CHAPTER II. CRETE
The island of Crete, lying like a long, narrow bar across the mouth of the Ægean Sea, presents a mountainous and rugged appearance to one approaching from any side. Possessing an extreme length of about one hundred and sixty miles, it is nowhere more than thirty-five miles in width, and in places much less than that. A lofty backbone of mountain runs through it from end to end. In all its coast-line few decent harbors are to be found, and that of the thriving city of Canea, near the northwestern end of the island, is no exception. In ancient times the fortifications and moles that were built to protect the ports had in view the small sailing vessels of light draught which were then common, and today it is necessary for steamers of any size to anchor in the practically open roadsteads outside the harbor proper. Needless to say, landing in small boats from a vessel stationed at this considerable distance outside the breakwater is a matter largely dependent on the wind and weather, not only at Canea, with which we are at present concerned, but at Candia, of which we shall speak later. In a north wind, such as frequently blows for days together, a landing on the northern coast is often quite impossible, and steamers have been known to lie for days off the island waiting a chance to approach and discharge. This contretemps, however, is less to be feared at Canea because of the proximity of the excellent though isolated Suda Bay, which is landlocked and deep, affording quiet water in any weather, but presenting the drawback that it is about four miles from the city of Canea, devoid of docks and surrounded by flat marshes. Nevertheless, steamers finding the weather too rough off the port do proceed thither on occasion and transact their business there, though with some difficulty. The resort to Suda, however, is seldom made save in exceedingly rough weather, for the stout shore boats of the Cretans are capable of braving very considerable waves and landing passengers and freight before the city itself in a fairly stiff northwest gale, as our own experience in several Cretan landings has proven abundantly. It is not a trip to be recommended to the timorous, however, when the sea is high; for although it is probably not as dangerous as it looks, the row across the open water between steamer and harbor is certainly rather terrifying in appearance, as the boats rise and fall, now in sight of each other on the crest of the waves, now disappearing for what seem interminable intervals in the valleys of water between what look like mountains of wave tossing angrily on all sides. The boatmen are skillful and comparatively few seas are shipped, but even so it is a passage likely to be dampening to the ardor in more ways than one. On a calm day, when the wind is light or offshore, there is naturally no trouble, and the boatmen have never seemed to me rapacious or insolent, but quite ready to abide by the very reasonable tariff charge for the round trip. In bad weather, as is not unnatural, it often happens that the men request a gratuity over and above the established franc-and-a-half rate, on the plea that the trip has been "molto cattivo" and the labor consequently out of all proportion to the tariff charge—which is true. It is no light task for three or four stout natives to row a heavy boat containing eight people over such a sea as often is to be found running off Canea, fighting for every foot of advance, and easing off now and then to put the boat head up to an unusually menacing comber.
LANDING-PLACE AT CANEA
The landing at Canea, if the weather permits landing at all, is on a long curving stone quay, lined with picturesque buildings, including a mosque with its minaret, the latter testifying to the considerable residuum of Turkish and Mohammedan population that remains in this polyglot island, despite its present Greek rule under the oversight of the Christian powers of Europe. The houses along the quay are mostly a grayish white, with the light green shutters one learns to associate with similar towns everywhere in the Ægean. Behind the town at no very great distance may be seen rising lofty and forbidding mountains, snowcapped down to early May; but a brief ride out from the city to Suda Bay will serve to reveal some fertile and open valleys such as save Crete from being a barren and utterly uninviting land. The ordinary stop of an Italian steamer at this port is something like six or eight hours, which is amply sufficient to give a very good idea of Canea and its immediate neighborhood. The time is enough for a walk through the tortuous and narrow highways and byways of the city—walks in which one is attended by a crowd of small boys from the start, and indeed by large boys as well, all most persistently offering their most unnecessary guidance in the hope of receiving “backsheesh,” which truly Oriental word is to be heard at every turn, and affords one more enduring local monument to the former rule of the unspeakable Turk. These lads apparently speak a smattering of every known language, and are as quick and alert as the New York or Naples gamin. Incidentally, I wonder if every other visitor to Canea is afflicted with "Mustapha"? On our last landing there we were told, as we went over the side of the steamer to brave the tempestuous journey ashore in the boat which bobbed below, to be sure to look for “Mustapha.” The captain always recommended Mustapha, he said, and no Americano that ever enlisted the services of Mustapha as guide, philosopher, and friend for four Canean hours had ever regretted it. So we began diligent inquiry of the boatman if he knew this Mustapha. Yes, he did—and who better? Was he not Mustapha himself, in his own proper person? Inwardly congratulating ourselves at finding the indispensable with such remarkable promptitude, we soon gained the harbor, and the subsequent landing at the quay was assisted in by at least forty hardy Caneans, including one bullet-headed Nubian, seven shades darker than a particularly black ace of clubs, who exhibited a mouthful of ivory and proclaimed himself, unsolicited, as the true and only Mustapha,—a declaration that caused an instant and spontaneous howl of derision from sundry other bystanders, who promptly filed their claims to that Oriental name and all the excellences that it implied. Apparently Mustapha’s other name was Legion. Search for him was abandoned on the spot, and I would advise any subsequent traveler to do the same. Search is quite unnecessary. Wherever two or three Caneans are gathered together, there is Mustapha in the midst of them,—and perhaps two or three of him.
It is by no means easy to get rid of the Canean urchins who follow you away from the landing-place and into the quaint and narrow streets of the town. By deploying your landing party, which is generally sufficiently numerous for the purpose, in blocks of three or four, the convoy of youth may be split into detachments and destroyed in detail. It may be an inexpensive and rather entertaining luxury to permit the brightest lad of the lot to go along, although, as has been intimated, guidance is about the last thing needed in Canea. The streets are very narrow, very crooked, and not over clean, and are lined with houses having those projecting basketwork windows overhead, such as are common enough in every Turkish or semi-Turkish city. Many of the women go heavily veiled, sometimes showing the upper face and sometimes not even that, giving an additional Oriental touch to the street scenes. This veiling is in part a survival of Turkish usages, and in part is due to the dust and glare. It is a practice to be met with in many other Ægean islands as well as in Crete. It is this perpetual recurrence of Mohammedan touches that prevents Canea from seeming typically Greek, despite its nominal allegiance. To all outward seeming it is Turkish still, and mosques and minarets rise above its roofs in more than one spot as one surveys it from the harbor or from the hills. The streets with their narrow alleys and overshadowing archways are tempting indeed to the camera, and it may as well be said once and for all that it is a grave mistake to visit Greece and the adjacent lands without that harmless instrument of retrospective pleasure.
As for sights, Canea must be confessed to offer none that are of the traditional kind, “double-starred in Bædeker.” There is no museum there, and no ruins. The hills are too far away to permit an ascent for a view. The palace of the Greek royal commissioner, Prince George, offers slight attraction to the visitor compared with the scenes of the streets and squares in the town itself, the coffee-houses, and above all the curious shops. Canea is no mean place for the curio hunter with an eye to handsome, though barbaric, blankets, saddle-bags, and the like. The bizarre effect of the scene is increased by the manifold racial characteristics of face, figure, and dress that one may observe there; men and women quaintly garbed in the peasant dress of half a dozen different nations. In a corner, sheltered from the heat or from the wind, as the case may be, sit knots of weazen old men, cloaks wrapped about their shoulders, either drinking their muddy coffee or plying some trifling trade while they gossip,—doubtless about the changed times. From a neighboring coffeehouse there will be heard to trickle a wild and barbaric melody tortured out of a long-suffering fiddle that cannot, by any stretch of euphemism, be called a violin; or men may be seen dancing in a sedate and solemn circle, arms spread on each other’s shoulders in the Greek fashion, to the minor cadences of the plaintive “bouzouki,” or Greek guitar. There are shops of every kind, retailing chiefly queer woolen bags, or shoes of soft, white skins, or sweetmeats of the Greek and Turkish fashion. Here it is possible for the first time to become acquainted with the celebrated “loukoumi” of Syra, a soft paste made of gums, rosewater, and flavoring extracts, with an addition of chopped nuts, each block of the candy rolled in soft sugar. It is much esteemed by the Greeks, who are notorious lovers of sweetmeats, and it is imitated and grossly libeled in America under the alias of “Turkish Delight.”
From Canea a very good road leads out over a gently rolling country to Suda Bay. Little is to be seen there, however, save a very lovely prospect of hill and vale, and a few warships of various nations lying at anchor, representing the four or five jealous powers who maintain a constant watch over the destinies of this troublous isle. The cosmopolitan character of these naval visitants is abundantly testified to by the signs that one may see along the highroad near Suda, ringing all possible linguistic changes on legends that indicate facilities for the entertainment of Jack ashore, and capable of being summed up in the single phrase, “Army and Navy Bar.” The Greeks were ever a hospitable race.
The road to Suda, however, is far from being lined by nothing more lovely than these decrepit wine shops for the audacious tar. The three or four miles of its length lie through fertile fields devoted to olive orchards and to the cultivation of grain, and one would look far for a more picturesque sight than the Cretan farmer driving his jocund team afield—a team of large oxen attached to a primitive plow—or wielding his cumbersome hoe in turning up the sod under his own vine and olive trees. It is a pleasing and pastoral spectacle. The ride out to Suda is easily made while the steamer waits, in a very comfortable carriage procurable in the public square for a moderate sum. It may be as well to remark, however, that carriages in Greece are not, as a rule, anywhere nearly as cheap as in Italy.
It is a long jump from Canea to Candia, the second city of the island, situated many miles farther to the east along this northern shore. But it easily surpasses Canea in classic interest, being the site of the traditional ruler of Crete in the most ancient times,—King Minos,—of whom we shall have much to say. Candia, as we shall call it, although its local name is Megalokastron, is not touched by any of the steamers en route from the west to Athens, but must be visited in connection with a cruise among the islands of the Ægean. From the sea it resembles Canea in nature as well as in name. It shows the same harbor fortifications of Venetian build, and bears the same lion of St. Mark. It possesses the same lack of harborage for vessels other than small sailing craft. Its water front is lined with white houses with green blinds, and slender white minarets stand loftily above the roofs. Its streets and squares are much like Canea’s, too, although they are rather broader and more modern in appearance; while the crowds of people in the streets present a similar array of racial types to that already referred to in describing the former city. More handsome men are to be seen, splendid specimens of humanity clad in the blue baggy trousers and jackets of Turkish cut, and wearing the fez. Candia is well walled by a very thick and lofty fortification erected in Venetian times, and lies at the opening of a broad valley stretching across the island to the south, and by its topography and central situation was the natural theatre of activity in the distant period with which we are about to make our first acquaintance. Even without leaving the city one may get some idea of the vast antiquity of some of its relics by a visit to the museum located in an old Venetian palace in the heart of the town, where are to be seen the finds of various excavators who have labored in the island. Most of these belong to a very remote past, antedating vastly the Mycenæan period, which used to seem so old, with its traditions of Agamemnon and the sack of Troy. Here we encounter relics of monarchs who lived before Troy was made famous, and the English excavator, Evans, who has exhumed the palace of Minos not far outside the city gates, has classified the articles displayed as of the “Minoan” period. It would be idle in this place to attempt any detailed explanation of the subdivisions of “early,” “middle,” and “late Minoan” which have been appended to the manifold relics to be seen in the museum collection, or to give any detailed description of them. It must suffice to say that the period represented is so early that any attempt to affix dates must be conjectural, and that we may safely take it in general terms as a period so far preceding the dawn of recorded history that it was largely legendary even in the time of the classic Greeks, who already regarded Minos himself as a demi-god and sort of immortal judge in the realm of the shades. The museum, with its hundreds of quaint old vases, rudely ornamented in geometric patterns, its fantastic and faded mural paintings, its sarcophagi, its implements of toil, and all the manifold testimony to a civilization so remote that it is overwhelming to the mind, will serve to hold the visitor long. Nor is it to be forgotten that among these relics from Cnossos, Phæstos, and Gortyn, are many contributed by the industry and energy of the American investigator, Mrs. Hawes (née Boyd), whose work in Crete has been of great value and archæological interest.
Having whetted one’s appetite for the remotely antique by browsing through this collection of treasures, one is ready enough to make the journey out to Cnossos, the site of the ancient palace, only four miles away. There is a good road, and it is possible to walk if desired, although it is about as hot and uninteresting a walk as can well be imagined. It is easier and better to ride, although the Cretan drivers in general, and the Candian ones in particular, enjoy the reputation of being about the most rapacious in the civilized world. On the way out to the palace at Cnossos, the road winds through a rolling country, and crosses repeatedly an old paved Turkish road, which must have been much less agreeable than the present one to traverse. On the right, far away to the southwest, rises the peak which is supposed to be the birthplace of Zeus, the slopes of Mt. Ida. Crete is the land most sacred to Zeus of all the lands of the ancient world. Here his mother bore him, having fled thither to escape the wrath of her husband, the god Cronos, who had formed the unbecoming habit of swallowing his progeny as soon as they were born. Having been duly delivered of the child Zeus, his mother, Rhæa, wrapped up a stone in some cloth and presented it to Cronos, who swallowed it, persuaded that he had once more ridded the world of the son it was predicted should oust him from his godlike dignities and power. But Rhæa concealed the real Zeus in a cave on Ida, and when he came to maturity he made war on Cronos and deprived him of his dominion. Hence Zeus, whose worship in Crete soon spread to other islands and mainland, was held in highest esteem in the isle of his birth, and his cult had for its symbol the double-headed axe, which we find on so many of the relics of the Candia museum and on the walls of the ancient palaces, like that we are on the way to visit at Cnossos.
It is necessary to remark that there were two characters named Minos in the ancient mythology. The original of the name was the child of Zeus and Europa, and he ruled over Crete, where Saturn is supposed to have governed before him, proving a wise law-giver for the people. The other Minos was a grandson of the first, child of Lycastos and Ida. This Minos later grew up and married Pasiphaë, whose unnatural passion begot the Minotaur, or savage bull with the body of a man and an appetite for human flesh. To house this monster Minos was compelled to build the celebrated labyrinth, and he fed the bull with condemned criminals, who were sent into the mazes of the labyrinth never to return. Still later, taking offense at the Athenians because in their Panathenaic games they had killed his own son, Minos sent an expedition against them, defeated them, and thereafter levied an annual tribute of seven boys and seven girls upon the inhabitants, who were taken to Crete and fed to the Minotaur. This cruel exaction continued until Theseus came to Crete and, with the aid of the thread furnished him by Ariadne, tracked his way into the labyrinth, slaughtered the monster and returned alive to the light of day. Of course such a network of myths, if it does nothing else, argues the great antiquity of the Minoan period, to which the ruins around Candia are supposed to belong, and they naturally lead us to an inquiry whether any labyrinth was ever found or supposed to be found in the vicinity. I believe there actually is an extensive artificial cave in the mountains south of Cnossos, doubtless an ancient subterranean quarry, which is called “the labyrinth” to-day, though it doubtless never sheltered the Minotaur. It is sufficiently large to have served once as the abode of several hundred persons during times of revolution, they living there in comparative comfort save for the lack of light; and it is interesting to know that they employed Ariadne’s device of the thread to keep them in touch with the passage out of their self-imposed prison when the political atmosphere cleared and it was safe to venture forth into the light of day. It seems rather more probable that the myth or legend of the labyrinth of Minos had its origin in the labyrinthine character of the king’s own palace, as it is now shown to have been a perfect maze of corridors and rooms, through which it is possible to wander at will, since the excavators have laid them open after the lapse of many centuries. A glance at the plans of the Cnossos palace in the guide-books, or a survey of them from the top of Mr. Evans’s rather garish and incongruous but highly useful tower on the spot, will serve to show a network of passageways and apartments that might easily have given rise to the tale of the impenetrable man-trap which Theseus alone had the wit to evade.
The ruins lie at the east of the high road, in a deep valley. Their excavation has been very complete and satisfactory, and while some restorations have been attempted here and there, chiefly because of absolute necessity to preserve portions of the structure, they are not such restorations as to jar on one, but exhibit a fidelity to tradition that saves them from the common fate of such efforts. Little or no retouching was necessary in the case of the stupendous flights of steps that were found leading up to the door of this prehistoric royal residence, and which are the first of the many sights the visitor of to-day may see. It is in the so-called “throne room of Minos” that the restoring hand is first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are known to have prevailed not only in the Minoan but in the Mycenæan period; monoliths noticeably larger at the top than at the bottom, reversing the usual form of stone pillar with which later ages have made us more familiar. This quite illogical inversion of what we now regard as the proper form has been accounted for in theory, by assuming that it was the natural successor of the sharpened wooden stake. When the ancients adopted stone supports for their roofs, they simply took over the forms they had been familiar with in the former use of wood, and the result was a stone pillar that copied the earlier wooden one in shape. Time, of course, served to show that the natural way of building demanded the reversal of this custom; but in the Mycenæan age it had not been discovered, for there are evidences that similar pillars existed in buildings of that period, and the representation of a pillar that stands between the two lions on Mycenæ’s famous gate has this inverted form.
