Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

We were welcomed with excellent hospitality in the town, and received by a fine old gentleman, whose sons, two splendid youths in full costume, attended us in person. Being people of moderate means, they allowed us, with a truer friendliness than that of more ostentatious hosts, to pay for the most of the materials we required, which they got for us of the best quality, at the lowest price, and cooked and prepared them for us in the house. We inquired of the father what prospects were open to his hand[pg 380]some sons, who seemed born to be soldiers—the ornaments of a royal pageant in peace, the stay of panic in battle. He complained that there was no scope for their energies. Of course, tilling of the soil could never satisfy them. One of them was secretary to the Demarchus, on some miserable salary. He had gone as far as Alexandria to seek his fortune, but had come home again, with the tastes and without the wealth of a rich townsman. So they are fretting away their life in idleness. I fear that such cases are but too common in the country towns of Greece.

The people brought us to see many pieces of funeral slabs, of marble pillars, and of short and late inscriptions built into house walls. They also sold us good coins of Philip of Macedon at a moderate price. The systematic digging about the old site undertaken by the English school will probably bring to light many important remains.[144] There is a carriage road from Megalopolis to Argos, but the portion inside the town was then only just finished, so we preferred riding as far as Tripoli. Travellers now landing at Argos will find it quite practicable to drive from the coast to this central plain of Arcadia, and then begin their riding. There is now, alas! a [pg 381]railway from Argos to Tripoli in progress. By this means even ladies can easily cross the Morea. Two days’ driving to Megalopolis, two days’ riding to Olympia, and an easy day’s drive and train to Katakalo, would be the absolute time required for the transit. But the difficulty is still to find a comfortable night’s lodging between the first and second day’s ride, both of them long and fatiguing journeys. Andritzena is too near Megalopolis, and not to be recommended without introductions. But there is probably some village on another route which would afford a half-way house. From Tripoli and from Megalopolis, which command their respective plains, excursions could be made to Mantinea, to Sparta, and best of all to Kalamata, where a coasting steamer calls frequently.

A Greek Peasant in National Costume

As we rode up the slopes of Mount Mænalus, which separates the plain of Tegea from that of Megalopolis, we often turned to admire the splendid view beneath, and count the numerous villages now as of old under the headship of the great town. The most striking feature was doubtless the snowy ridge of Taygetus, which reaches southward, and showed us the course of the Eurotas on its eastern side, along which a twelve hours’ ride brings the traveller to Sparta. The country into which we passed was wild and barren in the extreme, and, like most so-called mountains in Greece, consisted of a series of parallel and of intersecting ridges, with short valleys [pg 382]or high plateaus between them. This journey, perhaps the bleakest in all Peloponnesus, until it approaches the plain of Tegea, is through Mount Mænalus, the ancestral seat of the worship of Pan, and therefore more than any other tract of Arcadia endowed with pastoral richness and beauty by the poets. There may be more fertile tracts farther north in these mountains. There may in ancient times have been forest or verdure where all is now bare. But in the present day there is no bleaker and more barren tract than these slopes and summits of Mænalus, which are wholly different from the richly wooded and well carpeted mountains through which we had passed on the way from Elis. Even the asphodel, which covers all the barer and stonier tracts with its fields of bloom, was here scarce and poor. Dull tortoises, and quick-glancing hoopoes, with their beautiful head-dresses, were the only tenants of this solitude. There was here and there a spring of delicious water where we stopped. At one of them the best of our ponies, an unusually spirited animal, escaped up the mountain, with one of our royal-looking young friends, who had accompanied us in full costume, for want of other amusement, in hot pursuit of him. We thought the chase utterly hopeless, as the pony knew his way perfectly, and would not let any one approach him on the bare hillsides; so we consolidated our baggage, and left them to their fate. But about two hours afterward the [pg 383]young Greek came galloping after us on the pony, which he had caught—he had accomplished the apparently impossible feat.

At last, after a very hot and stony ride, with less color and less beauty than we had ever yet found in Greece, we descended into the great valley of Tripoli, formerly held by Tegea at the south, and Mantinea at the north. The modern town lies between the ancient sites, but nearer to Tegea, which is not an hour’s ride distant. The old Tripolis, of which the villages were absorbed by Megalopolis, is placed by the geographers in quite another part of Arcadia, near Gortyn, and due north of the western plain. The vicissitudes of the modern town are well known; its importance under the Turks, its terrible destruction by the Egyptians in the War of Liberation;[145] even now, though not a house is more than fifty years old, it is one of the largest and most important towns in the Morea.

