CHAPTER VIII. DELPHI
The pilgrimage to Delphi, which used to be fraught with considerable hardship and inconvenience, is happily so no longer. It is still true that the Greek steamers plying between the Piræus and Itea, the port nearest the ancient oracular shrine, leave much to be desired and are by no means to be depended upon to keep to their schedules; but aside from this minor difficulty there is nothing to hinder the ordinary visitor from making the journey, which is far and away the best of all ordinary short rambles in Greece, not only because of the great celebrity of the site itself, but because of the imposing scenic attractions Delphi has to show. The old-time drawback, the lack of decent accommodation at Delphi itself, or to be more exact, at the modern village of Kastri, has been removed by the presence of two inns, of rather limited capacity, it is true, but still affording very tolerable lodging. Indeed, hearsay reported the newer of these tiny hostelries to be one of the best in Greece outside of Athens, while the other quaint resort, owned and operated by the amiable Vasili Paraskevas, one of the “local characters” of the place, has long been esteemed by Hellenic visitors. Vasili, in appearance almost as formidable as the ancient Polyphemus, but in all else as gentle as the sucking dove, has felt the force of competition, and his advertisements easily rival those of the Hotel Cecil. As a matter of fact, the establishment is delightfully primitive, seemingly hanging precariously to the very edge of the deep ravine that lies just under lofty Delphi, boasting several small rooms and even the promise of a bath-tub, although Vasili was forced to admit that his advertisement in that respect was purely prospective and indicative of intention rather than actuality.
The truly adventurous may still approach Delphi over the ancient road by land from the eastward, doubtless the same highway that was taken by old King Laios when he was slain on his way to the oracle, all unwitting of the kinship, by his own son Œdipus,—possibly because of a dispute as to which should yield the road. For the old road was a narrow one, with deep ruts, suitable for a single chariot, but productive of frequent broils when two such haughty spirits met on the way. To come to Delphi over this road and to depart by sea is doubtless the ideal plan. That we elected not to take the land voyage was due to the early spring season, with its snows on the shoulder of Parnassus, around which the path winds. For those less hindered by the season, it is said that the journey overland from Livadià to Delphi, passing through the tiny hamlet of Arákhova and possibly spending a night in the open air on Parnassus, is well worth the trouble, and justifies the expense of a courier and horses, both of which are necessary.
The way which we chose, besides being infinitely easier, is far from being devoid of its interesting features. We set sail in the early afternoon from the Piræus, passing over a glassy sea by Psyttalea, and the famous waters in front of Salamis, to Corinth, where the canal proved sufficiently wide to let our little craft steam through to the gulf beyond. It was in the gathering dusk that we entered this unusual channel, but still it was light enough to see the entire length of the canal, along the deep sides of which electric lamps glimmered few and faint as a rather ineffectual illuminant of the tow-path on either hand. The walls towered above, something like two hundred feet in spots, and never very low, making this four-mile ribbon of water between the narrow seas a gloomy cavern indeed. It was wide enough for only one craft of the size of our own, therein resembling the land highway to Delphi; but fortunately, owing to the system of semaphore signals, no Œdipus disputed the road with us, and we shot swiftly through the channel, between its towering walls of rock, under the spidery railroad bridge that spans it near the Corinth end, and out into the gulf beyond. It is rather a nice job of steering, this passage of the canal. Everybody was ordered off the bow, three men stood nervously at the wheel, and the jack staff was kept centred on the bright line that distantly marked the opening between the precipitous sides of the cleft, a line of light that gradually widened, revealing another sea and a different land as we drew near and looked out of our straight and narrow path of water into the Corinthian Gulf beyond. The magnificence of the prospect would be hard indeed to exaggerate. On either side of the narrow gulf rose billowy mountains, the northern line of summits dominated by the snowy dome of Parnassus, the southern by Cyllene, likewise covered with white. They were ghostly in the darkness, which the moon relieved only a little, shining fitfully from an overcast sky. The Corinthian Gulf is fine enough from the railway which skirts it all the way to Patras, but it is finer far from the sea, whence one sees both sides at once in all the glory of their steep gray mountains. Happily the night was calm, and the gulf, which can be as bad as the English Channel at its worst, was smooth for once as we swung away from the little harbor of modern Corinth and laid our course for the capes off Itea, something like forty miles away. And thus we went to rest, the steamer plowing steadily on through the night with Parnassus towering on the starboard quarter.
A vigorous blowing of the whistle roused the ship’s company at dawn. The vessel was at anchor off Itea, a starveling village not at all praised by those who have been forced to sample its meagre accommodations for a night. Fortunately it is no longer necessary to rely on these, for one may drive to Delphi in a few hours, and on a moonlight night the ride, while chilly, is said to be most delightful. Arriving as we did at early dawn, we were deprived of this experience, and set out from the village at once on landing to cover the nine miles to Kastri, some riding in carriages or spring carts,—locally called "sustas,"—some on mules, and others proceeding on foot. From afar we could already see the village, perched high on the side of the foothills of Parnassus, which rise abruptly some three miles away across a level plain. The plain proved to be delightful. Walled in on either hand by rocky cliffs, its whole bottom was filled with olive trees, through which vast grove the road wound leisurely along. Brooks babbled by through the grass of the great orchard, and the green of the herbage was spangled with innumerable anemones and other wild-flowers in a profusion of color. Far behind us in the background towered the Peloponnesian mountains, and before rose the forbidding cliffs that shut in Delphi. Above the distant Kastri, there was always the lofty summit of Parnassus, somewhat dwarfed by proximity and therefore a trifle disappointing to one whose preconceived notions of that classic mountain demanded splendid isolation, but still impressive.
THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI
Naturally on this long, level plain the carriages soon passed us, and disappeared in the hills ahead, while the footpath left the highway and plunged off boldly into the olive grove in the general direction of Delphi. When it attained the base of the sharp ascent of the mountain-side, it went straight up, leaving the road to find its more gradual way by zigzags and détours,—windings so long that it soon developed that the carriages which so long ago had distanced us were in turn displaced and were later seen toiling up the steep behind us! The prospect rearward was increasingly lovely as we climbed and looked down upon the plain. It resembled nothing so much as a sea of verdure, the olive trees pouring into it from the uplands like a river, and filling it from bank to bank. No wonder this plain was deemed a ground worth fighting for by the ancients.
Despite the fact that the snows of Parnassus were apparently so near, the climb was warm. The rocky hillside gave back the heat of the April sun, although it was cloudy, and progress became necessarily slow, in part because of the warmth and in larger part because of the increasing splendor of the view. The path bore always easterly into a narrow gorge between two massive mountains, a gorge that narrowed and narrowed as the climb proceeded. Before very long we passed through a wayside hamlet that lies halfway up the road, exchanged greetings with the inhabitants, who proved a friendly people anxious to set us right on the way to Delphi, and speedily emerged from the nest of buildings on the path again, with Kastri always ahead and above, and seemingly as distant as ever. It was Palm Sunday, we discovered, and the populace of the tiny village all bore sprigs of greenery, which they pressed upon us and which later turned out to be more political than religious in their significance, since it was not only the day of the Lord’s triumphal entry but the closing day of the general elections as well.
Admiration for the green and fertile valley far behind now gave place to awe at the grim gorges before and the beetling cliffs towering overhead, up through which, like dark chimney flues, ran deep clefts in the rock, gloomy and mysterious, and doubtless potent in producing awe in the ancient mind by thus adding to the impressiveness of god-haunted Delphi. On the left the mountain rose abruptly and loftily to the blue; on the right the cliff descended sharply from the path to the dark depths of the ravine, while close on its other side rose again a neighboring mountain that inclosed this ever-narrowing gulch.
At last after a three-hour scramble over the rocks we attained Kastri, and found it a poor town lined with hovels, but, like Mount Zion, beautiful for situation. A brawling brook, fed by a spring above, dashed across the single street and lost itself in the depths of the ravine below. On either hand towered the steep sides of the surrounding cliffs, while before us the valley wound around a shoulder of the mountain and seemingly closed completely. Kastri did not always occupy this site, but once stood farther along around the mountain’s sharp corner, directly over the ancient shrine itself; and it was necessary for the French excavators who laid bare the ancient sites to have the village moved bodily by force and arms before any work could be done,—a task that was accomplished with no little difficulty, but which, when completed, enabled the exploration of what was once the most famous of all Pagan religious shrines. Curiously enough the restoration of the temples at Delphi fell to the hands of the French, the descendants of those very Gauls who, centuries before, had laid waste the shrines and treasuries of Loxias. We stopped long enough at Vasili’s to sample some "mastika,"—a native liqueur resembling anisette, very refreshing on a warm day,—and then walked on to the ruins which lie some few minutes’ walk farther around the shoulder of the mountain.
