From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood
RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF APOLLO AT DELPHI
As soon as I had descended from the car and begun to unpack my provisions, an elderly man came up, asked whether we were from Athens, and then put the question that is forever on the lips of the Greek, “What is the news?” Every Greek has a passion for the latest news. Often, when I was traveling through the country, people I passed on the way called out to me, “What is the news?” or, “Can you give us a newspaper?”
Thebes, where, according to legend, Hercules was born; where the stones gathered themselves together when Amphion struck his lyre; where blind Tiresias prophesied; and, seated upon a block of stone, the Sphinx asked her riddle of the passers-by and slew them; where Œdipus ruled and suffered his hideous fate; where the Epigoni took their vengeance; and Epaminondas showed how one man can lift a city and set it on a throne above all the cities of its fatherland—Thebes, where letters were first brought into use among the Greeks, and where weak-voiced Demosthenes by his eloquence persuaded the people to march to their glorious death against Philip of Macedon, is now just a busy village on the flank of a hill. Frequently devastated by earthquakes, which are the scourge of this region, it looks newly built, fairly clean and neat. It dominates the plain in which Plutarch was born, and the murmur of its waters is pleasant to the ear in a dry and thirsty land. But though Thebes is not specially interesting, below it, in that plain once celebrated for its flowers,—iris and lily, narcissus and rose,—beyond all sound of the voices of chattering peasants or determined soldiers, solitary in its noble rage and grief, is that most moving of monuments, the Lion of Chæronea.
I came upon it unexpectedly. If I had not happened to be looking toward the left my chauffeur would have driven me on without pause to Parnassus, the mighty flanks of which were already visible in the distance. When he pulled up we were already almost out of sight of the lion. And I was glad as I walked back alone, still more glad when I stood before it in solitude, surrounded by the great silence of the plain.
There where the lion sits, raised now on a high pedestal and with cypresses planted about him, was fought the great battle of Chæronea between the Greeks and Philip of Macedon; and there the Greeks lost much, but not their honor. Had it been otherwise, would the lion be there now after so many centuries, testifying to the grief of men long since dead, to their anger, even to their despair, but not to their cowardice or shame? I have heard people say that the face of the lion does express shame. It seems to me nobly passionate, loftily angry and sad, but not ashamed. The Thebans raised it to commemorate those of their comrades in arms who died on the battle-field. What shame can attach to such men? For long years the lion lay broken in pieces and buried in the earth. Only in 1902 were the fragments fitted together, though long before that they had lain above ground, where many noted travelers had seen them. The restoration has been splendidly successful, and has given to Greece one of the most memorable manifestations in marble of a state of soul that exists not merely in Greece, but in the world. Lion-hearted men are superbly commemorated by this lion.
The height of the statue from the top of the pedestal is about twenty feet. The material of which it is made, marble of Bœotia, was once, I believe, blue-gray. It is now gray and yellow. The lion is sitting, but in an attitude that suggests fierce vitality. Both the huge front paws seem to grasp the pedestal almost as if the claws were extended in an impulse of irresistible anger. The head is raised. The expression on the face is wonderful. There is in it a savage intensity of feeling that is rarely to be found in anything Greek. But the savagery is ennobled in some mysterious way by the sublime art of the sculptor, is lifted up and made ideal, eternal. It is as if the splendid rage in the souls of all men who ever have died fighting on a losing side had been gathered up by the soul of the sculptor, and conveyed by him whole into his work. The mysterious human spirit, breathed upon from eternal regions, glows in this divine lion of Greece.
Various writers on the scenery of Greece have described it as “alpine” in character. One has even used the word in connection with some of the mountain-ranges that may be seen from the plain of Attica. Such distracting visions of Switzerland did not beset my spirit as I traveled through a more beautiful and far more romantic land, absolutely different from the contented little republic which has been chosen by Europe as its playground. But there were moments, as we slowly ascended the Pass of Amblema, when I thought of the North. For the delicate and romantic serenity of the Greek landscape did here give way to something that was almost savage, almost spectacular. The climbing forests of dark and hardy firs made me think of snow, which lies among them deep in winter. The naked peaks, the severe uplands, the precipices, the dim ravines, bred gloom in the soul. There was sadness combined with wildness in the scene, which a premature darkness was seizing, and the cold wind seemed to go shivering among the rocks.
It was then that I thought of Delphi, and believed that we must be nearing the home of the oracle. As we climbed and climbed, and the cold increased, and the world seemed closing brutally about us, I felt no longer in doubt. We must be close to Delphi, old region of mysteries and terror, where the god of the dead was thought to be hidden, where Apollo fought with Python, where men came with fear in their hearts to search out the future.