GROTTO OF APOLLO. DELOS
The births of Apollo and Artemis appear to have been deemed quite enough for the celebrity of Delos; for in after years, when the Athenians felt called upon to “purify” the city, they enacted that no mortal in the future should be permitted to be born or to die on the island. In consequence, temporary habitations were erected across the narrow strait on the shores of Greater Delos for the use of those in extremis or those about to be confined. Aside from this fact, the larger island has little or no interest to the visitor.
There is, of course, a museum at Delos. Some day it will be a very interesting one indeed. At the time of our visit it was only just finished, and had not been provided with any floor but such as nature gave. In due season it will probably rank with any for its archæological value, although it will be infinitely less interesting than others to inexpert visitors, who generally prefer statues of fair preservation to small fragments and bits of inscription. Of the notable sculptures that must have abounded in Delos once, comparatively little remains; certainly nothing to compare with the charioteer and the Lysippus at Delphi, or with the Hermes and pedimental figures at Olympia. The great charm of Delos to the unskilled mind is to be found in its history and in its beautiful surroundings. As a birthplace of one of the major gods of high Olympus, the seat of the Delian league against the Persians, and the original treasury of the Athenian empire, Delos has history enough to satisfy an island many times her size. Traces still remain of the dancing place where the Delian maidens performed their wonderful evolutions during the annual pilgrimage, which was a feature during the Athenian supremacy; and the temples and treasuries, ruined as they are, forcibly recall the importance which once attached to the spot. The memory still survives of the so-called “Delian problem” of the doubling of the cube, a task that proved a poser for the ancient mathematicians when the oracle propounded, as the price of staying a plague, that the Delians should double the pedestal of Parian marble that stood in the great temple. But it is almost entirely a place of memories, deserted by all but the excavators and an occasional shepherd. To-day it is little more than the bare rock that it was when Poseidon split it from the bed of the sea. Apollo gave it an immortality, however, which does not wane although Apollo himself is dead. Athens and Corinth gave it a worldly celebrity, which proved but temporary so far as it depended on activity in the world of affairs. Delos, washed by the Ægean, has little to look forward to but to drowse the long tides idle, well content with her crowded hour of glorious life, and satisfied that her neighbors should have the age without a name.
CHAPTER XV. SAMOS AND THE
TEMPLE AT BRANCHIDÆ
The stiff north wind, which was known to be blowing outside, counseled delaying departure from Delos until after the evening meal, for our course to Samos lay through the trough of the sea. In the shelter of the narrow channel between Greater and Lesser Delos the water was calm enough to enable eating in comfort, and it was the commendable rule of the cruise to seek shelter for meals, owing to the lack of “racks” to prevent the contents of the tables from shifting when the vessel rolled. Hence it was well along in the evening before the anchor was weighed; and as the engines gave their first premonitory wheezes, word was passed from the bridge that all who did not love rough weather would better retire at once, as we were certain to “catch it” as soon as we rounded the capes of the neighboring Mykonos and squared away for Samos across a long stretch of open water. The warning served to bring home to us one of the marked peculiarities about cruising in the Ægean, namely, the succession of calm waters and tempestuous seas, which interlard themselves like the streaks of fat and lean in the bacon from the Irishman’s pig, which was fed to repletion one day and starved the next. This, of course, is due to the numerous islands, never many miles apart, which are forever affording shelter from the breezes and waves, only to open up again and subject the craft to a rolling and boisterous sea as it crosses the stretches of open channel between them. When the experiences due to these sudden transitions were not trying, they were likely to be amusing, we discovered, as was the case on one morning when the tables had been laid for breakfast rather imprudently just before rounding a windy promontory. The instant the ship felt the cross seas she began to roll heavily, and the entire array of breakfast dishes promptly left the unprotected table, only to crash heavily against the stateroom doors that lined the saloon, eliciting shrieks from those within; while the following roll of the vessel sent the débris careering across the floor to bring up with equal resonance against the doors on the other side, the stewards meantime being harassed beyond measure to recover their scudding cups and saucers.
