CORFU AND ITS HISTORY.
1875.
We have already spoken of the singular change of name which has befallen the most famous and important, though not the largest in superficial extent, of the group known as the Ionian Islands. The change of name, as we hold, followed naturally on the change of site of the city. The new city took a new name, and the island has always followed the name of the city. The old city and the new both occupy neighbouring points in a system of small peninsulas and havens, which form the middle of the eastern coast of the long and irregularly-shaped island of Korkyra. There, to the south of the present town, connected with it by a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive-trees which form so marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town, stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies one of its two forsaken harbours. Between the old and the new city lies the so-called harbour of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbour, bearing the name of one of the three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian commonwealth. But the physical features of the country have greatly changed since Chersikratês led thither his band of settlers twenty-six centuries back. It is plain that both harbours once came much further inland than they do now, that they covered a great deal of the low ground at the foot of the peninsular hill. The question indeed presents itself, whether the two did not once meet, whether the peninsula was not once an island, whether the original colony did not occupy a site standing to the mainland of Korkyra in exactly the same relation in which the original insular Syracuse, the sister Corinthian colony, stood to the mainland of Sicily. The physical aspect of the country certainly strongly suggests the belief. And though Thucydides does not directly speak of the city as insular, though his words do not at all suggest that it was so, yet we do not know that there is anything in his narrative which directly shuts out the idea. Anyhow, the great change which has happened is plain when we see how utterly the great Hyllaic haven has lost the character of a haven. It is now called a lake, and exists only for purposes of fishing. We may believe that these physical changes had a great deal to do with the removal of the city to another site, with the change from Korkyra to Corfu.
The description which Thucydides gives of the great sedition brings out a fact which we should at first sight hardly have expected, the fact that the aristocratic quarter of Korkyra was on the lower ground by the harbour, while the upper part of the town was occupied by the dêmos. To one who thinks of Rome, Athens, and ancient cities generally, this seems strange. But arguments from the most ancient class of cities do not fully apply to cities of the colonial class. These, where commerce was so great an object, were no longer, as a rule, placed on heights; convenient access from the sea was a main point, and we can therefore understand that the ground by the coast would be first settled, and would remain the dwelling-place of the old citizens, the forefathers of the oligarchs of the great sedition. There on the lower ground was the agora, where the Epidamnian exiles craved for help, and pointed to the tombs of their forefathers. The impression of the scene becomes more lively when we see not far off an actual ancient tomb remaining in its place, though it could hardly have been the tomb of the forefather of any Epidamnian. This is the tomb of Menekratês of Oianthê, honoured in this way by the people of Korkyra on account of his friendship for their city, a plain round tomb with one of those archaic inscriptions in which Korkyra is rich. Archaic indeed it is, written from right to left, in characters which mere familiarity with the Greek of printed books or of later inscriptions will not enable any one to read off with much ease. It formed doubtless only one of a range of tombs, doubtless outside the city, but visible from the agora. An orator in the Roman forum could not have pointed to the tombs of forefathers by the Appian Way.
The position of the quarter of the oligarchs by the modern suburb of Kastrades seems perfectly clear from Thucydides. The dêmos took refuge in the upper part of the city and held the Hyllaic harbour; the other party held the agora, where most of them dwelled, and the harbour near it and towards the continent (οἱ δὲ τήν τε ἀγορὰν κατέλαβον, οὗπερ οἱ πολλοὶ ᾤκουν αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸν λιμένα τὸν πρὸς αὐτῇ καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἤπειρον). This district marks out the haven by Kastrades, looking out on the Albanian mountains, as distinguished from the Hyllaic haven shut in by the hills of Korkyra itself.
But where was the Hêraion, the temple of Hêrê, which plays a part in more than one of the Thucydidean narratives? and where was the island opposite to the Hêraion—πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον—and the isle of Ptychia, both of which appear in his history? The answer to the former question seems to turn on another. Was the present citadel, the true Κορυφώ, itself always an island, as it is now? The present channel is artificial—that is to say, it is made artificial by fortifications—but it may after all have been a natural channel improved by art. And that is the belief of some of the best Corfiote antiquaries. If so, this may well be the νῆσος πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον, and Ptychia may be the isle of Vido beyond. The Hêraion would thus stand on the north side of the old Korkyra, looking towards the modern city; it would stand in the oligarchic quarter on the low ground near the agora. It was therefore neither of the two temples of which traces remain. One, of which the walls can be traced out nearly throughout, and of which a single broken Doric column is standing, overlooks the open sea towards Epeiros. Another on the other side overlooked the Hyllaic harbour. This in course of time became a church, a now ruined church, but which keeps large parts of its Hellenic walls and some windows of beautiful Byzantine brickwork. It seems hardly possible in any case that the Hêraion could have been at quite the further end of the peninsula, and that the island πρὸς τὸ Ἡραῖον could be either of the small islands, each containing a church, which keep the entrance of the Hyllaic harbour.
Such then was old Korkyra, the colony of Chersikratês, the Korkyra which figures in the tale of Periandros, the Korkyra which played such a doubtful part in the Persian War, which gained so fearful a name in the Peloponnesian War, and which, within two generations, had so thoroughly recovered itself that in the days of Timotheos it struck both friends and enemies by its wealth and flourishing state. It is the Korkyra of Pyrrhos and Agathoklês, the Korkyra which formed one of the first stepping-stones for the Roman to make his way to the Hellenic continent, the Korkyra whose history goes on till the wasting inroad of Totilas. Then, as we hold, ancient Korkyra on its peninsula began to give way to Koryphô (Corfu) on another peninsula or island, that to which the two peaks which form its most marked feature gave its name.
CHURCHES AT CORFU.
