We walked along the shore by the ruins of a Doric temple. The rocks are cut, as they are about Athens, for the reception of buildings, and there are moreover considerable quarries. The Syracusans confined their Athenian prisoners in their quarries; and the Athenians placed here the captives taken at Syracuse; but the stone of the Piræus is not so firm as that of Syracuse, and the hills are of less extent; the prisoners were consequently able to work their way out. It is rather a friable limestone, containing shells. We crossed over from the port to what is called the Tomb of Themistocles, but there are many difficulties in the way of our belief. A level surface, now frequently covered by the sea, was cut in the rocks, and on it was raised a lofty Ionic column; this has been overthrown, but the pieces of the shaft remain, and even a fragment of the capital, by which we are enabled to determine the order; and close to the place on which it stood, some oblong sepulchres are cut in the rock. In these, as in many of the tombs about Athens, there is a sort of double grave; a deep groove separating the immediate receptacle of the body from the rest of the rock, and there appears to have been a cover to this receptacle, besides the larger one to the tomb or grave. From this point we are able to trace the wall of the city by a continued heap of stones along the whole of the winding coast, as far as Munychia. This port consists of a somewhat elliptical basin, with a narrow and shallow entrance. There are remains of a theatre, and of a temple in its vicinity; and on the hill above are more considerable traces of another theatre; besides tombs without number, some of which are very curious. We were told of three temples, but we noticed only the foundations of two, and missed also the vestiges of the citadel of the Piræus, and some Cyclopean walls. The port of Phalerus was completed by artificial means, into an almost circular form; parts of the piers remain, but the whole is extremely shallow. To the east of the Piræus and of the bay of Phalerus, is the small promontory of Cape Colias. It is composed of a soft and recent limestone; even more so than that of the quarries above mentioned, containing organic remains.
I must give you an account of another excursion which I made on the 7th of March, in company with Mr. B. Our route passed through the olive-groves, and we crossed several channels of the Cephisus, all alike destitute of running water. The one farthest from Athens had most the appearance of being the natural channel, as its banks were fringed with bushes, but we did not find the traces of an ancient bridge, which are said to exist in this part. On leaving the olive-grove we pass by one of the small chapels so numerous about Athens; they are the erections of individuals, and I believe service is performed in them once a year, on the feast-day of the patron saint; and almost all of them contain some fragments of antiquity. From Athens to the grove is a continued but very gentle descent, the grove itself is nearly on a level, but on leaving it we immediately begin to ascend. About a mile beyond it, on the road to Daphne, there is a most admirable distant view of Athens, better perhaps in the morning, when the parts are a good deal massed in shade, from the light being behind them, than in the evening, when the details are brought out by the setting sun. A conical hill on the right, at the entrance of the defile between the hills Aigialos and Corydalus, is supposed to be the ancient Pœcilon, and to have been crowned with a temple of Apollo; but though there are almost everywhere abundant traces of foundations, there is nothing which can be distinctly made out as the remains of a temple. The rocks on the road, till we arrive at the foot of this hill, are of mica slate; at that point we find the breccia already mentioned as belonging probably to the Magnesian limestone, and the upper part both of the Pœcilon, and of the adjoining mountains, is of a limestone, which I imagined at the time to rest upon the breccia.
Daphne is a convent seated in the defile above-mentioned, where a wood of pines (Pinus maritima, or Halepensis) stretches over the Corydalus, and gives a charm to the scenery, which is felt the more from the usual nakedness of the Athenian hills. There are a few architectural fragments, and many squared stones at Daphne, and several foundations of walls, but nothing of much consequence.
