On the summit of the heights which here overlook the river is the site of a Roman cemetery, and the owner of the vineyards where most of the remains had been discovered kindly showed us over his domain. Many fine sarcophagi—the best of which are to be seen in the Agram museum—had been dug up here, containing the usual amount of coins, lamps, urns, and ashes, amongst which the skull-bones were most distinguishable. In one place we were shown a Roman conduit, square in shape, and the outside glazed as if by a conflagration. Near the old cemetery might be seen Roman walls, and some cottage foundations consisting entirely of Roman tiles.
The most interesting Roman fragments were, however, on the left side of the Kulpa, where the town walls are traceable, in a garden by the railway-station. There we found an altar with an inscription[168] showing that it was dedicated to Ceres, with a vase and patera engraved on one side, and on the other a jar full of spikes of corn. Close by lay mutilations of what once had been Corinthian capitals, with rich acanthus-leaves decayed by many winters; fragments of a marble frieze with wavy vine-sprays loaded with bunches of grapes fit for the Land of Promise; besides, other marble bits on which were sculptured beakers and telescopic flowers unknown to botanists, and spiral knot-work which seemed almost Byzantine. It was pleasant to believe that they all formed part of a temple of the corn-goddess, though I doubt whether all the fragments could be attributed either to the same building or the same age; and perhaps Father Liber or Isis, whose altars have also been discovered here, may lay as good claim to some of these vinous and floral devices as Mother Ceres.
But whatever view be taken, these remains are interesting as an illustration of the old position of Siscia as centre of a corn and vine-growing district; nor indeed are they inappropriate even to her present state. The present town of Siszek derives what trade she possesses mainly from the transport of cereals. Hither the maize and wheat from the rich alluvial plains of the Banat and the Possávina, as well as from the interior of Bosnia, are conveyed by the Save and its tributaries; for Siszek is the point where the land-carriage to the north and west commences, and she really stands to Trieste and Fiume, with respect to the traffic between the Danubian basin and the Adriatic, in much the same relation as her Roman ancestress stood to Aquileja. Siszek has two really busy seasons in the year—in the spring when the maize crop is gathered, and again the corn harvest in August and September; and at these times her population, normally reckoned at 3,800, rises to twice, or even, it is said, to three times that number. The town, however, like many other sites of Roman cities, is not so healthy as it was in former times, and a curious plague of emerods is epidemic here. This decrease of salubrity is attributed by the Siszekers themselves to the great destruction of forests that has taken place in the neighbourhood; with what reasons, let doctors decide.
However, modern science and drainage may probably be trusted to remedy the present unhealthy state of the Siscian atmosphere; and it requires no extraordinary gift of prophecy to be able to foresee for Siszek a glorious future, and to predict that, before many years are passed, she will have done much to regain the splendour of Roman Siscia, whose functions, as we have seen, she still to a certain extent performs. For she has been dowered with a situation destined by nature for a great emporium of commerce, nor are signs wanting that the fulfilment of her destiny is at hand. Already Siszek is fixed as the point at which the railway that is to connect Western Europe directly with Stamboul, and eventually perhaps the furthest Orient, is to meet the lines leading to Vienna and Trieste, and another line is projected, connecting Siszek directly with the Adriatic.
Siszek used to be divided by the Kulpa into the civil and military towns, the latter under ‘regimental’ government; but since the new legislation the whole has been placed under the municipal authorities. In neither half is there anything worth seeing except the Roman remains.
On the bank of the Kulpa, however, just at the confluence with the Save, about a mile from Siszek, rises the old castle of Caprag, built in a triangular form, with a round conical-roofed tower at each corner. This castle brings home to us the old days when the Empire was engaged in a life and death struggle with the Turk. It was built in the sixteenth century, with the Emperor Ferdinand’s permission, by the bishop and canons of Agram, and in 1592-3 it was gallantly defended against the Pashà of Bosnia by two canons of the cathedral chapter; till, after withstanding two sieges successfully, it yielded to a third attempt, and for a year belonged to the Infidel.[169]
As we were exploring the former military quarter of Siszek, whose habitations, tenanted by the ordinary peasants of the Granitza, are for the most part mere huts, as compared with the more stylish houses of the civil town, our ears were saluted by sounds of unearthly revelry proceeding from a neighbouring wine-shop. Entering it, we found ourselves in the midst of a Croat merrymaking: an orchestra of four men strumming on tamburas and tamburitzas as for dear life, and accompanied by such a whisking, and whirling, and stamping as never was! The dance they were engaged in when we went in was known to them as the Kardatz, to the Germans as ‘Kroatisch’—though the Croats say that it was taught them by the Magyars. Properly it was danced by the women alone, but there were often enough male interlopers. It is so pretty that it deserves to be known beyond the limits of Croatia; so I will give the general arrangement of the dance, as far as I could catch it.
Six Croat maidens—any number divisible by six and two would do as well—sorted themselves into two groups of three, which for awhile seemed to ignore each other’s existence, the sisters of each triad alternately dancing to one another, and then joining hands, like three Graces as they were, and circling round; till of a sudden the rival orbits seemed to feel each other’s influence, a quick rapprochement took place, and all six, interlacing their arms, tripped round in a fairy ring, faces outwards, till a starry disruption once more surprised us, and in a twinkling the revolving orb was split up into a new triad of twin constellations spinning round on their separate axes, till it made one giddy to look at them—ribbons, kerchiefs, and cometic plaits—and, sooth to say, the nebulous envelopes of the statuesque!—flying off centrifugally.
The dance was in parts surprisingly graceful; and the dancers, though mostly homely, were certainly prettier than the average North-German Bauerin. Their hair was inclined to light shades which one hardly expected to see in so southern a clime, and their eyes were generally blue. There was one maiden, however, more comely than the rest, with dark almond eyes and raven hair, of a strange type, that one meets with now and again in South-Sclavonic regions; a waif from the lands of the morning, an Oriental beauty shrouded in no winding-sheet and entombed in no harem, but set off by the light white muslin of Croatia.
Then there were other dances in which the men performed, which were distinguished by stamping, and every now and then interrupted by a comic ‘spoken.’ We heard some songs, too; such as one would imagine might break from a flock of sheep if they were to burst into spontaneous melody—a wearisome succession of baa-baas, varied at intervals by an attempt to see how long they could keep on at one note! The poverty of the instruments seemed to narrow the range of the human voice.