Vacation days in Greece

by Rufus B. Richardson

From all that one now sees it is clear that the architecture, though impressive as a whole, is shabby when examined in detail. The exquisite finish of the Greek is, of course, lacking. But even compared with some other Roman work it is seen to have been hastily done. Its nearest parallel is found in Palmyra, which was restored by Diocletian.

The enclosing wall has half columns of the Doric order in a lower story and Ionic half columns in a second. Of the buildings inside, the “peristyle” in front of the royal residence makes the best impression, because the space enclosed by it was thoroughly cleared out by the Emperor Francis I. of Austria, nearly a century ago, a benefaction duly recorded on a tablet inserted in an adjacent wall. Many of the columns of the peristyle itself, however, are still half embedded in the walls of buildings too important to be torn down. A building which is now generally identified with the mausoleum of Diocletian forms the present cathedral, the campanile of which caused the destruction of a portion of a peristyle enclosing the mausoleum. This mausoleum is a round building like the Pantheon, and like the latter has a perfectly preserved dome which, unlike that of the Pantheon, was not open at the top. About a quarter of a century ago the interior was restored under the auspices of the ill-matched and ill-fated Rudolf and Stephanie, who are mentioned on a conspicuous tablet, not as furnishing any cash for the enterprise, but as presentibus et opus admirantibus. The interior, forty-two feet in diameter, with eight large columns framing four niches and bearing eight smaller columns superimposed, makes a fine impression, although the space seems rather small for a cathedral. A sculptured frieze encircling the dome at the bottom, and containing, among other things, hunting scenes, must be catalogued as “shapeless sculpture.”

After being presens and admirans for half a day, wherever I could enter and climb, I sought out Father Bulich, the director of the museum as well as supervisor of all the archæological interests and undertakings of Spalato and Salona, in order to get him to show me the things that were under lock and key. I found him at his house dickering with some visitors for antiquities, and the last I saw of him, two days later, he was engaged in the same occupation. Nothing could exceed his cordiality and his active help. As soon as he could get rid of his visitors he brought out all the best works on Spalato, some of them loaded with illustrations, and sent them around to my hotel. Unfortunately, I could not get half time, even by sitting up all night, to read any large part of them. Then he took me over three of his five or six small museums with which he has to put up instead of the large one for which he prays as well as labors. But though he has done much to bring order out of the chaos which he found, some luckier man than he will probably be the arranger of the museum of Spalato worthy of the name. Amid much that is common and uninteresting, and yet too good to throw away, are objects of great value and importance. Nearly everything is from Salona. He has catalogued and published nearly two thousand seven hundred inscriptions. Gems are strongly represented, as well as coins and other small objects. Sculpture, aside from some good fragments, is represented mostly by sarcophagi, very few of which rise above mediocrity. It is interesting to see here, as elsewhere, a sarcophagus with the representation of Phædra and Hippolytos spared by the Christians, who took Hippolytos as the “chaste Joseph.” The oldest object in any of the museums is a sphinx shown by an inscription to belong to Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, of about 1500 B.C. In one museum is a cast of a really fine head of Herakles, found in the neighborhood but kept by the monks at Sinj.

Of objects which did not come from Salona may be mentioned certain Greek inscriptions which show the presence of Greeks on these coasts and islands long before the great days of Rome. Of course it was unlikely that, having put a girdle of colonies around southern Italy, and pushed up along the eastern shore of the Adriatic as far as Epidauros (Ragusa), they should remain strangers to this region so crowded with islands, just their kind.

Father Bulich took me also into the one building inside the palace that is kept locked. Its chief attraction is a perfectly preserved barrel vault with coffers containing rosettes. This is supposed, partly from its position, to have been Diocletian’s court chapel; but whether it was dedicated to Jupiter or to Æsculapius is a question which divides the authorities. Lanza, Bulich’s predecessor, inferred from a laurel wreath bound by a ribbon which he took to be the imperial crown, sculptured in the rear gable, that this was Diocletian’s mausoleum. This rear end was said by the guide-books to be inaccessible, and so of course it was what I most wanted to see. I mentioned my regret, and, to my surprise, Bulich said, “Oh! it is perfectly accessible.” Then he led the way through several by-ways and up three flights of stairs, almost tumbling over children in the dim light, until at last we got into a kitchen which was backed up against the gable. There was the laurel wreath, to be sure. Little did it interest the rosy-cheeked woman who had her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and was trying in some embarrassment to get them down again before a stranger. The wreath was out of her reach; but the horizontal cornice of the gable was only about four feet above the floor of her kitchen; and she had deployed upon it—a splendid shelf—her oils and essences, her butter and sugar, and all the appliances of a kitchen and a pantry. When Bulich, with all the authority of an archæologist and a father confessor combined, reproved her for quite a good-sized, fresh nick on the left ascending cornice, her cheeks and even her arms took on a redder hue, probably on account of my presence; for the priest was greeted on every staircase as a familiar friend.

