GREECE

COMPANION VOLUMES ILLUSTRATED BY THE SAME ARTIST

THE HOLY LAND
CONTAINING 92 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS,
MOSTLY IN COLOUR
PRICE 20s. NET
OXFORD
CONTAINING 60 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
PRICE 20s. NET
EDINBURGH
CONTAINING 60 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
PRICE 7s. 6d. NET

Published by
A. & C. BLACK, Soho Square, LONDON, W.

The pale golden light on the architraves within the Posticum is reflected from the east side of the west front of the Temple. The scarped rock to the right is the boundary of the precinct of Artemis Brauronia. The drum of a column in the right-hand corner of the drawing represents the southernmost column of the eastern portico of the Propylæa. For obvious artistic reasons the whole column could not be included in the drawing. The pedestal before the column is that of the statue of Athene Hygieia by the sculptor Pyrrhos. Two or three paces in front of it are the remains of a large free-standing altar.

GREECE · PAINTED BY
JOHN FULLEYLOVE, R.I.
DESCRIBED BY THE REV.
J. A. M‘CLYMONT, M.A., D.D.
PUBLISHED BY A. AND C.
BLACK · LONDON ·MCMVI

Author’s Note

AMONG the authorities consulted by the writer of the Text (who has had the advantage of a recent visit to Greece) special acknowledgments are due to Grote’s monumental History of Greece, and to J. G. Frazer’s lucid and searching Commentary on Pausanias’s Description of Greece.

Aberdeen, April 1906.

Contents

List of Illustrations

The Illustrations in this Volume have been engraved and printed in England by
The Hentschel Colourtype, Limited.

G R E E C E

INTRODUCTORY

MORE perhaps than any other country in Europe, Greece owes its charm to the traditions of a remote past. It has no lack of fine scenery, and there is much that is interesting in its modern life; but what chiefly distinguishes it from other countries is the rich and beautiful mythology which is reflected in its poetry, its art, and its philosophy, and was to a large extent the inspiration of its glorious history.

It will not be expected that any attempt should be made in these pages to give an adequate account of the artistic and architectural creations which, even in their ruins, form the chief attraction of the country. For detailed information on these matters, the reader must be left to consult such guide-books as Baedeker and Murray, or works specially devoted to archæology or art. The object of the present writer will be attained if he succeed in providing a congenial intellectual atmosphere for the scenes and objects to be presented by the artist. For this purpose it will be necessary, among other things, to recall many of the ancient legends, as well as the historical events associated with the places referred to. The history cannot be understood apart from the mythology, for the latter is a key to the religious faith as well as to the patriotic sentiment of the nation.

Opinions may differ as to the right interpretation of many of the myths, but whatever explanation we may be disposed to give of them, whether we regard them as allegorical, semi-historical, or purely poetical, they are generally full of human interest, and they were very dear to the Greeks as the embodiment of their earliest thoughts and cherished memories. Embalmed in their poetry, consecrated by their temples, and signalised by many other monuments, the Greek mythology formed for centuries the chief intellectual wealth of the nation. Even when history and philosophy had begun to make their influence felt, the old stories, dramatised by the tragic poets, still continued to fill the imagination and to occupy the attention of all classes of the people. Though Plato had a good deal to say against some of them from an ethical point of view, he did not propose in his ideal Republic to do away with them altogether, he only wished them to be so corrected and purified as to promote the interests of a sound morality and a reasonable theology.

An important feature of Greek mythology was its close connection with the received genealogies. These nearly always terminated, at the upper end, in a god or a hero, after whom a family or a group of families was named, with the curious result, to our modern

The two detached colossal columns belong to the west end of the southern peristyle of the Temple. To the right is the Arch of Hadrian. The striking form of the masses of rock, which constitute the natural defence of the Acropolis on its eastern side, shows with great effect in this drawing.

mind, that the shorter the pedigree the more honour it conferred upon its living representative. The public genealogies were thus an incentive both to the piety and the pride of the more influential classes, and they help to account for the reverence in which the ancient mythology was so long held by such an enlightened nation as the Greeks.

With the exception of Palestine, there is probably no country that can compare with Greece for the influence it has exerted on the life and thought of the world, in proportion to its size and population. In area it was never so large as Scotland, and its population, which is now under two millions and a half, was probably never much greater.

How far the influence of ancient Greece was due to the racial characteristics of its inhabitants, which they brought with them from other parts of the world, and how far to the peculiarities of the country itself, is a question which it is not easy to determine. To some extent, no doubt, both causes operated. The inhabitants belonged to a good stock, the Indo-Germanic, while their geographical position and surroundings were well fitted to develop a high type of manhood. The beauty of the scenery, the purity of the atmosphere, the geniality of the climate, the fertility of the plains and valleys, the grandeur of the mountains,—more numerous and widespread than in any other part of Europe of similar extent except Montenegro,—the bracing influence of the sea, and the commercial advantages afforded by its coasts, which are more extensive than those of any other country in proportion to its size, looking in the direction of Europe, Asia, and Africa—all these things no doubt helped to make the ancient Greeks the great nation that they were, though their comparative obscurity in modern times shows that something more is needed to produce a similar effect.

If we would form an adequate conception of the nation’s influence, we must take into account the numerous Greek colonies which were planted in Asia Minor and on the southern shore of the Black Sea, on the coast of Macedonia, along the Hellespont and Bosporus, and also in Sicily and Italy, where a new Greek world sprang up, which received the name of Magna Græcia. Hundreds of years before Athens reached the height of its glory, there was a Greek city in Italy, Cumæ (founded by colonists from Chalcis and Cymæ in Asia Minor), which held the first place in the peninsula for wealth and civilisation; while another Greek settlement was to be found as far west as Marseilles, which had been colonised from Phocæa in Asia Minor about 600 B.C.

The inhabitants of Greece in this wider sense not only spoke the same language (whose preservation was largely due to the influence of Homer), but were also bound together by fellowship in blood, in religion, and in manners. They were hardly more distinguishable from the rude and ignorant tribes of Europe than from the more civilised Orientals who practised human sacrifice, polygamy, and the mutilation of enemies. But perhaps the most marked characteristic of the Greeks was their love of local autonomy, and their rooted aversion to anything like imperial rule, such as prevailed so widely in Asia. Their attachment to an individual city, as the capital of a small district, was doubtless due in great measure to the divided nature of the country, which is broken up by mountains and rivers and arms of the sea into numberless plains and valleys only a few miles in extent. While this had the effect of fostering a spirit of independence, combined with a sense of civic obligation, which helped to develop the energies and capacities of the individual, the proximity to each other of so many rival states bred a great amount of jealousy and strife, which frequently led to bloody and destructive wars. Such disintegrating tendencies were too much even for the consolidating force of a common language and literature, or of voluntary confederations for the purpose of worship or amusement. Occasionally a great national emergency, such as the Persian invasion, might force the Greeks to join together for the resistance of a common foe, but it was almost inevitable that sooner or later they should fall into the hands of a great military power, such as Macedonia, and lose the civic liberties of which they were so proud. The political decay of Greece, however, only widened the scope of its influence. As the dissolution of the Jewish polity was followed by the rapid spread of a religion which had its roots in the Jewish Scriptures, so the national degradation of the Greeks led to a still wider diffusion of their language, their literature, and their civilisation.

CHAPTER I
THE IONIAN ISLANDS AND THE “ODYSSEY”

THE first place in Greece on which a traveller from the West usually sets foot is Corfu, one of the Ionian Islands, which were given up by Great Britain in 1864 to gratify the patriotic aspirations of the Greeks. The sacrifice was not without its compensations, as it relieved Britain from an annual outlay of £100,000, which had been the cost of administration.

The principal Ionian Islands are five in number, namely, Corfu (Corcyra), Santa Mauro (Leucas), Ithaca, Cephalonia (Cephallenia), and Zanté (Zacynthus). They represent a territory of more than 1000 square miles, with a population of about a quarter of a million, who are mainly dependent on shipping and on the trade in oil, wine, and currants.

A romantic interest attaches to the promontory of Leucas, which terminates in what is still known as Sappho’s Leap, in allusion to an old tradition which tells how the famous poetess, who shares with Alcæus the chief honours in Æolian lyric poetry, here put an end to her life to escape from the pangs of unrequited affection. In Zacynthus we have an illustration of the historical accuracy of Herodotus in the existence of some curious springs on the south-west, from which the water comes out mingled with pitch.

From an antiquarian point of view, however, still greater interest attaches to Corcyra, Ithaca, and Cephallenia, as they have Homeric associations which carry us back to a still earlier period.

Corfu or Corcyra, although not the largest, is the most populous of the whole group. It is a beautiful island, with a beautiful situation, looking out on the blue waters of the Southern Adriatic, with the snowy mountains of Epirus in the distance. It has two commodious harbours, in which the shipping of many nations may be seen. The streets of the city are narrow and old-fashioned, but it has an interesting old fortress with a handsome esplanade. Near the harbour is the former residence of the British High Commissioner (an office once held by Mr. Gladstone), with beautiful public gardens in front of it. The environs of the city are charming, with orange-groves here and there glowing in the brilliant sunshine, amid a profusion of roses, geraniums, and other blooms almost growing wild, with miles on miles of olive-trees in the background.

From the earliest times the island was a place of importance to the shipping world, as the ancients, in sailing, liked to keep near to land, and generally put in to shore at night, unless they wished to take advantage of some favourable breeze which did not

To the left the Albanian Mountains.

rise till after sunset. In this way the island afforded convenient shelter for those who were sailing from the Peloponnesus to Italy, and facilitated Greek traffic with Epirus. It became the seat of a Corinthian colony in 734 B.C., when Syracuse was also founded, but it never showed much sympathy or affection for the mother-city. Indeed, the first sea-battle we read of in authentic history took place between the ships of Corinth and Corcyra (c. 665 B.C.), when the latter came off victorious. Before the Peloponnesian war broke out there were great complaints on the part of Corinth on account of due respect not being shown to her representatives at the public festivals in the daughter-city; and the subsequent action of the latter in putting herself under the protection of Athens, when she became involved in difficulties with Corinth and Epidamnus, was largely the cause of the great war which proved so injurious to the prosperity and power of Athens. In the course of its early history Corcyra was the scene of some terrible conflicts and cruel slaughters, almost without a parallel in any other part of Greece. Since that time it has passed through many vicissitudes under Roman, Byzantine, Crusading, Venetian, French, and British rule.

But the greatest interest of the place arises from the tradition which identifies it with the Phæacian island Scheria, on which Odysseus was cast after his stormy voyage from the island of Calypso. No remains have been found of the palace of Alcinous, where Odysseus met with such generous hospitality, but about two miles from the esplanade at Canone (One-Gun Battery), near the end of a promontory, we get a view of the secluded bay or gulf (Lake of Kalikiopoulo) on which the weary voyager is said to have been cast ashore, at the mouth of a brook (Cressida), which falls into the lake, and where Nausicaa and her maidens were amusing themselves after their great washing was over. At a little distance from the shore lies the rocky islet of Ponticonisi (“Mouse-Island”), which tradition identifies with the Phæacian ship that was turned into stone by the wrath of Poseidon, as it was beginning its homeward voyage to Ithaca with Odysseus on board.

All this local tradition, however, is rejected by a recent explorer, M. Victor Bérard, who has taken enormous pains to investigate the matter. He is convinced that the palace of Alcinous and the whole scene described by Homer in connection with the visit of Odysseus lay on the western side of the island, near the Convent of Palæocastrizza, and he concludes from indications in the poem that the Phæacians had come from the ancient city of Cumæ (Hypereia), driven out by the Œnotrians (Cyclopes). But whatever view we may take on these points there can be little doubt that Corfu, which lay as it were on the outskirts of the ancient Greek world, and not far from Ithaca (to which Odysseus sailed from it in a night), is the island which Homer had in view when he described the home of the Phæacians.

Still more interesting, from a Homeric point of

view, is the small island of Ithaca (about 37 square miles in extent), where the poet locates the home of his wandering hero and his wife Penelope, the one the early Greek ideal of practical sagacity, as Achilles is of martial impetuosity, and the other the model of conjugal devotion, as Nausicaa is of maidenly grace. The identity of the island has recently been called in question by an eminent archæologist (Dörpfeld), who regards Leucas as the island referred to in the Odyssey. But it would require strong evidence to overcome the presumption in favour of the island which now bears the name of Ithaca, and which corresponds to the poet’s description as well as we have any right to expect, considering the want of maps and guide-books at the time that he wrote. Perhaps its claim may yet receive fuller confirmation as the result of excavations; but in the meantime it is interesting to know that a terrace wall built of rough-hewn blocks has been discovered on the west coast, in the neighbourhood of a port to which the name Polis (City) is still applied, though there is no modern town to justify the name.