Nothing could well be more impressive than the prospect that opened out as we came down to the famous site itself. No outlet of the great vale was to be seen from this point, for the gorge winds about among the crags which rise high above and drop far below to the base of the rocky glen. Human habitation there is none. Kastri was now out of sight behind. On the roadside and in the more gradual slopes of the ravine below one might find olive trees, and here and there a plane. Beyond, through the mysterious windings of the defile runs the road to Arakhova. It was on this spot that Apollo had his most famous shrine, the abode of his accredited priestesses gifted with prophecy; and no fitter habitation for the oracle could have been found by the worshipers of old time than this gloomy mountain glen where nature conspires with herself to overawe mankind by her grandeur.
The legend has it that Apollo, born as all the world knows in far-off Delos, transferred his chief seat to Delphi just after his feat of slaying the Python. He is said to have followed that exploit by leaping into the sea, where he assumed the form of a huge dolphin (delphis), and in this guise he directed the course of a passing Cretan ship to the landing place at Itea, or Crissa. There, suddenly resuming his proper shape of a beautiful youth he led the wondering crew of the vessel up from the shore to the present site of Delphi, proclaimed himself the god, and persuaded the sailors to remain there, build a temple and become his priests, calling the spot “Delphi.” Tradition also asks us to believe that there then existed on the spot a cavern, from which issued vapors having a peculiar effect on the human mind, producing in those who breathed them a stupor in which the victim raved, uttering words which were supposed to be prophetic. Over this cave, if it existed, the temple was erected; and therein the priestess, seated on a tripod where she might inhale the vapors, gave out her answers to suppliants, which answers the corps of priests later rendered into hexameter verses having the semblance of sense, but generally so ambiguous as to admit of more than one interpretation. All sorts of tales are told of the effect of the mephitic gas on the pythoness—how she would writhe in uncontrollable fury, how her hair would rise on her head as she poured forth her unintelligible gibberish, and so forth; stories well calculated to impress a credulous race “much given to religion” as St. Paul so sagely observed. If there ever was any such cavern at all, it has disappeared, possibly filled with the débris of the ruins or closed by earthquake. Perhaps there never was any cave at all. In any event the wonders of the Delphic oracle were undoubtedly explicable, as such phenomena nearly always are, by perfectly natural facts. It has been pointed out that the corps of priests, visited continually as they were by people from all parts of the ancient world, were probably the best informed set of men on earth, and the sum total of their knowledge thus gleaned so far surpassed that of the ordinary mortal and so far exceeded the average comprehension that what was perfectly natural was easily made to appear miraculous. To the already awed suppliant, predisposed to belief and impressed by the wonderful natural surroundings of the place, it was not hard to pass off this world-wide information as inspired truth. Nor was it a long step from this, especially for clever men such as the priests seem to have been, to begin forecasting future events by basing shrewd guesses on data already in hand—these guesses being received with full faith by the worshiper as god-given prophecy. As an added safeguard the priests often handed down their predictions in ambiguous form, as, for example, in the famous answer sent to Crœsus, when he asked if he should venture an expedition against Cyrus—“If Crœsus shall attack Cyrus, he will destroy a great empire.” Such answers were of course agreeable to the suppliant, for they admitted of flattering interpretation; and it was only after trial that Crœsus discovered that the “great empire” he was fated to destroy was his own. At other times the guesses, not in ambiguous form, went sadly astray—as in the case where the Pythian, after balancing probabilities and doubtless assuming that the gods were always on the side of the heaviest battalions, advised the Athenians not to hope to conquer the invading Persians. This erroneous estimate was the natural one for informed persons to make,—and it is highly probable that it was influenced in part by presents from the Persian king, for such corruption of the oracle was by no means unknown. In fact it led to the ultimate discrediting of the oracle, and it was not long before the shrine ceased to be revered as a fountain of good advice. Nevertheless for many hundred years it was held in unparalleled veneration by the whole ancient world. Pilgrims came and went. Cities and states maintained rich treasuries there, on which was founded a considerable banking system. Games in honor of Pythian Apollo were celebrated in the stadium which is still to be seen high up on the mountain-side above the extensive ruins of the sacred precinct. Temple after temple arose about the great main shrine of the god. Even distant Cnidus erected a treasury, and victorious powers set up trophy after trophy there for battles won by land or sea—the politeness of the time preventing the mention of any Hellenic victim by name.
THE VALE OF DELPHI
All these remains have been patiently uncovered and laboriously identified and labeled, with the assistance of the voluminous writings of that patron saint of travelers, Pausanias. The work was done under the direction of the erudite French school, and the visitor of to-day, provided with the plan in his guide-book and aided by the numerous guide-posts erected on the spot, will find his way about with much ease. One of the buildings, the “treasury of the Athenians,” a small structure about the size of the Niké Apteros temple, is being “restored” by the excavators, but with rather doubtful success. Aside from this one instance, the ruins are mainly reconstructible only in the imagination from the visible ground-plans and from the fragments lying all about. In the museum close by, however, some fractional restorations indoors serve to give a very excellent idea of the appearance of at least two of the ancient buildings.
Space and the intended scope of this narrative alike forbid anything like a detailed discussion of the numerous ruins that line the zigzag course of the old “sacred way.” The visitor, thanks to the ability of the French school, is left in no doubt as to the identity of the buildings, and the wayfaring man, though no archæologist, need not err. One may remark in passing, however, the curious polygonal wall of curved stones still standing along a portion of the way and still bearing the remnant of a colonnade, with an inscription indicating that once a trophy was set up here by the Athenians,—possibly the beaks of conquered ships. Of course the centre and soul of the whole precinct was the great temple of Apollo, now absolutely flat in ruins, but once a grand edifice indeed. The Alcmæonidæ, who had the contract for building it, surprised and delighted everybody by building better than the terms of their agreement demanded, providing marble ends for the temple and pedimental adornment as well, when the letter of the contract would have been satisfied with native stone. Thus shrewdly did a family that was in temporary disfavor at Athens win its way back to esteem!
However easy it may be to explain with some plausibility the ordinary feats of the oracle at Delphi as accomplished by purely natural means, there was an occasional tour de force that even to-day would pass for miraculous—supposing that there be any truth in the stories as originally told. The most notable instance was one in which Crœsus figured. That wealthy monarch was extremely partial to oracles, and generally consulted them before any considerable undertaking. On the occasion in question he contemplated an expedition against Cyrus—the same which he eventually undertook because of the enigmatic answer before referred to—and made extraordinary preparations to see that the advice given him was trustworthy. For Crœsus, with all his credulity, was inclined to be canny, and proposed to test the powers of the more famous oracular shrines by a little experiment. So he sent different persons, according to Herodotus, to the various oracles in Greece and even in Libya, "some to Phocis, some to Dodona, others to Amphiaraus and Trophonius, and others to Branchidæ of Milesia, and still others to Ammon in Libya. He sent them in different ways, desiring to make trial of what the oracle knew, in order that, if they should be found to know the truth, he might send a second time to inquire whether he should venture to make war on the Persians. He laid upon them the following orders: That, computing the days from the time of their departure from Sardis, they should consult the oracles on the hundredth day by asking what Crœsus, the son of Alyattes, was then doing. They were to bring back the answer in writing. Now what the answers were that were given by the other oracles is mentioned by none; but no sooner had the Lydian ambassadors entered the temple at Delphi and asked the question than the Pythian spoke thus, in hexameter verse: 'I know the number of the sands and the measure of the sea; I understand the dumb and hear him that does not speak; the savor of the hard-shelled tortoise boiled in brass with the flesh of lambs strikes on my senses; brass is laid beneath it and brass is put over it.' Now of all the answers opened by Crœsus none pleased him but only this. And when he had heard the answer from Delphi he adored it and approved it, and was convinced that the pythoness of Delphi was a real oracle because she alone had interpreted what he had done. For when he sent out his messengers to the several oracles, watching for the appointed day, he had recourse to the following contrivance, having thought of what it was impossible to discover or guess at. He cut up a tortoise and a lamb and boiled them himself together in a brazen caldron, and laid over it a cover of brass."[[1]]
