pantheism
when he not only asserts, in the words of Aratus,
in Him we live,
and move, and have our being.
His first conclusion, that the Godhead should not
be worshipped or even imaged in stone or in bronze,
was no doubt quite in accordance with more enlightened
Athenian philosophy. But it was when he
proceeded to preach the Resurrection of the Dead,
that even those who were attracted by him, and
sympathized with him, turned away in contempt.
The Epicureans thought death the end of all things.
The Stoics thought that the human soul, the offspring—nay,
rather an offshoot—of the Divine
world-soul, would be absorbed into its parent
essence. Neither could believe the assertion of
S. Paul. When they first heard him talk of Jesus
and Anastasis they thought them some new pair of
Oriental deities. But when they learned that Jesus
was a man ordained by God to judge the world, and
that Anastasis was merely the Anastasis of the dead,
they were greatly disappointed; so some mocked,
and some excused themselves from further listening.
Thus ended, to all appearance ignominiously, the
first heralding of the faith which was to supplant all
the temples and altars and statues with which Athens
had earned its renown as a beautiful city, which was
to overthrow the schools of the sneering philosophers,
and even to remodel all the society and the policy
of the world. And yet, in spite of this great and
decisive triumph of Christianity there was something
curiously prophetic in the contemptuous rejection
of its apostle at Athens. Was it not the
This depends on no mere accident, but on the essential features
of the spiritual side of Greek character, on which I will quote
an admirable passage from Renan’s S. Paul:Ce qui caractérisait la religion du Grec autrefois, ce qui la
caractérise encore de nos jours, c’est le manque d’infini, de vague,
d’attendrissement, de mollesse féminine; la profondeur du sentiment
religieux allemand et celtique manque à la race des vrais
Hellènes. La piété du Grec orthodoxe consiste en pratiques et en
signes extérieurs. Les églises orthodoxes, parfois très-élégantes,
n’ont rien des terreurs qu’on ressent dans une église gothique.
En ce christianisme oriental, point de larmes, de prières, de componction
intérieure. Les enterrements y sont presque gais; ils ont
lieu le soir, au soleil couchant, quand les ombres sont déjà longues,
avec des chants à mi-voix et un déploiement de couleurs voyantes.
La gravité fanatique des Latins déplaît à ces races vives, sereines,
légères. L’infirme n’y est pas abattu: il voit doucement venir la
mort; tout sourit autour de lui. Là est le secret de cette gaieté
divine des poëmes homériques et de Platon: le récit de la mort de
Socrate dans le
Phédon montre à peine une teinte de tristesse. La
vie, c’est donner sa fleur, puis son fruit; quoi de plus? Si, comme
on peut le soutenir, la préoccupation de la mort est le trait le plus
important du christianisme et du sentiment religieux moderne, la
race grecque est la moins religieuse des races. C’est une race
superficielle, prenant la vie comme une chose sans surnaturel ni
arrière-plan. Une telle simplicité de conception tient en grande
partie au climat, à la pureté de l’air, à l’étonnante joie qu’on
respire, mais bien plus encore aux instincts de la race hellénique,
adorablement idéaliste. Un rien, un arbre, une fleur, un lézard,
une tortue, provoquant le souvenir de mille métamorphoses chantées
par les poëtes; un filet d’eau, un petit creux dans le rocher, qu’on
qualifie d’antre des nymphes; un puits avec une tasse sur la margelle,
un pertuis de mer si étroit que les papillons le traversent et
pourtant navigable aux plus grands vaisseaux, comme à Poros;
des orangers, des cyprès dont l’ombre s’étend sur la mer, un petit
bois de pins au milieu des rochers, suffisent en Grèce pour produire
le contentement qu’éveille la beauté. Se promener dans les jardins
pendant la nuit, écouter les cigales, s’asseoir au clair de lune en
jouant de la flûte; aller boire de l’eau dans la montagne, apporter
avec soi un petit pain, un poisson et un lécythe de vin qu’on boit
en chantant; aux fêtes de famille, suspendre une couronne de
feuillage au-dessus de sa porte, aller avec des chapeaux de fleurs;
les jours de fêtes publiques, porter des thyrses garnis de
indulgere genio n’est pas
la pesante ivresse de l’Anglais, le grossier ébattement du Français;
c’est tout simplement penser que la nature est bonne, qu’on peut
et qu’on doit y céder. Pour le Grec, en effet, la nature est une
conseillère d’élégance, une maîtresse de droiture et de vertu; la
concupiscence,
cette idée que la nature nous induit à mal faire,
est un non-sens pour lui. Le goût de la parure qui distingue le
palicare, et qui se montre avec tant d’innocence dans la jeune
Grecque, n’est pas la pompeuse vanité du barbare, la sotte prétention
de la bourgeoise, bouffie de son ridicule orgueil de parvenue;
c’est le sentiment pur et fin de naïfs jouvenceaux, se sentant fils
légitimes des vrais inventeurs de la beauté.Une telle race, on le comprend, eût accueilli Jésus par un
sourire. Il était une chose que ces enfants exquis ne pouvaient
nous apprendre: le sérieux profond, l’honnêteté simple, le dévouement
sans gloire, la bonté sans emphase. Socrate est un moraliste
de premier ordre: mais il n’a rien à faire dans l’histoire religieuse.
Le Grec nous paraît toujours un peu sec et sans cœur: il a de
l’esprit, du mouvement, de la subtilité; il n’a rien de rêveur, de
mélancolique. Nous autres, Celtes et Germains, la source de notre
génie, c’est notre cœur. Au fond de nous est comme une fontaine de
fées, une fontaine claire, verte et profonde, où se reflète l’infini.
Chez le Grec, l’amour propre, la vanité se mêlent à tout; le sentiment
vague lui est inconnu; la réflexion sur sa propre destinée lui paraît
fade. Poussée à la caricature, une façon si incomplète d’entendre
la vie donne a l’époque romaine le
græculus esuriens, grammairien,
artiste, charlatan, acrobate, médecin, amuseur du monde entier, fort
analogue à l’Italien des XVIe et
XVIIe siècles: à l’époque byzantine,
le théologien sophiste faisant dégénérer la religion en subtiles disputes;
de nos jours, le Grec moderne, quelquefois vaniteux et
ingrat, le papas orthodoxe, avec sa religion égoïste et matérielle.
Malheur à qui s’arrête à cette décadence! Honte à celui qui,
devant le Parthénon, songe à remarquer un ridicule! Il faut le
reconnaître pourtant: la Grèce ne fut jamais sérieusement chrétienne;
elle ne l’est pas encore. Aucune race ne fut moins
romantique, plus dénuée du sentiment chevaleresque de notre
moyen âge. Platon bâtit toute sa théorie de la beauté en se passant
de la femme. Penser à une femme pour s’exciter à faire de grandes
choses! un Grec eût été bien surpris d’un pareil langage; il pensait, lui, aux hommes réunis sur l’agora, il pensait à la patrie.
Sous ce rapport, les Latins étaient plus près de nous. La poésie
grecque, incomparable dans les grands genres tels que l’épopée, la
tragédie, la poésie lyrique désintéressée, n’avait pas, ce semble, la
douce note élégiaque de Tibulle, de Virgile, de Lucrèce, note si
bien en harmonie avec nos sentiments, si voisine de ce que nous
aimons.La même différence se retrouve entre la piété de saint Bernard,
de saint François d’Assise et celle des saints de l’Église
grecque. Ces belles écoles de Cappadoce, de Syrie, d’Égypte, des
Pères du désert, sont presque des écoles philosophiques. L’hagiographie
populaire des Grecs est plus mythologique que celle des
Latins. La plupart des saints qui figurent dans l’iconostase d’une
maison grecque et devant lesquels brûle une lampe ne sont pas
de grands fondateurs, de grands hommes, comme les saints de
l’Occident; ce sont souvent des êtres fantastiques, d’anciens
dieux transfigurés, ou du moins des combinaisons de personnages
historiques et de mythologie, comme saint Georges. Et cette
admirable église de Sainte-Sophie! c’est un temple arien; le genre
humain tout entier pourrait y faire sa prière. N’ayant pas eu de
pape, d’inquisition, de scolastique, de moyen age barbare, ayant
toujours gardé un levain d’arianisme, la Grèce lâchera plus facilement
qu’aucun autre pays le christianisme surnaturel, à peu près
comme ces Athéniens d’autrefois étaient en même temps, grâce à
une sorte de légèreté, mille fois plus profonde que le sérieux de nos
lourdes races, le plus superstitieux des peuples et le plus voisin du
rationalisme. Les chants populaires grecs sont encore aujourd’hui
pleins d’images et d’idées païennes. À la grande différence de
l’Occident, l’Orient garda durant tout le moyen âge et jusqu’aux
temps modernes de vrais
hellénistes,
au fond plus païens que
chrétiens, vivants du culte de la vieille patrie grecque et des vieux
auteurs. Ces hellénistes sont, au XVe siècle, les agents de la renaissance
de l’Occident, auquel ils apportent les textes grecs, base de
toute civilization. Le même esprit a présidé et présidera aux destinées
de la Grèce nouvelle. Quand on a bien étudié ce qui fait de
nos jours le fond d’un Hellène cultivé, on voit qu’il y a chez lui
très-peu de christianisme: il est chrétien de forme, comme un
Persan est musulman; mais au fond il est helléniste.
Sa religion,
c’est l’adoration de l’ancien génie grec. Il pardonne toute hérésie
au philhellène, a celui qui admire son passé; il est bien moins
disciple de Jésus et de saint Paul que de Plutarque et de Julien.ces délicieuses petites églises byzantines,
I have now concluded a review of the most
important old Greek buildings to be seen about
Athens. To treat them exhaustively would require
a far longer discussion, or special knowledge which
I do not possess; and there are, moreover, smaller
buildings, like the so-called Lantern of Demosthenes,
which is really the Choragic monument of Lysicrates,
and the Temple of the Winds, which are well worth
There are two modern towns which, in natural features, resemble Athens. The irregular ridge of greater Acropolis and lesser Areopagus remind one of the castle and the Mönchsberg of Salzburg, one of the few towns in Europe more beautifully situated than Athens. The relation of the Acropolis to the more lofty Lycabettus suggests the castle of Edinburgh and Arthur’s Seat. But here the advantage is greatly on the side of Athens.
When you stand on the Acropolis and look round
upon Attica, a great part of its history becomes immediately
unravelled and clear. You see at once
that you are placed in the principal plain of the
country, surrounded with chains of mountains in
such a way that it is easy to understand the old
stories of wars with Eleusis, or with Marathon, or
with any of the outlying valleys. Looking inland
on the north side, as you stand beside the Erechtheum,
you see straight before you, at a distance of
some ten miles, Mount Pentelicus, from which all
the splendid marble was once carried to the rock
On the left side of Pentelicus you see the chain
of Parnes, which almost closes with it at a far distance,
and which stretches down all the north-west
side of Attica till it runs into the sea as Mount
Corydallus, opposite to the island of Salamis. In
this long chain of Parnes (which can only be
On this side of Attica also, with the exception of
the Thriasian plain and of Eleusis, there extends
outside Mount Parnes a wild mountainous district,
quite alpine in character, which severs Attica from
Bœotia, not by a single row of mountains, or by a
single pass, but by a succession of glens and defiles
which at once explain to the classical student, when
he sees them, how necessary and fundamental were
If we turn and look southward, we see a broken
country, with several low hills between us and the
sea—hills tolerably well cultivated, and when I saw
them in May all colored with golden stubbles, for
the corn had just been reaped. But all the plain in
every direction seems dry and dusty; arid, too, and
not rich alluvial soil, like the plains of Bœotia. Then
Thucydides’s words come back to us, when he says
Attica was undisturbed on account of the lightness
of its soil
(
But amid all the dusty and bare features of the
view, the eye fastens with delight on one great broad
band of dark green, which, starting from the west
side of Pentelicus, close to Mount Parnes in the
north, sweeps straight down the valley, passing about
I have wandered many hours in these delightful
woods listening to the nightingales, which sing all
day in the deep shade and solitude, as it were in a
prolonged twilight, and hearing the plane-tree
whispering to the elm,
All the ground under the dense olive-trees was
covered with standing corn, for here, as in Southern
Italy, the shade of trees seems no hindrance to the
ripening of the ear. But there was here thicker
wood than in Italian corn-fields; on the other hand,
there was not that rich festooning of vines which
spread from tree to tree, and which give a Neapolitan
summer landscape so peculiar a charm. A few
homesteads there were along the roads, and even at
one of the bridges a children’s school, full of those
beautiful fair children whose heads remind one so
strongly of the old Greek statues. But all the
houses were walled in, and many of them seemed
solitary and deserted. The memories of rapine and
violence were still there. I was told, indeed, that
There is no other excursion in the immediate
vicinity of Athens of any like beauty or interest.
The older buildings in the Peiræus are completely
gone. No trace of the docks or the deigma remains;
and the splendid walls, built as Thucydides tells us
with cut stone, without mortar or mud, and fastened
with clamps of iron fixed with lead—this splendid
structure has been almost completely destroyed.
We can find, indeed, elsewhere in Attica—at Phyle—still
better at Eleutheræ—specimens of this sort of
building, but at the Peiræus there are only foundations
remaining. Yet it is not really true that the
great wall surrounding the Peiræus has totally disappeared.
Even at the mouth of the harbor single
stones may be seen lying along the rocky edge of
the water, of which the size and the square cutting
prove the use for which they were originally intended.
But if the visitor to the Peiræus will take
the trouble to cross the hill, and walk round the
harbor of Munychia, he will find on the eastern
point of the headland a neat little café, with
comthe gods called the unknown. The traces of
the sea wall cease as soon as it reaches the actual
narrow mouth of the little harbor. I do not know
how far toward Phalerum it can be traced, but
when visiting the harbor called ZeaB. C., when the architect Philo built a famous arsenal (
The striking feature in the present Peiræus, which
from the entrance of the harbor is very picturesque,
is undoubtedly the rapid growth and extension of
[Illustration: The Peiraeus]
A drive to the open roadstead of Phalerum is more
repaying. Here it is interesting to observe how the
Athenians passed by the nearest sea, and even an
open and clear roadstead, in order to join their city
to the better harbor and more defensible headland of
Peiræus. Phalĕrum, as they now call it, though
they spell it with an
At the opening of the Peloponnesian war it
appears that the Athenians defended against the
Lacedæmonians, not the two long walls which ran
close together and parallel to Peiræus, but the northern
of these, and the far distant Phaleric wall. It
cannot but strike any observer as extraordinary how
the Athenians should undertake such an enormous
task. Had the enemy attacked anywhere suddenly
and with vigor, it seems hard to understand how
they could have kept him out. According to
Thucydides’s accurate detail,Long Walls. He
sometimes means the north and Phaleric wall, sometimes the
north and south parallel walls, to the exclusion of the Phaleric
wall. The long walls rebuilt by Conon were the latter pair, and
thus not the same long walls as were finished in 456 B. C.metics,
sufficed to do this work. We are forced to conclude
that not only were the means of attacking walls
curiously incomplete, but even the dash and enterprise
of modern warfare cannot have been understood
by the Greeks. For we never hear of even a
bold attempt on this absurdly straggling fortification,
far less of any successful attempt to force it.
But it is time that we should leave the environs
of Athens,Sketches in Italy and Greece—one of the most beautiful productions
of that charming poet in prose.the women of Colias will roast
their corn with oars,
We took ship in the little steamer
So, after passing many natural harbors and spacious
bays, many rocky headlands and bluff islands—but
all desert and abandoned by track of man, we
When we turned from it seaward, we saw
stretched out in échelon that chain of Cyclades, which
are but a prolongation of the headland—Keos,
Kyphnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and in the far distance,
Melos—Melos, the scene of Athens’s violence and
Here, at last, we found ourselves again among men; three thousand operatives, many of them with families, make quite a busy town of Ergasteria. And I could not but contrast their bold and independent looks, rough and savage as they seemed, with what must have been the appearance of the droves of slaves who worked the mines in old days. We were rowed ashore from our steamer by two men called Aristides and Epaminondas, but I cannot say that their looks betokened either the justice of the one or the culture of the other.
We found ourselves when we landed in an awkward
predicament. The last English engineer remaining
in the Mining Company, at whose invitation
we had ventured into this wild district, had suddenly
left, that morning, for Athens. His house was shut
up, and we were left friendless and alone, among
We started in the morning by a special train—for
the company have a private line from the coast up
to the mines—to ascend the wooded and hilly
country into the region so celebrated of old as one
of the main sources of Athenian wealth. As the
train wound its way round the somewhat steep
ascent, our prospect over the sea and its islands
[Illustration: Laurium]
The mines of Laurium appear very suddenly in
Attic history, but from that time onward are a
prominent part of the wealth of the Athenians.
We know that in Solon’s day there was great
scarcity of money, and that he was obliged to depreciate
the value of the coinage—a very violent
and unprecedented measure, never repeated; for, all
through later history, Attic silver was so good that
it circulated at a premium in foreign parts just as
English money does now. Accordingly, in Solon’s
time we hear no mention of this great and almost
inexhaustible source of national wealth. All through
the reign of the Peisistratids there is a like silence.
Suddenly, after the liberation of Athens, we hear of
Themistocles persuading the people to apply the
very large revenue from these mines to the building
of a fleet for the purpose of the war with Ægina.Persæ,
where they come in so peculiarly, and without any natural
suggestion, that they must have been in his day a new and surprising
source of wealth. Atossa is inquiring of the chorus about Athens,
and whether it possesses any considerable wealth. The chorus
replies (v. 238):
Polity of the Athenians, which says (chap. xxii.):
In the archonship of Nicodemus [484–3
etc.B. C.], when the mines
at Maroneia [as he calls them] were discovered (On the Attic Revenues—a
tract which is almost altogether about these mines—asserts
indeed that they had been worked from
remote antiquity; and there can be little doubt that
here, as elsewhere in Greece, the Phœnicians had
been the forerunners of the natives in the art of
mining. Here, as in Thasos, I believe the Phœnicians
had their settlements; and possibly a closer
survey of the great underground passages, which
are still there, may give us some proof by inscriptions
or otherwise.
But what happened after the Semitic traders had
been expelled from Greek waters?—for expelled
they were, though, perhaps, far later from some
remote and unexplored points than we usually
imagine. I suppose that when this took place
Athens was by no means in a condition to think
about prosecuting trade at Sunium. Salamis, which
was far closer and a more obvious possession, was
only conquered in Solon’s day, after a long and
Œcon., II. 4.
Our special train brought us up slowly round
wooded heights, and through rich green brakes, into
a lonely country, from which glimpses of the sea
could, however, still be seen, and glimpses of blue
islands, between the hills. And so we came to the
settlements of the modern miners. The great Company,
whose guests we were, had been started some
When the Greeks discuss these negotiations about
the mines they put quite a different color on the
affair. They say that the French and Italians desired
to evade fair payment for the ground-rent of
the mines, trusting to the strength of their respective
governments, and the weakness of Greece. The
Company’s policy is described in Greece as an over-reaching,
unscrupulous attempt to make great profits
by sharp bargains with the natives, who did not know
the value of their property. A great number of
obscure details are adduced in favor of their arguments,
and it seemed to me that the Greeks were
really convinced of their truth. In such a matter
it would be unfair to decide without stating both
sides; and I am quite prepared to change my present
conviction that the Greeks were most to blame,
if proper reasons can be assigned. But the
legis
The principal Laurium Company
In many places you come upon the openings of the
old pits, which went far into the bowels of the mountains,
through miles of underground galleries and
passages. Our engine-driver—an intelligent Frenchman—stopped
the train to show us one of these
entrances, which went down almost straight, with
good steps still remaining, into the earth. He assured
us that the other extremity which was known,
The quantity of scoriæ thrown out, which seems now perfectly inexhaustible, is in itself sufficient evidence of the enormous scale on which the old mining was carried on. Thus, we do not in the least wonder at hearing that Nicias had one thousand slaves working in the mines, and that the profits accruing to the State from the fines and head-rents of the mines were very large—on a moderate estimate, £8000 a year of our money, which meant in those days a great deal more.
The author of the tract on Athenian Revenue
says that the riches of the mines were absolutely
unbounded; that only a small part of the silver district
had been worked out, though the digging had
gone on from time immemorial; and that after innumerable
laborers had been employed the mines
always appeared equally rich, so that no limit need
be put on the employment of capital. Still he speaks
of opening a new shaft as a most risky speculation.
His general estimate appears, however, somewhat
exaggerated. The writer confesses that the number
of laborers was in his day diminishing, and the
majority of the proprietors were then beginners; so
that there must have been great interruption of work
during the Peloponnesian War. In the age of Philip
there were loud complaints that the speculations in
mining were unsuccessful; and for obtaining silver,
at all events, no reasonable prospect seems to have
been left. In the first century of our era, Strabo
(ix. i. 23) says that these once celebrated mines were
exhausted,B. C. Plutarch
(de defectu or. 43) speaks of them as having lately failed.
Our last mention of the place in olden times is
that of Pausanias (at the end of the second century
A. D.), who speaks of Laurium, with the addition
that it had once been the seat of the Athenian silver
mines!
There is but one more point suggested by these
mines, which it is not well to pass over when we are
considering the working of them in ancient times.
Nothing is more poisonous than the smoke from lead-mines;
and for this reason the people at Ergasteria
have built a chimney more than a mile long to the
top of a neighboring hill, where the smoke escapes.
Even so, when the wind blows back the smoke, all
the vegetation about the village is at once blighted,
and there is no greater difficulty than to keep a
garden within two or three miles of this chimney.
As the Athenians did not take such precautions, we
are not surprised to hear from them frequent notices of
the unhealthiness of the district, for when there were
many furnaces, and the smoke was not drawn away
by high chimneys, we can hardly conceive life to
have been tolerable. What then must have been the
condition of the gangs of slaves which Nicias and
other respectable and pious Athenians kept in these
mines? Two or three allusions give us a hideous
in
number.
The meaning of this frightful contract is only too
plain. The yearly rent paid for each slave was
about half the full price paid for him in the market.
It follows that, if the slave lived for three years,
Nicias made a profit of 50 per cent. on his outlay.
No doubt, some part of this extraordinary bargain
must be explained by the great profits which an
experienced miner could make—a fact supported
by the tract on the Revenues, which cannot date
more than a generation later than the bargain of
Nicias. The lessee, too, was under the additional
risk of the slaves escaping in time of war, when
a hostile army might make a special invasion into
the mountain district for the purpose of inflicting
a blow on this important part of Athenian revenue.
In such cases, it may be presumed that desperate
attempts were made by the slaves to escape, for
although the Athenian slaves generally were the
best treated in Greece, and had many holidays, it
was very different with the gangs employed by the
Thracian taskmaster. We are told that they had
And yet Nicias, the capitalist who worked this hideous trade, was the most pious and God-fearing man at Athens. So high was his reputation for integrity and religion, that the people insisted on appointing him again and again to commands for which he was wholly unfit; and when at last he ruined the great Athenian army before Syracuse, and lost his own life, by his extreme devoutness and his faith in the threats and warnings of the gods—even then the great sceptical historian, who cared for none of these things, condones all his blunders for the sake of his piety and his respectability.
Of course, however, an excursion to Laurium,
interesting as it might be, were absurd without
visiting the far more famous Sunium,—the promontory
which had already struck us so much on our
sea voyage round the point,—the temple which
Byron has again hallowed with his immortal verse,
and Turner with his hardly less immortal pencil.
So we hired horses on our return from the mines,
and set out on a very fine afternoon to ride down
some seven or eight miles from Ergasteria to the
famous promontory. Our route led over rolling
hills, covered with arbutus and stunted firs; along
valleys choked with deep, matted grass; by the
There can be no doubt that the temple of Neptune
on Mount Tænarum must have been quite as fine as
to position, but the earthquakes of Laconia have
made havoc of its treasures, while at Sunium,
though some of the drums in the shafts of the
pillars have been actually displaced several inches
from their fellows above and below, so that the perfect
fitting of the old Athenians has come to look
like the tottering work of a giant child with marble
We found the platform nearly complete, built with
great square blocks of poros-stone, and in some
places very high, though in others scarcely raised
at all, according to the requirements of the ground.
Over it the temple was built, not with the huge
blocks which we see at Corinth and in the Parthenon,
but still of perfectly white marble, and with that beautifully
close fitting, without mortar, rubble, or cement,
which characterizes the best and most perfect epoch
of Greek architecture.
It was our good fortune to see it in a splendid sunset,
with the sea a sheet of molten gold, and all the
headlands and islands colored with hazy purple.
The mountains of Eubœa, with their promontory of
Geræstus, closed the view upon the north-east; but
far down into the Ægean reached island after island,
as it were striving to prolong a highway to the holy
Delos. The ancient Andros, Tenos, Myconos were
there, but the eye sought in vain for the home of
Apollo’s shrine—the smallest and yet the greatest of
the group. The parallel chain, reaching down from
Sunium itself, was confused into one mass, but
ex
This great loneliness is a feature that strikes the
traveller almost everywhere through the country.
Many centuries of insecurity, and indeed of violence,
have made country life almost impossible; and now
that better times have come, the love and knowledge
of it are gone. The city Athenian no longer
grumbles, as he did in Aristophanes’s day, that an
invasion has driven him in from the rude plenty and
simple luxuries of his farming life, where with his
figs and his olives, his raisins and his heady wine, he
made holiday before his gods, and roasted his thrush
and his chestnuts with his neighbor over the fire.
All this is gone. There remains, indeed, the old
political lounger, the loafer of the market-place,
ever seeking to obtain some shabby maintenance by
sycophancy or by bullying. This type is not hard
to find in modern Athens, but the old sturdy Acharnian,
as well as the rich horse-breeding Alcmæonid,
are things of the past. Even the large profits to be
made by market-gardening will not tempt them to
adopt this industry, and the great city of Athens is
Nothing can be truer than the admirable description
of Northern Attica given in M. Perrot’s book on
the Attic orators. He is describing Rhamnus, the
home of Antiphon, but his picture is of broader
application.Aujourd’hui tout ce district est presque désert; seuls, quelques
archéologues et quelques artistes affrontent ces gorges pierreuses
et ces scabreux sentiers; on prend alors ce chemin pour
aller de Marathon à Chalcis et revenir à Athènes par Décélie, entre
le Pentélique et Parnès. Ces monuments de Rhamnunte offrent
des traits curieux qui les rendent intéressants pour le voyageur
érudit; mais de plus les ruines mêmes et le site ont assez de beauté
pour dédommager de leur peine ceux qui recherchent surtout le
pittoresque. Je n’oublierai jamais les quelques heures que j’ai
passées là, il y a déjà longtemps, par une radieuse matinée d’avril.
Pendant que nous examinions ce qui restait des anciens sanctuaires
et de leurs défenses, notre guide songeait au déjeuner; il avait
acheté un agneau à l’un de ces pâtres appelés
Vlaques qui, avec leurs
brebis et leurs chèvres éparses dans les buissons de myrtes et de
lentisques, sont à peu près les seuls habitants de ce canton. Quand
nous revînmes, l’agneau, soutenu sur deux fourches fichées en terre
par un jeune pin sylvestre qui servait de broche, cuisait tout entier
devant un feu clair, et la graisse coulait à grosses gouttes sur les
charbons ardents. Devant notre tapis étendu à l’ombre avait été
préparée une jonchée de verts branchages sur lesquels le succulent
rôti, rapidement découpé par le coutelas d’un berger, laissa bientôt
tomber côtelettes et gigots.Ce qui nous fit prolonger là notre halte après que notre appetit
fut satisfait, ce fut la vue magnifique dont on jouissait de la
plate-forme où nous étions établis, dans un coin de l’acropole. A
nos pieds, c’était la mer, veloutée de chatoyante reflets par le soleil,
par la brise, par les nuages qui passaient au ciel. En face de nous
se dressaient les hautes et sévères côtes de l’Eubée, dominés par la
pyramide du Dirphys. Ce fier sommet était encore tout blanc des
neiges de l’hiver; au contraire, si nous nous retournons vers les
gorges qui se creusaient autour de nous dans la montagne, entre
des parois de marbre rougies et comme hâlées par le soleil, c’était
le printemps de la Grèce dans tout son épanouissement et son éclat.
Dans le fond des ravins, là où un peu d’eau filtrait sous les cailloux,
arbres de Judée et cytises mêlaient leurs brillantes couleurs
au tendre feuillage des platanes, et sur les pentes les plus âpres des
milliers de genêts en fleur étincelaient parmi la verdure des genévriers,
des chênes et des oliviers francs.
Dans l’antiquité, toute cette portion du territoire athénien,
qui faisait partie de ce que l’on appelait la
Diakria ou le haut
pays,
sans avoir de gros villages ni une population aussi dense
que celle des plaines d’Athènes ou d’Eleusis, devait pourtant présenter
un aspect assez diffèrent de celui qu’elle offre aujourd’hui;
je me la représente assez semblable à ce que sont maintenant certains
districts montueux de la Grèce moderne où le désir d’éviter
le contact des Turcs avait rejeté et cantonné les Hellènes: il en
était ainsi du Magne, de la Tzaconie, des environs de Karytena en
Arcadie. Partout là, une industrieuse persévérance a mis à profit
tout ce que pouvaient offrir de ressources le sol et le climat. Sur
des pentes abruptes et presque verticales, de petits murs en pierres
sèches s’efforcent de retenir une mince couche de terre végétale;
malgré ces précautions, les grandes pluies de l’hiver et les vents de
l’été en emportent une partie jusqu’au fond de la vallée, sans
jamais se lasser, hommes, femmes, enfants, travaillent sans relâche
à réparer ces dégâts. Que de fois, admirant la patience de ces
sobres et tenaces montagnards, je les ai suivis des yeux pendant
qu’ils allaient ainsi lentement, le dos courbé sous leurs hottes
pleines, gravissant des sentiers sablonneux ou d’étroits escaliers
taillés à même la roche qui leur renvoyait touts les ardeurs du
soleil! Au bout de quelques années, il n’est pas peut-être une
parcelle du terrain dans chacun de ces petits champs qui n’ait fait
plusieurs fois le voyage, qui n’ait glissé jusqu’au bord du torrent
pour être ensuite ramenée pelletée par pelletée, sur une des terrasses
supérieures. Ces sacrifices sont récompensés. Le long du
ruisseau, là où les côtes s’écartent et laissent entre elles un peu
d’espace, l’eau, soigneusement ménagée, mesurée par heures et
par minutes à chaque propriétaire, court bruyante et claire dans
les rigoles; elle arrose des vergers où croissent, suivant les lieux,
soit l’oranger, le citronnier et le grenadier, soit les arbres de nos
climats tempérés, le pêcher, le pommier et le poirier; à leur ombre
grossissent la fève et l’enorme courge. Plus haut, sur les versants
les moins roides et les moins pierreux, là où la légère charrue inventée
par Triptolème a trouvé assez de place pour tracer le sillon,
l’orge et le seigle verdissent au printemps, et, dans les bonnes
années, profitent pour mûrir des tardifs soleils d’automne. Ce qui
d’ailleurs réussit le mieux dans ces montagnes, ce qui paye
vraiment les habitants de leurs peines, c’est l’olivier, dont les puissantes
racines étreignent le roc et semblent faire corps avec lui;
c’est la vigne, qui, d’étage en étage, grimpe presque jusqu’aux sommets.
