Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

Euripides, Fragment of the Cresphontes.

Telemachus, in search of his father, sailed down the western coast of the Peloponnesus, landed at “sandy Pylos,” the home of Nestor, and by this old friend was sent across country to Menelaus at Lacedæmon. The long drive was broken by a night at Pheræ. According to a tradition that still has its supporters the modern site of Pylos is Navarino, in the centre of the western coast of Messenia, while Pheræ is represented by Kalamata, on the northeastern shore of the Messenian Gulf. A growing tendency to push Nestor’s realm further up the coast, out of Messenia, and to place Pheræ in Arcadia is due, in part, to the discrepancy between the lot of modern travellers on their way from Kalamata to Sparta and that of the two young princes of the Homeric story. Telemachus and the son of Nestor mounted an inlaid chariot at early dawn, their two horses, touched lightly by the whip, flew eagerly onward, and at sunset, as all the ways were darkening, the wheat-bearing plain of Lacedæmon opened before their eyes. Moderns, whether merchants or sightseers, must spend an equally long or longer day in riding on mules or plodding horses over the difficult paths of Mount Taygetus, whose massive bulk forms an almost impenetrable barrier between Messenia and Laconia. The narrow bridle paths of the Gorge of the Nedon, which is the trade route, and the savage beauty of the Langada Gorge exclude highways for royal cars and on-rushing steeds.

Whether or no Kalamata was once an insignificant way-station between two princely domains, it is now one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation, separated from Athens only by a day’s ride in an express train, and the natural starting point for excursions in Messenia.

From this rich southern plain it is easy to reach the confines of the more northern plain, which was the country’s heart. Here was the capital of its prehistoric kings, and here about the mountain fortresses of Ithome and Eira occurred the chief events of its pitiable historic life. Ithome is one of the highest fortified mountains in Greece, but can be ascended by roadways which only below the fortress peaks change to rocky paths, insecure even for mountain horses. From this summit, by the favour of Zeus of the open sky whose sanctuary it once was, all Messenia can be overlooked. It is indeed a lovely country. The mountain ranges to the north and east have reserved their sterner influences for other peoples, while the open sea along the western and southern coasts bestows the largess of a perfect climate. The country between Kalamata and Ithome is one of great fertility and beauty. Orchards of gray-green olives are broken by dark cypresses, while lemon and orange groves, unknown to Euripides, add their peculiar radiance to the landscape. In the spring, almond trees delicately lift their pink blossoms above long hedges of glistening green cactus, and the green grass of the wayside fields nurses buttercups and scarlet anemones, purple and yellow irises, and thick clusters of deep blue flowers.

The loveliness of Messenia decided her history, which was one of passionate and futile resistance to foreign greed. The Spartan poet Tyrtæus said that the soil of Messenia was “good to plough and good to plant.” Long before his day the Spartans had stretched out their hands for it, and from the eighth century to the fourth they never relinquished their grasp. During the more important epochs of Greek history Messenia was but a province of Laconia.

But it was a province capable at any time of revolt. The two early “Messenian Wars,” of the eighth and seventh centuries, were the stepping stones by which Sparta rose to a place of power in the Peloponnesus. Beset by agrarian difficulties, she needed more land, and the most fertile land of Greece was to be had for a little blood. Of the second war we have a few fragmentary memorials in the contemporaneous martial verses of Tyrtæus. But in general both wars would be almost obliterated from history were it not for the fact that Pausanias, having access to some late prose and poetry which repeated the native legends, in an unwonted mood of imaginative sympathy gave himself up to recounting the pathetic efforts of Messenia toward freedom. There is the usual material: heroes and fortresses, Aristodemus and Ithome in the first war, Aristomenes and Eira in the second; oracles and portents; fair maidens and faithless wives; kings and cowherd lovers; storms and marvellous escapes; courage and despair. Aristomenes, as Pausanias says, shines out like Achilles in the Iliad, “the first and greatest glory of the Messenian name.” But in spite of his heroic and prolonged defence of Eira, the Messenians by the sixth century were serfs of the Spartans, paying to their masters a half of all the produce raised by their own hands from their own farms,—asses, Tyrtæus called them, worn by intolerable loads.

In the fifth century they took advantage of an earthquake and an insurrection of slaves at Sparta to rise once more and encamp on Ithome. They were defeated and obliged to choose between serfdom and exile. But by this time their petty rebellions had become important in the affairs of the greater powers of Greece. Ithome was the rock on which the political life of Cimon of Athens suffered shipwreck.

During the next ninety years the nationalism of Messenia was a homeless and restless force, seeking, wherever it might, to harm Sparta and to glorify itself. During the Peloponnesian War the Messenians by their knowledge of the country materially aided the Athenians in the dramatic battle of Sphacteria off the Messenian Pylos, and the surrender of the Spartans, Thucydides says, amazed all Hellas.

At last, about 370 B. C., the “Poland of Greece” found a friend in the man whose practical idealism was dominating the period. Epaminondas, in pursuance of his policy of weakening Sparta by reviving other Peloponnesian states, determined to found a new capital of Messenia, Messene by name, on the slopes of Ithome. Ruins of this city still exist, and the most imposing of them, the fortification known as the Arcadian Gateway, is famous as an example of skilful Greek engineering. Lying toward Megalopolis, also a beneficiary of Epaminondas, it seemed to reunite in a new hope the old Arcadia and the old Messenia whose friendship had been so futile. To-day, still a strangely impressive monument, it may serve as a symbol of Messenia’s share in the spirit of Greece. Impotent in literature and art and unsuccessful even in war, the men of this country conserved through many generations and vicissitudes that intense national feeling which existed at the core of every Greek state, shaping Greek history and penetrating Greek literature. Wherever history became large and literature became universal the force of national consciousness was likely to become diffused, but in a state like Messenia it was obscured neither by other national gifts nor by its own success.

The Messenians, Pausanias tells us, “wandered for nearly three hundred years far from Peloponnese, and in all that time they are known to have dropped none of their native customs, nor did they unlearn their Doric tongue.” After the victory at Leuctra “the Thebans sent messengers to Italy, Sicily and the Euesperitæ inviting all Messenians in any part of the world whither they had strayed to return to Peloponnese. They assembled faster than could have been expected, for they yearned towards the land of their fathers and hatred of Sparta still rankled in their breasts.” And for them Epaminondas made a new city, sending “men who were skilled in laying out streets, building houses and sanctuaries and erecting city walls.” The Arcadians sent victims for the sacrifices. The exiles, home at last, prayed to their ancient gods and called upon their ancient heroes to come and dwell among them. “But loudest of all was the cry for Aristomenes, and the whole people joined in it.” This call from his own people has been, we may hope, full compensation to his dead ears for the dumb or sneering lips of history.