The Isthmus, which is really some three or four miles north of Corinth, was of old famous for the Isthmian games, as well as for the noted diolkos, or road for dragging ships across. The games were founded about 586 B. C., when a strong suspicion had arisen throughout Greece concerning the fairness of the Elean awards at Olympia, and for a long time Eleans were excluded. In later days the games became very famous, the Argives or Cleonæans laying claim to celebrate them. It was at these games that Philip V. heard of the great defeat of the Romans by Hannibal, and resolved to enter into that colossal quarrel which brought the Romans into Macedonia. The site of the stadium, and of the temple of Isthmian Poseidon, and of the fortified sanctuary, were excavated and mapped out by M. Monceaux in 1883. A plan and details are to be found in the French Guide Joanne.[155] Close by I saw in 1889 the interrupted work of the canal which was at last to connect the [pg 400]eastern and western gulfs, and which when well-nigh completed found its funds dissipated by the terrible crash of the Credit Mobilier in Paris, and now awaits another enterprise. The idea is old and often discussed, like that of the Isthmus of Suez. The Emperor Nero actually began the work, and the engineers of to-day resumed the cutting at the very spot where his workmen left off.
But if this very expensive work might have been of great service when sailing-ships feared to round the notorious Cape of Malea, and when there was great trade from the Adriatic to the ports of Thessaly and Macedonia, surely all these advantages are now superseded. Steamers coming from the Straits of Messina would pay nothing to take the route of the Isthmus in preference to rounding the Morea, and the main line of traffic is no longer to the Northern Levant, but to Alexandria. Even goods despatched from Trieste or Venice may now be landed at Patras, and sent on by rail to Athens; so that the canal will now only serve the smallest fraction of the Levantine trade; and even then, if the charges be at all adequate to the labor, will be avoided by circumnavigation. Amid the promotion of many useful schemes of traffic, this undertaking seems to me to stand out by its want of common sense. Indeed, had it been really important at any date, we may be sure that the Hellenistic Sovrans or Roman capitalists would have carried it out. But in classical days [pg 401]their smaller ships seem to have been dragged across upon movable rollers by slaves without much difficulty.
But we had already delayed too long upon this citadel, where we would have willingly spent a day or two at greater leisure. Our guide urged us to start on our long ride, which was not to terminate till we reached the town of Argos, some thirty miles over the mountains.[156]
The country into which we passed was very different from any we had yet seen, and still it was intensely Greek. All the hills and valleys showed a very white, chalky soil, which actually glittered like snow where it was not covered with verdure or trees. Road, as usual, there was none; but all these hills and ravines, chequered with snowy white, were clothed with shining arbutus trees, and shrubs resembling dwarf holly. The purple and the white cistus, which is so readily mistaken for a wild rose,[157] were already out of blow, and showed but a rare blossom. Here and there was a plain or valley with great fields of thyme about the arbutus, and there were herds of goats wandering through the shrubs, and innumerable bees gathering honey from the thyme. The scene was precisely such as Theocritus describes in the uplands of Sicily; but in all [pg 402]our rides through that delightful island[158] we had never found the thyme and arbutus, the goats and bees, in such truly Theocritean perfection. We listened in vain for the shepherd’s pipe, and sought in vain for some Thyrsis beguiling his time with the oaten reed. It was almost noontide—noon, the hour of awe and mystery to the olden shepherd, when Pan slept his mid-day sleep,[159] and the wanton satyr was abroad, prowling for adventure through the silent woods; so that, in pagan days, we might have been afraid of the companionship of melody. But now the silence was not from dread of Pan’s displeasure, but that the sun’s fiercer heat had warned the shepherds to depart to the snowy heights of Cyllene, where they dwell all the summer in alpine huts, and feed their flocks on the upland pastures, which are covered with snow till late in the spring.
They had left behind them a single comrade, with his wife and little children, to protect the weak and the lame till their return. We found this family settled in their winter quarters, which consisted of a [pg 403]square enclosure of thorns θρίγκος ἀχέρδου, built up with stones, round a very old spreading olive-tree. At the foot of the tree were pots and pans, and other household goods, with some skins and rude rugs lying on the ground. There was no attempt at a roof or hut of any kind, though, of course, it might be set up in a moment, as we had seen in the defiles of Parnassus, with skins hung over three sticks—two uprights, and the third joining their tops, so as to form a ridge.
To make the scene Homeric,[160] as well as Theocritean, two large and very savage dogs rushed out upon us at our approach, but the shepherd hurried out after them, and drove them off by pelting them vigorously with stones. “Surely,” he said, turning to us breathlessly from his exertions, “you had met, O strangers! with some mischief, if I had not been here.” The dogs disappeared, in deep anger, into the thicket, and, though we stayed at the place for some time, never reappeared to threaten or to pursue us on our departure. We talked as best we could to the gentle shepherdess, one of whose children had a fearfully scalded hand, for which we suggested remedies to her occult and wonderful, though at [pg 404]home so trite as to be despised by the wise. She gave us in return great bowls of heated milk, which was being made into cheese, and into various kinds of curds, which are the very best produce of the country. They would take no money for their hospitality, but did not object to our giving the children coins to play with—to them, I am sure, a great curiosity.
Most of our journey was not, however, through pastures and plains, but up and down steep ravines, where riding was so difficult and dangerous that we were often content to dismount and lead our horses. Every hour or two brought us to a fountain springing from a rock, and over it generally a great spreading fig-tree, while the water was framed in on both sides with a perfect turf of maiden-hair fern. The only considerable valley which we saw was that of Cleonæ, which we passed some miles on our left, and about which there was a great deal of golden corn, and many shady plane-trees. Indeed, the corn was so plentiful that we saw asses grazing in it quite contentedly, without any interference from thrifty farmers. We had seen a very similar sight in Sicily, where the enormous deep-brown Sicilian oxen, with their forward-pointing horns, were stretching their huge forms in fields of half-ripe wheat, which covered all the plain without fence or division. There, too, it seemed as if this was the cheapest grazing, and as if it were unprofitable [pg 405]labor to drive the cattle to some untilled pasture. As for the treading-out of corn, I saw it done at Argos by a string of seven horses abreast, with two young foals at the outside, galloping round a small circular threshing-floor in the open field, upon which the ripe sheaves had been laid in radiating order. I have no doubt that a special observer of farming operations would find many interesting survivals both in Greece and the Two Sicilies.
Toward evening, after many hours of travel, we turned aside on our way down the plain of Argos, to see the famous ruins of Mycenæ. But we will now pass them by, as the discoveries of Dr. Schliemann, and a second visit to the ruins after his excavations, have opened up so many questions, that a separate chapter must be devoted to them.
The fortress of Tiryns, which I have already mentioned, and which we visited next day, may fitly be commented on before approaching the younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenæ. It stands several miles nearer to the sea, in the centre of the great plain of Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted blocks of Mycenæ, we have here the older style of rude masses piled together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with smaller fragments, and, as we now know, faced with mortar. This is essentially Cyclopean build[pg 406]ing.[161] There is a smaller castle of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall, which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It looked, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large enclosure for cattle around it.
Just below the north-east angle of the inner fort, and where the lower circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the south-east angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty feet, and in the centre a rude arched way is made—or rather, I believe, two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost untraceable—and this merely by piling together the great stones so as to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. Within the passage there are five niches in the outer side, made of rude arches, in the same way as the main passage. The length of [pg 407]the gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once windows, or at least to have had some look-out points into the hill country.