A l’un et à l’autre, pour donner une huile et un vin qui
seraient les plus savoureux du monde, s’ils étaient mieux préparés,
il suffit de beaucoup de soleil, d’un peu de terre et de quelques
coups de hoyau qui viennent à propos ameublir le sol et le dégager
des plantes parasites.C’est ainsi que dans l’Attique, au temps de sa prospérité,
même les cantons aujourd’hui les plus déserts et les plus stériles
devaient être habités et cultivés. Sur beaucoup de ces croupes où
le roc affleure presque partout, où verdit à peine, aux premiers
jours du printemps, une herbe courte, diaprée d’anémones et de
cistes, qui jaunira dès le mois de mai, il y avait jadis une couche
plus épaisse de terre végétale. Dans les ravins, là où j’ai perdu
plus d’une fois mon chemin en poursuivant la perdrix rouge ou la
bécasse à travers des maquis touffus, on a, pendant bien des siècles,
fait la vendange et la cueillette des olives; c’est ce dont témoignent,
sur les pentes les mieux exposées aux rayons du midi ou du
couchant, des restes de murs et de terrassements que l’on distingue
encore dans l’épaisseur du fourré. Dans les endroits où la culture
était à peu près impossible, des bois de pins,
All these remarks are even more strongly exemplified
by the beautiful country which lies between
[Illustration: Mount Lycabettus, Athens]
It strikes me, when speaking of this road, that the Greek roads cannot have been at all so well constructed as the Roman, many of which are still to be seen in England. Though I went upon the track of many of them, I but once noticed the vestige of an old Greek road. There are here and there wretched remains of Turkish roads—rough angular stones laid down across the hills, in a close irregular pavement; but of the great builders of the Parthenon and of Phyle, of Eleutheræ and of Eleusis, hardly a patch of road-work has, so far as I know, remained.
There is, indeed, one exception in this very neighborhood,
to which we may now naturally turn. The
traveller who has wondered at the huge blocks of
the Propylæa and the Parthenon, and who has
noticed the exquisite quality of the stone, and the
perfect smoothness which it has preserved to the
present day, will naturally desire to visit the quarry
on Pentelicus from which it was brought. The
marble of Paros is probably the only stone found
superior to it for the purposes of sculpture. It is,
however, harder and of larger grain, so that it must
have been more difficult to work. Experts can tell
the difference between the two marbles, but I confess
that, though M. Rousopoulos endeavored to teach
Theocr. VII. 135.
It is a laborious climb, up a road covered with
small fragments of stone. But at last, beneath a
great face of marble all chipped with the work of
ancient hands, there is a large cool cavern, with
water dripping from the roof into ice-cold pools
below, and besides it a quaint grotto chapel, with
its light still burning, and stone seats around, where
the traveller may rest. This place seems to have
been the main source of the old Athenian buildings.
The high face of the rock above it is chipped, as I
have said, with small and delicate cutting, and hangs
over, as if they had removed it beneath, in order
to bring down the higher pieces more easily. Of
course, they could not, and probably if they could,
would not, have blasted the stone; and, so far as I
know, we are not informed by what process they
The view from the top of Pentelicus is, of course,
very striking, and those who have no time or inclination
to spend a day at Marathon itself are usually
content with a very fine view of the bay and the
opposite mountains of Eubœa, which can thence be
had. But it is indeed a pity, now that the country
is generally quite safe, that after so long a journey
as that from England to Athens, people should turn
back without completing the additional fifteen miles
As we leave the track which leads up to the
monastery above mentioned, the country becomes
gradually covered with shrubs, and then with
stunted trees—generally old fir-trees, all hacked
and carved and wounded for the sake of their resin,
which is so painfully obtrusive in Greek wine. But
in one place there is, by way of change, a picturesque
bridge over a rapid rocky-bedded river, which is
completely hidden with rich flowering oleanders, and
in which we found sundry Attic women, of the
poorer class, washing their clothes. The woods in
this place were wonderfully rich and scented, and
the sound of the turtle doves was heard in the land.
Presently we came upon the thickly wooded corner,
which was pointed out to us as the spot where our
unfortunate countrymen were captured in 1870, and
carried up the slopes of Pentelicus, to be sacrificed
to the blundering of the English Minister or the
Greek Ministry,—I could not decide which,—and
more certainly to their own chivalry; for while all
the captured Greeks escaped during the pursuit, our
English gentlemen would not break their parole.
These men are now held by the better Greeks to
be martyrs for the good of Greece; for this outrage
first forced the Government to take really vigorous
measures for the safety of the country. The whole
band were gradually captured and executed, till at
We had, indeed, a missive from the Greek Prime
Minister, which we presented to the Chief Police
Officer of each town—a gentleman in the usual
scarlet cap and white petticoats, but carrying a great
dog-whip as the sign of his office. This custom,
strange to say, dates from the days of Aristophanes.
But the Prime Minister warned us that, though things
were now safe, there was no permanent security.
Any revolution in the neighborhood (such, for example,
as that in Herzegovina, which at that time had
not yet broken out) might, he said, send over the Turkish
frontier a number of outlaws or other fugitives,
who would support themselves by levying blackmail
on the peasantry, and then on travellers. We were
assured that the Morea, which does not afford an
easy escape into Turkey, has been for years perfectly
secure, and I found it so in several subsequent
journeys. So, then, any traveller desirous of seeing
the Peloponnesus—Sparta, Olympia, Mantinea,
Argos, or even Central Greece—may count on doing
so with safety. Not so the visitor to Tempe and
Mount Pindus.
So much for the safety of travelling in Greece,
which is suggested by the melancholy fate of Mr.
Vyner and his friends, though that event is now so
long past. But one point more. It is both idle and
foolish to imagine that revolvers and daggers are the
best protection against Greek bandits, should they
reappear. They never attack where they are visible.
The first notice given to the traveller is the sight of
twenty or thirty muzzles pointed at him from the
covert, with a summons to surrender. Except, therefore,
the party be too numerous to be so surrounded
and visé, so that some could fight, even were others
shot—except in such a case, arms are only an
addi
As we ascended the long saddle of country which
lies between Pentelicus and Hymettus, we came
upon a fine olive-wood, with the same enormous
stems which had already excited our wonder in the
groves of Academe. Indeed, some of the stems in
this wood were the largest we had seen, and made
us think that they may have been there since the
days when the olive oil of Attica was one of its most
famous products, and its export was even forbidden.
Even then there were ancient stumps—
When we had got well between the mountains a
new scene unfolded itself. We began to see the
famous old Euripus, with the mountains of Eubœa
over against us; and down to the south, behind
Hymettus, till we reach the extremity of Sunium,
stretched a long tract of mountainous and barren
country which never played a prominent part in
The plain of Marathon, as everybody knows, is a
long crescent-shaped strip of land by the shore, surrounded
by an amphitheatre of hills, which may be
crossed conveniently in three places, but most easily
toward the south-west, along the road which we
travelled, and which leads directly to Athens.
When the Athenians marched through this broad
and easy passage they found that the Persians had
landed at the northern extremity of the plain—I suppose,
because the water was there sufficiently deep
to let them land conveniently. Most of the shore,
as you proceed southward, is lined on the seaboard
by swamps. The Greek army must have marched
northward along the spurs of Pentelicus, and taken
up their position near the north of the plain. There
was evidently much danger that the Persians would
force a passage through the village of Marathon,
farther toward the north-west. Had they done this,
they might have rounded Pentelicus, and descended
[Illustration: Looking Toward the Sea from the Soros, Marathon]
Like almost every view in Greece, the prospect
from this mound is full of beauty and variety—everywhere
broken outlines, everywhere patches of
blue sea, everywhere silence and solitude. Byron
is so much out of fashion now, and so much more
talked about than read—though even that notice of
noble
savage,
with the omission of all his meaner vices.
But in spite of all these faults, who is there who
has felt as he the affecting aspects of this beautiful
land—the tomb of ancient glory—the home of ancient
wisdom—the mother of science, of art, of
philosophy, of politics—the champion of liberty—the
envy of the Persian and the Roman—the
teacher, even still, of modern Europe? It is surely
a great loss to our generation, and a bad sign of its
culture, that the love of more modern poets has
weaned them from the study of one not less great in
most respects, but far greater in one at least—in that
burning enthusiasm for a national cause, in that red-hot
passion for liberty which, even when misapplied,
or wasted upon unworthy objects, is ever one of the
noblest and most stirring instincts of higher man.
But Byron may well be excused his raving about
the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict
at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined men
Social Life in Greece,
p. Hell., iv., 3, § 1. To cite a parallel in modern history:
a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette (July 12, 1876) says: for
the love of God, and out of good feeling for the
fraternity of arms.
So, then, the loss of 192
Athenians, including some distinguished men, was
rather a severe one. As to the loss of the Persians,
I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of such
things that it is better to pass it by in silence.
Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear
of the Athenian army as undisciplined, and of the
science of war as undeveloped, in those times. Yet
I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of battles
by almost all the historians are so utterly vague, and
so childishly conventional, that it is evident that
these gentlemen were not only quite ignorant of the
science of war, but could not easily find any one to
explain it to them. We know that the Spartans—the
most admired of all Greek warriors—were chiefly
so admired because they devised the system of subordinating
officers to one another within the same
detachment, like our gradation from colonel to corporal.
Orders were passed down from officer to
officer, instead of being bawled out by a herald to a
whole army. But this superiority of the Spartans,
who were really disciplined, and went into battle
Yet what signifies all this criticism? In spite of
all skepticism, in spite of all contempt, the battle of
Marathon, whether badly or well fought, and the
troops at Marathon, whether well or ill trained, will
ever be more famous than any other battle or army,
however important or gigantic its dimensions. Even
in this very war, the battles of Salamis and Platæa
were vastly more important and more hotly contested.
The losses were greater, the results were
more enduring, yet thousands have heard of Marathon
to whom the other names are unknown. So much
for literary ability—so much for the power of talk
The plain in the present day is quite bare of trees,
and, as Colonel Leake observed, appears to have
been so at the time of the battle, from the vague
account of its evolutions. There was a little corn
and a few other crops about the great tumulus; and
along the seashore, whither we went to bathe, there
was a large herd of cows and oxen—a sight not
very usual in Greece. When we rushed into the
shallow blue water, striving to reach swimming
depth, we could not but think of the scene when
Kynægirus and his companions rushed in armed to
stop the embarkation of the Persians. On the
shore, then teeming with ships of war, with transports,
with fighting and flying men, there was now
no sign of life, but ourselves in the water, and the
lazy cattle and their silent herdsmen looking upon
us in wonder; for, though very hot, it was only May,
and the modern Greek never thinks it safe to bathe
till at least the end of June—in this like his Italian
I have already spoken (p. 154) of the position of
the pass of Daphne, and how it leads the traveller
over the ridge which separates the plain of the
Kephissus from the Thriasian plain. I have also
spoken at length of the country about the Kephissus,
with its olive woods and its nightingales. When we
Many points of Greek history become plain to us
by this view. We see how true was the epithet
rocky Salamis,
for the island, though it looks very
insignificant on our maps, contains lofty mountains,
with very bare and rocky sides. The student of
Greek geography in maps should note this feature.
Thus, Ithaca on the map does not suggest the real
Ithaca, which from most points looks like a high
and steep mountain standing out of the sea. We
begin also to see how Salamis was equally convenient
(as the Irish say) to both Megara and Attica, if we
consider that Eleusis was strictly a part of Attica.
The harbor of the Peiræus, for example, would be
[Illustration: Salamis from Across the Bay]
The wretched modern village of Eleusis is picturesquely
situated near the sea, on the old site, and
there are still to be seen the ruins, not only of the
famous temple of Demeter, but also of the Propylæa,
built apparently in imitation of that of Mnesicles on
the Acropolis at Athens, though the site of both
These celebrated ruins are wretchedly defaced. Not a column or a wall is now standing, and we can see nothing but vast fragments of pillars and capitals, and a great pavement, all of white marble, along which the ancient wheel-tracks are distinctly visible. There are also underground vaults of small dimensions, which, the people tell you, were intended for the Mysteries. We that knew what vast crowds attended there would not give credence to this ignorant guess; and indeed we knew from distinct evidence that the great ceremony took place in a large building specially constructed for the purpose. The necessary darkness was obtained by performing the more solemn rites at night; not by going down beneath the surface of the earth.
The Greek savants have at last laid open, and
explained, the whole plan of the temple, which was
built by Ictinus, in Pericles’s time, but apparently
restored after a destructive fire by Roman architects
copying faithfully the ancient style. The excavators
have shown that the shrine had strange peculiarities.
And this is exactly what we should
expect. For although no people adhered more
closely to traditional forms in their architecture, no
people were more ready to modify these forms with
a view to practical requirements. Thus, as a rule,
the cella, or inner chamber of the temple, only
conIX. 1, § 12. For further details consult
the Guide Joanne for Athens (1888), p. 201.epoptæ as they were
called—witnessed those services which brought
them peace in this world, and a blessed hope for
the world to come.
The way into the temple was adorned with two
Propylæa—one of the classical period, and by Philo
(311 B. C.), another set up by a Roman, App. Claudius
Pulcher, in 48 B. C., after you had passed
through the former. The great temple, raised upon
a natural platform, looks out toward Salamis, and
the narrow line of azure which separates it from the
land. Turning to the left as you stand at the temple
front, the eye wanders over the rich plain of
Eleusis, now dotted over with villages, and colored
(in April) with the rich brown of ploughing and the
splendid green of sprouting wheat. This plain had
multiplied its wealth manifold since I first saw it,
and led us to hope that the peasants were waking
up to the great market which is near them at Athens.
The track of the old sacred way along the Thriasian
plain is often visible, for much of the sea-coast is
It is, of course, the celebrated Mysteries—the
Greater Eleusinia, as they were called—which give
to the now wretched village of Eleusis, with its
hopeless ruins, so deep an interest. This wonderful
feast, handed down from the remotest antiquity,
maintained its august splendor all through the
greater ages of Greek history, down to the times
of decay and trifling—when everything else in the
country had become mean and contemptible. Even
Cicero, who was of the initiated himself, a man of
wide culture and of a skeptical turn of mind—even
Cicero speaks of it as the great product of the culture
of Athens. Much that is excellent and divine,
says he,De Legg., II. 14, § 36.does Athens seem to me to have
produced and added to our life, but nothing better
than those Mysteries, by which we are formed and
moulded from a rude and savage life to humanity;
and indeed in the Mysteries we perceive the real
principles of life, and learn not only to live happily,
but to die with a fairer hope.
These are the words
in Cer. v. 480.Thren. (frag.) Œd. Col. 1042.
To what did it owe this transcendent character?
It was not because men here worshipped exceptional
gods, for the worship of Demeter and Cora was an
old and widely diffused cult all over Greece: and
there were other Eleusinia in various places. It was
not because the ceremony consisted of mysteries, of
hidden acts and words, which it was impious to
reveal, and which the initiated alone might know.
For the habit of secret worship was practised in
every state, where special clans were charged with
the care of special secret services, which no man
else might know. Nay, even within the ordinary
homes of the Greeks there were these Mysteries.
Neither was it because of the splendor of the temple
and its appointments, which never equalled the
Panathenæa at the Parthenon, or the riches of
Delphi, or Olympia. There is only one reasonable
Here, then, we have the strangest and most striking
analogy to our religion in the Greek mythology;
for here we have a higher faith publicly taught,—any
man might present himself to be initiated,—and
taught, not in opposition to the popular creed, but
merely by deepening it, and showing to the ordinary
worldling its spiritual power. The belief in the
Goddess Demeter and her daughter, the queen of
the nether world, was, as I have said, common all
over Greece; but even as nowadays we are told that
there may be two kinds of belief of the same truths—one
of the head and another of the heart—just
De anima there are some very
striking passages on this subject. After this,
he says, evidently
describing some part of the ceremony, there came a great light,
there were shown pure places and meadows, with dances, and all
that was splendid and holy to see and hear, in which he who is
now perfected by
[Illustration: Temple of Mysteries, Eleusis]
The very fact that it was not lawful to divulge the
Mystery has prevented the many writers who knew
it from giving us any description by which we might
gain a clear idea of this wonderful rite. We have
hints of various sacred vessels, of various priests
known by special technical names; of dramatic
representations of the rape of Cora, and of the
grief of her mother; of her complaints before Zeus,
and the final reconciliation. We hear of scenes of
But all these things are fragmentary glimpses, as are also the doctrines hinted of the Unity of God, and of atonement by sacrifice. There remains nothing clear and certain, but the unanimous verdict as to the greatness, the majesty, and the awe of the services, and as to the great spiritual knowledge and comfort which they conveyed. The consciousness of guilt was not, indeed, first taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt very keenly by the Greek mind. These Mysteries were its Gospel of reconciliation with the offended gods.
No ordinary student, looking at the map of Attica
and Bœotia, can realize the profound and complete
separation between these two countries. Except at
the very northern extremity, where the fortified
town of Oropus guarded an easy boundary, all the
frontier consists not merely of steep mountains, but
of parallel and intersecting ridges and gorges, which
contain indeed a few alpine valleys, such as that of
Œnoe, but which are, as a rule, wild and barren,
easily defensible by a few against many, and totally
unfit for the site of any considerable town, or any
advanced culture. As I before stated, the traveller
can pass through by Dekelea, or he can pass most
directly by Phyle, the fort which Thrasybulus seized
when he desired to reconquer Athens with his democratic
exiles. The historians usually tell us that
he seized
; a statement which
the present aspect of it seems to render very doubtful
indeed. It is quite impossible that the great hill-fort
of the very finest Attic building, which is still
remaining and admired by all, could have been
and fortified Phyleknocked up
by Thrasybulus and his exiles.
The careful construction and the enormous extent
of the building compel us to suppose it the work of
a rich state, and of a deliberate plan of fortification.
It seems very unlikely, for these reasons, that it was
built after the days of Thrasybulus, or that so important
a point of attack should have been left unguarded
in the greater days of Athens. I am therefore
convinced that the fort, being built long before,
and being, in fact, one of the well-known fortified
demes through Attica, had been to some extent dismantled,
or allowed to fall into decay, at the end of
the Peloponnesian War, but that its solid structure
made it a matter of very little labor for the exiles
to render it strong and easily defensible.
This is one of the numerous instances in which a
single glance at the locality sets right an historical
statement that has eluded suspicion for ages. The
fort of Phyle, like that of Eleutheræ, of which I
shall speak, and like those of Messene and of Orchomenus,
is built of square blocks of stone, carefully
cut, and laid together without a particle of rubble or
cement, but so well fitted as to be able to resist the
wear of ages better than almost any other building.
I was informed by M. I. 93) as being employed
in the building of the walls of the Peiræus
in the days of Themistocles, apparently in contrast to
the rude and hurried construction of the city walls.
But he speaks of the great stones being not only cut
square, but fastened with clamps of iron soldered
with lead. I am not aware that any traces of this
are found in the remaining hill-forts. The walls of
the Peiræus have, unfortunately, long since almost
totally disappeared.
The way from Athens to Phyle leads north-west
through the rich fields of the old deme of Acharnæ;
and we wonder at first why they should be so noted
as charcoal-burners. But as we approach Mount
Parnes, we find that the valley is bounded by
tracts of hillside fit for nothing but pine forest. A
vast deal of wooding still remains; it is clear that
these forests were the largest and most convenient
to supply Athens with firewood or charcoal. As
usual, there are many glens and river-courses
through the rugged country through which we
ascend—here and there a village, in one secluded
nook a little monastery, hidden from the world, if
not from its cares. There is the usual Greek
vege
There is something inexpressibly bracing in this solitude, if solitude it can be called, where the forest speaks to the eye and ear, and fills the imagination with the mystery of its myriad forms. Now and then too the peculiar cadence of those bells which hardly varies throughout all the lands of the south, tells you that a flock of goats, or goat-like sheep, is near, attended by solemn, silent children, whose eyes seem to have no expression beyond that of vague wonder in their gaze. These are the flocks of some village below, not those of the nomad Vlachs, who bring with them their tents and dogs, and make gipsy encampments in the unoccupied country.
At last we see high over us the giant fort of Phyle—set
upon a natural precipice, which defends it
amply for half its circuit. The point of occupation
was well chosen, for while within sight of Athens,
and near enough to afford a sure refuge to those who
could escape by night and fly to the mountain, its
distance (some 15 miles) and the steep and rugged
ascent, made it impossible for weak and aged people
to crowd into it and mar the efficiency of its garrison.
We did not pass into Bœotia by the way of Phyle,
preferring to take the longer route through Eleusis.
But no sooner had we left Eleusis than we began to
ascend into the rough country, which is the preface
to the wild mountain passes of Cithæron. It is,
indeed, very difficult to find where one range of
mountains begins and another ends, anywhere
throughout Greece. There is generally one high
peak, which marks a whole chain or system of
mountains, and after which the system is called;
but all closer specification seems lost, on account of
the immense number of ridges and points which
crowd upon the view in all directions. Thus the
chain of Parnes, after throwing out a spur toward
the south, which divides the Athenian and the
Thriasian plains, sweeps round the latter in a sort
of amphitheatre, and joins the system of Cithæron
(Kitheron), which extends almost parallel with
Parnes. A simple look at a good map explains
these things by supplementing mere description.
The only thing which must be specially enforced
is, that all the region where a plain is not expressly
named is made up of broken mountain ridges and
rocky defiles, so that it may fairly be called an
I will only mention one other fact which illustrates the consequent isolation. We have a river Kephissus in the plain of Athens. As soon as we cross the pass of Daphne we have another Kephissus in the Thriasian plain. Within a day’s journey, or nearly so, we have another Kephissus, losing itself in the lake Copais, not far from Orchomenus. This repetition of the same name shows how little intercourse people have in the country, how little they travel, and how there is no danger of confusing these identical names. Such a fact, trifling as it is, illustrates very powerfully the isolation which the Greek mountains produce.
There is a good road from Athens to Thebes,—a
very unusual thing in Greece,—and we were able
to drive with four horses, after a fashion which
would have seemed very splendid in old days. But,
strange to say, the old Greek fashion of driving four
horses abreast, two being yoked to the pole, and two
outriggers, or
As usual, the country was covered with
brush
After some hours’ drive we reached a grassy dell,
shaded by large plane-trees, where a lonely little
public-house—if I may so call it—of this
construclucumia, or
Turkish delight. Not only had the owner his belt
full of knives and pistols, but there was hanging up
in a sort of rack a most picturesque collection of
swords and guns—all made in Turkish fashion, with
ornamented handles and stocks, and looking as
if they might be more dangerous to the sportsman
than to his game. While we were being served by
this wild-looking man, in this suspicious place—in
fact, it looked like the daily resort of bandits—his
wife, a comely young woman, dressed in the usual
dull blue, red, and white, disappeared through the
back way, and hid herself among the trees. This
fear of being seen by strangers—no doubt caused by
jealousy among men, and, possibly, by an Oriental
tone in the country—is a striking feature through
most parts of Greece. It is said to be a remnant of
the Turkish influence, but seems to me to lie deeper,
and to be even an echo of the old Greek days. The
same feeling is prevalent in most parts of Sicily. In
the towns there you seldom see ladies in the streets;
and in the evenings, except when the play-going
public is returning from the theatre, there are only
men visible.
After leaving this resting-place, about eleven in
the morning, we did not meet a village, or even a
These facts led me to reflect upon the narrative
of Thucydides, who evidently speaks of Œnoe as
the border fort of Attica, and yet says not a word
about Eleutheræ, which is really the border, the
great fort, and the key to the passes of Cithæron.
Antiope
of Euripides. Cf. Eurip., frag. 179 (ed. Nauck), and the
passages quoted there.
For, starting from Thebes, the slope of Cithæron
is a single unbroken ascent up to the ridge, through
which, nearly over the village of Platæa, there is a
cut that naturally indicates the pass. But when the
traveller has ascended from Thebes to this point he
finds a steep descent into a mountainous and broken
region, where he must presently choose between a
gorge to the right or to the left, and must wander
about zigzag among mountains, so as to find his way
The position of the fort at Phyle, above described, is very similar. It lies within a mile of the top of the pass, on the Attic side, within sight of Athens, and yet near enough to receive the scouts from the top, and resist all sudden attack. No force could invade Attica without leaving a large force to besiege it.
Looking backward into Attica, the whole mountainous
tract of Œnoe is visible; and, though we
cannot now tell the points actually selected, there
The site was, of course, an old one, and the name
Eleutheræ, if correctly applied to this fort, points
to a time when some mountain tribe maintained its
independence here against the governments on either
side in the plain, whence the place was called the
place, or FreeLiberties (as we have the term in
Dublin). There is further evidence of this in a
small irregular fort which was erected almost in the
centre of the larger and later enclosure. This older
fort is of polygonal masonry, very inferior to the
other, and has fallen into ruins, while the later walls
and towers are in many places perfect. The outer
wall follows the nature of the position, the principle
being to find everywhere an abrupt descent from
the fortification, so that an assault must be very
difficult. On the north side, where the rock is
preArchæological Tour in Greece—a splendid
book. The fort of Phyle, though smaller, possesses all the features
described in this fort, and shows that they represent a general
type.
The day was, as usual, very hot and fine, and the
hills were of that beautiful purple blue which Sir F.
Leighton so well reproduces in the backgrounds of
his Greek pictures; but a soft breeze brought occasional
clouds across the sun, and varied the landscape
with deeper hues. Above us on each side
were the noble crags of Cithæron, with their gray
rocks and their gnarled fir-trees. Far below, a
bright mountain stream was rushing beside the pass
into Attica; around us were the great walls of the
old Greeks, laid together with that symmetry, that
beauty, and that strength which marks all their
work. The massive towers are now defending a
barren rock; the enclosure which had seen so many
days of war and rapine was lying open and deserted;
the whole population was gone long centuries ago.
There is still liberty there, and there is peace—but
the liberty and the peace of solitude.
A short drive from Eleutheræ brought us to the
top of the pass,IX. 39)—evidently the same old name diversely interpreted by
diverse Volks-etymologien.
We made our descent at full gallop down the
windings of the road—a most risky drive; but the
coachman was daring and impatient, and we felt, in
spite of the danger, that peculiar delight which
accompanies the excitement of going at headlong
pace. We had previously an even more perilous
All the site of the great battle is well marked and
well known—the fountain Gargaphia, the so-called
The question of the depopulation of Greece is
no new one—it is not due to the Slav inroads—it is
not due to Turkish misrule. As soon as the political
liberties of Greece vanished, so that the national
talent found no scope in local government—as soon
as the riches of Asia were opened to Greek enterprise—the
population diminished with wonderful
rapidity. All the later Greek historians and travellers
are agreed about the fact.Greek Life and Thought, pp. 534 sq.The whole of
Greece could not put in the field,
says one, as
many soldiers as came of old from a single city.
Of all the famous cities of Bœotia,
says another,
but two—Thespiæ and Tanagra—now remain.
The rest are mostly described as ruins (Guide
Joanne, ii. xxxvi.
The evening saw us entering into Thebes—the
town which, beyond all others, retains the smallest
vestiges of antiquity. Even the site of the Cadmea
is not easily distinguishable. Two or three hillocks
in and about the town are all equally insignificant,
pleasaunce built at Thebes by
the Frankish knights, which was completely destroyed by the
grand Catalan company. It is described by their annalist Ramon
Muntaner. The remains of one Frankish tower mark the place.
The antiquities of Thebes consist of a few inscribed
slabs and fragments which are (as usual) collected
in a dark outhouse, where it is not easy to
make them out. I was not at the trouble of reading
Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum,
a collection daily increasing, and periodically reedited.
I may observe that, not only for manners
and customs, but even for history, these undeniable
and seldom suspicious sources are rapidly becoming
our surest and even fullest authority.
In the opinion of the inhabitants, by far the most
important thing about the town is the tomb of their
Evangelist S. Luke, which is situated in a chapel
close by. The stone is polished and worn with the
feet and lips of pilgrims, and all such homes of long
devotion are in themselves interesting; but the visitor
may well wonder that the Evangelist should
have his tomb established in a place so absolutely
decayed and depopulated as was the region of Thebes,
even in his day. The tombs of the early preachers
and missionaries are more likely to be in the thickest
of thoroughfares, amid the noise and strife of
men. The Evangelist was confused with a later
local saint of the same name.Athen, vol. i. pp. 144 sq.
Thebes is remarkable for its excellent supply of
water. Apart from the fountain Dirke,Antiope published by me in the Petrie papyri (Williams
& Norgate, 1891).
The general elections were at the moment pending.
M. Boulgaris had just échoue, as the French
say; and the King, after a crisis in which a rupture
of the Constitution had been expected, decided to
try a constitutional experiment, and called to office
M. Trikoupi, an advanced Radical in those days,
and strongly opposed to the Government. But M.
Trikoupi was a highly educated and reasonable man,
well acquainted with England and English politics,
and apparently anxious to govern by strictly constitutional
means. He has since proved himself, by his
able and vigorous administration, one of the most
remarkable statesmen in Europe, and the main cause
of the progress of his country. His recent defeat
(1890) is therefore to be regarded as a national misfortune.
Our new friend at Thebes was then the
But when I was there, and before the actual elections
had taken place, the Radical party were very
confident. They were not only to come in triumphant,
but their first act was to be the prosecution of
the late Prime Minister, M. Boulgaris, for violating
the Constitution, and his condemnation to hard labor,
with confiscation of his property. I used to plead
the poor man’s case earnestly with these hot-headed
too rich. But, said I, if you confiscate his property,
he will be poor. True, they replied; but still he
will not be able to do it: he is too old. It seemed
as if the idea that he might be too respectable never
crossed their minds.
We were afterward informed by a sarcastic observer
that many of the Greek politicians are
paupers, who will not dig, and to beg they are
ashamed;
and so they sit about the cafés of Athens
on the look-out for one of the 10,000 places which
have been devised for the patronage of the Ministry.
But, as there are some 30,000 expectants, it follows
that the 20,000 disappointed are always at work seeking
to turn out the 10,000. Hence a crisis every
three months; hence a Greek ambassador could
hardly reach his destination before he was recalled;
hence, too, the exodus of all thrifty and hard-working
men to Smyrna, to Alexandria, or to Manchester,
where their energies were not wasted in perpetual
political squabbling. The greatest misconduct with
which a man in office could be charged was the holding
of it for any length of time; the whole public then
join against him, and cry out that it is high time for
him, after so long an innings, to make way for some
one else. It was not till M. Trikoupi established his
ascendency that this ridiculous condition of things
ceased. Whether in office or in opposition, he has a
policy, and retains the confidence of foreign powers.
I had added, in the first edition of this book, some
Jingoes
were possessed.
We left Thebes, very glad that we had seen it, but not very curious to see it again. Its site makes it obviously the natural capital of the rich plain around it; and we can also see at once how the larger and richer plain of Orchomenus is separated from it by a distinct saddle of rising ground, and was naturally, in old times, the seat of a separate power. But the separation between the two districts, which is not even so steep or well marked as the easy pass of Daphne between Athens and Eleusis, makes it also clear that the owners of either plain would certainly cast the eye of desire upon the possessions of their neighbors, and so at an early epoch Orchomenus was subdued. For many reasons this may have been a disaster to Greece. The Minyæ of Orchomenus, as people called the old nobles who settled there in prehistoric days, were a great and rich society, building forts and treasure-houses, and celebrated, even in Homer’s day, for wealth and splendor.