THRONE OF MINOS AT CNOSSOS
Many hours may be spent in detailed examination of this colossal ruin, testifying to what must have been in its day an enormous and impressive palace. One cannot go far in traversing it without noticing the traces still evident enough of the fire that obviously destroyed it many hundred, if not several thousand, years before Christ. Along the western side have been discovered long corridors, from which scores of long and narrow rooms were to be entered. These, in the published plans, serve to give to the ruin a large share of its labyrinthine character. It seems to be agreed now that these were the store-rooms of the palace, and in them may still be seen the huge earthen jars which once served to contain the palace supplies. Long rows of them stand in the ancient hallways and in the narrow cells that lead off them, each jar large enough to hold a fair-sized man, and in number sufficient to have accommodated Ali Baba and the immortal forty thieves. In the centre of the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen several stories of the ancient building. Here one comes upon the rooms marked with the so-called “distaff” pattern, supposed to indicate that they were the women’s quarters. The restorer has been busy here, but not offensively so. Much of the ancient wall is intact, and in one place is a bath-room with a very diminutive bath-tub still in place. Along the eastern side is also shown the oil press, where olives were once made to yield their coveted juices, and from the press proper a stone gutter conducted the fluid down to the point where jars were placed to receive it. This discovery of oil presses in ancient buildings, by the way, has served in more than one case to arouse speculation as to the antiquity of oil lamps, such as were once supposed to belong only to a much later epoch. Whether in the Minoan days they had such lamps or not, it is known that they had at least an oil press and a good one. In the side of the hill below the main palace of Minos has been unearthed a smaller structure, which they now call the “villa,” and in which several terraces have been uncovered rather similar to the larger building above. Here is another throne room, cunningly contrived to be lighted by a long shaft of light from above falling on the seat of justice itself, while the rest of the room is in obscurity.
It may be that it requires a stretch of the imagination to compare the palace of Cnossos with Troy, but nevertheless there are one or two features that seem not unlike the discoveries made by Dr. Schliemann on that famous site. Notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the final fire, which are to be seen at Cnossos as at Troy, and the huge jars, which maybe compared with the receptacles the Trojan excavators unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that the Trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning city. Few are privileged to visit the site of Priam’s city, which is hard indeed to reach; but it is easy enough to make the excursion to Candia and visit the palace of old King Minos, which is amply worth the trouble, besides giving a glimpse of a civilization that is possibly vastly older than even that of Troy and Mycenæ. For those who reverence the great antiquities, Candia and its pre-classic suburb are distinctly worth visiting, and are unique among the sights of the ancient Hellenic and pre-Hellenic world.
STORE-ROOMS IN MINOAN PALACE, CNOSSOS
CHAPTER III. THE ENTRANCE
TO GREECE
Leaving Crete behind, the steamer turns her prow northward into the Ægean toward Greece proper, and in the early morning, if all goes smoothly, will be found well inside the promontory of Sunium, approaching the Piræus. One ought most infallibly to be early on deck, for the rugged, rocky shores of the Peloponnesus are close at hand on the left, indented here and there by deep inlets or gulfs, and looking as most travelers seem to think “Greece ought to look.” If it is clear, a few islands may be seen on the right, though none of the celebrated ones are near enough to be seen with any satisfaction. Sunium itself is so far away to the eastward that it is impossible at this distance to obtain any idea of the ancient ruin that still crowns its summit.
Although to enter Greece by way of the Piræus is actually to enter the front door of the kingdom, nevertheless, as has been hinted heretofore, one may vote on the whole that it is better to make this the point of departure instead of that of initiation. Leaving Greece as most of us do with a poignant sense of regret, it is not unfitting that we depart with the benediction of the old Acropolis of Athens, crowned with its famous ruins, which are to be seen even when far at sea, glowing in the afternoon sun, and furnishing an ideal last view of this land of golden memories. Simply because it makes such an ideal last view, leaving the crowning “glory that was Greece” last in the mind’s eye, one may well regard this point as the best one for leaving, whatever may be said for it as a place of beginning an acquaintance with Hellas. It must be confessed that to one approaching for the first time, save in the clearest weather, the view of the Acropolis from the sea is likely to be somewhat disappointing, because the locating of it in the landscape is not an easy matter. Under a cloudy sky—and there are occasionally such skies even in sunny Greece—it is not at all easy to pick out the Acropolis, lying low in the foreground and flanked by such superior heights as Lycabettus and Pentelicus. Hence it is that the voyager, returning home from a stay in Athens, enjoys the seaward view of the receding site far more than the approaching newcomer; and it must be added that, however one may reverence the Acropolis from his reading, it can never mean so much to him as it will after a few days of personal acquaintance, when he has learned to know its every stone. What slight disappointment one may feel on first beholding the ancient rock of Athena from the ocean, is, after all, only momentary and due solely to the distance. It is certain to be removed later when closer acquaintance shows it to be the stupendous rock it really is, standing alone, and seen to better advantage than when the hills that wall the Attic plain overshadow it in the perspective.
As the steamer approaches, the loftier heights of Hymettus, Pentelicus, Parnes, Ægina, and Salamis intrude themselves and will not be denied, framing between them the valley in which Athens lies, obscured for the time being by the tall chimneys and the forest of masts that herald the presence of the Piræus in the immediate foreground. That city is as of yore the seaport of Athens, and is a thriving city in itself, although from its proximity to the famous capital it loses individual prestige, and seems rather like a dependence of the main city than a separate and important town, rivaling Athens herself in size, if not in history.
Perhaps the most trying experience to the newcomer is this landing at the Piræus and the labor involved in getting ashore and up to Athens; but, after all, it is trying only in the sense that it is a matter for much bargaining, in which the unfamiliar visitor is at an obvious disadvantage. As in all Greek ports, the landing is to be accomplished only by small boats, which are manned by watermen having no connection at all with the steamship companies. It would seem to be the reasonable duty of a steamer line to provide facilities for setting its passengers ashore, and in time this may be done; but it is an unfortunate fact that it is not done now, and the passenger is left to bargain for himself with the crowd of small craft that surrounds the vessel as she is slowly and painfully berthed. The harbor itself is seen to be a very excellent and sheltered one, protected by two long breakwaters, which admit of hardly more than a single large vessel at a time between their narrow jaws. Within, it opens out into a broad expanse of smooth water, lined throughout its periphery by a low stone quay. While the steamer is being warped to her position, always with the stern toward the shore, a fleet of small boats, most of them flying the flags of hotels in Athens or of the several tourist agencies, eagerly swarm around and await the lowering of the landing stairs, meantime gesticulating violently to attract the attention of passengers on deck. Little that is definite, however, can be done until the gangway is lowered and the boatmen’s representatives have swarmed on the deck itself. There is time and to spare, so that the voyager has no occasion to hurry, but may possess his soul in patience and seek to make the most advantageous terms possible with the lowest bidder. The boatmen, be well assured, know English enough to negotiate the bargain.
Despite the apparent competition, which ought by all the laws of economics to be the life of trade, it will doubtless be found quite impossible to make any arrangement for landing and getting up to the city for a sum much under twelve francs. That is the published tariff of the hotels which send out boats, and if one is certain of his stopping-place in Athens he will doubtless do well to close immediately with the boatman displaying the insignia of that particular hostelry. But it is entirely probable that any regular habitué would say that the hotel tariff is grossly out of proportion to the actual cost, since the boatman’s fee should be not more than a franc and the ride to Athens not more than six. As for the tourist agencies, they may be depended upon to ask more than the hotel runners do, and the only limit is the visitor’s credulity and ignorance of the place. Whatever bargain is made, the incoming passenger will, if wise, see to it that it is understood to cover everything, including the supposititious “landing tax” that is so often foisted upon the customer after landing in Athens as an “extra.” These are doubtless sordid details, but necessary ones, and matters which it may prove profitable to understand before venturing in. Having dismissed them as such, we may turn with more enjoyment to the prospect now presenting itself.
Piræus, as all the world knows, is the port of Athens now as in classic times. Topographically it has three good harbors, the Piræus proper, Zea, and Munychia—the latter name also applying to the rocky promontory which juts out and separates the harbor from the Saronic Gulf. It was on the Munychia peninsula that Themistocles in 493 B.C. erected a town, and it was Themistocles, also, who conceived and carried out the scheme for the celebrated “long walls” which ran from the port up to Athens, and made the city practically impregnable by making it quite independent of the rest of Attica, so long as the Athenian supremacy by sea remained unquestioned. Thus it came to pass that, during the Peloponnesian War, when all the rest of the Attic plain had fallen into the hands of the Lacedæmonians, Athens herself remained practically undisturbed, thanks not only to the long walls and ships, but also to the fortifications of Cimon and Pericles. The Athenian navy, however, was finally overwhelmed in the battle of Ægospotamoi in 404 B.C., and the port fell a prey to the enemy, who demolished the long walls, to the music of the flute.
Ten years later, when Athens had somewhat recovered from the first defeat, Conon rebuilt the walls, and Athens, with Piræus, for a space enjoyed a return of her ancient greatness and prosperity. The Roman under Sulla came in 86 B.C., and practically put an end to the famous capital, which became an inconsiderable village, and so remained down to the Grecian risorgimento. The present city of Piræus, and the city of Athens also, practically date from 1836, though the old names had been revived the year previous. Up to that time the spot had for years passed under the unclassic name of Porto Leone.
Inasmuch as the fame of Athens and her empire rested on the navy as its foundation, and inasmuch as the navy made its home in the waters of the Piræus and Munychia, the locality has its glorious memories to share with the still more glorious traditions of the neighboring Salamis, where the Persians of Xerxes were put to such utter rout. It was from this harbor that the splendid, but ill-fated, Sicilian expedition set out, with flags flying, pæans sounding, and libations pouring. And it was to the Piræus that a lone survivor of that sorry campaign returned to relate the incredible news to the village barber.
The harbor of the Piræus is generally full of shipping of all sorts, including steamers of every size and nationality, as well as high-sided schooners that recall the Homeric epithet of the “hollow ships.” Some are en route to or from Constantinople, Alexandria, Naples, the ports of the Adriatic, the Orient,—everywhere. The Greek coastwise vessels often bear their names printed in large white letters amidships, familiar names looking decidedly odd in the Greek characters. All are busily loading or discharging, for the Piræus is, as ever, a busy port. Under the sterns of several such ships the shore boat passes, its occupants ducking repeatedly under the sagging stern cables, until in a brief time all are set ashore at the custom-house. That institution, however, need give the visitor little apprehension. The examination of reasonable luggage is seldom or never oppressive or fraught with inconvenience, doubtless because the visitor is duly recognized by the government as a being whose presence is bound to be of profit, and who should not, therefore, be wantonly discouraged at the very threshold of the kingdom. Little is insisted on save a declaration that the baggage contains no tobacco or cigarettes. The porters as a rule are more tolerant of copper tips than the present rapidly spoiling race of Italian facchini.
The sensible way to proceed to Athens is by carriage, taking the Phalerum road. The electric tram, which is a very commodious third-rail system resembling the subway trains of Boston or New York, is all very well if one is free from impedimenta. But for the ordinary voyager, with several valises or trunks, the carriage is not only best but probably the most economical in the end. The carriages are comfortable, and capable of carrying four persons with reasonable baggage.
Little of interest will be found in driving out of the Piræus, which is a frankly commercial place, devoid of architectural or enduring classical recommendations. The long walls that once connected the port with Athens have disappeared almost beyond recall, although the sites are known. Nor is the beach of New Phalerum (pronounced Fál-eron) much more attractive than the Piræus itself. It reminds one strongly of suburban beach places at home, lined as it is with cheap cottages, coffee-houses, restaurants, bicycle shops, and here and there a more pretentious residence, while at least one big and garish hotel is to be seen. The sea, varying from a light green to a deep Mediterranean blue, laps gently along the side of the highway toward the open ocean, while ahead, up the straight boulevard, appears the Acropolis of Athens, now seen for the first time in its proper light as one of the most magnificent ruins of the earth. The road thither is good but uncomfortably new. When its long lines of pepper trees, now in their infancy, shall have attained their growth, it will be a highway lined with shade and affording a prospect of much beauty. In its present state, however, which is destined to endure for some years to come, it is a long, straight, and rather dreary boulevard, relieved only by the glorious prospect of the crowning ruin of Athens something like four miles away, but towering alone and grand, and no longer dwarfed by the surrounding gray hills. Still this route seems to me infinitely better, even to-day, than the older road from Piræus, which approaches Athens from the western side without going near the sea, but which is not without its charms, nevertheless, and certainly does give the one who takes it a splendid view of the imposing western front of the Acropolis and its array of temples, across a plain green with waving grasses.
Approaching the city from the Phalerum side serves to give a very striking impression of the inaccessibility of the Acropolis, showing its precipitous southern face, crowned by the ruined Parthenon, whose ancient pillars, weathered to a golden brown, stand gleaming in the sun against the deep and brilliant blue of the Greek sky. Those who have pictured the temple as glistening white will be vastly surprised, no doubt, on seeing its actual color; for the iron and other metals present in the Pentelic marble, of which it was built, have removed almost entirely the white or creamy tints, and have given in their place a rich mottled appearance, due to the ripe old age of this shrine.
Aside from the ever present prospect of the Acropolis and its promise of interest in store, the road to Athens is devoid of much to attract attention. The long, gray ridge of Hymettus, which runs along just east of the road, of course is a famous mountain by reason of its well-known brand of honey, if for no other reason. Halfway up the gradual incline to the city there is a small and rather unattractive church, said to be a votive offering made by the king in thankfulness at escaping the bullets of two would-be assassins at this point. On the left, and still far ahead, rises the hill, crowned by the ruined but still conspicuous monument of Philopappus. Situated on a commanding eminence south of the Acropolis, this monument is a dominant feature of almost every view of Athens; but it is entirely out of proportion to the importance of the man whose vague memory it recalls.
Passing the eastern and most lofty end of the Acropolis, the carriage at last turns into the outskirts of the city proper and traverses a broad and pleasant avenue, its wide sidewalks shaded by graceful and luxuriant pepper trees, while the prosperous looking houses give an attractive first impression of residential Athens. The modern is curiously intermingled with the ancient; for on the right, in the fields which border the highway, are to be seen the few remaining colossal columns of the rather florid temple of Olympian Zeus and the fragmentary arch of Hadrian, the Roman emperor in whose reign that temple was at last completed. It is peculiarly fitting to enter Athens between these ruins on the one hand and the Acropolis on the other, for they are so characteristic of the great chief attraction of the place,—its immortal past.
The city proper now opens out before, and as the carriage enters the great principal square of Athens, the “Syntagma,” or Place de la Constitution, handsome streets may be seen radiating from it in all directions, giving a general impression of cleanly whiteness, while the square itself, spreading a wide open space before the huge and rather barnlike royal palace, is filled with humanity passing to and fro, or seated at small tables in the open air, partaking of the coffee so dear to the heart of the Greek; and carriages dash here and there, warning pedestrians only by the driver’s repeated growl of “empros, empros!” (εμπρός), which is exactly equivalent to the golf-player’s “fore!” And here in the crowded square we may leave the traveler for the present, doubtless not far from his hotel,—for hotels are all about,—with only the parting word of advice that he shall early seek repose, in the certitude that there will be some little noise. For the Athenians are almost as noisy and nocturnal creatures as the Palermitans or Neapolitans, and the nights will be filled with music and many other sounds of revelry. To be sure, there are no paved streets and no clanging trolley cars; but the passing throngs will make up for any lack in that regard, even until a late hour of the night.