From the convent we rode to the Written-rock, at the farther end of the same defile, on the road to Eleusis. Here, on a smoothed face of stone, are several recesses for ex voto tablets, or perhaps for little statues or other offerings. The offerings are gone, but with some difficulty we may trace portions of the inscriptions below them. Many of these are covered with a thin deposit of hard stalagmite, which it appears must have proceeded from the mere action of the weather on the surface of the stone; for from the situation of the rocks, it is hardly possible that any current of water should have passed over them. Before arriving at the Written-rock, we may observe vestiges of the ancient sacred way, supported in places on a sort of terrace, formed merely of natural fragments found on the spot, untooled, and uncemented; and in other places are marks of wheels, on a surface quite as uneven as that of the road to the Piræus. There are said also to be traces of a temple of Venus, but I could make nothing out. From this spot we walked to the top of Ægialus, whence we enjoyed a glorious view over the gulf and island of Salamis, the Thriasian plains of Eleusis, the mountains of Kerata and Cithæron, and a distant view of snowy summits in the Morea. Beyond this range of hills we find a salt lake. The beds of limestone apparently corresponding with that of the immediate neighbourhood of Athens, continue quite to the base of the hill, but it is probable that the salt is deposited in a partial formation of the red marl, which may intervene between this and the Magnesian limestone. The fertility of the celebrated vale of Eleusis agrees well with such an idea; the red marl often decomposing into a productive soil, when it can obtain sufficient moisture. The water of this salt pool or lake, is kept up by a dam to the height of two or three feet above the sea, and a copious current issues from it. At a little distance there is another pool of the same sort, which also furnishes a considerable issue of salt water. Pausanias supposes these streams to originate from the sea on the eastern shore of Attica. We returned along the shore, where the limestone rocks exhibit large crevices, filled up with a yellowish stalagmite or alabaster.[[31]] The breccia here appears again, and as I conceived at the time, running under the limestone rock. A little, pleasant, but uncultivated valley, opening to the shore, preceded our entrance to the defile on this side. It is sprinkled with olive and carob trees, and with a thorny tree something like an almond, now in full flower.[[32]] Corydalus is here also covered with the Pinus Halepensis, but Ægialus has only bushes.
On the 26th of March I went up Hymettus, in company with Sir F. A. who has been visiting Athens with a party from Corfu, among whom is Dr. Skey. The road takes a direction nearly east, to the convent of St. Cyrian, or as I understood the name, St. Sergian. It lies up the valley of the Ilissus, and afterwards follows a ravine uniting with it, or perhaps forming a part of it, for amongst the ravines descending from this mountain, I find it difficult to decide which water-course ought to preserve the name. In our way we observed a beautiful ornament over the entrance of a metokhi, or farm establishment. The convent is embosomed in a shady little hollow at the foot of the mountain, and has by it a pretty copious spring of good water, which however soon disappears, being either diverted, or evaporated among the olive-grounds, or lost amongst the rocks and stones. There are some badly worked columns, and some bad capitals, not originally made for them. There is also another, but smaller and less perfect fragment of the ornament we had seen over the gateway of the metokhi, and a ram’s head at the fountain. No doubt this delicious spot was anciently appropriated, but nothing remains to determine in what manner. Dr. S. and myself ascended the mountain from this point on foot. The whole of it seems to consist of a limestone, intimately connected with the mica slate, though the greater part contains little or no mica; and not to be of the same nature with that of the Musæum or Pnyx. I imagine the convent to stand about 400 feet above the sea, and the mountain to rise about 1,600 feet above the convent. On the side towards Athens it descends in rugged and uneven slopes, but on the opposite side, it is very broken and precipitous. We saw Parnassus, a mass of snow; Helicon, with two or three white stripes near the top; Cyllene, and a long range from it, deeply capped with snow, and Delphi in Eubœa, where the snow descended in ribs almost half way down; all the other mountains were clear, and we had an extensive and varied prospect of sea and land, but the day was not favourable. A very deep ravine tending to the west, tempted Dr. S. and myself to its examination. Some of the rocks were of a very white and pure marble, but there were no marks of its having been quarried. Others were of breccia, lying on the steep slope of the mountain, and broken off abruptly, so as to have at first sight, the appearance of running under the marble. The ravine is two or three miles in length, covered with bushes, and in the upper part are trees of the Pinus Halepensis, but we descended without seeing or hearing any signs of any animal bigger than an insect, and very few of them. The weather during the first part of our stay at Athens was in general very fine and pleasant, the glass rising to near 60° in the shade during the day. The wind was sometimes cold, but we had hardly any rain. A high wind when it occurs is particularly inconvenient to me, as I have no sufficient means of fastening the window-shutters of my room. On the night of the 20th of January we had a good deal of snow, and on the following morning every thing was covered. About the middle of February we frequently saw heavy clouds, and rain or snow falling on the mountains. The thermometer has never been so low as 30°, and it is well that it seldom approaches even to the freezing point, for on such occasions the effects are very unpleasant; no milk, no eggs, no linen can be washed; in fact nothing proceeds, and all the shops are shut; while at home, the chambers pervious in all directions to the winds, formed a very poor protection against the keen north-easter, which made the latter part of February and the earlier part of March, very much like a March month in England. We had even a little snow on the 20th.