But, perhaps owing to this very luxury, they were
subdued by the inartistic, vulgar Thebans, who, during
centuries of power and importance, never rose to
greatness save through the transcendent genius of
Pindar and of Epaminondas. No real greatness
ever attached to their town. When people came
from a distance to see art in Bœotia, they came to
Thus, even in Pindar, there is something to remind
us of his Theban vulgarity; and it is, therefore,
all the more wonderful, and all the more freely
to be confessed, that in Epaminondas we find not a
single flaw or failing, and that he stands out as far
the noblest of all the great men whom Greece ever
produced. It were possible to maintain that he was
also the greatest, but this is a matter of opinion and
of argument. Certain it is that his influence made
Thebes, for the moment, not only the leader in Greek
I will make but one more remark about this plain
of Bœotia. There is no part of Greece so sadly
famed for all the battles with which its soil was
stained. The ancients called it Mars’s Orchestra, or
exercising ground; and even now, when all the old
life is gone, and when not a hovel remains to mark
the site of once well-built towns, we may indeed ask,
why were these towns celebrated? Simply because
in old Greek history their names served to specify
a scene of slaughter, where a campaign, or it may
be an empire, was lost or won, Platæa, Leuctra,
Haliartus, Coronea, Chæronea, Delium, Œnophyta,
Tanagra—these are in history the landmarks of battles,
and, with one exception, landmarks of nothing
more. Thebes is mainly the nurse of the warriors
who fought in these battles, and but little else. So,
then, we cannot compare Bœotia to the rich plains
of Lombardy—they, too, in their clay, ay, and in
our own day, Mars’s Orchestra—for here literature
and art have given fame to cities, while the battles
I confess we saw nothing of the foggy atmosphere
so often brought up against the climate of Bœotia.
And yet it was then, of course, more foggy than it
had been of old, for then the lake Copais was
drained, whereas in 1875 the old tunnels, cut, or
rather enlarged, by the Minyæ, were choked, and
thousands of acres of the richest land covered with
marsh and lake. It was M. Trikoupi who promoted
the plan of a French Company to drain the
lake more completely than even the old Catabothra
had done, and, at the cost of less than one million
sterling, to bring into permanent cultivation some
thousands of acres—in fact, the largest and richest
plain in all Greece. I asked him where he meant
to find a population to till it, seeing that the present
land was about ten times more than sufficient for the
inhabitants. He told me that some Greek colonists,
who had settled in the north, under the Turks or
Servians (I forget which), were desirous of returning
to enjoy the sweets of Hellenic liberty. It was proposed
to give them the reclaimed tract. If these
good people will reason from analogy, they will be
slow to trust their fortunes to their old fellow-countrymen.
So long as they are indigent they will be
unmolested—cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator—but
as soon as they prosper, or are supposed to prosper,
we might have the affair of Laurium repeated.
What is now happening illustrates the views which I long since proposed. When the drainage works, completed in 1887, had uncovered rich tracts, the Government laid claim to every acre of it, and endeavored to fence off the old riparian proprietors. They on their side disputed the new boundaries, and claimed what the Government professed to have uncovered. Hence no sale to new owners is as yet possible. The dispute is still (1891) unsettled.
I think jealousy no accidental feature, but one
specially engrained in the texture of Greek nature
from the earliest times. Nothing can be a more
striking or cogent proof of this than the way in
which Herodotus sets down jealousy as one of the
attributes of the Deity. For the Deities of all
nations being conceptions formed after the analogy
of human nature around them, there can be no
doubt that the honest historian put it down as a
necessary factor in the course and constitution of
It is said that, in another curious respect, the old
and modern Greeks are very similar—I mean the
form which bribery takes in their political struggles.
It has been already observed and discussed by Mr.
Freeman, how, among the old Greeks, it was the
politician who was bribed, and not the constituents;
whereas among us in England the leading politicians
The road from Thebes to Lebadea (Livádia) leads
along the foot of Helicon all the way—Helicon,
which, like all celebrated Greek mountains, is not a
summit, but a system of summits, or even a chain.
Looking in the morning from the plain, the contrast
of the dark Cithæron and the gentle sunny Helicon
strikes the traveller again and again. After the
ridge, or saddle, is passed which separates the plain
of Thebes from that of Orchomenus, the richness of
the soil increases, but the land becomes very swampy
and low, for at every half-mile comes a clear silver
river, tumbling from the slopes of Helicon on our
left, crossing the road, and flowing to swell the
waters of Lake Copais—a vast sheet with undefined
edges, half-marsh, half-lake—which for centuries
had no outlet to the sea, and which was only kept
from covering all the plain by evaporation in the
heats of summer. Great fields of sedge and rushes,
giant reeds, and marsh plants unknown in colder
countries, mark each river course as it nears the
lake; and, as might be expected in this lonely fen
country, all manner of insect life and all manner of
As we passed along, we were shown the sites of
Haliartus and Coronea—Haliartus, where the cruel
Lysander met his death in a skirmish, and so gave a
place in history to an obscure village—Coronea,
where the Spartans first learned to taste the temper
of the Theban infantry, and where King Agesilaus
well-nigh preceded his great rival to the funeral
pyre. As I said before, all these towns are only
known by battles. Thespiæ has an independent interest,
and so has Ascra. The latter was the residence
of the earliest known Greek poet of whose
personality we can be sure; Thespiæ, with its
highly aristocratic society, which would not let a
shopkeeper walk their place of assembly for ten
years after he had retired from business, was the site
of fair temples and statues, and held its place and
fame long after all the rest of the surrounding cities
had sunk into decay. There are indistinct remains
of surrounding walls about both Haliartus and Coronea,
but surely nothing that would repay the labor
of excavations. All these Bœotian towns were, of
course, fortified, and all of them lay close to the
After some hours’ riding, we suddenly came upon
a deep vista in the mountains on our left—such
another vista as there is behind Coronea, but narrower,
and inclosed on both sides with great and
steep mountains. And here we found the cause of
the cultivation of the upper plain—here was the
town of Lebadea (Livádia), famed of old for the
august oracle of Trophonius—in later days the
Turkish capital of the province surrounding. To
this the roads of all the neighborhood converge,
and from this a small force can easily command the
deep gorges and high mountain passes which lead
through Delphi to the port of Kirrha. Even now
there is more life in Livádia than in most Greek
towns. All the wool of the country is brought in
and sold there, and, with the aid of their great
water power, they have a considerable factory,
where the wool is spun and woven into stuff. A
large and beautifully clear river comes down the
gorge above the town—or rather the gorge in which
the town lies—and tumbles in great falls between the
streets and under the houses, which have wooden
But the people are widely different. It was a
great saint’s day, and all the streets were crowded
with people from many miles round. As we noted in
all Greek towns, except Arachova, the women were
not to be seen in any numbers. They do not walk
about the streets except for some special ceremony
or amusement. But no women’s costume is required
to lend brightness to the coloring of the scene; for
here every man had his fustanella or kilt of dazzling
white, his gray or puce embroidered waistcoat, his
great white sleeves, and his scarlet skull-cap, with
its blue tassel. Nothing can be imagined brighter
than a dense crowd in this dress. They were all
much excited at the arrival of strangers, and
crowded around us without the least idea or care
about being thought obtrusive. The simple Greek
peasant thinks it his right to make aloud what observations
he chooses upon any stranger, and has
not the smallest idea of the politeness of reticence
on such occasions.
We were received most hospitably by the medical
officer of the district, who had an amiable young
wife, speaking Greek only, and a lively old mother-in-law,
living, as usual, permanently in the house,
As the gorge becomes narrower, there is, on the
right side, a small cave, from which a sacred stream
flows to join the larger river. Here numerous square
panels cut into the rock to hold votive tablets, now
gone, indicate a sacred place, to which pilgrims came
to offer prayers for aid, and thanksgiving for success.
The actual seat of the oracle is not certain, and is
supposed to be some cave or aperture now covered
by the Turkish fort on the rock immediately above;
but the whole glen, with its beetling sides, its rushing
river, and its cavernous vaulting, seems the very
home and preserve of superstition. We followed
the windings of the defile, jumping from rock to
rock up the river bed, and were soon able to bathe
beyond the observation of all the crowding boys,
who, like the boys of any other town, could not
satisfy their curiosity at strangeness of face and
costume. As we went on for some miles, the
country began to open, and to show us a bleak and
solitary mountain region, where the chains of Helicon
and Parnassus join, and shut out the sea of
As the evening was closing in we began to retrace
our steps, when we saw in two or three places scarlet
caps over the rocks, and swarthy faces peering down
upon us with signs and shouts. Though nothing
could have been more suspicious in such a country,
I cannot say that we felt the least uneasiness, and
we continued our way without regarding them.
They kept watching us from the heights, and when
at last we descended nearer to the town, they came
and made signs, and spoke very new Greek, to the
effect that they had been out scouring the country
for us, and that they had been very uneasy about
our safety. This was indeed the case; our excellent
Greek companion, who felt responsible to the Greek
Government for our safety, and who had stayed behind
in Livádia to make arrangements, had become
so uneasy that he had sent out the police to scour
the country. So we were brought in with triumph
by a large escort of idlers and officials, and presently
sat down to dinner at the fashionable hour, though in
anything but fashionable dress. The entertainment
would have been as excellent as even the intentions
of our host, had not our attention been foolishly distracted
by bugs walking up the table-cloth. It is,
It may be here worth giving a word of encouragement
to the sensitive student whom these hints are
apt to deter from venturing into the wilds of Greece.
In spite of frequent starvation, both for want of food
and for want of eatable food; in spite of frequent
sleeplessness and even severe exercise at night, owing
to the excess of insect population;Frogs, asks, especially about the inns, the very
questions which we often put to our guide; and if
his slave carried for him not only ordinary baggage,
but also his bed and bedding, so nowadays there
are many khans (inns) where the traveller cannot lie
down—I was going to say to rest—except on his
own rugs.
The next day was occupied in a tour across the
plain to Orchomenus, then to Chæronea, and back
to Livádia in the evening, so as to start from thence
for the passes to Delphi. Our ride was, as it were,
round an isosceles triangle, beginning with the right
base angle, going to Orchomenus north-east as the
vertex, then to Chæronea at the left base angle, and
home again over the high spurs of mountain which
protrude into the plain between the two base angles
of our triangle. For about a mile, as we rode out
of Livádia, a wretched road of little rough paving-stones
tormented us—the remains of Turkish engineering,
when Livádia was their capital. Patches
of this work are still to be found in curious isolation
over the mountains, to the great distress of both
mules and riders; for the stones are very small and
In two or three hours we arrived at the site of
old Orchomenus, of late called Scripou, but now
reverting, like all Greek towns, to its original name.
There is a mere hamlet, some dozen houses, at the
The subsequent excavation of it by Dr. Schliemann yielded but poor results. The building had fallen in but a few years ago. A handsome ceiling pattern, to which a curious parallel was afterward found at Tiryns, and some pottery, was all that rewarded the explorer.
On the hill above are the well-preserved remains
of the small Acropolis, of which the stones are so
carefully cut that it looks at first sight modern, then
too good for modern work, but in no case polygonal,
as are the walls of the hill city which it protected.
In a large and hospitable monastery we found the
well which Pausanias describes as close beside the
shrine of the Graces, and here we partook of breakfast,
attended by our muleteers, who always accompany
their employer into the reception-room of his
host, and look on at meat, ready to attend, and
always joining if possible in the conversation at
table. Some excellent specimens of old Greek pottery
were shown us in the monastery, apparently,
though not ostensibly, for sale, there being a law
prohibiting the sale of antiquities to foreigners, or
for exportation. In their chapel the monks pointed
out to us some fragments of marble pillars, and one
or two inscriptions—in which I was since informed
that I might have found a real live digamma, if I
had carefully examined them. The digamma is
now common enough at Olympia and elsewhere. I
saw it best, along with the koph, which is, I suppose,
much rarer, in the splendid bronze plates containing
Locrian inscriptions, which are in the possession of
Mr. Taylor’s heirs at Corfu. These plates have
been ably commented on, with facsimile drawings
of the inscriptions, by a Greek writer, G. N.
It was on our way up the valley to Chæronea,
along the rapid stream of the Kephissus, that we
stele, not unlike the celebrated stele and its relief
at Athens, which is inscribed as the stele of
Aristion, and dates from the time of the Persian
wars. The work before us was inscribed as the
work of Anxenor the Naxian—an artist otherwise
unknown to us; but the style and finish are very
remarkable, and more perfect than the stele of Aristion.
It is a relief carved on an upright slab of gray
Bœotian marble—I should say about four feet in
height—and representing a bearded man wrapped in
a cloak, resting on a long stick propped under his
arm,
The great value of these reliefs consists (apart
from their artistic value) in their undoubted genuineness.
For we know that in later days, both in
Greece and Italy, a sort of pre-Raphaelite taste
sprang up among amateurs, who admired and preferred
the stiff awkward groping after nature to the
symmetry and grace of perfect art. Pausanias, for
example, speaks with enthusiasm of these antique
statues and carvings, and generally mentions them
first, as of most importance. Thus, after describing
various archaic works on the Acropolis of Athens,
he adds, But whoever places works made with
artistic skill before those which come under the designation
of archaic, may, if he likes, admire the
archaistic, as
they call it, from the archaic, it is sometimes a very
difficult task, and about many of them there is doubt
and debate.
But here at Orchomenus—a country which was so
decayed as to lose almost all its population two centuries
before Christ, where no amateurs of art would
stay, and where Plutarch was, as it were, the last
remains in his town of literature and respectability—here
there is no danger whatever of finding this
spurious work; and thus here, as indeed all through
Greece, archaic work is thoroughly trustworthy.
But the unfortunate law of the land not often violated,
as in this case—which insists upon all these
relics, however isolated, being kept in their place of
finding—is the mightiest obstacle to the study of
this interesting phase of culture, and we must await
the completion of the Hellenic Society’s gallery of
photographs, from which we can make reliable observations.
The Greeks will tell you that the
pres
Not far from this little church and its famous relief,
we came in sight of the Acropolis (called Petrachus)
of Chæronea, and soon arrived at the town,
so celebrated through all antiquity, in spite of its
moderate size. The fort on the rock is, indeed,
very large—perhaps the largest we saw in Greece,
with the exception of that at Corinth; and, as usual
in these buildings, follows the steepest escarpments,
raising the natural precipice by a coping of beautifully
hewn and fitted square stones. The artificial
wall is now not more than four or five feet high; but
even so, there are only two or three places where it
is at all easy to enter the inclosure, which is fully a
mile of straggling outline on the rock. The view
from this fort is very interesting. Commanding all
the plain of the lake Copais, it also gives a view of
the sides of Parnassus, and of the passes into Phocis,
which cannot be seen till the traveller reaches this
point. Above all, it looks out upon the gap of
Elatea, about ten miles north-west, through which
This gap is, indeed, the true key of this side of
Bœotia, and is no mere mountain pass, but a narrow
plain, perhaps a mile wide, which must have afforded
an easy transit for an army. But the mountains on
both sides are tolerably steep, and so it was necessary
to have a fortified town, as Elatea was, to keep the
command of the place. As we gazed through the
narrow plain, the famous passage of Demosthenes
came home to us, which begins: It was evening,
and the news came in that Philip had seized, and
was fortifying Elatea.
The nearest point of observation
or of control was the rock of Chæronea,
and we may say with certainty that it was from here
the first breathless messenger set out with the terrible
news for Thebes and Athens. This, too, was evidently
the pass through which Agesilaus came on
his return from Asia, and on his way to Coronea,
where his great battle was fought, close by the older
trophy of the Theban victory over Tolmides.Agesilaus, chap. xvii.
Having surveyed the view, and fatigued ourselves
greatly by our climb in the summer heat, we descended
to the old theatre, cut into the rock where
it ascends from the village—the smallest and steepest
Greek theatre I had ever seen. Open-air buildings
always look small for their size, but most of
those erected by the Greeks and Romans were so
But, small as it is, there are few more interesting
places than the only spot in Chæronea where we can
say with certainty that here Plutarch sat—a man
who, living in an age of decadence, and in a country
village of no importance, has, nevertheless, as much
as any of his countrymen, made his genius felt over
all the world. Apart from the great stores of history
brought together in his Lives, which, indeed,
are frequently our only source for the inner life and
spirit of the greatest Greeks of the greatest epochs—the
moral effect of these splendid biographies,
both on poets and politicians through Europe, can
hardly be overrated. From Shakespeare and Alfieri
to the wild savages of the French Revolution,
a terrible historian,
remarked to a
friend of mine, who used to lend him Scott’s novels,
that Scott was a great historian,
and being asked
his reason, replied, He makes you to love your
kind.
There is a deep significance in this vague
utterance, in which it may be eminently applied to
Plutarch. Here in Chæronea,
says Pausanias,
they prepare unguents from the flowers of the
lily and the rose, the narcissus and the iris. These
are balm for the pains of men. Nay, that which is
made of roses, if old wooden images are anointed
with it, saves them, too, from decay.
He little
knew how eternally true his words would be, for
There is a rich supply of water, bursting from a beautiful old Greek fountain, near the theatre—indeed, the water supply all over this country is excellent. There is also an old marble throne in the church, about which they have many legends, but no history. The costume of the girls, whom we saw working in small irrigated plots near the houses, was beautiful beyond that in other Greek towns. They wore splendid necklaces of gold and silver coins, which lay like corselets of chain mail on the neck and breast; and the dull but rich embroidery of wool on their aprons and bodices was quite beyond what we could describe, but not beyond our highest appreciation.
As the day was waning, we were obliged to leave
this most interesting place, and set off again on our
ride home to Lebadea. We had not gone a mile
from the town when we came upon the most pathetic
and striking of all the remains in that country—the
famous lion of Chæronea, which the Thebans set up
B. C. We had been looking out for this monument,
and on our way to Chæronea, seeing a lofty mound
in the plain, rode up to it eagerly, hoping to find the
lion. But we were disappointed, and were told that
the history of this larger mound was completely unknown.
It evidently commemorates some battle,
and is a mound over the dead, but whether those
slain by Sylla, or those with Tolmides, or those of
some far older conflict, no man can say. It seems,
however, perfectly undisturbed, and grown about
with deep weeds and brushwood, so that a hardy
excavator might find it worth opening, and, perhaps,
coins might tell us of its age.
The mound where we found the lion was much
humbler and smaller; in fact, hardly a mound at all,
but a rising knoll, with its centre hollowed out, and
in the hollow the broken pieces of the famous lion.
It had sunk, we are told, into its mound of earth,
originally intended to raise it above the road beside,
and lay there in perfect safety till the present century,
when four English travellers claim to have
discovered it (June 3, 1818). They tried to get it
removed, and, failing in their efforts, covered up the
pieces carefully.Trans. of the Roy. Soc. of Lit., 2nd series, vol. viii. pp.
1, sqq. The latter gentleman called attention to his paper when
the subject was being discussed in the Academy in 1877. A very
different story was told to Colonel Mure, and has passed from his
Travels into Murray’s Guide. The current belief among the
Greeks seems still to be that a Greek patriot called Odysseus,
perceiving the stone protruding from the clay, and, on striking it,
hearing its hollow ring, dug it out and broke it in pieces, imagining
it to be a record of Philip’s victory over Hellenic liberty.
Some ill-natured people added that he hoped to find treasure
within it.Mon. of the Soc. Arch. of Rome, for
1856, of which Mr. A. S. Murray most kindly sent me a drawing,
makes the posture a sitting one, like that of the sitting lion in
front of the Arsenal at Venice. There is a small sitting lion from
Calymnæ, of the same posture, in the Brit. Museum. The Greeks,
when my account was first published in their papers, became fully
alive to the value of this monument, and anxious for its restoration.
There had been a custodian appointed to watch over it, even
when I was there, but he chanced to be absent when we paid our
visit.On the approach to
the city,
says he, is the tomb of the Bœotians
who fell in the battle with Philip. It has no inscription;
but the image of a lion is placed upon
it as an emblem of the spirit of these men. The
inscription has been omitted—I suppose, because
the gods had willed that their fortune should not be
equal to their valor.
So, then, we have here, in
what may fairly be called a dated record, one of the
finest specimens of the sepulchral monuments of the
best age of Greece. It is very much to be regretted
that this splendid figure is not put together and
photographed. Nothing would be more instructive
than a comparison with the finest of modern monuments—Thorwaldsen’s
Lion at Lucerne—the work,
too, of the only modern sculptor who can for one
moment be ranked beside the ancient Greeks. But
the lion of Chæronea now owes its existence to the
accident that no neighboring peasant has in old times
lacked stones for a wall, or for a ditch; and when
Greece awoke to a sense of the preciousness of these
things, it might have been gone, or dashed into useless
fragments.
As we saw it, on a splendid afternoon in June, it
lay in perfect repose and oblivion, the fragments
large enough to tell the contour and the style; in
polyandrion or common
tomb of the dead, which the lion commemorated. They lay in
rows, many of them with broken bones, showing how they had
received their death-wound, and with them were fragments of
broken weapons. Never have we come closer to an ancient battle,
or discovered more affecting records of a great struggle.
These and such like thoughts throng the mind of him who sits beside the solitary tomb; and it may be said in favor of its remoteness and difficulty of access, that in solitude there is at least peace and leisure, and the scattered objects of interest are scanned with affection and with care.
The pilgrim who went of old from Athens to the
shrine of Delphi, to consult the august oracle on
some great difficulty in his own life, or some
great danger to his country, saw before him the
giant Parnassus as his goal, as soon as he reached
the passes of Cithæron. For two or three days he
went across Bœotia with this great landmark before
him, but it was not till he reached Lebadea that he
found himself leaving level roads, and entering
defiles, where great cliffs and narrow glens gave to
his mind a tone of superstition and of awe which
ever dwelt around that wild and dangerous country.
Starting from Lebadea, or, by another road, from
Chæronea, he must go about half-way round Parnassus,
from its east to its south-west aspect; and
this can only be done by threading his way along
torrents and precipices, mounting steep ascents, and
descending into wild glens. This journey among
the Alps of Phocis is perhaps the most beautiful in
all Greece—certainly, with the exception of the
journey from Olympia over Mount Erymanthus,
[Illustration: A Greek Shepherd, Olympia]
The old priests of Delphi, who were the first
systematic road-builders among the Greeks, had
made a careful way from Thebes into Phocis, for
the use of the pilgrims thronging to their shrine.
It appears that, by way of saving the expense of
paving it all, they laid down or macadamized in
some way a double wheel-track or fixed track, upon
which chariots could run with safety; but we hear
from the oldest times of the unpleasantness of two
vehicles meeting on this road, and of the disputes
that took place as to which of them should turn
aside into the deep mud.Œdipus Tyrannus.
These wild mountains do not strike the mind with
the painful feeling of desolation which is produced
by the abandoned plains. At no time can they have
supported a large population, and we may suppose
Our way lay, not directly for Delphi, but for the curious town of Arachova, which is perched on the summit of precipices some 4000 feet or more above the level of the sea. We rode from eight in the morning till the evening twilight to reach this place, and all the day through scenes which gave us each moment some new delight and some new astonishment, but which could only be described by a painter, not by any pages of writing, however poetical or picturesque. It is the misfortune of such descriptions on paper, that the writer alone has the remembered image clear before him; no reader can grasp the detail and frame for himself a faithful picture.
We felt that we were approaching Arachova
when we saw the steep slopes above and below our
path planted with vineyards, and here and there
every
day. I believe this is practically true, though we,
who arrived in the evening and left early next day,
were not so fortunate as to feel the shock ourselves.
But the whole region of Parnassus shows great scars
and wounds from this awful natural scourge.
Arachova is remarkable as being one of the very
few towns of Greece of any note which is not built
upon a celebrated site. Everywhere the modern
Greek town is a mere survival of the old. I remember
but three exceptions—Arachova, Hydra, and
Tripolitza,
We had an excellent opportunity of seeing all this
sort of work, as we found the town in some excitement
at an approaching marriage; and we went to
see the bride, whom we found in a spacious room,
with low wooden rafters, in the company of a large
party of her companions, and surrounded on all sides
by her dowry, which consisted, in eastern fashion,
almost altogether of changes of raiment.
All
round the room these rich woollen rugs lay in perfect
piles, and from the low ceiling hung in great
numbers her future husband’s white petticoats; for
in that country, as everywhere in Greece, the men
wear the petticoats. The company were all dressed
in full costume—white sleeves, embroidered woollen
aprons, gold and silver coins about the neck, and a
bright red loose belt worn low round the figure. To
complete the picture, each girl had in her left hand
a distaff, swathed about with rich, soft, white wool,
from which her right hand and spindle were deftly
spinning thread, as she walked about the room
admiring the trousseau, and joking with us and with
her companions. The beauty of the Arachovite
women is as remarkable as the strength and longevity
of the men, nor do I know any mountaineers
equal to them, except those of some of the valleys
in the Tyrol. But there, as is well known, beauty
is chiefly confined to the men; at Arachova it seemed
We saw, moreover, what they called a Pyrrhic dance, which consisted of a string of people, hand-in-hand, standing in the form of a spiral, and moving rhythmically, while the outside member of the train performed curious and violent gymnastics. The music consisted in the squealing of a horrible clarionette, accompanied by the beating of a large drum. The clarionette-player had a leathern bandage about his mouth, like that which we see in the ancient reliefs and pictures of double-flute-players. According as each principal dancer was fatigued, he passed off from the end of the spiral line, and stuck a silver coin between the cap and forehead of the player. The whole motion was extremely slow throughout the party—the centre of the coil, which is often occupied by little children, hardly moving at all, and paying little attention to the dance.
In general, the Greek music which I heard—dance
music, and occasional shepherds’ songs—was nothing
but a wild and monotonous chant, with two or three
shakes and ornaments on a high note, running down
to a long drone note at the end. They repeat these
appoggiatura. I was told by competent people at
Athens, that all this was not properly Greek, but
Turkish, and that the long slavery of the Greeks
had completely destroyed the traditions of their
ancient music. Though this seemed certainly true
of the music which I heard, I very much doubt that
any ancient feature so general can have completely
disappeared. When there are national songs of a distinctly
Greek character transmitted all through the
Slavish and Turkish periods, it seems odd that they
should be sung altogether to foreign music. Without
more careful investigation I should be slow to
decide upon such a question. Unfortunately, our
specimens of old Greek music are very few, and
probably very insignificant, all the extant works on
music by the ancients being devoted to theoretical
questions, which are very difficult and not very
profitable. To this subject I have devoted a special
discussion in my Social Life in Greece, with what
illustration it is now possible to obtain.
The inhabitants wished us to stay with them some
days, which would have given us an opportunity of
witnessing the wedding ceremony, and also of making
excursions to the snowy tops of Mount Parnassus.
But we had had enough of that sort of amusement
in a climb up Mount Ætna, a short time before, and
the five hours’ toiling on the snow in a thick fog was
We therefore started early in the morning, and kept along the sides of precipices on our way to the oracle of Delphi. It is not wonderful that the Arachovites should be famous for superstitions and legends, and that the inquirers into the remnants of old Greek beliefs in the present day have found their richest harvest in this mountain fastness, where there seems no reason why any belief should ever die out. More especially the faith in the terrible god of the dead, Charos, who represents not only the old Charon, but Pluto also, is here very deep-seated, and many Arachovite songs and ballads speak of his awful and relentless visits. Longevity is so usual, and old age is so hale and green in these Alps, that the death of the young comes home with far greater force and pathos here than in unhealthy or immoral societies, and thus the inroads of Charos are not borne in sullen silence, but lamented with impatient complaints.
At eleven o’clock we came, in the fierce summer
sun, to the ascent into the rocky Pytho,
where
This very possible origin, however, does not distinctly
assert what may certainly be inferred—I
mean the existence of some older and ruder worship,
before the worship of Apollo was here established.
Two arguments make this clear. In the
first place, old legends consistently speak of the
arrival of Apollo here; of his conflict with the
powers of earth, under the form of the dragon
Python; of his having undergone purification for
its murder, and having been formally ceded possession
by its older owners. This distinct allusion
The researches of M. A. Lebègue, at Delos, have given us another instance. He found that the old shrine of Apollo has been made in imitation of a cave, and that in the recess of the shrine, made with large slabs of stone forming a gable over a natural fissure in the rock, there was an ancient, rude, sacred stone, on which were remaining the feet of the statue, which had afterward been added to give dignity to the improved worship. M. Lebègue’s work at Delos has been completed and superseded by M. Homolle.
Homer speaks in the Iliad of the great wealth of
the Pythian shrine; and the Hymn to the Pythian
B. C., though not
produced, was at least sanctioned and promoted, by
the Delphic Oracle. Again, in determining the
worship of other gods and the founding of new
services to great public benefactors, the oracle
[Illustration: The Temple of Apollo, Delphi]
At the same time the treasure-house of the shrine
was the largest and safest of banks, where both individuals
and states might deposit treasure—nay,
even the states seem to have had separate chambers—and
from which they could also borrow money, at
fair interest, in times of war and public distress.
The rock of Delphi was held to be the navel or centre
of the earth’s surface, and certainly in a social
and religious sense this was the case for all the
Greek world. Thus the priests were informed, by
perpetual visitors from all sides, of all the last news—of
the general aspect of politics—of the new developments
of trade—of the latest discoveries in
outlying and barbarous lands—and were accordingly
able, without any genius or supernatural inspiration,
to form their judgments upon wider experience
and better knowledge than anybody else
could command. This advice, which was really
sound and well-considered, was given to people who
took it to be divine, and acted upon it with implicit
faith and zeal. Of course, the result was in general
satisfactory; and so even individuals made use of it
as a sort of high confessional, to which they came
as pilgrims at some important crisis of their life;
and finding by the response that the god seemed to
This great and deserved general reputation was not affected by occasional rumors of bribed responses or of dishonest priestesses. Such things must happen everywhere; but, as Lord Bacon long ago observed, human nature is more affected by affirmatives than negatives—that is to say, a few cases of brilliantly accurate prophecy will outweigh a great number of cases of doubtful advices or even of acknowledged corruption. So the power of the Popes has lasted in some respects undiminished to the present day, and they are still regarded by many as infallible, even though historians have published many dreadful lives of some of them, and branded them as men of worse than average morals.
The greatness and the national importance of the
Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion of the
Dorians down to the Persian War, certainly more
than three centuries; when the part which it took in
the latter struggle gave it a blow from which it
seems never to have recovered. When the invasion
of Xerxes was approaching, the Delphic priests informed
accurately of the immense power of the Persians,
made up their minds that all resistance was
useless, and counselled absolute submission or flight.
According to all human probabilities they were
right, for nothing but a series of blunders could
pos
It is with some sadness that we turn from the splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the cold vapor that intoxicated the priestess, is blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling ruins, or still more completely destroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up and effaced the traces of what they thought a special entrance to hell, where communications had been held with the Evil One.
The three great fountains or springs of the town
are still in existence. The first and most striking
of these bursts out from between the Phædriades—two
shining peaks, which stand up one thousand
feet over Delphi, and so close together as to leave
only a dark and mysterious gorge or fissure, not
twenty feet wide, intervening. The aspect of these
twin peaks, so celebrated by the Greek poets, with
their splendid stream, the Castalian fount, bursting
from between them, is indeed grand and startling.
A great square bath is cut in the rock, just at the
mouth of the gorge; but the earthquake of 1870,
which made such havoc of Arachova, has been busy
here also, and has tumbled a huge block into this
bath, thus covering the old work, as well as several
votive niches cut into the rocky wall. This was the
In the great old days the oracle gave responses
on the seventh of each month, and even then only
when the sacrifices were favorable. If the victims
were not perfectly without blemish, they could not
be offered; if they did not tremble all over when
brought to the altar, the day was thought unpropitious.
The inquirers entered the great temple in festal
dress, with olive garlands and stemmata, or fillets of
wool, led by the
This was done in early days with perfect good
faith. During the decline of religion there were of
course many cases of corruption and of partiality,
B. C.) seized the treasures,
and applied to military purposes some ten thousand
talents, the shrine suffered a blow from which it
never recovered. Still, the quantity of splendid
votive offerings which were not convertible into
ready money made it the most interesting place in
Greece, next to Athens and Olympia, for lovers of
the arts: and the statues, tripods, and other curiosities
described there by Pausanias, give a wonderful
picture of the mighty oracle even in its decay.de Pyth. orac. for details of ciceroni
and visitors in his day.A. D.) a great number to adorn
When the Emperor Julian, the last great champion
of paganism, desired to consult the oracle on his
way to Persia, in 362 A. D., it replied: Tell the
king the fair-wrought dwelling has sunk into the
dust: Phœbus has no longer a shelter or a prophetic
laurel, neither has he a speaking fountain; the fair
water is dried up.
