Studies in Greek Scenery, Legend and History / Selected from His Commentary on Pausanias' 'Description of Greece,'

by James George Frazer

The country between Oropus and Rhamnus, through which Pausanias conducts his readers, is of similar character. Parallel chains of hills run from Mount Parnes to the high steep coast; and between them are fruitful valleys watered by pleasant brooks and embowered in luxuriant vegetation, with thickets where the song of the nightingale may be heard.

The site of the city of Oropus is now occupied by Skala Oropou, that is, ‘the port of Oropo,’ a small hamlet prettily situated among gardens, meadows, and springs, on the shore of a bay which is formed by two low projecting points a couple of miles asunder. Across the water the white houses of Eretria are clearly visible on the shore of Euboea; the mountains above them, when seen at evening from Oropus, are of a deep azure blue. In the sea are the remains of an ancient breakwater extending parallel to the shore. Among the remains of antiquity which have been found here is a beautiful marble relief of the best period of Greek sculpture, representing Amphiaraus and his charioteer Baton driving in a car drawn by four horses; the moment chosen by the sculptor is that when the earth gaped to receive the prophet; the horses are starting back in terror at the sight of the abyss which yawns at their feet.

The sanctuary of Amphiaraus, described by Pausanias, lies in a pleasant little glen, neither wide nor deep, among low hills partially wooded with pine. The place, now called Mavrodhilisi, is distant about four miles south-east of Skala Oropou; Pausanias has greatly understated the distance. The path to it first goes through corn-fields near the sea, then turns inland and ascends through woods. A brook flows through the glen and finds its way between banks fringed by plane-trees and oleanders to the sea, which is more than a mile off. The clumps of trees and shrubs which tuft the sides of the glen and in which the nightingale warbles, the stretch of green meadow at the bottom, the stillness and seclusion of the place, and its sheltered and sunny aspect, all fitted it to be the resort of invalids, who thronged thither to consult the healing god. So sheltered indeed is the spot that even on a May morning the heat in the airless glen, with the Greek sun beating down out of a cloudless sky, is apt to be felt by a northerner as somewhat overpowering. But to a Greek it was no doubt agreeable. The oracle, we know, was open only in summer; and Livy speaks of “the ancient temple delightfully situated among springs and brooks”. The ruins of the sanctuary, excavated some years ago by the Greek Archaeological Society, lie on the narrow strip of flat ground on the northern or left bank of the stream.

III. Rhamnus.—Rhamnus is one of the loneliest and most secluded, but at the same time most picturesque and verdant spots in all Attica. It lies on the north-east coast of Attica, about six and a half miles north of Kato-Souli, the village which occupies the site of the ancient Tricorythus. The distance agrees well with the sixty Greek furlongs (nearly seven miles) at which Pausanias estimates it. The road from Kato-Souli first goes north-east across the northern portion of the Marathonian plain, which it quits by a pass leading northward through the hills. The pass soon opens into an upland valley, three miles long from south to north by one mile wide, enclosed on both sides by wild and barren hills. The upper slopes of these hills are scantily wooded with firs; their lower slopes are overgrown with myrtle, lentisk, and many sorts of thorny shrubs, especially the one called rhamnus, which gave the district its ancient name. The soil of the valley is partly under cultivation, but most of it is covered with dense underwood and oaks of the valanidia species. On a low flat ridge which runs across the valley from east to west there are some ancient ruins, consisting of walls and foundations of houses. There are now no permanent inhabitations in the whole valley. A few dirty hamlets, tenanted from time to time by peasants for the purpose of looking after their fields, lie at its eastern edge. The general aspect of the country is lonesome and desolate.

Towards the northern end of the valley the ground gradually rises; and where it terminates the scenery changes. Here, at the northern extremity of the valley, a narrow woody glen, about half a mile long, descends rapidly in a north-easterly direction to the sea-shore. At the head of the glen, commanding a magnificent view down its wooded depths and across the narrow channel of the Euripus to the lofty mountains of Euboea, rises a stately terrace supported by exquisitely constructed walls of white marble, which are embowered in a luxuriant growth of dark-green shrubbery and fir-trees. In this superb situation, crowning the terrace, stand side by side the ruins of two temples, the famous temple of Nemesis and a smaller temple, probably of Themis. Below, where the glen opens on the shore, an isolated rocky hill juts out into the sea; and on its sides, half buried in thickly clustering masses of evergreens, are the white marble walls and towers of Rhamnus.

