Greece and the Ægean Islands

by Philip Sanford Marden

It was in this great Heræum, which in size rivaled the great temples at Ephesus and at Branchidæ, that the Samians deposited the brazen bowl filched from the Spartans, of which the ancients made so much. It appears that because of Crœsus having sought an alliance with Lacedæmonia, the inhabitants of that land desired to return the compliment by sending him a present. They caused a huge brass bowl to be made, adorned with many figures and capable of holding three hundred amphoræ. This they dispatched to Sardis. But as the ship bearing it was passing Samos on her way, the Samians came out in force, seized the ship, and carried the great bowl off to the temple, where it was consecrated to the uses of the goddess. That the Samians stole it thus was of course indignantly denied,—the islanders retorting that the bowl was sold them by the Spartans when they discovered that Crœsus had fallen before Cyrus and was no longer an ally to be desired. No trace of any such relic of course is to be seen there now. In fact there is very little to recall the former greatness of the place but the silent and lonely column and a very diminutive museum standing near the beach, which contains disappointingly little. It is, as a matter of fact, no more than a dark shed, similar in appearance to the rest of the houses of the hamlet.

The steamer was waiting near by in the sheltered waters of the sound, and as we were desirous of visiting the temple at Branchidæ that same afternoon, we left Samos and continued our voyage. Under that wonderfully clear sky the beauty of both shores was indescribable. The Asian coast, toward which we now bore our way, was, however, the grander of the two, with its foreground of plains and meadows and its magnificent background of imposing mountains stretching far into the interior and losing themselves in the unimagined distances beyond. The sun-kissed ripples of the sea were of that incredible blue that one never ceases to marvel at in the Mediterranean, and it was the sudden change from this color to a well-defined area of muddy yellow in the waters through which we glided that called attention to the mouth of the Mæander on the shore. That proverbially crooked and winding stream discharges so large a bulk of soil in projecting itself into the sea that the surface is discolored for a considerable distance off shore; and through this our steamer took her way, always nearing the low-lying beach, until we descried a projecting headland, and rounded it into waters as calm as those of a pond. Here we dropped anchor and once again proceeded to the land, setting our feet for the first time on the shores of Asia.

Samos was, of course, still to be seen to the northwest, like a dark blue cloud rising from a tossing sea. Before us, glowing in the afternoon sun, stretched a long expanse of open seashore meadow, undulating here and there, almost devoid of trees, but thickly covered with tracts of shrubs and bushes, through which we pushed our way until we came upon an isolated farmhouse and a path leading off over the moor. It was a mere cart-track through the green of the fields, leading toward a distant hillock, on which we could from afar make out the slowly waving arms of windmills and indications of a small town. None of the many rambles we took in the Greek islands surpassed this two-mile walk for pure pleasure. The air was balmy yet cool. The fields were spangled with flowers,—wild orchids, iris, gladioli, and many others. There were no gray hills, save so far in the distance that they had become purple and had lost their bareness. All around was a deserted yet pleasant and pastoral country—deserving, none the less, the general name of moor.

What few people we met on the way were farmers and shepherds, leading pastoral lives in the little brush wigwams so common in Greek uplands in the summer months. They gave us the usual cheerful good-day, and looked after our invading host with wondering eyes as we streamed off over the rolling country in the general direction of Branchidæ.

That ancient site appeared at last on a hillock overlooking the ocean. A small and mean hamlet had largely swallowed up the immediate environs of the famous temple that once stood there, contrasting strangely with the remaining columns that soon came into view over the roofs, as we drew near, attended by an increasing army of the youth. The name of the little modern village on the spot we never knew. Anciently this was the site of the temple of Apollo Didymeus, erected by the Branchidæ,—a clan of the neighborhood of ancient Miletus who claimed descent from Branchus. The temple of Apollo which had formerly stood upon the site was destroyed in some way in the sixth century before Christ, and the Branchidæ set out to erect a shrine that they boasted should rival the temple of Diana at Ephesus in size and in ornamentation. Nor was this an inappropriate desire, since Apollo and Diana—or Artemis, as we ought to call her—were twins, whence indeed the name “Didymeus” was applied to the temple on the spot. Unfortunately the great temple which the Branchidæ designed was never completed, simply because of the vastness of the plan. Before the work was done, Apollo had ceased to be so general an object of veneration, and what had been planned to be his most notable shrine fell into gradual ruin and decay.