In this connection some interest also attaches to Cephallenia, the largest island of the group. There is a little village on its east coast, called Samos, from which the boat sails to Ithaca, and as an island called Samé is often mentioned in the Odyssey in connection with Ithaca, and the subjects of Odysseus are sometimes called Cephallenians, we are evidently not far from the scenes depicted by the great poet.

It would scarcely be possible to exaggerate the influence which the Homeric poetry has exercised on the intellect and imagination of the Greeks, and it is impossible for any one to enter into the spirit of Greek history and literature without some acquaintance with it. Homer has often been called the “Bible of the Greeks,” and there is truth in the saying both from a religious and a literary point of view. Herodotus was mistaken when he said that Homer and Hesiod had created the religion of the Greeks, but they certainly did much to systematise it, and, by giving Jupiter a place of supremacy among the gods, they paved the way for the triumph of monotheism.

In course of time Homer came to be regarded by his countrymen as their chief authority, not only on religious subjects but in almost all matters of interest to a thoughtful and inquiring mind. The reading and hearing of his poetry was the chief means of education. It was no uncommon thing for a boy to be able to recite both the Iliad and the Odyssey from memory. Classical writers speak of Homer in terms not only of admiration but of reverence. Æschylus said that he had gathered up the crumbs from Homer’s table; and Sophocles was so much in sympathy with the Odyssey that he was spoken of as “the tragic Homer.” There was, therefore, nothing strange in the sentiment which led Alexander the Great to carry about with him in his eastern campaigns a copy of Homer, said to have been edited for him by his old tutor Aristotle, and kept in a precious Persian casket. About a third of the recently discovered Egyptian papyri are inscribed with passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey.

While the oldest poetry of Greece, as of other countries, was probably of a lyric character, called forth by the joys and sorrows of common life or by the festive celebration of the seasons, the more stately epic, dealing with grander themes, and chanted rather than sung, with occasional accompaniment on the harp, found more favour with princes and their nobles, and attracted the most gifted authors to its service, till it reached the high stage of development which we find in the writings of Homer. These poems may be described as the oldest literature in existence, but they were doubtless the result of many previous efforts of a more archaic character, traces of which may be found in the older bards and legendary themes that are mentioned by Homer himself.

The Iliad and Odyssey show to what a high degree of civilisation and culture the Hellenic race had attained not much later than 1000 B.C. In the freeness of their spirit, combined with reverence for law, and in their vivid portraiture of the different members of the Pantheon, seen through the medium of a rich and sympathetic humanity, the poems present a pleasing contrast to all other heathen pictures of things human and divine. Their language is as admirable as the thought,—so rich and flexible, entirely free from the crudities that might have been expected in such primitive literature. Matthew Arnold sums up Homer’s characteristics from a literary point of view, as rapidity, plainness of thought, plainness of style, and nobleness. These qualities give the poet as strong a hold on the sympathies of his readers as he assigns to the minstrel in the Odyssey, when he makes Eumæus say of his old master, now returned, but still in disguise: “Even as when a man gazes on a minstrel whom the gods have taught to sing words of yearning joy to mortals, and they have a ceaseless desire to hear him as long as he will sing, even so he charmed me, sitting by me in the halls.”

The controversy which has been going on for more than a hundred years regarding the authorship of the poems does not much affect their interest for the general reader. Similar questions were raised more than two thousand years ago. Even before Plato’s time there had been a sifting process by which a number of hymns and minor poems formerly attributed to Homer (as the whole book of Psalms used to be to David) were found to be the work of unknown authors of a later date. A century or two later there were Alexandrian critics who denied that the Iliad and the Odyssey could have come from the same author. But modern critics have assailed the integrity of the two great poems themselves. They have based their theories partly on the improbability of such long poems being composed and transmitted before writing had come into general use (an argument which has lost its force owing to recent discoveries of early writing), and partly on the apparent repetitions, interpolations, and discrepancies, which are supposed to have been

Distant view over the hills.

due either to the accidents of compilation or to the need for adaptation to suit the varying tastes of readers in different parts of the Greek world. Perhaps the strongest proof of composite authorship is to be found in the different stages of civilisation and religion which are discernible in different parts of the poetry, and the marked inconsistencies in certain of the leading characters. It is also very significant that Mount Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, is at one time the snow-clad mountain in the north which still bears that name, and in other and later passages is a bright and gladsome region, free from rain or snow or stormy wind. It is now generally agreed that the nucleus of the Iliad was a series of ancient lays concerning Achilles, derived from Northern Greece, and moulded by Æolic art, while the remainder of the poem and the bulk of the Odyssey were of a considerably later date, and came from an Ionic source. The poems as a whole were probably touched up and put into their present form by some one living on the coast of Asia Minor (perhaps at Smyrna, the meeting-place of Æolic and Ionic traditions), who sang of the glories of a by-gone age with the patriotic pride of a colonial. Whether his name was Homer is a different question, for it is quite possible the word may have been, as some maintain, a common term, meaning “compiler.” It is well to remember that the “blind bard who dwelt in rocky Chios,” so often identified with Homer since Thucydides set the example, is merely the description applied to himself by the writer of the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, whom no one now believes to have been the author of the Iliad or the Odyssey. We know that the Great Unknown, whoever he may have been, was succeeded by the Homeridæ of Chios, and these again, by the Rhapsodes or professional reciters, whom we come across in the pages of Plato and Xenophon.

Another subject of controversy has been as to whether the Homeric narratives have a historic basis to rest upon. Some have gone so far as to doubt whether the Trojan War ever took place; and it has been suggested that many of the stories in the Iliad are due to solar myths. But the excavations of Schliemann at Ilium and Mycenæ have rather discredited such scepticism; and the recent explorer already mentioned (Bérard), who has sailed over the course which appears to have been taken by Odysseus,—extending from Troy to Gibraltar,—has found the topographical and maritime allusions so accurate as to come to the conclusion that the poet must have had the benefit of some ancient book of reference, corresponding to the Pilot’s Guide, and drawn up in all probability by the Phœnicians, who were masters of the Mediterranean before the Greeks. But while the main thread of the narrative in the Odyssey may be historical, the poet has worked into it many fanciful legends, like those to be found in the literature of many nations. Indeed the story of Odysseus’ adventures as a whole is perhaps no more historical than the tale of Robinson Crusoe, created by Defoe out of the experience of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez.

To the left, a bit of the east front of the Parthenon; to the right, the precipitous north side of the Acropolis; in the middle distance the Erechtheum, showing all three of its porticoes; in shadow, between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum, the upper part of the Propylæa.

No criticism, however, can alter the fact that we have in the Odyssey some of the most charming pictures of social and domestic life that are to be found in any literature, touched up with a colouring of the strangest old-world romance, and deriving lustre from a religion which, however defective from an ethical point of view, was wedded to an imagination so rich and powerful as almost to efface in the mind of the reader the distinction between the natural and the supernatural.

CHAPTER II
DELPHI AND ITS ORACLE

AFTER entering the Gulf of Corinth the first port at which the steamers touch is Patras, the largest city in the Peloponnesus, with about 40,000 inhabitants,—looking across to Missolonghi on the northern shore, where Byron died and where his heart is buried. The only notable thing about Patras in pre-Christian times was its inclusion in the Achæan League, that last outburst of the Hellenic love of independence. In modern times it has had the distinction to be the first city to raise the national flag in the War of Liberation (1821). Its patron saint is St. Andrew, who has a cathedral dedicated to him, with a crypt in which his bones are said to have their resting-place. It is a prosperous and well-built city, with a picturesque country behind it, rich in vines and olives, and in front of it the inland sea which is the great highway of Greek commerce. But its chief interest for the traveller is the fact that it is the place at which arrangements can best be made for visiting Delphi and Olympia, two of the most attractive spots in Greece.

Delphi is situated on the mainland. To reach it the traveller has to sail across from Patras to Itea, a small port at the head of the famous Crisæan Gulf. The drive from Itea to Delphi on a fine April day is one of the finest in the world. For a few miles you hold northward along the plain, passing through a long forest of olive trees, with gnarled and twisted trunks, the fresh leaves glistening in the sun and changing colour in the breeze, shafts of glowing light shooting through the branches. In the distance rise hills on hills, crowned by the snowy summit of Parnassus. But it is not till you leave the plain and turn to the right, slowly ascending by a zigzag route to the village of Chryso, the ancient Crisa, that you begin to realise the sublimity of the surroundings. The solemn grandeur of the mountains is above you. Below lies the fertile plain, which was dedicated to Apollo and became the scene of the Pythian Games when they reached their full development. As you look down, the olive wood presents a new appearance and seems to wind, like a great river of oil, towards the sea, whose rock-bound coast, in the opening made by the bay at which you landed, shows the pink, white, and blue houses of Itea sparkling in the sun. The Gulf of Corinth, of which you can only catch glimpses now and then, might pass for a great lake, bordered by the hills of Achaia in the south, and surmounted in the far distance by the glittering summits of Erymanthus and Cyllene, which rise to a height of 7000 or 8000 feet. In the course of the journey you may often come upon a mass of flowers, sometimes covering the slope on the roadside, sometimes running into the field and mingling with the ripe corn, which the rustics are reaping with the old-fashioned hook. The most conspicuous and abundant of all the flowers is the large scarlet poppy, which might be counted by the thousand, and often spreads over a great extent of ground. After passing Crisa, almost the only signs of life we saw on the way were flocks of black goats with their tinkling bells, and a long string of heavy-laden camels, with their young ones running by their side, moving along in solemn procession from the east.

As we approached Delphi, the view presented sterner outlines and a wider range, embracing the dales and gorges of the Pleistus valley, and the rugged hills of Cirphis on the south, as well as the mighty range of Parnassus, with its outlying spurs and precipices. Of these the most remarkable and the most celebrated are the Phædriadæ or shining peaks, overshadowing the ancient sanctuary of Apollo, which was for centuries the religious centre of the Greek world, as the Vatican was to mediæval Christendom. The world-wide influence exerted by the Delphian oracle is one of the most interesting facts in all history. It was characteristic of the Hellenic as compared with the Hebrew mind that the oracle should hold such a prominent place in the national religion: for it was a religion dominated by the imagination rather than the conscience. At the same time it should not be forgotten that, until its decadence, the oracle was more frequently consulted

This drawing indicates in a general way the position of Delphi with regard to the plain of Cirrha below and the snowclad summit of Parnassos above. On the left is the opening of the gorge of the Pleistos. Just above where it disappears from view, to the right, the new village called Delphi is visible on the slope of the mountain in front of the great precipices of the Castalian Gorge. Ancient Delphi lies out of sight in the hollow immediately behind the new village, and between it and the Castalian cliffs.

for guidance in the practical affairs of life than merely to gratify curiosity as to future events. The Delphian oracle originated, no doubt, in the superstitious awe which the place inspired as the supposed centre of the earth, possessed of mysterious cavities by which it was believed possible to hold communication with the dead. In the earliest times it was connected with the worship of the earth-goddess Gæa or Gē, who sheltered the dead in her bosom. Later, the presiding deity was Themis, the goddess of law and order in the natural world. But during the whole historical period Apollo was the source of inspiration, the god of light and the highest interpreter of the divine will. During the three winter months Dionysus reigned, in the absence of Apollo.

The reverence in which the oracle was held, even in the most enlightened times, was largely due to the wisdom and prudence of the priests—five in number—who belonged to the noblest Delphian families and held office for life. They were brought into contact with leading men who came to consult the oracle from all parts of the Greek-speaking world,—men like Lycurgus and Solon and Socrates and Xenophon and Alexander the Great,—and they appear to have been on terms of intimacy with such national poets as Hesiod and Pindar and Æschylus. Pindar’s iron chair was carefully preserved in the sacred precincts, and the priest of Apollo cried nightly as he closed the temple, “Let Pindar the poet go in unto the supper of the gods.”

