Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

The ruins are extensive, but mainly flat, so that their interest as ruins is almost purely archæological. The ordinary visitor will find the chief charm in the memories of the place. Of course there is a museum on the spot, as in every Greek site. It contains a large number of fragments from the temples and Propylæa, bits of statuary and bas-relief having chiefly to do with Demeter and her attendant goddesses. By far the most interesting and most perfect of the Eleusinian reliefs, however, is in the national museum at Athens—a large slab representing Demeter and Proserpine bestowing the gift of seed corn on the youth Triptolemus, who is credited with the invention of the plow. For some reason, doubtless because of the hospitality of his family to her, Triptolemus won the lasting favor of Demeter, who not only gave him corn but instructed him in the art of tilling the stubborn glebe. It seems entirely probable that Triptolemus and Kora shared in the mystic rites at Eleusis. As for the dying with a “fairer hope” spoken of by Cicero as inculcated by the ceremonies of the cult, one may conjecture that it sprang from some early pagan interpretation of the principle later enunciated in the Scriptural “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die.”

Eleusis itself lies on a low knoll in the midst of the Thriasian plain, which in early spring presents a most attractive appearance of fertility on every side, appropriately enough to the traditions of the spot. From the top of the hillock behind the great temple and the museum, one obtains a good view of the vale northward and of the sacred way winding off toward Corinth by way of Megara. Where the plain stops and the mountain wall approaches once again close to the sea, this road grows decidedly picturesque, recalling in a mild way the celebrated Amalfi drive as it rises and falls on the face of the cliff. Nor should one pass from the subject of Eleusis without mentioning the numerous little kids that frisk over the ruins, attended by anxious mother-goats, all far from unfriendly. Kids are common enough sights in Greece, and to lovers of pets they are always irresistible; but nowhere are they more so than at Eleusis, where they add their mite of attractiveness to the scene. The grown-up goat is far from pretty, but by some curious dispensation of nature the ugliest of animals seem to have the most attractive young, and the frisking lambs and kids of Greece furnish striking examples of it.

The ride back to the city must be begun in season to get the sunset light on the west front of the Acropolis, which is especially effective from the Eleusis road all the way from Daphne’s Pass to the city proper. As for Salamis, which is always in sight until the pass is crossed, it is enough to say that, like Marathon, it is a place of memories only. The bay that one sees from the Eleusis road is not the one in which the great naval battle was fought. That lies on the other side, toward the open gulf, and is best seen from the sea. Few care to make a special excursion to the island itself, which is rocky and barren, and after all the chief interest is in its immediate waters. The account of the battle in Herodotus is decidedly worth reading on the spot, and to this day they will show you a rocky promontory supposed to have been the point where Xerxes had his throne placed so that he might watch the fight which resulted so disastrously to his ships. The battle, by the way, was another monument to the wiles of Themistocles, who recognized in the bulwarks of the ships the “wooden walls” which the oracle said would save Athens, and who, when he found the commanders weakening, secretly sent word to the Persians urging them to close in and fight. This was done; and the navy being reduced to the necessity of conflict acquitted itself nobly.

Of the other local excursions, that to Marathon is easily made in a day by carriage. There is little to see there, save a plain, lined on the one hand by the mountains which look on Marathon, and on the other by the sea, largely girt with marshes. The lion which once crowned the tumulus is gone, nobody knows whither. It is much, however, from a purely sentimental point of view, to have stood upon the site itself, the scene of one of the world’s famous battles. Some grudging critics, including the erudite Mahaffy, incline to believe that Marathon was a rather small affair, judged by purely military standards—a conflict of one undisciplined host with an even less disciplined one, in an age when battles ordinarily were won by an endurance of nerve in the face of a hand-to-hand charge rather than by actual carnage. These maintain that the chief celebrity of Marathon rests not on its military glories, but on the fame which the Athenians, a literary race, gave it in song and story. But even these have to admit that Marathon meant much to history, and that the psychological effect of it was enormous, as showing that the Persians were by no means invincible, so that ten years later Salamis put the finishing blow to Persian attempts on the west. For those who do not care to make the long ride to the field itself, it is quite possible to obtain a view of the plain from the summit of Pentelicus, something like fifteen miles away, although this does not reveal the mound marking the actual site.