It has not been sufficient, however, to destroy the beauty of much that the Branchidæ accomplished during the centuries that the work was progressing, for it is stated that several hundred years were spent in adorning the site. The fact that one of the few columns still standing and still bearing its crowning capital is unfluted bears silent testimony to the fact that the temple never was completed. Of the finished columns it is impossible to overstate their grace and lightness or the elegance of the carving on their bases, which apparently were designed to be different one from another. The pillars that remain are of great height and remarkable slenderness. Nineteen drums were employed in building them. The bases, of which many are to be seen lying about, and some in situ, display the most delicate tracery and carving imaginable, some being adorned with round bands of relief, and others divided into facets, making the base dodecagonal instead of round, each panel bearing a different and highly ornate design. Close by we found the remains of a huge stone face, or mask, apparently designed as a portion of the adornment of the cornice and presumably one of the metopes of the temple.

The mass of débris of the great structure has been heaped up for so long that a sort of conical hill rises in the midst of it; and on this has been built a tower from which one may look down on the ground plan so far as it remains. The major part of the ruin, however, is at its eastern end, the front, presumably, where the only standing columns are to be seen, rising gracefully from a terrace which has been carefully uncovered by the explorers. Enough remains to give an idea of the immense size projected for the building, and better still enough to give an idea of the elegance with which the ancients proposed to adorn it, that the Ephesians need not eclipse the Milesians in honoring the twin gods. Of the rows of statues that once lined the road from the sea to the shrine, one is to be seen in the British Museum—a curious sitting colossus of quaintly archaic workmanship, and somewhat suggestive, to my own mind, of an Egyptian influence in the squat modeling of the figure.

As one might expect of a shrine sacred to Apollo, there seems to have been an oracle of some repute here; for Crœsus, who was credulous in the extreme where oracles were concerned, sent hither for advice on various occasions, and dedicated a treasure here that was similar to the great wealth he bestowed upon the shrine at Delphi. Furthermore one Neco, who had been engaged in digging a canal to connect the Nile with the Red Sea,—a prototype of the Suez,—dedicated the clothes he wore during that period to the god at the temple of the Branchidæ. Thus while the site never attained the fame among Grecians that was accorded the Delphian, it nevertheless seems to have inspired a great deal of reverence among the inhabitants of Asia Minor and even of Egypt, which may easily account for the elaborate care the Branchidæ proposed to bestow and did bestow upon it.

Our inspection of the temple and the surrounding town was the source of immense interest upon the part of the infantile population, of which the number is enormous. The entire pit around the excavations was lined three deep with boys and girls, the oldest not over fifteen, who surveyed our party with open-mouthed amazement. They escorted us to the city gates, and a small detachment accompanied us on the way back over the moor to the landing, hauling a protesting bear-cub, whose mother had been shot the week before somewhere in the mountains of Latmos by some modern Nimrod, and whose wails indicated the presence of a capable pair of lungs in his small and furry body. He was taken aboard and became the ship’s pet forthwith, seemingly content with his lot and decidedly partial to sweetmeats.

The walk back over that vast and silent meadow in the twilight was one never to be forgotten. There was something mystical in the deserted plain, in the clumps of bushes taking on strange shapes in the growing dusk, in the great orb of the moon rising over the serrated tops of the distant mountains of the interior—and last, but not least, in the roaring fire which the boatmen had kindled on the rocks to indicate the landing place as the dark drew on. We pushed off, three boatloads of tired but happy voyagers, leaving the fire leaping and crackling on the shore, illuminating with a red glare the rugged rocks, and casting gigantic and awful shadows on the sea.