The Turk and his lost provinces

by William Eleroy Curtis

A long time ago a hermit made his home upon the top of the columns of the temple of Jupiter at Athens, and lived there, exposed to the sun and the wind and the storms, until compelled to come down. He had an arrangement with a woman in the neighborhood to provide him with food, and she used to appear every morning with a basket of supplies, which he was accustomed to haul up to his eyrie with a clothes-line.

In the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, one of the loftiest and most conspicuous of the ruins at the base of the Acropolis, which was formerly a theater accommodating six thousand spectators, erected by an Athenian millionaire in memory of his wife, Appia Annia Regilla, a noble Roman lady, there is an enormous earthen wine-jar called a pithos. For several years a half-witted man named Demetrius lived in it, just as Diogenes lived in his jar. A kind woman in the neighborhood furnished him food whenever he called for it, and in stormy weather he covered the mouth of his curious dwelling with a curtain of canvas, which gave him adequate shelter.

The parliament of Greece occupies a conspicuous building in the center of the city of Athens, which is the scene of frequent exciting episodes and heated debates. After observing the behavior of the German, Austrian, Hungarian, French, Italian and Greek chambers of deputies, I have deliberately reached the conclusion that the House of Representatives at Washington is the most orderly, dignified and statesmanlike legislative body elected by popular suffrage—not excepting the House of Commons. This is a recent opinion, and is contrary to what I have often written. From the reporter’s gallery of the House of Representatives I have witnessed some very stormy scenes during the last quarter of a century, but they have been incidental. Confusion and boisterous behavior in the European parliaments are chronic. The Greeks are so fond of debate that they ought to have several legislative chambers instead of one, in order to give the eloquent members of that body a chance to express their views; but, failing to get a hearing in the house, they go to the nearest café immediately after adjournment, where they are able to discourse to their heart’s content without interruption.

Politics is the curse of Greece. The country is so small, its financial and other interests are so limited, and its influence in the affairs of nations so insignificant, that one would suppose the people would devote themselves to the development of their material resources and the encouragement of their industries instead of wasting their time in useless discussions and quarrels. But I have always noticed that the smaller the country the hotter the political contests. In Servia, Bulgaria, and certain American republics, where the population is less than in Greece, political agitation is even more bitter and a larger number of people give their exclusive time to it.

I have been trying to discover the political issues in Greece, but have given up in despair. They seem to be numerous, but are not well defined. The local complications are too intricate to be untangled by a stranger, and when you bore through into the pith of the thing you find that the ambition to hold office is the ruling motive, as it is almost everywhere else. There are few offices in Greece and many men who desire to fill them. Hence the outs are opposed to the ins and attempt to justify their demands for authority by proclaiming political principles and promising administrative reforms.

King George is a wise, liberal and tactful ruler. He has a turbulent population to deal with, but is discreet, judicious, generous, and never mixes in political affairs. He always selects his ministers from the party which has a majority in the parliament and is usually able to handle them without difficulty. He holds the confidence of the parliament and the people. Everybody trusts him as a safe man. The only criticism I heard in Greece was that he is too merciful with violators of the law, and perhaps it would be to the advantage of the country if the criminal courts were more severe in their penalties and the pardoning power were not so freely exercised.

The political riots in Athens in the spring of 1902 were due to an unusual cause. Greek scholars are very jealous of the language and are trying to restore ancient Greek to common use. Modern Greek is not taught at the university, and whether it shall be taught in the public schools is a political issue. The advocates of a return to the classic tongue insist that the only way to restore it is to teach it to the children in the primary schools. Their opponents argue that if the children are taught nothing but ancient Greek they can not read modern newspapers, magazines or books. Modern Greek is a corruption of the ancient language, which has become debased by common usage, as the modern Italian is a corruption of the ancient Latin. While it is possible for the native of one province to understand another in conversation, just as a man from New England can understand the lingo of the Arizona miner, very few of the common people are able to read the pure classic. Some of the literary men of the country and many politicians are so democratic in their notions that they would use nothing but the vulgar, modern Athenian dialect, and one man in particular has made himself conspicuous in support of that proposition. He has been bitterly denounced, however, by the university faculties and the serious scholars of the country, and is held up to students as an enemy of their language and their race. So he resides in England.

This controversy is hot and cold according as provocation occurs, and volumes have been written upon one side and the other. During the recent war with Turkey, Queen Olga, who is a noble woman, famous for her good works, and a niece of the late Czar of Russia, found that the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals she visited were not able to read the Bibles she gave them, which were printed only in the classic Greek. She was greatly grieved at this, and arranged with two eminent members of the theological faculty to translate the gospels into the modern Greek. They were hastily printed and circulated in large numbers in the army at the queen’s expense. She paid the translators handsomely for their work and bore all the cost of the enterprise from her private purse. Before the war with Turkey had ended every soldier in the Greek army had one of Queen Olga’s Testaments in his knapsack.

The excitement was so great in those days that the matter was overlooked and nothing was said about it until last spring, when somehow or other the students of the university provoked an agitation and held a series of meetings at which inflammatory speeches were made against the desecration of the Holy Scriptures and the words of the Redeemer by translating them into modern Greek. As is often the case, the police authorities used unwise measures to suppress the agitation, which only made it worse, and it culminated in a mass-meeting called at the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter, near the base of the Acropolis and near the edge of the park which surrounds the palace. This is the usual place for public demonstrations. Political meetings of all kinds are held at the Olympieion, which Aristotle describes as a “work of despotic grandeur.” The ruins are the favorite place of promenade on summer evenings, and demagogues, fanatics and cranks take the opportunity to declaim their views there as they do at Hyde Park in London.

There were originally more than one hundred columns of Pentelic marble, fifty-six feet high and five and a half feet in diameter, of the second largest Greek temple known, being three hundred and fifty-three feet in length and one hundred and thirty-four feet in width, dimensions exceeded only by those of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Only sixteen of the columns remain. Several of them are said to have been taken to Rome by the emperors; more have been broken up for building-material, and at least sixteen are now supporting the domes of mosques in Constantinople.