On the track of Ulysses; Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus of Melos / Two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise among the Greek islands

by William James Stillman

He who goes about in the Mediterranean has great chance of seeing bad weather, for it is the reverse of a pacific sea, and in a scrap of a boat like the Kestrel the phenomena are sometimes interesting. Our course from Zante to Cerigo (ancient Cythera) leads by Cape Mátapan, opposite Cape Maleá, the two southern points of Greece, which enjoy a reputation of the kind that the American proverb gives to Hatteras and Lookout. The Kestrel was again baffled, and, after beating for hours to get past the point, we had to put up the helm and run back to Navarino, the nearest shelter, before a gathering southerly blow. We lay in our old anchorage another day, and as the wind fell at night we beat out again and ran through the little archipelago of barren and desolate islands which lie off this part of the Morea. The weather still looked ugly, and thunder-clouds were gathering on the hills of Lacedæmon, and we could see the storm creeping down toward the sea, but the wind was fair, and we hoped to make Kapsali, in Cerigo, before the squall came down. Already the heights of Cerigo loomed before us, and we had begun to look for the landmarks, when the wind struck us. All hands made what haste was possible to get in sail and get up a small storm jib to lie to under, and not too quickly, for no common canvas would have stood that blast when it struck us. The sun was setting, and soon we were out of sight of all land in the driving spray and rain. The lightning was such as only they who sail in semi-tropical seas can have known, blinding and incessant; it seemed to have gathered around the mountains of Cerigo as a centre, for it went and came and still hung there as the rain swept down the coast and up again. As the wind fell off with the down-pouring of the torrents we got off again and pointed our bowsprit for Kapsali; and as the waters above and those below seemed to have formed an alliance against us, we went below and shut the hatch. Fortunately the wind was off shore and we had little sea, and managed to creep along nearly as much as we had drifted to the leeward; so that when the storm broke and the rain held up we were able to see the rocks off the coast, and finally to grope our way into the little port of Kapsali, which is secure against everything but a southerly blow. The wind, always contrary, fell off as we drew near the light-house, and we had to get in with our sweeps in the small hours of the morning, wet, cold, hungry, and jaded from the excitement of the night; for, though it is simple and safe in the telling, a large Greek brig foundered only two miles from us in the squall, and we had experienced the worst weather we had yet felt, and since the storm began no one had been able to eat or even get a cup of coffee.

At Kapsali one begins to see the antique sailor ways and the evidence of the intense conservatism of the eastern world. The ships are drawn up on the beach at night as of old, and this necessitates a construction of the hull which cannot be far removed from that of the antique. Indeed, I have seen fishing-boats which might have served for the models of the galley on the Roman coins. The rigging, again, is of the simplest, and fitted for these seas, where the sudden squalls and the “meltem,” or gusts which come down from the mountains with no warning but a little cloud appearing on the summit, sometimes leave brief space for the taking in of sail. On the whole, wherever we look we see ample evidence that in the whole Levant, where the original population exists in a considerable proportion, the ways of life and thought are the same as those of Homer’s day. Nature has changed more than man. Where the Venetians came they brought new habits of military life and construction, and demolished all the old ruins to make fortresses; but on the domestic life and on the character of the Greek they had little or no influence.

Whether Kapsali, a mere village, the port of Cerigo, had any ancient existence, we do not know. Cerigo lies on the high rock above it, and is a Venetian fortress; and, as is generally the case with Venetian fortresses, has used up all ancient masonry, if any existed, in its construction.

CITADEL OF CERIGO.

The road from Kapsali to the town of Cerigo is of Venetian construction, kept in repair by those fitting successors of Venice, the English, who certainly left the Ionian Islands in a state of prosperity higher than that of to-day. Good roads were almost everywhere provided, and good ways of other kinds, now lost entirely, if I might believe the complaints of the people. The position of Cerigo is very strong for the days of Venetian rule, and it overhangs the port and country round on every side, except one, like a Pelasgic site, but I could find no stone of that date. It is not likely that there was any very ancient city there, as no tombs or evidences of a necropolis have been found. The formidable character of the position in the times of the Venetians is shown by the view from the road above the ravine which severs the mountain from the lesser hill over the port—a ravine whose existence is quite unsuspected from the port.

The city itself is without interest except as the first really Eastern city one will see coming from the West, and as an example of Venetian fortress-building. The view from the citadel is fine and breezy, the islands of Ovo, Cerigotto, and Crete being visible, and a great expanse of that sea which, on sunny days, is in itself so beautiful from its color. You look down on the houses, white as continual whitewashing will make them, whose flat, terraced roofs serve in the hot and rainless summer as sleeping-places for the whole family. How many nights I have dragged my mattress from the bedroom out on this delightful substitute and let the night breeze fan me to sleep!