CHAPTER IV. ATHENS; THE
MODERN CITY
Athens lies in a long and narrow plain between two rocky mountain ridges that run down from the north. The plain to-day is neither interesting nor particularly fertile, although it is still tilled with some success. Once when it was better watered by the Cephissus and Ilissus rivers, whose courses are still visible though in the main dry and rocky, it was doubtless better able to support the local population; but to-day it is rather a bare and unattractive intervale between mountains quite as bare—gray, rocky heights, covered with little vegetation save the sparse gorse and thyme. At that point in the plain where a lofty, isolated, and nearly oblong rock, with precipitous sides, invited the foundation of a citadel, Athens sprang into being. And there she stands to-day, having pivoted around the hoary Acropolis crag for centuries, first south, then west, then north, until the latter has become the final abiding place of the modern town, while the older sites to the southward and westward lie almost deserted save for the activities of the archæologists and students, who have found them rich and interesting ground for exploration. Always, however, the Acropolis was the fulcrum or focus, and it was on this unique rock that Poseidon and Athena waged their immortal contest for the possession of the Attic plain. Tradition says that Poseidon smote with his trident and a salt spring gushed forth from the cleft rock, thus proving his power; but that the judgment of the gods was in favor of Athena, who made to spring up from the ground an olive tree. Wherefore the land was allotted to her, and from her the city took its name. Under the northern side of the towering rock and around to the east of it runs the thriving city of to-day, thence spreading off for perhaps two miles to the northward along the plain, first closely congested, then widening into more open modernized streets, and finally dwindling into scattered suburbs out in the countryside.
The growth of Athens has left its marks of progress in well-defined strata. The narrow, squalid, slummy streets of the quarter nearest the Acropolis belong to the older or Turkish period of the city’s renascent life. Beyond these one meets newer and broader highways, lined in many cases with neat modern shops, called into life by the city’s remarkable growth of the past two decades, which have raised Athens from the rank of a dirty village to a clean and attractive metropolis—in the better sense of that much abused word. Still farther away are seen the natural products of the overflow of a thriving modern town—suburbs clustering around isolated mills or wine-presses. The present population is not far from a hundred thousand persons, so that Athens to-day is not an inconsiderable place. The population is chiefly the native Greek, modified no doubt by long submission to Turkish rule and mingled with a good deal of Turkish blood, but still preserving the language, names, and traditions that bespeak a glorious past. Despite the persistence of such names as Aristeides, Miltiades, Themistocles, Socrates, and the like among the modern Athenians, it would no doubt be rashly unreasonable to expect to find in a population that was to all intents and purposes so long enslaved by Turkey very much that savors of the traditional Greek character as it stood in the days of Pericles. But there have not been wanting eminent scholars, who have insisted that our exalted ideas of the ancient Greeks are really derived from a comparatively few exceptional and shining examples, and that the ancient population may have resembled the present citizens more than we are prone to think, in traits and general ability.
On his native heath the modern Greek openly charges his own race with a lack of industry and love of idling too much in the coffee-houses, although it is an indictment which has never struck me as just, and one which, if coming from a foreigner, would doubtless be resented. It is true that the coffeehouses are seldom deserted, and the possession of an extra drachma or two is generally enough to tempt one to abandon his employ for the seclusion that the kaffeneion grants, there to sip slowly until the cups of syrupy coffee which the money will buy are gone. Nevertheless, one should be slow to say that the race is indolent by nature, especially in view of its climatic surroundings; for there are too many thousand thrifty and hard-working Hellenes in Greece and in America as well to refute any such accusation. The one vast trouble, no doubt, is the lack of any spur to industrial ambition at home, or of any very attractive or remunerative employment compared with the opportunities offered by the cities of the newer world. The strong set of the tide of emigration to American shores has tended largely to depopulate Greece; but it is not unlikely that the return of the natives, which is by no means uncommon, will in time work large benefit to Hellas herself, and the attraction of her sons to foreign lands thus prove a blessing rather than, as was once supposed, a curse.
This, however, is rather aside from any consideration of the modern city of Athens. Let it be said at the outset that one may go freely anywhere in the city and be quite unmolested either by malicious or mendicant persons. It is not improbable, of course, that the increasing inundation of Athens by foreign visitors will tend somewhat to increase the tendency to begging, as it has elsewhere; but it is due the Greek race to say that it is infinitely less lazy and infinitely less inclined to proletarianism, or to seeking to live without work, than the Italian. Small children, as in all countries, will be found occasionally begging a penny, especially if they have gone out of their way to render a fancied service, by ostentatiously opening a gate that already stood ajar. But there are few of the lame, halt, and blind, such as infest Naples and many smaller Mediterranean cities, seeking to extort money from sheer pity of unsightliness. Here and there in Athens one may indeed see a cripple patiently awaiting alms, but generally in a quiet and unobtrusive way. Neither is the visitor bothered by the importunities of carriage drivers, although the carriages are numerous enough and anxious for fares—a contrast that is welcome indeed to one newly come from Italy and fresh from the tireless pursuit of warring Neapolitan cabbies. The offset to this welcome peace is the fact that carriage fares in Athens are undoubtedly high compared with the astonishingly low charges produced in Naples by active and incessant competition of the vetturini. The sole dangers of Athenian streets are those incident to the fast driving of carriages over the unpaved roadways; for the pedestrian has his own way to make and his own safety to guard, as is largely true in Paris, and it is incumbent on him to stop, look, and listen before venturing into the highway.
The street venders of laces, sponges, flowers, and postal cards are perhaps the nearest to an importunate class, though they generally await invitation to the attack, and their efforts are invariably good-humored. The region of the “Syntagma” square is generally full of them, lining the curb and laden with their wares. Men will be seen with long strips of fascinating island lace over their shoulders, baskets on baskets of flowers, heaps of curiously shaped, marvelously attractive sponges, fresh and white from the near-by ocean, or packets of well-executed postal cards picturing the city’s classic remains, all offered for sale to whomsoever will exhibit the faintest trace of interest. Needless to say, the initial prices asked are inevitably excessive and yield to treatment with surprising revelations of latitude.
Athens is a clean city. Its streets, while unpaved, are still fairly hard. Its buildings are in the main of stone, covered with a stucco finish and given a white color, or a tint of buff or light blue. The prevailing tone is white, and in the glare of the brilliant sun it is often rather trying to the eyes. To relieve the whiteness there is always the feathery green of the pepper trees, and the contrast of the clambering vines and flowers that in their season go far to make the city so attractive. Most notable of all the contrasts in color is unquestionably the rich purple of the bougainvillea blooms splashed in great masses against the immaculate walls and porticoes of the more pretentious houses. The gardens are numerous and run riot with roses, iris, and hundreds of other fragrant and lovely blossoms. The sidewalks are broad and smooth. It is an easy town in which to stroll about, for the distances are not great and the street scenes are interesting and frequently unusual to a high degree, while vistas are constantly opening to give momentary views of the towering Acropolis. It is not a hilly city, but rather built on rolling ground, the prevailing slope of which is toward the west, gently down from the pointed Lycabettus to the ancient course of the Cephissus, along which once spread the famous grove of Academe. The lack of a sufficient water supply is unfortunate, for one misses the gushing of fountains which makes Rome so delightful, and the restricted volume available for domestic uses is sometimes far from pleasant.
The Athenians had a prodigious mine to draw upon for the naming of their streets, in the magnificent stretch of their history and in the fabulous wealth of mythology. And it is a fact worth remarking that the mythological gods and heroes appear to have decidedly the better of the famous mortals in the selection of street names to do them honor. For example, Pericles, the greatest Athenian in many ways, is recalled by the name of a decidedly poor thoroughfare—hardly more than an alley; while Pheidias, Pindar, Homer, Solon, and a score of others fare but little better. On the contrary, the great gods of high Olympus, Hermes, Athena, Æolus, and others, give their names to the finest, broadest, most magnificent streets of this city that likes to call herself a little Paris. The result of it all is a curious mental state, for by the time one gets out of Athens and into the highlands of Delphi or of the Peloponnesus, where every peak and vale is the scene of some godlike encounter or amour, one is more than half ready to accept those ancient deities as actually having lived and done the things that legend ascribes to them. They become fully as real to the mind as William Tell or Pocahontas. The same illusion is helped on by the classic names affected for the engines of the Piræus-Athens-Peloponnesus Railroad, and by the time one has ridden for a day behind the “Hermes” or the “Hephaistos,” one is quite ready to expect to see Proteus rising from the sea, or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
It is at first a trifle perplexing to one not versed in the Greek language to find the streets all labeled in the genitive case, such as ὁδὸς Ἑρμοῦ (othòs Ermoù), “street of Hermes.” This soon becomes a matter of course, however. The main shopping district is confined to the greater highways of Hermes, Æolus, and Athena, and to Stadium Street—the latter so called because its length is about one kilometre, which is the modern “stadion,” instead of the lesser classic length of approximately six hundred feet. The name therefore has no reference to the magnificent athletic field of the city, in which the so-called modern “Olympic” games are occasionally held, and which in itself is a fine sight to see, as it lies in its natural amphitheatre east of the city, and brilliant in its newly built surfaces of purest marble. Stadium Street is perhaps the most modern and up-to-date street in Athens, lined with handsome stores, hotels, and cafés, thronged day and night, and perhaps even more gay and Parisian-looking by night, with its many lights and teeming life.
Athens at this writing has no system of trolley cars, but sticks obstinately to an old-fashioned and quite inadequate horse-railway, the several lines radiating from the Omonoia Square—pronounced much like "Ammonia"—which, being interpreted, means the same as Place de la Concorde. To master the intricacies of this tramway system requires a considerable acquaintance with Athens, but it is vastly less involved a problem than the omnibuses of London and Paris, and naturally so because of the smaller size of the town. Odd little carriages plying between stated points eke out the local transportation service, while the third-rail, semi-underground line to the Piræus and the antiquated steam tram to New Phalerum give a suburban service that is not to be despised. In a very few years no doubt the trolley will invade Athens, for it already has a foothold in Greece at the thriving port of Patras; and when it does, one may whirl incongruously about the classic regions of the Acropolis as one now whirls about the Forum at Rome.
The admirable Bædeker warns visitors to Hellas against assuming too hastily that Greece is a tropical land, merely because it is a southern Mediterranean country, and our own experiences have proved that even in April Athens can be as cold as in mid-winter, with snow capping Hymettus itself. But for the greater part of the year Athens is warm, and as in most southern cities business is practically at a standstill between the noon hour and two o'clock in the afternoon. In the summer months, which in Athens means the interval between May and late fall, this cessation is a practical necessity, owing to the heat and the glare of the noontide sun on the white streets and buildings. But the comparative compactness of the city makes it entirely possible to walk almost anywhere, even on a warm day, for the coolness of shade as compared with the heat of the sun is always noticeable. Thus the visitor who has plenty of time for his stay in the city is practically independent of cars and carriages. For those who find time pressing and who must cover the sites, or, as Bædeker sometimes says, “overtake” the points of interest in short order, the ingenious device once employed by a friend similarly situated may not come amiss. Having limited facilities of speech in the native tongue, and being practically without other means of communication with the cabman, this resourceful traveler supplied himself with a full set of picture post-cards dealing with the more celebrated features of Athens, and by dint of showing these one after another to his Jehu, he managed to “do” Athens in half a day—if one could call it that. He was not the only one to see the ancient capital in such short order, but it remains true that any such cavalier disposition of so famous a place is unfortunate and wholly inadequate. Athens is no place for the hasty “tripper,” for not only are the ancient monuments worthy of long and thoughtful contemplation, but the modern city itself is abundantly worthy of intimate acquaintance.
OLD CHURCH IN TURKISH QUARTER, ATHENS
It has been spoken of as a noisy city, and it is especially so after nightfall, when the streets are thronged with people until a late hour and the coffee-houses and open-air restaurants are in full swing. Long after the ordinary person has gone to bed, passing Athenians will be heard shouting or singing in merry bands of from three to a dozen, especially if it be election time. The Athenian takes his politics as he takes his coffee—in deliberate sips, making a little go a long way. The general election period usually extends over something like two weeks, during which time the blank walls of the city blossom with the portraits of candidates and the night is made vocal with the rallying cries of the free-born. “Rallying” carriages are employed much as our own practical politicians employ them, to convey the decrepit or the reluctant able-bodied voters to the polls, with the difference that the Athenian rallying conveyance is generally decorated with partisan banners and not infrequently bears on its box, beside the driver, a musical outfit consisting of a drum and penny whistle, with which imposing panoply the proud voter progresses grandly through the streets to the ballot box, attended by a shouting throng. Torchlight processions, which make up in noise for their lack of numbers, are common every night during the election. The Athenian, when he does make up his mind to shout for any aspirant, shouts with his whole being, and with a vigor that recalls the days of Stentor. Noisy enough at all times, Athens is more so than ever in days of political excitement or on high festivals—notably on the night before Easter, when the joy over the resurrection of the Lord is manifested in a whole-hearted outpouring of the spirit, finding vent in explosives, rockets, and other pyrotechnics. Religious anniversaries, such as the birthday of a saint, or the Nativity, or the final triumph of Jesus, are treated by the Greek with the same pomp and circumstance that we accord to the Fourth of July; and, indeed, the same is true of all Mediterranean countries. I have never experienced a night before Easter in Athens, but I have been told that this, one of the most sacred of the festivals of the Orthodox Church, is the one occasion when it is at all dangerous or disagreeable to be abroad in the streets of the capital, and it is so only because of the exuberant and genuine joy that the native feels in the thought of his salvation, the idea of which seems annually to be a perfectly new and hitherto unexpected one.
By day the chief tumult is from the ordinary press of traffic, with the unintelligible street-cries of itinerant peddlers offering fish, eggs, and divers vegetables, not to mention fire-wood. Nor should one omit the newsboys, for the Athenian has abandoned not a whit of his traditional eagerness to see or to hear some new thing, and has settled upon the daily paper as the best vehicle for purveying to that taste. Athens boasts perhaps half a dozen journals, fairly good though somewhat given to exaggeration, and it is a poor citizen indeed who does not read two or three of them as he drinks his coffee. Early morn and late evening are filled with the cries of the paper boys ringing clear and distinct over the general hubbub, and of all the street sounds their calls are by far the easiest to understand.
Most fascinating of all to the foreign visitor must always be the narrower and less ornate streets of the old quarter, leading off Hermes and Æolus streets, and paramount in attractiveness the little narrow lane of the red shoes, which is a perfect bazaar. It is a mere alley, lined from end to end with small open booths, or shops, and devoted almost exclusively to the sale of shoes, mostly of red leather and provided with red pompons, though soft, white leather boots are also to be had, and to the dealing in embroidered bags, coats, pouches, belts, and the like. The stock in trade of each is very similar to that of every neighbor, and the effect of the tout ensemble is highly curious and striking. To venture there once is to insure frequent visits, and one is absolutely certain sooner or later to buy. The wares seem rather Turkish than Greek in character. Of course, patience and tact are needful to enable one to avoid outrageous extortion. Nothing would surprise a shoe-lane dealer more, in all probability, than to find a foreigner willing and ready to accept his initial price as final. Chaffering is the order of the day, and after a sufficient amount of advancing and retreating, the intending purchaser is sure to succumb and return laden with souvenirs, from the inexpensive little embroidered bags to the coats heavy with gold lace, which are the festal gear of the peasant girls. The latter garments are mostly second-hand, and generally show the blemishes due to actual use. They are sleeveless over-garments made of heavy felt but gay with red and green cloth, on which, as a border, gold braid and tracery have been lavished without stint until they are splendid to see. Needless to say, they are the most expensive things in shoe lane. The process of bargaining between one who speaks no English and one who speaks no Greek is naturally largely a matter of dumb show, although the ever-ready pad and pencil figure in it. Madame looks inquiringly up from a handsome Greek coat, and is told by the pad that the price is 50 drachmas. Her face falls; she says as plainly as words could say it that she is very sorry, but it is out of the question. She turns and approaches the door. “Madame! madame!” She turns back, and the pad, bearing the legend 45, is shoved toward her. Again the retreat, and once more the summons to return and see a new and still lower price. Eventually the blank paper is passed to “madame,” and she writes thereon a price of her own—inevitably too low. Finally, however, the product of the extremes produces the Aristotelian golden mean, and the title passes. Indeed, it sometimes happens that the merchant will inform you of an outrageous price and add with shameless haste, “What will you give?” Experience will soon teach the purchaser that the easiest way to secure reasonable prices is to make a lump sum for several articles at a single sale.