The priests put their own interpretations on the ecstatic utterances of the prophetess, which she delivered in their hearing and in the presence of the inquirer after she had drunk the holy water, chewed the laurel-leaf, and mounted the tripod to inhale the narcotic vapour which arose from the chasm beneath. These interpretations they embodied in hexameter verses, generally disappointing from a poetical point of view, considering the auspices under which they were delivered, and frequently ambiguous in their terms, when it did not seem advisable for the oracle to commit itself to a definite opinion. One of the best known and most interesting cases of this sort was the answer given to Crœsus, King of Sardis, when he was deliberating whether he ought to go to war with Persia. Before inquiring on so important a point he resolved to test all the chief oracles, six in number, by asking each of them through a special messenger to say what he was doing on a specified day, on which the question was to be put. The oracle that best stood the test was Delphi, and Crœsus proceeded to ask advice on the momentous question about which he was so anxious, bestowing on the temple of Apollo at the same time magnificent gifts of solid gold and silver, and immense offerings for sacrifice. The answer was that if he went to war with Persia he would destroy a great empire, which he at once took in a favourable sense. He was defeated, however, and Cyrus became master of his city and kingdom, thus fulfilling the oracle in an unexpected sense. He would have been put to death by his conqueror had it not been that when he lay bound upon a funeral pile, which had been already kindled, his exclamations led Cyrus to inquire what he was speaking of, and on hearing of Solon’s warning as to the instability of human greatness, which the fallen monarch had been calling to mind, Cyrus gave orders that Crœsus should be at once released. The flames had taken such hold of the wood, however, that he would still have perished if Apollo had not heard his prayers and sent a heavy shower of rain, which extinguished the fire. The disappointment of his hopes gave such a shock to Crœsus’ faith that, by the leave of Cyrus, he sent to Delphi the chains in which he had been bound to the pile, with a message asking if that was the way in which Apollo treated his faithful votaries. In the reply he was reminded that Apollo had saved his life, and was told that he had not been careful enough in his interpretation of the oracle, and that it had been impossible any longer to avert the doom which rested on him as the fifth in descent from an ancestor who had incurred the divine wrath by the murder of his master and the usurpation of his throne.

With one exception—the encouragement which it gave on certain rare occasions to human sacrifice—the general influence of the oracle was salutary, from a social and political as well as an ethical point of view. On the walls of the temple were inscribed some of the sayings of the wise men of Greece, such as “Know thyself,” “Nothing to excess.” The oracle did much for the protection of rights where no legal sanction was available. It checked blood-feuds, and gave its sanction to the purification and pardon of those who had committed homicide under extenuating circumstances. It could even dispense with ritual observance altogether where there was no real guilt. For example, to a good man who had slain his friend in defending him against robbers, and had fled to the sanctuary in great distress of mind, its answer was: “Thou didst slay thy friend striving to save his life; go hence, thou art purer than thou wert before.” It confirmed the sanctity of oaths. Herodotus gives a striking instance of its high standard of morality when, in answer to an inquirer who asked whether by repudiating his oath he might claim a large sum of money which had been deposited with him, the prophetess declared that to tempt the god as he had done and to commit the crime was the same thing, and that the divine judgment would descend on him and on his house. For “there is a nameless son of Perjury, who has neither hands nor feet; he pursues swiftly, until he seizes and destroys the whole race and all the house.” It also rendered good service, as many inscriptions show, in connection with the emancipation of slaves, whose deposits it took care of, until a sufficient sum was available for the purchase of their freedom from their masters, who were interdicted from making any further claim upon their services. Besides the light and leading which the oracle afforded to some of the early lawgivers of Greece, and the wise counsels which it gave on questions of peace or war, it was specially useful in advising cities on all projects of colonisation.

The scarped vertical face of rock, which may be seen above the figure of the shepherd, shows the recently excavated site of the Place for the Lustration of Pilgrims, to which the water of the Castalian spring was carried by an artificial channel in the rock. The masonry to the left of the drawing is part of a modern reservoir.

It seems to have been almost the invariable practice for Greeks to consult the oracle before resolving to plant a colony, so much so that Delphi is declared to have been “the best-informed agency for emigration that any State has ever possessed.”

Its prestige declined owing to several causes. The priests were not always proof against bribery; and when it became known at any time that they had thus abused their office, it produced a deep feeling of indignation and distrust. There are several well-attested cases of corruption, chiefly on the part of Spartans. One of their kings, Cleomenes, procured the deposition of his brother-king Demaratus by bringing private influence to bear at Delphi. When the facts of the case came to light, the prophetess was deposed from her office, and her chief adviser at Delphi had to take to flight. Another Spartan king, Pleistoanax, who had been exiled for accepting bribes from Pericles, succeeded, after eighteen years’ residence in Arcadia (where, for safety, half of his dwelling-house was within the enclosure of a temple), in obtaining his recall to Sparta with great honour, owing to the injunctions to this effect, which were repeatedly given by the oracle as the result of bribes. Lysander, the great Spartan general, after he was deprived of his command, concerted a scheme with the authorities at Delphi for getting himself recognised as king through the publication of fabricated records, alleged to be of great antiquity, and only to be opened by a genuine son of Apollo. Such a pretender they secured, but the scheme broke down owing to the timidity of one of the conspirators.

Another drawback was that the growing power of rival states rendered it increasingly difficult for the oracle to hold the balance with any fairness between them, and at the same time maintain its old and intimate relations with Sparta. Its dignity was also lowered when, instead of being open for consultation for a month once a year, more frequent opportunities were afforded and trivial questions entertained. But perhaps the most serious difficulty they had to contend with was the growing intercourse and correspondence of the different cities of Greece, both with one another and with foreign cities, and the general spread of knowledge, which tended to impair the reverence in which the oracle had been held, and deprived its priests of the monopoly of general information which they seem to have at one time virtually enjoyed. By the time the Christian era began, the Greek oracles had been practically superseded by the Chaldæan astrologers; and when Julian the Apostate in the fourth century tried to revive the glory of Delphi, he received the answer, “Tell the king the earth has fallen, the beautiful mansion; no longer has Phœbus a home, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a font that speaks: gone dry is the talking water.” It was finally suppressed by the Emperor Theodosius towards the end of the fourth century.

Like the still older sanctuary of Dodona (where revelations were supposed to be given through the rustling of a sacred oak), Delphi was, alternately with Thermopylæ, the seat in historic times of an Amphictyony or union of states, which existed for the worship of the deity whose shrine they were pledged to defend, as well as for mutual friendship and protection. Unfortunately the history of the oracle, although a national institution, was marked at various times by deadly strife among the different Hellenic tribes whose interests were involved. At first the management of the oracle seems to have been in the hands of the people of Crisa, who were Phocians, but after the protracted war waged by the Amphictyony against the natives of Cirrha, the adjacent sea-port, on account of the extortions they practised on the pilgrims to the shrine and the outrages they sometimes perpetrated on them, the trust was committed by the federation to the inhabitants of Delphi, who were of Dorian extraction. Cirrha was laid waste, the whole Crisæan plain was dedicated to Apollo, and the spoils of Cirrha were used to establish the Pythian games on a more ambitious footing than had been possible when they were held in the limited space available at Delphi.

A second Sacred War, as it was called, broke out in 357 B.C., when the Amphictyonic Council, after imposing a fine on the Phocians at the instigation of their enemies the Thebans, which remained unpaid, proceeded to confiscate their territory. The Phocians offered a long and desperate resistance, asserting their old right to administer the affairs of the sanctuary. In the course of the war their leaders had recourse to the treasures of the temple again and again, melting and coining the precious metals, and turning the brass and iron into arms. Altogether they are said to have appropriated no less than £2,300,000, which was required to keep up their large mercenary army.

The fabulous wealth of the place had often tempted the cupidity of foreign foes, but on every occasion the god had been found able to protect himself. When Xerxes sent a detachment of his huge army to despoil the shrine, his soldiers were thrown into a panic and put utterly to flight by great rocks tumbling down upon them from the cliffs of Parnassus in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm. The rocks were shown to Herodotus in the precincts of the temple of Athena,—perhaps the same as are still to be seen in the low ground to the south of the public road. A similar experience is said to have befallen the Gauls under Brennus about two hundred years afterwards. At an intermediate date (370 B.C.), when Jason of Pheræ, the powerful ruler of Thessaly, set out for Delphi with, as it was believed, a hostile intent, under colour of sacrificing to the god a thousand bulls and ten thousand sheep, goats, and swine, he was suddenly cut off in the prime of life by a treacherous band of assassins.

There was yet a third Sacred War, a few years afterwards. The objects of Amphictyonic wrath on this occasion were not the Phocians but the Locrians of Amphissa (now Salona), who had taken possession of Cirrha and repeated the old offence of using part of the consecrated ground for their own secular purposes.

The wall of polygonal masonry to the right is part of the Heleniko, or terrace wall, of the Great Temple of Apollo. Three marble steps at the back of the Athenian portico, with two Ionic columns in place, stand in front of the wall. The “sacred way,” terminating at the east end of the Great Temple above, passes in front of this portico, and the row of marble seats along its farther side marks out its course. To the left of the drawing is seen the mountain slope of Kirphis leading down to the gorge of the river Pleistos.

The sympathies of Greece were divided in this war, and the final outcome of the struggle was that Philip of Macedonia, who had been called in to finish the previous war, and had been admitted a member of the Amphictyony in place of the dispossessed Phocian tribe, now became master of Greece by reason of his victory over the combined forces of Athens and Thebes at the fateful battle of Chæronea in 338 B.C.

Within the past few years French archæologists have done wonderful work at Delphi. By the removal of the modern village of Castri, the foundations of the temple and the remains of many of the surrounding buildings and monuments have been brought to light. As you pass along the “Sacred Way” you can identify many of the sites mentioned by Pausanias, in the very order in which he describes them. In most places the old pavement still remains, with grooves to keep the feet from slipping. Some of the most precious relics have been removed to the Museum, where there are also models of many of the most beautiful works of art that have perished. Among the former is the famous Omphalos or “Navel-stone,” on which Apollo is often represented as sitting. It marked the spot at which two eagles met, which had been sent out by Jupiter from extreme east and west, of equal speed in flight, to determine the exact centre of the earth. The marble stone which is now shown, although apparently identical with that seen by Pausanias,—for it was discovered on the same spot,—may be only an imitation of the original, like another which has also been recently discovered; and the golden eagles which stood beside the Omphalos have also disappeared. The chasm in the temple floor, from which the vapour ascended that was supposed to inspire the prophetess, cannot now be found, having probably been filled up somehow; but a little way off there is a rock with a rift in it, on which the first Sibyl (mentioned by Plutarch) is supposed to have sat and prophesied. The rift may have been the lurking-place of the dragon which Apollo shot with his darts, when he came from Delos, the land of his birth, to inaugurate the ministry of the Cretan travellers, whom he had enlisted in the service of his new sanctuary. According to the legend the skin of the dragon was left to rot, giving rise to the ancient name Pytho, by which Delphi was known in the days of Homer. In the hymn to the Delphian Apollo the scene of the combat is laid in the gorge of the Phædriadæ, but the other conjecture is supported by the proximity to the Sibyl’s rock of an enclosure like a threshing-floor, which is supposed to be the place where the drama was enacted every fourth year.

A little way above the temple is an open-air theatre—one of the best preserved in Greece. It is in the usual horse-shoe form, with its sloping back, enclosing the sitting accommodation for the spectators, resting on a rising ground. The stadium is still higher, right under the cliffs of Parnassus on the north, and shut in by rising grounds on either side, but commanding a magnificent view to the south over valley and mountain. It was the ancient scene of the Pythian games, and is still recognisable as such in almost every feature. Apollo was regarded as the leader of the Muses, and the Pythian festival was originally a musical, not an athletic contest. The prize of laurel wreath was given for the best song in honour of Apollo to the accompaniment of the lyre. At the conclusion of the first Sacred War, nearly 600 B.C., the chariot races (which are deprecated in the Homeric hymn) were inaugurated in the plain beneath. But the higher form of competition still continued, including even poetry and painting—a distinction of which no other pagan cult can boast. Deeply interesting as the ruins are from an archæological point of view, they bring home a sense of the transitoriness of early glory when one thinks how little remains of the thousand statues and trophies and votive offerings which once filled the spot with “the glory that was Greece.” Time has robbed it of the treasures of art which were to be seen in the days of Pliny, even after the ravages of Sulla and of Nero. Happily, one of the most interesting and beautiful of all the monuments has just been restored, namely the Treasury of the Athenians, which was built of Parian marble in the form of a small Doric temple, from the spoils taken on the field of Marathon. It seems to have been overthrown by an earthquake, but almost all the blocks of which it was constructed have been discovered among the ruins, and have been fitted together with such skill and success as to reproduce the old inscriptions engraved upon the walls, including several hymns to Apollo, with their musical notation. The expense of the restoration has been mainly borne by the city of Athens.