I found soon after my arrival that Mr. B. had engaged a Greek master, who as he said, put him in a fever whenever he came. I therefore engaged our consul to recommend another, who was, as I discovered on his first visit, hardly able to speak a word of Italian; what was worse, he did not at all understand the art of teaching, nor was he ready in comprehending what was required of him. Neither Mr. B.’s master nor mine have any distinct notions of grammar, and perhaps the modern Greek, or Romaic, can hardly be said to have a grammar, or even to be a written language; for the books published by Coray and others in Germany and Italy, are written in a compound of ancient and modern, which each author makes for himself, and which a Greek of these degenerate days can understand very imperfectly, unless he be acquainted with the ancient Hellenic. After twelve lessons, in which I made very little progress, I dismissed my teacher, and S. is now trying his hand with him. He has at least the merit of being very good tempered, and so willing to teach, that he never leaves us till he is fairly turned out of the room. Nothing can be more different in sound than the ancient Greek, as spoken by one of their descendants, and the language called Greek by us; and this is owing to two circumstances: the attention which the moderns pay to accent rather than quantity; and the pronunciation of the vowels. An Englishman, I believe, entirely disregards all the marks of accent, and places the principal stress upon the penultima, if it be long; and on the antepenultima, if the penultima be short; thus transferring to one language, the arbitrary rule acknowledged in another, and with whatever authority there is, decidedly against him. The marks of accent are said to have been of late invention, but they were surely intended to denote something in the intonation of the language. If ancient, they might have lost their meaning at an early period, and have been preserved by habit; but if they were additions, they had reference to a pronunciation which then existed, and probably to one which had long existed, for we all know with how much difficulty innovations are admitted into an established language. By the same rule, the spiritus must have had some meaning, but the modern Greeks wholly neglect it. They read by accent, and I think in general without any regard to quantity; but when the subject is poetry, the quantity becomes perceptible, and the ear readily distinguishes some degree of rhythm.
The present Greeks pronounce the iota, the eta, the upsilon, and the two diphthongs ει and οι, all exactly alike, and resembling, when short, our short i, when long our double ee. The English pronunciation may be wrong, but that of the Greeks cannot be right. It is very improbable that the ancients should have added letters to the alphabet to express sounds for which they had already characters. And unless something of importance has been lost, we must at least deny them all praise of ingenuity in the formation of their alphabet. What I have above mentioned, are the most striking particulars of the present pronunciation, but there are others of considerable importance. No difference is made between the epsilon, and the ai diphthong; none between the omicron and omega in common conversation. Beta is pronounced like our v; delta, like th in thy; gamma, before α, ο, or ω, is a guttural, bearing the same relation to the guttural chi, as our hard g bears to k. Before the other vowels and diphthongs, gamma is y consonant with a guttural prefixed. Kappa is like our k before the α, ο, or ω, but before the other vowels and diphthongs, it takes a y consonant in addition, and this at Athens, and I believe in most places, is very frequently corrupted into our soft ch. Since all the languages which have deduced their mode of writing from the Greeks, give two sounds to each of those two letters (for c, not k, is the legitimate daughter of the kappa) it is highly probable that some such difference existed in the original. Upsilon after a vowel is v or f. These particulars should, I think, be attended to, in transferring modern Greek or Romaic words into our own language.[[33]] Some names are naturalized, and these I would not attempt to alter; but in writing down the few places which will be less known to you, I have followed a regular system; β is v; δ th; γ and κ I leave as g and k; χ, I have ventured to express by kh, which avoids the ambiguity of our ch. In the vowels and diphthongs, α is a; αι is æ: a recurrence to the old mode which suits tolerably well with our pronunciation, ε is e; ει is ei; η is ee; which is sometimes short with us, as in been, as well as with the modern Greeks; ι is i; ο and ω are both o; οι, œ; υ is f or v, according as it is actually sounded when it follows a vowel; y in other cases. This plan you see leaves the etymologies quite as clear as at present, and if it do not follow all the niceties of pronunciation, which it would be difficult to express to an English eye, these niceties are not well settled among the Greeks themselves. I have also added the accent, without which our idea of the word is very imperfect.