Shoe lane, for all its narrowness and business, is far from squalid, and is remarkably clean and sweet. In this it differs from the market district farther along, where vegetables, lambs, pigs, chickens, and other viands are offered for sale. The sight is interesting, but its olfactory appeal is stronger than the ocular. One need not venture there, however, to see the wayside cook at his work of roasting a whole sheep on the curb. Even the business streets up-town often show this spectacle. The stove is a mere sheet-iron chest without a cover, and containing a slow fire of charcoal. Over this on an iron spit, which is thrust through the lamb from end to end, the roast is slowly turning, legs, ribs, head, eyes, and all, the motive power being a little boy. From this primitive establishment cooked meat may be bought, as in the days of Socrates, either to be taken home, or to be eaten in some corner by the Athenian quick-lunch devotee. Farther along in the old quarter, not far from the Monastiri Station of the Piræus Line, is the street of the coppersmiths, heralded from afar by the noise of its hammers. By all the rules of appropriateness this should be the street of Hephaistos. In the gathering dusk, especially, this is an interesting place to wander through, for the forge fires in the dark little shops gleam brightly in the increasing darkness, while the busy hammers ply far into the evening. It is the tinkers’ chorus and the armorer’s song rolled into one. Here one buys the coffee-mills and the coffee-pots used in concocting the Turkish coffee peculiar to the East, and any visitor who learns to like coffee thus made will do well to secure both utensils, since the process is simple and the drink can easily be made at home. The coffee-pots themselves are little brass or copper dippers, of varying sizes; and the mills are cylinders of brass with arrangements for pulverizing the coffee beans to a fine powder. This powder, in the proportion of about a teaspoonful to a cup, is put into the dipper with an equal quantity of sugar. Boiling water is added, and the mixture set on the fire until it “boils up.” This is repeated three times before pouring off into cups, the coffee being vigorously stirred or beaten to a froth between the several boilings. At the end it is a thick and syrup-like liquid, astonishingly devoid of the insomnia-producing qualities commonly attributed to coffee by the makers of American “substitutes.” In any event the long-handled copper pots and the mills for grinding are quaint and interesting to possess. At the coffee-houses the practice is generally to bring the coffee on in its little individual pot, to be poured out by the patron himself. It is always accompanied by a huge glass of rather dubious drinking water and often by a bit of loukoumi, which the Greek esteems as furnishing a thirst, or by a handful of salty pistachio nuts, equally efficacious for the same purpose. The consumption of coffee by the Greek nation is stupendous. Possibly it is harmful, too. But in any event it cheers without inebriating, and a drunken Greek is a rare sight indeed.
Walking homeward in the dusk of evening after a sunset on the Acropolis, one is sure to pass many out-of-door stoves set close to the entrances of humbler houses and stuffed with light wood which is blazing cheerily in preparation of the evening meal, the glow and the aromatic wood-smoke adding to the charm of the scene. Small shops, in the windows of which stand fresh-made bowls of giaourti (ya-oór-ti), are also to be seen, calling attention to that favorite Athenian delicacy, very popular as a dessert and not unlikely to please the palate of those not to the manner born. The giaourti is a sort of “junket,” or thick curd of goat’s milk, possessing a sour or acid taste. It is best eaten with an equal quantity of sugar, which renders the taste far from disagreeable. As for the other common foods of the natives, doubtless the lamb comes nearest to being the chief national dish, while chickens and eggs are every-day features of many a table. Unless one is far from the congested haunts of men, the food problem is not a serious one. That a visitor would find it rather hard to live long on the ordinary native cookery, however, is no doubt true; but fortunately there is little need to make the experiment. One other native dish deserves mention, in passing, and that is the “pilaffi,” or “pilaff,” which is rice covered with a rich meat gravy, and which almost any foreigner will appreciate as a palatable article of food.
Of the ruins and museums of Athens, it is necessary to speak in detail in another chapter. Of the modern city and its many oddities, it is enough to deal here. Rambles through the town in any direction are sure to prove delightful, not only in the older quarter which we have been considering, but through the more pretentious modern streets as well, with their excellent shops, their pseudo-classic architecture, and their constant glimpses of gardens or of distant ruined temples. Occasionally the classic style of building rises to something really fine, as in the case of the university buildings, the polytechnic school, or the national museum itself. The local churches are by no means beautiful, however. Indeed the ordinary Greek church makes no pretension to outward attractiveness, such as the cathedrals and minor churches of the Roman faith possess. Perhaps the most striking of the Athenian houses of worship is the little brown structure which has been allowed to remain in the midst of Hermes Street, recalling the situation of St. Clement Danes, or St. Mary le Strand in London. It is a squat Byzantine edifice, not beautiful, but evidently old, and a familiar sight of the city. Within, the Greek churches are quite different in arrangement from the Roman. At the entrance to the altar space there is always a high screen, pierced by a door leading to the altar itself, and used only by the officiating priest. The altar screen, or “iconastasis,” is richly adorned as a rule with embossed work, and the “icons,” or holy pictures, are generally painted faces set in raised silver-gilt frames, which supply the figure and robes of the saints, only the facial features being in pigment. Images are not allowed in the Orthodox worship, but the relief employed to embellish the faces in the icons goes far to simulate imagery.
The residential architecture of the city finds its best exemplification in the splendid marble mansions of the princes of the royal house, which are really fine, and which are surrounded by attractive grounds and gardens. The palace of the king is far less attractive, being a huge and barn-like structure in the centre of the city, relieved from utter barrenness only by a very good classic portico. But nothing could be lovelier than the deep dells of the palace gardens, which form a magnificent park well deserving the classic name of a παράδεισος, with its jungle of flowers, shrubs, and magnificent trees—the latter a welcome sight in treeless Attica.
One cannot pass from the subject of modern Athens without mentioning the soldiery, for the soldiers are everywhere, in all degrees of rank and magnificence of dress, from the humble private to the glittering and altogether gorgeous generalissimo. The uniforms are of a variety that would put to blush the variegated equipment of the famous Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston. These manifold uniforms have their proper signification, however, and they are undeniably handsome. If the Greek soldiers could only fight as well as they look, what could restrain the modern Athenian empire? The army clothes are admirably designed with an eye to fit and color, and the men carry themselves with admirable military hauteur. Most picturesque of all are the king’s body-guard, with their magnificent physique and national dress. They are big, erect fellows, clad in the short fustanella skirts of the ancient régime, the tight-fitting leggings, the pomponed shoes, the dark over-jacket, and the fez. These are the only troops that wear the old-time garb of the Greek. But the dress is a familiar sight in the outside country districts, often worn by well-to-do peasants, and still regarded as the national dress despite the general prevalence of ordinary European clothes.
It remains to speak briefly of the national money, for that is a subject the visitor cannot avoid. The drachma, which corresponds to the franc, is a peculiar thing. If one means the metal drachma, of silver, it is simple enough. It circulates at par with the franc. But the paper drachma varies in value from day to day at the behest of private speculation, and is almost never at par. I have experienced variations of it from a value of fourteen cents to eighteen. In small transactions, when the paper drachma is high, the difference is negligible. When it is low in value, or in large amounts, it is highly appreciable. The fluctuation of this money is the reason for the pads and pencils in the shops, for it is only by constant multiplication or division that the merchant is able to translate prices from francs into drachmas or vice versa, as occasion requires. Naturally when the drachma is worth only fourteen cents, the unsuspecting visitor is liable to pay more than he should, if assuming that a franc and a drachma are synonymous terms. In such a case a paper bill requires a considerable addition of copper lepta to make it equal the metal drachma or the French franc. The difference in value from day to day may be learned from the newspapers. Most bargains are made in francs, and the French money, both gold and silver, is freely used. Nevertheless, the local paper money is very useful, and it merely requires a little care in the use. Particularly is it desirable to know the status of the drachma in securing cash on a letter of credit or on a traveler’s cheque, in order that one may obtain the proper amount and not content himself with an inferior sum in paper; for although the principal banks may be relied upon as a rule to be honest, individual clerks may not be proof against the temptation to impose upon the ignorant and pocket the difference. I would advise the use of the Ionian Bank as far as possible, rather than the tourist agencies, for the latter often extort money quite without warrant, on the plea of needful stamps or fees for “accommodation,” that the bank does not require. Little trouble will be found to exist in the way of false coin—far less than in Italy. The one difficulty is to follow the paper drachma up and down, and not be mulcted to a greater or less extent in the exchange of silver for paper. The copper coins, which are either the five or ten lepta pieces, occasion no trouble, being like the Italian centesimi or English pence and ha' pennies.
One not uncommon sight to be met with in Athenian streets is the funeral procession—a sight which is liable at first to give the unaccustomed witness a serious shock, because of the custom of carrying the dead uncoffined through the city. The coffin and its cover are borne at the head of the procession, as a rule, while the body of the deceased, in an open hearse, rides joltingly along in the middle of the cortège. To those not used to this method of honoring the dead, the exposure of the face to the sight of every passer-by must seem incongruous and revolting. But it is the custom of the place, and the passing of a funeral causes no apparent concern to those who calmly view the passing corpse from the chairs where they sip their coffee, or idly finger their strings of beads. The beads which are to be seen in the hand of nearly every native have no religious significance, as might be thought at first sight, but are simply one of the innocuous things that the Hellene finds for idle hands to do. They are large beads, of various colors, though the strings are generally uniform in themselves, and their sole function is to furnish something to toy with while talking, or while doing nothing in particular. There is a sufficiency of loose string to give some play to the beads, and they become a familiar sight.
Royalty in Greece is decidedly democratic in its attitude. King George and his sons are frequently to be seen riding about town, much like ordinary citizens. Quite characteristic was an encounter of recent date, in which an American gentleman accosted one whom he found walking in the palace gardens with the inquiry as to what hour would be the best for seeing the royal children. The question elicited mutual interest and the two conversed for some time, the American asking with much curiosity for particulars of the household, with which his interlocutor professed to be acquainted. “What of the queen?” he inquired. "She’s exceedingly well beloved," was the reply. “She is a woman of high character and fills her high station admirably.” “And the king?” "Oh, the king! I regret to say that he is no good. He has done nothing for the country. He tries to give no offense—but as a king the less said of him the better!" Needless to say, this oracle was the king himself. Nobody else would have passed so harsh a judgment. King George I has been reigning since 1863, when the present government, with the sponsorship of the Christian powers, was inaugurated. He came from Denmark, being a son of the late King Christian, who furnished so many thrones of Europe with acceptable rulers and queens from his numerous and excellent family, so that the king is not himself a Greek at all. The years of successful rule have proved him highly acceptable to the Athenians and their countrymen, who have seen their land regain a large measure of its prosperity and their chief city grow to considerable proportions under the new order. The kingly office is hereditary, the crown prince reaching his majority at eighteen years.
Prince Constantine, the heir to the throne, lives on the street behind the palace gardens, and has a family of handsome children. Prince George is commissioner in charge of Crete. The royal family has embraced the faith of the Greek Orthodox Church.
CHAPTER V. ANCIENT ATHENS:
THE ACROPOLIS
The visible remains of the ancient city of Athens, as distinguished from the city of to-day, lie mainly to the south and west of the Acropolis, where are to be seen many distinct traces of the classic town, close around the base of the great rock and the Hill of Mars. How far the ancient city had extended around to the eastward can only be conjectured by the layman, for there exist almost no remains in that direction save the choragic monument of Lysicrates and the ruins of the temple of Olympian Zeus; while on the northern side of the Acropolis, although it is known that there once lay the agora, or market place, little is left but some porticoes of a late, if not of Roman, date. Not being bent on exact archæology, however, it is not for us here to speculate much over the probable sites of the ancient metes and bounds, the location of the fountain of nine spouts called “Enneacrunus,” nor the famous spring of Callirrhoë, which furnish fertile ground for dissent among those skilled in the art. What must now concern us most is the mass of visible ruins, which provide the chief charm of the city to every visitor, and most of all to those possessed of the desirable historic or classical “background” to make the ruins the more interesting.
Despite her many inglorious vicissitudes, Athens has been so fortunate as to retain many of her ancient structures in such shape that even to-day a very good idea is to be had of their magnificence in the golden age of Hellenic empire. The Greek habit of building temples and fanes in high places, apart from the dwellings of men, has contributed very naturally to the preservation of much that might otherwise have been lost. The chief attractions of the classic city were set on high, and the degenerate modern town that succeeded the ancient capital did not entirely swallow them up, as was so largely the case at Rome. To be sure, the Turks did invade the sacred precincts of the Acropolis with their mosques and their munitions of war, and the latter ruined the Parthenon beyond hope of restoration when Morosini’s lamentable advisers caused the Venetian bomb to be fired at that noble edifice. Local vandalism and the greed of lime burners have doubtless destroyed much. But the whole course of these depredations has failed to remove the crowning treasures of Athens, and the Acropolis temples are still the inspiration and the despair of architects. In passing, then, to a more detailed and perhaps superfluous consideration of the monuments surviving from the ancient city, it may be remarked that the visitor will find more of the classic remains to reward and delight him than is the case at Rome, rich as that eternal city is.
The Acropolis is naturally the great focus of interest, not only for what remains in situ on its top, but because of many remnants of buildings that cluster about its base. The rock itself, if it were stripped of every building and devoid of every memory, would still be commanding and imposing, alone by sheer force of its height and steepness. As it is, with its beetling sides made the more precipitous by the artifices of Cimon and ancient engineers, whose walls reveal the use of marble column drums built into the fortifications themselves, it is doubly impressive for mere inaccessibility. Something like a hundred feet below its top it ceases to be so sheer, and spreads out into a more gradual slope, on the southern expanses of which were built the city’s theatres and a precinct sacred to Asklepios. Only on the west, however, was the crag at all approachable, and on that side to-day is the only practicable entrance to the sacred precincts.
A more magnificent approach it would be hard to conceive. One must exempt from praise the so-called “Beulé” gate at the very entrance, at the foot of the grand staircase, for it is a mere late patchwork of marble from other ancient monuments, and is in every way unworthy of comparison with the majestic Propylæa at the top. It takes its name from the French explorer who unearthed it. As for its claim to interest, it must found that, if at all, on the identification of the stones which now compose it with the more ancient monument of some choragic victor. Looking up the steep incline to the Propylæa, or fore gate of the Acropolis, the Parthenon is completely hid. Nothing is visible from this point but the walls and columns of the magnificent gateway itself, designed to be a worthy prelude to the architectural glory of the main temple of the goddess. The architect certainly succeeded admirably in achieving the desired result. He did not at all dwarf or belittle his chief creation above, yet he gave it a most admirable setting. Even to-day, with so much of the colonnade of the Propylæa in ruins, it is a splendid and satisfying approach, not only when seen from a distance, but at close range. Not alone is it beautiful in and of itself, but it commands from its platform a grand view of the Attic plain below, of the bay of Salamis gleaming in the sun beyond, of the long cape running down to Sunium, and of the distant mountains of the Argolid, rolling like billows in the southwest far across the gulf and beyond Ægina. To pause for a moment on gaining this threshold of the Acropolis and gaze upon this imposing panorama of plain, mountain, and sea, is an admirable introduction to Greece.
TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS
On either side of the stairway by which one climbs to the Propylæa are buttresses of rock, on one of which stands an object worthy of long contemplation. At the right, on a platform leveled from the solid rock, stands the tiny temple of Niké Apteros (the Wingless Victory), “restored” it is true, but nevertheless one of the most perfect little buildings imaginable. At one time entirely removed to make room for a Turkish watch-tower, it has been re-created by careful hands out of its original marbles; and it stands to-day, as it stood of old, on its narrow parapet beside the grand stairway of Athena. The process of rebuilding has not, indeed, been able to give the unbroken lines of the old temple. The stones are chipped at the corners here and there, and there are places where entirely new blocks have been required. But in the main everything, even to the delicately carved frieze around its top, is in place; and for once at least the oft-berated “restorer” of ancient buildings has triumphed and has silenced all his critics. The remnants of the incomparable carved balustrade, which once served as a railing for the parapet, are to be seen in the small museum of the Acropolis, revealing the extreme grace which the Greek sculptors had achieved in the modeling of exquisite figures in high relief. The slab, particularly, which has come to be known as “Niké binding her sandal” seems to be the favorite of all, though the others, even in their headless and armless state, are scarcely less lovely.
As for the isolated pedestal on the other side of the stairway, known as the “pedestal of Agrippa,” it is not only devoid of any statue to give it continued excuse for being, but it is in such a state of decrepitude as to cause the uncomfortable thought that it is about to fall, and seems an object rather for removal than for perpetuation, although it serves to balance the effect produced by the Niké bastion.
