Mykênê to Corinth.
Mykênê and Tiryns have taught us a lesson in the history of those Greek cities which perished in days which we are used to look on as still ancient. Argos has given us one type of the Greek city which has lived on through all changes down to our own times. Corinth, a city hardly less famous than Argos, from some points of views even more famous, has had yet another destiny. After perishing utterly and rising again, Corinth has lived on through all later changes down to recent times, to give way, in recent times, to a new city bearing its own name. And on the way which leads us from Mykênê to Corinth we pass by a site of another kind, the site of a spot which never was a city, but which was as famous and venerable in Hellenic legend and Hellenic religion as any city not of the very foremost rank. Olympia is yet far off, but a foretaste of Olympia may well be had in the plain which was hallowed by the lesser festival, beneath the columns of Nemea, alongside of its ruined church.
But how is Nemea to be reached? It is perhaps a tribute to the ancient greatness of Mykênê that it is there that civilization in one important branch may be said to come to an end. From Nauplia the journey by Tiryns and Argos may be made in a carriage; but it cannot be said that the latter part of the road from Argos to Mykênê is made according to the principles of Macadam. Indeed, we think it would be possible to carry the drive a little further than Mykênê, or, to speak more accurately, than Chorbati. But as such a drive would not take the traveller to any point in particular, and as he certainly could not continue it to Corinth, we may say that the carriage-road ends at Mykênê. Mykênê is the last point which the traveller can examine by that mode of journeying. At Chorbati he will begin his really Greek journey. He will have to go after the fashion of the country so far as to travel, as one of a cavalcade, on one of the small and hardy horses of the country, which seem, very much like their guides or drivers, to be able to do anything and to eat nothing. Perhaps however he may not so far conform to the fashion of the country as himself to become a package on the back of his pack-horse, and to sit there with both his legs on one side. Such a manner of going, besides other things to be said against it, has this manifest disadvantage, that it compels the traveller to take a one-sided view of the land which he goes through. On a journey on which the traveller has to take everything with him, he will hardly forget to take European saddles also. But, even with a European saddle, it needs a calm head and good horsemanship to take in much of the view, or to call up many of its associations, when you are, not indeed, like General Wolfe, “scrambling up,” but, if the phrase be accurate, “scrambling down”
... Rough rugged rocks
Well nigh perpendiklar.
The scrambling up is well enough; it is with the scrambling down, that the hardship comes. It is easy to convince one’s intellect that there is really no danger, that the beast on which one is mounted, most unfairly called ἄλογον, knows thoroughly what he is about, and is far wiser than the ζωὸν λογικόν whom he carries. To give him his head, and to let him go where he pleases, is the dictate of common-sense; but there are moments when common-sense will not be heard. At such moments the traveller begins to wish that he was like Pheidippidês—most rightly named as sparing horses and not sparing his own feet—to whom the journey from Mykênê to Corinth would clearly have been no more than a pleasant morning’s walk. Or better still would it be, if the days of Pausanias could come back, as there is indeed fair hope that they soon may, and that the whole road from Nauplia to Corinth may again be passed by the help of wheels. To the young and adventurous the novelty and roughness of the mode of going seem to have their charms. The traveller more advanced in life would be better pleased even to go on his own feet, and he might think it better still if he might enjoy the Eastern luxury of going
ἐφ’ ἁρμαμαξῶν μαλθακός κατακείμενοι.
One thing however is certain—a land without inns is in every way better than a land with bad inns. The travelling party is self-supporting, and carries along with it all the necessaries of life, as well as some of its comforts and conveniences. It is wonderful how shortly and how thoroughly a sleeping-room and a well-furnished dinner-table can be called as it were out of nothing. It may be better not to ask too minutely what becomes of the hospitable inhabitants who so readily turn out to make way for the strangers. Certain it is, that for the native part of the travelling party, reasonable and unreasonable, any quarters for the night will do. One point, however, calls for a protest; if the man chooses to look on his fustanella and his other garments as an inseparable part of himself, that is his own look-out; but it is hard to treat the unreasonable beast as if his pack-saddle were an inseparable part of him, and to give him no rest from his burthen either by day or by night. As for the traveller himself, he certainly would not exchange the fare, he might not always be anxious to exchange the lodging, which he makes for himself in the museum at Mykênê or in the house of the single priest of fallen Corinth; for those that he could get in some lands where, as there are inns, people do not take everything with them.