The modern Greeks do not pretend that their grammar is the same as that of their ancestors. In many words they form all the oblique cases, by the omission of the s of the nominative; as, ὁ Σωκράτης, makes in the genitive and accusative (they have no dative) τοῦ and τον Σωκράτη; in the vocative case it ought by theory to make ω Σώκρατες, in which case the position of the accent would be changed. I was considering one day whether I had ever observed this to take place, when the little Greek servant of the house began calling the second son of my landlord; she began with Θεμιστόκλη, but as he did not answer it was changed to Θεμίστοκλη, and afterwards to Θεμιστοκλῆ. It seems to me that in vocatives there is a natural tendency to strengthen and lengthen the last syllable, but I have no system to account for her throwing back the accent at the second call, for she certainly never changed the terminating vowel. In the pronouns, the genitives μοῦ, μᾶς, and σᾶς, are used for all cases, but I am told that at Constantinople, the dative is preserved: τοῦ λόγουμου, signifies, I myself, τοῦ λόγουσου, thyself, &c. I do not understand on what principle this idiom is founded. In verbs the modern Greeks have lost the infinitive. They have retained a preter-perfect tense in the indicative, but form the future by a compound of θέλω; however, they seem to be in a fair way of forming a new future by contracting θέλω into θὰ, and incorporating it with the verb.
We have settled here into a very regular course of life. I rise between one and two, Turkish time, which begins at sunset, and is reckoned in twice twelve hours. We breakfast at three. At first we had tea, but our stock being exhausted, we now take coffee; in the winter we used eggs instead of milk, but as the spring came on, milk became plentiful. We stay at home studying Romaic or modern Greek, or completing and arranging the observations of the preceding day till seven or eight, and then go out and examine some building in its details, as far as we can make them out, and about twelve return to dinner. After this S. smokes two or three pipes, and I used to get through one, in order to be in the fashion, but I have now abandoned the attempt, and only take a whiff or two when I am paying visits. These pipes consist of wooden tubes about 6 feet long; those made of the shoots of the cherry tree are reckoned best. They have a bowl of earthenware at one end, some of the best and most beautiful of which are made at Thebes, and an amber mouth-piece at the other. It is said that you may use one of these from the mouth of a person who has the plague, without any danger of infection, but I had rather not try the experiment. A little tray is placed on the ground to receive the bowl of your pipe, as the tube is of course too long to be managed by the hand.
This course has been occasionally interrupted by visiting, especially during the carnival, of which I shall give you an account presently, and sometimes by our attention to occasional objects of curiosity. One of these is the exhibition of the dancing dervises, who use the tower of the winds as the place of their devotions, but they do not always dance. Mr. Sharp and myself entered just as they begun their chaunt, and walked through the midst of them to the gallery appropriated to the reception of strangers, without their taking the least notice of us. They were not at that time all assembled, and the greatest number present at one time was twenty-eight, besides a young man with a child in his arms, who took but little part in the ceremony, and went away before it was half over. The performers were of all ages, from six to sixty, and one old man, I should suppose, to be much more. You know all the orientals sit with their legs crossed under them, and as these are covered by their long garments, they look as if they had none, but the body seems a pivot placed in a socket. The performers sing, and move their bodies backward and forward without bending them, which very much strengthens this idea, and you may conceive what a ridiculous effect it has. They began chaunting slowly, and not loud, but got faster and louder as they proceeded, three boys all the while beating a drum with straps of hard leather. Suddenly the chaunt changed, and another set of words was used. Each chaunt consists of only two or three words, but I have not yet learned what they are. After a short pause they began a third chaunt. Each chaunt was quicker and more animated than the preceding, and some of the young men seemed exhausted by the effort; for independently of repeating the words as fast, and as loud as they can, without allowing themselves to take breath, they move the body incessantly backward and forward, with the head nodding this way and that, as if it were loose upon the shoulders. Some exerted themselves very much, others used no violent effort. The former began to pant for breath, and occasionally to utter a sort of groan, but on a sudden, all stopt, with their hands crossed on the breast, and the head bowed down; after they had raised themselves again, one of them began what I suppose was a hymn, but the singing is not at all to the taste of the rest of Europe; being very monotonous and performed through the nose. After this we had more chaunting, and during one interval, it was part of the ceremony to look at the palms of their hands, and in another occasionally to cover their faces with them. At last they all bowed down with their lips to the ground, and after a short space, got up and kissed each other. The younger ones kissed the hand of the oldest, who in return put it upon their heads, apparently giving them his blessing. They then departed, much to my disappointment, as I had hoped to see the dance.