Of history the island has next to none. Mythology puts the landing of Aphrodite here, as she came, foam-born and sea-borne, to found her religion in the Greek worlds.[7] The first who are traditionally reported to have colonized the island are the Phœnicians; but it is impossible to ignore the previous coming of the Pelasgi, who have left a well-marked ruin of the earliest type. To see the traces of the antique settlements, one had better go to Port San Nicolo if provided as we were; but secure an intelligent guide previously from Cerigo, as the country people, as in other islands, while pretending to know all about the antiquities, really know absolutely nothing. They know the tombs because they serve as sheep-folds, and they have sometimes a curious knowledge of the relative antiquity of the ruins; but they have heard modern myths, and apply them with the least possible regard to archæological facts, and invariably assure you that they know everything.

So it happened that I was again, for want of choice, out on a search with an ignorant guide. There had been some excavations commenced on the site of what is now known as Palaiopolis (the old city), which evidently was Phœnician, and was occupied down to Roman times. There were some columns of Roman or Byzantine work unearthed, and from mere curiosity to know his notions, I asked a shepherd boy watching his sheep near by what they were. “This,” he said, “was the palace of the king.” “Of what king?” I asked. “Don’t you know?” he said, opening his eyes at me as if this were the very a b c of history. “Why, the palace of Menelaus.” There is an old tradition that it was the place of residence of Menelaus and Helen, and all the objects to be seen are attributed to them. The Phœnician city is close to the sea; the Pelasgic site is several miles back, and looms up on the highest mountains in the vicinity. In a previous visit I had seen but had not explored it; but now I determined to see the whole extent of it. My guide, who brought a donkey for my occasional changes of mode of locomotion, pretended to lead me to the ancient citadel; but when we reached the hill on which I knew it to be better than he, he began to inquire about it of the women at work in the fields; thereupon I, as usual, took the lead. Guided by the nature of the ground, I found all that remained of the ancient citadel wall—a fragment kept up by the chance of its being the limit of a field, and so kept in repair, but in such a state of dilapidation that but for the evidences of the continuity I would not have been sure that it was a wall. I followed the main wall a mile or more along the edge of the precipitous slope, and saw that it bore testimony to the importance of the ancient city, for it was wide in its compass and massive, with towers, gates, and flanking towers of the true Pelasgic style, but in most places only two or three stones high. I got an imposing view of the hill from below the lowest trace of wall, showing its position with reference to the valley below, through which ran once a river of some volume, if we may judge by the alluvial plains at its mouth, but which at the time of my visit in midsummer, was dry as desert dust. A strip of white pebbles shows where it still runs in winter-time. On the hills close to the sea-side, and on both sides of the mouth of this ancient river, used to lie the old Phœnician, Greek, and Roman city, whatever it was originally called,—probably Cythera, like the island. As I have said, it is now called Palaiopolis. The temple of Aphrodite, the people pretend, was on the hill near the citadel where now is an insignificant chapel, but with no evidence of antiquity except that there are in the construction of the chapel some large stones which are evidently of Hellenic cutting; but as the Greeks had the habit in all ages of keeping up the temples of their gods, there is nothing to show that it was a temple of Aphrodite rather than a Pelasgic god, which Aphrodite-Astarte was not, and her temple must have been near the sea.

The site of Palaiopolis is marked by a quantity of tombs, most, if not all, of Hellenic date. There are now no temple remains there; but Spon, who visited the spot two hundred years ago, says that he saw the statue of Aphrodite, which was very ugly and of coarse brown stone, which reminds us of the statues of Cyprus. The rock is a soft conglomerate which the sea cuts away very rapidly, and apparently there has been a subsidence of the soil, since they say that when the sea is tranquil there may be seen beneath the water, some distance out from the actual shore, the ruins of a city. This may have been the port of Cythera—scarcely a fortified city, as the site must have been too low. Right and left of the rivulet which now represents the ancient river are bluffs of conglomerate, that on the left honeycombed by tombs, some of which have fallen with the rock, but of which others are still visible, opened to the elements but showing within the rock-cut graves. Many valuable articles of gold work have been found in past times, but the treasure seems to have been exhausted. These two bluffs are the lineal representatives and successors by right of position of what Aphrodite must have seen as she came ashore on the foam, otherwise they have no interest.