Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

TEMPLE AT STRATOS.

The next morning, with a captain of artillery who had been our fellow-passenger from Athens, we went out through orange groves to the famous bridge of Arta, over the Arachthos, which here forms the border, the Greeks having secured, in 1881, Arta and its adjacent fields up to the river, along with Thessaly. The present border is the most unrighteous one that could be devised. A river is generally no proper boundary-line, but in this case especially it is intolerable. The plain across the river belongs by nature to the city, and, in fact, is owned largely by the people of Arta, who have suffered manifold inconveniences in the management of their property. Who can wonder that the Greeks were anxious for an offensive campaign here which should give them back their own?

The finest feature of Arta is its view. From the hill, at the foot of which lies the city, one sees the mountains near Dodona, and farther south and quite close at hand, is Tsoumerka, in the spring a mass of snow, falling just short of eight thousand feet. Behind this, over beyond the Acheloos, the snowy peaks of the Pindos range crowd one upon another in such thick array that one despairs of identifying them all with the names given on the map. To the south lie the three mountains of Acarnania in echelon, impressive although only a little over five thousand feet high, and the glorious gulf itself.

Arta has also a history. One hurries by the interesting Church of the Consoling Virgin, a brick structure of the tenth century, perhaps, and a mediæval castle, to the days when Arta was Ambrakia. Even the days when it was the capital of the famous Pyrrhus seem recent, compared with the really great days when it was a democratic city of free Hellas long before the Persian war. Cropping out from under the shabby houses of the town are walls made of massive blocks which speak of days of greatness. This blooming colony of Corinth, foreordained by its situation to be the principal city of the region, gave its name in antiquity, as now, to the great gulf which it overlooks.

Corinth had the misfortune, rare in Greek history, to plant one unfilial colony, Corcyra, which, as early as 665 B.C., worsted the mother in a great naval battle, and, from a daughter, became a lasting enemy. To recover her influence in these regions, Corinth, in the days of Kypselos and Periander, which seem pretty old days, planted Ambrakia besides Anaktorion, just inside the entrance of the gulf, and Leukas just outside. As if to prove that Corinth was not an especially hard mother, these colonies always remained filial, and their contingents were always drawn up in the Persian war alongside those of Corinth. Ambrakia, besides dominating the rich plain which by nature belongs to her, but by the will of Europe now belongs to Turkey, had also an especial significance as standing on the road to Dodona for nearly all of Greece.

But it is not my purpose to rewrite any portion of the history of Greece, but only to set forth clearly the physical and moral position of Ambrakia, that one may realize more clearly the satisfaction of the sturdy Demosthenes, the man of deeds, not the man of words, when, at Olpæ and under the walls of Amphilochian Argos, a few miles to the south, he crippled Ambrakia as thoroughly as Cleomenes had crippled Argos at Tiryns a few years before the Persian war, and made Corinth feel in the woes of her favorite daughter that she had not kindled the flames of the Peloponnesian war with impunity. Since certain Messenians took part in this battle, it has been supposed by some that the famous Nike of Pæonios at Olympia was set up to commemorate their share of the victory.

We proceeded southward from Arta by a very good carriage-road skirting the west end of the gulf. About one-third of our day’s journey was taken up in traversing the famous Makrynoros Pass, where the mountains, as high as Hymettus, come down almost perpendicularly to the sea for a space of about ten miles. This is called the Thermopylæ of western Greece; but it is a much more difficult pass to force than Thermopylæ, where two foot-hills come down to the sea with a more gentle slope. Thermopylæ, too, in modern times has lost its original character by the formation of quite a plain at the foot of its mountains by the alluvial deposit of the Spercheios and the incrustation formed by sulphur springs; while Makrynoros remains a mountain running straight down into the sea, necessitating the making of the modern carriage-road with great difficulty and expense. But as this road is a thousand feet above the water, it affords a fine view over the gulf and its setting. The railroad which connects Patras with Agrinion must come some day to Arta, so all the people of the region were saying. The Makrynoros Pass would be the chief difficulty in the way; but the railroad could keep the same height all the way, and no steep grades would be required. The main difficulty would be the crossing of the many gullies which run down from the side of the mountain. In the ordinary march of events, Arta will be included in the slowly extending network, although the claims of Sparta may have to be attended to first. It depends somewhat upon the relative influence and push of the delegates of the sections concerned.

This pass has a strategic importance, and we may soon hear of it again in connection with military operations. The Ambrakian Gulf and Maliac Gulf, by Thermopylæ, reach out toward each other, making what is sometimes called an isthmus, an echo of the Isthmus of Corinth; but if anyone tries to make his way across this he will realize that it is only an isthmus by courtesy, and will have vividly impressed upon his mind that “the longest way around is the shortest way home.” The pass of Thermopylæ may be circumvented; but so piled up are the mountains to the west of Makrynoros that, in order to circumvent it, one might as well go to Thermopylæ itself.

In the Greek war of independence, the first severe defeat of the Greeks took place in the second year of the war, near the northern end of Makrynoros. Maurocordatos, the President of the new State, wishing to be a Washington and to be general as well as statesman, took command of the regular army, and pushed northward through the pass, as if to take the offensive against the Turks at Arta, and then, as if not quite certain what he wanted to do, waited for the Turks to attack him, which they did in good time, annihilating his army at Peta. His head-quarters were farther back at the opening of the pass. Had he decided to take the defensive soon enough he might have immortalized Makrynoros and saved his army, instead of simply saving himself and his staff. At Peta, which lay on the hill to the left of our road from Arta to the mouth of the pass, is a tablet on which are inscribed the names of the members of the regiment of Philhellenes who, to give the Greeks an example, stood their ground until they were all shot down, except twenty-five, who succeeded in cutting their way through the enemy.