Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

Now, in villages which are near important sites of antiquity, the rough and ready traveller may meet with nothing more unfamiliar to him than the Aristophanic flea that hops in the blankets like a dancing girl, while those who take a dragoman, at a moderate price, and mattresses and supplies from Athens may escape even this enemy, as well as beds of hard boards and coarsely cooked food. A knowledge of modern Greek enables the true Philhellene[Philhellene] to dispense with a middleman and to receive proofs in unexpected places of the unfailing hospitality and the alternating integrity and guile of the Greek peasant.

Perched on the crest that forms the watershed between the eastern and western lengths of the valley of the Plistus, the lovely village of Arachova serves as a way-station on the pilgrimage from Kastri to the Forked Roads. The first part of the road leads familiarly through the precinct of Delphi, past the clump of plane trees which keep green the memory of their ancestor planted by Agamemnon, and past Castalia, whose waters, emerging from the gorge below the Shining Rocks, are as “sweet to drink” as Pausanias found them and as clear as when they purified the suppliants at the oracle and the ministering hands of the priests, or laved the golden hair of the god himself.

Along the road that now stretches eastward the Persians streamed toward Delphi at the time of Xerxes’s invasion. But near the temple of Athena Pronaia, on the lower terrace, they were repulsed by terrible portents. A storm of thunder burst over their heads; at the same time two crags split off from Mount Parnassus and rolled down upon them with a loud noise, crushing vast numbers beneath their weight, while from the temple there went up the war cry and the shout of victory. The Delphians, who were hiding in the Corycian Cave, seeing their terror, rushed down upon them, causing great slaughter. And barbarian survivors declared afterwards that two armed warriors, of a stature more than human, pursued after their flying ranks, pressing them close and slaying them. These supernatural warriors were two heroes who belonged to Delphi, by name Phylacus and Autonous. For their timely aid they received precincts and worship, Autonous by the Castalian spring, his comrade hard by the road, practically identical with the modern highway, which ran above the temple of Athena. The traces of this Heroon may yet be seen, faint reminders of old-time tumults amid to-day’s oblivious silence. A little farther is the so-called “Logari,” or likeness of a great door chiselled in the face of a rock, representing, perhaps, the Gate of Hell. At least it seems to have marked the entrance to an ancient cemetery which lay below the road along the southern slopes now given over to orchards and to tillage. Through them a road winds down toward the silvery Plistus, twisting in and out among the gray-green olives and the almond trees. In antiquity this was the road to the bustling town of Ambrosus by the pass of Dhesphina over Mount Cirphis. Now the donkeys that saunter along it are bearing peasant girls and their bags to the mills by the river.

The road to Arachova leads in a gentle ascent close along the lower reaches of Parnassus on the left and high above the deep valley on the right. The muleteers may turn aside to shorter mountain paths, but the easy highway tempts to leisure while the sun is still warm in the west and the brilliant pageant of the valley is but lightly subdued by the delicate reserves of the approaching evening. Either route leads in less than three hours to the foot of high precipices rising at the back of windy Arachova, the representative of Homer’s Anemoreia (Windswept Town). These cliffs, now called Petrites, are, perhaps, the Look-Out Place often alluded to in ancient literature, the point of vantage from which Apollo, the Far-Darter, shot his arrow at the dragon in Delphi. The town itself, two thousand feet above the sea-level, is one of the most typical of modern Greece both in situation and in those racial characteristics which are forming a new nation out of the roots of the old. The houses, interspersed with vivid green trees, gather about each other in terraces up the hill to the high-poised church of St. George, that other dragon slayer, while in its turn the little Christian edifice is frowned down upon by the rocky mountain-side. The stony, twisted streets, alive with children, often become staircases of rock, up and down which the mules indifferently clatter. Stone courtyards lead to doorways out of which handsome men and women smile an hospitable welcome. The inhabitants of Arachova, perhaps because they live near the Muses of Parnassus, possess a charm and courtesy of manner that is not duplicated among the rougher peasants of the Peloponnesus. They are also famous for their beauty, the gift of the Greeks from the time of Helen and Achilles through all admixtures of foreign blood. The men are tall and slim, with the dignity of carriage and chiselled fineness of feature which distinguishes the Greek peasantry from the livelier Italian, and the beauty of the women is grave and tranquil. The traveller may find himself served by a fair mother and fairer daughter, whose name of Sappho is belied by the shy, cool loveliness of her parted hair and innocent eyes.

