Greek Lands and Letters

by Francis Greenleaf Allinson; Anne C. E. Allinson

Hangs over the surge of the sea,

That straightway our Athens, the holy,

Might be greeted and hailed by me.”

Vessels of commerce or war would double it, bound from Athens to the Ægean or to Ionia, and grain transports sailing to Athens from the Euxine. The Persian warships backing out from the inhospitable bay of Marathon “sailed around Sunium, making haste to anticipate the Athenians in arriving at the city.” The vessel of Theseus sailed past it bringing back safe from Crete the Athenian youths and maidens, and, in after days, the look-out, posted at Sunium, hastened back to Athens to say that the mission-ship from Delos had been sighted and was beating its way up the Saronic gulf to put an end, on its arrival, at once to the sacred holiday and to the life of Socrates.

On the west coast of Attica the place of chief interest, in connection with Greek letters, is Vari, near the promontory of Zoster, where Mount Hymettus comes down to the sea. Herodotus tells us that the frightened Persians, escaping from Salamis, thought that the long rocks running out at Zoster were some more hostile ships and “went fleeing for a long distance” until they recognised their mistake. Some little distance inland on the side of Hymettus, back of the town of Vari, is a grotto dedicated to the Nymphs and also sacred to the Graces, to Pan, and to Apollo. There is a tradition that the infant Plato was taken to Hymettus by his parents, who there sacrificed on his behalf to Pan, the Nymphs and Apollo.

The straits which interrupt the continuity of Mount Ægaleus with Salamis could not avail to dissever the island from Attica. The northwestern promontory, indeed, comes even closer to the outjutting Nisæan peninsula of the Megarid, and it was inevitable that Megara and Athens should contend for this “island of desire.” The energy of Solon at the beginning of the sixth century adjudicated the dispute with finality, and Salamis was permanently incorporated as an essential part of Attica. To a seafaring folk triremes and sailing craft could annul the interrupting sea, and the mainland and island were still more firmly cemented by the blood of Persian and Greek at the great sea-fight.

The ancestral hero of Salamis was Aias (“Ajax”), the son of Telamon. Pausanias saw a stone near the harbour upon which Telamon sat, as it was said, looking after his children departing to join the Greek fleet at Aulis. When Aias fell upon his sword before Troy the hyacinth, according to the usual tale, sprang up inscribed with the exclamation of woe “Ai! ai!” the first syllable of his name. But, as Pausanias would have it, a local flower, different from the hyacinth, made its appearance in Salamis inscribed with the same letters. Ajax, as was to be expected, appeared and offered divine aid to the Greeks at the battle of Salamis. In his honour the “Aianteia” festival was celebrated, and the young Athenian ephebi used to go over annually to contend at Salamis in friendly rivalry with the Salaminian youth in foot-races and in boat-races resembling those rowed from Munychia to the Cantharus harbour in Piræus. In addition to the Ajax traditions, here, as elsewhere, other sagas were invented or reshaped to give personification to the remote past and to be handed down to satisfy the pride of succeeding generations. Solon was a more tangible memory, and Demosthenes, in speaking of his statue standing in the market-place of Salamis, quotes the Salaminians as saying: “This statue was set up not yet fifty years ago.”

But the dominant memory evoked by the name of Salamis is, naturally, the defeat of the Persians in the narrow straits. For the Athenians everything was at stake. The wives and children who had not been sent to the Peloponnesus were on the island. Euripides, according to an enticing tradition, was born there at the time of the battle. Xerxes sat on his throne on the mainland to overawe disaffection and to watch the spectacle. He had no doubt as to the outcome. His fleet was numerous enough to allow him to detach the Egyptian squadron for guarding the narrow exit of the northwest channel and still to leave more ships than could be used for closing in the eastern approaches. The Greeks were thus hemmed in, and the unwilling allies from the Peloponnesus were forced to remain and give battle instead of withdrawing to the Isthmus. Themistocles, the great admiral, had his will.

To-day, if one sails in a small boat across from Piræus to the harbour of the modern Ambelaki, the details of the battle as narrated by Æschylus and Herodotus explain themselves. The long, bare reef of Psyttaleia cumbers the entrance to the channel. The messenger, in the “Persians” of Æschylus, in describing to the Queen Mother the scene enacted on this tiny island, introduces Pan, the old ally at Marathon:—

“An island lies before the shores of Salamis;