Thus, on one occasion, the oracle is supposed to have performed a feat of what we should now set down as telepathy, and which, if it really happened, would be explicable in no other way. It sufficed to establish Delphi as a shrine to be revered, in the mind of Crœsus, and to propitiate the god he sent magnificent gifts. And as these may serve to give some idea of the vast riches of the spot in bygone ages, it may be well to relate here what Crœsus is supposed to have sent. Herodotus relates that he made a prodigious sacrifice, in the flames of which he melted down an incredible amount of gold and silver. "Out of the metal thus melted down he cast half-bricks, of which the longest was six palms in length, the shortest three; and in thickness, each was one palm. Their number was one hundred and seventeen. Four of these, of pure gold, weighed each two talents and a half. The other bricks, of pale gold, weighed two talents each. He made also the figure of a lion, of fine gold, weighing ten talents. This lion, when the temple at Delphi was burned down, fell from its pedestal of half-bricks, for it was placed upon them. It now lies in the treasury of the Corinthians, weighing only six talents and a half,—for three talents and a half were melted from it in the fire. Crœsus, having finished these things, sent them to Delphi, and with them the following: two large bowls, one of gold and one of silver. The golden one was placed on the right as one enters the temple, and that of silver on the left; but they were removed when the temple was burning, and the gold bowl was set in the treasury of the Clazomenæ; while the silver one, which contains six hundred amphorae, lies in a corner of the Propylæa, and is used for mixing wine on the Theophanian festival. The Delians said it was the work of Theodorus the Samian, which was probably true, for it was no common work. He sent also four casks of silver, which also stand in the Corinthian treasury; and he dedicated two lustral vases, one of gold and the other of silver. The Spartans claim that the golden one was their offering, for it bears an inscription, ‘From the Lacedæmonians;’ but this is wrong, for Crœsus gave it. He sent many other offerings, among them some round silver covers, and also a golden statue of a woman, three cubits high, which the Delphians say is the image of Crœsus’s baking-woman. And to all these things he added the necklaces and girdles of his wife."[[2]]
Such is the account given by Herodotus of the gifts bestowed by the king regarded as the richest of all the ancient monarchs. In return for his gifts he got the answer that “if Crœsus shall make war on the Persians he will destroy a mighty empire.” Crœsus was so delighted at this that he sent more gifts, “giving to each of the inhabitants of Delphi two staters of gold.” A further question as to how long he was destined to rule elicited the response, “When a mule shall become king of the Medes, then, tender-footed Lydian, flee over the pebbly Hermus; nor delay, nor blush to be a coward.” There is even less of apparent enigma about that statement; yet nevertheless Crœsus lived to see the day when a man, whom he deemed a “mule,” did become ruler of the Medes, and he likewise saw his own mighty empire destroyed. The case of Crœsus is typical in many ways of the attitude of the ancients toward the oracle,—their belief in it as inspired, and their frequent attempts to predispose it to favor by gifts of great magnificence. Not everybody could give such offerings as Crœsus, to be sure. But the presents piled up in the buildings of the sacred precinct must have been of enormous value, and the contemplation of them somewhat overpowering. By the way, recent estimates have been published showing that the wealth of Crœsus, measured by our modern standards, would total only about $11,000,000.
Doubtless the awe felt for the spot sufficed in the main to protect the treasures from theft. When Xerxes came into Greece and approached the shrine, the inhabitants proposed that the valuables be buried in the earth. Phœbus, speaking through the priestess, forbade this, however, saying that “he was able to protect his own.” And, in fact, he proved to be so, for the approaching host were awed by the sight of the sacred arms of the god, moved apparently by superhuman means from their armory within the temple to the steps outside. And moreover while the invaders were approaching along the vale below, where the temple of Athena Pronoia still stands, a storm broke, and two great crags were dashed from the overhanging cliffs above, killing some and demoralizing the rest. A war shout was heard from the temple of Athena, and the Delians, taking heart at these prodigies, swept down from the hills and destroyed many of the fleeing Medes.
The most successful attempt to prejudice and corrupt the oracle seems to have been that of the Alcmæonidæ, who have been referred to as the builders of the great temple after its destruction by fire. They had been driven out of Athens by the Pisistratidæ, and during their exile they contracted with the Amphictyons to rebuild the great shrine of Apollo. That they imported Parian marble for the front of the edifice when the contract would have been amply satisfied with Poros stone seems to have been less a disinterested act than an effort to win the favor of the god. The Athenians long maintained that the builders still further persuaded the oracle by gifts of money to urge upon the Spartans the liberation of Athens from the tyrants; and in the end the Pisistratidæ were driven out, in obedience to this mandate, while the Alcmæonidæ came back in triumph, as had been their design from the first.
It was rather a relief at last to turn from the bewildering array of ruins to the museum itself. It is not large, but it contains some wonderfully interesting things, and chief of all, no doubt, the bronze figure of the charioteer. I cannot bring myself to believe that he surpasses the bronze “ephebus” at Athens, whom he instantly recalls both from the material and from the treatment of the eyes; but he is wonderful, nevertheless, as he stands slightly leaning backward as one might in the act of driving, the remnants of a rein still visible in one hand. His self-possession and rather aristocratic mien have often been remarked, and a careful examination will reveal what is doubtless the most curious thing about the whole statue—namely, the little fringe of eye-lashes, which those who cast the image allowed to protrude around the inlaid eye-ball. They might easily be overlooked by a casual observer, but their effect is to add a subtle something that gives the unusual naturalness to the eyes. One other statue, a marble replica of an original bronze by Lysippus, deserves a word of comment also, because it is held by good authorities to be a better example of the school of Lysippus than the far better known “Apoxyomenos” in the Braccio Nuovo at Rome. Each of the figures is the work of a pupil of Lysippus, but the claim is made that the copy of a youth at Delphi was doubtless made by a pupil working under the master’s own supervision, while the Apoxyomenos was carved after Lysippus had died. From this it is natural enough to infer that the Delphi example is a more faithful reproduction than the Vatican’s familiar figure. In this museum also is a carved stone which is known as the “omphalos,” because of its having marked the supposed navel of the earth. The legend is that Zeus once let fly two eagles from opposite sides of the world, bidding them fly toward one another with equal wing. They met at Delphi, which therefore shares this form of celebrity with Dodona in Epirus.
CHARIOTEER—DELPHI
Of course we visited the Castalian spring, which still gushes forth from a cleft in the rock, as it did in the days when suppliants came thither first of all to purify themselves. After a long journey one is not loath to rest beside this ancient fount after washing and drinking deep of its unfailing supply, for the water is good and the chance to drink fresh water in Greece is rare enough to be embraced wherever met. The cleft from which the spring emerges is truly wonderful. It is narrow and dark enough for a colossal chimney, running far back into the bowels of the mountain heights behind. An old stone trough hewn out of the side of the cliff was once filled by this spring, but the flow has now been diverted and it runs off in a babbling stream over the pebbles. Not the least inspiring thing at Delphi is to stand here and reflect, as one enjoys the Castalian water, how many of the great in bygone ages stood on this very spot and listened to the same murmur of this brook which goes on forever.
Hard by the spring, under two great plane trees that we fondly believed were direct descendants of those planted on the spot by Agamemnon, we sat down to lunch, a stone khan across the way affording shelter and fire for our coffee. And in the afternoon we rambled among the ruins below on the grassy slopes of the lower glen, where are to be seen a ruined gymnasium, a temple of Athena Pronoia, and a fascinating circular “tholos,” all of which, though sadly shattered, still present much beauty of detail. If the site were devoid of every ruined temple it would still be well worth a visit, not merely from the importance it once enjoyed as Apollo’s chief sanctuary, but also for the grandeur and impressiveness of its setting, so typical of Greece at her best. Fortunate indeed are those who may tarry here awhile, now that local lodging has been robbed of its ancient hardships. To-day, as in the days of the priests, Delphi is in touch with the uttermost parts of the earth by means of the telegraph, the incongruous wires of which accompany the climber all the way from Itea, so that details of arrival, departure, or stay may be arranged readily enough from afar. Long sojourn, however, was not to be our portion, and we were forced to depart, though with reluctant steps, down along the rough side of the mountain, through the vast and silent olive groves, back into the world of men, to sordid Itea and our ship.
CHAPTER IX. MYCENÆ AND THE
PLAIN OF ARGOS
We journeyed down to Mycenæ from Athens by train. The moment the railroad leaves Corinth it branches southward into the Peloponnesus and into a country which, for legendary interest, has few equals in the world. Old Corinth herself, mother of colonies, might claim a preëminent interest from the purely historical point of view, but she must forever subordinate herself to the half-mythical charm that surrounds ruined and desolate Mycenæ, the famous capital of Atreus and his two celebrated sons, Menelaus and Agamemnon. As for Corinth herself, the ancient site has lately been explored under the auspices of the American school at Athens, and these excavations, with the steep climb to the isolated and lofty Acrocorinth, furnish the attractions of the place to-day. The train runs fairly close to the mountain, so that even from the car window the fortifications on its top may be distinguished; but evidently they are Venetian battlements rather than old Greek remains that are thus visible. As a purely natural phenomenon the Acrocorinth is immensely impressive, resembling not a little the Messenian Acropolis at Ithome. It is a precipitous rock, high enough to deserve the name of a mountain, and sufficiently isolated to be a conspicuous feature of the landscape for miles as you approach Corinth from the sea or from Athens by train. Circumstances have never permitted us to ascend it, but the view from the summit over the tumbling surface of the mountainous Peloponnesus is said to be indescribably fine, giving the same effect as that produced by a relief map, while the prospect northward across the Gulf of Corinth is of course no less magnificent.