IV. Marathon.—The plain of Marathon, the scene of the memorable defeat of the Persians by the Athenians in 490 B.C., is a crescent-shaped stretch of flat land curving round the shore of a spacious bay and bounded on the landward side by a semicircle of steep mountains, with bare rocky sides, which rise abruptly from the plain. In its north-eastern corner the plain is terminated by a narrow rocky promontory running southward far into the sea and sheltering the bay on the north-east; in antiquity this promontory was called Cynosura (‘dog’s tail’), it is now called Cape Stomi or Cape Marathon. At its southern end the plain is terminated by Mount Agrieliki, a spur of Mount Pentelicus, which here advances so far eastward as to leave only a narrow strip of flat land between it and the sea. Through this strip of flat land at the foot of Mount Agrieliki runs the only carriage road which connects Marathon with Athens. The length of the plain of Marathon from north-east to south-west is about six miles; its breadth varies from one and a half to two and a half miles. The shore is a shelving sandy beach, free from rocks and shoals, and well suited for the disembarkation of troops. A great swamp, covered with sharp reed-grass and divided from the sea by a narrow strip of sandy beach overgrown with pine-trees, occupies most of the northern end of the plain. It never dries wholly up even in the heat of summer; two canals constructed by General Sutzos have only partially drained it. Tamarisk bushes grow in the drier parts of the marsh; their scarlet blossoms are conspicuous in spring. The swamp is deepest at its western side, where it is separated only by a narrow passage, hardly wide enough for two horses to pass each other, from the steep rocky slope of Mount Stavrokoraki. The ancient road which led northward from the plain of Marathon to Rhamnus ran along this narrow passage, between the marsh on the one hand and the slope of the mountain on the other. Leake noticed traces of ancient chariot-wheels here; and till a few years ago a long line of stones, a little farther to the south, marked the line of the ancient road. At the northern end of this defile between the marsh and the mountain stands the modern village of Kato-Souli. About a quarter of a mile to the south of it, close to the road and to the foot of the mountain, are the deepest pools of the swamp; they are easily distinguished by the luxuriant vegetation that surrounds them, the tall reeds being particularly noticeable. These pools, beside which cattle find green pasture in summer when the plains are scorched and brown with heat, are fed by powerful subterranean sources, the Macaria of the ancients, about which Pausanias tells us the legend of Macaria, daughter of Hercules, who gave her name to the spring. Strabo says that the head of Eurystheus was cut off and buried by Iolaus beside the spring Macaria, under the highroad, and that hence the place was called ‘the head of Eurystheus.’ At Kato-Souli, about half-way up the slope of the hill which rises above the village, there are some shallow niche-like excavations in the rock, not unlike mangers. It may have been these niches to which popular fancy gave the name of ‘the mangers of the horses of Artaphernes.’ On its opposite or eastern side the great swamp ends in a small salt-water lake, now called Drakonera, that is ‘the dragon-water’ or ‘the enchanted water.’ This lake discharges itself into the sea by a stream which flows exactly at the point where the sandy beach of the bay ends and the rocks of Cape Cynosura begin. Sea fish are caught in the lake, and eels in the fresh-water pools of the marsh. The salt lake has perhaps been formed since the time of Pausanias, for he describes only the marsh and a stream flowing from it into the sea. At the southern end of the plain of Marathon there is another, but much smaller, swamp called Vrexisa between the sea and the foot of Mount Agrieliki. Its greatest breadth is about half a mile. It is covered with reedy grass and shrubs, and is separated from the sea by a strip of sand. The highroad to Athens runs betwixt this marsh and the foot of the mountains.

Between these two marshes, the one on the north, the other on the south, the plain of Marathon is now chiefly covered with corn-fields. But towards its southern end there is a stretch of vineyards mixed with olives and fruit-trees and dotted with a few pines and cypresses. Farther north, an isolated oak-tree rising here and there, and a green belt of currant-plantations stretching from the foot of the hills to the shore of the bay, break the uniformity of the endless corn-fields. The plain is uninhabited. The villages lie at the foot of the mountains or in the neighbouring glens. On a still autumn day, under a lowering sky, the wide expanse of the solitary plain presents a chilling and dreary aspect. Not a living creature is to be seen, except perhaps a few peasants in the distance ploughing with teams of slow-paced oxen.