Standing on the Niké platform, the visitor finds the noble columns of the Propylæa towering above him close at hand. These Doric pillars give one for the first time an adequate idea of the perfection to which the column was carried by Ictinus and the builders and architects of his time; for although each pillar is built up drum upon drum, it is still true in many cases that the joints between them are almost invisible, so perfect are they, despite the lapse of ages and the ravages of war, not to mention the frequent earthquake shocks to which the whole region has been subjected. Age has been kind also to the Pentelic marble, softening its original whiteness to a golden brown without destroying its exquisite satin texture. Nothing more charming can well be imagined than the contrast of the blue Athenian sky with these stately old columns, as one looks outward or inward through their majestic rows.
The rock rises sharply as one passes within the precinct of the Acropolis, and the surface of it appears to have been grooved to give a more secure footing to pedestrians. Stony as is the place, it still affords soil enough to support a growth of grasses and struggling bits of greenery to cradle the many fallen drums. But one has eyes only for the Parthenon, the western front of which now appears for the first time in its full effect. From its western end, the havoc wrought in its midst being concealed, the Parthenon appears almost perfect. The pedimental sculptures, it is true, are gone save for a fragment or two, having been carried off to England. But the massive Doric columns still stand in an unbroken double row before one; the walls of the cella appear to be intact; the pediment rises almost unbroken above; frieze, triglyphs, and metopes remain in sufficient degree to give an idea of the ancient magnificence of the shrine—and all conspire to compel instant and unstinted admiration. Speculation as to the ethics of the removal of the Parthenon sculptures by Lord Elgin has become an academic matter, and therefore one quite beyond our present purpose. Doubtless to-day no such removal would be countenanced for a moment. It is no longer possible to say, as former critics have said, that the local regard for the treasures of the place is so slight as to endanger their safety. The present custodianship of the priceless relics of antiquity in Athens is admirably careful and satisfactory. If, therefore, Greece had only come into her own a century or so earlier than she did, the famous sculptures of the miraculous birth of Athena, springing full grown from the head of Zeus, and the colossal representation of the strife between Athena and Poseidon for possession of the Attic land, might still adorn as of yore the eastern and western gables of the great temple; or if not that, might still be seen in the very excellent museum at the other end of the city. It is enough for us to know, however, that they are not in Athens but in London, and that there is no probability they will ever return to Greek soil; and to know, also, that had they not been removed as they were, they might never have been preserved at all. That is the one comfortable state of mind in which to view the vacant pediments of the Parthenon. To work up a Byronic frenzy over what cannot be helped, and may, after all, be for the best, is of no benefit.
Writers on Athens have often called attention to the curved stylobate of the Parthenon—a feature which is by no means confined to this temple, but which is to be noticed in almost every considerable ruin of the sort. The base of the building curves sufficiently to make the device visible, rising from either end to the centre of the sides; and the curious may easily prove it by placing a hat at one extremity and trying to see it from the other, sighting along the line of the basic stones. The curve was necessary to cure an optical defect, for a straight or level base would have produced the illusion of a decided sagging Similarly it has long been recognized that the columns must swell at the middle drums, lest they appear to the eye to be concaved. In fact, as Professor Gardner has pointed out, there is actually hardly a really straight line in the Parthenon—yet the effect is of absolute straightness everywhere.
Obviously this curvature of the base, slight though it was, imposed some engineering problems of no inconsiderable nature when it came to setting the column drums; for the columns must stand erect, and the bottom sections must be so devised as to meet the configuration of the convex stylobate. The corner columns, being set on a base that curved in both directions, must have been more difficult still to deal with. But the problem was solved successfully, and the result of this cunningly contrived structure was a temple that comes as near architectural perfection as earthly artisans are ever likely to attain. The columns were set up in an unfluted state, the fluting being added after the pillar was complete. Each drum is said to have been rotated upon its lower fellow until the joint became so exact as to be to all intents and purposes indistinguishable. In the centre of the fallen drums will be seen always a square hole, used to contain a peg of wood designed to hold the finished sections immovable, and in many cases this wooden plug has been found intact. All along the sides of the Parthenon, lying on the ground as they fell, are to be seen the fallen drums that once composed the columns of the sides, but which were blown out of position by the bomb from the Venetian fleet of Admiral Morosini. They lie like fallen heaps of dominoes or children’s building blocks, and the entire centre of the temple is a gaping void. Here and there an attempt has been made to reconstruct the fallen columns from the original portions, but the result is by no means reassuring and seems not to justify the further prosecution of the task. Better a ruined Parthenon than an obvious patchwork. The few restored columns are quite devoid of that homogeneity that marks the extant originals, and their joints are painfully felt, being chipped and uneven, where the old are all but imperceptible; so that the whole effect is of insecurity and lack of perfection entirely out of harmony with the Parthenon itself. Opinions, however, differ. Some still do advocate the rebuilding of the temple rather than leave the drums, seemingly so perfect still, lying as they now are amid the grasses of the Acropolis. It is one of those questions of taste on which debate is traditionally idle and purposeless.
THE PARTHENON, WEST PEDIMENT
For those who must demand restorations other than those constructed by the mind’s eye, there are models and drawings enough extant, and some are to be seen in the Acropolis Museum. Most interesting of the attempts are doubtless the speculations as to the pedimental sculptures, the remains of which are in the British Museum, but which are so fragmentary and so ill placed in their new home that much of the original grouping is matter for conjecture. With the aid of drawings made by a visitor long years ago, before Lord Elgin had thought of tearing them down, the two great pediments have been ingeniously reconstructed in miniature, showing a multitude of figures attending on the birth of the city’s tutelary goddess, as she sprang full armed from the head of Zeus assisted by the blow of Hephaistos’s hammer, or the concourse of deities that umpired the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the land. The Acropolis Museum has only casts of the Elgin marbles, but there is still to be seen a good proportion of the original frieze. It would be out of place in any such work as this to be drawn into anything like a detailed account of these famous sculptures, the subjects of a vast volume of available literature already and sources of a considerable volume also of controversial writing involving conflicts of the highest authority. It must therefore suffice to refer the reader interested in the detailed story of the Parthenon, its external adornment, its huge gold-and-ivory statue within, and the great Panathenaic festival which its frieze portrayed, to any one of those learned authors who have written of all these things so copiously and clearly—doubtless none more so than Dr. Ernest Gardner in his admirably lucid and readable “Ancient Athens,” or in his “Handbook of Greek Sculpture,” without which no one should visit the museum in that city.
One must remember that the Parthenon and the other features of the Acropolis are monuments of the age of Pericles, and not of an earlier day. The Persians who invaded Greece in 480 B.C. succeeded in obtaining possession of Athens and of the whole Attic plain, the inhabitants fleeing to the island of Salamis. The hordes of barbarians brought in by Xerxes were opposed by a very few of the citizens, some of whom erected a stockade around the Acropolis, thinking that thereby they satisfied the oracle which had promised the city salvation through the impregnability of its “Wooden Walls.” The Persians massed their forces on Mars Hill, just west of the larger rock, and a hot fight took place, the invaders attempting to fire the stockade by means of arrows carrying burning tow, while the besieged made use of round stones with considerable effect. Eventually the enemy discovered an unsuspected means of access to the citadel and took it by storm, after which they burned its temples and left it a sorry ruin. The rest of the Athenians with the allied navy at Salamis repulsed the Persian fleet, and Xerxes, disgusted, withdrew,—despite the fact that it would seem to have been quite possible for him to pursue his successes on land. It left Athens a waste, but on that waste grew up a city that for architectural beauty has never, in all probability, been surpassed. The reaction from the horrors of war gave us the Parthenon, the Propylæa, and the Erechtheum, all dating, perhaps, from the fifth century before Christ.
The Erechtheum, while properly entitled to the epithet “elegant” as a building, seems decidedly less a favorite than the Parthenon. It is extremely beautiful, no doubt, in a delicate and elaborate way, and its ornamentation is certainly of a high order. Unlike the Parthenon, it is not surrounded by a colonnade, but possesses pillars only in its several porticoes. The columns are not Doric, but Ionic. As for its general plan, it is so complicated and devoted to so many obscure purposes that the lay visitor doubtless will find it an extremely difficult place to understand. There appear to have been at least three precincts involved in it, and the name it bears is the ancient one, given it because in part it was a temple of Erechtheus. That deity was of the demi-god type. He was an ancient Attic hero, who had received apotheosis and become highly esteemed, doubtless because in part he had instituted the worship of Athena in the city and had devised the celebrated Panathenaic festival. Tradition says that he was brought up by Athena herself, and that she intrusted him as a babe, secreted in a chest, to the daughters of Cecrops to guard. They were enjoined not to open the chest, but being overcome with curiosity they disobeyed, and discovered the babe entwined with serpents—whereat, terrified beyond measure, they rushed to the steeper part of the Acropolis and threw themselves down from the rock. Therein they were not alone, for it is also related that the father of Theseus had also thrown himself down from this eminence in despair, because he beheld his son’s ship returning from Crete with black sails, imagining therefrom that the Minotaur had triumphed over his heroic son, when the reverse was the fact.
The complicated character of the Erechtheum is further emphasized by the fact that a portion of it was supposed to shelter the gash made by Poseidon with his trident when he was contending with Athena for the land, as well as the olive tree that Athena caused to grow out of the rock. The two relics were naturally held in veneration, and it was the story that in the cleft made by the trident there was a salt spring, or “sea” as Herodotus calls it, which gave forth to the ear a murmuring like that of the ocean. The cleft is still there. The olive tree, unfortunately, has disappeared. It was there when the Persian horde came to Athens, however, if we may believe Herodotus; and tradition says that after the invaders had burned the Acropolis over, the tree-stump immediately put forth a shoot which was in length a cubit, as a sign that the deity had not abandoned the city. It had been the custom of the place to deposit a cake of honey at stated intervals in the temple door for the food of the sacred serpents; and when, on the arrival of the Persians, this cake remained untouched, the inhabitants were convinced that even the god had left the Acropolis and that naught remained but ruin. The renewed and miraculous life of the olive tree dispelled this error. The Erechtheum in part overlaps the oldest precinct sacred to Athena, where stood an earlier temple supposed to have contained the sacred image of the goddess, made of wood, which came down from heaven. For exact and detailed descriptions of the Erechtheum and its uses, the reader must once again turn to the archæologists. As for its external features, the most famous of all is unquestionably the caryatid portico, in which the roof is borne up by a row of graceful, but undeniably sturdy, marble maidens. The use of the caryatid, always unnatural, is here rather successful on the whole, for the beholder derives no sensation that the maidens are restive under the weight imposed on them. They are entirely free from any indictment of grotesqueness. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the portico is altogether pleasing. One of the figures is, as is well known, a reproduction of the one Lord Elgin carried away to the British Museum, but the remainder of the six are the original members.
The Acropolis Museum serves to house a great many interesting fragments found on the spot, including a host of archaic representations of Athena, still bearing ample traces of the paint which the Greeks used so lavishly on their marble statues. This use of pigment might seem to have been a very doubtful exhibition of taste, as judged by modern standards, not only in its application to statues, but in the decoration of marble temples as well. It is hard for us to-day, accustomed to pure white marble sculpture, to imagine any added beauty from painting the hair, eyes, and garments of a statue; or to conceive how the polychromy so commonly made use of in bedecking such masterpieces as the Parthenon could have been anything but a blemish. Nevertheless, the fact that the Greeks did it, and that they were in all else so consummately tasteful, makes it entirely probable that their finished statues and edifices thus adorned were perfectly congruous—especially under that brilliant sky and surrounded by so many brilliant costumes. From the surviving multitude of statues of Athena, it is evident that the Greeks conceived her as a woman of majestic mien, rather almond-eyed, and possessed of abundant braids of the ruddy hair later vouchsafed to Queen Elizabeth. The more rudimentary figure of the “Typhon,” also preserved in this museum, which was doubtless a pedimental sculpture from some earlier acropolitan temple, bears abundant traces of paint on its body and on the beards of its triple head. It is too grotesque to furnish much of an idea of the use of paint on such statues as the great masters later produced. The remnants of the Parthenon frieze give little or no trace of any of the blue background, such as was commonly laid on to bring out the figures carved on such ornaments, nor are there any traces remaining of polychrome decoration on the Parthenon itself.
The Acropolis, of course, has not escaped the common fate of all similar celebrated places—that of being “done” now and then by parties of tourists in absurdly hasty fashion, that to the lover of the spot seems little less than sacrilege. It is no infrequent sight to see a body of men and women numbering from a dozen to over a hundred, in the keeping of a voluble courier, scampering up the steps of the Propylæa, over the summit, through the two temples, in and out of the museum, and down again, amply satisfied with having spent a half hour or even less among those immortal ruins, and prepared to tell about it for the rest of their days. It is a pity, as it always is, to see a wonder of the world so cavalierly treated. Still, one hesitates to say that rather than do this, one should never visit the Acropolis of Athens. It is better to have looked for a moment than never to have looked at all. The Acropolis is no place to hurry through. Rather is it a spot to visit again and again, chiefly toward sunset, not merely to wander through the ruins, or to rest on the steps of the Parthenon musing over the remote past to which this place belongs, but also to see the sun sink to the west as Plato and Socrates must often have seen it sink from this very place, behind the rugged sky-line of the Argolid, which never changes, lengthening the purple shadows of the hills on the peaceful plain and touching the golden-brown of the temples with that afterglow which, once seen, can never be forgotten.
The gates of the Acropolis are closed at sunset by the guards, and lingering visitors are insistently herded into groups and driven downward to the gate like sheep by the little band of blue-coated custodians. Still, they are not hard-hearted, and if a belated visitor finds the outer gates locked a trifle before sunset, as often happens with the idea of preventing needless ascent, a plea for “pende lepta” (five minutes) is likely to be honored even without a petty bribe. But at last every one must go, and the holy hill of Athena is left untenanted for one more of its endless round of nights. A visit to the Acropolis by moonlight is traditionally worth while, and the needful permission is not difficult to obtain once the municipal office dealing with such things is located. The Parthenon on a clear, moonlit night must be indescribably lovely, even in its lamentable ruin.
Other sights of Athens, ancient and modern, are interesting, and many are magnificent. But the Acropolis is unquestionably the best that Athens has to show, and the Parthenon is incomparably the best of the Acropolis. It is the first and the last spot to seek in visiting Athena’s famous city, and the last glimpse the departing voyager—very likely with a not unmanly tear—catches from his ship as it sails out into the blue Ægean is of this hoary temple reposing in calm and serene indifference to mankind on its rocky height. It has seen the worship of Athena Parthenos give way to the reverence of another Virgin—a holier ideal of Wisdom set up in its own precincts, and worshiped there on the very spot where once the youth of Athens did honor to the pagan goddess. Gods and religions have risen and departed, despots have come and gone; but the Parthenon has stood unchanging, the unrivaled embodiment of architectural beauty to-day, as it was when Ictinus, Mnesicles, Pheidias, and those who were with them created it out of their combined and colossal genius, under the wise ordainment of Pericles.
CHAPTER VI. ANCIENT ATHENS:
THE OTHER MONUMENTS
There are two favorite ways whereby those leaving the Acropolis are wont to descend to the modern city. One lies around to the right as you leave the gates, passing between the Acropolis and Mars Hill to the north side of the former, where steps will be found leading down to the old quarter and thence past Shoe Lane to Hermes Street and home. The other passes to the south of the Acropolis along its southerly slopes, finally emerging through an iron gate at the eastern end, whence a street leads directly homeward, rather cleaner and sweeter than the other route but hardly as picturesque. Since, however, this way leads to some of the other notable remains of classic Athens, for the present let us take it.
Immediately on leaving the avenue in front of the gates of the Acropolis, one finds a path leading eastward directly behind and above the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, which is made conspicuous in the landscape by the lofty stone arches remaining at its front. These arches are blackened and bear every ear-mark of the later Roman epoch. Moreover they strike the beholder as rather unstable, as if some day they might fall unless removed. But their loss would be a pity, nevertheless, for they certainly present a striking and agreeable feature to the sight despite their lack of harmony with the received ideas of pure Greek architecture. It hardly repays one to descend to the pit of this commodious theatre, or rather concert hall, since one gets a very accurate idea of it from above looking down into its orchestra over the tiers of grass-grown seats. For more detailed inspection of ancient theatrical structures, the Dionysiac theatre farther along our path is decidedly more worth while, besides being much more ancient and more interesting by association.
