Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

Looking Toward the Sea from the Soros, Marathon

Like almost every view in Greece, the prospect from this mound is full of beauty and variety—everywhere broken outlines, everywhere patches of blue sea, everywhere silence and solitude. Byron is so much out of fashion now, and so much more talked about than read—though even that notice of [pg 200]him is fast disappearing—that I will venture to remind the reader of the splendid things he has said of Greece, and especially of this very plain of Marathon. He was carried away by his enthusiasm to fancy a great future possible for the country, and to believe that its desolation and the low condition of the inhabitants were simply the result of Turkish tyranny, and not of many natural causes conspiring for twenty centuries. He paints the Greek brigand or pirate as many others have painted the “noble savage,” with the omission of all his meaner vices. But in spite of all these faults, who is there who has felt as he the affecting aspects of this beautiful land—the tomb of ancient glory—the home of ancient wisdom—the mother of science, of art, of philosophy, of politics—the champion of liberty—the envy of the Persian and the Roman—the teacher, even still, of modern Europe? It is surely a great loss to our generation, and a bad sign of its culture, that the love of more modern poets has weaned them from the study of one not less great in most respects, but far greater in one at least—in that burning enthusiasm for a national cause, in that red-hot passion for liberty which, even when misapplied, or wasted upon unworthy objects, is ever one of the noblest and most stirring instincts of higher man.

But Byron may well be excused his raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined men [pg 201]repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics—perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism—how is it that this conflict has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by any of the great battles of the world from that day down to our own? The courage of the Greeks, as I have elsewhere shown,[77] was not of the first order. Herodotus praises the Athenians in this very battle for being the first Greeks that dared to look the Persians in the face. Their generals all through history seem never to feel sure of victory, and always endeavor to harangue their soldiers into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they especially incite to rage—ὀργῇ προσμίξωμεν, says one of them in Thucydides—as if any man not in this state would be sure to estimate the danger fully, and run away. It is, indeed, true that the ancient battles were hand to hand, and therefore parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said to be very seldom carried out by two opposing lines, as one of them almost always gives way before the actual collision takes place. This must often have occurred in Greek battles, for in one fought at Amphipolis Brasidas lost seven men; at a battle at Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon—an important battle, too—the slain amounted to eight;[78] [pg 202]and these battles were fought before the days when whole armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, “for the love of God, and out of good feeling for the fraternity of arms.” So, then, the loss of 192 Athenians, including some distinguished men, was rather a severe one. As to the loss of the Persians, I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of such things that it is better to pass it by in silence.

Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear of the Athenian army as undisciplined, and of the science of war as undeveloped, in those times. Yet I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of battles by almost all the historians are so utterly vague, and so childishly conventional, that it is evident that these gentlemen were not only quite ignorant of the science of war, but could not easily find any one to explain it to them. We know that the Spartans—the most admired of all Greek warriors—were chiefly so admired because they devised the system of subordinating officers to one another within the same detachment, like our gradation from colonel to corporal. Orders were passed down from officer to officer, instead of being bawled out by a herald to a whole army. But this superiority of the Spartans, who were really disciplined, and went into battle [pg 203]coolly, like brave men, certainly did not extend to strategy, but was merely a question of better drill. As soon as any real strategist met them they were helpless. Thus Iphicrates, when he devised Wellington’s plan of meeting their attacking column in line, and using missiles, succeeded against them, even without firearms: thus Epaminondas, when he devised Napoleon’s plan of massing troops on a single point, while keeping his enemy’s line occupied, defeated them without any considerable struggle. As for that general’s great battle of Mantinea, the ancient Rossbach, which seems really to have been introduced by some complicated strategical movements, we owe our partial knowledge to the grudging aid of the soldier Xenophon. But both generals were in the distant future when the battle of Marathon was being fought.

Yet what signifies all this criticism? In spite of all skepticism, in spite of all contempt, the battle of Marathon, whether badly or well fought, and the troops at Marathon, whether well or ill trained, will ever be more famous than any other battle or army, however important or gigantic its dimensions. Even in this very war, the battles of Salamis and Platæa were vastly more important and more hotly contested. The losses were greater, the results were more enduring, yet thousands have heard of Marathon to whom the other names are unknown. So much for literary ability—so much for the power of talk[pg 204]ing well about one’s deeds. Marathon was fought by Athenians; the Athenians eclipsed the other Greeks as far as the other Greeks eclipsed the rest of the world, in literary power. This battle became the literary property of the city, hymned by poet, cited by orator, told by aged nurse, lisped by stammering infant; and so it has taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the great decisive battles which assured the liberty of the West against Oriental despotism.