A few hundred yards to the east is the Castalian spring, in the cleft between the lofty Phædriadæ. At one time it was believed to confer the gift of prophecy on those who drank of it; but its rock-hewn basin is now used by the village women for washing clothes. In ancient times its water was used for sacred purposes by the prophetess and her attendants and all who came to consult the oracle. That the purification sought was not merely that of the body may be inferred from a prophetic utterance which has been rendered as follows:—

To the pure precincts of Apollo’s portal,
Come, pure in heart, and touch the lustral wave:
One drop sufficeth for the sinless mortal;
All else e’en ocean’s billows cannot lave.

If the traveller pursue his journey a few hours farther to the east, passing the picturesque little town of Arachova, about 2000 feet above the sea, he will reach the ancient Cleft or Triple Way, in a scene of desolate grandeur at the end of a long, deep, narrow valley. It was there that Œdipus, seeking to escape the destiny which had just been announced to him by the oracle, and unaware of his true parentage, met his father Laius, King of Thebes, on his way to Delphi, and in a fit of anger at the unceremonious way in which he was jostled aside by the royal charioteer, slew the aged king and all his attendants save one,—a crime which was the beginning of those many sorrows in his

Of extraordinary interest as the material source of the finest architecture and sculpture of Ancient Greece.

family history which were to be the theme of some of the greatest of the Greek tragedies. Pausanias mentions that the tomb of the murdered men, with unhewn stones heaped upon it, was to be seen at the middle of the place where the three roads met: the modern traveller finds a monument with an inscription which tells how Johannes Megas was killed on the same spot in 1856, in an encounter with a band of brigands, which he was seeking to extirpate.

CHAPTER III
OLYMPIA AND ITS GAMES

OLYMPIA has been described by an ancient writer as the fairest spot in Greece. In so describing it, he must have had in view not only the natural scenery but also the beautiful buildings and statuary with which it was so richly adorned as the time-honoured seat of the Olympian games. The scenery is pleasing without being grand, presenting in this respect a striking contrast to the stern majesty of Delphi. It may be described as a peaceful and fertile plain, traversed by the river Alpheus, whose waters Heracles is said to have diverted from their course to cleanse the Augean stables. On either side, and also at its western end, the plain is shut in by hills, while far away to the east the mountains of Arcadia, where the Alpheus has its rise, can be dimly seen. In the immediate foreground, standing by itself, as if detached from the low range behind, there is a small conical hill, about 400 feet high, covered with pines and brushwood, and bearing a name (Cronius) which calls to mind the primeval deity who was dethroned by his son Zeus, the presiding god of Olympia. Close to this hill, on the south, lies the Altis or sacred enclosure, originally a consecrated grove, which, in course of time, was overspread with altars and temples and other public buildings.

Thirty years ago there was scarcely any trace of this ancient glory to be seen. But within the last generation a great work of excavation and discovery has been carried on by German archæologists, at an expense of £40,000, generously defrayed by the German Government, on the understanding that all objects of interest brought to light should be allowed to remain in Greece. One can form some idea of the labour involved in the undertaking from the fact that the average depth of the débris, composed of the clay washed down from the Cronius hill and the alluvial deposits of the river Cladeus (which joins the Alpheus close to the Altis on the west), was fully sixteen feet.

Although associated, more than any other spot in Greece, with the worship of the “father of gods and men,” Olympia seems originally to have been devoted to the honour of his consort Hera, or possibly of both. The oldest architectural remains within the enclosure are those of a temple of Hera, to which Pausanias assigned an earlier date than we can give to any other sacred ruin in Greece, namely, about 1096 B.C. Its great antiquity is proved by the resemblance which it bears in some respects to the architecture of Mycenæ, and also by the fact that the existing columns (of which thirty-four out of the original forty have been more or less preserved) were evidently preceded by columns of wood, one of which, made of oak, was still standing when Pausanias visited the place in the second century A.D. Wood seems to have been the material in which the Doric architecture was originally executed; and in this instance it was only as the wood of each column decayed that it was replaced with stone, the natural result being that the columns differ greatly from one another in thickness and style and the nature of their stone. Some of them must have been substituted for the wooden ones as early as the seventh century B.C., for their capitals are among the oldest specimens of Doric architecture that are anywhere to be found. Pausanias tells us that this temple contained rude images of both Zeus and Hera; and not far from the spot a head has been discovered, twice as large as life, which is supposed with great probability to belong to the latter. It is believed to date from the seventh or sixth century B.C., and is made of the same soft stone as the base still remaining, which could not have lasted so long unless it had been under cover. The eyes are large, the head is crowned, and the face wears a look of complacency, without much dignity or refinement. Hera seems to have had much the same prominence in Olympia as she had in Argolis, where the family of Pelops was also in the ascendant.

It was only gradually that Zeus obtained general recognition as the chief deity in the court of Olympus, becoming the centre of the Pan-Hellenic religion reflected in Homer, which was as powerful a bond of union among the ancient Greeks as Christianity has

At the foot of the hill, the columns of the north, south, and west sides of the Heræon still in situ are clearly shown, and also the cella wall on the west and south. The remains of the Philippeion, a circular building erected by Philip II. of Macedon (circ. 336 B.C.), are in the foreground, to the west of the Heræon. The base of one of the Ionic columns is in its place, and the marble steps which supported the colonnade are connected by a slab of marble with the circular sub-structure of the central mass of the building.

proved to be in modern times in preserving the Greek nationality under the Turkish Empire. The supremacy which was given to Zeus in theory in other parts of the country was visibly realised at Olympia, where the chief sanctuary was a temple dedicated to his worship, more than 200 feet long and about 90 feet wide, surrounded by 134 columns, each of them about 34 feet high, dating probably from the fifth century B.C. It was a magnificent edifice, as we may still judge from the appearance of the columns and the decorations of the pediments and the frieze—although built of native conglomerate. On the east pediment of the gable there were twenty-one colossal and imposing figures, representing those interested in the chariot-race from Pisa to the isthmus of Corinth, by which Pelops gained the kingdom and the hand of the king’s daughter; while on the west there was a representation, in a similar style, of the legendary battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs. On the metopes of the frieze the Twelve Labours of Heracles were depicted, and along the sides of the roof gargoyles projected in the form of lions’ mouths. Many of these figures have been recovered, mostly in fragments, and are exhibited in the local museum. In the same place there is an exquisite statue of Hermes by Praxiteles, which was found under a covering of clay in front of the very pedestal in the temple of Hera where Pausanias mentions that he had seen it standing, and also a Niké of Pæonius, representing the goddess of Victory flying through the air to execute the behest of Zeus.

But the crowning glory of Olympia, the masterpiece of Pheidias and of Greek art, is gone beyond recall. It was a colossal image of Jupiter, made of gold and ivory and ebony, about 40 feet high, and standing on a pedestal of bluish-black stone in the innermost part of the temple. Cicero expressed his admiration of it by saying that Pheidias had designed it not after a living model but after that ideal beauty which he saw with the inward eye alone. Dīo Chrysostom bore still more impressive testimony to its entrancing beauty when he said: “Methinks that if one who is heavy-laden in mind, who has drained the cup of misfortune and sorrow in life, and whom sweet sleep visits no more, were to stand before this image, he would forget all the griefs and troubles that are incident to the life of man.” It is uncertain whether the image perished in the fire which destroyed the temple in the beginning of the fifth century A.D., or was carried to Constantinople and consumed in a conflagration which took place there in 475 A.D.

Near the centre of the Altis has been found the foundation of the great altar of Zeus (which was made of ashes and rose to a height of 22 feet), and not far off an ancient altar of Hera, where an immense quantity of small bronzes and terra-cotta figures has been found. In the same neighbourhood has been traced the Pelopium, a precinct sacred to the memory of Pelops, where he was worshipped as a hero with a ritual of a sad and gloomy nature, directed to a pit as an emblem of the grave, and more akin to the primitive worship of the Chthonian or infernal gods than to that of the deities who were enthroned on lofty Olympus.

The fame of Olympia may be said to have rested even more on its games than on its religious associations, though the secular and sacred were so bound up with one another, in ancient Greece, that it is scarcely possible to form a true conception of the one without the other. The Olympian games held the foremost place among those competitive exhibitions, which were so illustrative of the spirit of emulation characteristic of the Greeks, as well as of their ideal of a harmonious development of body and soul. There were three other foundations of the same kind: the Pythian, in honour of Apollo, likewise held every four years; the Nemean (under the care of Argos), every second year, in honour of Zeus; and the Isthmian (under Corinth), also held every second year, in honour of Poseidon. The prizes were respectively a wreath of bay, of pine, and of parsley, a palm-branch being also placed in the hand of the victor. The prize at Olympia was a wreath of olive, cut with a golden sickle by a boy, both of whose parents had to be alive—as among the Gauls the priest had to cut the sacred mistletoe with the same precious metal. At the three other places just mentioned the games dated practically from the first quarter of the sixth century B.C. But the register of victors in the Olympian games went back to 776 B.C., which is the first definite and reliable date (called the First Olympiad) in Greek chronology.

The origin of all these gatherings may probably be traced to the funeral games mentioned in Homer and Hesiod, which were celebrated by a chief in honour of a departed friend or relative. According to one account the Olympian games were instituted by Heracles in honour of Pelops, grandfather of Agamemnon and brother of the ill-fated Niobe, who had come to Pisa from the Lydian kingdom of his father Tantalus—that presumptuous guest at the table of the gods whose name is immortalised for us in the English word which describes the nature of his penal sufferings. The traditional connection of Olympia with Asia Minor is borne out by the resemblance of the bronzes above mentioned to early Phrygian art, as well as by other circumstances; and there is no reason to doubt that Olympia was at one time in the hands of the Achæans.

The Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus about 1100 B.C., eighty years after the fall of Troy, marked a new era in the history of Olympia. The Heracleids (whose shipbuilding for the voyage across the narrow straits of the Gulf is still commemorated in the name of the port Naupactus, on the northern side of the Gulf) are said to have rewarded the Ætolian exile Oxylus, who acted as their guide (answering to the oracular description of “a man with three eyes,” whom they were to find—being one-eyed and riding on a horse with two eyes), by confirming him in the possession of Elis, which in older times was known as Epeia, and is so referred to by Homer. For a long time the Eleans and the Pisatans seem to have superintended the games

This view is taken from the western side of the Palæstra, and the standing columns in the foreground are part of the southern colonnade of that building. The platform (Krepidoma) of the great Temple (which was raised upon a mound and occupied the highest point of the Altis or sacred enclosure) is in the centre of the drawing. Many of the colossal drums and other architectural members of the Temple lie scattered about on the platform. Across the valley of the Alpheios are seen the Phellon Mountains, topped by splendid masses of cloud. This drawing is a record of a lovely spring day in the Western Peloponnesus.

jointly, with the support of the Dorian settlement at Sparta, whose great lawgiver, Lycurgus, was said to have put the institution on a new footing in concert with Iphitus, the king of Pisatis, the names of both being inscribed on a famous quoit of which Aristotle speaks. Pausanias tells us that the towns of Elis and Pisatis appointed sixteen women—eight from each state—to weave the festal robe (peplos) for the image of the Olympian Hera. The Pisatans, however, were afterwards displaced, and in 570 B.C. their city was destroyed, and Elis obtained the whole right of administration.

The first historic game was a foot-race, and it was only by degrees that other contests were at various times added. The pentathlon, during which the Pythian air was played on the flutes in honour of Apollo, consisted of running, jumping, throwing the disc or quoit, throwing the javelin, and wrestling. Finally came chariot-racing (in a hippodrome adjoining the Altis), which, though necessarily confined to men of wealth, added much to the spectacular attractions of the games.

The competitors had to strip naked for the athletic contests, this being a characteristic feature of the Greek games, obligatory on all without distinction of rank. There were games for boys as well as for men, and the celebrations, which at first were confined to a single day, extended ultimately to five days. The women had a festival of their own, with games for girls; but at the ordinary games married women were not allowed to be present. At the same time there was very little coarseness or cruelty about them, compared with a Roman gladiatorial exhibition or a Spanish bull-fight—except in the pancratium, a combination of wrestling and boxing, in which the combatants were allowed to get the better of one another by any means in their power, provided they did not make use of any weapon, which was forbidden in all the contests. The conflict was sometimes attended with a fatal result. Pausanias mentions a case of this kind in which a dead man was proclaimed victor, and crowned with the olive wreath.