Thus did the shrine confess,
even to the ardent and hopeful Julian, that its power
had passed away, and, as it were by a supreme
effort, declared to him the great truth which he refused
to see—that paganism was gone for ever, and
a new faith had arisen for the nations of the Roman
Empire.
About the year 390, Theodosius took the god at
his word, and closed the oracle finally. The temple—with
its cella of 100 feet—with its Doric and Ionic
pillars—with its splendid sculptures upon the pediments—sank
into decay and ruin. The walls and
porticos tumbled down the precipitous cliffs; the
One or two features are still unchanged. The
three fine springs, to which Delphi doubtless owed
its first selection for human habitation, are still there—Castalia,
of which we have spoken; Cassotis,
which was led artificially into the very shrine of the
god; and Delphussa, which was, I suppose, the
water used for secular purposes by the inhabitants.
The stadium, too, a tiny racecourse high above the
town, in the only place where they could find a
level 150 yards, is still visible; and we see at once
what the importance of games must have been at a
sacred Greek town, when such a thing as a stadium
should be attempted here.
There is yet one more element in the varied greatness of Delphi. It was here that the religious federation of Greece—the Amphictyony of which we hear so often—held its meetings alternately with the meetings at the springs of Thermopylæ. When I stood high up on the stadium at Delphi, the great scene described by the orator Æschines came fresh upon me, when he looked upon the sacred plain of Krissa, and called all the worshippers of the god to clear it of the sacrilegious Amphissians, who had covered it with cattle and growing crops. The plain, he says, is easily surveyed from the place of meeting—a statement which shows that the latter cannot have been in the town of Delphi: for a great shoulder of the mountain effectually hides the whole plain from every part of the town.
The Pylæa, or place of assembly, was, however,
outside, and precisely at the other side of this huge
shoulder, so that what Æschines says is true; but it
is not true, as any ordinary student imagines, that
he was standing in Delphi itself. He was, in fact,
completely out of sight of the town, though not a
mile from it. There is no more common error than
this among our mere book scholars—and I daresay
there are not many who realize the existence of this
When we rode round to the real place we found
his words amply verified. Far below us stretched
the plain from Amphissa to Kirrha, at right angles
with the gorge above which Delphi is situated.
The river-courses of the Delphic springs form, in
fact, a regular zigzag. When they tumble from
their great elevation on the rocks into the valley,
they join the Pleistus, running at right angles toward
the west; when this torrent has reached the plain,
it turns again due south, and flows into the sea at
the Gulf of Kirrha. Thus, looking from Pylæa,
you see the upper part of the plain, and the gorge
to the north-west of it, where Amphissa occupies its
place in a position similar to the mouth of the gorge
of Delphi. The southern rocks of the gorge over
against Delphi shut out the sea and the actual bay;
but a large rich tract, covered with olive-woods, and
medlars, and oleanders, stretches out beneath the
eye—verily a plain worth fighting for, and a possession
still more precious, when it commanded the
approach of pilgrims from the sea; for the harbor
duties and tolls of Kirrha were once a large revenue,
and their loss threatened the oracle with poverty.
This levying of tolls on the pilgrims to Delphi
be
A few hours brought us to the neighborhood of the sea. The most curious feature of this valley, as we saw it, was a long string of camels tied together, and led by a small and shabby donkey. Our mules and horses turned with astonishment to examine these animals, which have survived here only, though introduced by the Turks into many parts of Greece.
The port of Itea is one of the stations at which
the Greek coasting steamers now call, and, accordingly,
the place is growing in importance. If a
day’s delay were allowed, to let tourists ride up to
the old seat of the oracle, and if the service were
better regulated so as to compete in convenience
with the train journey from Patras to Athens, I
suppose no traveller going to Greece would choose
any other route. For he would see all the beautiful
coasts of Acarnania and Ætolia on the one side, and
of Achaia on the other; he could then take Delphi
on his way, and would land again at Corinth. Here
again, a day, or part of a day, should be allowed to
see the splendid Acro-Corinthus, of which more in
another chapter. The traveller might thus reach
Athens with an important part of Greece already
visited, and have more leisure to turn his attention
to the monuments and curiosities of that city and
of Attica. It is worth while to suggest these things,
because most men who go to Greece find, as I did,
that, with some better previous information, they
could have economized both time and money. I
can also advise that the coasting steamer should be
abandoned at Itea, from which the traveller can
easily get horses to Delphi and Arachova, and from
thence to Chæronea, Lebadea, and through Thebes
to Athens. So he would arrive there by a land tour,
which would make him acquainted with all Bœotia.
He might next go by train from Athens to Corinth
But surely, no voyage in Greece can be called complete which does not include a visit to the famous shrine of Delphi, where the wildness and ruggedness of nature naturally suggest the powers of earth and air, that sway our lives unseen—where the quaking soil and the rent rocks speak a strength above the strength of mortal man—and where a great faith, based upon his deepest hopes and fears, gained a moral empire over all the nation, and exercised it for centuries, to the purifying and the ennobling of the Hellenic race. The oracle is long silent, the priestess forgotten, the temple not only ruined, but destroyed; and yet the grand responses of that noble shrine are not forgotten, nor are they dead. For they have contributed their part and added their element to the general advancement of the world, and to the emancipation of man from immorality and superstition into the true liberty of a good and enlightened conscience.
The thousands of visitors, whose ships thronged
the bay of Katakolo every four years in the great
old times, cannot have been fairly impressed with
the beauty of the country at first sight. Most other
approaches to the coast of Greece are far more
striking. For although, on a clear day, the mountains
of Arcadia are plainly visible, and form a fine
background to the view, from the great bar of Erymanthus
on the north, round to the top of Lykæon
far south-west, the foreground has not, and never
had, either the historic interest or the beauty of the
many bays and harbors in other parts of Greece.
Yet I am far from asserting that it is actually wanting
even in this respect. As we saw the bay in a
quiet summer sunset, with placid water reflecting a
sleeping cloud and a few idle sails in its amber glow,
with a wide circle of low hills and tufted shore
bathed in a golden haze, which spread its curtain
of light athwart all the distance, so that the great
snowy comb of Erymanthus alone seemed suspended
by some mystery in the higher blue—the view was
The carriage-way along the coast passes by sand-hills, and sandy fields of vines, which were being tilled when we saw them by kindly but squalid peasants, some of whom lived in wretched huts of skins, enclosed with a rough fence. But these were probably only temporary dwellings, for the thrift and diligence of the southern Greek seems hardly compatible with real penury. Mendicancy, except in the case of little children who do it for the nonce, seems unknown in the Morea.
A dusty ride of two hours, relieved now and then
for a moment by the intense perfume from the
orange blossoms of gardens fenced with mighty
aloes, brought us to the noisy and stirring town of
Pyrgos.
The whole town, like most others in Greece, even
in the Arcadian highlands, is full of half-built and
just finished houses, showing a rapid increase of
prosperity, or perhaps a return of the population
from country life into the towns which have always
been so congenial to the race. But if the latter be
the fact, there yet seems no slackening in the agriculture
of the country, which in the Morea is strikingly
diligent and laborious, reaching up steep hillsides,
and creeping along precipices, winning from
ungrateful nature every inch of niggard soil.
The carriage road from Pyrgos up to Olympia was just finished, and it is now possible to drive all the way from the sea, but we preferred the old method of travelling on horseback to the terrors of a newly-constructed Greek thoroughfare. There is, moreover, in wandering on unpaved thoroughfares, along meadows, through groves and thickets, and across mountains, a charm which no dusty carriage road can ever afford. We soon came upon the banks of the Alpheus, which we followed as our main index, though at times we were high above it, and at times in the meadows at the water-side; at times again mounting some wooded ridge which had barred the way of the stream, and forced it to take a wide circuit from our course, or again crossing the deep cuttings made by rivulets which come down from northern Elis to swell the river from mile to mile.
Our path must have been almost the same as was
followed by the crowds which came from the west to
visit the Olympic games in classical days: they
must have ascended along the windings of the river,
and as they came upon each new amphitheatre of
hills, and each new tributary stream, they may have
felt the impatience which we felt that this was not
the sacred Altis, and that this was not the famous
confluence of the Kladeus. But the season in which
they travelled—the beginning of July—can never
[Illustration: The Banks of the Kladeus]
When we came to the real Olympia the prospect was truly disenchanting. However interesting excavations may be, they are always exceedingly ugly. Instead of grass and flowers, and pure water, we found the classic spot defaced with great mounds of earth, and trodden bare of grass. We found the Kladeus flowing a turbid drain into the larger river. We found hundreds of workmen, and wheel-barrows, and planks, and trenches, instead of solitude and the song of birds. Thus it was that we found the famous temple of Zeus.
This temple was in many respects one of the most
celebrated in Greece, especially on account of the
great image of Zeus, which Phidias himself wrought
for it in gold and ivory, and of which Pausanias has
V. II, sqq.). It
was carried away to Constantinople, and of course
its precious material precluded all chance of its surviving
through centuries of ignorance and bigotry.
The temple itself, to judge from its appearance, was
somewhat older than the days of Phidias, for it is of
that thickset and massive type which we only find
in the earlier Doric temples, and which rather reminds
us of Pæstum than of Athenian remains. It
was built by a local architect, Libon, and of a very
coarse limestone from the neighborhood, which was
covered with stucco, and painted chiefly white, to
judge from the fragments which remain. But it
seems as if the Eleans had done all they could to
add splendor to the building, whenever their funds
permitted. The tiles of the roof were not of burnt
clay, but of Pentelican marble, the well-known and
beautiful invention of the Naxian Byzes. Moreover,
Phidias and a number of his fellow-workers or subordinates
at Athens, as well as other artists, had
been invited to Olympia, to adorn the temple, and to
them we owe the pediments, probably also the
metopes, and many of the statues, with which all
the sacred enclosure around the edifice was literally
thronged. Subsequent generations added to this
splendor: a gilded figure of Victory, with a gold
shield, was set upon the apex of the gable; gilded
pitchers at the extremities; gilded shields were
fastened all along the architraves by Mummius,
But with the fall of paganism and the formal
extinction of the Olympic games (394 A. D.) the
glories of the temple fell into decay. The great
statue in the shrine was carried away to Byzantium;
many of the votive bronzes and marbles which stood
about the sacred grove were transported to Italy;
and at last a terrible earthquake, apparently in the
fifth century, levelled the whole temple almost with
the ground. The action of this extraordinary earthquake
is still plainly to be traced in the now uncovered
ruins. It upheaved the temple from the centre,
throwing the pillars of all the four sides outward,
where most of them lie with their drums separated,
but still complete in all parts, and only requiring
mechanical power to set them up again. Some preliminary
shakes had caused pieces of the pediment
sculptures to fall out of their place, for they were
found at the foot of the temple steps; but the main
shock threw the remainder to a great distance, and
I saw the work of Alkamenes being unearthed more
than twenty-five yards from its proper site.
In spite of this convulsion, the floor of the temple,
with its marble work, and its still more beautiful
mosaic, is still there, and it seemed doubtful to the
Germans whether there is even a crack now to be
found in it. About the ruins there gathered some
Hermes!Niké of
[Illustration: Statue of Niké, by Paeonius]
For even if the restoration were never accomplished, there is enough in the fragments of the figures already recovered to show the genius of both sculptors, but particularly of Alkamenes, the author of the western pediment. This perfectly agrees with the note of Pausanias, who adds, in mentioning this very work, that Alkamenes was considered in his day an artist second only to Phidias.
It was objected to me by learned men on the spot,
that the eastern pediment, being the proper front of
the temple, must have been the more important, and
that Pæonius, as we know from an inscription, boasts
that he obtained the executing of it by competition,
thus proving that he was, at least in this case, preferred
to his rivals. But the decided superiority of
Alkamenes’s design leads me to suppose that the
boast of Pæonius only applies to the eastern pediment,
and that probably the western had been already
assigned to Alkamenes. Nor do I agree with the
view that the eastern pediment must have been
e. g., the Parthenon, the temple at Bassæ,
and in this—the great majority of visitors must
have approached it from the rear, which should
accordingly have been quite the prominent side for
artistic decoration. Let me add that far more action
was permitted in the groups on this side, while over
the entrance the figures were staid and in repose, as
if to harmonize with the awe and silence of the
entering worshippers. Be these things as they may,
the work of Alkamenes is certainly superior to that
which remains to us of Pæonius in the eastern pediment,
and in his figure of winged Victory, which
was, I think, greatly overpraised by the critics who
saw it soon after its discovery.
The composition of the groups in the pediments
and friezes has been described by Pausanias (V. 10,
§§ 6–10) in a passage of great interest, which has
given rise to much controversy. The general
impression of Drs. Hirschfeld and Weil, when I
was at Olympia, was against the accuracy of
Pausanias, whom they considered to have blindly
set down whatever the local cicerones told him.
That of Dr. Purgold was in his favor. The traveller
says, however, that the eastern pediment, in which,
It is worth pausing for a moment upon this disposition,
which was so usual as to be almost conventional
in the pediments sculptured during the best
epochs of Greek art. In the centre, where the field
was very high, and admitted a colossal figure, it was
usual to place the god whose providence guided the
events around him, and this god was represented
calm and without excitement. Then came the
mythical event grouped on both sides; but at the
ends, where the field narrowed to an angle, it was
usual to represent the calmness or impassiveness of
external nature. This was done in Greek sculpture
not by trees and hills, but by the gods who symbolized
them. So thoroughly was nature personified in
Greek art, that its picturesqueness was altogether
postponed to its living conscious sympathy with
man, and thus to a Greek the proper representation
of the rivers of Olympia was no landscape, but the
graceful forms of the river gods—intelligent and
human, yet calm spectators, as nature is wont to be.
The arrangement of the rest of the eastern pediment was evidently quite symmetrical. On Zeus’s right hand was Œnomaus, his wife Sterope, his charioteer Myrtilus sitting before the four horses, and two grooms; on his left, Pelops, Hippodamia, and a like number of horses and attendants. A good many pieces of these figures have been found, sufficient to tempt several art-critics to make conjectural restorations of the pediment, one of which is now set up, I believe, in the museum at Berlin.
The western pediment, of which more, and more
striking, fragments are recovered, is more difficult
to restore, because Pausanias is unfortunately not
nearly so precise in describing it, and because,
moreover, he is suspected of a serious blunder about
the central figure. Contrary to the precedent just
mentioned, he says that this central figure is Pirithous,
whose wife is just being carried off by the
Centaurs, and ought therefore to be in violent excitement.
But there had been found, just before we
arrived at Olympia, a colossal head, of the noblest
conception, which seems certainly to belong to the
pediment sculptures, and which must be the head of
But on the other figures Pausanias is silent; and there were certainly two beautiful mountain or river nymphs at the extremities—lying figures, with a peculiar head-dress of a thick bandage wrapped all round the hair—which are among the most perfect of the figures recovered. It seems also certain that Pirithous must have been somewhere on the pediment; and this would suggest another figure to correspond to him at the other side, for these groups were always symmetrical. In this case Pausanias has omitted four figures at least in his description, and seems to have besides mistaken the largest and most important of all. The Germans cite in proof of these strictures his passing remark on the Metopes, representing the labors of Herakles, on one of which was (he says) Herakles about to relieve Atlas, whereas this slab, which has been found, really represents Herakles carrying the globe, and one of the Hesperidæ assisting him, while Atlas is bringing to him the apple.
This criticism will seem to most ordinary people too minute, and I am rather disposed to think well of Pausanias as an intelligent traveller, though he, of course, made some mistakes.
But since the above words were written sufficient time has elapsed not only to bring the excavations to an end, but to study more carefully the recovered fragments, and offer a calmer judgment as to their merits. On the whole, the strong feeling of the best critics has been one of disappointment. The design of both pediments still seems to me masterly, especially that of Alkamenes, but there can be no doubt that the execution is far below that of the Parthenon marbles. There are some positive faults—inability to reproduce drapery (while the nude parts are very true to nature), and great want of care in other details. It must be urged in answer that the pediments were meant to be seen about forty feet from the ground, and that the painting of the figures must have brought out the features of the drapery neglected in the carving. However true this may be, we can answer at once that the workmen of Phidias did not produce this kind of work. The first quality of the Attic school was that conscientiousness in detail which meets us in every great age of art.
So serious have these difficulties appeared to some,
that they have actually suspected Pausanias of being
misled, and having falsely attributed the work of
Niké, which certainly is the work of Pæonius, that
he was not an artist of the quality of the great Attic
school.History of Greek Sculpture, or the works
of Mr. A. S. Murray, or Mr. Copeland Perry, on the same subject.B. C., or pre-Phidian in time.
Very different is the impression produced by the
greatest and most priceless gem of all the treasures
at Olympia—the Hermes of Praxiteles, which was
actually found on the very spot where it was seen
and described by Pausanias, fallen among the ruins
of the temple which originally protected it. This
exquisite figure, much smaller than life-size, represents
the god Hermes holding the infant Dionysus
on one arm, and showing the child some object now
lost. The right arm and the legs from below the
treasuries
described by Pausanias that in very old times wood
and mud bricks were faced with colored terra cotta,
moulded to the required form, and that this ornament
was still used after stone had replaced bricks
and mud as the material of the walls and architrave.
Olympia. The
complete results of the excavations are now to be
found in the official work issued by the German
Government on the explorations.
Unfortunately, there only remains one very realistic head of a boxer from a large class of monuments at Olympia, that of the portrait statues of victors at the games, of which one was even attributed to Phidias, and several to Alkamenes, in Pausanias’s time. All these were votive statues, set up by victors at the games, or victors in war, and in the early times were not portraits strictly speaking, but ideal figures. Later on they became more realistic, and were made in the likeness of the offerer, a privilege said at one time only to have been accorded to those who had won thrice at Olympia.
The commemoration of gymnastic victories by
these statues seems to have completely supplanted
the older fashion of triumphal odes, which in Pindar’s
day were so prized, and so dearly bought from
lyric poets. When these odes first came to be composed,
sculpture was still struggling with the difficulties
of human expression, and there was no one
But the day came when the poets were avenged
upon the sculptors. Olympia sank under general
decay and sudden catastrophe. Earthquakes and
barbarians ravaged its treasury, and while Pindar
was being preserved in manuscript, until his resurrection
in the days of printing, the invasion of the
Kladeus saved the scanty remains in the Altis from
destruction only by covering them with oblivion.
Now, in the day of its resurrection, pedestal after
pedestal with its votive inscription has been unearthed,
but, except the Niké of Pæonius, no actual
The river Alpheus, which has done such excellent
work in its inundations, does not confine itself
to concealing antiquities, but sometimes discovers
them. Its rapid course eats away the alluvial bank
which the waters have deposited ages ago, and thus
encroaches upon old tombs, from which various relics
are washed down in its turbid stream. The famous
helmet dedicated by Hiero, son of Deinomenes, was
discovered in the river in this way; and there is
also in the Ministry of Public Instruction a large
circular band of bronze, riveted together where the
ends meet, with very archaic zigzag and linear patterns,
which was found in the same way some twenty
years ago, and which seems to me of great interest,
as exhibiting a kind of workmanship akin to the
decorations in the Schliemann treasure of Mycenæ.
There is also a rude red earthen pot in the Turkish
house on the Acropolis at Athens, which is decorated
with the same kind of lines. It is very important
to point out these resemblances to travellers,
for there is such endless detail in Greek antiquities,
and so little has yet been classified, that every observation
may be of use to future students, even
though it may merely serve as a hint for closer
research.
The Stadium and Hippodrome, which lie farther
away from the river, and right under the conical
These games were not at all what most people imagine them to be. I will, therefore, delay the reader with some details concerning this most interesting side of old Greek life.
The establishment of games at Olympia was
assigned by the poets to mythical ages, and not
only is there a book of the Iliad devoted to funeral
games, but in Pindar’s eleventh Olympic Ode this
particular establishment is made coeval with the
labors of Herakles. Whether such evidence is
indeed conclusive may fairly be doubted. The
twenty-third book of the Iliad, which shows traces
of being a later portion of the poem, describes contests
widely differing from those at Olympia, and
the mythical founders enumerated by Pausanias
(v. 7) are so various and inconsistent that we can
see how obscure the question appeared to Greek
archæologists, even did we not find at the end of
the enumeration the following significant hint:—But
after Oxylus—for Oxylus, too, established
the contest—after his reign it fell out of use till
the Olympiad of Iphitus,
that is to say, till the
first Ol., which is dated 776 B. C., Oxylus being
the companion of the Herakleidæ, who obtained
Elis for his portion. Pausanias adds that when
gradually came to remember
them, and whenever they recollected any special
competition they added it to the games. This is
the excellent man’s theory to account for the gradual
addition of long races, of wrestling, discus
throwing, boxing, and chariot racing, to the original
sprint race of about 200 yards, which was at
first the only known competition.
[Illustration: Kronion Hill, Olympia]
The facts seem to me rather to point to the late
growth of games in Greece, which may possibly
have begun as a local feast at Olympia in the eighth
century, but which only rose to importance during
the reign of the despots throughout Greece, when
the aristocrats were prevented from murdering one
another, and compelled to adopt more peaceful pursuits.B. C. But the reader who is
curious on the subject may either consult my article in the Journal
of Hellenic Studies for 1881, or the appendix to my Problems in
Greek History (1892). He will then see that there is no direct
evidence whatever for any early list, and that the antiquarian
Pausanias, in his hunt after ancient monuments at Olympia,
could find nothing earlier than the so-called 33d Olympiad. Plutarch,
moreover, in the opening of his Life of Numa, tells us
plainly that the list was the manufacture of Hippias, and based
on no trustworthy evidence. To accept the list, therefore, in the face
of these objections, is to exhibit culpable credulity.pentathlon,
when they choose, did not countenance the
fiercer competitions, as engendering bad feeling between
rivals, and, what was worse, compelling a
man to declare himself vanquished, and feel disgraced.
The Athenians also, as soon as the sophists
reformed education, began to rate intellectual wrestling
as far superior to any bodily exercise. Thus
the supremacy of Athens and Sparta over the other
Two circumstances only tended strongly to keep them up. In the first place, musical competitions (which had always been a part of the Pythian) and poetical rivalries were added to the sports, which were also made the occasion of mercantile business, of social meetings, and not seldom of political agitation. The wise responses of the Delphic oracle were not a little indebted to the information gathered from all parts of the Hellenic world at the games, some important celebration of which, whether at Nemea, the Isthmus, or the greater meetings, occurred every year.
Secondly, if the art of poetry soon devoted itself
to the higher objects of tragedy, and created for
itself the conflict which it celebrated, the art of
sculpture became so closely connected with athletics
as to give them an æsthetic importance of the highest
kind all through Greek history. The ancient
These things kept alive the athletic meetings in
Greece, and even preserved for them some celebrity.
The sacred truce proclaimed during the national
games was of inestimable convenience in times of
long and bitter hostilities, and doubtless enabled
friends to meet who had else been separated for
life.Greek World under Roman Sway, p. 261.
In the days of Solon things had been very different.
He appointed a reward of 500 drachmas,
then a very large sum, for victors at Olympia, 100
for those at the Isthmus, and for the others in proportion.
Pindar sings as if, to the aristocrats of Ægina,
or the tyrants of Sicily, no higher earthly prizes were
attainable. But we must not transfer these evidences—the
habit or the echo of the sixth century B. C.—to
the days of political and educated Greece, when
public opinion altered very considerably on the advantage
and value of physical competition. This
being once understood, I will proceed to a short
analysis of the sports, and will attempt to criticise
the methods adopted by the old Greeks to obtain the
highest physical condition, the nature of the competitions
they established, and the results which they
appear to have attained.
The Greeks of Europe seem always to have been
aware that physical exercise was of the greatest importance
for health, and consequently for mental
vigor, and the earliest notices we have of education
include careful bodily training. Apart from the
games of children, which were much the same as
ours, there was not only orchestic or rhythmical dancing
in graceful figures, in which girls took part, and
which corresponded to what are now vulgarly called
callisthenics, but also gymnastics, in which boys were
palæstras,
which were kept for the benefit of boys as a matter
of private speculation in Athens, and probably in
other towns, regular gymnasia were established by
the civic authorities, and put under strict supervision
as state institutions to prevent either idleness or immorality.in Timarchum
may possibly be spurious, since we know from other allusions that
they were not enforced. But more probably they existed as a
dead letter, which could be revived if occasion required.
This sort of physical training I conceive to have
grown up with the growth of towns, and with the
abandonment of hunting and marauding, owing to
the increase of culture. Among the aristocrats of
epical days, as well as among the Spartans, who
lived a village life, surrounded by forest and mountain,
I presume field sports must have been quite the
leading amusement; nor ought competitions in a
gymnasium to be compared for one moment to this
far higher and more varied recreation. The contrast
still subsists among us, and our fox-hunting,
salmon-fishing, grouse-shooting country gentleman
has the same inestimable advantage over the city
gymnastic and agonistic, but may
use the details preserved about the latter to tell us
how the Greeks practised the former.
There is no doubt that the pursuit of high muscular
condition was early associated with that of
health, and that hygiene and physical training were
soon discovered to be closely allied. Thus Herodicus,
a trainer, who was also an invalid, was said to
It would be very interesting to know in detail
what rules the Greeks prescribed for this purpose.
Pausanias tells us (vi. 7, 9) that a certain Dromeus,
who won ten victories in long races at various
games (about Ol. 74, 485 B. C.), was the first who
thought of eating meat in his training, for that up
to that time the diet of athletes had been cheese
from wicker baskets (
The suspicion that, in consequence, Greek athletic
performances were not in speed greater than, if even
equal to, our own, is however hard to verify, as we
are without any information as to the time in which
their running feats were performed. They had no
watches, or nice measures of short moments of time,
and always ran races merely to see who would win,
not to see in how short a time a given distance
could be done. Nevertheless, as the course was
over soft sand, and as the vases picture them rushing
along in spread-eagle fashion, with their arms
like the sails of a windmill—in order to aid the
motion of their bodies, as the Germans explain (after
Philostratos)—nay, as we even hear of their having
started shouting, if we can believe such a thing,
their time performances in running must have been
decidedly poor.
In the Olympic games the running, which had
originally been the only competition, always came
first. The distance was once up the course, and
seems to have been about 200 yards. After the
year 720 B. C. (?) races of double the course, and
long races of about 3000 yards were added;
There were short races for boys at Olympia of
half the course. Eighteen years was beyond the
limit of age for competing, as a story in Pausanias
implies, and a boy who won at the age of twelve
was thought wonderfully young. The same authority
tells us of a man who won the sprint race at four
successive meetings, thus keeping up his pace for
sixteen years—a remarkable case. There seems to
have been no second prize in any of the historical
games, a natural consequence of the abolition of
material rewards.Know ye not,
says St. Paul, that all run, and
—a quite different condition of things from
that of the Iliad, where every competitor, like the boys at a private
school, comes off with a prize.one receiveth
the crown?
The next event was the wrestling match, which is
out of fashion at our prize meetings, though still a
favorite sport in many country districts. There is a
very ample terminology for the various tricks and
devices in this contest, and they have been explained
with much absurdity by scholiasts, both ancient and
modern. It seems that it was not always enough to
throw your adversary,pankration, from which it can have differed but little, if it
indeed subsisted permanently as a distinct form of wrestling.pankration.
When the wrestling was over there followed the
throwing of the discus and the dart, and the long
leap, but in what order is uncertain; for I cannot
B. C.), and are not informed in what order each
was appointed.
[Illustration: Entrance to the Stadium, Olympia]
The discus-throwing was mainly to test distance,
but the dart-throwing to strike a mark. The discus
was either of stone or of metal, and was very heavy.
I infer from the attitude of Myron’s discobolus, as
seen in our copies, that it was thrown without a preliminary
run, and rather hurled standing. This contest
is to be compared with our hammer-throwing,
or putting of weights. We are, however, without
any accurate information either as to the average
weight of the discus, or the average distance which
a good man could throw it. There is, indeed, one
ancient specimen extant, which was found at Ægina,
The question of the long jump is more interesting,
as it still forms a part of our contests. It is not certain
whether the old Greeks practised the running jump,
or the high jump, for we never hear of a preliminary
start, or of any difficulty about breaking trig,
as
people now call it. Furthermore, an extant epigram
on a celebrated athlete, Phayllus of Kroton, asserts
that he jumped clean over the prepared ground (which
The length of Phayllus’s leap would be even more
incredible if the competition was in a standing jump,
and yet the figures of athletes on vases which I have
seen strongly favor this supposition. They are represented
not as running, but as standing and swinging
the dumb-bells or
We hear of no vaulting or jumping with a pole,
There remain the two severest and most objectionable
sports—boxing and the pankration. The
former came first (Ol. 23), the other test of strength
not being admitted till Ol. 33 (650 B. C.). But one
special occasion is mentioned when a champion, who
was competing in both, persuaded the judges to
change the order, that he might not have to contend
against a specially famous antagonist when already
wounded and bruised. For boxing was, even from
Homeric times, a very dangerous and bloody amusement,
in which the vanquished were always severely
punished. The Greeks were not content with naked
fists, but always used a special apparatus, called
sharp thongs
on the wrist,
and probably increased the weight of
the instrument. The successful boxer in the Iliad
The principle of increasing the weight of the fist
as much as possible is only to be explained by the
habit of dealing swinging or downward strokes, and
is incompatible with the true method of striking
straight home quickly, and giving weight to the
stroke by sending the whole body with it. In Vergil’s
description a boxer is even described getting up on
tip-toe to strike his adversary on the top of the head—a
ridiculous manœuvre, which must make his instant
ruin certain, if his opponent knew the first
elements of the art. That this downward stroke
was used appears also from the anecdote in Pausanias,
where a father seeing his son, who was
ploughing, drive in the share which had fallen out
with strokes of his fist, without a hammer, immediately
entered him for the boys’ boxing match at
Olympia. The lad got roughly handled from want
of skill, and seemed likely to lose, when the father
Boy, give him the plough stroke!
and
so encouraged him that he forthwith knocked his
adversary out of time.
It is almost conclusive as to the swinging stroke
that throughout antiquity a boxer was not known as
a man with his nose broken, but as a man with his
ears crushed. Vergil even speaks of their receiving
blows on the back. Against all this there are only
two pieces of evidence—one of them incredible—in
favor of the straight home stroke. In the fight
between Pollux and Amykos, described by Theocritus
(Idyll 22), Pollux strikes his man on the left
temple, and
follows up the stroke from the shoulder.
But this
is doubtful. The other is the story of Pausanias
(viii. 40, 3), that when Kreugas and Damoxenos
boxed till evening, and neither could hit the other,
they at last agreed to receive stroke about, and after
Kreugas had dealt Damoxenos one on the head, the
latter told him to hold up his hand,one blow in turn, by striking him with five
sep
Little need be added about the pankration, which combined boxing and wrestling, and permitted every sort of physical violence except biting. In this contest a mere fall did not end the affair, as might happen in wrestling, but the conflict was always continued on the ground, and often ended in one of the combatants being actually choked, or having his fingers and toes broken. One man, Arrachion, at the last gasp, broke his adversary’s toe, and made him give in, at the moment he was himself dying of strangulation. Such contests were not to the credit either of the humanity or of the good taste of the Greeks, and would not be tolerated even in the lowest of our prize rings.
I will conclude this sketch by giving some account of the general management of the prize meetings.
There was no want of excitement and of circumstance
about them. In the case of the four great
meetings there was even a public truce proclaimed,
and the competitors and visitors were guaranteed
a safe journey to visit them and to return to their
homes. The umpires at the Olympic games were
chosen ten months before at Elis, and seem to have
numbered one for each clan, varying through Greek
history from two to twelve, but finally fixed at ten.