On the way thereto are passed several remnants of a long “stoa,” or portico, called that of Eumenes, curiously intermingled with brick relics of the Turkish times, and the non-archæological visitor will hardly care to concern himself long with either. But he will doubtless be interested to turn aside from the path and clamber up to the base of the steeper rock to inspect the damp and dripping cave where once was an important shrine of Asklepios, with the usual “sacred spring” still flowing, and still surrounded with remains of the customary porticoes, in which the faithful in need of healing once reposed themselves by night, awaiting the cure which the vision of the god might be hoped to bestow. The cave is now a Catholic shrine, with a picture of its particular saint and an oil lamp burning before it. It is dank and dismal, and for one to remain there long would doubtless necessitate the services of Asklepios himself, or of some skillful modern disciple of his healing art—of which, by the way, Athens can boast not a few. The Greek seems to take naturally to the practice of medicine, and some of the physicians, even in remote country districts, are said to possess unusual talent.
Not far below the shrine lies the theatre of Dionysus, scooped out of the hillside as are most Greek theatres, with a paved, semi-circular “orchestra,” or dancing place, at its foot. Much of the original seating capacity is concealed by the overgrowth of grass, so that one is likely greatly to underestimate its former size. Once the seats rose far up toward the precinct of Asklepios, and the path that to-day traverses the slope passes through what was once the upper portion of the amphitheatre. It is only in the lower portions that the stones still remain in a fair state of preservation and serve to show us the manner of theatre that the Athenians knew—the same in which the earlier generations saw for the first time the tragedies of that famous trio of playwrights, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. This theatre has undergone manifold changes since its first construction, as one will discover from his archæological books. It is idle for us here to seek to recall the successive alterations which changed the present theatre from that which the ancients actually saw, or to point out the traces of each transformation that now remain, to show that the “orchestra” was once a complete circle and lay much farther back. It will, however, be found interesting enough to clamber down over the tiers of seats to the bottom and inspect at leisure the carved chairs once allotted to various dignitaries, and bearing to this day the names of the officers who used them. Particularly fine is the chief seat of all, the carved chair of the high priest of Dionysus, in the very centre of the row, with its bas-relief of fighting cocks on the chair-arms still plainly to be seen. It is well to remember, however, that most of what the visitor sees is of a rather recent period as compared with other Athenian monuments, for it is stated that very little of the present visible theatre is of earlier date than the third century B.C., while much is of even a more recent time and is the work of the Romans. This is true, especially, of the conspicuous carved screen that runs along behind the orchestra space, and which may have supported the stage—if there was a stage at all. The paved orchestra will also strike one as unusual, contrasting with the greensward to be seen in other similar structures, such as the theatre at Epidaurus.
The vexed question of the use of any elevated stage in Greek theatres so divides the skilled archæologists into warring camps even to-day that it ill becomes an amateur in the field to advance any opinion at all, one way or the other, upon the subject. There are eminent authorities who maintain that the use of a raised stage in such a theatre was utterly unknown by the ancients, and that any such development can only have come in comparatively modern times, under Roman auspices. Others insist, and with equal positiveness, that some sort of a stage was used by the more ancient Greeks. The arguments pro and con have waxed warm for several years, without convincing either side of its error. It is safe to say that American students generally incline to the view that there was no such raised stage, agreeing with the Germans, while English scholars appear generally to believe that the stage did exist and was used. As just remarked, the views of mere laymen in such a case are of small account, and I shall spare the reader my own, saying only that in the few reproductions of Greek plays that I myself have seen, there has been no confusion whatever produced by having the principal actors present in the “orchestra” space with the chorus—and this, too, without the aid of the distinguishing cothurnos, or sandal, to give to the principals any added height. From this it seems to me not unreasonable to contend that, if a stage did exist, it was hardly called into being by any pressing necessity to avoid confusion, as some have argued; while, on the contrary, it does seem as if the separation of the chief actors to the higher level would often mar the general effect. Such a play as the “Agamemnon” of Æschylus would, it seems to me, lose much by the employment of an elevated platform for those actors not of the chorus. In fact, there was no more need of any such difference in level, to separate chorus from principal, in ancient times than there is to-day. The ancients did, however, seek to differentiate the principals from the chorus players, by adding a cubit unto their stature, so to speak, for they devised thick-soled sandals that raised them above the ordinary height. Besides this they employed masks, and occasionally even mechanism for aerial acting, and also subterranean passages.
Whatever we may each conclude as to the existence or non-existence of an elevated stage at the time of Pericles, we shall all agree, no doubt, that our modern stagecraft takes its nomenclature direct from the Greek. The “orchestra,” which in the old Greek meant the circle in which the dancing and acting took place, we have taken over as a word referring to the floor space filled with the best seats, and by a still less justifiable stretch of the meaning we have come to apply it to the musicians themselves. Our modern “scene” is simply the old Greek word σκηνή (skèné), meaning a “tent,” which the ancient actors used as a dressing-room. The marble or stone wall, of varying height, and pierced by doors for the entrance and exit of actors, was called by the Greeks the “proskenion,” or structure before the skèné, serving to conceal the portions behind the scenes and add background to the action. The word is obviously the same as our modern “proscenium,” though the meaning to-day is entirely different. In ancient times the proskenion, instead of being the arch framing the foreground of a “scene,” was the background, or more like our modern “drop” scene. Being of permanent character and made of stone, it generally represented a palace, with three entrances, and often with a colonnade. At either side of the proskenion were broad roads leading into the orchestra space, called the “parodoi,” by means of which the chorus entered and departed on occasion, and through which chariots might be driven. Thus, for instance, in the “Agamemnon,” that hero and Cassandra drove through one of the parodoi into the orchestra, chariots and all—a much more effective entrance than would have been possible had they been forced to climb aloft to a stage by means of the ladder represented on some of the vases as used for the purpose. The side from which the actor entered often possessed significance, as indicating whether he came from the country or from the sea. As for disagreeable scenes, such as the murders which form the motif of the Oresteian trilogy, it may not be out of place to remark that they were almost never represented on the stage in sight of the orchestra or spectators, but were supposed always to take place indoors, the audience being apprized of events by groans and by the explanations of the chorus. The ordinary theatrical performance was in the nature of a religious ceremony, the altar of the god being in the centre of the orchestra space, and served by the priest before the play began. And in leaving the subject, one may add that many Greek plays required sequels, so that they often came in groups of three, each separate from the other, but bearing a relation to each other not unlike our several acts of a single piece. So much for Greek theatres in general, and the theatre of Dionysus in particular.
Leaving it by the iron gate above and plunging into a labyrinthine mass of houses just outside, one will speedily come upon an interesting monument called the “choragic monument of Lysicrates.” This is the only remaining representative of a series of pedestals erected by victors in musical or dancing fêtes to support tripods celebrating their victories. This one, which is exceedingly graceful, has managed to survive and is a thing of beauty still, despite several fires and vicissitudes of which it bears traces. The street is still called the “Street of the Tripods.”
TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS
A few steps farther, and one emerges from the narrower lanes into the broader avenues of the city, and is confronted at once by the arch of Hadrian, which stands in an open field across the boulevard of Amalia. It is frankly and outspokenly Roman, of course, and does not flatter the Latin taste as compared with the Greek. It need delay nobody long, however, for the tall remaining columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus are just before, and are commanding enough to inspire attention at once. To those who prefer the stern simplicity of the Doric order of columns, the Corinthian capitals will not appeal. But the few huge, weathered pillars, despite the absence of roof or of much of the entablature, are grand in their own peculiar way, and the vast size of the temple as it originally stood may serve to show the reverence in which the father of the gods was held in the city of his great daughter, Athena. The more florid Corinthian capital seems to have appealed to the Roman taste, and it is to be remembered that this great temple, although begun by Greeks, was completed in the time of Hadrian and after the dawn of the Christian era: so that if it disappoints one in comparison with the more classic structures of the Acropolis, it may be set down to the decadent Hellenistic taste rather than to a flaw in the old Hellenic. As for the Corinthian order of capital, it is supposed to have been devised by a Corinthian sculptor from a basket of fruit and flowers which he saw one day on a wall, perhaps as a funeral tribute. The idea inspired him to devise a conventionalized flower basket with the acanthus leaf as the main feature, and to apply the same to the ornamentation of the tops of marble columns, such as these.
On the northern side of the Acropolis, down among the buildings and alleys of the so-called “Turkish” quarter, there exist several fragmentary monuments, which may be passed over with little more than a word. The most complete and at the same time the most interesting of these relics is unquestionably the “Tower of the Winds,” an octagonal building not unlike a windmill in shape and general size, but devoted originally to the uses of town clock and weather bureau. On its cornices, just below the top, are carved eight panels facing the different points of the compass, the figures in high relief representing the several winds. The appropriate general characteristics of each wind are brought out by the sculpture—here an old man of sour visage brings snow and storms; another, of more kindly mien, brings gentle rain; others bring flowers and ripening fruits. A weather-vane once surmounted the structure. Near by, scattered among the houses, are bits of old porticoes, sometimes areas of broken columns, and at others quite perfect specimens still bearing their pedimental stones, testifying to the former presence of ancient market places, or public meeting places, in large part belonging to the later, or Roman, period. It was in this general vicinity that the original agora, or market place, stood, no doubt. In some of the porticoes were often to be found teachers of one sort or another, and in one “stoa” of this kind, we are told, taught those philosophers who, from the location of their school, came to be called "stoics"—giving us an adjective which to-day has lost every vestige of its derivative significance. Nothing remains of the other famous structures that are supposed to have been located in this vicinity, or at least nothing has been unearthed as yet, although possibly if some of the congested and rather mean houses of the quarter could be removed, some vestiges of this important section of the classic city might be recovered. Nothing remains of the ancient “agora,” or market place, in which St. Paul said he saw the altar with this inscription, “To the unknown god.” But the Areopagus, or Mars Hill, where Paul is supposed to have stood when he made his noble speech to the men of Athens, is still left and well repays frequent visitation. Its ancient fame as the place where the god Ares, or Mars, was tried for his life, and as the place of deliberation over the gravest Athenian affairs, has been augmented by the celebrity it derived from the apostle’s eloquent argument, in which he commented on the activity of the Athenian mind and its fondness for theology, a characteristic rather inadequately brought out by the Bible’s rendering, “too superstitious.” The Areopagus to-day is a barren rock devoid of vegetation or of any trace of building, although rough-hewn steps here and there and a rude leveling of the top are visible. Of the great events that have passed on this rocky knoll not a trace remains. With reference to the Acropolis towering above and close at hand, Mars Hill seems small, but the ascent of it from the plain is long and steep enough. It is apparently no more than an outlying spur of the main rock of the Acropolis, from which it is separated by a slight depression; but it shares with the holy hill of Athena a celebrity which makes it the object of every thoughtful visitor’s attention. From its top one may obtain almost the best view of the afterglow of sunset on the temples and the Propylæa of the Acropolis, after the custodians of the latter have driven all visitors below; and sitting there as the light fades one may lose himself readily in a reverie in which the mighty ones of old, from Ares himself down to the mortal sages of later days, pass in grand review, only to fade away from the mind and leave the eloquent apostle of the newer religion saying to the citizens gathered around him, “Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.” Let us, if we will, believe that it was “in the midst of Mars Hill” that Paul preached his sonorous sermon, despite a tendency among scholars to suggest that he probably stood somewhere else, “close by or near to” rather than “in the midst of” the spot. If we paid undue heed to these iconoclastic theories of scientists, what would become of all our cherished legends? The traveler in Greece loses half the charm of the place if he cannot become as a little child and believe a good many things to be true enough that perhaps can hardly stand the severe test of archæology. And why should he not do this?
THE AREOPAGUS
Peopled with ghostly memories also is the long, low ridge of rocky ground to the westward, across the broad avenue that leads from the plain up to the Acropolis, still bearing its ancient name of the “Pnyx.” In the valley between lie evidences of a bygone civilization, the crowded foundations of ancient houses, perhaps of the poorer class, huddled together along ancient streets, the lines of which are faintly discernible among the ruins, while here and there are traces of old watercourses and drains, with deep wells and cisterns yawning up at the beholder. Thus much of the older town has been recovered, lying as it does in the open and beyond the reach of the present line of dwellings. Above this mass of ruin the hill rises to the ancient assembling place of the enfranchised citizens—the “Bema,” or rostrum, from which speeches on public topics were made to the assembled multitude. The Bema is still in place, backed by a wall of huge “Cyclopean” masonry. Curiously enough the ground slopes downward from the Bema to-day, instead of upward as a good amphitheatre for auditors should do, giving the impression that the eloquence of the Athenian orators must literally have gone over the heads of their audiences. That this was anciently the case appears to be denied, however, and we are told that formerly the topography was quite the reverse of modern conditions, made so artificially with the aid of retaining walls, now largely destroyed. Until this is understood, the Bema and its neighborhood form one of the hardest things in Athens to reconstruct in memory. It is from the rocky platform of this old rostrum that one gets the ideal view of the Acropolis, bringing out the perfect subordination of the Propylæa to the Parthenon, and giving even to-day a very fair idea of the appearance of the Acropolis and its temples as the ancients saw them. Fortunate, indeed, is one who may see these in the afternoon light standing out sharply against a background of opaque cloud, yet themselves colored by the glow of the declining sun. Of all the magnificent ruins in Greece, this is the finest and best,—the Acropolis from the Bema, or from any point along the ridge of the Pnyx.
Of course that temple which is called, though possibly erroneously, the Theseum, is one of the best preserved of all extant Greek temples of ancient date, and is one of the most conspicuous sights of Athens, after the Acropolis and the temples thereon. And yet, despite that fact, it somehow fails to arouse anything like the same enthusiasm in the average visitor. Just why this is so it may be rash to attempt to say, but I suspect it is chiefly because the Theseum is, after all, a rather colorless and uninspiring thing by comparison with the Parthenon, lacking in individuality, although doubtless one would look long before finding real flaws in its architecture or proportions. It simply suffers because its neighbors are so much grander. If it stood quite alone as the temple at Segesta stands, or as stand the magnificent ruins at Pæstum, it would be a different matter. As it is, with the Parthenon looking down from the Acropolis not far away, the Theseum loses immeasurably in the effect that a specimen of ancient architecture so obviously perfect ought, in all justice, to command. It seems entirely probable that the failure of this smaller temple to inspire and lay hold on Athenian visitors is due to the overshadowing effect of its greater neighbors, which it feebly resembles in form without at all equaling their beauty, and in part also, perhaps, to the uncertainty about its name. That it was really a temple of Theseus, an early king of Athens, seems no longer to be believed by any, although no very satisfactory substitute seems to be generally accepted. It will remain the Theseum for many years to come, no doubt, if not for all time. Theseus certainly deserved some such memorial as this, and it is not amiss to believe that the bones of the hero were actually deposited here by Cimon when he brought them back from Scyros. The services of Theseus to the city were great. If we may, in childlike trust, accept the testimony of legend, Theseus was the son of King Ægeus and Æthra, but was brought up in the supposition that he was a son of Poseidon, in the far city of Trœzen. When he grew up, however, he was given a sword and shield and sent to Athens, where his father, Ægeus, was king. Escaping poisoning by Medea, he appeared at the Athenian court, was recognized by his armor, and was designated by Ægeus as his rightful successor. He performed various heroic exploits, freed Athens of her horrid tribute of seven boys and seven girls paid to the Cretan Minotaur, came back triumphant to Athens only to find that Ægeus, mistaking the significance of his sails, which were black, had committed suicide by hurling himself in his grief from the Acropolis; and thereupon, Theseus became king. He united the Attic cities in one state, instituted the democracy and generously abdicated a large share of the kingly power, devised good laws, and was ever after held in high esteem by the city—although he died in exile at Scyros, to which place he withdrew because of a temporary coolness of his people toward him. Cimon brought back his bones, however, in 469 B.C., and Theseus became a demi-god in the popular imagination. The Theseum owes its splendid preservation to the fact that it was used, as many other temples were, as a Christian church, sacred to St. George of Cappadocia.
