“The reading, with the filling up, is as follows:—
τᾶς [Ἀ]θάνας
τᾶς (Ρ)[έ](ας)
χα[ὶ τ](ᾶ)ς Ἡρ
ας τα (ἔ) [ν]τεα
τῶ[ἱ]ερῶ οἱ
ἱε[ρ]εε[ς] (Κες-
π
“Translation: ‘Of Athena—of Rhea—and of Hera—the sacred utensils of the temple—the priests, Kes—placed.’
“Probably the names of the three priests followed, the first commencing with the letters Kes,—perhaps Kesiphron,—and there ought to follow τάδ’ ἒνεθεν or τάδε χάτεθεν, or similar expression. The inscription, then, has nothing to do with a sarcophagus, or with the dead. It treats, on the contrary, of a hidden treasure, that is to say, of the sacred utensils of a temple in which were worshiped the three divinities, Athena, Rhea, and Hera, each one having her peculiar priest. It is well known that there is nothing new in this case of three divinities worshiped in the same temple. We know that Athena was especially reverenced in Ithaca, and are not surprised to find her first in the list. Then to explain this inscription, it may be supposed that in some perilous time of war, revolution, or other danger, these priests decided to put in security the treasures of the temple and hid them in a safe and secret place, leaving there this inscription, so that in any case the nature and origin of the objects might be known. Probably they cut the inscription themselves that no one else might be in the secret, and this would explain the signs of haste and inexperience in the cutting, while on the other hand the language, like the orthography, is correct.”
The attribution to a sarcophagus by Schliemann is difficult to explain as a mistake. If it had been, as he says, on a sarcophagus that he found the right half of the inscription, he must have found the whole; but the fact is that there was in the whole pile of stones no fragment of anything like a sarcophagus, an object unknown in Greece till centuries later. The inscription had evidently been a mural tablet and was about eighteen inches deep and of a shape and size which made it impossible to take it for a fragment of a sarcophagus; and underneath the mass of debris from which it was extracted the workmen found a pit, which was excavated, they told me, without finding anything; nor, they said, was any object of antiquity found with the stones, while Schliemann engraves a lance head and a coin of about 300 B. C. which he says were found in the sarcophagus. This proves nothing, for when anything is found the absurd rigor of the Greek laws makes the concealment of it the first object of the finder. If this pit, when discovered, had still contained the sacred objects, what a find if archæology could have profited by it! But as the Greek law in case of concealment would have punished the excavator by confiscation, or in the best case by taking the half of the objects found, the first precaution taken by the finder would have been to remove, if possible, to a foreign shore, and if not, to melt down, if of precious metal, the objects found. Until Greek legislation on archæological research is more intelligent, it will be gravely handicapped. The greater part of the value of an object is often to know where it came from, and this we never know of objects found in Greece by chance or private excavation. There was some years ago a report, which had certainly considerable confirmation, of the discovery of a great treasure in this very part of Ithaca; possibly it may have been this. If we could have found the vessels of the temple, they would have given us the art of the descendants of the Dorians in Ithaca at least six hundred years B. C.; for this inscription is Doric, and dates from about that time.
In any case, we may be confident that our inscription marks the site as having been in the vicinity of a city of, or little later than, the Homeric epoch, as, supposing the Odyssey to have been composed in 850 B. C., only about two hundred and fifty years could have intervened between its composition and the placing of this inscription; and we know of no ethnic revolution which would have destroyed the Homeric city between the Dorian invasion and the wars of Corinth.
THE SCHOOL OF HOMER.
But if there are no traces of the Homeric city, and none of earlier construction in the immediate neighborhood of the site, there is in the interior of the island, and in the northern lobe, which we see was probably the special domain of the Ithaca of Ulysses, a most interesting antiquity which is now known as the “school of Homer.” It is in all probability a sacred place of the Pelasgic epoch, as on the rock above it is a chapel whose substructions are clearly Pelasgic and most probably the remains of a Pelasgic temple, which alone would account for its preservation, and is probably also the reason of its conversion into a Christian church. It is on a scale in keeping with all the remains we have of the heroic epoch, about twelve by twenty feet, and though much repaired in the modern adaptation, still shows its ancient dimensions and style of building in the lower courses, too solid to have been rearranged, though some of the upper stones have evidently been replaced in later times. It stands on the brow of a low bluff, below the village of Exoï and not far from the “field of Laertes,” which tradition points out at a little hamlet below. Traces of other walls extend to the brink of the precipice that overhangs the “school,” and round by the side is an antique flight of steps, mostly preserved and cut in the solid rock, that served as passage between the temple and the “school,” which may have been the place of sacrifice or possibly an area for the holding of the council. It is mainly cut in the rock at the foot of the precipice on which the temple was built, with a double flight of steps, also cut in the rock, descending to the ground below. It is not above fifteen feet across at its widest, and the decomposition of the solid rock by time and weather leaves only the general shape and character, with some of the steps above and below it, still tolerably perfect. It was a lovely place, and if the shade now thrown by the olive-trees which surround it was anciently given by plane-trees, it would have been still more striking. You look off on the sea and the distant island of Levkadi with the mountains of Acarnania, and through the interstices of the olive-trees you catch glimpses of the cultivated valley beneath, where, if anywhere in this end of the island, old Laertes must have had his field, as here only is tillage possible. North is the sea, south the huge wall of Neriton, east the rugged mountain that looks out on the inner sea, and west that on which Exoï is raised to the clouds and from which one looks down on the Cephalonian channel at its foot. Like the plain or valley between the Raven’s Cliff and Vathy for the southern lobe, this is the only valley for the northern. The “school” is poised thus midway between the valley and the mountain peak; and whether, as the islanders pretend, it was the place where Homer read his poems, the council place of the ancient heroes and kings, or the hieron of Pelasgic priests whence the smoke of sacrifice went up to the great Zeus, the choice of locality was one which suited alike its uses. The young wheat was springing into head in all the interspaces of the close-standing olive-trees, and the rocks above were overhung and draped with wild sage and gemmed with wild flowers. The boy who guided us assured us that there was a secret passage to the top of the rock, filled up now; and a peasant passing by stopped to see what we might be saying or doing, and finding that our interest was fixed on palaia pragmata, offered to guide us to an ancient rock-cut well in the valley below. We found the door which opens to the passage, which led down a stone-cut staircase to the well, far in the ground; but as the well belonged to the priest, who had the key in his pocket, and was, no one knew where, we had to be content with the door, which was modern enough, though fitting an opening cut in the rock very evidently ancient.
In this vicinity must, by the force of nature, have been the residence of all the agricultural part of the population of the ancient Ithaca. Says the poem:—