Fate ordained that we should stick to the line of the railway and proceed directly to the site of Mycenæ, in which interest had been whetted by the remarkable display of Mycenæan relics in the museum at Athens, as well as by the consciousness that we were about to visit the home of the conqueror of Troy and of his murderous queen. The train did some steep climbing as it rounded the shoulder of the Acrocorinth, and for two hours or so it was a steady up-grade, winding around long valleys in spacious curves, the old road from Sparta generally visible below. At every station the mail car threw off bundles of newspapers, which the crowds gathered on the platform instantly snatched and purchased with avidity. The love of news is by no means confined to Athenians, but has spread to their countrymen; and every morning the same scene is enacted at every railroad station in Hellas on the arrival of the Athens train. At every stop the air was vocal with demands for this or that morning daily, and each, having secured the journal of his choice, retired precipitately to the shade of a near-by tree, while those who could not read gathered near and heard the news of the world retailed by the more learned, at second-hand. The peasant costumes were most interesting, for we were now in the country of the shepherds, far from the madding crowd and dressed for work. The dress of each was substantially the same,—a heavy capote of wool, if it was at all chilly, the tight drawers gartered below the knee, the heavy leather wallet on the front of the belt, the curious tufted shoes whose pompons at the toe, if large denoted newly bought gear, or if sheared small meant that the footwear was old. For the custom is to cut down these odd bits of adornment as they become frayed, a process that is repeated until the tuft is entirely removed, when it is time to buy new shoes.
The landscape was most striking now. The plains were small and separated from one another by walls of rugged hills, whose barriers were not to be despised in days when communication was primitive and slow, and which bore an important part in keeping the several ancient states so long apart, instead of allowing them permanently to unite. The neighboring peaks began to be increasingly redolent of mythology, chiefly relating to various heroic exploits of Herakles. Indeed the train stopped at Nemea itself, and the site of the struggle with the Nemean lion was indicated to us from afar, while a distant summit was said to be near the lake where were slain the Stymphalian birds. Shortly beyond the grade began to drop sharply, until, rushing through a pass of incredible narrowness,—the site of a bloody modern battle between the Greek patriots and the Turks,—the train dashed out into the broad plain of Argos, once famous as the breeder of horses. The narrow and rather sterile valleys hemmed in by bare hills of gray rock gave place to this immense level tract of sandy soil leading down to the sea, which gleamed in the distance under the noonday sun. On either side of the broad expanse of plain towered the mountain wall, always gray and bare of trees, though in the old days it was doubtless well wooded. With the departure of trees came the drouth, and to-day the rivers of the Argolid are mere sandy channels, devoid of water save in the season of the melting mountain snows.
The train halted at Phychtia, the station for Mycenæ, and there we found waiting a respectable carriage that had seen better days in some city, but which was now relegated to the task of conveying the curious to various points in the Argolic plain. It was there in response to the inevitable telegraph, which we had the forethought to employ. Otherwise we should have had to go over to the site of Mycenæ on foot, a task which the heat of the day rather than the distance would have made arduous. Mycenæ to-day is absolutely deserted and desolate, lying perhaps two miles eastward from the railway, on the spurs of two imposing mountain peaks. Toward this point the road rises steadily, and before long we had passed through a starveling village of peasant huts and came suddenly upon a two-story structure bearing the portentous sign, “Grand Hotel of Helen and Menelaus!” To outward view it was in keeping with the rest of the hamlet, which was chiefly remarkable for its children and dogs. It proved, on closer inspection, to be a queer little inn, boasting a few sleeping rooms in its upper story, to be reached only by an outside stairway. On the ground floor—which was a ground floor in the most literal sense of that overworked expression—was a broad room, used partly as a dining-room and partly as a store and office. The actual eating-place was separated from the remainder of the apartment by a grill-work of laths, or pickets, with a wicket gate, through which not only the guests and the proprietor, but sundry dogs, chickens, and cats passed from the main hall to the table. This, being the only available hotel in the region, and bearing so resounding and sonorous a title, proved irresistible. Lunch, consisting of very excellent broiled chickens, and sundry modest concomitants, was promptly served by a tall slip of a girl, the daughter of the house, and probably named Helen, too. During the meal various hens, perhaps the ancestors of our pièces de résistance, clucked contentedly in and out, and a mournful hound sneaked repeatedly through the gate, only to be as repeatedly thrust into the outer darkness of the office by the cook and waitress. In former times, before the “Grand Hotel of Helen and Menelaus” sprang into being, it was necessary to carry one’s food and eat it under the shadow of the famous Lion Gate on the site of the old town itself—a place replete with thrills. Nevertheless it seems well that the vicinity now has a place of public entertainment, and doubly well that it has been so sonorously named.
It may not have been more than half a mile farther to the ruins, but it was up hill and very warm work reaching them. On either side of the high road, where presumably once lay the real every-day city of Mycenæ, there was little in the way of remains to be seen, save for the remarkable avenue leading to the subterranean tomb, or treasury, of which it will be best to speak somewhat later. The slopes were covered with grass, and here and there a trace of very old “Cyclopean” masonry was all that remained to bear witness to the previous existence of a city wall, or possibly an ancient highway with a primitive arch-bridge spanning a gully. Back over the plain the view was expansive. The several strongholds of Agamemnon’s kingdom were all in sight,—Mycenæ, Nauplia, Argos, and Tiryns,—at the corners of the great plain, which one might ride all around in a day; so that from his chief stronghold on the height at Mycenæ Agamemnon might well claim to be monarch of all he surveyed. Behind the valley, the twin peaks at whose base the stronghold lay rose abruptly, bearing no trace of the forests of oak that once covered them; and on a rocky foothill stood the acropolis of the city, admirably fitted by nature for defense. It was on this high ground that the ruins were found, and the visitor is informed that this was the citadel rather than the main town—the place to which the beleaguered inhabitants might flock for safety in time of war, and in which Atreus and his line had their palace. It was here that Dr. Schliemann conducted his remarkable researches, of which we shall have much to say. It is a remarkable fact that the events of the past twenty years or so have given a most astonishing insight into the dimness of the so-called “heroic” age—the age that long after was sung by Homer—so that it is actually possible now to say that we know more of the daily life and conditions of the time of Troy’s besiegers than we do of the time of Homer himself, and more about the heroes than about those who sang their exploits. Knowledge of the more remote periods seems to vary directly with the distance. The dark ages, as has been sagely remarked, were too dark altogether to admit men to read the story told by the ancient monuments such as survived at Mycenæ, and it is only lately that light has increased sufficiently to enable them to be understood with such clearness that the dead past has suddenly seemed to live again. From the remains at Mycenæ the savants have unearthed the houses, walls, palaces, reservoirs, ornaments, weapons, and daily utensils of the pre-Homeric age. Bones and other relics cast aside in rubbish heaps give an idea of the daily food of the people. The tombs have revealed how they were buried at death, and have yielded a wealth of gold ornaments showing a marvelous skill in working metals.
This upper city of Mycenæ was built on a rock, which we soon discovered to be separated from the rest of the mountain by ravines, leaving the sides very steep and smooth, so that on nearly every hand the place was inaccessible. The gorges toward the mountains were natural moats, and wide enough to prevent assault or even the effective hurling of missiles from above into the citadel. The stronghold, however, was vastly strengthened by artificial construction and proved to be walled entirely about, the fortress being especially strong on the more exposed portions, and most especially at the main gate, where the enormous blocks of stone and the tremendous thickness of the wall were most in evidence. The road winds up the last steep ascent until it becomes a mere narrow driveway, scarcely wide enough for more than a single chariot, and right ahead appears suddenly the famed Lion Gate, flanked on one hand by a formidable wall facing the side of the native rock, and on the other by a projecting bastion of almost incredible thickness. The stones are of remarkable size, hewn to a sort of rough regularity by the Cyclopean builders, and the wonder is that, in so rude and primitive an age, men were able to handle such great blocks with such skill. No wonder the tale gained currency that it was the work of the Cyclopes, imported from abroad—and indeed the tale is not without its abiding plausibility, since there are evidences enough in scattered Phœnician sites elsewhere to warrant the assumption that the builders of these numerous fortresses in Argolis did come from over seas.
