Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

But the object of greatest interest is the Zeus Temple, still farther west in the line. This justifies the saying of Empedocles above quoted, being so large that the Parthenon could be lost in one corner of it, as the wooden ladle was lost in Lady Wouter Van Twiller’s pocket. It is the most massive of Greek temples, in the sense in which the temple of Zeus at Olympia is more massive than the Parthenon—i.e., its columns and all its members are larger. So enormous were its dimensions that the architect readily saw that he must deviate from the ordinary rules of construction. Columns of friable stone fifty-five feet high, supporting an unusually heavy entablature, needed support themselves. Accordingly they were embedded in a continuous wall. What one here saw was not a line of graceful columns between which and the cella one could walk about, but only a great wall with half columns protruding from it. These half columns were not really independent members. The small blocks composing them run over into the wall to the right and left. They simply serve to break up a monotonous wall, and to present the appearance of columns. This contour, which is a little over a semi-circumference, averages about twenty feet, being, of course, greater at the bottom. A man’s back, as was remarked by Diodorus Siculus, easily fits into the flutings. The clearest idea, however, of the large proportions of the temple I got by noting that the grooves in a triglyph lying on the ground measured fifteen feet in length. It would also be no exaggeration to say that a company could dance on the top of one of the capitals lying about.

The inside of this temple must have been as peculiar as the outside. The great question here is where to place the gigantic figures called Atlantes or Telamones, male figures corresponding to the female figures on the Erechtheum, but, unlike them, showing exertion, like Atlas in the Olympia metope. Probably they stood on the lateral walls of the cella, and, with their twenty-five feet, they would reach up to the roof, like the second row of columns at Pæstum. The cella probably ran clear through from one end of the temple to the other, and, while the two divisions of the temple to the right and left of it, which were as much closed as the cella itself, had entrances from the east, the cella was probably entered from the west. One has to say “probably” very often in speaking of the interior, because the temple has been nearly all carried away to make the pier at Porto Empedocle, the harbor of the modern city. As late as 1401 three columns were still standing and carrying a piece of the architrave. But the temple entered very early on the stage of dilapidation, for the reason that the roof was never put upon it. For more than half a century, even from the time of Theron, Akragas had wrought upon this monster building, and had not finished it when the Carthaginian fury broke upon her. Although the city rose again, and even prospered, it never saw a day for taking up again such a gigantic enterprise.

Besides this temple of Olympian Zeus there was an older temple of Zeus Polieus on the acropolis, to which an unusual interest attaches, because it was built by Phalaris, of execrable memory, who, having attached to himself a band of laborers for the construction of the temple, by their help seized the sovereign power and subverted the democracy. Down in the crypt of the Church of Santa Maria dei Greci we were shown a regular stylobate of three steps, and on the top step eight columns, the upper parts of which run up into the church, which shows also columns of the other long side of the temple. Tradition claims this as the identical temple built by Phalaris. But as the forms of the columns forbid putting them back into the sixth century we do better to identify them with the temple of Athena on the acropolis. The temple built by Phalaris is to be sought, then, on the ground occupied by the modern cathedral. Jove gave place to Jesus, and the virgin goddess, as at Athens, to the Virgin Mother.

When we told our smiling host that we intended to ride in one day from his hotel to Castelvetrano, the point of departure for Selinus, he said the thing was impossible. We told him that, while we admitted his judgment in all that pertained to horses, we were going to make the sixty-two miles which, according to Baedeker, lay between us and our goal between sunrise and sunset, however bad the road might be. He then, like a true sportsman, got interested, offered to bet, and when we declined begged us to telegraph back to him if we really did it.

As we had to wake up the cook the next morning, after waking up ourselves, the sun was well up in the heavens before we got off. But the coffee which cost us so much time must have told on our gait; for a fellow-countryman, whom we first met two days later at Palermo, seemed impressed by it, and rather proud of it. He asked, “Didn’t I see you go through Porto Empedocle the day before yesterday morning on bicycles?” When we assented he said: “Well, I told the American Consul who was with me, ‘I bet dose vas American boys.’” And the next day he repeated, as if pleased with his own sagacity, “I told the Consul, ‘I bet dose vas American boys.’”

As we started the next morning toward Selinus, after passing the night at Castelvetrano, I realized that this, more even than Syracuse, was my chief object of interest in this long-delayed Sicilian journey.

The history of this short-lived colony of a colony is invested with a pathetic interest. Planted by Sicilian Megara in 628 B.C., as an outpost of Hellas toward the west, it was a standing challenge to the Phœnicians. But there was not always war between Hellas and Canaan. The Phœnicians, who had long been in possession of the west end of the island, were bent on gain, while the Greek sought rather for a free unfolding of his civic life; and so, Selinus, with a little temporizing, got on with its neighbors.

There were some strange vicissitudes in Sicilian politics. From the time when Carthage appeared in Sicily as a protector of the older Phœnician settlements, Selinus saw its advantage in siding with her against other rivals. On the great day of Himera, Gelon and Theron had to contend against Selinus as well as against Carthage. This off-side play was not, however, regarded by the other Sicilian cities as sufficient cause for shutting Selinus out of the sisterhood of states.

But, while Selinus had an eye to profit, it did not, like Akragas, forget the art of war. That she was a power in western Sicily in the days when Carthage was so strangely inactive for seventy years after Himera, is shown by an inscription of this time, which mentions a victory won by the Selinuntians “with the aid of Zeus and Phobos and Herakles and Apollo and Poseidon and the Tyndaridæ and Athena and Malophoros and Pasikrateia and the other gods, but especially Zeus.” This drawing in of so large a part of the pantheon implies that it was a great victory. Probably it was won from Segesta, that most hated Elymian neighbor. But Segesta knew how to help herself. After she had lured Athens to destruction in this same quarrel, she invoked the Carthaginian on a mission of destruction. For the Carthaginian was not subdued, but was biding his time, and, when he again fell upon Sicily, it was his old ally, Selinus, that first felt the weight of his arm. Then Zeus and Phobos seemed to forsake her. But her conduct was such in that awful visitation that Hellas had no reason to blush for this daughter.