When the great day came, they sat in purple
robes in the semicircular end of the racecourse—a
piece of splendor which the modern Greeks imitate
by dressing the judges of the new Olympic games
in full evening dress and white kid gloves. The
effect even now with neatly-clothed candidates is
striking enough; what must it have been when
a row of judges in purple looked on solemnly at
a pair of men dressed in oil and dust—i. e., in mud—wrestling
or rolling upon the ground? The crowd
cheered and shouted as it now does. Pausanias
mentions a number of cases where competitors were
disqualified for unfairness, and in most of them the
man’s city took up the quarrel, which became quite
a public matter; but at the games the decision was
final, nor do we hear of a case where it was afterward
reversed.B. C.), when the Thessalian Eupolos was convicted of
bribing the three boxers opposed to him, one of whom had won at
the previous meeting. Such crimes were commemorated by bronze
figures of Zeus (called
There is yet one unpleasant feature to be noted,
Social
Greece, 6th edition, p. 96.
The general conclusion to which all these details
lead us is this, that with all the care and with all the
pomp expended on Greek athletic meetings, despite
the exaggerated fame attained by victors, and the
solid rewards both of money and of privileges accorded
them by their grateful country, the results attained
physically seem to have been inferior to those of
English athletes. There was, moreover, an element
of brutality in them, which is very shocking to modern
notions: and not all the ideal splendor of Pindar’s
praises, or of Pythagoras’s art, can raise the Greek
pankratiast as an athlete much above the level of
a modern prize-fighter. But, nevertheless, by the
aid of their monumental statues, their splendid lyric
poetry, and the many literary and musical contests
which were combined with the gymnastic, the Greeks
contrived, as usual, to raise very common things to
For common they were, and very human, in the
strictest sense. Dry-as-dust scholars would have
us believe that the odes of Pindar give a complete
picture of these games; as if all the booths about
the course had not been filled with idlers, pleasure-mongers,
and the scum of Greek society! Tumbling,
thimble-rigging, and fortune-telling, along with
love-making and trading, made Olympia a scene
not unlike the Derby. When the drinking parties
of young men began in the evening, there may even
have been a soupçon of Donnybrook Fair about it,
but that the committee of management were probably
strict in their discipline. From the Isthmian
games the successful athletes, with their training
over, retired, as most athletes do, to the relaxation
afforded by city amusements. One can imagine
how amply Corinth provided for the outburst of
liberty after the long and arduous subjection of
physical training.
But all these things are perhaps justly forgotten,
and it is ungrateful to revive them from oblivion.
The dust and dross of human conflict, the blood and
the gall, the pain and the revenge—all this was laid
aside like the athlete’s dress, and could not hide the
glory of his naked strength and his iron endurance.
The idleness and vanity of human admiration have
vanished with the motley crowd, and have left us
When we left Olympia, and began to ascend the course of the Alpheus, the valley narrowed to the broad bed of the stream. The way leads now along the shady slopes high over the river, now down in the sandy flats left bare in the summer season. There are curious zones of vegetation distinctly marked along the course of the valley. On the river bank, and in the little islands formed by the stream, are laurels, myrtles, and great plane-trees. On the steep and rocky slopes are thick coverts of mastich, arbutus, dwarf-holly, and other evergreens which love to clasp the rocks with their roots; and they are all knit together by great creeping plants, the wild vine, the convolvulus, and many that are new and nameless to the northern stranger. On the heights, rearing their great tops against the sky, are huge pine-trees, isolated and still tattered with the winter storms.
Ces adieux à l’Elide,
adds M. Beulé, laissent
[Illustration: The Valley of the Alpheus]
Travellers going from Olympia northward either
go round by carriage through Elis to Patras—a drive
of two days—or by Kalavryta to Megaspilion, and
thence to Vostitza, thus avoiding the great Alps of
Olonos (as Erymanthus is now called) and Chelmos,
which are among the highest and most picturesque
in Greece. After my last visit to Olympia (1884)
I was so tantalized by the perpetual view of the
snowy crest of Olonos, that I determined to attempt
a new route, not known to any of the guide-books,Greece.
So we started on a beautiful spring morning, up
the valley of the Kladeos, with all the trees bursting
into leaf and blossom, and the birds singing their
hymns of delight. The way was wooded, and led
We spent at least two hours in riding through this
forest, and then we rose higher and higher, passing
along the upper edge of deep glens, with rushing
streams far beneath us. The most beautiful point
was one from which we looked down a vast straight
We were much tempted to turn up another tortuous
glen to the hidden nest of Divri, where the
Greeks found refuge from Turkish prosecution in
the great war—a place so concealed, and so difficult
of access, that an armed force has never penetrated
there. But the uncertainties of our route were too
many to admit of these episodes, so we hurried on
to reach the Kahn of Tripotamo in the evening—a
resting-place which suggested to us strongly the inn
where St. John is reported to have slept in the
apocryphal Acts of his life. Being very tired with
preaching and travelling, he found it so impossible
to share the room with the bugs, that he besought
them in touching language to allow him to sleep;
practically in virtue of his apostolic authority, he
ordered them out of the house. They all obeyed,
but when in the morning the apostle and his companions
found them waiting patiently outside the
door, he was so moved by their consideration for
Nor were the bugs perhaps the worst. Being awakened by a crunching noise in the night, I perceived that a party of cats had come in to finish our supper for us, and when startled by a flying boot, they made our beds and bodies the stepping stones for a leap to the rafters, and out through a large hole in the roof. By and by I was aroused by the splashing of cold water in my face, and found that a heavy shower had come on, and was pouring through the cats’ passage. So I put up my umbrella in bed till the shower was over—the only time I felt rain during the whole of that voyage. I notice that Miss Agnes Smith, who travelled through these parts in May, 1883, and had very similar experiences at Tripotamo, was wet through almost every day. We did not see more than two showers, and were moreover so fortunate as to have perfectly calm days whenever we were crossing high passes, though in general the breeze was so strong as to be almost stormy in the valleys.
Next morning we followed the river up to the
neighboring site of Psophis, so picturesquely described
by Polybius in his account of Philip V., and
his campaigns in Elis and Triphylia.cul-de-sac. Perpendicular walls of rock
surrounded us on all sides except where we had
entered by constantly fording the stream, or skirting
along its edge. Was it possible that the curiosity of
our fellow-traveller had betrayed him into leading us
up this valley to the village whither he himself was
bound? We sought anxiously for the answer, when
he showed us a narrow strip of dark pine-trees coming
down from above, in form like a little torrent, and
so reaching with a narrow thread of green to the
head of the valley. This was our pass, the pine-trees
with their roots and stems made a zigzag path
up the almost perpendicular wall possible, and so we
When we had reached the top we found ourselves on a narrow saddle, with snowy heights close to us on both sides, the highest ridge of Olonos facing us a few miles away, and a great pine forest reaching down on the northern side, whither our descent was to lead us. About us were still great patches of snow, and in them were blowing the crocus and the cyclamen, with deep blue scilla. Far away to the south reached, in a great panorama, the mountains of Arcadia, and even beyond them the highest tops of Messene and Laconia were plainly visible. The air was clear, the day was perfectly fine and calm. To the north the chain of Erymanthus still hid from us the far distance. For a long time, while our muleteers slept and the mules and ponies rested, we sat wondering at the great view. The barometer indicated that we were at a height of about 5500 feet. The freshness and purity of the atmosphere was such that no thought of hunger and fatigue could mar our perfect enjoyment. In the evening, descending through gloomy pines and dazzling snow, we reached the village of Hagios Vlasos, where the song of countless nightingales beguiled the hours of the night, for here too sleep was not easily obtained.
The journey from this point to Patras, which we accomplished in twelve hours, is not so interesting, and the traveller who tries it now had better telegraph for a carriage to meet him as far as possible on the way. By this time a good road is finished for many miles, and the tedium and heat of the plain, as you approach Patras, are very trying. But with this help, I think no journey in all Greece so well worth attempting, and of course it can be accomplished in either direction.
Patras is indeed an excellent place for a starting-point.
Apart from the route just described, you can
go by boat to Vostitza, and thence to Megaspilion.
There are, moreover, splendid alpine ascents to be
made for those who like such work, to the summits
of Chelmos and Olonos (Erymanthus), and this is
best done from Patras. Moreover, Patras is itself a
most lovely place, commanding a noble view of the
coast and mountains of Ætolia across the narrow
fiord, as well as of the Ionian islands to the N. W.
Right opposite is the ever-interesting site of Missolonghi.
Last, and perhaps not least, there is at
Patras a most respectable inn, indeed I should call
it a hotel,Guide Joanne, which neglects to give such
information. The house to which I allude in the text is the
Hotel S. George.
There is no name in Greece which raises in the
mind of the ordinary reader more pleasing and more
definite ideas than the name Arcadia. It has become
indissolubly connected with the charms of pastoral
ease and rural simplicity. The sound of the
shepherd’s pipe and the maiden’s laughter, the rustling
of shady trees, the murmuring of gentle fountains,
the bleating of lambs and the lowing of oxen—these
are the images of peace and plenty which
the poets have gathered about that ideal retreat.
There are none more historically false, more unfounded
in the real nature and aspect of the country,
and more opposed to the sentiment of the ancients.
Rugged mountains and gloomy defiles, a
harsh and wintry climate, a poor and barren soil,
tilled with infinite patience; a home that exiled its
children to seek bread at the risk of their blood, a
climate more opposed to intelligence and to culture
than even Bœotian fogs, a safe retreat of bears and
wolves—this is the Arcadia of old Greek history.
Politically it has no weight whatever till the days
I must remind the reader that rural beauty among the ancients, as well as among the Renaissance visions of an imaginary Arcadia as a rustic paradise, by no means included the wild picturesqueness which we admire in beetling cliffs and raging torrents. These were inhospitable and savage to the Greeks. It was the gentle slope, the rich pasture, the placid river framed in deep foliage—it was, in fact, landscape-scenery like the valleys of the Thames, or about the gray abbeys of Yorkshire, which satisfied their notion of perfect landscape; and in this the men of the Renaissance were perfectly agreed with them.
How, then, did the false notion of our Arcadia
It appears that from the oldest days the worship
of Pan had its home in Arcadia, particularly about
Mount Mænalus, and that it was already ancient
when it was brought to Athens at the time of the
Persian Wars. The extant Hymn to Pan, among
the Homeric Hymns, which may have been composed
shortly after that date, is very remarkable
for its idyllic and picturesque tone, and shows that
with this worship of Pan were early associated those
trains of nymphs and rustic gods, with their piping
and dance, which inspired Praxiteles’s inimitable
Faun. These images are even transferred by Euripides
to the Acropolis, where he describes the
daughters of Aglauros dancing on the sward, while
Pan is playing his pipe in the grotto underneath
( The following extract from the first prose piece of the book
will show how absolutely imaginary is his Arcadia, with its impossible
combination of trees, and its absence of winter:—Ion, vv. 492, sqq.). Such facts seem to show a
gentle and poetical element in the stern and gloomy
mountaineers, who lived, like the Swiss of our day,
in a perpetual struggle with nature, and were all
their lives harassed with toil and saddened with
thankless fatigue. This conclusion is sustained by
the evidence of a far later witness, Polybius, who
Daphnis and Chloe, are particularly
associated with the voluptuous Lesbos, Vergil, in
several of his Eclogues, makes allusion to the musical
talent of Arcadian shepherds, and in his tenth
brings the unhappy Gallus into direct relation to
Arcadia in connection with the worship of Pan on
Mænalus. But this prominent feature in Vergil—borrowed,
I suppose, from some Greek poet, though
I know not from whom—bore no immediate fruit.
His Roman imitators, Calpurnius and Nemesianus,
make no mention of Arcadia, and if they had, their
works were not unearthed till the year 1534, when
the poetical Arcadia had been already, as I shall
show, created. There seems no hint of the idea in
early Italian poetry;Eclogues of Petrarch are modelled upon those of Vergil
to the exclusion of the most characteristic features borrowed by
the latter from Theocritus.Arcadia,Giace nella sommità di Partenio, non umile monte della pastorale
Arcadia, un dilettevole piano, di ampiezza non molto spazioso,
peroche il sito del luogo non consente, ma di minuta e
verdissima erbetta sì ripieno, che, se le lascive pecorelle con gli
avidi morsi non vi pasceresso, vi si potrebbe d’ogni tempo ritrovare
verdura. Ove, se io non m’inganno, son forse dodici o quindici
alberi di tanto strana ed eccessiva bellezza, che chiunque le vedesse,
giudicherebbe che la maestra natura vi si fosse con sommo
diletto studiata in formarli. Li quali alquanto distanti, ed in
ordine non artificioso disposti, con la loro rarità la naturale bellezza
del luogo oltra misura annobiliscono. Quivi senza nodo
veruno si vede il dritissimo abete, nato a sostenere i pericoli del
mare; e con più aperti rami la robusta quercia, e l’alto frassino,
e lo amenissimo platano vi si distendano, con le loro ombre non
picciola parte del bello e copioso prato occupando; ed evvi con
più breve fronda l’albero, di che Ercole coronare si solea, nel cui
pedale le misere figliuole di Climene furono trasformate: ed in un
de’ lati si scerne il noderoso castagno, il fronzuto bosco, e con puntate
foglie lo eccelso pino carico di durissimi frutti; nell’ altro
l’ombroso faggio, la incorruttibile tiglia, il fragile tamarisco, insieme
con la orientale palma, dolci ed onorato premio dei vincitori.
Ma fra tutti nel mezzo, presso un chiaro fonte, sorge verso
il cielo un dritto cipresso,
etc., etc. The work is, moreover, full
of direct imitations of Vergil, not, I fancy, of Theocritus also, as
the Italian commentators suppose, for that poet was not adequately
printed till 1495, which must have been very near the date of the
actual composition of the Arcadia.Arcadia of
Sannazaro went through sixty editions during the
century, and so this single book created that imaginary
home of innocence and grace which has ever
since been attached to the name. Its occurrence
henceforward is so frequent as to require no further
illustration in this place.
But let us turn from this poetical and imaginary
country to the real land—from Arcádia to Arcadía,
as it is called by the real inhabitants. As everybody
knows, this Arcadia is the alpine centre of the
Morea, bristling with mountain chains, which reach
their highest points in the great bar of Erymanthus,
to the N. W., in the lonely peak of Cyllene hoar,
to the N. E., in the less conspicuous, but far more
sacred Lykæon, to the S. W., and finally, in the
serShepherd of
Hermas, describing a scene of twelve mountains of varied and contrasted
aspect, though intended for an allegorical purpose, is really
faithful to nature, and suggests that the author knew something of
the country he describes.
The passage from Elis into Arcadia is nowhere
marked by any natural boundary. You ride up the
valley of the Alpheus, crossing constantly the
We experienced in this place some of the rudeness
of Greek travel. As the party was too large
to be accommodated in a private house, we sought
the shelter of a
The gentleman to whom I appealed in this case
did all he could to save us from starvation. He
On looking out a very curious scene presented
itself. All the little children were coming in slow
procession, each with a candle in its hand, and shouting
Kyrie Eleison at the top of its voice. After the
children came the women and the older men (I fancy
many of the younger men were absent), also with
candles, and in the midst a sort of small bier, with
an image of the dead Christ laid out upon it, decked
with tinsel and flowers, and surrounded with lights.
Along with it came priests in their robes, singing in
gruff bass some sort of Litany. The whole procession
adjourned to the church of the town, where the
women went to a separate gallery, the men gathered
We rose in the morning eager to start on our
three hours’ ride to Bassæ, where Ictinus had built
his famous but inaccessible temple to Apollo the
Helper. The temple is very usually called the
temple of Phigalía, and its friezes are called Phigalian,
I think, in the British Museum. This is so
far true that it was built for and managed by the
people of Phigalía. But the town was a considerable
distance off,—according to Pausanias forty
stadia, or about five miles,—and he tells us they
built the temple at a place called Bassæ (the glades),
near the summit of Mount Kotilion. Accordingly,
The morning, as is not unusual in these Alps, was
lowering and gloomy, and as we and our patient
mules climbed up a steep ascent out of the town,
the rain began to fall in great threatening drops.
But we would not be daunted. The way led among
gaunt and naked mountain sides, and often up the
bed of winter torrents. The lateness of the spring,
for the snow was now hardly gone, added to the
gloom; the summer shrubs and the summer grass
were not yet green, and the country retained most
of its wintry bleakness. Now and then there met
us in the solitude a shepherd coming from the mountains,
covered in his white woollen cowl, and with
a lamb of the same soft dull color upon his shoulders.
It was the day of preparation for the Easter feast,
and the lamb was being brought by this picturesque
shepherd, not to the fold, but to the slaughter. Yet
there was a strange and fascinating suggestion in the
serious face surrounded by its symphony of white,
in the wilderness around, in the helpless patience of
the animal, all framed in a background of gray mist,
and dripping with abundant rain. As we wound our
way through the mountains we came to glens of
richer color and friendlier aspect. The sound of
merry boys and baying dogs reached up to us from
below as we skirted far up along the steep sides,
still seeking a higher and higher level. Here the
At last we attained a weird country, in which the
ground was bare, save where some sheltered and
sunny spot showed bunches of very tall violets,
hanging over in tufts, rare purple anemones, and
here and there a great full iris; yet these patches
were so exceptional as to make a strong contrast
with the brown soil. But the main features were
single oak-trees with pollarded tops and gnarled
branches, which stood about all over these lofty
slopes, and gave them a melancholy and dilapidated
aspect. They showed no mark of spring, no shoot
or budding leaf, but the russet brown rags of last
year’s clothing hung here and there upon the
branches. These wintry signs, the gloomy mist,
and the insisting rain gave us the feeling of chill
October. And yet the weird oaks, with their
branches tortured as it were by storm and frost—these
crippled limbs, which looked as if the pains of
age and disease had laid hold of the sad tenants of
this alpine desert—were colored with their own
peculiar loveliness. All the stems were clothed
with delicate silver-gray lichen, save where great
patches of velvety, pale green moss spread a warm
mantle about them. This beautiful contrast of gray
and yellow-green may be seen upon many of our
At last we crossed a long flat summit, and began to descend, when we presently came upon the temple from the north, facing us on a lower part of the lofty ridge. As we approached, the mist began to clear away, and the sun shone out upon the scene, while the clouds rolled back toward the east, and gradually disclosed to us the splendid prospect which the sanctuary commands. All the southern Peloponnesus lay before us. We could see the western sea, and the gulf of Koron to the south; but the long ridge of Taygetus and the mountains of Malea hid from us the eastern seas. The rich slopes of Messene, and the rugged highlands of northern Laconia and of Arcadia, filled up the nearer view. There still remained here and there a cloud which made a blot in the picture, and marred the completeness of the landscape.
Nothing can be stranger than the remains of a
beautiful temple in this alpine solitude. Greek life
It was reputed in Pausanias’s day the most beautiful
temple in Peloponnesus, next to that of Athene
Alea at Tegea. Even its roof was of marble tiles,
and the cutting of the limestone soffits of the ceiling
is still so sharp and clear, that specimens have been
brought to Athens, as the most perfect of the kind.
The friezes, discovered years ago (1812), and quite
close to the surface, by Mr. Cockerell and his friends,
were carried away, and are now one of the greatest
ornaments of the British Museum. Any one who
desires to know every detail of the building, and see
its general effect when restored, must consult Cockerell’s
elaborate work on this and the temple of
Ægina. It affords many problems to the architect.
Each of the pillars within the cella was engaged or
skied
into
a place not worthy of them. Any one who will look
up at the remaining band on the west front of the
Parthenon from the foot of the pillars beneath will,
I think, agree with me. At Heræon (cf. p. 304) found at Olympia. This seems to me a
very happy solution of the difficulties, and shows us Ictinus in a
new light. Another specimen of his art, with unexpected features,
may be the newly unearthed Hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis,
already described, if indeed this be his work, and not a late copy
of it.
The ruin, as we saw it, was very striking and unlike any other we had visited in Greece. It is built of the limestone which crops up all over the mountain plateau on which it stands; and, as the sun shone upon it after recent rain, was of a delicate bluish-gray color, so like the surface of the ground in tone that it almost seemed to have grown out of the rock, as its natural product. The pillars are indeed by no means monoliths, but set together of short drums, of which the inner row are but the rounded ends of long blocks which reach back to the cella wall. But as the grain of the stone runs across the pillars they have become curiously wrinkled with age, so that the artificial joinings are lost among the wavy transverse lines, which make us imagine the pillars sunk with years and fatigue, and weary of standing in this wild and gloomy solitude. There is a great oak-tree, such as I have already described, close beside the temple, and the coloring of its stem forms a curious contrast to the no less beautiful shading of the time-worn pillars. Their ground being a pale bluish-gray, the lichens which invade the stone have varied the fluted surface with silver, with bright orange, and still more with a delicate rose madder. Even under a mid-day sun these rich colors were very wonderful, but what must they be at sunset?
There is something touching in the unconscious
efforts of Nature to fill up the breaks and heal the
The way from Andritzena to Megalopolis leads
down from the rugged frontiers of Arcadia and
Messene, till we reach the fine rolling plain which
has Karytena at its northern, and Megalopolis near
[Illustration: Music]
The way was at first steep and difficult—we were
still in the land of the violet and primrose. But after
an hour’s ride we came into a forest which already
showed summer signs; and here we found again the
anemone, the purple and white cistus, among shrubs
of mastich and arbutus. Here, too, we found the
cyclamen, which is such a favorite in the green-houses
and gardens of England. We passed a few
miles to the south of Karytena, with its wonderful,
and apparently impregnable Frankish fortress perched
like an eagle’s nest on the top of a huge cliff, from
which there must be a splendid outlook not only down
the valley of Megalopolis, but into the northern
passes from Achaia, and the mountains of Elis. I
can conceive no military post more important to the
Arcadian plain, and yet it seems to have attained
no celebrity in ancient history. From this fortress
to the southern end of the plain, where the passes
lead to Sparta and to northern Messene, there lies
extended a very rich vein of country about
twenty-
I confess I had not understood the history of the
celebrated foundation of Megalopolis, until I came
to study the features of this plain. Here, as elsewhere,
personal acquaintance with the geography
of the country is the necessary condition of a living
knowledge of its history. As is well known, immediately
after the battle of Leuctra the Arcadians
proceeded to build this metropolis, as a safeguard
or makeweight against the neighboring power of
Sparta. Pausanias, who is very full and instructive
on the founding of the city, tells us that the founders
came from the chief towns of Arcadia—Tegea,
Mantinea, Kleitor, and Mænalus. But these cities
had no intention of merging themselves in the new
capital. In fact, Mantinea and Tegea were in themselves
fully as important a check on Sparta in their
own valley, and were absolutely necessary to hold
the passes northward to Argos, which lay in that
direction. But the nation insisted upon all the
village populations in and around the western plain
(which hitherto had possessed no leading city)
amalgreat city, the latest
foundation of a city in Classical Greece. But in
his account it seems to me that Pausanias has omitted
to take sufficient note of the leading spirit of
all the movement—the Theban Epaminondas. No
doubt, the traveller’s Arcadian informants were too
thoroughly blinded by national vanity to give him
the real account, if indeed, they knew it themselves.
They represented it as the spontaneous movement
of the nation, and even stated it to have been done
in imitation of Argos, which in older times, when in
almost daily danger of Spartan war, had abolished
all the townships through Argolis, and thus increased
its power and consolidated its population.
But the advice and support of Epaminondas,
which made him the real founder, point to another
model. The traveller who comes, after he has seen
northern Greece, into the plain of Megalopolis, is at
once struck with its extraordinary likeness to that
of Thebes. There is the same circuit of mountains,
the same undulation in the plain, the same abundance
of water, the same attractive sites on the slopes
for the settlements of men. It was not then Argos,
with its far remote and not very successful centralization,
but Thebes, which was the real model; and
Although,
says Pausanias (8. 33), the
These words of Pausanias have but increased in
force with the lapse of centuries. The whole ancient
capital of the Arcadians has well-nigh disappeared.
The theatre, cut out from the deep earthen
river bank, and faced along the wings with massive
masonry, is still visible, though overgrown with
shrubs; and the English school of Athens is now
prosecuting its exploration (1892).
great city was founded with all zeal by the Arcadians,
and with the brightest expectations on the
part of the Greeks, I am not astonished that it has
lost all its elegance and ancient splendor, and most
of it is now ruined, for I know that Providence is
pleased to work perpetual change, and that all
things alike, both strong and weak, whether coming
into life or passing into nothingness, are changed
by a Fortune which controls them with an iron necessity.
Thus Mycenæ, Nineveh, and the Bœotian
Thebes are for the most part completely deserted and
destroyed, but the name of Thebes has descended to
the mere acropolis and very few inhabitants. Others,
formerly of extraordinary wealth, the Egyptian
Thebes and the Minyan Orchomenus and Delos,
the common mart of the Greeks, are some of them
inferior in wealth to that of a private man of not
the richest class; while Delos, being deprived of the
charge of the Oracle by the Athenians who settled
there, is, as regards Delians, depopulated. At Babylon
the temple of Belus remains, but of this Babylon,
once the greatest city under the sun, there is
nothing left but the wall, as there is of Tiryns in
Argolis. These the Deity has reduced to naught.
But the city of Alexander in Egypt, and of Seleucus
on the Orontes, built the other day, have risen
to such greatness and prosperity, because Fortune
favors them.... Thus the affairs of men have
The ancient town lay on both sides of the river Helisson, which is a broad and silvery stream, but not difficult to ford, as we saw it in spring, and Pausanias mentions important public buildings on both banks. Now there seems nothing but a mound, called the tomb of Philopœmen, on the north side, with a few scanty foundations. On the south side the stylobate of at least one temple is still almost on the level of the soil, and myriads of fragments of baked clay tell us that this material was largely used in the walls of a city where a rich alluvial soil afforded a very scanty supply of stone—a difficulty rare in Greece. The modern town lies a mile to the south of the river, and quite clear of the old site, so that excavations can be made without considerable cost, and with good hope of results. But the absence of any really archaic monument has, till recently, damped the ardor of the archæologists.
The aspect of the present Megalopolis is very
pleasing. Its streets are wide and clean, though
We were welcomed with excellent hospitality in
the town, and received by a fine old gentleman,
whose sons, two splendid youths in full costume, attended
us in person. Being people of moderate
means, they allowed us, with a truer friendliness than
that of more ostentatious hosts, to pay for the most
of the materials we required, which they got for us
of the best quality, at the lowest price, and cooked
and prepared them for us in the house. We inquired
of the father what prospects were open to his
handDemarchus, on some miserable salary.
He had gone as far as Alexandria to seek his fortune,
but had come home again, with the tastes and
without the wealth of a rich townsman. So they
are fretting away their life in idleness. I fear that
such cases are but too common in the country towns
of Greece.
The people brought us to see many pieces of
funeral slabs, of marble pillars, and of short and late
inscriptions built into house walls. They also sold
us good coins of Philip of Macedon at a moderate
price. The systematic digging about the old site
undertaken by the English school will probably bring
to light many important remains.
[Illustration: A Greek Peasant in National Costume]
As we rode up the slopes of Mount Mænalus,
which separates the plain of Tegea from that of
Megalopolis, we often turned to admire the splendid
view beneath, and count the numerous villages now
as of old under the headship of the great town. The
most striking feature was doubtless the snowy ridge
of Taygetus, which reaches southward, and showed
us the course of the Eurotas on its eastern side,
along which a twelve hours’ ride brings the traveller
to Sparta. The country into which we passed was
wild and barren in the extreme, and, like most so-called
mountains in Greece, consisted of a series of
parallel and of intersecting ridges, with short valleys
At last, after a very hot and stony ride, with less
color and less beauty than we had ever yet found in
Greece, we descended into the great valley of Tripoli,
formerly held by Tegea at the south, and Mantinea
at the north. The modern town lies between
the ancient sites, but nearer to Tegea, which is not
an hour’s ride distant. The old Tripolis, of which
the villages were absorbed by Megalopolis, is placed
by the geographers in quite another part of Arcadia,
near Gortyn, and due north of the western plain.
The vicissitudes of the modern town are well known;
its importance under the Turks, its terrible destruction
by the Egyptians in the War of Liberation;Memoirs or in Finlay’s History.
The whole place was in holiday, it being the
Greek Easter Day, and hundreds of men in full
costume crowded the large square in the middle of
the town. There is a considerable manufacture of
what are commonly called Turkey carpets, and of
It is my disagreeable duty to state that while the
inn at Tripoli was no better than other country inns
in Arcadia, and full of noise and disturbance, the
innkeeper, a gentleman in magnificent costume, with
a crimson vest and gaiters, covered with rich embroidery,
also turned out a disgraceful villain, in fact
quite up to the mark of the innkeepers of whom
Plato in his day complained. We had no comforts,
we had bad food, we had the locks of our baggage
strained, not indeed by thieves, but by curious
neighbors, who wished to see the contents; we had
dinner, a night’s lodging, and breakfast, for which
the host charged us, a party of four and a servant,
118 francs. And be it remembered that the wine of
the country, which we drank, is cheaper than ale in
The site of Tegea, where there is now a considerable
village, is more interesting, being quite
close to the passes which lead to Sparta, and surrounded
by a panorama of rocky mountains. The
morning was cloudy, and lights and shades were
coursing alternately over the view. There were no
trees, but the surface of the rocks took splendid
changing hues—gray, pink, and deep purple—while
the rich soil beneath alternated between brilliant
green and ruddy brown. As the plain of Megalopolis
reminded me of that of Thebes, so this plain
of Tegea, though infinitely richer in soil, yet had
B. C., had
Corinthian as well as Ionic capitals, though externally
Doric in character. Some remarkable remains
of the pediment, especially a boar’s head, are now in
the Museum at Athens.
The way to Argos is a good carriage road through
the passes of Mount Parthenion, and is not unlike
the bleak ride through Mænalus, though there is a
great deal more tillage, and in some places the hillsides
are terraced with cultivation. It was in this
affords tortoises most suitable for the making
of lyres, which the men who inhabit the mountains
are afraid to catch, nor do they allow strangers to
catch them, for they think them sacred to Pan.
We saw these tortoises, both in Mænalus and Parthenion,
yet to us suggestive not of harmony but of
discord. Two of them were engaged in mortal combat
by the road side. They were rushing at each
other, and battering the edges of their shells together,
apparently in the attempt to overturn each other.
After a long and even conflict, one of them fled,
pursued by the other at full speed, indeed far
quicker than could be imagined. We watched the
battle till we were tired, and left the pursuer and
the pursued in the excitement of their deadly struggle.
The traveller who goes by the new railroad
over this ground will never see sights like this.
These were the principal adventures of our tour across Arcadia. The following night we rested in real luxury at the house of our old guest-friend, Dr. Papalexopoulos, whose open mansion had received us two years before, on our first visit to Argos.
The Gulf of Corinth is a very beautiful and narrow
fiord, with chains of mountains on either side, through
the gaps of which you can see far into the Morea
on one side, and into northern Greece on the other.
But the bays or harbors on either coast are few, and
so there was no city able to wrest the commerce of
these waters from old Corinth, which held the keys
by land of the whole Peloponnesus, and commanded
the passage from sea to sea. It is, indeed, wonderful
how Corinth did not acquire and maintain the
first position in Greece. It may, perhaps, have
done so in the days of Periander, and we hear at
various times of inventions and discoveries in
Corinth, which show that, commercially and artistically,
it was among the leading cities of Greece.