Of all the ruins at Mycenæ the “gate of the lions” is unquestionably the most impressive. It spans the end of the long and narrow vestibule between the walls of rock, its jambs made of huge upright stones that even to-day show the slots cut for hinges and the deep holes into which were shot the ancient bolts. Over the top is another massive single stone, forming the lintel. It is a peculiarity of the Cyclopean doorways at Mycenæ that the weight on the centre of the lintel is almost invariably lightened by leaving a triangular aperture in the stonework above, and in the main gate the immense blocks of the wall were so disposed as to leave such an opening. Even the massive lintel of this broad gate would probably have failed to support the pressure of the walls had not some such expedient been devised. As it is, the light stone slab that was used to fill the triangular opening is still in place, and it is what gives the name to the gateway, from the rudely sculptured lions that grace it. These two lions, minus their heads, are sitting facing each other—“heraldically opposed,” as the phrase is—each with his fore feet resting on the base of an altar bearing a sculptured column, which marks the centre of the slab. The column is represented as larger at the top than at the base, a peculiarity of the stone columns of the Mycenæan age, and recalling the fact that the first stone pillars were faithful copies of the sharpened stakes that had been used as supports in a still earlier day. The missing heads of the lions were doubtless of metal,—bronze, perhaps,—and were placed so as to seem to be gazing down the road. They are gone, nobody knows whither. It used to be stated that this quaint bas-relief was the “oldest sculpture in Europe,” but this is another of the comfortable delusions that modern science has destroyed. Nobody, however, can deny that the Gate of the Lions is vastly impressive, or that it is so old that we may, without serious error, feel that we are looking on something that Agamemnon himself perhaps saw over his shoulder as he set out for Troy. Just inside the gate we found a narrow opening in the stones, leading to a sort of subterranean chamber, presumably for the sentry. The impression produced by the gate and its massive flanking walls is that of absolute impregnability, and it was easy enough to fancy the Argive javelin-men thronging the bastion above and pouring death and destruction down upon the exposed right hands of the invaders jammed tight in the constricted vestibule below.
Inside the gate, the old market-place opens out, and it was here that were discovered the tombs from which came the numerous relics seen at Athens. The market place is still encircled by a curious elliptical structure, which is in effect a double ring of flat stones, with slabs laid flat across the top, forming what looks like a sort of oval bench all around the inclosure. We were asked to believe that these actually were seats to be occupied by the old men and councilors of the city; but if that is the truth, there were indeed giants in the land in those times. Other authorities conjecture that it was a retaining wall for a sort of mound heaped up over the graves within—an hypothesis which it seems almost as hard to adopt. Whatever the purpose of this remarkable circle of stone slabs, it is hardly to be doubted that it did once inclose an “agora,” and it was within this space that Schliemann sunk his shafts and brought up so much that was wonderful from the tombs below. Tombs in so central a spot, and filled with such a plethora of gold, certainly might well be deemed to have been the last resting-place of royalty, and it is agreeable to believe that they were sovereigns of the Agamemnonian line, if the “prince of men” himself be not one of them. It is the fashion to aver that Schliemann was too ready to jump at conclusions prompted by his own fond hopes and preconceived ideas, and to make little of his claim that he had unearthed the grave of the famous warrior who overcame Priam’s city; and perhaps this is justified. But one cannot forget that the old legend insisted that Atreus, Agamemnon, Cassandra, Electra, Eurymedon, and several others were buried in the market place of Mycenæ,—which was doubtless what prompted the excavation at this point; excavations which moreover proved to be so prolific of royal reward.
AGORA—MYCENÆ
On the heights above, where it was far too steep for chariots to follow, there is a pathway direct to the royal palace itself, which it will doubtless do no harm to call Agamemnon’s. Of course it is practically flat to-day, with little more than traces of the foundation, save for a bit of pavement here and there, or a fragment of wall on which possibly one may detect a faint surviving touch of fresco. All around the citadel below are traces of other habitations, so congested as to preclude any application of Homer’s epithet, “Mycenæ of the broad streets,” to this particular section of the city. All around the summit ran the wall, even at points where it would seem no wall was necessary. As we explored the site the guide kept gathering handfuls of herbage that grew all about, and speedily led us to a curious Cyclopean “arch,” made by allowing two sloping stones to fall toward each other at the top of an approaching row of wall-blocks, which it developed was the entrance to a subterranean gallery that led down to the reservoir of the fort. It was a dark and tortuous place, and its descent to the bowels of the hill was quite abrupt, so that we did not venture very far, but allowed the guide to creep gingerly down until he was far below; whereupon he set fire to the grasses he had been accumulating and lighted up this interior gallery for us. The walls of this passageway had been polished smooth for centuries by passing goats which had rubbed against the stone, and it gleamed and glittered in the firelight, revealing a long tunnel leading downward and out of sight to a cavern far below, where was once stored the water supply conveyed thither from a spring north of the citadel. Stones cast down the tunnel reverberated for a long distance along its slippery floor, and at last apparently came against a final obstacle with a crash. Then came the upward rush of smoke from the impromptu torch, and we were forced hastily to scramble out into the open air. We returned later, however, for a passing shower swept down from the mountains and threatened a drenching, which rendered the shelter of the ancient aqueduct welcome indeed. It was soon over, however, and afforded us a chance to sit on the topmost rock of the acropolis, looking down over what was once the most important of the Greek kingdoms, from the mountains on the north and west down to the sea—a pleasing sight, which was cut short only by the reflection that we had still to visit the so-called “treasury of Atreus” beside the road below.
This is one more of the odd structures of the place over which controversy has raged long and fiercely, the problem being whether or not it was a tomb. There are a number of these underground chambers near by, but the most celebrated one just mentioned is the common type and is completely excavated so that it is easily to be explored. The approach is by a long cut in the hillside, walled on both sides with well-hewn stone, the avenue terminating only when a sufficient depth had been reached to excavate a lofty subterranean chamber. A tall and narrow door stands at the end of this curious lane, placed against the hill, its lintel made of a noticeably massive flat stone, with the inevitable triangular opening over it; but in this case the block which presumably once closed it is gone, and nobody knows whether it, like its mate at the main gateway, bore sculptured lions or not. Within, the tomb is shaped like an old-fashioned straw beehive, lined throughout with stone, which bears marks indicating that it in turn was once faced with bronze plates. It is a huge place, in which the voice echoes strangely, and it is lighted only from the door and its triangular opening above. Just off the northern side is a smaller chamber, where light is only to be had by lighting some more of the dry grasses gathered without. Those who adhere to the idea that this was a tomb maintain that the real sepulchre was in the smaller adjoining chamber. Respectable authority exists, however, for saying that these chambers were not tombs at all, but treasuries, and a vast amount of controversial literature exists on the subject, over which one may pore at his leisure if he desires. If it was a tomb, it is obvious from the other burial-place discovered on the acropolis above that there must have been at least two different styles of burial,—and the tombs above appear to have contained people of consequence, such as might be expected to have as honorable and imposing sepulchres as there were. No bones were found in the “treasury of Atreus,” and plenty of bones were found elsewhere, a fact which might seem significant and indeed conclusive if it were not known that bones had been found in beehive tombs like this elsewhere in Greece, notably near Menidi, where six skeletons were discovered in a similar structure. Of course it might be true that the bodies found on the heights at Mycenæ and taken to Athens belonged to an entirely different epoch from those that were buried in the beehive tombs, and that the beehive tombs might easily have been looted long before the existence of any such booty as the marketplace graves yielded had even been suspected. The layman is therefore left to suit himself, whether he will call this underground chamber a tomb or a treasury, and devote his time to admiring the ingenuity with which the stone lining of the place was built, each tier of stone slightly projecting above its lower fellow so as at last to converge at the top in a point. The perfection of this subterranean treasure-house seems no less remarkable than the ease with which the ancient builders managed large masses of rock.
As for the history of Mycenæ, its greatest celebrity is unquestionably that which it achieved in the time of the Atreidai, when it was the home of the kings of Argos. It is supposable that in the palace on the height Clytæmnestra spent the ten years of her lord’s absence at Troy, and that therein she murdered him on his return. The poets have woven a great web of song and story about the place, largely imaginative and legendary, to be sure. But the revelations of the later excavations have revealed that the poets came exceedingly close to fact in their descriptions of material things. The benches before the doors, the weapons and shields of heroes, the cups,—such as Nestor used, for example,—all these find their counterparts in the recently discovered actualities and give the more color to the events that the ancient writers describe. That Mycenæ was practically abandoned soon after her great eminence doubtless accounts for the wealth of relics that the excavators found, and her low estate during the centuries of neglect curiously but not unnaturally insured her return to celebrity, with a vast volume of most interesting testimony to her former greatness quite unimpaired.
