CHAPTER VI.
EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA—COLONUS—THE HARBORS—LAURIUM—SUNIUM.
There are two modern towns which, in natural features, resemble Athens. The irregular ridge of greater Acropolis and lesser Areopagus remind one of the castle and the Mönchsberg of Salzburg, one of the few towns in Europe more beautifully situated than Athens. The relation of the Acropolis to the more lofty Lycabettus suggests the castle of Edinburgh and Arthur’s Seat. But here the advantage is greatly on the side of Athens.
When you stand on the Acropolis and look round upon Attica, a great part of its history becomes immediately unravelled and clear. You see at once that you are placed in the principal plain of the country, surrounded with chains of mountains in such a way that it is easy to understand the old stories of wars with Eleusis, or with Marathon, or with any of the outlying valleys. Looking inland on the north side, as you stand beside the Erechtheum, you see straight before you, at a distance of some ten miles, Mount Pentelicus, from which all the splendid marble was once carried to the rock [pg 153]around you. This Pentelicus is a sort of intermediate cross-chain between two main lines which diverge from either side of it, and gradually widen so as to form the plain of Athens. The left or north-western chain is Mount Parnes; the right or eastern is Mount Hymettus. This latter, however, is only the inner margin of a large mountainous tract which spreads all over the rest of South Attica down to the Cape of Sunium. There are, of course, little valleys, and two or three villages, one of them the old deme Brauron, which they now pronounce Vravron. There is the town of Thorikos, near the mines of Laurium; there are two modern villages called Marcopoulos; but on the whole, both in ancient and modern times, this south-eastern part of Attica, south of Hymettus, was, with the exception of Laurium, of little moment. There is a gap between Pentelicus and Hymettus, nearly due north, through which the way leads out to Marathon; and you can see the spot where the bandits surprised in 1870 the unfortunate gentlemen who fell victims to the vacillation and incompetence of people in power at that time.
On the left side of Pentelicus you see the chain of Parnes, which almost closes with it at a far distance, and which stretches down all the north-west side of Attica till it runs into the sea as Mount Corydallus, opposite to the island of Salamis. In this long chain of Parnes (which can only be [pg 154]avoided by going up to the northern coast at Oropus, and passing into Bœotia close by the sea) there are three passes or lower points, one far to the north—that by Dekelea, where the present king has his country palace, but where of old Alcibiades planted the Spartan garrison which tormented and ruined the farmers of Attica. This pass leads you out to Tanagra in Bœotia. Next to the south, some miles nearer, is the even more famous pass of Phyle, from which Thrasybulus and his brave fellows recovered Athens and its liberty. This pass, when you reach its summit, looks into the northern point of the Thriasian plain, and also into the wilder regions of Cithæron, which border Bœotia. The third pass, and the lowest—but a few miles beyond the groves of Academe—is the pass of Daphne, which was the high road to Eleusis, along which the sacred processions passed in the times of the Mysteries; and in this pass you still see the numerous niches in which native tablets had been set by the worshippers at a famous temple of Aphrodite.
On this side of Attica also, with the exception of the Thriasian plain and of Eleusis, there extends outside Mount Parnes a wild mountainous district, quite alpine in character, which severs Attica from Bœotia, not by a single row of mountains, or by a single pass, but by a succession of glens and defiles which at once explain to the classical student, when he sees them, how necessary and fundamental were [pg 155]the divisions of Greece into its separate districts, and how completely different in character the inhabitants of each were sure to be. The way from Attica into Bœotia was no ordinary high road, nor even a pass over one mountain, but through a series of glens and valleys and defiles, at any of which a hostile army could be stopped, and each of which severed the country on either side by a difficult obstacle. This truly alpine nature of Greece is only felt when we see it, and yet must ever be kept before the mind in estimating the character and energy of the race. But let us return to our view from the Acropolis.
