XLI. Monemvasia.—The ancient Minoa[[8]] is now Monemvasia, an island about half a mile long, close to the shore, with which it is connected by a long old stone bridge. The island is a lofty precipitous rock, resembling Gibraltar, or the Bass Rock and Dumbarton Rock in Scotland. The summit, crowned by the ruins of a mediaeval fortress and a mass of tumble-down roofless churches and houses overgrown with weeds, is now only a sheepwalk. From the summit the rock falls away in sheer and lofty precipices, especially on the north. The modern town lies huddled up at the foot of the cliffs on the southern side. Strong walls encircle it, which are connected with the ruined fortress on the top of the rock. Within the walls everything is fast falling to decay. Fine churches, high archways, great private houses, all deserted and in ruins, testify to the former prosperity and the present decline of the town. Trade has quite deserted it; the coasting steamers call only at rare intervals. From the town a zigzag path leads up the face of the rock to the old citadel on the summit.
[8]. The reference is to Minoa on the eastern coast of Laconia, not to the better known but less picturesque Minoa near Megara.
In the Middle Ages Monemvasia was one of the chief places of the Levantine trade and one of the strongest fortresses in the Morea. It gave its name to Malmsey wine, which was grown in the Cyclades, especially Tenos, but was called after the port whence it was shipped to the west.
XLII. Maina.—The great central peninsula of southern Greece, which Pausanias describes in detail, has been known since the Middle Ages by the name of Maina or Mani. The backbone of the peninsula is the great range of Taygetus, which runs south till it terminates in Taenarum, the modern Cape Matapan, the southern extremity of Greece. The scenery of the peninsula is wild and savage; the villages, hedged in by impenetrable thickets of cactus, cling like eagles’ eyries to the faces of apparently inaccessible cliffs, and are reached by stony and exceedingly toilsome footpaths—the only semblance of roads in these secluded highlands. Almost everywhere the surface is nothing but the naked rock. Wood there is none, but a few bushes and here and there some tufts of grass have rooted themselves in the crevices of the rocks, and furnish a scanty pasture to the sheep and goats. The miserable stony soil, wherever it exists, is carefully husbanded by means of terraces, and under the soft southern sky of Laconia yields a tolerable return. There are no springs or brooks; water is obtained only from cisterns, which are kept closed by their owners, and leave to draw from them has to be paid for.
The inhabitants, the Mainotes, Mainiotes, or Maniates, are a hardy and warlike race of mountaineers, who claim to be descended from the ancient Spartans. In the fastnesses of their rugged mountains they are said to have retained their primitive heathenism till the latter half of the ninth century; and the Turks never succeeded in subjugating them. As pirates they were greatly dreaded. They are still notorious for the relentless ferocity of their blood-feuds, which are so common that every family of importance has a tower in which to take refuge from the avengers of blood. In these towers persons implicated in a blood-feud have been known to live for many years without ever coming out. To this day many heads of families dare not quit their shelter except under a strong guard of armed retainers. A village will contain twenty to thirty of such strongholds. Each tower is surrounded by a few low huts, which serve as workshops and as the lodgings of the subordinate members of the household. Frequently tower and huts together are enclosed within a fortification wall strengthened with turrets and loopholed. Bitter feuds often rage between the towers of the same village.
XLIII. Pharae and the Messenian Plain.—The ancient Pharae, or Pherae, probably occupied the site of the modern Kalamata, an industrial town situated on the left bank of the broad stony bed of the Nedon, a mile from the sea. Telemachus, in search of his father, lodged for the night at Pharae on his way from Pylus to Sparta, and again on his return. It is a long day’s ride from Sparta to Kalamata, by the magnificent Langada pass over Mount Taygetus. Pausanias does not mention the name of the river on which Pharae stood, but from Strabo we learn that it was the Nedon. It is a torrent which issues from a rocky gorge in Mount Taygetus, about a mile to the north-east of a steep hill that rises at the back of the town. This hill is crowned with a mediaeval castle, built or occupied successively by Franks, Venetians, and Turks. The presence of ancient hewn stones in the walls, as well as the whole arrangement of the fortress, seem to show that a castle stood here in antiquity also. There are no other relics of antiquity in Kalamata.
The town, with its narrow winding streets and lively bazaar, lies in the great Messenian plain, near its south-eastern extremity. This plain, open to the south and sheltered from the north by mountains, is the warmest part of Greece, and on account of its wonderful fertility was known to the ancients as Makaria or the Happy Land. Its natural wealth and delightful climate were celebrated by Euripides in a lost play, of which some lines have been preserved by Strabo. Here at the present day groves of oranges, lemons, fig-trees, olives, and vineyards succeed each other, all fenced by gigantic hedges of prickly and fantastically-shaped cactuses and sword-like aloes, which, with the hot air, remind a traveller from northern Europe that he is in a sub-tropical climate.
XLIV. Messene.—From Kalamata, the probable site of the ancient Pharae, the road to Messene runs north-west across the fertile Messenian plain between hedges of huge fantastically-shaped cactuses and groves of fig-trees, olives, and vines. In front of us loom nearer and nearer the twin peaks of Ithome and Eva rising boldly and abruptly from a single base on the western side of the plain, and forming the natural citadel, as it were, of the whole country. As we near their base we quit the dusty highway and strike westward up the mountain-side by devious and rocky paths. This brings us in time to the monastery of Vourkano, where visitors to Messene generally spend the night.