For a time there was great hustling to keep the he-goats away from the River Neda. But one day a seer noticed a wild fig-tree, which in Messenian parlance was called tragos, a he-goat, growing crooked, and bending over the Neda so as to brush the water with the tips of its leaves. He showed this to the general, Aristomenes, who agreed with him that all was lost; but instead of committing suicide like the leader in the former war, he fought on like a real hero, and even after the cause was lost became a terror to the Spartans on their own side of Taygetos. One wonders whether a people ever really believed that the issue of great wars turned on such portents. Such yarns may have been spun several centuries after the events, by the more or less mendacious historians, to whom Pausanias, in his character of historian, refers as his sources from which he drew his pure history of Messenia.
But however flimsy the history of those past centuries, the walls of the new city are solid reality. Pausanias records that “the first day was devoted to prayer and sacrifice; but on the following days they proceeded to rear the circuit wall, and to build houses and sanctuaries within.” Why did he not say “the following years”? These walls are so extensive, as well as so massive, that one wonders whether they could have been built in less than five years. But there was every reason that the wall should be built at once, to secure the new city against the attacks of Sparta; and we have so many cases of rapid wall-building on the part of the Greeks that we can believe almost any feat ascribed to them in this line. Pausanias recognizes these walls as something extraordinary, saying: “I have not seen the walls of Babylon, nor the Memnonian walls at Susa in Persia, nor have I heard of them from persons who have seen them; but Ambrosos in Phokis, Byzantium, and Rhodes are fortified in the best style; and yet the walls of Messene are stronger than theirs.” A great deal of this circuit wall, over five miles in extent, has now disappeared; but, on the north side the Arcadian gate, with adjacent towers and lines of wall, not only justifies Pausanias’s admiration, but makes the visitor of to-day stand long in mute astonishment. The walls of Tiryns are of more gigantic blocks; but they made simply an enclosure of a palace.
The view from the top of Ithome, which towers above the city, is superb; but Pausanias must have thought it much higher than it really is when he said, “There is no higher mountain in the Peloponnesus.” Taygetos, which stared him in the face, is more than five thousand feet higher; so are Kyllene and Aroania. But it is, with the possible exception of Vlocho, the acropolis of the Thestiæi, in Ætolia, the highest acropolis in Greece, measured, not from the sea level, but from the plain at its foot.
Pylos is about thirty miles distant from Kalamata, across the western prong of the Peloponnesus. Our maps led us to think that there was a fair road across. But more than fifty persons assured us that it was impossible for bicycles. We were convinced, however, that we knew better than they what one could accomplish with bicycles, knowing from experience that a bridle-path is often better than a poor carriage-road. We took the train, however, as far as Nisi (officially styled Messene, though ten miles distant from the Messene of classical times), thus cutting off about seven miles of our journey. In the face of loud and universal dissuasion we struck out for Pylos, and in two hours we had cut off seven miles more of the road, having dismounted perhaps fifty times when it was either too muddy or too sandy, or when the path became six inches wide and two feet deep. An occasional orange plucked from an overhanging bough was a consolation for hard work. We had not yet drawn far away from the sea, and had passed, by fairly good bridges, six rivers. But now we came to a river with no bridge. While we were hesitating, a man came out of a hut near by and offered to carry us across, wheels and all, for a drachma apiece. While he was rapidly lowering his price we had got over, boy fashion, each for himself, with the added pleasure of a very cold foot-bath.
Directly after this the road took a turn up a mountain side, over rough rock strata set on edge. For the middle third of the journey the worst that had been said was short of the horrible truth. We toiled up and down over the path of jagged stones, carrying our wheels and bags. Not until two hours before sunset did we get our first glimpse of the western sea; and darkness fell upon us before we reached the carriage-road running along the shore northward from Pylos. We even struck a bog in the dark; but by keeping straight on we staggered out upon the firm road at last, probably with something of the feeling which Ulysses had when he tumbled ashore at Scheria after his long swim. Three hours later we were sleeping on beds by no means so soft as the bog from which we had been delivered.
BAY OF NAVARINO, WITH OLD PYLOS TO THE RIGHT AND SPHAKTERIA TO THE LEFT
The Pylos, where we passed the night, is a comparatively new town, having grown up around a fort built by the Franks in the thirteenth century on the south side of a great bay. Venetians occupied it later. It received, also, the name of Navarino from some merchants of Navarre, who settled there in the fifteenth century. This new Pylos, beautifully situated, looks out upon a scene so lovely that words fail to describe it; and in this spot history has been made.