If we turn and look southward, we see a broken country, with several low hills between us and the sea—hills tolerably well cultivated, and when I saw them in May all colored with golden stubbles, for the corn had just been reaped. But all the plain in every direction seems dry and dusty; arid, too, and not rich alluvial soil, like the plains of Bœotia. Then Thucydides’s words come back to us, when he says Attica was “undisturbed on account of the lightness of its soil” (ἀστασίαστος οὖσα διὰ τὸ λεπτόγεων), as early invaders rather looked out for richer pastures. This reflection, too, of Thucydides applies equally to the mountains of Attica round Athens, which are not covered with rich grass and dense shrubs, like Helicon, like Parnassus, like the glades of Arcadia, but seem so bare that we wonder where the bees of [pg 156]Hymettus can find food for their famous honey. It is only when the traveller ascends the rocky slopes of the mountain that he finds its rugged surface carpeted with quantities of little wild flowers, too insignificant to give the slightest color to the mountain, but sufficient for the bees, which are still making their honey as of old. This honey of Hymettus, which was our daily food at Athens, is now not very remarkable either for color or flavor. It is very dark, and not by any means so good as the honey produced in other parts of Greece—not to say on the heather hills of Scotland and Ireland. I tasted honey at Thebes and at Corinth which was much better, especially that of Corinth made in the hills toward Cleonæ, where the whole country is scented with thyme, and where thousands of bees are buzzing eagerly through the summer air. But when the old Athenians are found talking so much about honey, we must not forget that sugar was unknown to them, and that all their sweetmeats depended upon honey exclusively. Hence the culture and use of it assumed an importance not easily understood among moderns, who are in possession of the sugar-cane.
But amid all the dusty and bare features of the view, the eye fastens with delight on one great broad band of dark green, which, starting from the west side of Pentelicus, close to Mount Parnes in the north, sweeps straight down the valley, passing about [pg 157]two miles to the west of Athens, and reaching to the Peiræus. This is the plain of the Kephissus, and these are the famous olive woods which contain with them the deme Colonus, so celebrated by Sophocles, and the groves of Academe, at their nearest point to the city. The dust of Athens, and the bareness of the plain, make all walks about the town disagreeable, save either the ascent of Lycabettus, or a ramble into these olive woods. The River Kephissus, which waters them, is a respectable, though narrow river, even in summer often discharging a good deal of water, but much divided into trenches and arms, which are very convenient for irrigation.[59] So there is a strip of country, fully ten miles long, and perhaps two wide on the average, which affords delicious shade and greenness and the song of birds, instead of hot sunlight and dust and the shrill clamor of the tettix without.
I have wandered many hours in these delightful woods listening to the nightingales, which sing all day in the deep shade and solitude, as it were in a prolonged twilight, and hearing the plane-tree whispering to the elm,[60] as Aristophanes has it, and [pg 158]seeing the white poplar show its silvery leaves in the breeze, and wondering whether the huge old olive stems, so like the old pollarded stumps in Windsor Forest, could be the actual sacred trees, the μορίαι, under which the youth of Athens ran their races. The banks of the Kephissus, too, are lined with great reeds, and sedgy marsh plants, which stoop over into its sandy shallows and wave idly in the current of its stream. The ouzel and the kingfisher start from under one’s feet, and bright fish move out lazily from their sunny bay into the deeper pool. Now and then through a vista the Acropolis shows itself in a framework of green foliage, nor do I know any more enchanting view of that great ruin.
All the ground under the dense olive-trees was covered with standing corn, for here, as in Southern Italy, the shade of trees seems no hindrance to the ripening of the ear. But there was here thicker wood than in Italian corn-fields; on the other hand, there was not that rich festooning of vines which spread from tree to tree, and which give a Neapolitan summer landscape so peculiar a charm. A few homesteads there were along the roads, and even at one of the bridges a children’s school, full of those beautiful fair children whose heads remind one so strongly of the old Greek statues. But all the houses were walled in, and many of them seemed solitary and deserted. The memories of rapine and violence were still there. I was told, indeed, that [pg 159]no country in Europe was so secure, and I confess I found it so myself in my wanderings; but when we see how every disturbance or war on the frontier revives again the rumor of brigandage, I could not help feeling that the desert state of the land, and the general sense of insecurity, however irrational in the intervals of peace, was not surprising.