Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

EPIDAURIAN SHEPHERDS

Perhaps halfway out to Epidaurus one passes another remnant of the most remote time—a lofty fortification on a deserted hill. It is of polygonal masonry—that is, of angular stones fitted together without mortar, instead of being squared after the manner of the Cyclopes. Hard by, spanning a ravine which has been worn by centuries of winter torrents, there was a Cyclopean bridge, made of huge rocks so arranged as to form an enduring arch, and on this once ran no doubt the great highway from Epidaurus to the plain of Argos.

It was long after the noontide hour when the gray theatre of Epidaurus, a mere splash of stone in the distant side of a green hill, came in sight, lying a mile or so away across a level field, in which lay scattered the remnants of what was once the most celebrated hospital in the world. For Epidaurus boasted herself to be the birthplace of Æsculapius,—or, as we are on Greek soil, Asklepios,—and held his memory in deep reverence forever after by erecting on the site a vast establishment such as to-day we might call a “sanitarium.” After the heat and dust of the ride it was pleasant to stretch out in the shade of the scanty local trees, on the fragrant grass of the rising ground near the theatre, and look back down the long valley, with its distant blue mountains framed in a vista of massive gray hills. The nearer ones were impressive in their height, but absolutely denuded of vegetation, like the hills around Attica; and it was these mountains that formed the sole scenery for the background of plays produced in the great theatre close by. The theatre, of course, is the great and central attraction at Epidaurus to-day, for it is in splendid preservation while all else is a confusing mass of flat ruins. No ancient theatre is better preserved, or can surpass this one for general grace of lines or perfection of acoustic properties. Many were doubtless larger, but among all the old Greek theatres Epidaurus best preserves to the modern eye the playhouse of the ancients, circular orchestra and all. The acoustics anybody may test easily enough. We disposed ourselves over the theatre in various positions, high and low, along the half-a-hundred tiers of seats, and listened to an oration dealing with the points of interest in the theatre’s construction delivered in a very ordinary tone, from the centre of the orchestra, but audible in the remotest tier.

The circle of the orchestra is not paved, as had been the case with the theatres seen at Athens, but is a green lawn, in the centre of which a stone dot reveals the site of the ancient altar. It was stated that the circle is not actually as perfect as it looks, being shorter in one set of radii by something like two feet. But to all appearance it is absolutely round, and is easily the most beautiful type of the circular orchestra in existence to-day, if indeed it is not the only perfect one. The immense amphitheatre surrounding it was evidently largely a natural one, which a little artificial stonework easily made complete; and it is so perfect to-day that a very little labor would make it entirely possible to give a play there now before a vast audience. Some such plan was actually talked of a few years ago, but abandoned,—no doubt, because of the apparent difficulty of getting any very considerable company of auditors to the spot, or of housing them while there. It would be necessary, also, to rebuild the proskenion, the foundations of which are still to be seen behind the orchestra, and one may tremble to think of what might happen in the process should the advocates of the stage theory and their opponents fail to agree better than they have hitherto done.

From the inspection of the theatre and the enjoyment of the view across the plain to the rugged hills our dragoman called us to lunch, which was spread in a little rustic pergola below. He had thoughtfully provided fresh mullets, caught that morning off the Nauplia quay, and had cooked them in the little house occupied by the local custode. Hunger, however, was far less a matter of concern than thirst. We had been warned not to drink of the waters of the sacred well of Asklepios in the field below, and as there was no spring vouched for with that certitude that had attended the waters of Castalia, we were thrown back, as usual, on the bottled product of the island of Andros—a water which is not only intrinsically pure and excellent, but well worth the price of admission from the quaint English on its label. In rendering their panegyric on the springs of Andros into the English tongue, the translators have declared that it “is the equal of its superior mineral waters of Europe.”

