Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

Our way lay, not directly for Delphi, but for the curious town of Arachova, which is perched on the summit of precipices some 4000 feet or more above the level of the sea. We rode from eight in the morning till the evening twilight to reach this place, and all the day through scenes which gave us each moment some new delight and some new astonishment, but which could only be described by a painter, not by any pages of writing, however poetical or picturesque. It is the misfortune of such descriptions on paper, that the writer alone has the remembered image clear before him; no reader can grasp the detail and frame for himself a faithful picture.

We felt that we were approaching Arachova when we saw the steep slopes above and below our path planted with vineyards, and here and there [pg 277]a woman in her gay dress working on the steep incline, where a stumble would have sent her rolling many hundreds of feet into some torrent bed. At one particular spot, where the way turned round a projecting shoulder, we were struck by seeing at the same time, to the north, the blue sea under Eubœa, and, at the south, the Gulf of Corinth where it nears Delphi—both mere patches among the mountains, like the little tarns among the Irish moors, but both great historic waters—old high roads of commerce and of culture. From any of the summits such a view from sea to sea would not be the least remarkable; but it was interesting and unusual to see it from a mule’s back on one of the high roads of the country. A moment later, the houses of Arachova itself attracted all our attention, lying as they did over against us, and quite near, but with a great gulf between us and them, which we were fortunately able to ride round. The town has a curious, scattered appearance, with interrupted streets and uncertain plan, owing not only to the extraordinary nature of the site, but to the fact that huge boulders, I might say rocks, have been shaken loose by earthquakes from above, and have come tumbling into the middle of the town. They crush a house or two, and stand there in the street. Presently some one comes and builds a house up against the side of this rock; others venture in their turn, and so the town recovers itself, till another earth[pg 278]quake makes another rent. Since 1870 these earthquakes have been very frequent. At first they were very severe, and ruined almost all the town; but now they are very slight, and so frequent that we were assured that they happened at some hour every day. I believe this is practically true, though we, who arrived in the evening and left early next day, were not so fortunate as to feel the shock ourselves. But the whole region of Parnassus shows great scars and wounds from this awful natural scourge.

Arachova is remarkable as being one of the very few towns of Greece of any note which is not built upon a celebrated site. Everywhere the modern Greek town is a mere survival of the old. I remember but three exceptions—Arachova, Hydra, and Tripolitza,[111] and of these the latter two arose from special and known circumstances. The prosperity of Arachova is not so easily explicable. In spite of its wonderful and curious site, the trade of the place is, for a Greek town, very considerable. The wines which they make are of the highest repute, though to us the free use of resin makes them all equally worthless. Besides, they work beautifully patterned rugs of divers-colored wool—rugs which are sold at high prices all over the Greek waters. They are used in boats, on saddles, on beds—in fact for every possible rough use. The patterns are stitched on [pg 279]with wool, and the widths sewn together in the same way, with effective rudeness.

We had an excellent opportunity of seeing all this sort of work, as we found the town in some excitement at an approaching marriage; and we went to see the bride, whom we found in a spacious room, with low wooden rafters, in the company of a large party of her companions, and surrounded on all sides by her dowry, which consisted, in eastern fashion, almost altogether of “changes of raiment.” All round the room these rich woollen rugs lay in perfect piles, and from the low ceiling hung in great numbers her future husband’s white petticoats; for in that country, as everywhere in Greece, the men wear the petticoats. The company were all dressed in full costume—white sleeves, embroidered woollen aprons, gold and silver coins about the neck, and a bright red loose belt worn low round the figure. To complete the picture, each girl had in her left hand a distaff, swathed about with rich, soft, white wool, from which her right hand and spindle were deftly spinning thread, as she walked about the room admiring the trousseau, and joking with us and with her companions. The beauty of the Arachovite women is as remarkable as the strength and longevity of the men, nor do I know any mountaineers equal to them, except those of some of the valleys in the Tyrol. But there, as is well known, beauty is chiefly confined to the men; at Arachova it seemed [pg 280]fairly distributed. We did not see any one girl of singular beauty. The average was remarkably high; and, as might be expected, they were not only very fair, but of that peculiarly clear complexion, and vigorous frame, which seem almost always to be found when a good climate and clear air are combined with a very high level above the sea.