But, whenever the relations of the various powers
become clear, as in the Persian or Peloponnesian
Wars, we find Corinth always at the head of the
second-rate states, and never among the first. This
is possibly to be accounted for by the predominance
But as soon as the greater powers of Greece decayed
and fell away, we find Corinth immediately
taking the highest position in wealth, and even in
importance. The capture of Corinth, in 146 B. C.,
marks the Roman conquest of all Greece, and the
art-treasures carried to Rome seem to have been as
great and various as those which even Athens could
have produced. Its commercial position was at once
assumed by Delos. No sooner had Julius Cæsar
restored and rebuilt the ruined city than it sprang
at once again into importance,
These were our reflections as we passed up the
gulf on a splendid summer evening, the mountains
of Arcadia showing on their snowy tops a deep rose
color in the setting sun. And passing by Ægion
and Sikyon, we came to anchor at the harbor of
Lechæum. There was a public conveyance which
took the traveller across the isthmus to Kenchreæ,
where a steamboat was in readiness to bring him
to Athens. But with the usual absurdity of such
services, no time was allowed for visiting Corinth
and its Acropolis.
The fondness of the Greeks for driving a bargain
is often to be noticed. Thus, a Greek gentleman on
this boat, perceiving that we were strangers in pursuit
of art and antiquities, produced two very fine gold
coins of Philip and Alexander, which he offered for
£5. That of Philip was particularly beautiful—a
very perfect Greek head in profile, crowned with
laurel, and on the reverse a chariot and four, with
the legend,
The form of the country, as you ascend from Lechæum to Corinth, is very marked and peculiar. At some distance from the flat shore the road leads up through a steep pass of little height, which is cut through a long ridge of rock, almost like a wall, and over which lies a higher plateau of land. The same feature is again repeated a mile inland, as the traveller approaches the site of ancient Corinth. These plateaus, though not lofty, are well marked, and perfectly distinct, the passes from one up to the next being quite sufficient to form a strong place of defence against an attacking force. How far these rocky parapets reach I did not examine. Behind the highest plateau rises the great cliff on which the citadel was built. But even from the site of the old city it is easy to obtain a commanding view of the isthmus, of the two seas, and of the Achæan coast up to Sikyon.
The traveller who expects to find any sufficient
traces of the city of Periander and of Timoleon,
and, I may say, of St. Paul, will be grievously disappointed.
In the middle of the wretched straggling
modern village there stand up seven enormous
rough stone pillars of the Doric Order, evidently
of the oldest and heaviest type; and these
are the only visible relic of the ancient city, looking
Entretiens sur l’Architecture, vol. i. p.
45, explains the reason of this. Apart from the greater facility of
raising smaller blocks, most limestones are subject to flaws, which
are disclosed only by strain. Hence it was much safer to support
the entablature on two separate beams, one of which might sustain,
at least temporarily, the building, in case the other should
crack.
[Illustration: Temple of Corinth]
The longer one studies the Greek orders of architecture,
the more the conviction grows that the
Doric is of all the noblest and the most natural.
When lightened and perfected by the Athenians of
Pericles’s time, it becomes simply unapproachable;
but even in older and ruder forms it seems to me
vastly superior to either of the more florid orders.
All the massive temples of Roman times were built
in the very ornate Corinthian, which may almost be
called the Græco-Roman, style; but, notwithstanding
their majesty and beauty, they are not to be
compared with the severer and more religious tone
of the Doric remains. I may add that the titles by
[Illustration: Scene near Corinth, the Acro-Corinthus in the Distance]
Straight over the site of the town is the great
rock known as the Acro-Corinthus. A winding
path leads up on the south-west side to the Turkish
drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted and
open; nor is there a single guard or soldier to watch
a spot once the coveted prize of contending empires.
In the days of the Achæan League it was called one
of the fetters of Greece, and indeed it requires no
military experience to see the extraordinary importance
of the place. Strabo speaks of the Peloponnesus
as the Acropolis of Greece—Corinth may
fairly be called the Acropolis of the Peloponnesus.
It runs out boldly from the surging mountain-chains
of the peninsula, like an outpost or sentry, guarding
all approach from the north. In days when news
was transmitted by fire signals, we can imagine how
all the southern country must have depended on the
watch upon the rock of Corinth. It is separated by
a wide plain of land, ending in the isthmus, from
Next to the view from the heights of Parnassus,
I suppose the view from this citadel is held the
finest in Greece.Guide Joanne, ii. p. 197.
The surface is very large, at least half a mile each
way, and is covered inside the bounding wall with
the remains of a considerable Turkish town, now in
ruins and totally deserted, but evidently of no small
importance in the days of the War of Liberation.
The building of this town was a great misfortune to
antiquarians, for every available remnant of old
Greek work was used as material for the modern
houses. At all parts of the walls may be seen white
marble fragments of pillars and architraves, and I
have no doubt that a careful dilapidation of the modern
abandoned houses would amply repay the outlay.
There are several pits for saving rain-water, and
some shallow underground passages of which we
could not make out the purpose. The pits or tanks
must have been merely intended to save trouble, for
about the middle of the plateau, which sinks considerably
toward the south, we were brought to a
passage into the ground, which led by a rapid descent
to the famous well of Pirene, the water of
which was so perfectly clear that we walked into it
on going down the steps, as there was actually no
There are numerous inscriptions as you descend,
which I did not copy, because I was informed they
had already been published, though I have not since
been able to find them; but they are, of course, to
be found in some of the Greek archæological newspapers.
They appeared to me at the time to be
either hopelessly illegible, or suspiciously clear.
This great well, springing up near the top of a
barren rock, is very curious, especially as we could
see no outlet.Seine Ruine steht noch heute.
Cf. also Friedländer,
ii. 383, but I could not find it.
The Isthmus, which is really some three or four
miles north of Corinth, was of old famous for the Isthmian
games, as well as for the noted diolkos, or road
for dragging ships across. The games were founded
about 586 B. C., when a strong suspicion had arisen
throughout Greece concerning the fairness of the
Elean awards at Olympia, and for a long time Eleans
were excluded. In later days the games became
very famous, the Argives or Cleonæans laying claim
to celebrate them. It was at these games that Philip
V. heard of the great defeat of the Romans by Hannibal,
and resolved to enter into that colossal quarrel
which brought the Romans into Macedonia. The
site of the stadium, and of the temple of Isthmian
Poseidon, and of the fortified sanctuary, were excavated
and mapped out by M. Monceaux in 1883. A
plan and details are to be found in the French Guide
Joanne.sq. (1891).
But if this very expensive work might have been
of great service when sailing-ships feared to round
the notorious Cape of Malea, and when there was
great trade from the Adriatic to the ports of Thessaly
and Macedonia, surely all these advantages are
now superseded. Steamers coming from the Straits
of Messina would pay nothing to take the route of the
Isthmus in preference to rounding the Morea, and
the main line of traffic is no longer to the Northern
Levant, but to Alexandria. Even goods despatched
from Trieste or Venice may now be landed at Patras,
and sent on by rail to Athens; so that the canal will
now only serve the smallest fraction of the Levantine
trade; and even then, if the charges be at all adequate
to the labor, will be avoided by circumnavigation.
Amid the promotion of many useful schemes
of traffic, this undertaking seems to me to stand out
by its want of common sense. Indeed, had it been
really important at any date, we may be sure
that the Hellenistic Sovrans or Roman capitalists
would have carried it out. But in classical days
But we had already delayed too long upon this
citadel, where we would have willingly spent a day
or two at greater leisure. Our guide urged us to
start on our long ride, which was not to terminate
till we reached the town of Argos, some thirty miles
over the mountains.
The country into which we passed was very different
from any we had yet seen, and still it was
intensely Greek. All the hills and valleys showed
a very white, chalky soil, which actually glittered
like snow where it was not covered with verdure or
trees. Road, as usual, there was none; but all these
hills and ravines, chequered with snowy white, were
clothed with shining arbutus trees, and shrubs resembling
dwarf holly. The purple and the white
cistus, which is so readily mistaken for a wild rose,Theocr. v. 131.Theocr. i. 15.
They had left behind them a single comrade, with
his wife and little children, to protect the weak and
the lame till their return. We found this family
settled in their winter quarters, which consisted of a
To make the scene Homeric,Theocr. xxv. 73, and cf. Odyss. xiv. 29 sq.Surely,
he said, turning
to us breathlessly from his exertions, you had met,
O strangers! with some mischief, if I had not been
here.
The dogs disappeared, in deep anger, into
the thicket, and, though we stayed at the place for
some time, never reappeared to threaten or to pursue
us on our departure. We talked as best we could
to the gentle shepherdess, one of whose children had
a fearfully scalded hand, for which we suggested
remedies to her occult and wonderful, though at
Most of our journey was not, however, through
pastures and plains, but up and down steep ravines,
where riding was so difficult and dangerous that we
were often content to dismount and lead our horses.
Every hour or two brought us to a fountain springing
from a rock, and over it generally a great
spreading fig-tree, while the water was framed in
on both sides with a perfect turf of maiden-hair
fern. The only considerable valley which we saw
was that of Cleonæ, which we passed some miles on
our left, and about which there was a great deal of
golden corn, and many shady plane-trees. Indeed,
the corn was so plentiful that we saw asses grazing
in it quite contentedly, without any interference from
thrifty farmers. We had seen a very similar sight
in Sicily, where the enormous deep-brown Sicilian
oxen, with their forward-pointing horns, were
stretching their huge forms in fields of half-ripe
wheat, which covered all the plain without fence
or division. There, too, it seemed as if this was
the cheapest grazing, and as if it were unprofitable
Toward evening, after many hours of travel, we turned aside on our way down the plain of Argos, to see the famous ruins of Mycenæ. But we will now pass them by, as the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, and a second visit to the ruins after his excavations, have opened up so many questions, that a separate chapter must be devoted to them.
The fortress of Tiryns, which I have already
mentioned, and which we visited next day, may
fitly be commented on before approaching the
younger, or at least more artistically finished,
Mycenæ. It stands several miles nearer to the
sea, in the centre of the great plain of Argos, and
upon the only hillock which there affords any natural
scope for fortification. Instead of the square, or at
least hewn, well-fitted blocks of Mycenæ, we have
here the older style of rude masses piled together as
best they would fit, the interstices being filled up
with smaller fragments, and, as we now know, faced
with mortar. This is essentially Cyclopean
build
Just below the north-east angle of the inner fort,
and where the lower circuit is about to leave it,
there is an entrance, with a massive projection of
huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its
right side, so as to defend it from attack. The
most remarkable feature in the walls are the covered
galleries, constructed within them at the south-east
angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often
over twenty feet, and in the centre a rude arched
way is made—or rather, I believe, two parallel
ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is
almost untraceable—and this merely by piling
together the great stones so as to leave an opening,
which narrows at the top in the form of a
Gothic arch. Within the passage there are five
niches in the outer side, made of rude arches, in
the same way as the main passage. The length of
[Illustration: Gallery at Tiryns]
It is remarkable that, although the walls are made
of perfectly rude stones, the builders have managed
to use so many smooth surfaces looking outward,
that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well-built.Notes on Irish Architecture.
The whole ruin was covered in summer with thistles, such as English people can hardly imagine. The needles at the points of the leaves are fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather dress can resist them. They pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be supported by a very burning love for knowledge, or the sure hope of future fame. The rough masses of stone are so loose that one’s footing is insecure, and when the traveller loses his balance, and falls among the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to Jericho instead, or even fallen among thieves on the way.
Such was the aspect of Tiryns when I visited it in the years 1875 and in 1877. In 1884 I went there again with Dr. Schliemann, who was uncovering the palace on the height. The results of his discoveries are so important that I shall review them in another chapter.
We rode down from Mycenæ to Argos late in the
evening, along the broad and limpid stream of the
river Inachus, which made us wonder at the old epic
epithet, very thirsty, given to this celebrated plain.Il., p. 350) notes this epithet, in order to account for its being no
longer true,
Aves, 1092–8.)Shield of Hercules are also worth
quoting (393, sqq.):—
At ten o’clock we rode into the curious dark streets of Argos, and, after some difficulty, were shown to the residence of M. Papalexopoulos, who volunteered to be our host—a medical man of education and ability, who, in spite of a very recent family bereavement, opened his house to the stranger, and entertained us with what may well be called in that country real splendor. I may notice that he alone, of all the country residents whom we met, gave us wine not drenched with resin—a very choice and remarkable red wine, for which the plain of Argos is justly celebrated. In this comfortable house we slept, I may say, in solitary grandeur, and awoke in high spirits, without loss or damage, to visit the wonders of this old centre of legend and of history.
It is very easy to see why all the Greek myths
have placed the earliest empires, the earliest arts,
and the earliest conquests, in the plains of Argolis.
They speak, too, of this particular plain having the
benefit of foreign settlers and of foreign skill. If
we imagine, as we must do, the older knowledge of
the East coming up by way of Cyprus and Crete
into Greek waters, there can be no doubt that the
first exploring mariners, reaching the barren island
of Cerigo, and the rocky shore of Laconia, would
feel their way up this rugged and inhospitable coast,
Odyssey as infesting Thrinacria, in the
western seas.
This was evidently the oldest great settlement.
Then, by some change of fortune, it seems that
Mycenæ grew in importance, not impossibly because
of the unhealthy site of Tiryns, where the surroundings
are now low and marshy, and were, probably,
even more so in those days. But the epoch of
Mycenæ’s greatness also passed away in historical
times; and the third city in this plain came forward
as its ruler—Argos, built under the huge Larissa, or
hill-fort, which springs out from the surrounding
mountains, and stands like an outpost over the city.Iliad we see the power
and greatness of Mycenæ distinctly expressed by the power of
Agamemnon, who appears to rule over all the district and many
islands. Yet the great hero, Diomedes, is made the sovereign of
Argos and Tiryns in his immediate neighborhood. This difficulty
has made some critics suppose that all the acts of Diomedes were
foisted in by some of the Argive reciters of the Iliad. Without
adopting this theory, which seems to me extravagant, I would suggest
that, in the poet’s day, Argos was rapidly growing into first-rate
importance, while all the older legends attested the greatness
of Mycenæ. Thus the poet, who was obliged to put together the
materials given him by divers older and shorter poems, was under
the difficulty of harmonizing the fresher legends about Argos with
the older about Mycenæ.
We went first to visit the old theatre, certainly
the most beautifully situated,
The Argive theatre was built to hold an enormous
audience. We counted sixty-six tiers of seats, in
All the children about brought us coins, of every possible date and description, but were themselves more interesting than their coins. For here, in southern Greece, in a very hot climate, in a level plain, every second child is fair, with blue eyes, and looks like a transplanted northern, and not like the offspring of a southern race. After the deep brown Italian children, which strike the traveller by their southernness all the way from Venice to Reggio, nothing is more curious than these fairer children, under a sunnier and hotter sky; and it reminds the student at once how, even in Homer, yellow hair and a fair complexion is noted as belonging to the King of Sparta. This type seems to me common wherever there has not arisen a mixed population, such as that of Athens or Syra, and where the inhabitants appear to live as they have done for centuries. Fallmerayer’s cleverness and undoubted learning persuaded many people, and led many more to suspect, that the old Greek race was completely gone, and that the present people were a mixture of Turks, Albanians, and Slavs. To this many answers suggest themselves,—to me, above all things, the strange and accurate resemblances in character between ancient and modern Greeks,—resemblances which permeate all their life and habits.
But this is a kind of evidence not easily stated in
Slavisation, and the evidences obtained from the
lives of the Greek saints who belong to this epoch,
have proved to demonstration that the country was
never wholly occupied by foreigners, or deserted by
its old population. The researches of Ross, Ellissen,
and lastly of Hopf,Encyclopædia, vol. lxxxv., and more especially
his refutation of Fallmerayer’s theory, pp. 100–19.
Another weighty argument seems to me to be
from language.primâ facie probability in favor of a well-preserved language
indicating a well-preserved race.
Again, the Greek language is not one which spread itself easily among foreigners, nor did it give rise to a number of daughter languages, like the Latin. In many Hellenic colonies, barbarians learned to speak Greek with the Greeks, and to adopt their language at the time; but in all these cases, when the Greek influence vanished the Greek language decayed, and finally made way for the old tongue which it had temporarily displaced. Thus the evidence of history seems to suggest that no foreigners were ever really able to make that subtle tongue their own; and even now we can feel the force of what Aristotle says—that however well a stranger might speak, you could recognize him at once by his use of the particles.
These considerations seem to me conclusive that,
whatever admixtures may have taken place, the
main body of the people are what their language
declares them to be, essentially Greeks. Any careful
observer will not fail to see through the wilder
parts of the Morea types and forms equal to those
which inspired the old artists. There are still among
the shepherd boys splendid lads who would adorn a
thallophori in the
Panathenaic procession.
These thoughts often struck us as we went through
the narrow and crowded streets of Argos, in search
of the peculiar produce of the place—raw silks, rich-colored
carpets and rugs, and ornamental shoes in
dull red morocco
leather.
We were taken to see the little museum of the
town—then a very small one, with a single inscription,
and eight or ten pieces of sculpture. But the
inscription, which is published, is exceedingly clear
and legible, and the fragments of sculpture are all
both peculiar and excellent. There is a female head
of great beauty, about half life-size, and from the
best, or certainly a very good, period of Greek art,
which has the curious peculiarity of one eye being
larger than the other. It is not merely the eyeball,
but the whole setting of the eye, which is slightly
enlarged, nor does it injure the general effect. The
gentlemen who showed this head to me, and who
were all very enthusiastic about it, had indeed not
noticed this feature, but recognized it at once when
pointed out to them. Beside this trunkless head is
a headless trunk of equal beauty—a female figure
without arms, and draped with exquisite grace, in a
We also noticed a relief larger than life, on a square block of white marble, of the head of Medusa. The face is calm and expressionless, exactly the reverse of Lionardo da Vinci’s matchless painting, but archaic in character, and of good and clear workmanship. The head-dress, which has been finished only on the right side, is very peculiar, and consists of large scales starting from the forehead, and separating into two plaits, which become serpents’ bodies, and descend in curves as low as the chin, then turning upward and outward again, till they end in well-formed serpents’ heads. The left serpent is carved out perfectly in relief, but not covered with scales.
I was unable to obtain any trustworthy account
of the finding of these marbles, but they were all
fresh discoveries, especially the Medusa head, which
If we look at Dorian art, as contrasted with
Ionian, there can be no doubt that the earliest centre
was Corinth in the Peloponnesus, to which various
discoveries in art are specially ascribed. In architecture,
there were many leading ideas, such as the
setting up of clay figures in the tympanum of their
temples, and the use of panels or soffits, as they
were called, in ceilings, which came first from Corinth.
But when we descend to better-known times,
there are three other Dorian states which quite
eclipse Corinth, I suppose because the trading instinct,
as is sometimes the case, crushed out or
weakened her enthusiasm for art. These states are
Ægina, Sikyon, and Argos. Sikyon rose to greatness
under the gentle and enlightened despotism of
Orthagoras and his family, of whom it was noticed
that they retained their sovereignty longer than any
other dynasty of despots in Greece. Ægina seems
to have disputed the lead with Corinth as a commercial
mart, from the days of Pheidon, whose coinage
of money was always said to have been first practised
at Ægina.
Thus Sikyon and Argos remained, and it was precisely
these two towns which produced a special
school of art, of which Polycletus was the most distinguished
representative. Dorian sculpture had
originally started with figures of athletes, which
were dedicated at the temples, and were a sort of
collateral monument to the odes of poets—more
durable, no doubt, in the minds of the offerers, but,
as time has shown, perishable and gone, while the
winged words of the poet have not lost even the first
bloom of their freshness. However, in contrast to
the flowing robes and delicately-chiselled features of
The Argive school, owing to its traditions, affected
single figures much more than groups; and this, no
doubt, was the main contrast between Polycletus
and Phidias—that, however superior the Argive
might be in a single figure, the genius of the Athenian
was beyond all comparison in using sculpture
for groups and processions as an adjunct to architecture.
But there was also in the sitting statue of
Zeus, at Olympia, a certain majesty which seems
not to have been equalled by any other known
sculpDiscobolus has reached us in some splendid
copies, and who seems to have had all the Dorian
taste for representing single athletic figures with
more life and more daring action about them than
was attempted by Polycletus.
Herodotus notices somewhere that, at a certain period, the Argives were the most renowned in Greece for music. It is most unfortunate that our knowledge of this branch of Greek art is so fragmentary that we are wholly unable to tell in what the Argive proficiency consisted. We are never told that the Doric scale was there invented; but, very possibly, they may have taken the lead among their brethren in this direction also, for it is well known that the Spartans, though excellent judges, depended altogether upon foreigners to make music for them, and thought it not gentlemanly to do more than criticise.
The drive from Argos to Nauplia leads by Tiryns,
then by a great marsh, which is most luxuriously
covered with green and with various flowers, and
then along a good road all the way into the important
and stirring town of Nauplia. This place,
which was one of the oldest settlements, as is proved
A coasting steamer, which goes right round all the
Peloponnesus, took us up with a great company,
which was hurrying to Athens for the elections, and
carried us round the coast of Argolis, stopping at the
several ports on the way. This method of seeing
either Greece or Italy is highly to be commended,
and it is a great pity that so many people adhere
strictly to the quickest and most obvious route, so
missing many of the really characteristic features in
the country which they desire to study. Thus the
Italian coasting steamers, which go up from Messina
by Naples to Genoa, touch at many not insignificant
places (such as Gaeta), which no ordinary tourist
ever sees, and which are nevertheless among the
most beautiful in all the country. The same may
be said of the sail from Nauplia to Athens, which
leads you to Spezza, Hydra, or Idra, as they now
[Illustration: The Palamedi, Nauplia]
The island of Hydra was, in old days, a mere barren rock, scarcely inhabited, and would probably never have changed its reputation but for a pirate settlement in a very curious little harbor, with a very narrow entrance, which faces the main shore of Argolis. As you sail along the straight coast line, there seems no break or indentation, when suddenly, as if by magic, the rocky shore opens for about twenty yards, at a spot marked by several caves in the face of the cliff, and lets you see into a circular harbor of very small dimensions, with an amphitheatre of rich and well-built houses rising up all round the bay. Though the water is very deep, there is actually no room for a large fleet, and there seems not a yard of level ground, except where terraces have been artificially made. High rocks on both sides of the narrow entrance hide all prospect of the town, except from the point directly opposite the entrance.
The Hydriotes, who were rich merchants, and, I
suppose, successful pirates in the Turkish days, were
never enslaved, but kept their liberty and their
wealth by paying a tribute to the Porte. They
developed a trading power which reminds one
strongly of the old Greek cities; and so faithful
were they to one another that it was an ordinary
habit for citizens to entrust all their savings to a
With the rise of the nation the wealth and importance
of Hydra has strangely decayed.
Prob
The neighboring island of Spezza, where the
steamer waits, and a crowd of picturesque people
come out in quaint boats to give and take cargo,
has a history very parallel to that of Hydra. It is
to be noted that the population of both islands is
rather Albanian than Greek. A few hours brings
the steamer past Poros and through narrow passages
among islands to Ægina, as they now call it. We
have here an island whose history is precisely the
reverse of that of Hydra. The great days of
Ægina (as I mentioned above) were in very old
times, from the age of Pheidon of Argos, in the
seventh century B. C., up to the rise of Athens’s
democracy and navy, when this splendid centre of
literature, art, and commerce was absorbed in the
greater Athenian empire.
There is at present a considerable town on the
coast, and some cultivation on the hills; but the
whole aspect of the island is very rocky and barren,
and as it can hardly ever have been otherwise, we
With enterprise and diligence, a trading nation or
city may readily become great in a small island or
barren coast, and no phenomenon in history proves
this more strongly than the vast empire of the
Phœnicians, who seem never to have owned more
than a bare tract of a few miles about Tyre and
Sidon. They were, in fact, a great people without
a country. The Venetians similarly raised an
empire on a salt marsh, and at one time owned
many important possessions on Greek coasts and
islands, without any visible means of subsistence,
as they say in the police courts. In the same way,
Pericles thought nothing of the possession of Attica,
provided the Athenians could hold their city walls
and their harbors. He knew that with a maritime
supremacy they must necessarily be lords of so vast
a stretch of coasts and islands that the barren hills
of Attica might be completely left out of account.
There is yet another and a very interesting way
from Nauplia to Ægina, which may be strongly
Epídavros). Here a boat
can be obtained, which, with a fair wind, can reach
Ægina in three, and the Peiræus in about six hours.
But, like all boating expeditions, this trip is uncertain,
and may be thwarted by either calm or storm.
[Illustration: Sculptured Lion, Nauplia]
We left Nauplia on a very fine morning, while the
shepherds from the country were going through the
streets, shouting
The way through the Argolic country is rough
and stony, not unlike in character to the ride from
Corinth to Mycenæ, but more barren, and for the
most part less picturesque. On some of the hilltops
are old ruins, with fine remains of masonry, apparently
old Greek work. The last two or three hours
of the journey are, however, particularly beautiful,
as the path goes along the course of a rich glen, in
which a tumbling river hurries toward the sea.
This glen is full of verdure and of trees. We saw
In the picturesque little land-locked bay of Epidavros
there was a good-sized fishing-boat riding at
anchor, which we immediately chartered to convey
us to Athens. The skipper took some time to
gather a crew, and to obtain the necessary papers
from the local authorities, but after some pressure
on our part we got under weigh with a fair wind,
and ran out of the harbor into the broad rock-studded
sheet of water which separates Argolis
from Ægina, and from the more distant coast of
Attica. There is no more delightful or truly Greek
mode of travelling than to run through islands and
under rocky coasts in these boats, which are roomy
and comfortable, and, being decked, afford fair shelter
from shower or spray. But presently the wind
began to increase from the north-west, and our
A great point of interest among newly-discovered
sites is the great temple and theatre of Epidaurus,
which I did not visit, on account of an epidemic of
small-pox—
The excavations of the Greek archæological
society have laid bare at least three principal buildings
in connection with the famous spot; the old
temple of the god, the theatre, and the famous tholos,
a circular building, in which those who had been
healed of diseases set up votive tablets. The extraordinary
size and splendor of the theatre—Pausanias
says it was far the finest in Greece—rather contrasts
with the dimensions of the temple, and suggests
that most of the patients who came were able
to enjoy themselves, or else that many people came
for pleasure, and not on serious business. The remains
discovered are particularly valuable for the
good preservation of the stage, but of this I can
only speak at second hand. So also the circular
building, which was erected under the supervision
of the famous Polycletus, the great Argive sculptor,
a rival of Phidias, has many peculiar features, and
shows in one more instance that what earlier art
critics assumed as modern was based on older classical
models. Circular buildings supported on pillars
were thought rather Græco-Roman than Greek, but
here we see that, like the builders of the Odeon of
B. C., when Alexander was leading his
army into Asia, was considered the oldest, and perhaps
the only pure Greek example of the Corinthian
capital. People began to hesitate when a solitary
specimen was found in the famous temple of Bassæ,
where it could hardly have been imported in later
days. Now the evidence is completed, and in this
respect the historians of art are correcting the rash
generalization of their predecessors.
Whatever other excursions a traveller may make in the Morea, he ought not to omit a trip to Sparta, which has so often been the centre of power, and is still one of the chief centres of attraction in Greece. And yet many reasons conspire to make this famous place less visited than the rest of the country. It is distinctly out of the way from the present starting-points of travel. To reach it from Athens, or even from Patras or Corinth, requires several days, and it is not remarkable for any of those architectural remains which are more attractive to the modern inquirer than anything else in a historic country.
Of the various routes we choose (in 1884) that
from Nauplia by Astros, as we had been the guests
for some days of the hospitable Dr. Schliemann, who
was prosecuting his now famous researches at Tiryns.
So we rose one morning with the indefatigable doctor
before dawn,Tiryns, cap. I.
Of course, the whole population came down to see us. They were apparently as idle, and as ready to be amused, as the inhabitants of an Irish village. But they are sadly wanting in fun. You seldom hear them make a joke or laugh, and their curiosity is itself curious from this aspect. After a good deal of bargaining we agreed for a set of mules and ponies to bring us all the way round the Morea, to Corinth if necessary, though ultimately we were glad to leave them at Kyparissia, at the opposite side of Peloponnesus, and pursue our way by sea. The bargain was eight drachmas per day for each animal; a native, or very experienced traveller, could have got them for five to six drachmas.
Our way led us up a river course, as usual
through fine olive-trees and fields of corn, studded
with scarlet anemones, till after a mile or two we
agogiatæ or muleteers pulling out
fragments of mirror, and arranging their toilette,
such as it was, before encountering the criticism of
the Hagiopetrans. One of these men was indeed a
handsome soldierly youth, who walked all day with
us for a week over the roughest country, in miserable
shoes, and yet without apparent fatigue.
Another, a great stout man with a beard, excused
himself for not being married by saying he was too
little (
At Hagios Petros we were hospitably received by
the demarch, a venerable old man with a white
beard, who was a physician, unfortunately also a
politician, and who insisted on making a thousand
inquiries about Mr. Gladstone and Prince Bismarck,
while we were starving and longing for dinner.
Some fish, which the muleteers had providently
bought at Astros and brought with them, formed the
best part of the entertainment, if we except the
magnificent creature, adorned in all his petticoats
and colors and knives, who came in to see us before
dinner, and kissed our hands with wonderful dignity,
but who turned out to be the waiter at the
table. We asked the demarch how he had procured
himself so stately a servant, and he said he was the
clerk in his office. It occurred to us, when we
watched the grace and dignity of every movement
in this royal-looking person, how great an effect
splendid costume seems to have on manners. It
was but a few days since that I had gone to a very
fashionable evening party at a handsome palace in
Athens, and had been amused at the extraordinary
awkwardness with which various very learned
men
We were accommodated as well as the worthy demarch could manage for the night. As a special favor I was put to sleep into his dispensary, a little chamber full of galley-pots, pestles, and labelled bottles of antiquated appearance, and dreamt in turns of the study of Faust and of the apothecary’s shop in Mantua, which we see upon the stage.
Early in the morning we climbed up a steep
ascent to attain the high plateau, very bleak and
bare, which is believed by the people to have been
the scene of the conflict of Othryades and his men
with the Argive 300. A particular spot is still
called the place of the slain.
The high plain, about 3500 feet above the sea,
was all peopled with country-folk coming to a
market at Hagios Petros, and we had ample opportunity
of admiring both the fine manly appearance
and the excellent manners of this hardy and free
After a ride of an hour or two we descended to the village of Arachova, much smaller and poorer than its namesake in Phocis (above, p. 274), and thence to the valley of a stream called Phonissa, the murderess, from its dangerous floods, but at the moment a pleasant and shallow brook. Down its narrow bed we went for hours, crossing and recrossing it, or riding along its banks, with all the verdure gradually increasing with the change of climate and of shelter, till at last a turn in the river brought us suddenly in sight of the brilliant serrated crest of Taygetus, glittering with its snow in the sunshine. Then we knew our proper landmark, and felt that we were indeed approaching Sparta.
But we still had a long way to ride down our
river till we reached its confluence with the Eurotas,
near to which we stopped at a solitary khan, from
which it is an easy ride to visit the remains of Sellasia.
During the remaining three hours we descended
the banks of the Eurotas, with the country
gradually growing richer, and the stream so deep
that it could no longer be forded. There is a quaint
The town was in holiday, and athletic sports were
going on in commemoration of the establishment of
Greek liberty. Crowds of fine tall men were in the
very wide regular streets, and in the evening this
new town vindicated its ancient title of
We are led to the same conclusion by the art-remains
which are now coming to light, and which
are being collected in the well-built local museum of
the town. They show us that there was an archaic
school of sculpture, which produced votive and
funeral reliefs, and therefore that the old Spartans
were by no means so opposed to art as they have
been represented in the histories. The poetry of
Alkman, with its social and moral freedom, its
suggestions of luxury and good living, shows what
kind of literature the Spartan rulers thought fit to
import and encourage in the city of Lycurgus. The
whole sketch of Spartan society which we read in
Plutarch’s Life and other late authorities seems
rather to smack of imaginary reconstruction on
Doric principles than of historical reality. Contrasts
there were, no doubt, between Dorians and Ionians,
nay, even between Sparta and Tarentine or Argive
Dorians; but still Sparta was a rich and luxurious
society, as is confessed on all hands where there is
any mention of the ladies and their homes. We
might as well infer from the rudeness of the dormitories
in the College at Winchester, or from the
simplicity of an English man-of-war’s mess, that our
nation consisted of rude mountaineers living in the
sternest simplicity.
