Mythology says that when Adonis was killed, Aphrodite, seeking him through all the earth, finally found him lying dead in the temple of the Erythræan Apollo. The Sun-god, to cure her grief, counseled her to throw herself from the cliffs of Leucadia into the sea, where she would find oblivion. Here Zeus, who seems to have found obstacles in the way of his legitimate marriage, and to have wooed Hera at first with less success than attended his mortal loves, found by the same process a salutary indifference to the charms of his divine sister and afterwards spouse, to which temporary coolness on his part might, perhaps, be ascribed his ultimate success with the fickle fair.
And here, in practical historical times, criminals condemned to death were thrown into the sea. The people (who even now preserve a certain sympathy with the criminal class) used to tie numbers of birds to the limbs of the condemned and cover them with feathers to break the force of their fall, and then send boats to pick them up. If they survived, they were pardoned.
In modern times nothing has occurred to signalize Santa Maura, or “Levkadi,” as it is indifferently called. It was taken and retaken by Turks and Venetians, and finally passed with the rest of the Ionian Islands to the heirs of Venice. Its people are a mild, hospitable race, to whom the stranger is a guest almost in the antique sense.
We loitered along with a feeble west wind, under the western shore, bold and desolate, of Levkadi, its high peaks above us breaking into ravines, and the ravines ending in cliffs, doubled “Sappho’s Leap,” and before us lay Ithaca, the ten-years-sought-for island. To the north was still visible a dim film which we knew to be Corfu; nearer, one less dim, which we recognized by its outline to be Paxos, an island without history and without interest, but which tradition asserts to have been once united to Corfu and separated by an earthquake. The breeze quickened at night-fall as we went round the point of the Leukadian cliffs, and before us lay the inland sea, which, separating Santa Maura, Ithaca, Cephalonia, and Zante from the mainland, is a sort of smooth-water channel for ships coming out of the Gulf of Patras, or of Corinth, as it is indifferently called, or running in there from Corfu and the upper Adriatic. The bolder portions of Ithaca are almost utterly denuded rock. One hollow, like a great theatre, opens northward between two bold rocky peninsulas, and this is the vale from which the Odyssean city drew its prosperity. Olive-trees and vineyards still cover its slopes, and suggestions of white villages flashed out from the silvery green sea of olive orchards as we flitted by, running under the eastern shore to catch the breeze that blew down from the mountain as the sun sank. We had all the wind our cutter could carry, and bowled along through the smooth water in the lee of the island like a steamer. Far ahead we saw, in the gathering night, a faint glimmer of light, which seemed too faint for a light-house, and too steady for a house-light, and which perplexed us exceedingly, as no light was indicated on the chart; but, creeping along shore, we found that it was a tiny chapel standing on a long and menacing peninsula of bare rock, in the window of which burned a lamp,—in all probability the fulfillment of a vow made by some devout Greek sailor who had escaped the teeth of this Scylla; or the perpetuation of an antique custom, when the little chapel of St. Nicholas, protector of sailors, was a temple of Neptune, whom the saint replaces in function and respect of the seafarer. Nothing is more interesting in this part of the world than the evidences of the unbroken continuity of religious tradition, and the gradual change of paganism into Christianity,—if, indeed, the change has taken place, which in certain districts I am scarcely disposed to admit. The little chapels which one finds planted by the seaside or solitary roadside in all the Greek islands, and even on the mainland, will generally be found to have some antique material in them, some evidence of the earlier shrine which honored one of the Greek gods. The Olympians have their homologues if not their homonyms. Zeus goes back to his awful antique dignity of the All-father, the original sole deity of the Pelasgian, worshiped in a temple not made by hands, under the speaking oak of Dodona, the one God, maker of heaven and earth, the Dyaus or Sky-father of our Aryan ancestors, and Zeus (Deus, Divus) of the western branch of the family; but his creatures and children fall into the lower rank of saints: Apollo becomes St. Elias (Helios); Athena, the Virgin Mary; Ares, St. George; Poseidon, St. Nicholas, etc., etc.
We left St. Nicholas and his night-light behind us, and, rounding a cape into the Bay of Vathy, saw in the dim distance the light of the outer light-house, and met the wind coming out of the bay. It was late, and beating up the bay would be a long job; so we turned in and left the navigation to the sailors. The next morning we woke, as Ulysses did, under the shadow of Neriton, where the Phæacians had left him sleeping.
“In one part of Ithaca is the port of Phorcys, the old man of the sea; the bold promontories forming the circuit protect it from the great waves and the sounding winds. The ships which have once entered it may lie without cables. At its extremity is a bushy olive-tree whose shadow hides a delicious grotto and shady retreat, sacred to the Nereids. In this asylum, refreshed by an inexhaustible fountain, are placed the vases and the jars of stone.... It has two entrances: one, looking toward the north, is for the use of men; the other, to the east, is more divine. Never man enters there: it is the path of the immortals.
“The olive-tree and the grotto are known to the Phæacians. There they go. The ship runs half-way up the beach, so strong is the stroke of the rowers. Then these land, carrying Ulysses, still plunged in profound sleep, and lay him on the sand, wrapped in brilliant blankets and woven linen.”
Waking, he is bewildered by the artifice of Athena, and does not recognize his native island; but finally, when he appeals to the Goddess to tell him the truth, if he be in Ithaca, she replies to him:—
“Now I will show you the localities of Ithaca, that you may doubt no more. There is the port of Phorcys, old man of the sea; there, at the extremity of the port, the bushy olive-tree, and under its shade a delicious grotto, dark resting-place, and sacred to the nymphs. This is the vaulted grotto where often you sacrificed entire hecatombs to the nymphs. There is Mount Neriton, shadowed by forests.”
The identification of this little bay or “port” is the one contested point of the topography, and, on account of its greater commodiousness, Port Vathy (at the left as we enter the roadstead) is maintained by some authorities to be the “port of Phorcys.” The geology of the two bays is conclusive evidence in favor of that which the Greeks now call Port Dexia (the right-hand port), as Port Vathy has not, and by its geological formation never could have had, a beach such as Homer describes, and which was indispensable to the ancient sailor, while that of Dexia is superb—a soft, unbroken stretch of sand. Other objections we shall meet further on.