The stadium or race-course can be distinctly traced north-east of the Altis. The two parallel grooves in the stone pavement at the starting-point, the one a few inches in front of the other, were evidently intended to give the runner a secure footing. The course was 600 feet long, which became a recognised measure of distance, as the English furlong was derived from the length of a furrow. But the double race was soon introduced, which accounts for there being similar grooves at the other end, where the seats for the judges were, as the start would then have to be made from that end. In the same place you can also trace the sockets, about four feet apart, in which were fixed the wooden posts that marked off the space for each of the runners, who could be accommodated to the number of twenty.

There is a vaulted entrance to the stadium about a hundred feet high (one of the oldest examples of such work in cut stone, 350-300 B.C.), through which none could pass but the judges and heralds, and the competitors, who must have gone through ten months’ training, and were lodged during the games at the public expense. Close to this entrance are still to be seen a large number of pedestals, on which stood at one time certain brazen images, well fitted to warn competitors against any infringement of the rules. They were called Zanēs in honour of Zeus, and they had all been placed there at the expense of persons who had been convicted of some violation of the rules. Giving or receiving bribes was the most common offence at Olympia, as it was indeed with the Greeks generally, even in the more serious game of politics. But there were others of a different nature. For example, Pausanias tells of a man of Alexandria who had come too late for the boxing match, and, finding that another had been adjudged the prize without a contest and was already wearing the olive wreath, put on the gloves as though for a fight and rushed at the victor, for which he was sentenced to pay a fine. In contrast to the penal erection of a statue to Zeus, the winner of a prize was allowed to put up a statue in commemoration of his victory, and the third time he thus distinguished himself he was at liberty to erect an image of himself. In this way Olympia became in course of time a great school of art as well as a gymnastic arena. In Homer there is no mention of statues of the gods, not even of wood, and the development of art in this line during the seventh and sixth centuries was very remarkable.

Xerxes or one of his princes is said to have expressed his astonishment that the Greeks should contend so earnestly for the sake of an olive wreath. But in reality the wreath was only an emblem of the honour conferred upon the victor. In the days of Solon, before the games had reached the height of their popularity, a grant of 500 drachms was made to an Athenian when he was successful at Olympia, and 100 drachms if he carried off a prize at the Isthmian games. The reward offered by the Spartans to any of their sons who thus distinguished themselves was the privilege of fighting near their king. Success in the competitions was attended with many other advantages. The victor in the foot-race gave his name to the Olympiad which was then beginning; the name, parentage, and country of every successful competitor was publicly proclaimed before the whole assembly, which comprised deputies from the most important cities of Greece, frequently very distinguished men, who had been sent not only to do honour to Zeus but also to maintain the dignity of the community which they represented. For example, Alcibiades headed the deputation which Athens sent, after an interval of twelve years, during the Peloponnesian war. On that occasion there was a remarkable display of Athenian wealth and magnificence in connection with the public processions and sacrifices. Alcibiades himself entered as a competitor with seven chariots—each drawn by four horses—one of which gained a first prize and another a second. He gave a splendid banquet to signalise his triumph; and such was the impression made on the assembled visitors by what they had seen of Athenian greatness that Alcibiades

A portion of the west front of the Temple, which stood upon a platform with two steps, is shown. Two columns on the east side and six on the north are seen in situ. These columns vary in size to a surprising extent. One of the enormous capitals, tilted up and standing upon the head of its abacus, should be noticed, behind the tall column in the centre of the drawing. The hill at the back of the Temple is the one to the west of the river Kladeos. In this Temple, said to be the most ancient in Greece, was found the Hermes of Praxiteles, the only extant work of sculpture of the finest period known to be from the chisel of a great master.

claimed, some years afterwards, to have done much on this occasion to restore the prestige of the city. A man in the position of Alcibiades could afford to give a banquet to celebrate his victory. But, in general, the feasts and processions were provided for the winners by their friends and admirers, and, on returning home, they received a great ovation and frequently had substantial benefits conferred upon them. We have an illustration of the interest taken in the contests even by distant colonies in the fact that when (408 B.C.) a native of Agrigentum in Sicily came off victorious, he was met, when he returned home, by three hundred of his richest countrymen, each driving a chariot drawn by two milk-white steeds. Sometimes a poem was written to commemorate victory, and the odes of Pindar, written for this purpose, have proved more imperishable than brass.[1]

From a physical point of view there can be no doubt that the games at Olympia and elsewhere had a salutary influence on the nation, and helped to develop that aptitude for military life which enabled them to repel the Persian invaders and to distinguish themselves so often in the field of war. But higher interests were also promoted. Although no prizes were offered for intellectual distinction, the opportunity was often afforded for the publication of literary works. Herodotus is said to have read aloud his history at Olympia, and to have thereby stirred the ambition of Thucydides. Dramatic performances were also sometimes given. It was the great ambition of Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, who had risen from a comparatively humble position to be the greatest potentate in the Grecian world, to distinguish himself as a dramatic poet. With this view he once sent to Olympia, along with a splendid embassy, a fully equipped company of the best actors of the day, to represent some plays which he had written. They met with a very bad reception, which was no doubt partly owing to the personal unpopularity of their author; and it is said that when Dionysius heard that his verses had been laughed at, and that his representatives had been treated with contumely, he was so chagrined that he almost went out of his mind. A still worse effect was produced on him, however, some time afterwards by his success at the Lenæan festival in Athens, for the rejoicing and conviviality to which he abandoned himself when he heard that he had gained the first prize were largely the cause of his death.

Literature was not the only interest which was promoted side by side with gymnastic accomplishments. Such a gathering of Greeks from all parts of the world could not fail to have an educative influence from many points of view. Intellectually it afforded the most cultured men an opportunity for discussing subjects of common interest and for an exchange of views, while politically it tended to counteract the tendency to isolation on the part of the several states, and to foster unity of sentiment among the members of the great Hellenic race from Trebizond to Marseilles, and from Amphipolis to Cyrene. Occasionally great orations were heard at critical periods in the history of the nation, as when Lysias and Isocrates strove to rouse their countrymen to a sense of the dangers impending over them from the tyranny of Persia on the east and that of Syracuse on the west. Even commerce shared in the benefit, for it was a meeting-place of merchants from far and near. As already indicated, the games had also a religious aspect. Many sacrifices were offered during the celebrations, and solemn oaths were taken. Near the entrance to the stadium there was an image of the god of Oaths holding a thunderbolt in each hand, before which competitors had to swear that they would conform to the rules laid down for them. For a fortnight before and after the celebrations (which took place at the first full moon after the summer solstice) a truce was proclaimed throughout the whole of Greece, to enable competitors from all parts to attend. So strictly was this enforced that the Spartans were excluded from the games on the same occasion on which Alcibiades was present, because they had despatched a thousand soldiers to the town of Lepreum after the truce had been proclaimed, to help the inhabitants to maintain their independence against the claims of the Eleans. In consequence of this exclusion Lychas, a wealthy Lacedæmonian, had to enter for the chariot-race in the name of the Bœotian federation. But he was so elated by the success of his chariot that he stepped into the lists and put a chaplet on the head of his driver, to show that the chariot was his, whereupon the attendants, regardless of his rank, made use of their staffs and drove him back to his proper place. On another occasion a Spartan king, Agis, was refused permission to sacrifice to or consult the oracle because he wished to pray for success in the war against Athens.

At the 104th Olympiad the peaceful solemnity of

The northern face of the great Bastion or outwork of squared masonry, which guards the ascent to the Acropolis at its south-western point, occupies the left-hand half of the drawing. This Bastion is capped by a cornice of Pentelic marble, upon which formerly stood the famous parapet adorned with figures of winged Victories sculptured in low relief. The three steps of the exquisite little Temple would, therefore, originally have been hidden from view. Just below are the steps, still in situ, belonging to the stairs which ascended to the platform of the Temple. The pedestal, above the anta beside these stairs, supported a statue of one of the leaders of the Athenian Cavalry. The long flight of the steps, passing transversely across the drawing, is the modern ascent to the Propylæa. Far below, near the foot of the Acropolis, some of the upper arches of the massive façade of the theatre of Herodes Atticus rise into view; and, to the right, the scathed surface of the Museion Hill, with the monument of Philopappus on its top, slopes away from the eye in subtle curves. Farther to the right is the Bay of Phaleron and (closing the landscape above) the clearly seen ranges of the mountains of Argolis.

Olympia was rudely broken by a sanguinary struggle in the sacred enclosure between the Eleans on the one hand and the Arcadians and their allies from Argos, who had taken possession of the Altis and planted a garrison on the adjoining hill. The Eleans fought bravely but were overpowered, and had the mortification of seeing the games carried out under the direction of the Pisatans, the original presidents of the festival. The outrage was aggravated by the fact that the Arcadians were not content with enriching themselves with the wealth of the Eleans, but went so far as to rob the temples and the treasuries of their precious contents. The ruins of some of these “treasuries,” as they were called, built against the side of the hill, are still to be seen. They bore the names of different Greek cities, chiefly colonies, and contained the various utensils and votive offerings that would be needed by their representatives in connection with the celebration of the games.

Even before this time (364 B.C.) the social standing of competitors in the games had begun to deteriorate, and a class of professionals had arisen who made it their sole object to develop their muscles so as to succeed in athletic contests. But even after the glory of Greece began to wane the Olympian games still held their ground. When Philip of Macedonia became supreme he sought to conciliate Hellenic sentiment and to prove himself a genuine Greek by dedicating a building in the Altis, to which his name was given. And when his son, Alexander the Great, issued a rescript, for political reasons of his own, ordaining that all Greek cities should recall their exiled sons, it was at Olympia that the proclamation was made by the herald who had gained the prize for the loudest voice, in the hearing of 20,000 exiles who had gathered there knowing what they had to expect, and of hundreds of the leading men of Greece, among them the great Athenian orator, who had striven in vain to preserve the liberties of his country.

Nearly four centuries later we find Nero contending successfully in the games, and building a palace on the border of the Altis, the remains of which have been recently discovered. The institution was finally abolished by the Emperor Theodosius in 394 A.D., the last recorded victor being an Armenian knight, who carried off the prize in the previous year.

CHAPTER IV
ARCADIA AND ITS ABORIGINES

ARCADIA held a unique place in the Peloponnesus, both as regards its physical features and the character of its inhabitants. It occupied the very centre of the peninsula, and was the only province that had no direct access to the sea. Its area was greater than that of any other, being about equal in extent to the county of Cumberland. The rural charms with which it was credited by the Latin poets, and by Sir Philip Sydney among ourselves, were largely the product of imagination, as the scenery is generally of a bleak and stern character, and the people, in consequence, are disposed to take life seriously. There are some smiling plains in the south and west, but the most of the country consists of rugged mountains and marshy valleys. A remarkable feature is the number of basins enclosed on all sides by the hills, where the streams can find no visible outlet, and either form a lake or take a subterranean course through some chasm or crevices in the porous limestone, in many cases never to reappear. The only river which forces its way through all obstacles till it reaches the sea, and has a perennial supply of water, is the Alpheus, which we have already met at Olympia. It was believed by the ancient Greeks to hold on its course after it reached the sea, and to mingle its waters with the fountain of Arethusa at Syracuse. In proof of this it was said that a cup which had been thrown into the river had afterwards been discovered in the fountain!

