Greece and the Ægean Islands - Philip Sanford Marden

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

1907

Published November 1907

PROLEGOMENA

What follows makes no pretense whatever of being a scientific work on Greece, from an archæological or other standpoint. That it is written at all is the resultant of several forces, chief among which are the consciousness that no book hitherto published, so far as I am aware, has covered quite the same ground, and the feeling, based on the experience of myself and others, that some such book ought to be available.

By way of explanation and apology, I am forced to admit, even to myself, that what I have written, especially in the opening chapters, is liable to the occasional charge that it has a guide-bookish sound, despite an honest and persistent effort to avoid the same. In the sincere desire to show how easy it really is to visit Hellas, and in the ardent hope of making a few of the rough places smooth for first visitors, I have doubtless been needlessly prolix and explicit at the outset, notably in dealing with a number of sordid details and directions. Moreover, to deal in so small a compass with so vast a subject as that of ancient and modern Athens is a task fraught with many difficulties. One certainly cannot in such a book as this ignore Athens utterly, despite the fact that so much has been published hitherto about the city and its monuments that no further description is at all necessary. My object is not to make Athens more familiar, but rather to describe other and more remote sites in Greece for the information, and I hope also for the pleasure, of past and future travelers. Athens, however, I could not ignore; and while such brief treatment as is possible here is necessarily superficial, it may help to awaken an additional interest in that city where none existed before.