The whole place was in holiday, it being the Greek Easter Day, and hundreds of men in full costume crowded the large square in the middle of the town. There is a considerable manufacture of what are commonly called Turkey carpets, and of [pg 384]silk; but the carpets have of late years lost all the beauty and harmony of color for which they were so justly admired, and are now copied from the worst Bavarian work—tawdry and vulgar in the extreme. They are sold by weight, and are not dear, but they were so exceedingly ugly that we could not buy them. This decadence of taste is strange when compared with the woollen work of Arachova. If the colors of the Arachovite rugs were transferred to the carpets of Tripoli, nothing could be more effective, or more likely to attract English buyers. I could not learn that any passing travellers save some Germans, are now ever tempted to carry them home.

It is my disagreeable duty to state that while the inn at Tripoli was no better than other country inns in Arcadia, and full of noise and disturbance, the innkeeper, a gentleman in magnificent costume, with a crimson vest and gaiters, covered with rich embroidery, also turned out a disgraceful villain, in fact quite up to the mark of the innkeepers of whom Plato in his day complained. We had no comforts, we had bad food, we had the locks of our baggage strained, not indeed by thieves, but by curious neighbors, who wished to see the contents; we had dinner, a night’s lodging, and breakfast, for which the host charged us, a party of four and a servant, 118 francs. And be it remembered that the wine of the country, which we drank, is cheaper than ale in [pg 385]England. We appealed at once to the magistrate, a very polite and reasonable man, who cut it down to 84 francs, still an exorbitant sum, and one which our friend quietly pocketed without further remonstrance. It is therefore advisable either to go with introductions, which we had (but our party was too large for private hospitality), or to stipulate beforehand concerning prices. I mention such conduct as exceptional—we met it only here, at Sparta, and at Nauplia; but I fear Tripoli is not an honest district. A coat and rug which were dropped accidentally from a mule were picked up by the next wayfarer, who carried them off, though we had passed him but a few hundred yards, and there could be no doubt as to the owners. Our guides knew his village, and our property was telegraphed for, but never reappeared.

The site of Tegea, where there is now a considerable village, is more interesting, being quite close to the passes which lead to Sparta, and surrounded by a panorama of rocky mountains. The morning was cloudy, and lights and shades were coursing alternately over the view. There were no trees, but the surface of the rocks took splendid changing hues—gray, pink, and deep purple—while the rich soil beneath alternated between brilliant green and ruddy brown. As the plain of Megalopolis reminded me of that of Thebes, so this plain of Tegea, though infinitely richer in soil, yet had [pg 386]many features singularly like that of Attica, especially its bareness, and the splendid colors of its barren mountains. But the climate is very different at this great height above the sea; the nights, and even the mornings and evenings, were still chilly, and the crops are still green when the harvest has begun in Attica. There are a good many remains, especially of the necropolis of Tegea, to be found scattered through the modern village, chiefly in the walls of new houses. One of these reliefs contained a very good representation of a feast—two men and two women, the latter sitting, and alternately with the men; the whole work seemed delicate, and of a good epoch. These and other remains, especially an excellent relief of a lion, are now gathered into the little museum of the village of Piali, which occupies part of the ancient site. The circuit of the ancient walls and the site and plan of the great temple of Athena Alea have also recently been determined. The temple, rebuilt by Scopas about 395 B. C., had Corinthian as well as Ionic capitals, though externally Doric in character. Some remarkable remains of the pediment, especially a boar’s head, are now in the Museum at Athens.

The way to Argos is a good carriage road through the passes of Mount Parthenion, and is not unlike the bleak ride through Mænalus, though there is a great deal more tillage, and in some places the hillsides are terraced with cultivation. It was in this [pg 387]mountain that the god Pan met the celebrated runner Phidippides, who was carrying his despatch about the Persian invasion from Athens to Sparta, and told him he would come and help the Athenians at Marathon. This Mount Parthenion, bleak and bare like Mount Mænalus, and yet like it peculiarly sacred to Pan, “affords tortoises most suitable for the making of lyres, which the men who inhabit the mountains are afraid to catch, nor do they allow strangers to catch them, for they think them sacred to Pan.” We saw these tortoises, both in Mænalus and Parthenion, yet to us suggestive not of harmony but of discord. Two of them were engaged in mortal combat by the road side. They were rushing at each other, and battering the edges of their shells together, apparently in the attempt to overturn each other. After a long and even conflict, one of them fled, pursued by the other at full speed, indeed far quicker than could be imagined. We watched the battle till we were tired, and left the pursuer and the pursued in the excitement of their deadly struggle. The traveller who goes by the new railroad over this ground will never see sights like this.