Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

All inquired anxiously whether there was not a chance of the village being soon purchased for purposes of excavation. Visitors from the neighboring town of Arachova, who seemed happy that they were not living in Kastri, said that probably many Kastriots would soon leave their homes anyway, and move to Arachova.

The most important thing in Delphi was, of course, the temple of Apollo, in which was the oracular chasm, influences from which controlled Greece so long. Fragments of the temple lay all around, near and in the houses built above its ancient floor. This floor was so near the surface of the soil that one saw quite a portion of it. By digging away a few feet of earth in one place, an opening was laid bare, by which one could pass down into a series of vaults beneath this floor. Pomtow, who visited Delphi in 1884, counted himself as the third man who had ever crawled in through these vaults. But the exploit subsequently became so common that a fixed price of twelve drachmas was allowed workmen for removing the earth. Perhaps a hundred persons have undergone this crawling process, from which one came out covered with dirt from head to foot, but satisfied that he has seen all that was to be seen of the world-renowned temple.

The village school was a striking sight. Attracted by a loud buzzing sound near the house of the keeper of antiquities, with whom we lodged, we ventured in at the open door whence the sound proceeded, and found about forty boys apparently repeating something after the teacher, who, clad somewhat like the shepherd in the play of “Œdipus,” as given at Harvard University, looked like anything but a learned man. He proved to be a gentleman, however, in spite of his rough mantle. After school we ventured with him into his house, from which his family had fled, because a river of mud had flowed through the cellar, and left the walls in a tottering condition. He seemed to possess but little, and yet he took down from the rafters a cluster or two of half-dried grapes, and gave them to us, exhibiting the time-honored Greek hospitality.

But to return a moment to the school. No sooner had we arrived than a dead silence fell upon the crowd. The boys took seats on the long benches resting on the bare earth, and reading of Herodotus in modern Greek began. The first boy, with a voice pitched as high as a steam whistle of small dimensions and high pressure, started off to see how much he could read in a given time. If he saw a period coming, he would catch for breath, and dash over it like a locomotive putting on extra steam to take an up grade. To our utter amazement, the next boy beat the first both in pitch and rapidity. The teacher, without a word, watched the process with apparently rising satisfaction. Meanwhile a boy passed to and fro in the front benches, keeping things wonderfully quiet by striking the ears of the smaller boys with a little twig.

No sooner had we returned to our quarters on our first evening in Delphi, and begun to read the register of people who had visited the house in the past, than, just as we were noticing the name of Bayard Taylor, a peal of thunder reverberated through the great gorge, followed by peal on peal, with rain and lightning, lasting nearly all night. It was so impressive that we wished to expose ourselves to the rain in order the better to see and hear. A sheltering roof, however, was the best place from which to enjoy the storm as much as was possible while disturbed by thoughts of the poor villagers, exposed to further sufferings and fears. He who has not seen Delphi in a thunder-storm has not seen it in all its majesty. It seems made for such spectacles.

The excavations inaugurated by the French School at Athens, soon after our visit, have changed the aspect of Delphi in many respects. As the work has proceeded, I have made annual pilgrimages thither. While one finds the results of intense interest, and sees each year some additional important building brought to light, temple upon temple, the theatre, the stadion, the numerous treasuries of the different cities of Greece with their sculptured adornment, it is still the place itself that impresses one most of all. If one walks through the ruins just at night-fall, one need not ask why the Greeks considered this spot sacred. It is in itself “an awful place.” Olympia lies in a charming sunny valley. It was as appropriate to the brilliant games that were held there as was Delphi to the deep religious transactions and the awful oracle that spoke the doom of men and states. There were games at Delphi, as there was religion at Olympia; but at Olympia the games became at least as prominent as the worship of Father Zeus, while at Delphi it was always religion that was paramount.

It would be contrary to the plan of this book to describe in full the excavations of Delphi. It may be said that the results were in some ways disappointing to some people. From certain passages in ancient authors sprung a belief that statues in Delphi might be as “thick as hops.” The five hundred bronze statues that Nero is said to have carried away must have made only a small hole in the total number of seventy-three thousand reported by Pliny to have been still remaining in his time. Even if one suspects an error in the text, we know that Demetrios of Phaleron, who passed for a fairly modest man, had three hundred and sixty statues erected to him at Athens during the short time in which he directed the affairs of Athens. And taking this as a sample of the way statues multiplied, we can the more readily swallow Pliny’s numerals. At any rate, Delphi is classed by him with Olympia and Athens as the third of the places where statues most abounded. But, for many years after Pliny’s time, Delphi doubtless lay open to plunder. The bronzes were melted up and the marbles made into lime.

The yield of statues from the excavations has, it is true, been smaller than many expected it to be. But it would be most absurd to say that the work has been disappointing. The bronze charioteer alone, probably a subsidiary figure in the group dedicated by a member of the Syracusan family, Gelon, Hieron, Polyzalos, would have set the stamp of success upon the enterprise. And, apart from this, there is a whole museum full of statuary of the utmost importance in the history of sculpture. Tombs of the Mycenæan period with rich contents have also added to the interest of the excavations, more important in some aspects than those of Olympia. It will be years before the enormous quantity of inscriptions can be published.

The French excavators are to be congratulated upon the ease with which they got rid of their earth. Their dumping-cars were easily brought to the edge of the gorge of the Pleistos, and the contents shot down thousands of feet, never to trouble them more. How I have envied them when working at Corinth, where one of the chief difficulties has been to find a proper dumping-place for the enormous deposit of from twenty to thirty feet of earth. At Olympia, also, the brook Kladeos was very serviceable in carrying off the dump. It is a pity that one cannot always find an excavation site close by a serviceable river.