From Mycenæ down to the Argive Heræum, the ancient temple of Hera which was once the chief shrine of this region, is something like two miles; but as it was over a rough ground, and as time failed us, it was found necessary to eliminate this, which to a strenuous archæologist might doubtless prove highly interesting as an excursion, and more especially so to Americans, since it was a site explored by the American school. It lies off on the hills that border the plain of Argos on the east, on the direct line between Mycenæ and Nauplia. Our own road led us back to Phychtia again and down the centre of the plain over a very good carriage road, passing through broad fields of waving grain, in the midst of which, breast deep, stood occasional horses contentedly munching without restraint. Almost the only buildings were isolated stone windmills, some still in use and others dismantled. At last the road plunged down a bank and into the sandy bed of what was doubtless at some time of year a river,—but at this season, and probably most of the year as well, a mere broad flat expanse of sand as destitute of water as the most arid part of Sahara. The railroad, which had borne us friendly company for a few miles, was provided with an iron bridge, spanning this broad desert with as much gravity as if it were a raging torrent, which doubtless it sometimes is. Just beyond we rattled into Argos.
Argos is a rather large place, but decidedly unattractive save for its many little gardens. Nearly every house had them, and from our high seats in the respectable but superannuated depot carriage we were able to look into the depths of many such, to marvel at their riot of roses and greenery. As for the houses, they were little and not over-clean. The populace, however, was exceeding friendly, sitting en masse along the highway, the young women blithely saluting and the children bombarding us with nosegays in the hope of leptà. Over Argos towers a steep hill, known as a “larisa” or acropolis, from the top of which we could imagine a wonderful view over the whole kingdom of the Argives and over the mountains as well, not to mention the Gulf of Nauplia; but as time was speeding on toward the dusk and we were still far from Nauplia, we had to be content with the imagination alone, and with the news that a little monastery about halfway up the hillside had been set on fire on the Easter Sunday previous by too enthusiastic celebrants, who had been over-free with the inevitable rockets and Roman candles. Also we had to give short shrift to the vast theatre, hewn out of the solid rock at the foot of the larisa, and said to be one of the largest in Greece. It was sadly grass-grown, however, and infinitely less attractive than the smallest at Athens, not to mention the splendid playhouse at Epidaurus, which we promised ourselves for the morrow. So we were not reluctant to swing away from old Argos, with her shouting villagers and high-walled gardens, and to skirt the harbor, now close at hand along the dusty Nauplia road. Across the dancing waters lay Nauplia herself, a white patch at the foot of a prodigious cliff far around the bay. By the roadside the country seaward was marshy, while inland rolled the great plain back to the gray hills which showed the northern bounds of the old kingdom, and the lofty rock of Mycenæ from which the sons of Atreus had looked down over their broad acres.
It was not long before we were aware that “well-walled” Tiryns was at hand and that we were not to close a day already well marked by memories of Cyclopean masonry without adding thereto the most stupendous of all, the memory of the great stones piled up in prehistoric ages at this ancient palace whose size impressed even that hardened sight-seer Pausanias. Tiryns proved to be a highly interesting place; in general appearance much like Mycenæ, but in detail sufficiently different to keep us exclaiming. It lies on what is little more than an isolated hillock beside the highroad, and there is nothing imposing about its height or length. It is a long, low rock, devoid of any building save for the solid retaining walls that may go back to the days of Herakles himself.
Whoever built the fortress at Tiryns had seen fit to make the front door face the plain rather than the sea; so that it was necessary to leave the road and go around to the north side of the rock, where a gradual incline afforded an easy approach to a sort of ramp, or terrace, defended by walls of the most astonishing Cyclopean construction. It has been stated that these great and rudely squared blocks of native rock, taken from the quarries in the hills northward, were once bonded together with a rude clay mortar, which has since entirely disappeared. How such enormous blocks were quarried in those primitive days, or how they were handled, is a good deal of a mystery. But it is claimed that swelled wedges of wet wood were used to separate the stones from their native bed.
As a ruin, Tiryns is rather difficult to reconstruct in the imagination from the visible remains. The inclined ramp and the gateway, remains of which are still standing, are interesting, but chiefly from the remarkable size of the stones employed in their construction. Within, the old palace is in a state of complete and comprehensive ruin. The lines of the former palace walls may, however, be seen on the rocky floor, with here and there a trace of an ancient column which has left its mark on the foundation rock. The outer and inner courts, megaron, men’s and women’s apartments, and even the remnants of a “bathroom” are to be made out, the last-named bearing testimony to the fact that even in the remote Mycenæan age the disposition of waste water was carefully looked to—perhaps more carefully than was the case with the later Greeks. The Tirynthian feature which eclipses everything else for interest, however, is the arrangement of covered galleries of stone on two sides of the palace, from which at intervals radiate side chambers supposed to have been used for storage. To-day they recall rather more the casements of our own old-fashioned forts. In these galleries the rude foreshadowings of the arch principle are even more clearly to be seen than in the underground conduit at Mycenæ which leads to the sunken reservoir. The sides of the corridor are vertical for only a short distance, and speedily begin to slope inward, meeting in an acute angle overhead. The side chambers are of a similar construction. Nowhere does it appear that the “Cyclopes,” if we may call them such, recognized the principle of the keystone, although they seem to have come very close to it by accident here and there, and notably so in the case of the little postern gate which is to be seen on the side of the citadel toward the modern highroad. As for the galleries, at the present day they are polished to a glassy smoothness within by the rubbing of sheltering flocks of sheep and goats. And they are interesting, not only because of the massive stones used in building them, but because the similarity of these corridors and storage chambers to the arrangements found near old Carthage and other Phœnician sites may well argue a common paternity of architecture, and thus give color to the tale that the ancient kings of Argos secured artisans of marvelous skill and strength from abroad. The immense size of the roughly hewn rocks easily enough begot the tradition that these alien builders were men of gigantic stature, called “Cyclopes” from the name of their king, Cyclops, and supposed to be a race of Thracian giants; quite distinct, of course, from the other mythological Cyclopes who served Hephaistos, or the Sicilian ones who made life a burden for Odysseus on his wanderings. It seems to be a plausible opinion now widely held that the foreign masons who erected the Cyclopean walls in the Argolid were not from Thrace, but from the southern shores of the Ægean—perhaps from Lycia. And it is interesting to know that there are examples of the same sort of stone work, bearing a similar name, to be found as far away as Peru.
A somewhat lower hillock just west of the main acropolis—if it deserves that name—is shown as once being the servants’ quarters. And we descended, as is the common practice, from the main ruin to the road, by a rude stone stairway at what was formerly the back of the castle, to the narrow postern, the stones of which form an almost perfect, but doubtless quite accidental, archway; and thence to our carriage, which speedily whirled us away to Nauplia. The road thither lay around a placid bay, sweeping in a broad curve through a landscape which was happily marked by some very creditable trees. Nauplia herself made a pleasant picture to the approaching eye, lying on her well-protected harbor at the base of an imposing cliff, on the top of which the frowning battlements of an old Venetian fortress proclaimed the presence of the modern state prison of Greece. The evening sun brought out the whiteness of the city against the forbidding rock behind, while far away westward across the land-locked bay the evening light touched with a rosy glow the snowy summit of Cyllene, and brought out the rugged skyline of the less lofty Peloponnesian mountains. And it was these that lay before us as our carriage rattled out of a narrow street and upon the broad esplanade of the quay at the doors of our hotel.
CHAPTER X. NAUPLIA AND
EPIDAURUS
We were awakened in the morning by an unaccustomed sound,—a subdued, rapid, rhythmic cadence coming up from the esplanade below, accompanied by the monotonous undertone of a voice saying something in time with the shuffle of marching feet, the whole punctuated now and then by a word of command and less frequently by the unmistakable clang of arms. The soldiers from the fortress were having their morning drill. The words of command sounded strangely natural, although presumably in Greek, doubtless because military men the world over fall into the habit of uttering “commands of execution” in a sort of unintelligible grunt. The counting of “fours” sounded natural, too, despite the more marked Hellenism of the numbers. So far from being a disturbance, the muffled tread of the troops was rather soporific, which is fortunate, because I have been in Nauplia on several occasions, and this early drill appears to be the regular thing under the windows of the Hôtel des Étrangers.
