Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

The Bay of Navarino, about three miles long from north to south, and about two miles broad, is a large natural harbor, shut off from the sea by what was in prehistoric ages a long, continuous cliff, but which in historic times had already been broken open in three places. The opening farthest north had ages ago already been silted up with sand; and the next one is in a fair way to become so before long. The northern end of the bay has also been a good deal silted up by streams flowing into it; and a long sand-bar has at last entirely shut it off from the rest, making of it a lake.

The particular feature which imparts picturesqueness to the bay is the already mentioned cliff, which rises almost perpendicularly in the greater part of its extent to a height varying from one hundred to three hundred feet, or even more. The face of these cliffs is in places very red, and when struck by the morning sun they are gorgeously colored.

In the fifth century before Christ the southern section of the hill was called Sphacteria, and was, of course, an island; the section next it on the north, which would have been an island had not the opening to the north of it been silted up, was called Pylos; after that follows a low promontory well joined to the mainland. There can be little doubt that the name Pylos is a survival of Homeric times, and that here we must look for the home of Nestor. It has become a fashion in the past few years to look for the Homeric Pylos farther north, partly to furnish a better road for Telemachos’s chariot ride from Pylos to Sparta, and partly because no Mycenæan remains have been found here. But it is about as easy to take Telemachos straight over Taygetos as it is to find any more convenient road farther north. Pheræ, where the two days’ journey was divided by a night’s rest, has been reasonably well identified with some ancient walls on the slope of Taygetos above Kalamata; and if the journey was undertaken from our Pylos it would be about evenly divided there.

Furthermore, in the great cave on the north end of Pylos, which is probably the cave where, according to legend, the baby Hermes hid the oxen of Apollo which he had stolen, there were found in 1896 vase fragments of Mycenæan and even of pre-Mycenæan times. Who knows how soon serious excavations may bring to light Mycenæan walls under the great Venetian fortress? Such a harbor as this could hardly have failed to be known and occupied in the earliest times; and surely there is sand enough here to justify Homer’s standing epithet of “Sandy Pylos.”

But if the Homeric glory should be stolen away, this bay would yet be remembered as the scene of that most picturesque of naval battles in which the allied fleet, sailing in through the broad southern entrance one afternoon in 1827, annihilated in two hours the Ottoman fleet, and brought about the independence of Greece. Some of the wrecks from this battle are still to be seen on shore and beneath the water.

But, after all, it is an episode in the Peloponnesian war that has given this region its chief renown. This episode has been described in the luminous narrative of Thucydides; and the land and the book so exactly coincide that we can trace every movement of the Athenians and Spartans in that struggle of more than two months’ duration. In one respect only is Thucydides’s topography wide of the mark, for that he makes Sphacteria a mile too short is not important; he says that the southern entrance is broad enough for eight ships to sail in abreast, whereas it is approximately a mile wide. The whole Athenian fleet of fifty ships could easily sail in in line. Arnold of Rugby felt this difficulty so strongly that in his edition of Thucydides he advanced the view that Pylos was Sphacteria, supposing that the third opening at the time of Thucydides had not been silted up. He then sought Pylos in the northern promontory of the mainland. This, however, was jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; for if one makes the middle mass Sphacteria the large island to the south, generally taken to be Sphacteria, is utterly ignored. There is no doubt that Thucydides in this one point departed from his principle of always getting information from eye-witnesses. Some have thought he got this broad opening confounded with a narrower one, which at that time, before the sand-bar reached clear up to Pylos, as it now does, led into the northern part of the bay, a sort of lagoon, affording a secure harbor, in which the Spartan fleet awaited attack, supported, morally at least, by the proximity of their land forces. In every other point the narrative fits the minutest nuances of hill and shore.

Most unexpectedly the seat of war was transferred to this quarter. In the spring of 425 B.C. an Athenian fleet was sailing past Pylos bound for Sicily, on which Athens even then had her eye, with instructions to attend first to the Spartan fleet that was hovering off Kerkyra, trying to bring the island over to the Peloponnesian alliance by the aid of their partisans then in exile near at hand. Accompanying the fleet was Demosthenes, the man of deeds, whose path through this war is marked with brightness. Ever capable and adequate to every emergency, he was at last destroyed, and Athens with him, by the incompetency of Nikias. In the previous year he had gained in Akarnania the greatest Athenian victory of the war, cutting off all the able-bodied men of Ambrakia and luring Sparta into a discreditable abandonment of her allies. In the full enjoyment of the public confidence he accompanied the fleet, with indefinite powers to use it in any way that seemed to be for the good of Athens.

When they were off Pylos he saw there, in that deserted region, a chance to strike a deadly blow at Sparta. He proposed to fortify Pylos, and establish there Messenians, who, knowing the land and loving it, would be a thorn in the side of Sparta. But the Admirals, Eurymedon and Sophokles, felt that the chief function of the fleet was to save Kerkyra, inasmuch as Athens had entered into the war depending upon the help that this great naval power could give. They refused to stop, telling Demosthenes that there were headlands enough on the shores of Peloponnesus as good as this, if he really wanted to throw away the money of Athens in fortifying them. He had no power of coercion; but he tried every form of persuasion. The men agreed with the Admirals; but he turned to the captains; and when they also refused to help him out he had to abandon his plan and move on with the rest. The relation of Demosthenes to the fleet seems droll. But by his strong personality, aided by luck, he accomplished all, and perhaps more than all, that he had hoped for.

The fleet had hardly put out to sea when, luckily for him, a storm came on, and they were all driven back into the bay for shelter. The storm continued for several days, and after awhile the men by a common impulse began to fortify Pylos. It was a regular lark. They had brought along no tools to cut stones; so they took stones which lay ready at hand and piled them up just as they happened to fit. They used their backs as hods to carry mud, clasping their hands low down behind them and letting their companions load them up. Two short stretches of wall at the north and south ends made Pylos secure from attack on the land side. Another longer one, but not so high, on the sea front at the southwest angle was a sort of lure to invite attack by sea. In front of the wall was the only level space on Pylos; but before one could reach it by sea he must run his ship in close to a belt of jagged rocks, and get across them as best he could. Demosthenes, who was the director of all this jolly activity, frankly told his men that he never meant to fight behind this wall, but in front of it; never allowing a man of the enemy to reach the shore.

In six days the work of fortification was completed; and the Admirals went on, leaving Demosthenes and five of their forty ships to carry out his plan. By good luck his men, who were marines and not very well equipped for land fighting, were immediately re-enforced by a Messenian pirate boat, with a lot of wicker shields on board, and, to crown all, forty heavy armed soldiers (hoplites).