The Arachovans cherish brave traditions of their part in the War of Independence, but their relation to antiquity is revealed in certain elements of their imaginative life. Now, as of old, natural forces are identified with the activities of divine beings. The snowstorms and icy winds of winter are attributed to furious battles waged high up on the peaks of Parnassus by the spirits of the mountain. Gentler spirits of forest and fountain seem to have descended directly from antique prototypes. The Corycian Cave, once the haunt of Pan and his nymphs, is still a favourite resort of the Nereids. And these “Maidens,” as the modern like the ancient Greek often calls them, dwell in many other pleasant places, lingering in the old trunks of olive or fig trees, like hamadryads, or tumbling sportively in mill streams and mountain torrents, like the daughters of ancient Nereus among the waves of the sea. Primarily, indeed, the Nereids are still water nymphs, and the modern Greek word for water, nero, so often upon the tourist’s tongue, echoes their immortal play. Nor has the fashion of their garments greatly changed since the pictures of antiquity represented them with long veils, now bound upon the head, now fluttering freely in the hand. The peasants say that their Nereids wear a head cloth, always of the finest quality but in style like the cloths worn by their own women, hanging down over the neck and shoulders. At Arachova the Nereids go with uncovered head and swing the cloth in their hands, as Leucothea loosened her veil to give it to Odysseus when she rose like a sea-gull from the depths of ocean to save his life. The Nereids have pipe-playing lovers known as demons, in whom Pan and the satyrs seem to live on. And Pan has his own special representative in the protective Lord of Hares and Wild Goats, who still ranges the slopes of Parnassus. An evil spirit in the shape of a he-goat with long beard, who leaps on the goats to their destruction, hints at that other aspect of Pan revealed in the malignant power of nature.

Another inheritance from antiquity are the Lamiæ. One of these female monsters dwelt in a large cavern in the side of Mount Cirphis, still accessible at the end of a blind path beyond the Plistus, and ravaged the country all about until a brave hero put her to death. She, and others of her ilk, were the bugbears of children, and they still live among the Greek peasantry as vampirish demons. The name is also used as a term of reproach for scolding women. But in Arachova, oddly enough, the Lamia has been transformed by some kindly alchemy into a good spirit, and is often seen in the dusk striding through the village streets, or spinning at a huge distaff by a fountain’s rim. Her name is given to handsome, well-behaved women, as beautiful girls are said to be Nereid-descended or Nereid-eyed.

The modern Greeks also believe in the Fates or Moiræ, either as three dread sisters or as a hierarchy of twelve who delegate the care of a specified number of men to a smaller committee. At Arachova three fates appear within three days of an infant’s birth, two known as the bearers of good and of ill fortune, who fight the matter out and agree upon a destiny, and the third called the Spinner, who will weave the strands into the web of life.

Thus under the very eyes of St. George pagan spirits make common cause with the angels and demons of Christianity. A hoof print on the edge of a crag may betray the presence of the lord of hares and goats or of the unmentionable Devil. An infant who dies unbaptised may claim to be the victim of the ruthless Spinner, or may go to join in the air the imps who war with the angels for the souls of men. Mountains and ether, springs and tree-trunks, are filled with the divine forces created, under the influence of two religions, by a people always sensitive to the intimacy between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Cleft Way lies two hours beyond Arachova, and six hours beyond that is Chæronea, battlefield and railroad station. On a morning in March the moon may be bright at six o’clock when the mules beat their way out of the rough streets of Arachova to the open. The road descends from the village and skirts the southern sides of Parnassus, leading through vineyards and gorges and winding over a bare and rocky valley. The amber moon grows white, and between the opening hills to the east the rising sun sets the sky aflame. Gradually the gold and rose give way to intense, brilliant blue. The twin peaks of Parnassus glisten in their covering of snow. A pastoral charm, reminiscent of Theocritus’s Sicilian uplands, mingles with the rugged impressiveness of mountain scenery. Steep hillsides alternate with pastures, and here and there cool streams curl about the heedless feet of mules and muleteers. Gradually the severity of the landscape predominates. The road from Delphi along which Œdipus, like ourselves, was coming, descends through a wild pass enclosed by the mighty precipices of Parnassus and Cirphis, and in a scene of impressive loneliness meets the roads from Daulis and Thebes.[^[29]] The spot is now called “Stavrodromi tou Mega,” or Cross-Roads of Megas, in memory of a hero who was killed here in the middle of the nineteenth century while destroying a band of brigands. The story of the ancient deed of violence is put by Sophocles into the mouth of Œdipus himself. The Delphic oracle had declared that Thebes could be healed of its pestilence only by the punishment of the murderer of Laius, the former king, and Œdipus had proclaimed the requisite sentence against the unknown. Now he has begun to realize that he was the slayer:—

“And, wife, I’ll speak out truth to thee. When, journeying,