In the morning of our arrival off Samos we found ourselves moving along on an even keel, under the lee of that extensive island and close also to the shores of Asia Minor, the famous promontory of Mykale looming large and blue ahead. We coasted along the Samian shore, close enough to distinguish even from a distance the ruins of the once famous Heræum, which was among the objects of our visit. It was marked from afar by a single gleaming column, rising apparently from the beach. For the present we passed it by, the ship heading for the little white town farther ahead and just opposite the bay made by the great bulk of Mykale. It was historic ground, for it was at Mykale that the pursuing Greeks, under Leotychides and Xantippus, made the final quietus of the Persian army and navy in the year 479 B.C., just after Salamis, by the final defeat of Tigranes. Mykale, however, we viewed only from afar. The ship rounded the mole protecting the harbor of what was once the chief city of Samos, and came to anchor for the first time in Turkish waters. While the necessary official visits and examination of passports were being made, there was abundant opportunity to inspect the port from the deck. It lay at the base of a rugged mountain, and the buildings of the city lined the diminutive harbor on two sides, curving along a low quay. In general appearance the town recalled Canea, in Crete, by the whiteness of its houses and the pale greenness of its shutters and the occasional slender tower of a mosque. Technically Samos is a Turkish island. Practically it is so only in the sense that it pays an annual tribute to the Sultan and that its Greek governor is nominated by that monarch. It was sufficiently Turkish, in any event, to require passports and the official call of a tiny skiff flying the crescent flag and bearing a resplendent local officer crowned with a red fez. The formalities were all arranged by proxy ashore, and in due time the ship’s boat returned, bearing the freedom of the city and a limited supply of Samian cigarettes, which retailed at the modest sum of a franc and a half the hundred.
Herodotus devotes a considerable space to the history of the Samians in the time of the Persian supremacy and especially to the deeds of the tyrant Polycrates, who seized the power of the island and proved a prosperous ruler. In fact the rampant successes of Polycrates alarmed his friend and ally, King Amasis of Egypt, who had the wholesome dread of the ancients for the “jealousy” of the gods; and in consequence Amasis sent a messenger up to Samos to tell Polycrates that he was too successful for his own good. Amasis was afraid, according to the messenger, that some evil would overtake the Samian ruler, and he advised Polycrates to cast away whatever thing he valued the most as a propitiation of the gods. The advice so impressed Polycrates that he recounted his possessions, selected a certain emerald seal-ring that he cherished exceedingly, took it aboard a fifty-oared galley and, when sufficiently far out at sea, hurled the treasured ring into the water. Whereat he returned content that he had appeased the presumably jealous gods. In less than a week a fisherman, who had taken an unusually beautiful fish in those waters, presented it as a great honor to Polycrates, and in dressing it for the table the servants found in its belly the ring that Polycrates had tried so hard to cast away! The event was held to be superhuman, and an account of it was promptly sent to Amasis in Egypt. He, however, judging from it that Polycrates was inevitably doomed by heaven, ended his alliance with Samos on the naïve plea that he should be sorry to have anything happen to a friend, and therefore proposed to make of Polycrates an enemy, that he need not grieve when misfortune overtook him! Misfortune did indeed overtake Polycrates, and Herodotus describes at some length how it occurred, ending his discourse with the remark that he feels justified in dealing at such length with the affairs of the Samians because they have accomplished "three works, the greatest that have been achieved by all the Greeks. The first is of a mountain, one hundred and fifty orgyiæ in height, in which is dug a tunnel beginning at the base and having an opening at either side of the mountain. The length of the tunnel is seven stadia, and the height and breadth are eight feet respectively. Through the whole length of the tunnel runs another excavation three feet wide and twenty cubits deep, through which cutting the water, conveyed by pipes, reaches the city, being drawn from a copious fount on the farther side of the mountain. The architect of this excavation was a Megarian, Eupalinus the son of Naustrophus. This, then, is one of the three great works. The second is a mound in the sea around the harbor, in depth about a hundred orgyiæ and in length about two stadia. The third work of theirs is a great temple, the largest we ever have seen, of which the architect was Rhœcus, son of Phileos, a native Samian. On account of these things I have dwelt longer on the affairs of the Samians."[[3]]