The sacred well of the god, however, proved later in the day that it had not lost all its virtues even under the assaults of the modern germ theory; for while we were wandering through the maze of ruins in the strong heat of the early afternoon one of our company was decidedly inconvenienced by an ordinary "nose-bleed"—which prompt applications of the water, drawn up in an incongruous tin pail, instantly stopped. And thus did we add what is probably the latest cure, and the only one for some centuries, worked by the once celebrated institution patronized by the native divinity. It is related that the god was born on the hillside just east of the meadow, but this story is sadly in conflict with other traditions. It seems that Asklepios was not originally a divinity, but a mere human, as he seems to be in the Homeric poems. His deification came later, as not infrequently happened in ancient times, and with it came a network of legends ascribing a godlike paternity to him and assigning no less a sire than Apollo. Indeed, it is stated by some authorities that the worship of Asklepios did not originate in Epidaurus at all, but in Thessaly; and that the cult was a transplanted one in its chief site in the Peloponnesus, brought there by Thessalian adventurers.

THEATRE AT EPIDAURUS

All over the meadow below the great theatre are scattered the remains of the ancient establishment. The ceremony of healing at Epidaurus seems to have been in large part a faith-cure arrangement, although not entirely so; for there is reason to believe that, as at Delphi, there was more or less natural common sense employed in the miracle-working, and that the priests of the healing art actually acquired not a little primitive skill in medicine. It was a skill, however, which was attended by more or less mummery and circumstance, useful for impressing the mind of the patient; but this is not even to-day entirely absent from the practice of medicine with its “placebos” and “therapeutic suggestion” elements. The custom of sending the patient to rest in a loggia with others, where he might expect a nocturnal visitation of the god himself, has been referred to in these pages before, and survives even to-day in the island of Tenos at the eve of the Annunciation. The tales of marvelous cures at Epidaurus were doubtless as common and as well authenticated as the similar modern stories at Lourdes and Ste. Anne de Beaupré.

In addition to the actual apartments devoted to the sleeping patients, which were but a small part of the sanitarium’s equipment, there was the inevitable great temple of the god himself,—a large gymnasium suggestive of the faith the doctors placed in bodily exercise as a remedy, and a large building said to be the first example of a hospital ward, beside numerous incidental buildings devoted to lodgment. Satirical commentators have called attention to the presence of shrines to the honor of Aphrodite and Dionysus as bearing enduring witness to the part that devotion to those divinities seems to have been thought to bear in afflicting the human race. The presence of the magnificent theatre and the existence of a commodious stadium testify that life at Epidaurus was not without its diversions to relieve the tedium of the medical treatment. And in its day it must have been a large and beautiful agglomeration of buildings. To-day it is as much of a maze as the ruins at Delphi or at Olympia. The non-archæological visitor will probably find his greatest interest in the theatre and in the curious circular "tholos"—a remarkable building, the purpose of which is not clear, made of a number of concentric rings of stone which once bore colonnades. It stands in the midst of the great precinct, and in its ruined state it resembles nothing so much as the once celebrated “pigs-in-clover” puzzle. In the little museum on the knoll above, a very successful attempt has been made to give an idea of this beautiful temple by a partial restoration. Being indoors, it can give no idea either of the diameter or height of the original; but the inclusion of fragments of architrave and columns serve to convey an impression of the general beauty of the structure, as we had seen to be the case with similar fractional restorations at Delphi. The extensive ruins in the precinct itself do not lend themselves to non-technical description. They are almost entirely flat, and the ground plans serve to identify most of the buildings, without giving any very good idea of their appearance when complete. Pavements still remain intact in some of the rooms, and altar bases and exedral seats lie all about in apparent confusion. Nevertheless the discoveries have been plotted and identified with practical completeness, and it is easy enough with the aid of the plans to pass through the precinct and get a very good idea of the manifold buildings which once went to make up what must have been a populous and attractive resort for the sick. Whatever may be thought of the religious aspects of the worship of Asklepios, it is evident that the regimen prescribed by the cult at Epidaurus, with its regard for pure mountain air and healthful bodily exercise, not to mention welcome diversion and amusement for the mind, was furthered by ample facilities in the way of equipment of this world-famous hospital.