But if I continue to write in this way I shall have all the pedants down upon me. Let us return to the Sparta of to-day. We lodged at a very bad and dear inn, and our host’s candid excuse for his exorbitant prices was the fact that he very seldom had strangers to rob, and so must plunder those that came without stint. His formula was perhaps a little more decent, but he hardly sought to disguise the plain truth. When we sought our beds, we found that a very noisy party had established themselves below to celebrate the Feast of the Liberation, with supper, speeches, and midnight revelry.
So, as usual, there was little possibility of sleep. Moreover, I knew that we had a very long day’s journey before us to Kalamata, so I rose before the sun and before my companions, to make preparations and to rouse the muleteers.
On opening my window, I felt that I had attained
one of the strange moments of life which can never
be forgotten. The air was preternaturally clear and
cold, and the sky beginning to glow faintly with the
coming day. Straight before me, so close that it
almost seemed within reach of voice, the giant
Taygetus, which rises straight from the plain, stood
up into the sky, its black and purple gradually
brightening into crimson, and the cold blue-white
of its snow warming into rose. There was a great
feeling of peace and silence, and yet a vast diffusion
of sound. From the whole plain, with all its
home
How long I stood there, and forgot my hurry, I know not, but starting up at last as the sun struck the mountain, I went down, and found below stairs another curious contrast. All over the coffee-room (if I may so dignify it) were the disordered remains of a disorderly revel, ashes and stains and fragments in disgusting confusion; and among them a solitary figure was mumbling prayers in the gloom to the image of a saint with a faint lamp burning before it. In the midst of the wrecks of dissipation was the earnestness of devotion, prayer in the place of ribaldry; perhaps, too, dead formalism in the place of coarse but real enjoyment.
We left for Mistra before six in the morning, so
escaping some of the parting inspection which the
whole town was ready to bestow upon us. The way
led us past many orchards, where oranges and lemons
were growing in the richest profusion on great trees,
as large as the cherry-trees in the Alps. The
After an hour or so we reached the picturesque
town of Mistra, now nearly deserted, but all through
the Middle Ages the capital of the district, nestled
under the shelter of the great fortress of the Villehardouins,
the family of the famous chronicler. Separated
by a deep gorge (or langada) with its torrent
from the loftier mountain, this picturesque rock with
its fortress contains the most remarkable mediæval
remains, Latin, Greek, Venetian, Turkish, in all the
Morea. Villehardouins and Paleologi made it their
seat of power, and filled it with churches and palaces,
to which I shall return when we speak of mediæval
Greece. An earthquake about fifty years ago destroyed
many of the houses, and the population
then founded the new Sparta, with its wide, regular
streets, on the site of the old classical city. This
resettlement is not so serious a hindrance to archæology
as the rebuilding of Athens, for we know that
in the days of its real greatness Sparta was a mere
We reached in another hour the steep village of Trypi, at the very mouth of the great pass through Taygetus—a beautiful site, with houses and forest trees standing one above the other on the precipitous steep; and below, the torrent rushing into the plain to join the Eurotas. It is from this village that we ought to have started at dawn, and where we should have spent the previous night, for even from here it takes eleven full hours to reach Kalamata on the Gulf of Messene. The traveller should send on his ponies, or take them to Mistra and thence to Trypi on the previous afternoon. The lodging there is probably not much worse than at Sparta.
From this point we entered at once into the great
Langada pass, the most splendid defile in Greece—the
only way from Sparta into Messene for a distance
of thirty miles north and south. It is indeed possible
to scale the mountain at a few other points, but
only by regular alpine climbing, whereas this is a
regular highway; and along it strings of mules,
not without trouble, make their passage daily, when
[Illustration: Langada Pass]
Nothing can exceed the picturesqueness and beauty of this pass, and nothing was stranger than the contrast between its two steeps. That which faced south was covered with green and with spring flowers—pale anemones, irises, orchids, violets, and, where a stream trickled down, with primroses—a marsh plant in this country. All these were growing among great boulders and cliffs, whereas on the opposite side the whole face was bleak and barren, the rocks being striated with rich yellow and red veins. I suppose in hot summer these aspects are reversed. High above us, as it were, looking down from the summits, were great forests of fir-trees—a gloomy setting to a grandiose and savage landscape. The day was, as usual, calm and perfectly fine, with a few white clouds relieving the deep blue of the sky. As we were threading our way among the rocks of the river-course we were alarmed by large stones tumbling from above, and threatening to crush us. Our guides raised all the echoes with their shouts, to warn any unconscious disturber of this solitude that there were human beings beneath, but on closer survey we found that our possible assassins were only goats clambering along the precipice in search of food, and disturbing loose boulders as they went.
Farther on we met other herds of these quaint
The descent was longer and more varied; sometimes
through well cultivated olive yards, mulberries,
and thriving villages, sometimes along giant slopes,
where a high wind would have made our progress
The town is a cheery and pleasant little place, with remains of a large mediæval castle occupied by Franks, Venetians, Turks, which was the first seat of the Villehardouins, and from which they founded their second fort at Mistra. The river Nedon here runs into the sea, and there is a sort of open roadstead for ships, where steamers call almost daily, and a good deal of coasting trade (silk, currants, etc.) goes on. The only notable feature in the architecture is the pretty bell tower of the church, of a type which I afterward saw in other parts of Messenia, but which is not usual in these late Byzantine buildings.
As there was nothing to delay us here, we left
next morning for the convent of Vourkano, from
which we were to visit Mount Ithome, and the famous
ruins of Epaminondas’s second great foundation
in Peloponnesus—the revived Messene. The
plain (called Macaria or Felix from its fertility)
through which we rode was indeed both rich and
prosperous, but swampy in some places and very
dusty in others. There seemed to be active cultivation
of mulberries, figs, olives, lemons, almonds,
The building, very picturesquely situated high on the side of Mount Ithome, commands a long slope covered with brushwood and wild-flowers, the ideal spot for a botanist, as many rills of water run down the descent and produce an abundant and various vegetation. There is not a sod of soil which does not contain bulbs and roots of flowers. Below stretches the valley of Stenyclarus, so famous in the old annals of Messene. It was studded with groves of orange and lemon, olive and date, mulberry and fig. The whole of this country has an aspect far more southern and subtropical than any part of Laconia.
The monks treated us with great kindness, even
pressing us to sit down to dinner before any ablutions
had been thought of, and while we were still
covered with the dust of a very hot and stormy
journey along high roads. The plan of the building,
which is not old, having been moved down from
The main excursion from the monastery is over
the saddle of the mountain westward, and through
the Laconian gate
down into the valley beneath,
to see the remains of Epaminondas’s great foundation,
the new Messene. There are still faint traces
of a small theatre and some other buildings, but of
the walls and gates enough to tell us pretty clearly
how men built fortifications in those days. The
circuit of the walls included the fort on the summit,
and enclosed a large tract of country, so much that
it would be impossible for any garrison to defend it,
and accordingly we hear of the city being taken by
sudden assault more than once. The plan is very
splendid, but seems to us rather ostentatious than
serious for a new foundation liable to attacks from
Sparta. The walls were, however, beautifully built,
with towers at intervals, and gates for sallies. The
best extant gate is called the Arcadian, and consisted
of an outer and inner pair of folding-doors,
enclosing a large round chamber for the watch.
The size of the doorposts and lintels is gigantic, and
shows that there was neither time nor labor spared
to make Messene a stately settlement. There was
[Illustration: Arcadian Gateway, Messene]
We could have gone up from Messene by a very
long day’s ride to Bassæ, and so to Olympia, but we
had had enough of riding and preferred to make a
short day to the sea at Kyparissia, and thence by
steamer to Katakolo, from which rail and road to
Olympia are quite easy. So we left the convent in
the morning and descended into the valley, to turn
north and then north-east, along the river courses
which mark the mule-tracks through the wild
country. We crossed a strange bridge over the
junction of two rivers made of three arches meeting
in the centre, and of which the substructure were
certainly old Greek building. We then passed
through bleak tracts of uncultivated land, perhaps
the most signal case of insufficient population we
had seen in Greece. All these waste fields were
covered with great masses of asphodel, through
which rare herds of swine were feeding, and the
sight of these fields suggested to me that by the
meadow of asphodel
in Homer is not meant a
pleasant garden, or desirable country, but merely a
dull waste in which there is nothing done, and no
sign of human labor or human happiness. Had
there been night or gloom over this stony tract, with
its tall straggling plants and pale flowers, one could
easily imagine it the place which the dead hero inhabited
when he told his friend that the vilest menial
on earth was happier than he.
After some hours the mountains began to approach on either side, and we reached a country wonderful in its contrast. Great green slopes reached up from us far away into the hills, studded with great single forest trees, and among them huge shrubs of arbutus and mastich, trimmed and rounded as if for ornament. It was like a splendid park, kept by an English magnate. The regularity of shape in the shrubs arises, no doubt, from the constant cropping of the young shoots all round by herds of goats, which we met here and there in this beautiful solitude. The river bank where we rode was clothed with oleander, prickly pear, and other flowering shrubs which I could not name.
At last woods of ancient olives, with great gnarled
stems, told us that we were nearing some important
settlement, and the pleasant town of Kyparissia
came in view—now, alas! a heap of ruins since the
recent earthquake. Here we took leave of our
ponies, mules, and human followers; but the pathos
I have set apart a chapter for Mycenæ and Tiryns, because the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann there have raised so many new problems, and have so largely increased public curiosity about them, that a book of travels in Greece cannot venture to avoid the subject; even long before Dr. Schliemann’s day, the learned and deliberate travellers who visited the Morea, and wrote their great books, found ample scope for description, and large room for erudite discussion. It is a curious thing to add, but strictly true, that all the new facts brought out by the late excavations have, as yet, contributed but little to our knowledge about the actual history of the country, and that almost every word of what was summed up from all existing sources twenty years ago, by Ernst Curtius, can still be read with far more profit than the rash speculations which appear almost weekly in the periodical press.
It is impossible to approach Mycenæ from any
side without being struck with the picturesqueness
of the site. If you come down over the mountains
from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the
a recess of the horse-feeding Argos,
as
Homer calls it, and then you find on the edge of
the valley, and where the hills begin to rise one
behind the other, the village of Charváti. When
you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty
Mount Elias is separated from the plain by two
nearly parallel waves of land, which are indeed
joined at the northern end by a curving saddle,
but elsewhere are divided by deep gorges. The
loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky citadel of
Mycenæ—the Argion, as it was once called. The
lower and longer was part of the outer city, which
occupied both this hill and the gorge under the
Argion. As you walk along the lower hill, you find
the Treasure-house of Atreus, as it is called, built
into the side which faces the Acropolis. But there
are other ruined treasuries on the outer slope, and
the newly-opened one is just at the joining saddle,
where the way winds round to lead you up the
greater hill to the giant gate with the Lion portal.
If we represent the high levels under the image of
a fishing-hook, with the shank placed downward
(south), and the point lying to the right (east), then
the Great Treasury is at that spot in the shank
which is exactly opposite the point, and faces it.
The point and barb are the Acropolis. The New
Treasury is just at the turn of the hook, facing
inMycenæ, where all these
matters are made perfectly plain and easy.
When we first visited the place it was in the
afternoon of a splendid summer’s day; the fields
were yellow and white with stubbles or with dust,
and the deep gray shadow of a passing cloud was
the only variety in the color of the upper plain.
For here there are now no trees, the corn had been
reaped, and the land asserted its character as very
thirsty Argos. But as we ascended to higher
ground, the groves and plantations of the lower
plain came in sight, the splendid blue of the bay
began to frame the picture, and the setting sun cast
deeper shadow and richer color over all the view.
Down at the river-bed great oleanders were spreading
their sheets of bloom, like the rhododendrons in
our climate, but they were too distant to form a
feature in the prospect.
I saw the valley of Argos again in spring, in our
roaring moon of daffodil and crocus;
it was the
time of growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple
cistus, but there too of high winds and glancing
shadows. Then all the plain was either brilliant
green with growing wheat, or ruddy brown with
recent tillage; there were clouds about the
moun
[Illustration: The Argive Plain]
I can hardly say which of these seasons was the more beautiful, but I shall always associate the summer scene with the charm of a first visit to this famous spot, and still more with the venerable and undisturbed aspect of the ruins before they had been profaned by modern research. It is, I suppose, ungrateful to complain of these things, and we must admit that great discoveries outbalance the æsthetic damage done to an ancient ruin by digging unsightly holes and piling mounds of earth about it; but who can contemplate without sorrow the covering of the finest piece of the Cyclopean wall at Mycenæ with the rubbish taken away from over the tombs? Who will not regret the fig-tree which spread its shade over the portal of the House of Atreus? This fig-tree is still to be seen in the older photographs, and is in the woodcut of the entrance given in Dr. Schliemann’s book, but the visitor of to-day will look for it in vain. On the other hand, the opening at the top, which had been there since the beginning of this century, but which was closed when I first visited the chamber, had been again uncovered, and so it was much easier to examine the inner arrangement of the building.
I am not sure that this wonderful structure was
visited or described by any traveller from the days
About the same time Lord Elgin had turned his
attention to the Treasury, and had made excavations
about the place, finding several fragments of very
old engraved basalt and limestone, which had been
employed to ornament the entrance. Some of these
fragments are now in the British Museum. But,
though both Clarke and Leake allude to Lord
Elgin’s excavators,
they do not specify what was
performed, or in what condition the place had been
before their researches. There is no published account
of this interesting point, which is probably to
be solved by the still unpublished journals said to be
in the possession of the present Earl.Mycenæ, p. 49.
I need not attempt a fresh description of the
Great Treasury, in the face of such ample and
accurate reports as those I have indicated. It is in
no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous
age, but, on the contrary, the product of
Mycenæ, p. 140). There is the strongest architectural
reason for the triangular aperture over the
door, as it diminishes the enormous weight to be
borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some
orna
The extreme darkness of the chamber during our first visit prevented me from discovering, even with the aid of torches, the nail-marks which all the earlier travellers found there, and which are now again easily to be seen. So also the outer lintel-stone is not by any means the largest, but is far exceeded by the inner, which lies next to it, and which reaches on each side of the entrance a long way round the chamber, its inner surface being curved to suit the form of the wall. Along this curve it is twenty-nine feet long; it is, moreover, seventeen feet broad, and nearly four feet thick, weighing about one hundred and twenty-four tons!
When we first entered by the light of torches, we
found ourselves in the great cone-shaped chamber,
which, strange to say, reminded me of the Pantheon
at Rome more than any other building I know, and
is, nevertheless, built on a very different principle.
The stones are not, indeed, pushed forward one
above the other, as in ruder stone roofs through
Ireland; but each of them, which is on the other
surfaces cut perfectly square, has its inner face
curved so that the upper end comes out several
inches above the lower. So each stone carries on
the conical plan, having its lower line fitting closely
to the upper line of the one beneath, and the
Dodwell still found copper nails of some inches in
length, which he supposed to have been used to
fasten on thin plates of shining metal; but I was
at first unable to see even the holes in the roof,
which other travellers had believed to be the places
where the nails were inserted. However, without
being provided with magnesium wire, it was then
impossible to light the chamber sufficiently for a
positive decision on this point. A comparatively
small side chamber is hollowed out in the rock and
earth, without any stone casing or ornament whatever,
but with a similar triangular aperture over its
doorway. Schliemann tells us he dug two trenches
in this chamber, and that, besides finding some
hewn pieces of limestone, he found in the middle a
circular depression (apparently of stone), twenty-one
inches deep, and about one yard in diameter,
which he compares to a large wash-bowl. Any one
who has visited New Grange will be struck with the
likeness of this description to the large stone saucers
There has been much controversy about the use to
which this building was applied, and we cannot now
attempt to change the name, even if we could prove
its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenæ in the
second century A. D., found it in much the same state
as we do, and was no better informed than we,
though he tells us the popular belief that this and
its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the
Minyæ at Orchomenus, which was very much
greater, and was, in his opinion, one of the most
wonderful things in all Greece. But it does not
seem to me that his opinion, which, indeed, is
not very clear, need in the least shackle our judgments.
The majority of scholars incline to the theory that
it is a tomb. In the first place, there are three other
similar buildings quite close to it, which Pausanias
mentions as the treasure-houses of the sons of
Atreus, but their number makes it most unlikely
that any of them could be for treasure. Surely
such a house could only be owned by the reigning
king, and there is no reason why his successor
should make himself a new vault for this purpose.
In the next place, these buildings were all underground
and dark, and exactly such as would be
selected for tombs. Thirdly, they are not situated
within the enclosure of the citadel of Mycenæ, but
Antiquities of Kertch.
These antiquarian considerations have led us away
from the actual survey of the old vault, for ruin it
cannot be called. The simplicity and massiveness
of its structure have defied age and violence, and,
except for the shattered ornaments and a few pieces
over the inner side of the window, not a stone
appears ever to have been moved from its place.
Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the
scattered masonry of the walls of Mycenæ, on the
hillock over against you. Close beyond this is a
dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is
narrow and confined, and faces the north, so that,
for most of the day, the gate is dark and in shadow.
We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a
king, within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a
deep natural hillock, with a great solemn portal
symbolizing the resistless strength of the barrier
which he had passed into an unknown land. But
one more remark seems necessary. This treasure-house
is by no means a Hellenic building in its
features. It has the same perfection of construction
which can be seen at Eleutheræ, or any other Greek
fort, but still the really analogous buildings are to be
I have had the opportunity of comparing the structure and effect of the great sepulchral monuments in the county of Meath, in Ireland. Two of these, Dowth and New Grange, are opened, and can be entered almost as easily as the treasury of Atreus. They lie close to the rich valley of the Boyne, in that part of the country which was pointed out by nature as the earliest seat of wealth and culture. Dowth is the ruder and less ornamented, and therefore not improbably the older, but is less suited for the present comparison than the greater and more ornate New Grange.
This splendid tomb is not a whit less remarkable,
or less colossal in its construction, than those at
Mycenæ, but differs in many details. It was not
hollowed out in a hillside, but was built of great
upright stones, with flat slabs laid over them, and
then covered with a mound of earth. An enormous
circle of giant boulders stands round the foot of the
mound. Instead of passing through a short entrance
into a great vaulted chamber, there is a long narrow
corridor, which leads to a much smaller, but still
very lofty room, nearly twenty feet high. Three
recesses in the walls of this latter each contain a
large round saucer, so to speak, made of single
stone, in which the remains of the dead seem to
have been laid. This saucer is very shallow, and
Putting aside minor details, it may be said that
while both monuments show an equal display of
human strength, and an equal contempt for human
toil, which were lavished upon them without stint,
the Greek building shows far greater finish of
design and neatness of execution, together with
greater simplicity. The stones are all carefully hewn
and fitted, but not carved or decorated. The triangular
carved block over the lintel, and the supposed
metal plates on the interior, were both foreign
to the original structure. On the contrary, while
the Irish tomb is a far greater feature in the landscape—a
landmark in the district—the great stones
within are not fitted together, or hewn into shape,
and yet they are covered with patterns and designs
strangely similar to the carvings found by Dodwell
and Dr. Schliemann at the Argive tombs. Thus the
Irish builders, with far greater rudeness, show a
Book of
Kells.
The second treasury lately excavated by Mrs. Schliemann has been disappointing in its results. Though it seems not to have been disturbed for ages, it had evidently been once rifled, for nothing save a few fragments of pottery were found within. Its entrance is much loftier than that of the house of Atreus, but the general building is inferior, the stones are far smaller and by no means so well fitted, and it produces altogether the impression of being either a much earlier and ruder attempt, or a poor and feeble imitation. Though Dr. Schliemann asserts the former, I am disposed to suspect the latter to be the case.
A great deal of what was said about the tomb of
Agamemnon, as the common people, with truer instinct,
call the supposed treasure-house, may be repeated
about the fortifications of Mycenæ. It is the
work of builders who know perfectly how to deal
with their materials—who can hew and fit great
blocks of stone with perfect ease; nay, who prefer,
for the sake of massive effect, to make their doorway
with such enormous blocks as even modern
science would find it difficult to handle. The
sculpt There has been strange diversity of opinion about the nature
of this stone. Dodwell and Leake call it basalt. Moreover, Dodwell
thought it greenish. Some one else thinks it yellowish. The
French expedition and Curtius call it limestone. Dr. Schliemann
says it is the same breccia as the rest of the gate. It is in the face
of these opinions that I persist in the statement that it is bluish,
and limestone. It is owing to this note that it was again critically examined by
Mr. Tuckett, who published his result in the Architect of 19th
January, 1879, and who had fragments of the stone analyzed,
which justified my observation. He also notes that several observers
erred as to the shape of the central pillar, which does not
diminish in bulk downward.
When you go in, and climb up the hill of the Acropolis, you find various other portions of Cyclopean walls which belonged to the old palace, in plan very similar to that of Tiryns. But the outer wall goes all round the hill where it is steepest, sometimes right along a precipice, and everywhere offering an almost insurmountable obstacle to an ancient assailant. On the east side, facing the steep mountain, which is separated from it by a deep gorge, is a postern gate, consisting merely of three stones, but these so massive, and so beautifully hewn and fitted, as to be a structure hardly less striking than the lion gate. At about half the depth of these huge blocks there is a regular groove cut down both sides and along the top, in order to hold the door.
The whole summit of the great rock is now stony and bare, but not so bare that I could not gather scarlet anemones, which found scanty sustenance here and there in tiny patches of grass, and gladdened the gray color of the native rock and the primeval walls. The view from the summit, when first I saw it, was one of singular solitude and peace; not a stone seemed to have been disturbed for ages; not a human creature, or even a browsing goat, was visible, and the traveller might sketch or scrutinize any part of the fortress without fear of intrusion, far less of molestation. When I again reached the site, in the spring of 1877, a great change had taken place. Dr. Schliemann had attacked the ruins, and had made his world-renowned excavations inside and about the lion gate. To the gate itself this was a very great gain. All the encumbering earth and stones have been removed, so that we can now admire the full proportions of the mighty portal. He discovered a tiny porter’s lodge inside it. He denied the existence of the wheel-tracks which we and others fancied we had seen there on our former visit.
[Illustration: Lion Gate, Mycenae]
But proceeding from the gate to the lower side,
where the hill slopes down rapidly, and where the
great irregular Cyclopean wall trends away to the
right, Dr. Schliemann found a deep accumulation
of soil. This was, of course, the chief place on an
otherwise bare rock where excavations promised
He first found in this area a double circuit of thin upright slabs, joined together closely, and joined across the top with flat slabs mortised into them, the whole circuit being like a covered way, about three feet high. Into the enclosed circle a way leads from the lion gate; and what I noted particularly was this, that the whole circle, which was over thirty yards in diameter, was separated from the higher ground by a very miserable bounding wall, which, though quite concealed before the excavations, and therefore certainly very old, looked for all the world like some Turkish piece of masonry.
As soon as this stone circle was discovered, it was
suggested that old Greek agoras were round, that
they were often in the citadel at the king’s gate, and
that people were sometimes buried in them. Dr.
Schliemann at once baptized the place as the agora
of Mycenæ. It was a circle with only one free
access, and that from the gate; it had tombstones
standing in the midst of it, and there were the
charred remains of sacrifices about them. The
Inside this circuit of stone slabs were found—apparently at the same depth, but on this Dr. Schliemann is not explicit—very curious and very archaic carved slabs, with rude hunting scenes of warriors in very uncomfortable chariots, and varied spiral ornaments filling up the vacant spaces. These sculptures are unlike any Hellenic work, properly so called, and point back to a very remote period, and probably to the introduction of a foreign art among the rude inhabitants of early Greece. Deeper down were found more tombstones, all manner of archaic pottery, arrow-heads, and buttons of bone; there was also found some rude construction of hewn stones, which may have served as an altar or a tomb.
Yet further down, twenty-one feet deep, and close
to the rock, were lying together a number of skeletons,
which seemed to have been hastily or carelessly
buried; but in the rock itself, in rudely hewn
chambers, were found fifteen bodies buried with a
splendor seldom equalled in the history of the world.
These people were not buried like Greeks. They
Academy, No. 29. Cf. also Dörpfeld in Schuchhardt, p. 161.
Dr. Schliemann boldly announced in the Times,
and the public believed him, that he had found Agamemnon,
and his companions, who were murdered
when they returned from the siege of Troy. The
burial is indeed quite different from any such ceremony
described in the Homeric poems. The number
of fifteen is not to be accounted for by any of
the legends. There is no reason to think all the
Such an inference would be as absurd as to accept
the hypothesis of Dr. Schliemann. The tombs are
undoubtedly very ancient, certainly far more ancient
than the supposed date of Homer, or even of Agamemnon.
The treasures which have been carried
to Athens, and which I saw and handled at
the National Bank, are not only really valuable
masses of gold, but have a good deal of beauty
of workmanship, both in design and decoration.
Though the masks are very ugly and barbarous,
and though there is in general no power shown of
moulding any animal figure, there are very beautiful
cups and jugs, there are most elegant geometrical
ornaments—zigzags, spirals, and the like—and there
are even imitations of animals of much artistic
merit. The celebrated silver bull’s head, with golden
horns, is a piece of work which would not disgrace
I can now add important corroborations of these
general conclusions from the researches made since
the appearance of my earlier editions. I then said
that the discoveries were too fresh and dazzling to
admit of safe theories concerning their origin. By
way of illustration I need only allude to those savants
(they will hereafter be obliged to me for omitting
their names) who imagined that all the Mycenæan
tombs were not archaic at all, but the work of
northern barbarians who occupied Greece during the
disasters of the later Roman Empire! Serious
reB. C. we shall be led to about 1000 B. C. as the latest
possible date for the splendors of Mycenæ. But
this negative conclusion has been well-nigh demonstrated
by the positive results of the various recent
researches in Egypt. Not only has the Egypt Exploration
Society examined carefully the sites of
Naucratis and Daphne, thus disclosing to us what
Greek art and manufacture could produce in the
sixth and seventh centuries B. C. (665–565 B. C.),
but Mr. Flinders Petrie has enriched our knowledge
by his wonderful discoveries of Egyptian art on
several sites, and of many epochs, fairly determinable
by the reigning dynasties. He has recently
(1890) examined the Mycenæan and other pre-historic
treasures collected at Athens, by the light of
his rich Egyptian experience, and has given a
sumJournal of Hellenic Studies.
He finds that the materials and their treatment,
such as blue glass, even in its decomposition, alabaster,
rock-crystal, hollowed and painted within,
dome-head rivets attaching handles of gold cups,
ostrich eggs with handles attached, ties made for
ornament in porcelain, are all to be found in Egyptian
tombs varying from 1400 to 1100 in date. His
analysis leads him to give the dates for the tombs
I.-IV. at Mycenæ as 1200–1100 B. C. That an
earlier date is improbable is shown by the negative
evidence that none of the purely geometrical false-necked
vases occur, such as are the general product
of 1400–1200 in Egyptian deposits. But as several
isolated articles are of older types, as in particular
the lions over the gate are quite similar to a gilt
wooden lion he found of about 1450 B. C. in date,
the Mycenæan civilization probably extended over a
considerable period. He even finds proof of decadence
in grave IV. as compared with the rest, and
so comes to the conclusion, which I am disposed to
question, that the tombs within the circle at Mycenæ
(shaft-tombs) are later and worse interments made
by the same people who had already built the more
majestic and costly bee-hive tombs. Instead therefore
of upholding a Phrygian origin, Mr. Petrie
asserts an Egyptian origin for both Mycenæan and
parallel Phrygian designs. The spiral pattern in its
B. C., with occasional traditional links with
Egypt as far back as 1500 or 1600 B. C.
Such is an abstract of Mr. Petrie’s estimate.Schliemann’s Excavations,
1891), and of Busolt in the new edition of his Greek history,
1892.
I will only here point out, in addition, the remarkable
unity of style between the ornaments
found at a depth of twenty-five feet in the tombs,
the sculptured tombstones twelve or fourteen feet
over them, and the lions on the gate of the citadel.
It is, indeed, only a general uniformity, but it corroborates
Mr. Petrie’s inference that there was more
than mere importing; there was home manufacture.
But still among the small gold ornaments in the
tombs were found several pairs of animals placed
opposite each other in this strictly heraldic fashion,
and even on the engraved gems this symmetry is
curiously frequent. It seems, then, that the art of
Mycenæ had not changed when its early history
came to a close, and its inhabitants were forced to
We are, indeed, told expressly by Pausanias and
Diodorus that this event did not take place till after
the Persian wars, when old Hellenic art was already
well defined, and was beginning to make rapid progress.
But this express statement, which I saw
reason to question since my former remarks on the
subject in this book, I am now determined to reject,
in the face of the inconsistencies of these historians,
the silence of all the contemporaries of the alleged
conquest, and the exclusively archaic remains which
Dr. Schliemann has unearthed. Mycenæ, along
with Tiryns, Midea, and the other towns of the
plain, was incorporated into Argos at a far earlier
date, and not posterior to the brilliant rule of Pheidon.
So it comes that historical Greece is silent
about the ancient capital of the Pelopids, and the
poets transfer all its glories to Argos. Once, indeed,
the name did appear on the national records. The
offerings to the gods at Olympia, and at Delphi,
after the victory over the Persians, recorded that a
few patriots—460 in all—from Mycenæ and from
Tiryns had joined the Greeks at Platæa, while the
remainder of the Argives preserved a base and cowardly
neutrality. The Mycenæans were very few in
number; sixty are mentioned in connection with
Thermopylæ by Herodotus. They were probably
exiles through Greece, who had preserved their
On the other hand, the origin of Mycenæ, and its
greatness as a royal residence, must be thrown back
into a far deeper antiquity than any one had yet
imagined. If Agamemnon and his house represent
Hellenic princes, of the type of Homer’s knowledge
and acquaintance, they must have arisen after some
older, and apparently different dynasties had ruled
and had buried their dead at Mycenæ.Tiryns
(1885).Homer
that I will not
venture to expand it, and will leave the reader to
add any conjectures he chooses to those which I have
already hazarded in too great number.
When the splendid findings of Dr. Schliemann
are taken out of their bandboxes in the Bank of
Athens, and arranged in the National Museum;
The further investigation of the remains of Mycenæ, with the additional evidence derived from the ruins of Tiryns, presently to be described, have led Dr. Adler to explain Mycenæ as the record of a double foundation, first by a race who built rubble masonry, and buried their dead in narrow rock-tombs or graves, piling on the bodies their arms and ornaments; secondly, after some considerable interval, by a race who built splendid ashlar masonry, with well-cut blocks, and who constructed great beehive tombs, where the dead could lie with ample room in royal state. The second race enlarged, rebuilt, and refaced the old fortifications, added the present lion gate, and built the so-called treasure-houses. For convenience’ sake he calls them, according to the old legends, Perseids and Pelopids respectively. Hence the tombs which Dr. Schliemann found were really far older than any one had at first supposed, and if the record of Homer points distinctly to the Pelopids, then the gold and jewels of a far earlier people were hidden deep underground in the foundation of Agamemnon’s fortress, merely marked by a sacred circle of stones and some archaic gravestones.
To which of these stages of building do the ruins
of Tiryns belong? Apparently to the earlier, though
The upper part of the rock of Tiryns, which consisted
of two plateaus or levels, was known to contain
remains of building by the shafts which Dr.
