The “Temple of Diana,” Evora
It is difficult to shake oneself free from retrospective visions when standing between this stately ruin and the cathedral that has supplanted it; but regarded simply as a Roman material relic, the ruin is remarkable. It is of a similar period and much resembles the Maison Carrée at Nimes, although as I recollect it appeared much larger. The temple at Evora is about eighty feet long and nearly fifty feet broad, the height of the columns being twenty-five feet. Behind the temple there is a pretty shady public garden, ending in a balustrade where the hill drops suddenly away to the plain spread out at the foot for miles to the mountains far away. It was a spot which will linger in my memory to the last; and I left it sorrowfully.
Opposite the temple is the Archæological Museum of Evora, containing a large collection of Roman and mediæval relics, found in the city and rescued from ruined buildings; and in the streets still the remains of ancient architecture greet the visitor at every turn. Evora, indeed, is a museum of itself; and it is impossible even to mention a quarter of the objects in it that would appeal to an antiquarian or archæologist. Two buildings there are, however, that cannot be entirely passed over. The so-called palace of Dom Manuel is now used as an agricultural museum, and some of the upper portion has been rebuilt in semi-Moorish style; but the lower portion is intact, and is a splendid specimen of early sixteenth-century stonework. The hall is low but tremendously massive, the walls being three yards thick, and the octagonal pillars supporting the simple groined roof in the centre being massive in proportion.
From the beautiful semi-tropical public garden in which this palace stands, just beyond the mediæval walls of the city, it is but a step across the road to the extraordinary hermitage church of St. Braz. A great plague had assailed Evora in 1479, and here a temporary pesthouse was established outside the walls. The bishop vowed that if St. Braz would free the place from the epidemic he would build here a permanent temple to his honour. When the plague disappeared in the following year, 1480, the bishop kept his word, and the present church has stood here ever since. The style, in my experience, is unique—Norman-Gothic local archæologists call it—the building being a long, low, fortress-like structure, with six pointed turrets along each side, and with battlemented parapets; the two first turrets supporting a massive battlemented ante-porch, with plain pointed arches and Byzantine capitals, the porch being perhaps a third the length of the church, and of the same height. For a building so late as the end of the fifteenth century, just on the verge of the period that went crazy over the exuberant Manueline, this survival of the Norman-Byzantine tradition is extraordinary.
Evora was all aglow with the glories of the setting sun when I left it. Long lines of lofty eucalyptus trees stretched as far as the eye reached along the railway, the long hanging strips of bark and the bright clean trunks shining a brilliant orange, whilst the drooping foliage was a bright bronze tipped with gold. Wistaria and clematis hung in wondrous bunches and masses over walls and in wayside gardens, and no sign of coming winter marred the beauty of the day. Long rows of trucks and waggons filled with cork lined the way, and open doors of depôts and warehouses disclosed overflowing stores of cork in bales ready for transport; for Evora is the centre of this profitable industry, and derives from it much of its prosperity. Over all the gold and emerald after-glow cast its strange glamour; high overhead the deep blue of the sky was just flecked by purple cloud, and the soft scented air was like a breath from the Arabian Nights.
Once only in the four hours’ journey through the night to Barreiro and Lisbon was I aroused from the series of reveries into which the impressions of these scenes had cast me. It was at a station by the way, dimly lit with smoky oil lamps. Some bundles of rags topped by nightcaps lounged about in the gloom of the platform, and across the way a few white cottages stood out from a background of trees and the hills beyond, whilst overhead, through the high branches of the eucalyptus, the stars shone brilliantly. There was nothing special in all this, for the same picture is presented by most Portuguese and Spanish railway stations by night during the interminable waits inherent to travelling by a train whose first interest is the conveyance of merchandise; but what did strike me as I looked was the name of the place: Montemor.
From here, then, from this humble remote place, came the man, the poet, Jorge de Montemor—or Montemayor as he came to be called—who set all cultured Europe running again after the preposterous pastoral romances of lovelorn shepherds and shepherdesses, which had been forgotten since the eclogues and bucolics of classical Italy had been voted old-fashioned. From here came the inspiration that made Cervantes write the “Galatea,” Sidney write the “Arcadia,” and Spenser write the “Fairy Queen”: these sweet fertile hillsides and vales of southern Portugal were the scenes which the native poet peopled with the erotic swains of his Spanish pastoral, “Diana Enamorada.” It was a style utterly foreign to arid Spain, for there the flocks had to travel in vast multitudes from desert to desert in search of the scanty pasture; but it caught the fancy of a people sated with knights-errant, and the pastoral became the rage. That Spain itself should have given it new birth was incredible, though Jorge de Montemor wrote in Spanish. The neighbourhood of his birthplace gives us the key; for here in rich pastures and lush, half-tropical valleys flocks would need but little tending or travelling, and here beneath the sunny skies shepherds and their lasses might as easily as in Italy be imagined piping, singing, and telling their long-winded love stories to their hearts’ content.
Lisbon was all smiles when I arrived; clear and crisp as if no rain-clouds and wreaths of wet mist had ever crept up the Tagus and put her out of temper. But the big steamer was lying in the harbour ready to sail for England, and though Lisbon tempted me, I could not choose but go. Forth from the splendid panorama we went, past the great white fortress high on the hill, the city piled up on its amphitheatre and set in verdant frames, the majestic square palace of Ajuda looking down upon Belem and its glorious church, and the sturdy old tower rising from the water dumbly protesting against its desecration by the gasworks that surround it.