We saw, moreover, what they called a Pyrrhic dance, which consisted of a string of people, hand-in-hand, standing in the form of a spiral, and moving rhythmically, while the outside member of the train performed curious and violent gymnastics. The music consisted in the squealing of a horrible clarionette, accompanied by the beating of a large drum. The clarionette-player had a leathern bandage about his mouth, like that which we see in the ancient reliefs and pictures of double-flute-players. According as each principal dancer was fatigued, he passed off from the end of the spiral line, and stuck a silver coin between the cap and forehead of the player. The whole motion was extremely slow throughout the party—the centre of the coil, which is often occupied by little children, hardly moving at all, and paying little attention to the dance.

In general, the Greek music which I heard—dance music, and occasional shepherds’ songs—was nothing but a wild and monotonous chant, with two or three shakes and ornaments on a high note, running down to a long drone note at the end. They repeat these [pg 281]phrases, which are not more than three bars long, over and over again, with some slight variations of appoggiatura. I was told by competent people at Athens, that all this was not properly Greek, but Turkish, and that the long slavery of the Greeks had completely destroyed the traditions of their ancient music. Though this seemed certainly true of the music which I heard, I very much doubt that any ancient feature so general can have completely disappeared. When there are national songs of a distinctly Greek character transmitted all through the Slavish and Turkish periods, it seems odd that they should be sung altogether to foreign music. Without more careful investigation I should be slow to decide upon such a question. Unfortunately, our specimens of old Greek music are very few, and probably very insignificant, all the extant works on music by the ancients being devoted to theoretical questions, which are very difficult and not very profitable. To this subject I have devoted a special discussion in my Social Life in Greece, with what illustration it is now possible to obtain.

The inhabitants wished us to stay with them some days, which would have given us an opportunity of witnessing the wedding ceremony, and also of making excursions to the snowy tops of Mount Parnassus. But we had had enough of that sort of amusement in a climb up Mount Ætna, a short time before, and the five hours’ toiling on the snow in a thick fog was [pg 282]too fresh in our memory. Beside, we were bound to catch the weekly steamer at Itea, as the port of Delphi is now called; and eight additional days, or rather nights, in this country might have been too much for the wildest enthusiast. For the wooden houses of Arachova are beyond all other structures infested with life, and not even the balconies in the frosty night air were safe from insect invasions.

We therefore started early in the morning, and kept along the sides of precipices on our way to the oracle of Delphi. It is not wonderful that the Arachovites should be famous for superstitions and legends, and that the inquirers into the remnants of old Greek beliefs in the present day have found their richest harvest in this mountain fastness, where there seems no reason why any belief should ever die out. More especially the faith in the terrible god of the dead, Charos, who represents not only the old Charon, but Pluto also, is here very deep-seated, and many Arachovite songs and ballads speak of his awful and relentless visits. Longevity is so usual, and old age is so hale and green in these Alps, that the death of the young comes home with far greater force and pathos here than in unhealthy or immoral societies, and thus the inroads of Charos are not borne in sullen silence, but lamented with impatient complaints.

At eleven o’clock we came, in the fierce summer sun, to the ascent into the “rocky Pytho,” where [pg 283]the terraced city of old had once harbored pilgrims from every corner of the civilized world. The ordinary histories which we read give us but little idea of the mighty influence of this place in the age of its faith. We hear of its being consulted by Crœsus, or by the Romans, and we appreciate its renown for sanctity; but until of very late years there was small account taken of its political and commercial importance. The date of its first rise is hidden in remote antiquity. As the story goes, a shepherd, who fed his flocks here, observed the goats, when they approached the vaporous cavern, springing about madly, as if under some strange influence. He came up to see the place himself, and was immediately seized with the prophetic frenzy. So the reputation of the place spread, first around the neighboring pastoral tribes, and then to a wider sphere.

This very possible origin, however, does not distinctly assert what may certainly be inferred—I mean the existence of some older and ruder worship, before the worship of Apollo was here established. Two arguments make this clear. In the first place, old legends consistently speak of the arrival of Apollo here; of his conflict with the powers of earth, under the form of the dragon Python; of his having undergone purification for its murder, and having been formally ceded possession by its older owners. This distinct allusion [pg 284]to a previous cult, and one even hostile to Apollo, but ultimately reconciled with him, is sustained by the fact that Pausanias describes in the Temple of Apollo itself two old stones—one apparently an aërolith—which were treated with great respect, anointed daily with oil, and adorned with garlands of flowers. One of these was to the Greeks the centre of the earth (ὀμφαλός), and beside it were two eagles in gold, to remind one of the legend that Zeus had started two eagles from the ends of the earth, and that they met at this exact spot midway. These old and shapeless stories, which occur elsewhere in Greek temples, point to the older stage of fetish worship, before the Greeks had risen to the art of carving a statue, or of worshipping the unseen deity without a gross material symbol.