The fine open space along the water front makes a tempting parade-ground, and at other hours an attractive place for general assemblage, especially at evening, when the people of Nauplia are to be seen lounging along the wharves or drinking their coffee in the shade under the white line of buildings. The quay curves for a long distance around the bay, and alongside it are moored many of those curious hollow schooners that do the coastwise carrying in Greece. Nauplia appears still to be something of a port, although infinitely smaller and less busy than either the Piræus or Patras. Her name, of course, is redolent of the sea. The beauty of her situation has often reminded visitors of Naples, but it is only a faint resemblance to the Italian city. In size she is little indeed. Scenically, however, her prospects are magnificent, with their inclusion of a panorama of distant and imposing peaks towering far away across the inner bay, so admirably sheltered from the outer seas by the massive promontory, on the inner shelf of which the city stands. The town is forced to be narrow because of the little space between the water and the great cliff rising precipitously behind. There is room for little more than three parallel streets, and in consequence Nauplia is forced to make up in length what she lacks in breadth, and strings along eastward in a dwindling line of buildings to the point where the marshy shore curves around toward Tiryns, or loses herself in the barren country that lies in the gray valleys that lead inland to Epidaurus.
From the windows of the hotel the most conspicuous object in the middle distance was a picturesque islet in the midst of the bay, almost entirely covered by a yellow fort of diminutive size and Venetian appearance—the home of an interesting functionary, though a gruesome one; to wit, the national executioner. For Nauplia at the present day is above all else the Sing-Sing of Hellas,—the site of the national prison, where are confined the principal criminals of the kingdom, and more especially those who are under sentence of death. The medieval fortifications on the summit behind the town have been converted to the base uses of a jail, and are locally known as the Palamide. We did not make the ascent to the prison, although it cannot be a hard climb, but contented ourselves with purchasing the small wares that are vended by street dealers in the lower town,—strings of “conversation beads,” odd knives, and such like things, which you are assured were made by “brigands” confined in the prison above. Somehow a string of beads made by a Greek “brigand” seems a possession to be coveted.
“M. de Nauplia,” if that is the proper way of referring to the headsman, is a criminal himself. He is generally, and probably always, one who has been convicted of murder, but who has accepted the post of executioner as the price of escaping the extreme penalty of the law. It is no small price to pay, for while it saves the neck of the victim it means virtual exile during the term of the service, and aversion of all good people forever. We were told that the executioner at the time was a man who had indulged in a perfect carnival of homicide—so much so that in almost any other country he would have been deemed violently and irreclaimably insane and would have escaped death by confinement in an asylum. But not so he. Instead he was sentenced to a richly deserved beheading by the guillotine, and the penalty was only commuted by his agreement to assume the unwelcome task of dispatching others of his kind—an office carrying with it virtual solitary imprisonment for a term variously stated as from five to eight years, and coupled with lasting odium. For all those years he must live on the executioner’s island, unattended save by the corporal’s guard of soldiers from the fort, which guard is changed every day or two, lest the men be contaminated or corrupted into conniving at the prisoner’s escape. Others told us that the term of his sanguinary employ was as long as twenty-five years, but this was far greater than the average story set as his limit. On liberation, it is said to be the ordinary practice for these unhappy men to go abroad and seek spots where their condition is unknown. On days when death sentences are to be executed the headsman is conveyed with solemn military pomp to the Palamide prison above the city, and there in the prison yard the guillotine is found set up and waiting for the hand that releases its death-dealing knife. Whether or not the executioner is paid a stated pittance in any event, or whether, as we were told by some, he was paid so much “per head,” we never found out. Meantime the executioner’s island undeniably proves one of the features of Nauplia, quaint to see, and shrouded with a sort of awesome mystery.
The narrow streets of Nauplia furnished diversion for a short time. They proved to be fairly clean, and the morning hours revealed a picturesque array of barbaric colored blankets and rugs hung out of the upper balconies to air. In one street a dense throng about an open door drew attention to the morning session of the municipal court. The men roaming the streets were mainly in European dress, although here and there a peasant from the suburbs displayed his quaint capote and pomponed shoes. It was one of these native-garbed gentry who approached us with a grin and stated in excellent English, that sorted strangely with his Hellenic clothes, that he was once employed in an electric light plant in Cincinnati. Did he like it? Oh, yes! In fact, he was quite ready to go back there, where pay was better than in Nauplia. And with an expressive shrug and comprehensive gesture that took in the whole broad sweep of the ancient kingdom of the Atreidai, he added, “Argos is broke; no good!” One other such deserves mention, perhaps; one who broke in on a reverential reverie one day, as we were contemplating a Greek dance in a classic neighborhood, with some English that savored of the Bowery brand, informing us that he had been in America and had traveled all over that land of plenty in the peregrinations of Barnum’s circus, adding as a most convincing passport to our friendship, "I was wit' old man Barnum w'en he died." Greeks who speak English are plentiful in the Peloponnesus, and even those who make no other pretensions to knowledge of the tongue are proud of being able to say “all right” in response to labored efforts at pidgin Greek.
WOMAN SPINNING ON THE ROAD TO EPIDAURUS
It did not take long to exhaust the interest of the city of Nauplia itself, including a survey of the massive walls that survive from the Middle Ages. And it was fortunate, too, because we had planned to spend the day at Epidaurus, which lies eighteen miles or so away, and was to be reached only by a long and arduous ride in a carriage—the same highly respectable old landau in which we had ridden the length of Agamemnon’s kingdom the day before. Owing to the grade and the considerable solidity of our party a third horse was in some miraculous way attached by ropes to the carriage, the lunch was loaded in the hood forward, and we rattled away through the narrow streets toward the open country east of the town—a country that we soon discovered to be made up of narrow valleys winding among gray and treeless hills, whose height increased steadily as the highway wound along. It was a good highway—the distances being marked in “stadia,” as the Greek classically terms his kilometres, and the stadium posts constantly reminding us that this was an “Odos Ethniké,” or national road. But we missed sadly the large trees that are to be seen in the close neighborhood of the city as we jogged out on the dusty road in the heat of the increasing April day.
The grade, while not steep, was mainly upward through the long valleys, making the journey a matter of more than three hours under the most favorable of conditions; and the general sameness of the scenery made it a rather monotonous drive. Of human habitation there was almost none, for although here and there one might find a vineyard, the greater part of the adjacent land is little more than rocky pasture. It soon developed, however, that the modern Greek shepherd is not afraid to play his pipes at noonday through any fear of exciting the wrath or jealousy of Pan, as was once the case; for from the mountain-sides and from under the scanty shade of isolated olive trees we kept hearing the plaintive wailing of the pipes, faint and far away, where some tender of the flocks was beguiling the time in music. This distant piping is indescribable. The tone is hardly to be called shrill, for it is so only in the sense that its pitch is high like the ordinary human whistling; in quality it is a soft note, apparently following no particular tune but wavering up and down, and generally ending in a minor wail that soon grows pleasant to hear. Besides, it recalls the idyls of Theocritus, and the pastorals and bucolics take on a new meaning to anybody who has heard the music of the shepherd lads of Greece. Nothing would do but we must buy pipes and learn to play upon them; so a zealous inquiry was instituted among the wayfaring men we met, with a view to securing the same. It was not on this day, however, but on the next that we finally succeeded in buying what certainly looked like pipes, but which turned out to be delusions and snares so far as music was concerned. They were straight wooden tubes, in which holes had been burned out at regular intervals to form “stops” for varying the tone. No reed was inserted in them, and if they were to be played upon at all it must be by reason of a most accomplished “lip.” We derived considerable amusement from them, however, by attempting to reproduce on them the mellifluous whistling of the natives; but the nearest approach to awakening any sound at all which any of our party achieved was so lugubriously melancholy that he was solemnly enjoined and commanded never to try it again, on pain of being turned over to “M. de Nauplia” as the only fitting punishment. Later we found that the flute-like notes that we heard floating down over the vales from invisible shepherds came from a very different sort of wind instrument—a reed pipe of bamboo not unlike the American boy’s willow whistle, with six or seven stops bored out of the tube.
The wayfarers were decidedly the most interesting sights on the Epidaurus road. Several stadia out of Nauplia a stalwart man came striding down a hill from his flocks and took the road to town. He was dressed in the peasant garb, and across his shoulders he bore a yoke, from either end of which depended large yellow sacks containing freshly made cheese, the moisture draining through the meshes of the cloth as he walked along to market. These cheeses we had met with in the little markets at Athens and found not unpleasant, once one grows accustomed to the goat’s milk flavor and the “freshness;” although it is probable that a taste for Greek cheese, like that for the resinated wine, is an acquired one.
