Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

THERMON. TEMPLE OF APOLLO IN THE FOREGROUND

Leake, who never travelled around the east end of the lake, made up his mind that Thermon must be found at Vlocho, the most impressive ruin and strongest fortified place in Ætolia, not far east of Agrinion. Starting with this as a fact, he laid out the rest of the topography accordingly. Two great difficulties, however, confronted Leake. Polybius speaks of the lake as covering the left of the army during a considerable part of the march, while Leake, placing Thermon at Vlocho, cannot keep them from leaving it well to their right all the way. The great topographer, who had successfully located Calydon by transposing two passages in Strabo and inserting a negative, thought it not venturesome to “restore” right for left in this passage of Polybius, on the ground that there are many occurrences of such slips in ancient writers. A second difficulty troubled him less. A march from the Acheloos to Thermon, which is spoken of as a forced march, a record march if you will, from the dawn of a summer day till late in the afternoon, by hardy troops, cannot, if Vlocho is Thermon, be spun out to more than fifteen miles, and that mostly over good ground. Leake talks loosely of arrival at two o’clock in the afternoon, which hardly does justice to the πολλῆς ὥρας of the text.

The prestige of Leake, his almost established record of never going astray, led topographers generally to follow him, at least in the location of Thermon. Bazin, indeed, having a conscience about changing left to right, makes Philip march clear round the lake and reach Vlocho in season to destroy that great citadel on the same day, a distance of forty-five miles over some very bad ground, and that, too, on top of a forced march the day before. A military man like Leake could not have made this error, though he led Bazin into it by falsely locating Thermon.

In spite of a growing belief, starting with Bursian and at last finding exact expression in Lolling’s selection of Palæo-Bazaar, that Thermon was somewhere near the east end of the lake, Vlocho, the mighty hill fortress, made such an impression that many regarded the discussion as one in which it was still worth while to sum up the pros and cons, adding: “If Vlocho is not Thermon, give us some adequate name for it.” But the spade, which has again substantiated its claims to be the best archæologist, has relegated all this discussion to the limbo of old notions. Whatever Vlocho was, it was not Thermon. A score or more of inscriptions found by Soteiriades at Palæo-Bazaar, speaking of the affairs of the Ætolian League, show that he has found the capital. What makes the identification absolutely certain is the inscription containing the treaty between the Ætolians and Philip of Macedon, in which it is provided that of two copies one shall be set up at Thermon, and the other at Delphi, which was at the time the ecclesiastical capital of the league. The French have found one copy at Delphi; Soteiriades found the other, an exact duplicate, at Kephalovrysi. After that, one surely need not go elsewhere to seek for Thermon. A suggestive trifle was found here before the excavations, viz., a life-size bronze thumb of good work, showing the dint of a hammer on the knuckle. This probably belonged to one of the two thousand statues destroyed by Philip.

Leaving Kephalovrysi at two o’clock, instead of taking the shortest road to Agrinion along the north shore of the lake, at my suggestion, which again sprung from the desire of seeing something new, we circled the lake, following the line of Philip’s retreat along the south side, and identifying among other places the site of Trichonion, which gave its name to the lake. Passing between this lake and its neighbor to the west, we reached Agrinion just before dark, and found there a new, clean hotel. The railroad is beginning to work its wonders even in Agrinion.

This flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, the centre of the most important tobacco-growing region in Greece, and the capital of Ætolia, has stolen its name from ancient Agrinion, which lay about seven miles away on the Acheloos. Its real name is Vrachori, which is still used by many who do not fancy the revamping of classical names, especially when they are foisted on to towns that are not entitled to them, and have an honorable history of their own which has been gained under the name which it is proposed to set aside. Vrachori is such a case.

Not till after dinner did we present ourselves at the house of the doctor who had bountifully entertained my friend and me last year for two nights. Both he and his wife seemed hurt that we had not all four of us come unannounced straight to them, and extorted from us the promise that on our return from Arta we would spend a night with them. “But these things lay on the knees of the gods.” After starting off hopefully in the morning, when almost in sight of Stratos my bicycle met with a collapse, which we tried in vain to remedy; and the afternoon train bore me in great tribulation through the front door of Ætolia back to Patras and Athens.

The next year, and pretty nearly every succeeding year, brought me again to this most romantic part of Greece, so little known by modern travellers, and so little famed in ancient history, but full of walls and acropolises which cry out for a name. On the last of these visits we climbed Vlocho on a rather hot day. To judge from the exhaustion which even the strongest felt, as well as from the appearance of the mountain, for Vlocho is really a mountain, we have here the highest acropolis in Greece. It looks down upon Trichonis to the south and back into the rugged peaks of Ætolia to the north, overtopping all the foot-hills of those mountains. Its walls also match the commanding position. It is no wonder that Leake took it for the great central citadel of the Ætolians, none other than Thermon. But not only has Thermon been positively identified, as has been already mentioned, but Vlocho has been shown by an inscription found by Soteiriades to be the acropolis of the Thestiæi, a merely tribal gathering place. This solution is a surprise, a sort of anticlimax. It is an equally great surprise that Thermon had no acropolis at all, but was a gathering-place in a plain. Its situation, however, high up above the mountainous north shore of Lake Trichonis near its eastern end, made it difficult for an enemy to attack; and when Philip V. broke into the nest of the robber brood, destroyed it, and got safely back to his connections, it was the master stroke of that enterprising and rash boy king. The Ætolians got a sweet revenge more than twenty years later, when, at Kynoskephalæ, they contributed materially to Philip’s crushing defeat by Flamininus.

The usual approach to Thermon is from Agrinion over a level road along the north shore until the middle of that shore-line is reached. Then comes a steady climb until one gains an altitude of perhaps two thousand feet, directly over the surface of the lake, and then another more gentle climb away from the lake, and the goal is reached. There is a fine carriage-road all the way.

The one thing that Ætolia, as well as Acarnania, lacks to make it famous is the bard, or, failing him, the historian. No Homer or Sophocles or Pindar has made the beautiful Lake Trichonis into a more than earthly lake. The great historians have found elsewhere more attractive themes than the wars of the men who inhabited these mighty fortresses. The modern traveller likes to follow the footsteps of the poets and historians; and so Attica, Argos, Bœotia, and Thessaly are visited and enjoyed, while the stream passes by Ætolia and Acarnania “on the other side.” But there are some who will be drawn by that beautiful Lake Trichonis, by the bountiful Acheloos, by the Gulf of Ambrakia, and by the Gorge of Klissoura, which runs through Mount Arakynthos, and only lacks a stream to make it surpass Tempe. This number may increase so that in ten years more, demand creating supply, even Arta may provide an inn where the weary traveller may lie down to pleasant dreams.