The very fact that it was not lawful to divulge the Mystery has prevented the many writers who knew it from giving us any description by which we might gain a clear idea of this wonderful rite. We have hints of various sacred vessels, of various priests known by special technical names; of dramatic representations of the rape of Cora, and of the grief of her mother; of her complaints before Zeus, and the final reconciliation. We hear of scenes of [pg 214]darkness and fear, in which the hopeless state of the unbelievers was portrayed; of light and glory, to which the convert attained, when at last his eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and evil.
But all these things are fragmentary glimpses, as are also the doctrines hinted of the Unity of God, and of atonement by sacrifice. There remains nothing clear and certain, but the unanimous verdict as to the greatness, the majesty, and the awe of the services, and as to the great spiritual knowledge and comfort which they conveyed. The consciousness of guilt was not, indeed, first taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt very keenly by the Greek mind. These Mysteries were its Gospel of reconciliation with the offended gods.
CHAPTER VIII.
FROM ATHENS TO THEBES—THE PASSES OF PARNES AND OF CITHÆRON, ELEUTHERÆ, PLATÆA.
No ordinary student, looking at the map of Attica and Bœotia, can realize the profound and complete separation between these two countries. Except at the very northern extremity, where the fortified town of Oropus guarded an easy boundary, all the frontier consists not merely of steep mountains, but of parallel and intersecting ridges and gorges, which contain indeed a few alpine valleys, such as that of Œnoe, but which are, as a rule, wild and barren, easily defensible by a few against many, and totally unfit for the site of any considerable town, or any advanced culture. As I before stated, the traveller can pass through by Dekelea, or he can pass most directly by Phyle, the fort which Thrasybulus seized when he desired to reconquer Athens with his democratic exiles. The historians usually tell us “that he seized and fortified Phyle”; a statement which the present aspect of it seems to render very doubtful indeed. It is quite impossible that the great hill-fort of the very finest Attic building, which is still remaining and admired by all, could have been [pg 216]“knocked up” by Thrasybulus and his exiles. The careful construction and the enormous extent of the building compel us to suppose it the work of a rich state, and of a deliberate plan of fortification. It seems very unlikely, for these reasons, that it was built after the days of Thrasybulus, or that so important a point of attack should have been left unguarded in the greater days of Athens. I am therefore convinced that the fort, being built long before, and being, in fact, one of the well-known fortified demes through Attica, had been to some extent dismantled, or allowed to fall into decay, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, but that its solid structure made it a matter of very little labor for the exiles to render it strong and easily defensible.
This is one of the numerous instances in which a single glance at the locality sets right an historical statement that has eluded suspicion for ages. The fort of Phyle, like that of Eleutheræ, of which I shall speak, and like those of Messene and of Orchomenus, is built of square blocks of stone, carefully cut, and laid together without a particle of rubble or cement, but so well fitted as to be able to resist the wear of ages better than almost any other building. I was informed by M. Émile Burnouf, that in the case of a fort at Megara, which I did not see, there are even polygonal blocks, of which the irregular and varying angles are fitted with such precision that it is difficult, as in the case of the Parthenon, to detect [pg 217]the joinings of the stones. The blocks are by no means so colossal in these buildings as in the great ruins about Mycenæ; but the fitting is closer, and the sites on which we find them very lofty, and with precipitous ascents. This style of building is specially mentioned by Thucydides (I. 93) as being employed in the building of the walls of the Peiræus in the days of Themistocles, apparently in contrast to the rude and hurried construction of the city walls. But he speaks of the great stones being not only cut square, but fastened with clamps of iron soldered with lead. I am not aware that any traces of this are found in the remaining hill-forts. The walls of the Peiræus have, unfortunately, long since almost totally disappeared.
The way from Athens to Phyle leads north-west through the rich fields of the old deme of Acharnæ; and we wonder at first why they should be so noted as charcoal-burners. But as we approach Mount Parnes, we find that the valley is bounded by tracts of hillside fit for nothing but pine forest. A vast deal of wooding still remains; it is clear that these forests were the largest and most convenient to supply Athens with firewood or charcoal. As usual, there are many glens and river-courses through the rugged country through which we ascend—here and there a village, in one secluded nook a little monastery, hidden from the world, if not from its cares. There is the usual Greek vege[pg 218]tation beside the path; not perhaps luxuriant to our Northern eyes, but full of colors of its own—the glowing anemone, the blood-red poppy, the delicate cistus on a rocky surface, with foliage rather gray and silvery than green. The pine-trees sound, as the breeze sweeps up the valleys, and lavish their vigorous fragrance through the air.
There is something inexpressibly bracing in this solitude, if solitude it can be called, where the forest speaks to the eye and ear, and fills the imagination with the mystery of its myriad forms. Now and then too the peculiar cadence of those bells which hardly varies throughout all the lands of the south, tells you that a flock of goats, or goat-like sheep, is near, attended by solemn, silent children, whose eyes seem to have no expression beyond that of vague wonder in their gaze. These are the flocks of some village below, not those of the nomad Vlachs, who bring with them their tents and dogs, and make gipsy encampments in the unoccupied country.