Groups of shepherds were encountered now and then, especially at the few points along the way where buildings and shade were to be found. They were all picturesque in their country dress, but more especially the women, who spin flax as they walk and who probably ply a trade as old as Hellenic civilization itself in about the same general way that their most remote ancestors plied it. These little knots of peasants readily enough posed for the camera, and were contented with a penny apiece for drink-money. Not the least curious feature of these peasant herdsmen was the type of crook carried—not the large, curved crook that the ordinary preconceived ideal pictures, but straight sticks with a queer little narrow quirk in the end, with which the shepherd catches the agile and elusive goat or lamb by the hind leg and thus holds it until he is able to seize the animal in some more suitable part. These herdsmen proved hospitable folk, ready enough with offers of milk fresh from the herd, which is esteemed a delicacy by them, whatever it might have seemed to our uneducated palates.
EPIDAURIAN SHEPHERDS
Perhaps halfway out to Epidaurus one passes another remnant of the most remote time—a lofty fortification on a deserted hill. It is of polygonal masonry—that is, of angular stones fitted together without mortar, instead of being squared after the manner of the Cyclopes. Hard by, spanning a ravine which has been worn by centuries of winter torrents, there was a Cyclopean bridge, made of huge rocks so arranged as to form an enduring arch, and on this once ran no doubt the great highway from Epidaurus to the plain of Argos.
It was long after the noontide hour when the gray theatre of Epidaurus, a mere splash of stone in the distant side of a green hill, came in sight, lying a mile or so away across a level field, in which lay scattered the remnants of what was once the most celebrated hospital in the world. For Epidaurus boasted herself to be the birthplace of Æsculapius,—or, as we are on Greek soil, Asklepios,—and held his memory in deep reverence forever after by erecting on the site a vast establishment such as to-day we might call a “sanitarium.” After the heat and dust of the ride it was pleasant to stretch out in the shade of the scanty local trees, on the fragrant grass of the rising ground near the theatre, and look back down the long valley, with its distant blue mountains framed in a vista of massive gray hills. The nearer ones were impressive in their height, but absolutely denuded of vegetation, like the hills around Attica; and it was these mountains that formed the sole scenery for the background of plays produced in the great theatre close by. The theatre, of course, is the great and central attraction at Epidaurus to-day, for it is in splendid preservation while all else is a confusing mass of flat ruins. No ancient theatre is better preserved, or can surpass this one for general grace of lines or perfection of acoustic properties. Many were doubtless larger, but among all the old Greek theatres Epidaurus best preserves to the modern eye the playhouse of the ancients, circular orchestra and all. The acoustics anybody may test easily enough. We disposed ourselves over the theatre in various positions, high and low, along the half-a-hundred tiers of seats, and listened to an oration dealing with the points of interest in the theatre’s construction delivered in a very ordinary tone, from the centre of the orchestra, but audible in the remotest tier.
The circle of the orchestra is not paved, as had been the case with the theatres seen at Athens, but is a green lawn, in the centre of which a stone dot reveals the site of the ancient altar. It was stated that the circle is not actually as perfect as it looks, being shorter in one set of radii by something like two feet. But to all appearance it is absolutely round, and is easily the most beautiful type of the circular orchestra in existence to-day, if indeed it is not the only perfect one. The immense amphitheatre surrounding it was evidently largely a natural one, which a little artificial stonework easily made complete; and it is so perfect to-day that a very little labor would make it entirely possible to give a play there now before a vast audience. Some such plan was actually talked of a few years ago, but abandoned,—no doubt, because of the apparent difficulty of getting any very considerable company of auditors to the spot, or of housing them while there. It would be necessary, also, to rebuild the proskenion, the foundations of which are still to be seen behind the orchestra, and one may tremble to think of what might happen in the process should the advocates of the stage theory and their opponents fail to agree better than they have hitherto done.
From the inspection of the theatre and the enjoyment of the view across the plain to the rugged hills our dragoman called us to lunch, which was spread in a little rustic pergola below. He had thoughtfully provided fresh mullets, caught that morning off the Nauplia quay, and had cooked them in the little house occupied by the local custode. Hunger, however, was far less a matter of concern than thirst. We had been warned not to drink of the waters of the sacred well of Asklepios in the field below, and as there was no spring vouched for with that certitude that had attended the waters of Castalia, we were thrown back, as usual, on the bottled product of the island of Andros—a water which is not only intrinsically pure and excellent, but well worth the price of admission from the quaint English on its label. In rendering their panegyric on the springs of Andros into the English tongue, the translators have declared that it “is the equal of its superior mineral waters of Europe.”
The sacred well of the god, however, proved later in the day that it had not lost all its virtues even under the assaults of the modern germ theory; for while we were wandering through the maze of ruins in the strong heat of the early afternoon one of our company was decidedly inconvenienced by an ordinary "nose-bleed"—which prompt applications of the water, drawn up in an incongruous tin pail, instantly stopped. And thus did we add what is probably the latest cure, and the only one for some centuries, worked by the once celebrated institution patronized by the native divinity. It is related that the god was born on the hillside just east of the meadow, but this story is sadly in conflict with other traditions. It seems that Asklepios was not originally a divinity, but a mere human, as he seems to be in the Homeric poems. His deification came later, as not infrequently happened in ancient times, and with it came a network of legends ascribing a godlike paternity to him and assigning no less a sire than Apollo. Indeed, it is stated by some authorities that the worship of Asklepios did not originate in Epidaurus at all, but in Thessaly; and that the cult was a transplanted one in its chief site in the Peloponnesus, brought there by Thessalian adventurers.
THEATRE AT EPIDAURUS
All over the meadow below the great theatre are scattered the remains of the ancient establishment. The ceremony of healing at Epidaurus seems to have been in large part a faith-cure arrangement, although not entirely so; for there is reason to believe that, as at Delphi, there was more or less natural common sense employed in the miracle-working, and that the priests of the healing art actually acquired not a little primitive skill in medicine. It was a skill, however, which was attended by more or less mummery and circumstance, useful for impressing the mind of the patient; but this is not even to-day entirely absent from the practice of medicine with its “placebos” and “therapeutic suggestion” elements. The custom of sending the patient to rest in a loggia with others, where he might expect a nocturnal visitation of the god himself, has been referred to in these pages before, and survives even to-day in the island of Tenos at the eve of the Annunciation. The tales of marvelous cures at Epidaurus were doubtless as common and as well authenticated as the similar modern stories at Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupré.
In addition to the actual apartments devoted to the sleeping patients, which were but a small part of the sanitarium’s equipment, there was the inevitable great temple of the god himself,—a large gymnasium suggestive of the faith the doctors placed in bodily exercise as a remedy, and a large building said to be the first example of a hospital ward, beside numerous incidental buildings devoted to lodgment. Satirical commentators have called attention to the presence of shrines to the honor of Aphrodite and Dionysus as bearing enduring witness to the part that devotion to those divinities seems to have been thought to bear in afflicting the human race. The presence of the magnificent theatre and the existence of a commodious stadium testify that life at Epidaurus was not without its diversions to relieve the tedium of the medical treatment. And in its day it must have been a large and beautiful agglomeration of buildings. To-day it is as much of a maze as the ruins at Delphi or at Olympia. The non-archæological visitor will probably find his greatest interest in the theatre and in the curious circular "tholos"—a remarkable building, the purpose of which is not clear, made of a number of concentric rings of stone which once bore colonnades. It stands in the midst of the great precinct, and in its ruined state it resembles nothing so much as the once celebrated “pigs-in-clover” puzzle. In the little museum on the knoll above, a very successful attempt has been made to give an idea of this beautiful temple by a partial restoration. Being indoors, it can give no idea either of the diameter or height of the original; but the inclusion of fragments of architrave and columns serve to convey an impression of the general beauty of the structure, as we had seen to be the case with similar fractional restorations at Delphi. The extensive ruins in the precinct itself do not lend themselves to non-technical description. They are almost entirely flat, and the ground plans serve to identify most of the buildings, without giving any very good idea of their appearance when complete. Pavements still remain intact in some of the rooms, and altar bases and exedral seats lie all about in apparent confusion. Nevertheless the discoveries have been plotted and identified with practical completeness, and it is easy enough with the aid of the plans to pass through the precinct and get a very good idea of the manifold buildings which once went to make up what must have been a populous and attractive resort for the sick. Whatever may be thought of the religious aspects of the worship of Asklepios, it is evident that the regimen prescribed by the cult at Epidaurus, with its regard for pure mountain air and healthful bodily exercise, not to mention welcome diversion and amusement for the mind, was furthered by ample facilities in the way of equipment of this world-famous hospital.
When we were there the Greek School of Archæology was engaged in digging near the great temple of the god, the foundations of which have now been completely explored to a considerable depth, and it was interesting to see the primitive way in which the excavation was being carried on. Men with curiously shaped picks and shovels were loosening the earth and tossing it into baskets of wicker stuff, which in turn were borne on the heads of women to a distance and there dumped. It was slow work, and apparently nothing very exciting was discovered. Certainly nothing was unearthed while we were watching this laborious toil.