Schliemann had already sunk there in former years.
But now a very different method of excavating was
adopted—that of uncovering the surface in layers,
so that successive strata of debris might be clearly
distinguished. This exceedingly slow and laborious
process, which I saw going on for days at Tiryns
with very little result, brought out in the end the
whole plan of a palace, with its gates, floors, parting
walls, and pillar bases, so that in the admirable
drawing to be seen in the book called Tiryns, Dr.
Dörpfeld has given us the first clear view of an old
Greek, or perhaps even pre-Hellenic, palace. The
partial agreement with the plan of the palaces of
Troy, and of Mycenæ, since discovered, and the
adoption in Hellenic temples of the plan of entrance,
here several times repeated—two pillars between
All the gates leading up into this palace are still
distinctly marked by the threshold or door-sill, a
great stone, lying in its place, with grooves inserted
for the pivots of the doors, which were of wood, but
had their pivots shod with bronze, as was proved by
the actual remains. These doors divided a double
porch, entered either way between two pillars of
wood, standing upon stone bases still in their place,
and flanked by antæ, which were below of stone
and above of wood dowelled into the stone piers.
All the upper structure of the gates, and, indeed, of
all the palace, seems to have been of wood. There
are clear signs of a great conflagration, in which
the palace perished. This implies the existence
of ample fuel, and while the ashes, mud-bricks, etc.,
remain, no trace of architrave, or pillar, or roof has
been found. There are gates of similar design leading
into the courts and principal chamber of the
palace, the floors of which are covered with a careful
lime concrete marked with line patterns, and so
sloped as to afford easy drainage into a vent leading
to pipes of terra cotta, which carried off water. The
same careful arrangements are observed in the bath-room,
with a floor of one great stone, twelve feet by
nine, which is likewise pierced to carry off water.
The remains of a terra cotta tub were found there,
and the walls of the room were panelled with wood,
Of the walls little remains but the foundations,
and here and there a couple of feet of mud-bricks,
with signs of beams let into them, which added to
the conflagration. But enough remains to show
that the walls of the better rooms were richly covered
with ornament. There is a fresco of a bull
still preserved, and reproduced in Dr. Schliemann’s
book; and there was also found a very remarkable
frieze ornament in rosettes and brooch patterns,
made of blue glass paste (supposed to be Homer’s
The size of the main hall, or men’s apartment, is very large, the floor covering about 120 square yards, and the parallel room in the palace at Troy was consequently taken to be the cella of a temple. But there seems no doubt that the great room at Tiryns, with a hearth in the middle and four pillar bases near it, supporting, perhaps, a higher roof, with a clerestory, was the main reception room of the palace; a smaller room of similar construction, not connected with the former, save by a circuitous route through passages, seems to have been the ladies’ drawing-room.
If I were to attempt any full description of this wonderful place I should be obliged to copy out a great part of the fifth chapter in Dr. Schliemann’s book, in which Dr. Dörpfeld has set down very modestly, but very completely, the results of his own acuteness and research. Many things which are now plain enough were perfect riddles till he found the true solution, and the acuteness with which he has utilized the smallest hints, as well as the caution of his conclusions, make this work of his a very model of scientific induction.
He says, rightly enough, that a minute description
is necessary, because a very few years will cover up
much of the evidence which he had plainly before
him. The concrete floors, the remains of mud-brick
walls, the plan of the various rooms, will be choked
up with grass and weeds, unless they are kept
covered and cleared. The rain, which has long
since washed all traces of mortar out of the walls,
will wash away far more now that the site is opened,
and so the future archæologist will find that the book
Tiryns will tell him much that the actual Tiryns cannot
show him.
The lower platform on the rock is not yet touched,
and here perhaps digging will discover to us the
remains of a temple, from which one very archaic
Doric capital and an antefix have found their way to
the higher rock. There are traces, too, of the great
Two things are plain from these discoveries, and
I dwell on them with satisfaction, because they corroborate
old opinions of mine, put forth long before
the principal evidence was forthcoming. First, the
general use of wood for pillars and architraves, so
showing how naturally the stone temple imitated the
older wooden buildings. Secondly, the archaic or
ante-Hellenic character of all that was found at
Tiryns, with the solitary exception of the architectural
fragments, which certainly have no building
to correspond to them where they were found.
Thus my hypothesis, which holds that Tiryns, as
well as Mycenæ, was destroyed at least as early as
Pheidon’s time (660 B. C.), and not after the Persian
wars, receives corroboration which will amount to
positive proof in any mind open to evidence on the
point.
When I first went to Greece, nearly twenty years
ago, the few travellers one met in the country never
thought of studying its mediæval remains. We
were in search of classical art, we passed by Byzantine
churches or Frankish towers with contemptuous
ignorance. Mr. Finlay’s great book, indeed, was
already written; but those who knew German and
were bold enough to attack the eight volumes which
Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopædia devote to the
article on Greece, had been taught by Hopf’s Essay
on Mediæval Greece to fathom what depths dulness
could attain. Whether the author, or the odious
paper, and type in its double columns, contributed
to this result, was of little consequence. The subject
itself seemed dreary beyond description. All
the various peoples who invaded, swayed, ravaged,
colonized the country in the Dark Ages, seemed
but undistinguishable hordes of barbarians, of
whom we knew nothing, about whom we cared
nothing, beyond a general hatred of them, as those
who had broken up and destroyed the splendid
temples and fair statues that are now the world’s
desire. Even the very thorough and learned
Bædeker’s Greece, a very
few years ago, never thought of putting in any
information whatever, beyond their chronological
table, upon the many centuries which intervened
between the close of paganism and the recent regeneration
of the country. The contempt for Byzantine
work in the East was in our early days like
the contempt of Renaissance work in the West.
We were all Classical or Gothic in taste.
Now a great reaction is setting in. Instead of the
dreadful Hopf, we have the fascinating Gregorovius,
whose Mediæval Athens clothes even dry details with
the hue of fancy; the sober Murray’s Guide includes
Mt. Athos and its wonders as part of its task.
Recent travellers, and the students at the Foreign
Schools of Athens, tell us of curious churches and
their frescoes, and now Mr. Schultz, of the British
school, has undertaken to reproduce them with his
pencil. Following the example of Pullen, whose
pictures have secured for posterity some record of
the churches of Salonica, so often threatened by fire,
he will perpetuate the remnants of an architecture
and an art which were rapidly perishing from
neglect. When I was first at Athens men were
seriously discussing the propriety of razing to the
ground the most striking of all the Byzantine
churches at Athens, because it stood in the thoroughfare
which led from the palace to the railway
station! Historians tell us the dreadful fact, that
There are indeed no mean traces of this art in Adriatic Italy; the exarchate at Ravenna, the eastern traffic of Venice, have shown their influence on Italian art and architecture. The splendid mosaics of Ravenna, nay, even the seven domes of S. Antonio at Verona, the frescoes of the Giotto Chapel at Padua, above all, the great cathedral at Venice, are all strongly colored—those of Ravenna even produced—by Byzantine art. Yet most travellers who visit S. Mark’s at Venice have never seen a Byzantine church, and do not feel its Eastern parentage; still fewer visit the splendid basilica of Parenzo, which is a still more unmistakable example. But to those who have turned aside from Olympia and Parthenon to study the early Christian remains in Greece, all this art of Eastern Italy will acquire a new interest and a deeper meaning.
These are the reasons which have tempted me to
say a few words on this side of Greek travel. I do
not pretend to speak as an authority; I only desire
to stimulate a nascent interest which will presently
make what I say seem simple and antiquated. But
Let us begin with the best and quaintest, the so-called
Old Cathedral, which was fortunately allowed to
stand beside its ugly and pretentious successor. The
first thing which strikes us is the exceeding smallness
of the dimensions, it is like one of the little chapels
you find in Glendalough and elsewhere in Ireland.
I do not know whether the Greeks contemplated a
congregation kneeling in the open air, as was the
case around these chapels in Ireland, but such edifices
were certainly intended in the first instance as
holy places for sacerdotal celebrations, not as houses
of prayer for the people. I was told on Mt. Athos
that it was not the practice of the Greek church to
celebrate more than one service in any one Church
daily. Hence the monks, who are making prayer
continually, have twenty or thirty chapels within
the precincts of each monastery. Perhaps a similar
motive may have led to the construction of a great
number of smaller churches at Athens, where
seventy have already been destroyed, and at
Salonica, where remains of them are still being
frequently discovered. Perhaps, also, that desire
But if this Cathedral is small, it has the proper
beauty of minute art; it is covered with rich
decoration. All its surfaces show carved fragments
not only of classical, but of earlier Byzantine work—friezes,
reliefs, inscriptions, capitals—all so disposed
with a general correspondence or symmetry
as to produce the effect of a real design. Moreover,
this foreign ornament is set in a building strictly
Byzantine in form, with its rich doorway, its tiny
windows with their high semicircular arches supported
on delicate capitals, and toned by the centuries of
Attic dust to that rich gold brown which has turned
the Parthenon from marble almost to ruddy gold.
Never was there greater harmony and unity attained
by the most deliberate patch-work. In the earlier
works on Byzantine art, this church was confidently
assigned to the sixth century. Buchon found upon
it the arms of La Roche and of Villehardouin, so
that he assigned it to the thirteenth. The character
of the other buildings of these knights makes me
doubt that they and their friends could have constructed
such a church—the Western monks then
Of the remaining churches three only, the Kapnikarea, the Virgin of the Monastery, and S. Theodore, are worth studying, as specimens of the typical form of such buildings. The main plan is a square, surmounted by a cupola supported on four pillars, with a corridor or porch on the West side, and three polygonal apses on the East. Lesser cupolas often surround the central dome. The height and slenderness of this central dome is probably the clearest sign of comparative lateness in these buildings, which used to be attributed to the fourth and fifth centuries, but are now degraded to the eleventh. The earliest form is no doubt that of the massive S. George’s at Salonica—a huge Rotunda covered with a flat dome, not unlike the Pantheon at Rome, with nothing but richly ornamented niches, and a splendid mosaic ceiling in the dome, to give relief to a very plain design. The successive complications and refinements added to this simple structure may be studied even in the later churches of Salonica.
The traveller who has whetted his taste for this
peculiar form of mediæval art, and desires to study
it further, will find within reach of Athens two
monasteries well worth a visit, that of the Phæneromené
on Salamis, a very fair specimen of an
un
The structure as we now see it is chiefly the work of the Cistercians who accompanied Otho de la Roche from Champagne to his dukedom of Athens, and was established round a far older Byzantine church and monastery. Like all mediæval convents, it is fortified, and the whole settlement, courts and gardens included, is surrounded by a crenelated wall, originally about thirty feet high.
There are occasional towers in the wall, and remains of arches supporting a passage of sufficient altitude for the defenders to look over the battlements. The old church in the centre of the court has had a narthex or nave added in Gothic style by the Benedictines, and here again are battlements, from which the monks could send down stones or boiling liquid upon assailants who penetrated the outer walls. Three sides of the court are surrounded by buildings; beneath, there are massive arcades of stone for the kitchen, store-rooms, and refectory; above, wooden galleries which supplied the monks with their cells. Most of this is now in ruins, occupied in part by peasants and their sheep. But the church, both in its external simplicity and its internal grandeur, is remarkable for the splendid decoration of its walls with mosaics, which, alas! have been allowed to decay as much from the indolence of the Greeks as the intolerance of the Turks. In fact, while some care and regard for classical remains have gradually been instilled into the minds of the inhabitants—of course, money value is an easily understood test—the respect for their splendid mediæval remains has only gained Western intellects within the last two or three years, so that we may expect another generation to elapse before this new kind of interest will be disseminated among the possessors of so great a bequest from the Middle Ages.
The interior of the church at Daphne is a melancholy
example. From the effects of damp the
mortar has loosened, and great patches of the precious
mosaic have fallen to the ground. You can
pick up handfulls of glazed and gilded fragments, of
which the rich surfaces were composed. Here and
there a Turkish bullet has defaced a solemn Saint,
while the fires lit by soldiers in days of war, and
by shepherds in time of peace, have, in many places,
blackened the roof beyond recognition. Within the
central cupola a gigantic head of Christ on gold
ground is still visible, or was so when I saw the
place in 1889; but the whole roof was in danger
of falling, and the Greek Government, at the instigation
of Dr. Dörpfeld, had undertaken to stay
the progress of decay, and so the building was filled
with scaffolding. This, however, enabled us to
mount close to the figures, which in the short and
high building are seen with difficulty from the
ground, and so we distinguished clearly round the
base of the cupola the twelve Apostles, in the bay
arches the prophets, in the transepts the Annunciation,
the Nativity, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration
of Christ—all according to the strict models
laid down for such ornaments by the Greek Church.
The drawings are indeed stiff and grotesque, but the
gloom and mystery of the building hide all imperfections,
and give to these imposing figures in black
and gold a certain majesty, which must have been
We have, unfortunately, no records of the history
of these convents, as in the case of many Western
abbeys, and the old chronicles of wars and pestilences
seldom mention this quiet life. We should
fain, says M. Henri Belle, have followed the fortunes
of these monks who left some fair abbey in
Burgundy to catechise schismatics in this distant
land, and bring their preaching to aid the sword of
the Crusaders; but these Crusaders were generally
intent on changing their cross for a crown, and were
therefore not at all likely to favor the rigid proselytism
of the Cistercians. It is very interesting to
know that Innocent III., that great pope, who from
the outset disapproved of the violent overthrow of
the Christian Empire of the East, was the first to
recommend, both to the conquerors and their clergy,
such moderation as might serve to bring back the
schismatic Greeks to the Roman fold. There are
still extant several of his letters to the abbeys of
the Morea, and to this abbey of the duchy of Athens,
showing that even his authority and zeal in this
matter were unable to restrain the bigotry of the
Latin monks. There were frequent quarrels, too,
between these monks of Daphne and their Duke,
and frequent appeals to the sovran pontiff to regulate
the relations between the civil authority, which
claimed the right of suzerain, and the religious
Midsummer
Night’s Dream, as well as the curious fact, at least
to classical readers, that the poet should have chosen
mediæval Athens as a court of gracious manners,
and suitable for the background of his fairy drama.
Neglecting geography, I shall carry the reader next to the very analogous ruins of Mistra, where, however, it was rather the Greek that supplanted the Latin, than the Latin the Greek ecclesiastic.
When the Franks invaded Greece a very remarkable
family, the Villehardouins, seized a part of the
Morea, and presently built Mistra, above Sparta; it
was adorned with fair Gothic churches and palaces,
La Conquête de Constantinople, which is unique
in its importance both as a specimen of old French
and a piece of mediæval history.
The architecture of Mistra, begun at a noble epoch
by the Latins, was taken up by the Byzantine
Greeks, so that we have both styles combined in
curious relics of the now deserted stronghold. For,
since 1850, when an earthquake shook down many
houses, the population wandered to the revived
Sparta, which is now a thriving town. But as the
old Sparta in its greatest days was only a collection
of shabby villages, showing no outward sign of its
importance, so the new and vulgar Sparta has no
attractions (save the lovely orange and lemon
orchards round it) in comparison with the mediæval
Mistra. The houses are piled one above another till
you reach the summit crowned by the citadel which,
itself a mountain, is severed from the higher mountains
at its back by a deep gorge with a tumbling
The whole town is now nothing but ruined
palaces, churches, and houses. You wander up
rudely-paved streets rising zigzag, and pass beneath
arches on which are carved the escutcheons of
French knights. You enter courts overgrown with
grass, but full of memories of the Crusaders. It is
the very home of the Middle Ages. Passing through
these streets, now the resort of lizards and serpents,
you come upon Frankish tombs, among others that
of Theodora Tocco, wife of the Emperor Constantine
Palæologus, who died in 1430. The Panagia
is the only church well preserved—a Latin basilica,
with a portico in the form of an Italian loggia, and
a Byzantine tower added to it. This building is
highly ornamented with delicate carving, and its
walls are in alternate courses of brick and stone,
while the gates, columns, and floor are of marble.
The interior is adorned with Byzantine frescoes of
scenes from the Old Testament. Higher up is the
metropolitan church, built by the Greeks as soon as
William Villehardouin had surrendered the fort in
1263. This great church is not so beautiful as that
already described, but has many peculiarities of no
less interest. The palace of the Frank princes was
probably at the wide place on a higher level, where
the ruined walls show the remains of many Gothic
windows. The citadel was first rehandled by the
Greek Palæologi, then by the Turks, then by the
Venetians, who in their turn seized this mediæval
Fetter of Greece.
And now all the traces of all
these conquerors are lying together confused in
silence and decay. The heat of the sun in these
narrow and stony streets, with their high walls, is
intense. But you cannot but pause when you find
in turn old Greek carving, Byzantine dedications,
Roman inscriptions, Frankish devices, emblazoned
on the walls. The Turkish baths alone are intact,
and have resisted both weather and earthquake. But
the churches occupy the chief place still, dropping
now and then a stone, as it were a monumental tear
for their glorious past; the Greek Cross, the Latin
Cross, the Crescent, have all ruled there in their
turn. Even a pair of ruined minarets remain to
show the traces of that slavery to which the people
were subject for four hundred years.
The occupation of the Frankish knights had not
found an adequate historian, since old Villehardouin,
till Gregorovius wrote his Mediæval Athens. The
traveller still sees throughout Greece frequent traces
of this short domination, but all of one sort—the
ruins of castles which the knights had built to overawe
their subjects, and of which Mistra was perhaps
the most important. The same invaders built the
great towers at Kalamata, and most picturesque of
all is the keep over the town of Karytena in
Arcadia, the stronghold of Hugo de Bruyères. But
the Frankish devices which adorned these castles
have been mostly torn down by the Turks, or
re
But let us pass from these complex ruins, which
speak the conflict of the East and West, to the
peculiar quiet homes of the Greek monk, who
spends his time not in works of charity, not in
labors of erudition, not in the toil of education, like
his western brother, but simply in performing an
arduous and exacting ritual, in praying, or rather
in repeating prayers, so many hours in the day, in
observing fasts and vigils, above all in maintaining
the strict creed which has given the title of orthodox
to his Church. These resting-places (skete (the house of
ascetics) lonely and wild in site; and by the sea on
Salamis, nearly over against Megara, the traveller
Panagia Phæneromené.
There he will see the tiny cells, and the library,
almost as small as any of them, at the top of dark
stairs, and containing some twenty volumes; he will
be received by the Hegoumenos with mastic and
jam, and then with coffee, and strive to satisfy the
simple curiosity of the old men, who seem so
anxious to hear about the world, and yet have
turned away their eyes from seeing it. Above all,
he will find in the midst of the enclosure a little
model Byzantine Church, built with the greatest
neatness, of narrow bricks, in which string courses
and crosses are introduced by an altered setting of
the bricks. Here too he will see the curious practice,
which led to marble imitations at Venice, of ornamenting
the walls by building in green and blue
pottery—apparently old Rhodian ware, for it is not
now to be found in use. It is a simpler form of the
decoration already described in the Cathedral of
Athens, that of ornamenting a wall with foreign
objects symmetrically disposed, and no one who sees
it will say that it is inartistic. Within are the usual
ornaments of the Byzantine Church, but not in
mosaic; for all the walls are covered with frescoes
by a monk of the early eighteenth century, a genius
in his way, though following strictly the traditions
of the school of Athos. The traveller who ascends
the pulpit will thence see himself surrounded by very
These few details are sufficient to tempt the reader
to visit this monastery, which is far better worth
seeing than the beautifully situated and hospitable
Vourkano described elsewhere in this work. I have
no space to speak of Megaspilion, for this book must
be kept within handy limits, and can never aspire to
even approximate completeness. So also will I here
pass by with a mere mention the eyries of Meteora
in Thessaly, perched upon strange pinnacles of rock,
like S. Simeon upon his pillar. The approach to,
and descent from, these monasteries in a swinging
But all these monastic settlements pale into insignificance
when we turn to Mount Athos, the real
Holy of Holies of the Greek Church, which is indeed
far from the kingdom of Greece, and therefore
beyond the scope of this work, and yet a chapter on
the mediævalism of Eastern Europe can hardly be
written without some consideration of this strange
promontory, in its beauty surpassing all description,
in its history unique both for early progress and for
subsequent unchangeableness, in its daily life a faithful
mirror of long past centuries, even as its buildings
are now mediæval castles inhabited by mediæval
men. I will here set down the impressions, from a
visit made in 1889, not merely of the art, but of the
Velificatus Athos is an expression which has a
meaning even now, though a very different one
from that implied by Juvenal. The satirist would
not believe that Xerxes turned it into an island,
though the remains of the canal are plainly visible
to the present day. But now the incompetence of
the Turkish Government has turned Athos, for English
travellers, into an island, for it may only be approached
by sea. If you attempt to ride there from
Salonica or Cavalla, you are at once warned that you
do so at your own risk; that the tariff now fixed by
a joint commission of Turks, dragomans, and bandits
for the release of an English captive is £15,000;
that you will have to pay that sum yourself, etc. etc.
This is enough to drive any respectable and responsible
person from the enterprise of the land journey,
and so he must wait for the rare and irregular
chances of boat or steamer traffic. It was my good
fortune to find one of H. M.’s ships going that way
from Salonica, and with a captain gracious enough
to drop me on the headland, or rather to throw me
up on it, for we landed in a heavy sea, with considerable
risk and danger, and the
For this had been many years my desire, not only
to see the strangest and most perfect relic now extant
of mediæval superstition, but to find, if possible,
in the early MSS. which throng the libraries of that
famous retreat some cousin, if not some uncle or
aunt of the great illuminated MSS. which are the
glory of the early Irish Church. The other travellers
who have reached this place have done so by
arriving at some legitimate port on the tamer eastern
side; the latest, Mr. Riley,Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks. By Athelstan Riley.
Longmans, 1887. This is the newest and best book on the subject.
But we took the place by storm, not by regular
siege. We showed our letters, when we climbed up
to Dionysiu, as they call it, and prayed them to
forestall the hospitality which they would doubtless
show us, if we returned with official sanction. The
good monks were equal to the occasion; they waived
ceremony, though ceremony lords it in these conservative
establishments, and every violation of it
is called a
Nowhere have I seen more perfect and graceful
hospitality in spirit, nowhere a more genuine attempt
to feed the hungry and shelter the outcast, even
though the means and materials of doing so were
often very inadequate to Western notions. But let
me first notice the extant comforts. We always had
ample room in special strangers’ apartments, which
occupy the highest and most picturesque place in
every monastery. We always had clean beds to
What else was there good? There was jam of
many kinds, all good, though unfortunately served
neat, and to be eaten in spoonfuls, without any
bread, till at last we committed the prosvolé of asking
to have it brought back when there was bread
on the table. There were also eggs in abundance,
just imported to be ready for Easter, and therefore
fresh, and served au plat. Nor had we anywhere
When I say that butter was rare and eggs imported, I assume that the reader knows of the singularity of Athos, which consists in the absence of the greatest feature of human life—woman, and all inferior imitations of her in the animal world. Not a cow, not a goat, not a hen, not a cat, of that sex! And this for centuries! Three thousand monks, kept up by importation, three thousand laborers or servants, imported likewise, but no home production of animals—that is considered odious and impious. And when, in this remote nook of extreme conservatism, this one refuge from the snares and wiles of Eve, a Russian monk seriously proposed to us the propriety of admitting the other sex, we felt a shock as of an earthquake, and began to understand the current feeling that the Russians were pushing their influence at Athos, in order to transform the Holy Mountain into a den of political thieves.
Nothing is more curious than to study the effects,
upon a large society, of the total exclusion of the
female sex. It is commonly thought that men by
themselves must grow rude and savage; that it is
Panagia
with her infant in all the churches, which the strict
iconography of the orthodox Church has made as
unlovely and non-human as it is possible for a picture
to be. So far, so well.
But if the monks imagined they could simply expunge
the other sex from their life without any but
the obvious consequences, they were mistaken.
What strikes the traveller is not the rudeness, the
untidyness, the discomfort of a purely male society,
How different were the notes of the nightingales,
the pigeons, the jays, whose wings emancipate them
from monkish restrictions; and whose music fills with
For if an exquisite situation in the midst of historic
splendor, a marvellous variety of outline and
climate, and a vegetation rich and undisturbed beyond
comparison, can make a modern Eden possible,
it is here. Nature might be imagined gradually improving
in her work when she framed the three
peninsulas of the Chalcidice. The westernmost,
the old Pallene, once the site of the historic Olynthus,
is broad and flat, with no recommendation
but its fertility; the second, Sithonia, makes some
attempt at being picturesque, having an outline of
gently serrated hills, which rise, perhaps, to one
thousand feet, and are dotted with woods. Anywhere
else, Sithonia may take some rank, but within
sight of the mighty Olympus, and beside the giant
Athos, it remains obscure and without a history.
Athos runs out into the Ægean, with its outermost
cone standing six thousand five hundred feet out of
the sea, and as such is (I believe) far the most striking
headland in Europe. You may see higher Alps,
but from a height, and with intervening heights to
lessen the effect; you may see higher Carpathians,
but from the dull plain of land in Hungary. Here
you can enjoy the full splendor of the peak from the
sea, from the fringe of white breakers round the
base up to the pale-gray, snow-streaked dome, which
reaches beyond torrent and forest into heaven.
Each side of the main ridge has its peculiarities of vegetation, that facing north-east being gentler in aspect, and showing brakes of Mediterranean heath ten or fifteen feet high, through which mule paths are cut as through a forest. The coast facing south-west is far sterner, wilder, and more precipitous, but enjoys a temperature almost tropical; for there the plants and fruits of southern Greece flourish without stint.
The site of the western monasteries is generally
on a precipitous rock at the mouth of one of the
ravines, and commands a view up the glen to the
But it is high time for us to take a closer view of
the inside of these curious castles, some of which,
Vatopédi, Ivíron, Lavra, are almost towns surrounded
by great fortifications, and which possess
not only large properties, outlying farms, dependencies,
but within them a whole population of
monks and their retainers. Let us first speak of
With this preamble I turn first to the books.
Every convent we visited had a library containing
MSS. The larger had in addition many printed
books; in one, for example, which was not rich
(Esphigménu), we found a fine bound set of Migne’s
Fathers.
The library room was generally a
mere closet with very little light, and there was no
sign that anybody ever read there. The contents
In the twelve libraries I examined I did not find
more than half a dozen secular books, and these of
late date, and copies of well-known texts. There
As I am not now addressing learned readers, I need
not go into details about the particular books which
interested me. My main object had been to find, if
possible, at Mount Athos some analogy, some parallel,
to the splendid school of ornamentation which has
left us the Book of Kells, the Lindisfarne Gospels,
St. Chad’s Gospel at Lichfield, and other such
masterpieces of Irish illumination. I have always
thought it likely that some early Byzantine missionary
found his way to Ireland, and gave the first
impulse to a local school of art. That there is a
family likeness between early Irish and Byzantine
Book of Kells. The emblems of the Evangelists
seemed unknown there before the eleventh century.
There was ample use of gilding, and a good knowledge
of colors. In one or two we found a dozen
kinds of birds adequately portrayed in colors—the
peacock, pheasant, red-legged partridge, stork, etc.,
being at once recognizable. But all the capitals
were upon the same design, all the bands of ornament
were little more than blue diaper on gold
ground. There were a good many books in slanting
uncials, probably seventh to ninth century; an
occasional page or fragment of earlier date, but
nothing that we could see of value for solving the
difficulties of a Scripture text. Careful and beautiful
handwritings on splendid vellum of the succeeding
centuries were there in countless abundance.
They are valuable as specimens of handwriting and
as nothing else. In many of the libraries the monk
in charge was quite intelligent about the dates of the
MSS., and was able to read the often perplexing
colophon in which the century and indiction were
recorded. But the number of dated MSS. was,
alas! very small.
I now turn to the
By far the finest embroideries in silk were at the
rich convent of Iviron, and indeed the main church
there has many features worthy of note. The floor
is of elaborate old mosaic, with an inscription of
George the Founder, which the monks refer to the
tenth century. There are quaint Rhodian plaques,
both set in the outer wall, and also laid like carpets,
with a border of fine design on the walls of the transept
domes. Beside them are remarkable old Byzantine
capitals designed of rams’ heads. But the
great piece of embroidery is a
What shall we say of the services which go on most of the day and night in these monastic churches, and which seemed to Messrs. Riley and Owen so interesting and so in harmony with the Church of England, that they were never tired of regretting the separation of Anglican from Greek Christianity, and hoping for a union or reunion between them? Mr. Owen went so far as to celebrate the Eucharist after the Anglican ritual in one or two of these churches before a crowd of monks, who could not understand his words, far less the spirit with which our Church approaches the Holy Table.
Yet here are large companies of men, who have
given up the world to live on hard fare and strict rule,
spending days and nights in the service of God, and
resigning the ordinary pleasures and distractions of the
world. Surely here there must be some strong impulse,
some living faith which sways so many lives. And yet
full of dry bones, and,
behold, they were very dry.
It is of course very hazardous for a stranger to
assert a negative; there may be, even in this cold
and barren ritual, some real breath of spiritual life,
and some examples of men who serve God in spirit
and in truth. But the general impression, as compared
with that of any Western religion—Roman
Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian—is not favorable.
Very possibly no Western man will ever be in real
sympathy with Orientals in spiritual matters, and
Orientals these monks are in the strictest sense.
They put a stress upon orthodoxy as such, which to
most of us is incomprehensible. They regard idleness
as not inconsistent with the highest and holiest
life. They consider the particular kind of food
which they eat of far more religious importance
than to avoid excess in eating and drinking. How
can we judge such people by our standards? To
them it seems to be religion to sit in a stall all night,
perhaps keeping their eyes open, but in a vague
trance, thinking of nothing, and not following one
word that is said, while they ignore teaching, preaching,
active charity, education of the young, as not
worthy of the anchorite and the recluse. To us the
I have spoken unreservedly of these things, as I learned that these gentle and hospitable souls were impossible to please in one respect—they think all criticism of their life most rude and unjust. They complained to me bitterly of Mr. Riley’s book, which they had learned to know from extracts published in Greek papers, and yet could there be a more generous and sympathetic account than his? If, then, I must in any case (though I deeply regret it) incur their resentment, it is better to do so for a candid judgment, than to endeavor to escape it by writing a mere panegyric, which would mislead the reader without satisfying the monks. Indeed, in one point I could not even satisfy myself. No panegyric could adequately describe their courteous and unstinted hospitality.
[Map: Greece and the Ægean Sea]
The illustrations in the original volume were printed on separate, not paginated plates. The captions were printed on the reverse side of the plates.
The following changes have been made to the text:
à l’ Eugénie
Erectheumchanged to
Erechtheum
Bühnenalt
Anaxgoraschanged to
Anaxagoras
thanchanged to
that
fueillageschanged to
feuillages,
caractèristiquesto
caractéristiques
aujhourd'huichanged to
aujourd’hui
pollaredchanged to
pollarded
23,
Xenophenchanged to
Xenophon, single quote changed to double quote before
I witnessed
Oed.changed to
Œd.
initationchanged to
initiation
Emilechanged to
Émile
originals
memory
Bassechanged to
Bassæ
haraldicchanged to
heraldic
but
stillchanged to
till
Alkamenes, period added after
154, semicolon changed to comma after
andsq.
321–324
plagueschanged to
plaques,
Copiaschanged to
Copais, period added after
131and
246
425and
427, period added after
505, semicolon changed to comma after
sq.
Pausaniuschanged to
Pausanias,
Mycenænchanged to
Mycenæan,
151,;changed to
151;
sq.
Variations in hyphenation (e.g. prehistoric
, pre-historic
;
halfway
, half-way
) have not been changed.
Neither have variant spellings in the captions to the plates and in the index.