Aside from the preliminary chapters and those dealing with Athens itself, I hope to have been more successful. I have, at any rate, been free in those other places from the depressing feeling that I was engaged on a work of supererogation, since this part of the subject is by no means hackneyed even through treatment by technical writers. Since the publication of most of the better known books on Greek travel, a great deal has been accomplished in the way of excavation, and much that is interesting has been laid bare, which has not been adequately described, even in the technical works. In dealing with these additions and in describing journeys to less familiar inland sites, as well as cruises to sundry of the classic islands of the Ægean, I hope this book will find its real excuse for being.
In adopting a system for spelling the names of Greek cities, towns, and islands, I have been in something of a quandary, owing to the possibilities presented by the various customs of authors in this field, each one of which has something to recommend it and something, also, of disadvantage. If one spells Greek names in the more common Anglicized fashion, especially in writing for the average traveler, one certainly avoids the appearance of affectation, and also avoids misleading the reader by an unfamiliar form of an otherwise familiar word. Hence, after much debate and rather against my own personal preferences and usage in several instances, I have adhered in the main to the forms of name most familiar to American eyes and ears. In cases of obscure or little known sites, where it is occasionally more important to know the names as locally pronounced, I have followed the Greek forms. This, while doubtless not entirely logical, has seemed the best way out of a rather perplexing situation, bound to be unsatisfactory whichever way one attempts to solve the problem.
In mercy to non-Hellenic readers, I have likewise sought to exclude with a firm hand quotations from the Greek language, and as far as reasonably possible to avoid the use of Greek words or expressions when English would answer every purpose.
If, in such places as have seemed to demand it, I have touched upon archæological matters, I hope not to have led any reader far from the truth, although one admittedly an amateur in such matters runs grave risk in committing himself to paper where even the doctors themselves so often disagree. I hope especially to have escaped advancing mere personal opinions on moot points, since dilettanti in such a case have little business to own any opinions, and none at all to exploit them to the untutored as if they had importance or weight. Rather I have only the desire to arouse others to a consciousness that it is as easy now to view and enjoy the visible remnants of the glory that was Greece, as it is to view those of the grandeur that was Rome.
In the writing of these chapters an effort has been made to set forth in non-technical terms only what the writer himself has seen and observed among these haunts of remote antiquity, with the idea of confining the scope of this book to the needs of those who, like himself, possess a veneration for the old things, an amateur’s love for the classics, and a desire to see and know that world which was born, lived, and died before our own was even dreamed of as existing. If by what is written herein others are led to go and see for themselves, or are in any wise assisted in making their acquaintance with Greece, or, better still, are enabled the more readily to recall days spent in that most fascinating of all the bygone nations, then this book, however unworthily dealing with a great subject, will not have been written in vain.
Philip Sanford Marden.
Lowell, Mass., August, 1907.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| I. | TRAVELING IN GREECE | [1] |
| II. | CRETE | [18] |
| III. | THE ENTRANCE TO GREECE | [37] |
| IV. | ATHENS; THE MODERN CITY | [50] |
| V. | ANCIENT ATHENS: THE ACROPOLIS | [76] |
| VI. | ANCIENT ATHENS: THE OTHER MONUMENTS | [96] |
| VII. | EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA | [123] |
| VIII. | DELPHI | [146] |
| IX. | MYCENÆ AND THE PLAIN OF ARGOS | [169] |
| X. | NAUPLIA AND EPIDAURUS | [193] |
| XI. | IN ARCADIA | [211] |
| XII. | ANDHRITSÆNA AND THE BASSÆ TEMPLE | [229] |
| XIII. | OVER THE HILLS TO OLYMPIA | [247] |
| XIV. | THE ISLES OF GREECE: DELOS | [272] |
| XV. | SAMOS AND THE TEMPLE AT BRANCHIDÆ | [286] |
| XVI. | COS AND CNIDOS | [304] |
| XVII. | RHODES | [318] |
| XVIII. | THERA | [334] |
| XIX. | NIOS; PAROS; A MIDNIGHT MASS | [351] |
| XX. | CORFU | [368] |
| INDEX | [381] |