In classical times the Arcadians had been so long settled in the land that they were generally believed to be indigenous, and their chief city, Lycosoura, was regarded as the oldest city in Greece. On its site some colossal heads have recently been discovered that are supposed to represent Despoina (that is, Persephone), who had a temple here, Demeter, Artemis, and Anytus the Titan. The city was close to Mount Lycæus, the fabled birthplace of the Arcadian Zeus; and perhaps this fact and the similarity of the names may account for the belief in its antiquity. Here, as on Mount Ithome, Zeus seems to have been worshipped in primitive fashion without temple or image. On Mount Lycæus Pelasgus was also believed to have been born, the reputed ancestor of the primitive race which was in possession of the country before the Achæans or the Dorians made their appearance. A story is told of his son, King Lycaon, which seems to reflect the memory of a time when human sacrifices were sometimes offered. It was said that Zeus had come to detect the royal family in their wickedness, and was received with reverence by the rest of the community,

The small figure is a Pan, also in the Museum.

but Lycaon, being sceptical of his guest’s divinity and wishing to put it to the test, caused his grandson Arcas to be cut up and served at his table, whereupon the indignant deity at once destroyed him, his sons, and his palace with a flash of lightning, and restored Arcas to life, to take possession of the throne and give his name to the country. There were other versions of the same story. According to Pausanias “Lycaon brought a human babe to the altar of Lycæan Zeus and sacrificed it, and poured out the blood on the altar; and they say that immediately after the sacrifice he was turned into a wolf.” Pausanias’ comments on it are interesting, as an illustration of the religious views of a well-informed Greek in the second century of the Christian era. “For my own part I believe the tale: it has been handed down among the Arcadians from antiquity, and probability is in its favour. For the men of that time, by reason of their righteousness and piety, were guests of the gods, and sat with them at table; the gods openly visited the good with honour and the bad with their displeasure. Indeed, men were raised to the rank of gods in those days, and are worshipped down to the present time.... So we may well believe that Lycaon was turned into a wild beast, and Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, into a stone. But in the present age, when wickedness is growing to such a height, and spreading over every land and every city, men are changed into gods no more, save in the hollow rhetoric which flattery addresses to power; and the wrath of the gods at the wicked is reserved for a distant future, when they shall have gone hence.” By far the greater part of the observations made by this writer on Arcadia relate to its religious customs and traditions; and from the vague nature of the information he obtained regarding many of its deities and the peculiar rites with which they were worshipped, it is evident that Arcadia contained more distinct traces of the old Pelasgic religion, anterior to the theogony recognised by Homer and Hesiod, than almost any other part of Greece. It was difficult for a votary of the Hellenic religion like Pausanias to arrive at a definite conception of the names, the functions, and the outward symbols of not a few of the objects of Arcadian worship.

According to tradition Arcas had three sons, of whom the second, Apheidas, was the founder of Tegea, an aggregate of nine villages, and for a long time the most famous city in the district. He was the ancestor of Atalanta, immortalised by Euripides in connection with the Calydonian Hunt, which ranks with the Voyage of the Argonauts, the Siege of Thebes, and the Trojan War, as one of the heroic legends of Greece. It is the same Atalanta who is known to us by the story of her conquest in the foot-race by one of her suitors, Melanion, through the seductive influence of the golden apples of the Hesperides, which she stooped to pick up when he threw them in her path. After the hunt she was said to have brought home with her to Tegea the head and skin of the wild boar which Artemis had sent to ravage the Calydonian kingdom

The front of the Temple faces the spectator, and looks to the north. The reason for the unusual orientation is evident from the conformation of the ground. The Temple is, in fact, built upon a ridge, and very extensive sub-structures would have been necessary if the usual orientation had been followed.

on account of a slight offered to her in sacrifice. Whether genuine or not, the relics of the boar, in the form of a great hide, and tusks three feet long, were exhibited for centuries in the temple of Athena Alea, and a sculptured head of the boar has recently been found among the ruins, from the size of which it is calculated that the animal was six and a half feet long. The tusks were carried off to Rome by the Emperor Augustus, along with an ivory image of the goddess, but the well-worn skin was shown to Pausanias when he visited Tegea. He also saw a relief executed by the great sculptor Scopas, representing the famous hunt, on the pediment of the temple, which was rebuilt of marble after a fire, in 394 B.C., and was considered the most beautiful building of the kind in the Peloponnesus.

Echemus was another illustrious Tegean of prehistoric times, married, according to Hesiod, to a sister of Clytemnestra. He commanded the contingent of troops raised by the city to join the allied forces, Arcadian, Achæan, and Ionian, which came forth to repel the Heracleids when they were crossing the Isthmus for the purpose of invading the country. Instead of a general engagement it was agreed to settle the question by a single combat between Echemus and Hyllus, the eldest son of Heracles, from whom the challenge had come. In the encounter Hyllus was overcome and put to death, whereupon the Dorian invaders retraced their steps, and, in accordance with an agreement come to, did not again attempt the conquest of the Peloponnesus for three generations. Even when victorious they left Arcadia alone, and it continued to retain its independence for many centuries afterwards.

The Arcadians, as known to us in history, have generally been distinguished by the rude simplicity of their manners and the sturdy vigour of their physique. Intensely conservative in their ways, they were always ready to do their duty bravely when called upon to defend their country; and, like the Swiss, whom they resembled in some other points, they supplied many neighbouring states with mercenary soldiers, who were always looked upon as a valuable force. It was one of the ambitions of the Spartans to reduce them to subjection. With this view they are said to have once consulted the Delphian oracle, which gave them an unfavourable answer as regards Arcadia generally, telling them that there were many acorn-eating men there, but appeared to encourage them to try their strength against Tegea, foretelling that they would dance there and measure out the plain with a rope. Taking this in a favourable sense they advanced against Tegea, but were utterly defeated, and many of them were taken prisoners and compelled to work in the fields, wearing the very chains which, with undue confidence, they had carried with them from Sparta for the purpose of securing their expected captives. Both Herodotus and Pausanias mention having seen these chains in the temple of Athena. In the same sanctuary there was also deposited the horse’s manger, made of brass, which was found in the tent of the Persian general Mardonius by the Tegean troops who took part in the battle of Platæa, and who on that occasion claimed the place of honour next to the Lacedæmonians, on account of the signal services which had been rendered by their ancestor Echemus.

In his history (i. 67-8) Herodotus tells a curious story of the way in which the Spartans succeeded at a later time in getting the better of the Tegeans, with the help of the friendly oracle at Delphi. They were directed to bring back to Sparta the bones of Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, whose resting-place was enigmatically described. By the combined sagacity and good luck of a Spartan, named Lichas, the body, contained in a coffin measuring about seven cubits in length, was discovered in a blacksmith’s premises at Tegea, and was brought back to Sparta and buried there. The consequence was that the Spartans soon proved the stronger, compelling the Tegeans to become their allies for nearly two centuries, to which they were less averse than the rest of the Arcadians, owing to their liking for an oligarchic form of government. They still remained faithful to the general cause of Greek independence and sent 500 men to fight at Thermopylæ. For centuries after the loss of Greek liberty Tegea continued to be a place of importance. Strabo, writing in the first century A.D., speaks of it as the only city in Arcadia worth mentioning, and when Pausanias visited it he found it in a flourishing condition. There is now little to mark its site, save the scanty ruins of its famous temple and its theatre. The foundations of the temple were discovered in 1879, buried deep underground, to the west of the Church of St. Nicholas, where many fragments of Doric columns of marble had long been lying exposed to view. The inner columns were Ionic and Corinthian. The workmanship, so far as any specimens of it exist, fully justifies the admiration expressed by Pausanias.

Thirteen or fourteen miles north of Tegea, on a somewhat lower level of the same great central plain, stood the city of Mantinea, long a rival to Tegea, and possessing more of a commercial character, with a consequent leaning to the democratic form of government. Originally built on the top of a low conical hill (Gourtsouli, or Ptolis), rather less than a mile to the north, it was constituted on its later site by the union of five villages, which were amalgamated by the Argives (who dwelt only a day’s journey to the east) for the purpose of counteracting the Spartan sympathies of Tegea. It was the scene of two great battles—the one fought and gained by the Spartans under King Agis, with the help of Bœotian and Corinthian troops, the other by Epaminondas at the head of the Theban confederacy. On the former occasion a striking proof was given of the value of Spartan discipline. Though taken by surprise when he found the enemy drawn up and ready for the conflict, Agis succeeded in gaining such a victory as went far to restore the prestige of his country, which had been tarnished by recent events in the Peloponnesian war. About thirty years later

The west arm of the Theatre shows to the left, and the foreground is occupied by the remains of the Thersilion or Town Hall. The river Helisson sparkles in the distance, which is closed by the mountains of Arcadia. Sunset.

(386 B.C.) Mantinea again incurred the hostility of Sparta and experienced its military skill. The river Ophis (so called from its circuitous windings farther north), which at that time ran through the city, was diverted from its course by the Spartan general Agesipolis, and so dammed up that its waters overflowed the brick-built walls, which soon gave way, compelling the inhabitants to surrender. The community was then dissolved into the five villages of which it had been composed, a high-handed act on the part of Sparta, which was characteristic of its policy when it thought its ascendency to be in danger. One of the first results of the great Theban victory achieved by Epaminondas at Leuctra (371 B.C.) was the reunion of the scattered population. But though the Mantineans were at first in sympathy with the policy of that great soldier and statesman in seeking to create an Arcadian federation for the defence of the country against Spartan aggression, the rise of a new capital at Megalopolis excited their jealousy, and it was partly owing to their defection that Epaminondas had to undertake his last campaign in the Peloponnesus. It was in a great battle fought in the immediate vicinity of Mantinea that he met his death. Never was there a more striking proof of the influence that may be exerted by a master-mind upon an army, than when Epaminondas was suddenly struck down while fighting with heroic energy at the head of his men. As soon as they knew that he had fallen, their victorious advance ceased, and the enemy were allowed to retire without suffering the usual penalties of defeat. He was carried out of the field with a lance sticking in his breast; and a rising-ground is still pointed out (Scopas) from which he is said to have watched the close of the battle. He named two men to succeed him in the command of the forces; but, on learning that they had both fallen, he advised that peace should be concluded with the enemy. Having ascertained that his shield was safe, he ordered the javelin to be extracted, and as the blood rushed out he breathed his last. He was buried on the spot, and a monument was erected over his grave, of which no trace has yet been found.

Even if there were no such names in Greek history as Hesiod, Pindar, Pelopidas, and Plutarch, the memory of Epaminondas would be sufficient to redeem Bœotia from the reproach so often cast upon it as a land of dullards. He was not only a consummate general, whose name will always be associated with the irresistible phalanx which anticipated that of Macedonia,[2] but was in every respect a great man—the greatest of the Greeks, according to Cicero. Distinguished in music and philosophy, he was also a good speaker, and if he had had more opportunities for the practice of eloquence, he would probably have been found a match for the greatest orators of his day. We may judge of his readiness in debate from the answer he gave to Callistratus, the renowned Athenian orator, when the latter, pleading with the Arcadians to form an alliance with Athens rather than with Thebes and Argos, sought to excite prejudice against these states by asking, “Were not Orestes and Alcmæon, who were both murderers of their mothers, natives of Argos? Was not Œdipus, who slew his father and married his mother, a native of Thebes?” “Yes, they were,” said Epaminondas, in his reply, “but Callistratus has forgotten to tell you that these men, while they lived at home, were innocent or were reputed to be so. As soon as their crimes became known they were banished; and then it was that Athens received them, stained with blood.” On another occasion, when he was accused by a demagogue of trying to emulate the glories of Agamemnon at the risk of his country, by sailing from Aulis to the Hellespont at the head of a great fleet, he replied, “By the help of Thebes I have already done more than Agamemnon. He with the forces of Sparta and all Greece besides, was ten years in taking a single city; while I, with the single force of Thebes and on the single day of Leuctra, have crushed the power of the Agamemnonian Sparta.” This was answering a fool according to his folly; but, in general, he was as remarkable for his modesty as for his great powers. It was said of him by one who had been in early life a companion of Socrates that he had never known any one who understood so much and spoke so little; and when he was reduced in rank, even after the great battle which deprived Sparta of its military supremacy, he did not disdain to serve his country for a time in a comparatively humble position. That the Spartans knew how formidable he was as an adversary is evident from the honours which, as Plutarch tells us, they heaped on the man who slew him, even ordaining that his descendants in all time coming should be exempted from the payment of taxes. Like Aristides the “Just” and Delyannis, the recently-assassinated Premier of Greece, Epaminondas was so free from the love of money that he did not leave enough even to pay his funeral expenses.

Very few remains of the ancient city of Mantinea are to be seen, but the lower courses of the encircling walls, measuring more than two and a half miles in circumference, are plainly visible, with eight different gates and more than 120 towers, separated by intervals of fully 80 feet, while the course of the Ophis can also be traced, which served apparently as a moat, with its two arms running round the city. In 1887 three marble slabs were discovered in the floor of a Byzantine church within the walls, with reliefs representing the musical contest between Marsyas and Apollo, which have been identified with those mentioned by Pausanias as adorning a pedestal supporting images of Latona and her children, by Praxiteles. In the present aspect of the place, which is very much of the nature of a swamp, there is little to justify its ancient reputation as the “lovely city” mentioned in Homer.

Tegea and Mantinea and another ancient city in the neighbourhood (Pallantion) are commemorated in the city of Tripoliza (or Tripolis, the threefold city), which was founded by the Turks about two hundred years ago.

The east ramp of the Theatre is in the foreground to the left, from which we see remains of the proscenium and colonnade. Beyond are a few drums of columns, probably belonging to the Thersilion or Town Hall. The river Helisson shows in the distance. Sunset.