That mountain’s chief celebrity is, of course, to be found in the great marble quarries from which came the stone for the Acropolis temples, and it is these rather than the view of Marathon that draw climbers to the famous height. The ancient quarries lie far up on the side of the slope, and the marks of the old chisels are still plainly to be discerned. The difficulties of getting out perfect stone in the ancient days seem to have been enormous; but that they were surmounted is obvious from the fact that the great blocks used in building the Parthenon and Propylæa were handled with comparative speed, as shown by the relatively few years occupied in erecting them. It seems probable that the stone was slid down the mountain side in chutes to the point where it was feasible to begin carting it. Inherent but invisible defects naturally occurred, and these the ancients managed to detect by sounding with a mallet. Samples of these imperfect blocks are to be seen lying where they fell when the builders rejected them, not only on the road by the quarries but on the Acropolis itself.

THE TEMPLE AT SUNIUM

Sunium, the famous promontory at the extremity of the Attic peninsula, may be reached by a train on the road that serves the ancient silver mines of Laurium, but as the trains are slow and infrequent it is better, if one can, to go down by sea. Our own visit was so made, the vessel landing us accommodatingly at the foot of the promontory on which a few columns of the ancient temple are still standing. The columns that remain are decidedly whiter than those on the Acropolis, and the general effect is highly satisfying to one’s preconceived ideas of Greek ruins. Dispute is rife as to the particular deity to whom this shrine was anciently consecrated, and the rivalry lies between those traditional antagonists, Athena and Poseidon, each of whom advances plausible claims. How the case can be decided without another contest between the two, like that supposed to have taken place on the Acropolis itself and depicted by Pheidias, is not clear. For who shall decide when doctors of archæology disagree?

The chief architectural peculiarity of the Sunium temple is the arrangement of its frontal columns "in antis,"—that is to say, included between two projecting ends of the side walls. And, in addition, one regrets to say that the ruin is peculiar in affording evidences of modern vandalism more common in our own country than in Hellas, namely, the scratching of signatures on the surface of the stone. All sorts of names have been scrawled there,—English, French, Italian, American, Greek,—and most famous of all, no doubt, the unblushing signature of no less a personage than Byron himself! Perhaps, however, it is not really his. There may be isolated instances of this low form of vandalism elsewhere, but I do not recall any that can compare with the volume of defacing scrawls to be seen at Sunium.

Lovelier far than Sunium is the situation of the temple in Ægina, occupying a commanding height in that large and lofty island on the other side of the gulf, opposite the Piræus and perhaps six or seven miles distant from that port. The journey to it is necessarily by sea, and it has become a frequent objective point for steamer excursions landing near the temple itself rather than at the distant town. In the absence of a steamer, it is possible to charter native boats for a small cost and with a fair breeze make the run across the bay in a comparatively brief time. From the cove where parties are generally landed the temple cannot be seen, as the slopes are covered with trees and the shrine itself is distant some twenty minutes on foot. Donkeys can be had, as usual, but they save labor rather than time, and the walk, being through a grove of fragrant pines, is far from arduous or fatiguing. The odor of the pines is most agreeable, the more so because after one has sojourned for a brief time in comparatively treeless Attica one is the more ready to welcome a scent of the forest. The pungency of the grove is due, however, less to the pine needles and cones than to the tapping, or rather “blazing,” of the trunks for their resin. Under nearly every tree will be found stone troughs, into which the native juice of the tree oozes with painful slowness. The resin, of course, is for the native wines, which the Greek much prefers flavored with that ingredient. The drinking of resinated wine is an acquired taste, so far as foreigners are concerned. Some solemnly aver that they like it,—and even prefer it to the unresinated kind; but the average man not to the manner born declares it to be only less palatable than medicine. The Greeks maintain that the resin adds to the healthfulness of the wines, and to get the gum they have ruined countless pine groves by this tapping process so evident in the Ægina woods, for the gashes cut in the trees have the effect of stunting the growth.