The plain in the present day is quite bare of trees, and, as Colonel Leake observed, appears to have been so at the time of the battle, from the vague account of its evolutions. There was a little corn and a few other crops about the great tumulus; and along the seashore, whither we went to bathe, there was a large herd of cows and oxen—a sight not very usual in Greece. When we rushed into the shallow blue water, striving to reach swimming depth, we could not but think of the scene when Kynægirus and his companions rushed in armed to stop the embarkation of the Persians. On the shore, then teeming with ships of war, with transports, with fighting and flying men, there was now no sign of life, but ourselves in the water, and the lazy cattle and their silent herdsmen looking upon us in wonder; for, though very hot, it was only May, and the modern Greek never thinks it safe to bathe till at least the end of June—in this like his Italian [pg 205]neighbor. There was not a single ship or boat in the straits; there was no sign of life or of population on the coast of Eubœa. There was everywhere that solitude which so much struck Byron, as it strikes every traveller in Modern Greece. There was not even the child or beggar, with coins and pieces of pottery, who is so troublesome about Italian ruins, and who has even lately appeared at the Parthenon, the theatre at Argos, and a few other places in Greece. We asked the herdsman for remnants of arms or pieces of money: he had seen such things picked up, but knew nothing of their value. Lord Byron tells us he was offered the purchase of the whole plain (six miles by two) for about £900. It would have been a fine speculation for an antiquarian: but I am surprised, as he was, rather at the greatness than at the smallness of the price. The Greek Government might very well, even now, grant the fee-simple to any one who would pay the ordinary taxes on property, which are not, I was told, very heavy. But still the jealousy of the nation would not tolerate a foreign speculator.

I have already spoken ([p. 154]) of the position of the pass of Daphne, and how it leads the traveller over the ridge which separates the plain of the Kephissus from the Thriasian plain. I have also spoken at length of the country about the Kephissus, with its olive woods and its nightingales. When we [pg 206]go through the pass of Daphne—of its monastery I shall speak in another chapter—a perfectly new view opens before us. We see under us the Thriasian plain, well covered with ripening corn and other crops; we see at the far side of the crescent-shaped bay the remains of Eleusis. Behind it, and all round to the right up to where we stand, is an amphitheatre of hills—the spurs of Mount Parnes, which from Phyle reach due south down to where we stand, and due west to the inland of the Thriasian plain, till they meet and are confounded with the slopes of Cithæron, which extend for miles away behind Eleusis. On the sea-side, to our left, lies the island of Salamis, so near the coast that the sea seems a calm inland lake, lying tortuously between the hills.

Many points of Greek history become plain to us by this view. We see how true was the epithet “rocky Salamis,” for the island, though it looks very insignificant on our maps, contains lofty mountains, with very bare and rocky sides. The student of Greek geography in maps should note this feature. Thus, Ithaca on the map does not suggest the real Ithaca, which from most points looks like a high and steep mountain standing out of the sea. We begin also to see how Salamis was equally convenient (as the Irish say) to both Megara and Attica, if we consider that Eleusis was strictly a part of Attica. The harbor of the Peiræus, for example, would be [pg 207]quite useless if an enemy were watching it from Salamis. But we also come to see the sense of the old legend, that Eleusis had originally a separate king or government from that of Athens, and that the two cities once carried on war against each other. The towns are but a few miles apart; but their respective plains are so distinctly and completely separated by the pass of Daphne, that not one acre of the territory of Eleusis can be seen from Athens, nor of Athens from Eleusis. So also, lastly, we come to feel how natural is the remark of Thucydides, that the population of Athens, when the Lacedæmonians invaded Attica, and came no farther than the Thriasian plain, did not feel the terrors of a hostile invasion, as the enemy was not in sight; but when he crossed the pass, and began to ravage Acharnæ and the vale of Kephissus, then indeed, though Eleusis was just as near, and just as much their own, they felt the reality of the invasion, and were for the first time deeply dejected. This is a good example of that combined farness and nearness which is so characteristic about most neighboring cities in Greece.