Tripoliza is the only large town in Arcadia, having a population of more than 10,000, with a thriving trade. It is also the seat of a bishopric, and contains one of the handsomest modern churches in Greece, built of marble, with a lofty tower recently added. The elevation of the city, like that of the plain generally, is fully 2000 feet above the sea.

In the western plain of Arcadia, separated from that of Tegea and Mantinea by the Mænalus range, stood the “great city,” Megalopolis, which owed its existence to the genius and the determination of Epaminondas. He saw that Arcadia would never be secure against Spartan invasion until means could be found to unite its forces. The jealousy between Tegea and Mantinea rendered it impossible for either of these cities to be chosen as the capital, and another site was found by the banks of the Helisson, a tributary of the Alpheus. No fewer than forty small townships were merged in the new city, which was founded immediately after the battle of Leuctra. Several refused to join, and the inhabitants of one of them, called Trapezus, a very old settlement, rather than give up their independence, preferred to be put to the sword, those who escaped emigrating to their daughter-city of the same name, on the southern shore of the Black Sea. The name Megalopolis was not unsuitable, considering that the walls of the city were more than five and a half miles in circumference, and that the territory attached to it extended twenty-four miles on the north. Its stability was at various times endangered by internal discord, and nothing but the watchful eye and strong arm of Thebes could have saved the union from a speedy dissolution.

Like most of the Greek cities, Megalopolis did not realise till too late what the gradual advance of the Macedonian power was to mean for Greece. In 347 B.C. the Athenian orator Æschines paid it a visit and spoke in its national assembly, the “Ten Thousand,” urging them to combine with other Powers against Philip; but without much effect, as might have been expected, considering that Æschines himself was soon to prove a traitor. Seventeen years later the city was delivered out of the hands of its Peloponnesian enemies by Antipater, the lieutenant of Alexander the Great; but it had to submit, like Argos and Athens, to the remodelling of its constitution, in order that its new master might put some of his own partisans into power to form an oligarchy. A hundred years later it fell into the hands of the Spartans under Cleomenes, who took it by a stratagem and levelled it to the ground. Most of the citizens escaped to Messene under the leadership of the brave Philopœmen, and the city was afterwards rebuilt, taking a leading part in the Achæan League, until the supremacy of Roman arms could no longer be disputed. Among its citizens at the beginning of the second century B.C., Megalopolis could boast of two of the greatest Greeks of their time, the gallant soldier just mentioned, who humbled the pride of Sparta and extorted the admiration of his Roman adversaries, and his young friend Polybius, the famous historian. The latter carried the urn containing the ashes of the mighty dead in the imposing funeral procession described by Plutarch—the precursor of still higher honours, amounting to divine worship, that were afterwards to be paid to Philopœmen, whom Pausanias describes as the last benefactor of the Greeks.

To the modern traveller Megalopolis still presents features of interest. Its wide and open landscape embraces fertile plains and wooded hills and refreshing streams, which present a pleasing contrast to the dreary stretch of country on the eastern side of Arcadia. There are also some interesting ruins (excavated by the British School of Archæology in 1890-93), the best preserved of which is the theatre, described by Pausanias as the largest in Greece, and supposed to have been capable of accommodating nearly 20,000 persons. There is a distance of about 500 feet between the stage and the top of the hill, in the hollow of which the semicircular banks of stone benches are fixed; but such is the clearness of the atmosphere and the form of the enclosure that words spoken from the actor’s place can be distinctly heard by any one listening above. Another ruin of great interest is the Thersilium, a hall covering an area of 35,000 square yards, in which the Arcadian assembly held their meetings and carried on their fierce debates. It is connected with the theatre by a portico, which was at one time mistaken for a stage, but is now regarded as of an earlier date and built for a different purpose. If Dr. Dörpfeld’s theory be correct that until a comparatively late period the Greek actors spoke from the floor of the orchestra, the only purpose which the portico could have served, so far as the theatre was concerned, was to form a background. Many old coins and vases have been picked up on the site of the ancient city by the inhabitants of the modern village of Sinanou, a little way to the south-east, and are preserved in their houses. Large fragments of marble are also to be seen scattered about.

The road from Megalopolis to Bassæ, by way of Andritsæna, takes the traveller through some of the finest hill-scenery in Arcadia, along one of those modern carriage-roads which are felt to be luxurious, compared with the mule-tracks by which many journeys have still to be taken in the Peloponnesus, as in the days of old, when there was comparatively little communication between the different parts of Greece except by sea. One of the most striking objects to be seen on the way is the village of Karytæna, with its mediæval fortress on the top of a hill nearly 2000 feet high. The castle is only approachable by a narrow passage, and even the town, now reduced to a population of about 1400, can only be reached from one side of the mountain, standing as it does in a corner between the summit crowned with the fortress and the neighbouring hill of St. Elias,[3] on which may be seen two Greek churches of Byzantine-Frankish architecture. Karytæna was the home of Kolokotronis, the highland chieftain who carried on guerilla operations with so much success during the War of Liberation. His

A giant plane-tree stands in the space opposite the church door, and supports the bells of the church.

great achievement was the capture of Tripoliza in 1821, but his cruelty in putting to death nearly the whole Turkish population, and his self-seeking spirit generally, detracted greatly from his reputation. After the independence of Greece had been secured he was found guilty of conspiracy against the Government, and was sentenced to death; but the penalty was remitted and he was allowed to end his days in his castle at Karytæna. A prominent object in the neighbourhood, as the traveller’s carriage winds round the hill, is a handsome bridge with six arches, which recalls the wealth and importance of the place in former times.

Still more attractive, although less interesting from a historical point of view, is the little town of Andritsæna, with upwards of 2000 inhabitants, which is reached after crossing Mount Lycæus. It is built on the two sides of a mountain stream embroidered with trees; and in the main street, beside the village fountain, there is a wide-spreading plane-tree, under which the people gather for a friendly talk, giving the place a most genial aspect. From the top of an adjoining hill a magnificent view can be obtained, extending to Erymanthus on the north and even including a glimpse of some of the Ionian Islands, under a favourable evening light.

From Andritsæna to Olympia is a long day’s ride over a very bad road, and is not a journey to be undertaken by any one who is deficient either in nerve or physical endurance. But the rich and varied scenery through which you pass, as you traverse mountain sides bordering on precipitous gorges, and thread your way through umbrageous forests and flowery though often thorny thickets, and ford rivers, and skirt vineyards and cornfields, with an occasional view of far-away summits white with snow glistening in the sun—makes the experience an interesting and vivid recollection.

The journey to Bassæ from Andritsæna is very similar, though too short to be laborious. It conducts to a scene of the most impressive solitude, at an elevation of nearly 4000 feet, commanding a magnificent view both of land and sea, including Mt. Ithome and the great Messenian plain. In the Temple of Bassæ, dedicated to Apollo in this secluded spot by the people of Phigalia, which was six miles distant, the beauty of art seems to vie with the grandeur of nature. The ruin is acknowledged by general consent to be the finest in the Peloponnesus, though for centuries it was known only to the shepherds in the neighbourhood. Designed by Ictinus, one of the architects of the Parthenon, the structure has weathered the storms of more than twenty-three centuries. Of the thirty-eight Doric columns which surrounded the temple only three are now wanting, and their architraves are almost intact. The frieze of the cella or inner chamber was discovered in 1812, and was purchased two years afterwards by the British Government for £19,000—to be preserved in the British Museum. On it are represented the battle between the Greeks and the Amazons, and the fight between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The design is admirable, but the execution is so poor as to suggest that the work was done by local sculptors. Though the frieze is of marble, the temple generally was built of grey limestone quarried in the neighbourhood. Unlike other Greek temples, which look to the east to greet the rising sun, that of Bassæ faces the north. This is accounted for by the fact that it was built over an older shrine, which, from the nature of the rocky ledge on which it stood, could not be extended any farther east and west. The old entrance, however, was still preserved, and the image of the god still faced to the east. Pausanias tells us of a bronze statue of Apollo, twelve feet high, which was removed from the temple to Megalopolis and set up in the market-place, but it has long since disappeared. The same writer conjectures that the temple was erected in honour of Apollo Epicourios for having averted from Phigalia the plague with which Athens was visited during the Peloponnesian War. But it is considered more likely to have been a general tribute to the god on account of the health-giving breezes which play over the spot, and which no doubt made it a favourite resort for the invalids of the district.

According to the ancient traveller just mentioned, the civilisation of Arcadia dates from the time of Arcas, who introduced cereal crops and taught his subjects to spin wool and weave cloth. Here, as elsewhere in Greece, it is no uncommon thing to see women spinning thread and herding sheep or goats at the same time, while indoors you may find them busy at the loom weaving cloth for family use, following the good example set of old both by Helen and Penelope. Unfortunately, women are also much in evidence in the fields and on the country roads, doing work which in this country would be left to men—even such heavy work as breaking stones. The men seem to be much fonder of taking their ease than the other sex, and show more vanity in their dress. The Albanian costume, which is the uniform worn by the eight battalions of Riflemen, called Evzoni, who guard the frontier, is much affected by those who can afford it in the country towns. Its most conspicuous features are the fustanella kilt, made of a white linen of incredible length when stretched out to its full extent, the embroidered vest, and the red shoes with turned-up toes. The shepherds wear a sheepskin cloak without any pretensions to elegance, but they trim their hair with great care, ringlets frequently hanging over their brow. They wear a broad leathern belt with innumerable receptacles, and one of the first things they will show to a stranger who is curious to know what they carry about with them is a small hand-mirror. They often amuse themselves and their flocks by playing on the pipe, which they can make in a few minutes from a bamboo cut in the field or plucked out of the roofing of their hut.

This is one of the most romantic scenes in the Peloponnesus, and is aptly quoted by Curtius as no less characteristic of mediæval Greece than Tiryns and Mycenæ are of the prehistoric age. The Castle covers the summit of a free-standing mass of rock, rising up into the air (almost like the central tower of a great English Cathedral) above a gorge with precipitous red cliffs. To the right of the Castle lies the modern town.

CHAPTER V
SPARTA AND ITS DISCIPLINE

FOR centuries Sparta was the first military power in Greece. This position it owed partly to the Dorian vigour of its inhabitants, and partly to the strict discipline introduced by Lycurgus at a time when the other Greek states had not yet awakened to the importance of that military drill which was to contribute so largely to their influence. Of these two sources of Spartan greatness we seem to have a recognition in the fact mentioned by Pausanias that at the two bridges, on either side of the place where the youths were in the habit of engaging in their athletic contests, there was an image of Heracles and a statue of Lycurgus, the one being the emblem of bodily strength, the other of authority and rule.

Besides Sparta there were two other states whose ruling families could claim to be descended from Heracles, namely Argos and Messenia. For a long time Argos would admit no superiority on the part of any other Greek state, and at no time was it reduced to subjection to any; but within two hundred years after the Lycurgean régime had been established at Sparta, Messenia had been virtually annexed to Lacedæmonian territory, and the bulk of its inhabitants reduced to a state of serfdom scarcely distinguishable from that of the helots who had been subjugated at the time of the Dorian invasion. From the first the Dorian conquerors of Messenia seem to have been on more friendly terms with their subjects than was the case with their kindred who settled in Argos and Laconia. Their racial characteristics were thus impaired, while their moral fibre was relaxed by the wealth of the country which fell to their lot; but it was not till after a number of severe struggles that Sparta obtained the mastery.

The condition of the Messenians after the first war (743-724) is thus described by Tyrtæus the poet, who took part in the second war (645-628):—

Like asses galled with heavy loads
To their masters bringing, by doleful necessity,
Half of all the fruit that the tilled land yields,
Themselves and their wives alike bewailing their masters
Whene’er death’s baneful lot has fallen on any.