This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world, with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark. Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which the Tzar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces of the modern Greek kingdom. But Corfu has never for a moment been under the direct rule of the Turk. The proudest memory in the later history of the island is the defeat of the Turks in 1716. Peloponnêsos, the conquest of Morosini, had again been lost, and the Turk deemed that he might again carry his conquests into the Western seas. The city was besieged by land and sea; the two fleets, Christian and infidel, stretched across the narrow channel between the island and the mainland, the left wing of the Turkish fleet resting strangely enough on Venetian Butrinto, while the ships of Venice and her allies stretched from Vido to the Albanian shore. The statue of Schulemberg, set up as an unparalleled honour in his lifetime, adorns the esplanade of the city which he saved. Unless we count the Turkish acquisition of the Venetian points on the mainland, which, though done under the cover of a treaty, took at Prevesa at least the form of an actual conquest, this was the last great attempt of the Turk to extend his dominion by altogether fresh conquests at the expense of any Christian power.
Korkyra thus gave way to Corfu, and the endless fortifications of Corfu of every date were largely built out of the remains of Korkyra which supplied so convenient a quarry. None but an accomplished military engineer could attempt to give an account of the remains of all the fortifications, Venetian and English, dismantled, ruined, or altogether blown up. But the kingdom of which Corfu now forms a part still keeps the insular citadel, the outline of the two peaks being sadly disfigured by the needs of modern military defence. Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they present but few architectural features, and we find none of those various forms of ornamental window, so common, not only in Venice and Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they will give to many their first impression of Orthodox arrangement and Orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of its own. Of one, known as ἡ Παναγία τῶν βλαχερνῶν , we have already spoken; another, known specially as Our Lady of Oldbury (ἡ Παναγία παλαιοπόλεως), is unattractive enough from any point from which the spectator is likely to see it. Its form is by courtesy called basilican; but, if so, it is like the basilica of Trier, without columns or arches. Within it is a dreary building enough, but it presents one object of interest in a side-altar, a Latin intrusion into the Orthodox fabric. But the west end is one of the most memorable things to be found in Corfu or anywhere else. Two columns, not of the usual early Doric of the island, but with floriated capitals, though not exactly Corinthian, are built into the wall with a piece of their entablature. On this is graven a Christian inscription, which is given in an inaccurate shape by Mustoxidi (Delle cose Corciresi, p. 405), who has further improved the spelling. The spelling is in truth after the manner of Liudprand and the modern shoe-makers of Corfu, and is therefore instructive. At the top come the words of the Psalmist; "This is the gate of the Lord; the writeous shall enter into it":—αὕτη ἡ πύλη τοῦ Κυρίου, δίκεοι εἰσελεύσονται ἐν αὐτῇ. Below come four hexameters:—
πίστιν ἔχων βασίλιαν ἐμῶν μενέων συνέριθον,
σοὶ μάκαρ ὑψιμέδον τόνδ' ἱερὸν ἔκτισα ναὸν,
Ἑλλήνων τεμένη καὶ βωμοὺς ἐξαλαπάξας,
χειρὸς ἀπ' οὐτιδανῆς Ἰοβιανὸς ἔδωκεν ἄνακτι.
Who was this Jovianus? Clearly a Christian as zealous as his Imperial namesake; for he cannot be the Emperor himself, as some have thought. He thought it glory and not shame to destroy the works of the Gentiles—the Ἕλληνες—and to turn them to the service of the royal faith. But are we to take the "royal faith" in the same sense as the "royal law" of the New Testament? or does it mean the "royal faith," as being set up under some orthodox Emperor, when the orthodoxy of Emperors was still a new thing? Anyhow the plunderer of Gentile temples and altars could not keep himself from something of the Gentile in the ring and the language of his verses. And had he made use of his spoil to rear a basilica like those of Constantine and Theodoric, we should, from a wider view than that of the mere classical antiquary, have but little right to blame him. The rest of the columns, besides the two that are left, would have well relieved the bareness of his interior; better still would it have been if Saint Peter ad Vincula had found a rival in two arcades formed out of the Doric columns whose fragments lie about at Corfu, almost as Corinthian and Composite fragments lie about at Rome. The third church, that which professes to be the oldest in the island, that which bears the name of the alleged apostles of the island, the Jasôn and Sosipatros of the New Testament, is a more successful work. Brought to its present form about the twelfth century by the priest Stephen, as is recorded in two inscriptions on its west front, it is, allowing for some modern disfigurements, an admirable specimen of a small Byzantine church. It will remind him who comes by way of Dalmatia of old friends at Zara, Spalato, and Traü; but it has the advantage over them of somewhat greater size, and of standing free and detached, so that the outline of its cross, its single central cupola and its three apses, may be well seen. This church, like most in the neighbourhood, has a bell-gable—κωδωνοστάσιον—with arches for three bells, of a type which seems to be found of all ages from genuine Byzantine to late Renaissance.
SAINT JASON AND SAINT SOSIPATROS, CORFU.
To go back to earlier times, the museum of Corfu contains an inscription, βουστροφηδόν inscription, rivalling that of Menekratês in its archaism, attached to a Doric capital, of far later workmanship, one would have thought, than the inscription. The building art had clearly outstripped the writing art. The military cemetery contains some beautiful Greek sepulchral sculptures from various quarters, not all Korkyraian. And at some distance from the city, near the shore of Benizza—a name of Slavonic sound—is a Roman ruin with mosaics and hypocaust, whose bricks we think Mr. Parker would rule to be not older than Diocletian. In Corfu such a monument seems at first sight to be out of place. For Hellenic remains, for Venetian remains, we naturally look; still it is well to have something of an intermediate day, something to remind us of the long ages which passed between the revolutions recorded by Polybios and the revolutions recorded by Nikêtas.