THE THESEUM
Infinitely more pregnant with definite interest is the precinct of the Ceramicus, near the Dipylon, or double gate, of the city, which gave egress to the Eleusis road on the western side of the town, the remains of which are easily to be seen to-day. The excavations at this point have recently been pushed with thoroughness and some very interesting fragments have come to light, buried for all these centuries in the “Themistoclean wall” of the city. It will be recalled that the Spartans, being jealous of the growing power of Athens, protested against the rebuilding of the walls. Themistocles, who was not only a crafty soul but in high favor at Athens at the time, undertook to go to Sparta and hold the citizens of that town at bay until the walls should be of sufficient height for defense. Accordingly he journeyed down to Sparta and pleaded the non-arrival of his ambassadorial colleagues as an excuse for delaying the opening of negotiations on the subject of the wall. Days passed and still the colleagues did not come, much to the ostensible anxiety and disgust of Themistocles, who still asserted they must soon arrive. Meantime every man, woman, and child in Athens was working night and day to build those walls, heaping up outworks for the city from every conceivable material, sparing nothing, not even the gravestones of the Ceramicus district, in their feverish anxiety to get the walls high enough to risk an attack. The Roman consul worked no more assiduously at hewing down the famous bridge, nor did Horatius labor more arduously at his task, than did Themistocles in diplomatic duel with the men of Sparta. At last the news leaked out—but it was too late. The walls were high enough at last, and all further pretense of a delayed embassy was dropped. The diplomacy of the wily Themistocles had triumphed—and by no means for the first time. Out of this so-called Themistoclean wall there have recently been taken some of the grave “stelae,” or flat slabs sculptured in low relief, from the places where the harassed Athenians cast them in such haste more than four centuries before Christ. They are battered and broken, but the figures on them are still easily visible, and while by no means sculpturally remarkable the relics possess an undoubted historical interest.
The tombs of the Ceramicus district, which form an important part of the sculptural remains of Athenian art, are still numerous enough just outside the Dipylon Gate, although many examples have been housed in the National Museum for greater protection against weather and vandals. Of those that fortunately remain in situ along what was the beginning of the Sacred Way to Eleusis, there are enough to give a very fair idea of the appearance of this ancient necropolis, while the entire collection of tombstones affords one of the most interesting and complete exhibits to be seen in Athens. The excellence of the work calls attention to the high general level of skill achieved by the artisans of the time, for it is hardly to be assumed that these memorials of the dead were any more often the work of the first Athenian artists of that day than is the case among our own people at present.
The whole question of the Greek tomb sculpture is a tempting one, and a considerable volume of literature already exists with regard to it. The artistic excellence of the stelae in their highest estate, the quaintness of the earlier efforts, the ultimate regulation of the size and style by statute to discourage extravagance, the frequent utilization of an older stone for second-hand uses, and a score of other interesting facts, might well furnish forth an entire chapter. As it is, we shall be obliged here briefly to pass over the salient points and consider without much pretense of detail the chief forms of tomb adornment that the present age has to show, preserved from the day when all good Athenians dying were buried outside the gates on the Eleusinian way. Not only carved on the stelae themselves, but also placed on top of them, are to be seen reliefs or reproductions of long-necked amphorae, or two-handled vases, in great numbers. These are now known to have had their significance as referring to the unmarried state of the deceased. They are nothing more nor less than reproductions of the vases the Greek maidens used to carry to the spring Callirrhoë for water for the nuptial bath, and the use of them in the tomb sculpture, on the graves of those who died unmarried, is stated to have grown out of the idea that “those who died unwed had Hades for their bridegroom.” These vases come the nearest to resembling modern grave memorials of any displayed at Athens, perhaps. The rest of the gravestones are entirely different both in appearance and in idea from anything we are accustomed to-day to use in our cemeteries, and it is likely to be universally agreed that they far eclipse our modern devices in beauty. The modern graveyard contents itself in the main with having its graves marked with an eye to statistics, rather than artistic effect, save in the cases of the very rich, who may invoke the aid of eminent sculptors to adorn their burial plots. In Athens this seems not to have been so. There is very little in the way of inscription on the stones, save for the name. The majority are single panels containing bas-reliefs, which may or may not be portraits of the departed.
TOMB AMPHORA, CERAMICUS
The usual type of tomb relief of this sort seems to be a group of figures, sometimes two, sometimes three or four, apparently representing a leave-taking, or frequently the figure of a person performing some characteristic act of life. Of the latter the well-known tomb of Hegeso, representing a woman attended by her maid fingering trinkets in a jewel casket, is as good a type as any, and it has the added merit of standing in its original place in the street of the tombs. Others of this kind are numerous enough in the museum. The aversion to the representation of death itself among the ancient Greeks is well understood, and many have argued from it that these tomb reliefs indicate an intention to recall the deceased as he or she was in life, without suggestion of mourning. Nevertheless, the obvious attitudes of sorrowful parting visible in many of the tomb stelae seem to me to do violence to this theory in its full strength. Among those which seem most indicative of this is a very well-executed one showing three figures,—an old man, a youth, and a little lad. The old man stands looking intently, but with a far-away gaze, at a splendidly built but thoughtful-visaged young man before him, while the lad behind is doubled up in a posture plainly indicating extreme grief, with his face apparently bathed in tears. The calm face of the youth, the grave and silent grief of the paternal-looking man, and the unbridled emotion of the boy, all speak of a parting fraught with intense sorrow. It might be any parting—but is it not more reasonable to assume that it means the parting which involves no return?
The more archaic gravestones are best typified by the not unfamiliar sculpture, in low relief, of a warrior leaning on a spear, or by the well-known little figure of Athena, similarly poised, mourning beside what appears to be a gravestone of a hero. It was one of the former type that we saw exhumed from the Themistoclean wall, with the warrior’s figure and portions of the spear still easily discernible.
TOMB RELIEF, CERAMICUS
It remains to speak, though very briefly and without much detail, of the National Museum itself, which is one of the chief glories of Athens, and which divides with the Acropolis the abiding interest and attention of every visitor. It is in many ways incomparable among the great museums of the world, although others can show more beautiful and more famous Greek statues. The British Museum has the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon, which one would to-day greatly prefer to see restored to Athens; the Vatican holds many priceless and beautiful examples of the highest Greek sculptural art; Munich has the interesting pedimental figures from the temple at Ægina; Naples and Paris have collections not to be despised; but nowhere may one find under a single roof so wide a range of Greek sculpture, from the earliest strivings after form and expression to the highest ultimate success, as in the Athenian National Museum, with its priceless treasures in marble and in bronze. The wealth of statues, large and small, quaintly primitive or commandingly lovely, in all degrees of relief and in the round, is stupendous. And while it may be heresy to pass over the best of the marbles for anything else, it is still a fact that many will turn from all the other treasures of the place to the “bronze boy” as we will call him for lack of a better name. This figure of a youth, of more than life size and poised lightly as if about to step from his pedestal, with one hand extended, and seemingly ready to speak, is far less well known than he deserves to be, chiefly because it is but a few years since the sponge divers found him in the bed of the ocean and brought him back to the light of day. At present nobody presumes to say whether this splendid figure represents any particular hero. He might be Perseus, or Paris, or even Hermes. His hand bears evidence of having at one time clasped some object, whether the head of Medusa, the apple, or the caduceus, it is impossible to say. But the absence of winged sandals appears to dismiss the chance that he was Hermes, and the other identifications are so vague as to leave it perhaps best to refer to him only as an “ephebus,” or youth. The bronze has turned to a dark green, and such restorations as had to be made are quite invisible, so that to all outward seeming the statue is as perfect as when it was first cast. The eyes, inlaid with consummate skill to simulate real eyes, surpass in lifelike effect those of the celebrated bronze charioteer at Delphi. That a more detailed description of this figure is given here is not so much that it surpasses the other statues of the museum, but because it is so recent in its discovery that almost nothing has been printed about it for general circulation.
National Museum, Athens
BRONZE EPHEBUS
It would be almost endless and entirely profitless to attempt any detailed consideration of the multitude of objects of this general sculptural nature which the museum contains, and volumes have been written about them all, from the largest and noblest of the marbles to the smallest of the island gems. It may not be out of place, however, to make brief mention of the spoils of Mycenæ which are housed here, and which reproductions have made generally familiar, because later we shall have occasion to visit Mycenæ itself and to discuss in more detail that once proud but now deserted city, the capital which Agamemnon made so famous. In a large room set apart for the purpose are to be seen the treasures that were taken from the six tombs, supposed to be royal graves, that were unearthed in the midst of the Mycenæan agora, including a host of gold ornaments, cups, rosettes, chains, death masks, weapons, and human bones. Whether Dr. Schliemann, as he so fondly hoped and claimed, really laid bare the burial place of the conqueror of Troy, or whether what he found was something far less momentous, the fact remains that he did exhume the bodies of a number of personages buried in the very spot where legend said the famous heroes and heroines were buried, together with such an array of golden gear that it seems safe to assert that these were at any rate the tombs of royalty. If one can divest his mind of the suspicions raised by the ever-cautious archæologist and can persuade himself that he sees perhaps the skeleton and sword of the leader of the Argive host that went to recapture Helen, this Mycenæan room is of literally overwhelming interest. Case after case ranged about the room reveals the cunningly wrought ornaments that gave to Mycenæ the well-deserved Homeric epithet “rich-in-gold.” From the grotesque death masks of thin gold leaf to the heavily embossed Vaphio cups, everything bears testimony to the high perfection of the goldsmith’s art in the pre-Homeric age. Of all this multitude of treasures, the chief objects are unquestionably the embossed daggers and the large golden cups, notably the two that bear the exceedingly well-executed golden bulls, and the so-called “Nestor” cup, which, with its rather angular shape and its double handle, reproduces exactly the cup that Homer describes as belonging to that wise and reverend counselor.
As has been hinted, the scientific archæologists, less swept away by Homeric enthusiasm than was Schliemann, have proved skeptical as to the identification of the tombs which Schliemann so confidently proclaimed at first discovery. The unearthing of a sixth tomb, where the original excavator had looked for only five, is supposed to have done violence to the Agamemnonian theory. But what harm can it do if we pass out of the Mycenæan room with a secret, though perhaps an ignorant, belief that we have looked upon the remains and accoutrements of one who was an epic hero, the victim of a murderous queen, the avenger of a brother’s honor, and the conqueror of a famous city? It is simply one more of those cases in which one gains immeasurably in pleasure if he can dismiss scientific questionings from his mind and pass through the scene unskeptical of the heroes of the mighty past, if not of the very gods of high Olympus themselves. It may be wrong; to a scientific investigator such guileless trust is doubtless laughable. But on our own heads be it if therein we err!
CHAPTER VII. EXCURSIONS IN
ATTICA
As the admirable Baedeker well says, the stay in Athens is undoubtedly the finest part of a visit to Greece, and it is so not merely because of the many attractions and delights of the city itself, but because also of the numerous short trips aside which can be made in a day’s time, without involving a night’s absence. Such little journeys include the ascent of Pentelicus, whose massive peak rises only a few miles away, revealing even from afar the great gash made in his side by the ancients in quest of marble for their buildings and statues; the ride out to the battlefield of Marathon; the incomparable drive to Eleusis; the jaunt by rail or sea to Sunium; and last, but by no means least, the sail over to Ægina. Marathon has no ruins to show. Aside from the interest attaching to that famous battleground as a site, there is nothing to call one thither, if we except the tumulus, or mound, which marks the exact spot of the conflict which was so important to the history of western Europe. Neither Marathon nor Thermopylæ can offer much to-day but memories. But Sunium, Ægina, and Eleusis possess ruins decidedly worth a visit in addition to much scenic loveliness, and the last-named is a spot so interwoven with the highest and best in Greek tradition that it offers a peculiar charm.
It is perfectly possible to journey to Eleusis by train, but to elect that method of approach is to miss one of the finest carriage rides to be had in the vicinity of Athens. The road leads out of the city through its unpretentious western quarter, by the “street of the tombs” to the vale of the Cephissus, where it follows the line of the old “sacred way” to Eleusis, over which, on the stated festivals, the procession of torch-bearing initiates wended its way by night to the shrine of Demeter. From the river—which to-day is a mere sandy channel most of the year—the smooth, hard highway rises gradually from the Attic plain to the mountain wall of Parnes, making straight for a narrow defile still known as the Pass of Daphne. This pass affords direct communication between the Attic and Thriasian plains, and save for the loftier valley farther north, through which the Peloponnesian railroad runs, is the only break in the mountain barrier. Eleusis and Attica were always so near—and yet so far apart. When the Spartans invaded the region, Athens felt no alarm from their proximity until they had actually entered her own plain, so remote seemed the valley about Eleusis, despite its scant ten miles of distance, simply because it was so completely out of sight. As the carriage ascends the gentle rise to the pass, the plain of Attica stretches out behind, affording an open vista from the Piræus to the northern mountains, a green and pleasant vale despite its dearth of trees, while the city of Athens dominates the scene and promises a fine spectacle by sunset as one shall return from the pass at evening, facing the commanding Acropolis aglow in the after-light.
A halt of a few moments at the top of the pass gives an opportunity to alight and visit an old church just beside the road. It was once adjoined by some monastic cloisters, now in ruins. Unlike most of the Greek churches, this one possesses a quaint charm from without, and within displays some very curious old mosaics in the ceiling. On either side of its doorway stand two sentinel cypresses, their sombre green contrasting admirably with the dull brown tones of the building, while across the close, in a gnarled old tree, are hung the bells of the church. The use of the neighboring tree as a campanile is by no means uncommon in Greece, and a pretty custom it is. The groves were God’s first temples; and if they are no longer so, it is yet true in Greece at least that the trees still bear the chimes that call the devout to prayer. Inside the building, in addition to the quaint Byzantine decorations, one may find something of interest in the curious votive offerings, before referred to as common in Greek churches, suspended on the altar screen. Thanks for the recovered use of arms, eyes, legs, and the like seem to be expressed by hanging in the church a small white-metal model of the afflicted organ which has been so happily restored. I believe I have called attention to this practice as a direct survival of the old custom of the worshipers of Asklepios, which finds a further amplification in many churches farther west,—in Sicily, for example,—where pictures of accidents are often found hung in churches by those who have been delivered from bodily peril and who are desirous to commemorate the fact. In the church in Daphne Pass we found for the first time instances of the votive offering of coins, as well as of anatomical models. The significance of this I do not pretend to know, but by analogy one might assume that the worshiper was returning thanks for relief from depleted finances. The coins we saw in this church were of different denominations, all of silver, and representing several different national currency systems.
Behind the church on either side rise the pine-clad slopes of the Parnes range, displaying a most attractive grove of fragrant trees, through the midst of which Daphne’s road permits us to pass. And in a brief time the way descends toward the bay of Salamis, shining in the sun, directly at one’s feet, while the lofty and extensive island of that immortal name appears behind it. So narrow are the straits that for a long time Salamis seems almost like a part of the mainland, while the included bay appears more like a large and placid lake than an arm of a tideless sea. The carriage road skirts the wide curve of the bay for several level miles, the village of Eleusis—now called Levsina—being always visible at the far extremity of the bay and marked from afar by prosaic modern factory chimneys. It lies low in the landscape, which is a pastoral one. The highway winds along past a score of level farms, and at least two curious salt lakes are to be seen, lying close to the road and said to be tenanted by sea fish, although supplied apparently from inland sources. They are higher in level than the bay, and there is a strong outflow from them to the sea waters beyond. Nevertheless, they are said to be salt and to support salt-water life.
Eleusis as a town is not attractive. The sole claim on the visitor is found in the memories of the place and in the ruined temples, which are in the heart of the village itself. The secret of the mysteries, despite its wide dissemination among the Athenians and others, has been well kept—so well that almost nothing is known of the ceremony and less of its teaching. In a general way there is known only the fact that it had to do with the worship of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, and that the mysteries concerned in some way the legend of the rape of Kora (Proserpine) by Hades (Pluto). There are hints as to certain priests, sacred vessels, symbols and rites, some of which appear not to have been devoid of grossness—but nothing definite is known, and probably nothing definite ever will be. The general tone of the mysteries seems to have been high, for no less an authority than Cicero, who was initiated into the cult in the later and decadent days of the Greek nation, regarded the teachings embodied in the Eleusinian rites as the highest product of the Athenian culture, and averred that they “enabled one to live more happily on earth and to die with a fairer hope.” It was, of course, unlawful for anybody to reveal the secrets; and although the initiation was apparently open to any one who should seek it, so that the number of devotees was large during a long succession of years, the secret was faithfully kept by reason of the great reverence in which the mysteries were held. That some of the features verged on wanton license has been alleged, and it may have been this that inspired the wild and brilliant young Alcibiades to burlesque the ceremony, to the scandal of pious Athenians and to his own ultimate undoing. For it was a trial on this charge that recalled Alcibiades from Sicily and led to his disgrace.
