In the fairly well-preserved theater to the northwest, quantities of yellow flowers were growing, with some daisies. Among the gray limestone blocks of the orchestra I found a quantity of excellent blackberries. Where once was the stage, there are now brown grasses dried up by the sun. This theater is very steep, and above it towers a precipice. Near by, between the theater and the stadium, Parnassus gives back to your cry a swift and sharp echo. The gold, red-gold, and gray stadium, which lies farther up the mountain than the theater, is partly ruined, but in parts is well preserved. As I stood in it, thinking of the intellectual competitions that used to take place there, of the poems recited in it, of the music the lyre gave forth, and of the famous Pythian games, which, later, used to be celebrated in this strange mountain fastness, I saw eagles wheeling over me far up in the blue, above the wild gray and orange peaks.
In the museum, which stands in a splendid position on the mountain-side, with a terrace before it, there are many fine things. Delphi in the time of its greatness contained thousands of statues, great numbers of which were in bronze. Nero, Constantine, and others carried hundreds of them away. One which they left, a bronze charioteer in a long robe, faces you as you enter the museum. It is marvelously alive, almost seems to glow with vitality. The feet should be specially noticed. They are bare, and are miracles of sensitiveness. Farther on there is a splendid Antinous, robust, sensual, egoistic, a type of muscular beauty and crude determination, without heart or any sparkle of intellect. Two other statues which I thought exceptionally interesting are of a sturdy, smiling child and of a headless and armless woman. The latter, numbered 1817 in the catalogue, is very gracious and lovely. The back of the figure and the drapery, especially that part of it which flows from under the left arm to the heel of the right foot, are exceptionally beautiful.
There is a very fine view from the terrace. Toward evening it becomes wonderfully romantic. Far off, the village of Arachova, perched on its high ridge, bounds the horizon. It is a view closed in by mountains yet not oppressive; for there is width between the two ranges, and the large volcanic slopes are splendidly spacious. Here and there on these slopes are large wine-colored splashes such as you see often on the mountains of Syria, and these splashes give warmth to the scene. Above the Castalian fountain the two peaks of the Phædriadæ, a thousand feet high, stand up magnificently. Between them is the famous cleft from which the cold stream issues, to flow down through the olive-groves.
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI
When evening falls, follow the winding white road a little way toward Arachova. From the soft dusk of the defile that spreads out into the plain of Krissa the goat-bells still chime melodiously. I have heard them even very late in the night. The section of sea that was turquoise now looks like solid silver. Behind it the mountains, velvety and black, flow away in delicate shapes. They are dreamlike, but beyond them rise other ethereal ranges which seem to you, as you gaze on them, impalpable, fluid almost, like a lovely imagination of mountains summoned up in your mind. Black-green is the plain. Under the tree of Agamemnon glows a tiny light, like an earth-bound star. Where once the pilgrims gathered who knew only the gods, Christian hands have tended the lamp before the holy picture. And a little farther on, among the foliage of the olive-trees, shines another of these Christian stars, which, in the darkness of Delphi's solitudes, shed their light, faintly perhaps, but faithfully, upon a way once often trodden by pagans who now sleep the last long sleep. To what changes in the human soul do these earth-bound stars bear witness! I sat beneath Agamemnon's tree, listening to the cry of the fountain, watching the little lights, till the night was black about me.
I must always think of Olympia as the poetic shrine of one of the most poetic statues in the world. As the Parthenon seems to be the soul of Athens, so the Hermes of Praxiteles seems to be the soul of Olympia, gathering up and expressing its aloofness from all ugly things, its almost reflective tenderness, its profound calm, and its far-off freedom from any sadness. When I stayed there I was the only traveler. Never did I see any human being among the beautiful ruins, or hear any voice to break their silence. Only the peasants of that region passed now and then on the winding track below the hill of Cronus, to lose themselves among the pine-trees. And I heard at a distance the wonderful sound, eternity's murmur withdrawn, that the breeze makes among their branches, as I sat by the palace of Nero.
Nature has taken Olympia into her loving arms. She has shed her pine-needles and her leaves of the golden autumn upon the seats where the wrestlers reposed. She has set her grasses and flowers among the stones of the Temple of Zeus. Her vines creep down to the edge of that cup of her earth which holds gently, as a nurse holds a sleeping child, palaces, temples, altars, shrines of the gods and ways for the chariots. All the glory of men has departed, but something remains which is better than glory—peace, loveliness, a pervading promise of lasting things beyond.
Among the ruins of Nero's palace I watched white butterflies flitting among feathery, silver grasses and red and white daisies. Lizards basked on the altar of Zeus. At the foot of the Heræum, the most ancient temple that may be seen in Greece at this time, a jackal whined in its dwelling. Sheep-bells were sounding plaintively down the valley beyond the arch leading to the walled way by which the great stadium, where the games took place, was entered. When I got up presently to stroll among the ruins, I set my foot on the tiny ruts of an uneven pavement, specially constructed so that the feet of contending athletes should not slip upon it.