In this vast sweep of level ground the eye is caught, at no great distance, by a single solitary object rising inconspicuously above it. This is the famous mound, now called Soros, which covers the remains of the Athenians who fell in the battle. It rises from the plain a mile from the foot of the hills, half a mile from the sea, and about three-quarters of a mile north of the marsh of Vrexisa. It is a conical mound of light, reddish mould, some thirty feet high and two hundred paces in circumference. Its top has been somewhat flattened by excavations; its sides are overgrown with low brushwood. A wild pear-tree grows at its foot. In April-June 1890 the mound was excavated under the superintendence of Mr. Staes for the Greek Government. Trenches were cut into it, and at the depth of about nine feet below the present surface of the plain there was found an artificial floor, constructed of sand and other materials, about eighty-five feet long and twenty feet broad. On this floor there rested a layer of ashes, charcoal, and human bones, charred by fire and mouldering away with damp. Mixed with this layer of ashes and bones were about thirty earthenware vases, most of them broken in pieces. These vases are painted in the common black-figured style; the subjects represented are generally chariots, but in some cases horsemen and foot-soldiers. Besides these vases there was found a long-necked amphora adorned with friezes of beasts and monsters in the oriental style, and a winged figure of the oriental Artemis; and another two-handled vase of reddish-brown clay, with decorations somewhat in the Mycenaean style, was found to contain charred bones, perhaps those of a general. Further excavations made in the following year laid bare a sacrificial pit or trench extending diagonally under the mound from north to south. This trench is cased with burnt bricks, and contained ashes, charcoal, and the bones of animals and birds, mixed with fragments of black-figured vases. It had originally been roofed with bricks, which had fallen in. The bones found in this trench are clearly those of the victims sacrificed to the heroic dead before the mound was heaped over their remains; and the broken vases discovered along with them may have been those which were used at the funeral banquet. The Greek archaeologists further detected some vestiges which led them to believe that, even after the mound had been raised, sacrifices continued to be annually offered at it. This confirms Pausanias’s statement that the men who fell in the battle were worshipped as heroes by the people of Marathon. From an inscription we learn that the Athenian lads went to the tomb, laid wreaths on it, and sacrificed to the dead.

The excavations have finally disproved a theory, broached by E. Curtius in 1853 and maintained by Professor Milchhöfer as late as 1889, that, the mound was prehistoric and had nothing to do with the battle of Marathon. For the black-figured vases found with the bones and ashes of the dead belong to the period of the Persian wars; the human remains can therefore be no other than those of the hundred and ninety-two Athenians who fell at Marathon. Curtius’s erroneous theory was apparently countenanced by some imperfect excavations made by Dr. Schliemann in 1884. Many bronze arrow-heads, about an inch long and pierced with a round hole at the top for the reception of the shaft, have been picked up at the mound; also a great number of black flints, rudely chipped into shape. It has been conjectured that these flints are parts of the stone-headed arrows discharged by the Ethiopian archers in the Persian army. But against this opinion it has been urged that similar flints have been found at other ancient sites in Attica and elsewhere, especially in the oldest graves on many Greek islands, and have not been found at Thermopylae and Plataea, where, if anywhere, the stone-headed arrows may be supposed to have flown in showers.

There are two main routes from the plain of Marathon to Athens; one of them goes by the south, the other by the north side of Mount Pentelicus. The first route leaves the plain at its southern extremity, and passing between the foot of Mount Agrieliki and the marsh of Vrexisa runs parallel with the coast for some distance. It then turns westward, and crossing the deep valley which divides Pentelicus on the north from Hymettus on the south enters the plain of Athens. This is by far the easiest road; it is the only one which vehicles can traverse. The distance by this road from the great mound at Marathon to Athens is about twenty-five or twenty-six miles. The other route, by the north side of Mount Pentelicus, goes from Oenoe (the modern Ninoi) by a very steep and toilsome path to Stamata, a village in a high situation, surrounded by a few barren fields, among woods of pine. In many places the path is so hemmed in between cliffs and precipices that there is room only for a single horse. Trees are rare, but the stony slopes of the mountain are overgrown with shrubs of many sorts, among which the Erica arborea is conspicuous. In spring its masses of white blossoms perfume the whole air with their fragrance. About half an hour short of Stamata, at a point where there is a spring shaded by fine plane-trees, the path is joined on the left by another path, also steep and toilsome, which comes up from Vrana. This latter path commands a magnificent view backward down the deep ravine through which the traveller has ascended. On either side of the ravine rise the mountains, their precipitous sides covered with straggling pine-forest or evergreen copse, and terminating in bold peaks; below is spread out the green expanse of the Marathonian plain, backed by the sea and Cape Cynosura curving into the blue water with the sweep of a scimitar. Farther off, bounding the prospect, stretches the long line of the mountains of Euboea.