The next day he showed me his excavations at Salona, which he has carried on under great difficulties. Since the Austrian empire has no law for the expropriation of private property for the purpose of archæological excavations, he has been obliged with his not all too generous funds to make his peace with the owners of the fields; and, since the whole area of Salona is covered by one continuous vineyard, it has been very slow business. But he has managed to get a foothold here and there. Here the greater part of a big amphitheatre has been uncovered, here a long line of sarcophagi; at present he is pushing a few yards farther the uncovering of a huge Christian basilica.

There had been no great surprises for me at Spalato; but Salona, which had been to me a mere name, now suddenly loomed large before my vision as the great city of the Occident next to Rome. Three things made Salona what it was. It had in the first place a fine harbor at the end of a deep bay. The silting up of the harbor in modern times has brought it a little farther from the water’s edge; but that the water once lapped its walls is shown by its water gate. Secondly, just back of Salona there is a great gap in the long chain of mountains that follow the shore at a little interval as far as the eye can reach. Through this gap a great road led into the heart of the Balkan peninsula through what is now known as Bosnia and Servia to the Danube and beyond. Thirdly, the region back of the gap was vastly important to the Romans as a gold-bearing land. In the times of Augustus and Tiberius gold was commonly referred to by the poets as “Dalmatian ore.” Salona was the place where all this gold was gathered for transmission to Rome.

The Romans’ greed for gold was here seen in its sharpest phase. They dug miles into the heart of mountains, and carried water hundreds of miles in artificial channels for washing deposits of gold. Perhaps no one can ever convey or even conceive of the horror of the life of slaves in these works. In droves of tens of thousands, many of them made slaves instead of masters by the mere fortune of war, they were driven into the bowels of the earth with poor chance of seeing the light again. It is, at any rate, a fact that months passed without such re-emergence, a fact which lessened the likelihood of any re-emergence at all. In that great and cruel empire, slave life counted for little; the supply was abundant.

Arthur Evans, who has recently given back to us the palace of Minos, made in a series of essays some twenty-five years ago what French savants would call a “most penetrating study” of the roads and mines of Dalmatia and adjacent regions. Realizing from this book the importance of this great highway from Salona, and being already strongly lured by the sight of that great yawning gap in the mountain range, I took advantage of the fact that my appointment with Bulich was not until four o’clock to make the day a day of exploration. Taking an early start, I worked my way up to the top of the pass over a road laid out with such a gentle grade that I was able to bicycle over nine-tenths of the distance. Arrived at the top, I went on by a gentle down grade four or five miles into the interior toward Sinj; but, finding no commanding point of view, I returned to the top of the pass. From this point the view can hardly be overpraised. Exactly in the middle of the deep cut is Clissa, a sharp cone, on the truncated top of which is a strong fortress with a straggling village on the slope facing Spalato. Although there are no evident remains of masonry in the fort earlier than the mediæval period, there can be no doubt that a fortress primeval existed here. For once Baedeker deceived me in saying that admission to the fortress would be granted on presentation of a visiting card. The non-commissioned officer in charge stood by his guns, and, in spite of all importunity, refused admission except on the strength of a written permit from the commandant at Spalato. So I contented myself with a view from a point outside the walls some twenty feet lower down. Since it is mainly the view toward Spalato and the sea that is important, there was practically nothing lost. There was just a little feeling of defeat, of being baffled in an attempt to reach the highest height. A railroad is just now approaching completion from Spalato up through this gap to Sinj. When it is finished visitors can enjoy from its many windings all this fine view at their ease.