The approach to the vast main temple is unusual, in that it is by an inclined plane rather than by steps. Even to-day the ruts of chariot wheels are to be distinguished in this approaching pavement. The temple itself was also most unusual, for instead of a narrow cella sufficient only for the colossal image of the deity, there was a vast nave, and room for a large concourse of worshipers. On the side next the hillock against which the temple was built there is a long, low flight of hewn steps, possibly used for seats, while the many column bases seem to argue either a second story or a balcony as well as a spacious roof. Much of the original building is distinguishable, despite the fact that the Romans added a great deal; for the Latin race seems to have found the rites to its liking, so that it took care to preserve and beautify the place after its own ideas of beauty. If the surviving medallion of some Roman emperor which is to be seen near the entrance of the Propylæa is a fair sample, however, one may doubt with reason the effectiveness of the later additions to the buildings on the spot. The Roman Propylæa was built by Appius Claudius Pulcher, but if the medallion portrait is his own, one must conclude that the “Pulcher” was gross flattery.
The ruins are extensive, but mainly flat, so that their interest as ruins is almost purely archæological. The ordinary visitor will find the chief charm in the memories of the place. Of course there is a museum on the spot, as in every Greek site. It contains a large number of fragments from the temples and Propylæa, bits of statuary and bas-relief having chiefly to do with Demeter and her attendant goddesses. By far the most interesting and most perfect of the Eleusinian reliefs, however, is in the national museum at Athens—a large slab representing Demeter and Proserpine bestowing the gift of seed corn on the youth Triptolemus, who is credited with the invention of the plow. For some reason, doubtless because of the hospitality of his family to her, Triptolemus won the lasting favor of Demeter, who not only gave him corn but instructed him in the art of tilling the stubborn glebe. It seems entirely probable that Triptolemus and Kora shared in the mystic rites at Eleusis. As for the dying with a “fairer hope” spoken of by Cicero as inculcated by the ceremonies of the cult, one may conjecture that it sprang from some early pagan interpretation of the principle later enunciated in the Scriptural “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die.”
Eleusis itself lies on a low knoll in the midst of the Thriasian plain, which in early spring presents a most attractive appearance of fertility on every side, appropriately enough to the traditions of the spot. From the top of the hillock behind the great temple and the museum, one obtains a good view of the vale northward and of the sacred way winding off toward Corinth by way of Megara. Where the plain stops and the mountain wall approaches once again close to the sea, this road grows decidedly picturesque, recalling in a mild way the celebrated Amalfi drive as it rises and falls on the face of the cliff. Nor should one pass from the subject of Eleusis without mentioning the numerous little kids that frisk over the ruins, attended by anxious mother-goats, all far from unfriendly. Kids are common enough sights in Greece, and to lovers of pets they are always irresistible; but nowhere are they more so than at Eleusis, where they add their mite of attractiveness to the scene. The grown-up goat is far from pretty, but by some curious dispensation of nature the ugliest of animals seem to have the most attractive young, and the frisking lambs and kids of Greece furnish striking examples of it.
The ride back to the city must be begun in season to get the sunset light on the west front of the Acropolis, which is especially effective from the Eleusis road all the way from Daphne’s Pass to the city proper. As for Salamis, which is always in sight until the pass is crossed, it is enough to say that, like Marathon, it is a place of memories only. The bay that one sees from the Eleusis road is not the one in which the great naval battle was fought. That lies on the other side, toward the open gulf, and is best seen from the sea. Few care to make a special excursion to the island itself, which is rocky and barren, and after all the chief interest is in its immediate waters. The account of the battle in Herodotus is decidedly worth reading on the spot, and to this day they will show you a rocky promontory supposed to have been the point where Xerxes had his throne placed so that he might watch the fight which resulted so disastrously to his ships. The battle, by the way, was another monument to the wiles of Themistocles, who recognized in the bulwarks of the ships the “wooden walls” which the oracle said would save Athens, and who, when he found the commanders weakening, secretly sent word to the Persians urging them to close in and fight. This was done; and the navy being reduced to the necessity of conflict acquitted itself nobly.
Of the other local excursions, that to Marathon is easily made in a day by carriage. There is little to see there, save a plain, lined on the one hand by the mountains which look on Marathon, and on the other by the sea, largely girt with marshes. The lion which once crowned the tumulus is gone, nobody knows whither. It is much, however, from a purely sentimental point of view, to have stood upon the site itself, the scene of one of the world’s famous battles. Some grudging critics, including the erudite Mahaffy, incline to believe that Marathon was a rather small affair, judged by purely military standards—a conflict of one undisciplined host with an even less disciplined one, in an age when battles ordinarily were won by an endurance of nerve in the face of a hand-to-hand charge rather than by actual carnage. These maintain that the chief celebrity of Marathon rests not on its military glories, but on the fame which the Athenians, a literary race, gave it in song and story. But even these have to admit that Marathon meant much to history, and that the psychological effect of it was enormous, as showing that the Persians were by no means invincible, so that ten years later Salamis put the finishing blow to Persian attempts on the west. For those who do not care to make the long ride to the field itself, it is quite possible to obtain a view of the plain from the summit of Pentelicus, something like fifteen miles away, although this does not reveal the mound marking the actual site.
That mountain’s chief celebrity is, of course, to be found in the great marble quarries from which came the stone for the Acropolis temples, and it is these rather than the view of Marathon that draw climbers to the famous height. The ancient quarries lie far up on the side of the slope, and the marks of the old chisels are still plainly to be discerned. The difficulties of getting out perfect stone in the ancient days seem to have been enormous; but that they were surmounted is obvious from the fact that the great blocks used in building the Parthenon and Propylæa were handled with comparative speed, as shown by the relatively few years occupied in erecting them. It seems probable that the stone was slid down the mountain side in chutes to the point where it was feasible to begin carting it. Inherent but invisible defects naturally occurred, and these the ancients managed to detect by sounding with a mallet. Samples of these imperfect blocks are to be seen lying where they fell when the builders rejected them, not only on the road by the quarries but on the Acropolis itself.
THE TEMPLE AT SUNIUM
Sunium, the famous promontory at the extremity of the Attic peninsula, may be reached by a train on the road that serves the ancient silver mines of Laurium, but as the trains are slow and infrequent it is better, if one can, to go down by sea. Our own visit was so made, the vessel landing us accommodatingly at the foot of the promontory on which a few columns of the ancient temple are still standing. The columns that remain are decidedly whiter than those on the Acropolis, and the general effect is highly satisfying to one’s preconceived ideas of Greek ruins. Dispute is rife as to the particular deity to whom this shrine was anciently consecrated, and the rivalry lies between those traditional antagonists, Athena and Poseidon, each of whom advances plausible claims. How the case can be decided without another contest between the two, like that supposed to have taken place on the Acropolis itself and depicted by Pheidias, is not clear. For who shall decide when doctors of archæology disagree?
The chief architectural peculiarity of the Sunium temple is the arrangement of its frontal columns "in antis,"—that is to say, included between two projecting ends of the side walls. And, in addition, one regrets to say that the ruin is peculiar in affording evidences of modern vandalism more common in our own country than in Hellas, namely, the scratching of signatures on the surface of the stone. All sorts of names have been scrawled there,—English, French, Italian, American, Greek,—and most famous of all, no doubt, the unblushing signature of no less a personage than Byron himself! Perhaps, however, it is not really his. There may be isolated instances of this low form of vandalism elsewhere, but I do not recall any that can compare with the volume of defacing scrawls to be seen at Sunium.
Lovelier far than Sunium is the situation of the temple in Ægina, occupying a commanding height in that large and lofty island on the other side of the gulf, opposite the Piræus and perhaps six or seven miles distant from that port. The journey to it is necessarily by sea, and it has become a frequent objective point for steamer excursions landing near the temple itself rather than at the distant town. In the absence of a steamer, it is possible to charter native boats for a small cost and with a fair breeze make the run across the bay in a comparatively brief time. From the cove where parties are generally landed the temple cannot be seen, as the slopes are covered with trees and the shrine itself is distant some twenty minutes on foot. Donkeys can be had, as usual, but they save labor rather than time, and the walk, being through a grove of fragrant pines, is far from arduous or fatiguing. The odor of the pines is most agreeable, the more so because after one has sojourned for a brief time in comparatively treeless Attica one is the more ready to welcome a scent of the forest. The pungency of the grove is due, however, less to the pine needles and cones than to the tapping, or rather “blazing,” of the trunks for their resin. Under nearly every tree will be found stone troughs, into which the native juice of the tree oozes with painful slowness. The resin, of course, is for the native wines, which the Greek much prefers flavored with that ingredient. The drinking of resinated wine is an acquired taste, so far as foreigners are concerned. Some solemnly aver that they like it,—and even prefer it to the unresinated kind; but the average man not to the manner born declares it to be only less palatable than medicine. The Greeks maintain that the resin adds to the healthfulness of the wines, and to get the gum they have ruined countless pine groves by this tapping process so evident in the Ægina woods, for the gashes cut in the trees have the effect of stunting the growth.
After a steady ascent of a mile or so, the temple comes suddenly into view, framed in a foreground of green boughs, which add immensely to the effectiveness of the picture, and which make one regret the passing of the Greek forests in other places. Once upon a time the ordinary temple must have gained greatly by reason of its contrast with the foliage of the surrounding trees; but to-day only those at Ægina and at Bassæ present this feature to the beholder. This Ægina temple is variously attributed to Athena and to Zeus Panhellenius, so that, as at Sunium, there is a chance for doubt. The chief peculiarity seems to be that the entrance door, which is as usual in the eastern side, is not exactly in the centre of the cella. The columns are still standing to a large extent, but the pedimental sculptures have been removed to Munich, so that the spot is robbed, as the Acropolis is, of a portion of its charm. It is a pity, because the Æginetan pedimental figures were most interesting, furnishing a very good idea of the Æginetan style of sculpture of an early date. The figures which survive, to the number of seventeen, in a very fair state of preservation, represent warriors in various active postures, and several draped female figures, including a large statue of Athena. Those who have never seen these at Munich are doubtless familiar with the reproductions in plaster which are common in all first-class museums boasting collections of Greek masterpieces.
THE APPROACH TO ÆGINA
THE TEMPLE AT ÆGINA
The island of Ægina, which is large and mountainous, forms a conspicuous feature of the gulf in which it lies. It is close to the Peloponnesian shore, and from the temple a magnificent view is outspread in every direction, not only over the mountains of the Argolid but northward toward Corinth,—and on a clear day it is said that even the summit of Parnassus can be descried. Directly opposite lies Athens, with which city the island long maintained a successful rivalry. The chief celebrity of the spot was achieved under its independent existence, about the seventh century B.C., and before Athens subjugated it. It was then tenanted by colonists from Epidaurus, who had the commercial instinct, and who made Ægina a most prosperous place. The name is said to be derived from the nymph Ægina, who was brought to the island by Zeus. The hardy Æginetan sailors were an important factor in the battle of Salamis, to which they contributed not only men but sacred images; and they were not entirely expelled from their land by the Athenian domination until 431 B.C. Thereafter the prominence of the city dwindled and has never returned.
It remains to describe an excursion which we made to the north of Athens one day shortly after Easter, to witness some peasant dances. These particular festivities were held at Menidi, and were rather less extensive than the annual Easter dances at Megara, but still of the same general type; and as they constitute a regular spring feature of Attic life, well worth seeing if one is at Athens at the Easter season, it is not out of place to describe them here. Either Megara or Menidi may be reached easily by train, and Menidi is not a hard carriage ride, being only six miles or so north of Athens, in the midst of the plain. It may be that these dances are direct descendants of ancient rites, like so many of the features of the present Orthodox church; but whatever their significance and history, they certainly present the best opportunity to see the peasantry of the district in their richest gala array, which is something almost too gorgeous to describe.
The drive out to the village over the old north road was dusty and hot, and we were haunted by a fear that the dances might be postponed, as occasionally happens. These doubts were removed, however, when Menidi at last hove in sight as we drove over an undulation of the plain and came suddenly upon the village in holiday dress, flags waving, peasant girls and swains in gala garb, and streets lined with booths for the vending of sweetmeats, Syrian peanuts, pistachio nuts, loukoumi, and what the New England merchant would call “notions.” Indeed, it was all very suggestive of the New England county fair, save for the gorgeousness of the costumes. The streets were thronged and everybody was in a high good-humor. What it was all about we never knew. Conflicting reports were gleaned from the natives, some to the effect that it was, and some that it was not, essentially a churchly affair; but all agreed apparently that it had no connection with the Easter feast, although it was celebrated something like five days thereafter. Others mentioned a spring as having something to do with it,—suggesting a possible pagan origin. This view gained color from the energy with which lusty youths were manipulating the town pump in the village square, causing it to squirt a copious stream to a considerable distance,—a performance in which the bystanders took an unflagging and unbounded delight. That the celebration was not devoid of its religious significance was evident from the open church close by thronged with devout people coming and going, each obtaining a thin yellow taper to light and place in the huge many-branched candelabrum. The number of these soon became so great that the priests removed the older ones and threw them in a heap below, to make room for fresh-lighted candles. Those who deposited coins in the baptismal font near the door were rewarded with a sprinkling of water by the attendant priest, who constantly dipped a rose in the font and shook it over those who sought this particular form of benison.
Outside, the square was thronged with merrymakers, some dancing in the solemn Greek fashion, in a circle with arms extended on each others’ shoulders, moving slowly around and around to the monotonous wail of a clarionet. Others were seated under awnings sipping coffee, and to such a resort we were courteously escorted by the local captain of the gendarmerie, whose acquaintance we had made in Athens and who proved the soul of hospitality. Here we sat and drank the delicious thick coffee, accompanied by the inevitable huge beaker of water drawn from the rocky slopes of Parnes, and watched the dancers and the passing crowds. The dress of the men was seldom conspicuous. Many wore European clothes like our own, although here and there might be seen one in the national costume of full white skirts and close-fitting leggings, leather wallet, and zouave jacket. But the women were visions of incomparable magnificence. Their robes were in the main of white, but the skirts were decked with the richest of woolen embroideries, heavy and thick, extending for several inches upward from the lower hem, in a profusion of rich reds, blues, and browns. Aprons similarly adorned were worn above. Most impressive of all, however, were the sleeveless overgarments or coats, such as we had seen and bickered over in Shoe Lane,—coats of white stuff, bordered with a deep red facing and overlaid with intricate tracery in gold lace and gold braid. These were infinitely finer than any we had seen in the Athens shops, and they made the scene gay indeed with a barbaric splendor. To add to the gorgeousness of the display, the girls wore flat caps, bordered with gold lace and coins, giving the effect of crowns, flowing veils which did not conceal the face but fell over the shoulders, and on their breasts many displayed a store of gold and silver coins arranged as bangles—their dowries, it was explained. Most of these young women were betrothed, it developed, and custom dictated this parade of the marriage portion, which is no small part of the Greek wedding arrangement. The cuffs of the full white sleeves were embroidered like the aprons and skirt bottoms, and the whole effect was such as to be impossible of adequate description.
PEASANT DANCERS AT MENIDI
One comely damsel, whose friends clamored us to photograph her, scampered nimbly into her courtyard, only to be dragged forth bodily by a proud young swain, who announced himself her betrothed and who insisted that she pose for the picture, willy-nilly,—which she did, joining amiably in the general hilarity, and exacting a promise of a print when the picture should be finished. The ice once broken, the entire peasant population became seized with a desire to be photographed, and it was only the beginning of the great dance that dissolved the clamoring throng.
The dance was held on a broad level space, just east of the town, about which a crowd had already gathered. We were escorted thither and duly presented to the demarch, or mayor, who bestowed upon us the freedom of the city and the hospitality of his own home if we required it. He was a handsome man, dressed in a black cut-away coat and other garments of a decidedly civilized nature, which seemed curiously incongruous in those surroundings, as indeed did his own face, which was pronouncedly Hibernian and won for him the sobriquet of "O'Sullivan" on the spot. His stay with us was brief, for the dance was to begin, and nothing would do but the mayor should lead the first two rounds. This he did with much grace, though we were told that he did not relish the task, and only did it because if he balked the votes at the next election would go to some other aspirant. The dance was simple enough, being a mere solemn circling around of a long procession of those gorgeous maidens, numbering perhaps a hundred or more, hand in hand and keeping time to the music of a quaint band composed of drum, clarionet, and a sort of penny whistle. The demarch danced best of all, and after two stately rounds of the green inclosure left the circle and watched the show at his leisure, his face beaming with the sweet consciousness of political security and duty faithfully performed.
How long the dance went on we never knew. The evening was to be marked by a display of fireworks, the frames for which were already in evidence and betokened a magnificence in keeping with the costumes of the celebrants. For ourselves, satiated with the display, we returned to our carriage laden with flowers, pistachio nuts, and strings of beads bestowed by the abundant local hospitality, and bowled home across the plain in time to be rewarded with a fine sunset glow on the Parthenon as a fitting close for a most unusual and enjoyable day.