The reference in the last two lines is to the fact that when Spartan kings or nobles died, men and women had to come from Messenia to attend their funeral, dressed in black. Their greatest warrior was Aristomenes, who is said to have twice offered to Zeus Ithomates the sacrifice called hekatomphonia, which could only be offered by any one after slaying a hundred of his enemies in battle. Rather than submit to the loss of their liberty many of the Messenians abandoned

On the left of the picture are shown some of the columns of the eastern side of the Temple, together with the attached columns of the cella, a peculiar architectural feature of this Temple. The front (north) part of the cella was hypæthral, so the floor below the opening in the roof was slightly hollowed out—as shown in the drawing—to collect the rain-water. Mount Ithome appears between the columns of the southern end of the Temple.

their native land and settled at Naupactus, Cephallenia, and elsewhere, with the sympathy and help of the Athenians. But even from these places of refuge they were driven by the Spartans long afterwards, when the latter had recovered their ascendency, and were forced to seek new homes in Sicily and Italy (where they founded Messene and Rhegium) and in North Africa. In 464 B.C. a general rising of the subject population took place not only in Messenia but in the greater part of Laconia, partly occasioned by a destructive earthquake, which was regarded as a judgment of heaven on the Spartans for their sacrilegious cruelty to some slaves who had taken refuge in a temple of Poseidon on the coast. In this struggle, as at the close of the first war, the chief stronghold and rallying-point of the oppressed nationality was Mount Ithome, which rises to a height of 2600 feet, and was described at a later time as one of the horns of the Peloponnesus, Acro-Corinthus being the other. Nearly a hundred years afterwards the Messenians found a deliverer in Epaminondas. The great Theban not only invited the exiles to return, but also restored their enslaved countrymen at home to the enjoyment of their political rights and liberties. In order to secure their unity and independence he resolved to build a great city in the immediate vicinity of Ithome, with the summit for an acropolis. After elaborate sacrifices and solemn prayers, invoking the presence and protection of their ancient heroes, especially the valiant Aristomenes, the city was laid out and built with the help of some of the best architects and masons of the day, the labourers being cheered in their work by the rival strains of the Bœotian and Argive flutes. Fortifications were erected, so strong, and planned on such scientific principles, that the remains of them, in the form of walls and towers and gates, are still the admiration and astonishment of military men. The territory which Epaminondas annexed to the city was by far the most fertile part of Greece, including the plain of Stenyclerus on the north and the still richer and more extensive plain watered by the river Pamisus on the south, to which the name of Macaria (“Blessed”) was given.

Notwithstanding these advantages, and although the returned exiles had preserved unimpaired their Dorian speech and sentiment, the new city was not destined to play any great part in the annals of Greece. The fear of its old enemy made it too ready to submit to the subtle encroachments of Philip, in spite of the warnings which Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, on one occasion addressed in person to its assembly. A few years later the city fell into the hands of Alexander the Great and his subordinates, who robbed it of its liberties and paved the way for the dominion of Rome. The site is now almost uninhabited, and overgrown with vineyards and corn-fields. Excavations have brought to light the foundations of a theatre, a stadium, a market-place, and a fountain; but, apart from the fortifications, there are few remains of any great interest. The view from the top of the mountain is one of the finest in the Peloponnesus, commanding the Taygetus range of mountains on the east and the sea on the south

The roadway coming up from the monastery of Vourkano to the village of Mavromati divides the foreground of the scene. In the middle distance we have before us the luxuriant valley of the Pamisus, and, in the far distance, the lofty upper ranges of Taÿgetus covered with snow. Under the boughs of the graceful olive, which flanks the finely squared masonry of the ruined gateway, we catch a glimpse of the gulf of Messene. The freshness and purity of colour of an April day in Southern Peloponnesus has here been happily caught.

and west. Standing on the summit one has a sense of elevation and aloofness; and one can understand how it should have been chosen as a retreat by a wealthy citizen of Athens, who devoted himself to a life of prayer and meditation, only descending once a fortnight for a supply of necessary food—an illustration, in a new form, as Prof. Mahaffy remarks, of the tendency to human sacrifice which was early associated with the altar of Zeus Ithomates. There is a ruined chapel on the top, also traces of very ancient foundations, some of them probably connected with the defence of the fortress, others with the worship of Zeus. Nearly half-way up the mountain the traveller passes a Greek convent (Vourkano)—a quadrangle with an interesting little church in the centre, where he will meet with a kind reception if he pay a visit to the monks and partake of their simple hospitality.

The ascent of Mount Ithome is in some places rather difficult, and requires careful riding. Before he start, perhaps the traveller may witness a controversy between his dragoman and the natives who have been engaged to bring horses or mules for the journey. An excited crowd will gather, which will not be complete without the presence and peace-making counsels of the parish priest—usually a very sociable person, in close touch with the interests of his parishioners, and conspicuous for his long black beard, his tall rimless hat, and his long loose coat, lined with fur. Perhaps the traveller may have a servant told off to guide his beast, who rejoices in the illustrious name of Leonidas, and is entrusted with a big leather bottle containing the copious supply of resinated wine intended not only for himself but for his fellow-servants. To refresh himself in his long climb under the rays of the sun pouring down upon him from a cloudless sky, Leonidas may help himself so liberally as to get excited and break out into song and story, imperilling the rider’s life, perhaps, by going off the main track and having to turn where the horse has difficulty in keeping its hind feet from slipping down the side of a precipice; or, perhaps, in descending the mountain he may pull the rope attached to the animal’s head with such force as to compel it to take a leap downwards, which might easily project the rider down the hill if he were not on the watch and determined to keep his seat under all circumstances. But Leonidas is an exceptional man, and the animals are so sure-footed that accidents very seldom occur.

About fifteen miles south-east of Messene, at the head of the gulf, is the thriving little town of Kalamata, with some silk manufactories and a large trade in currants and figs and other fruits. To the south-west, on the coast, about twenty-five miles from Messene, lies the traditional capital of Nestor’s kingdom, still retaining its old Homeric name of (sandy) Pylos. Kalamata is supposed to be the ancient Pheræ at which Telemachus and Nestor’s son, Peisistratus, halted for the night on their way to Sparta to visit Menelaus. The distances suit well enough for a two-days’ ride, but it has been pointed out by V. Bérard that there is no road

across the Taygetus mountains by which travellers could have driven in a chariot to Sparta, as Homer represents the two young men to have done; and he concludes (as Strabo did) that the Pylos referred to must have been the place of the same name much farther north, from which a journey on wheels could be made all the way to Sparta. Even apart from the interest attaching to it as the supposed city of Nestor, Pylos, with the adjacent island of Sphacteria, has had an important place in Greek history, both in ancient and in modern times. In the seventh year of the Pelopennesian war it was the scene of one of the most memorable defeats ever sustained by the Spartans at the hands of the Athenians. Twenty-two centuries afterwards (1770 A.D.) its garrison of Greek insurgents was massacred by the Turks, who, in turn, suffered a similar calamity in 1821 at the outbreak of the War of Liberation, as the Greeks again did at the hands of the Egyptians in 1825; while in 1827 the naval battle of Navarino took place in its bay, resulting in the destruction of the Turkish fleet, with a loss of 6000 lives, in less than two hours, by the combined British, French, and Russian forces.

Sparta was the only Greek state that retained the regal form of government all through the period of Hellenic glory. Its government was not, strictly speaking, a monarchy, however, as there were two royal dynasties, descended from the twin sons of the Heracleid Aristodemus, which had continued unbroken in the male line for 500 years, forming a direct connection with the heroic age. The two kings served as a check on one another’s ambition, preventing the growth of such tyranny as had been found intolerable in other states, and had there led to the adoption of an oligarchic or democratic form of government. The rights of the community were further conserved by the modification of two public bodies, dating from the heroic age, of which we often hear in Homer, namely, the Boulé or Senate and the Ecclesia or General Assembly. In Sparta the former received the name of Gerousia, and consisted of twenty-eight members above sixty years of age, presided over by the two kings; the latter was called Apella, and was periodically convened to consider any proposals submitted to it, and had the right to fill up vacancies in the Gerousia. But the most effectual safeguard against tyranny was found in the annual election, by the Apella, of five officials, named ephors, who came into existence about 750 B.C. and gradually acquired such control of public affairs both at home and abroad that the royal prerogative was virtually reduced to the command of the army in the field, the offering of public sacrifices, the charge of communications with the Delphian oracle, and some other matters of a ceremonial kind. Even in their capacity as commanders-in-chief the kings became subject to the decision of the Assembly as to the making of peace or war, and ultimately had even to take their directions from the ephors in the conduct of a campaign. Every month the kings and the ephors took an oath of fidelity, the former promising to rule in accordance with the constitution, the latter to be loyal in their obedience, on the condition just mentioned. As in our own country, there was a continual tendency to make royalty a position of honour rather than of power, which was the more remarkable in Sparta, as the office was universally regarded as held by divine right, and as lying at the foundation of the nation’s tide to its territorial inheritance derived from Heracles.

The social system introduced by Lycurgus about the beginning of the eighth century B.C., under the direction, as was believed, of the Delphian oracle, was founded upon a species of communism to which only those were admitted who were full citizens of Sparta, and had sufficient property to contribute their appointed quota to the expenses of the common mess. All the citizens without exception had to conform with the utmost regularity to a rigorous code of discipline, which was fitted to produce habits of courage, strength, endurance, self-denial, and simplicity of life. The training of the boys for military service, to which citizens were liable from their twentieth to their sixtieth year, began when they were seven years old. They were not only trained to athletic exercises and feats of strength, but they had also to content themselves with the plainest food and the scantiest clothing. As they approached manhood it was considered to be in the interests of religion, and pleasing to the goddess Artemis Orthia in particular, that they should be severely scourged, and it was no uncommon thing for young lads to die under the operation without betraying any sign of suffering. To be able to bear pain without flinching, and to become inured to the severest hardships and privations, was looked on as the chief end of a manly education.

The young women were also trained in gymnastic exercises, and enjoyed more freedom than in any other part of Greece. They boxed and wrestled, and ran races, sometimes even with the young men. The object of their education was to train them to be mothers of brave men, and their martial spirit comes out in some of the sayings addressed by Spartan mothers to their sons—“Return with your shield or upon it,” “If your sword is too short add a pace to it.” As a rule the women held a position of honour in the community and were frequently possessed of property, so much so that in the fourth century B.C. more than half the land in Laconia belonged to them. They were trained to suppress all emotions of tenderness and compassion, and to reserve their admiration and affection for the brave and strong. Nothing could have been more humiliating than the reception given to defeated soldiers who survived their comrades and returned home. No one would speak to them or associate with them in any way, and if they did not bear themselves with the greatest humility they were liable to be struck and insulted by any one who met them. Cowardice was the one sin for which there was no forgiveness. It is told of one of the men serving under Leonidas, who had allowed some complaint in his eyes to prevent him from joining his comrades at Thermopylæ, that when he went home to Sparta he was treated with the utmost scorn; no

At the base of the mountain, part of the village of Mavromati may be seen. The architectural fragments in the foreground lie near the entrance to the Stadion. Only the western side of the Stadion appears. Its site is indicated by two figures seated under a tree.

one would give him even a light for his fire. A year afterwards the same man was foremost in the fight at the battle of Platæa, which completed the discomfiture of Persia. He thought by his heroic defiance of danger to wipe out the reproach which rested on him, and he perished nobly on the field. But for all that he was not considered worthy of the funeral honours that were bestowed upon his fallen comrades, who had been less reckless in the fight but had always done their duty.

In harmony with this contempt for cowardice was the deportment of soldiers’ relatives when news of battle reached them. The friends of those who had fallen, instead of being cast down with grief, went about with a proud and glad mien, as if they knew they were entitled to honour and respect, while the relatives of those who had allowed themselves to be taken prisoners or had made their escape were depressed and sad, as if they had reason to be ashamed in the presence of their neighbours. When tidings of the terrible disaster at Leuctra arrived at Sparta the whole community were engaged in the celebration of the festival of gymnopædia, and the chorus of grown men was at the moment performing in the theatre. But no suspension or interruption of the proceedings took place. The only thing done was to send information of their bereavement to those whose friends were reported as killed, and to enjoin the women to make no noise. Historians have contrasted this self-control of the Spartans with the weeping and wailing of the Athenians on the night on which the news arrived of the destruction of their fleet at Ægospotami, which put an end for ever to their naval empire. But they also relate an incident which shows that Athenian women could be as fierce in their indignation as their Spartan sisters. In an expedition against Ægina the whole of the Athenian citizens engaged in it, except one, lost their lives. On his return the survivor was beset by the widows of his slain comrades, each demanding to know what had become of her husband; and before he could make his escape from the infuriate crowd he was pricked to death with their brooch-pins.

In contrast to the wonderful calmness shown by the Spartans in time of calamity was the demonstration of feeling which took place on one occasion when they received unexpected news of a great victory over the combined Arcadian and Argive forces, without the loss of a single Lacedæmonian. For some time they had been so accustomed to defeat that all who heard the news burst into tears, Agesilaus and the Ephors setting the example—so much more difficult is it to repress violent feelings of joy than of sorrow.

It was another peculiarity of Spartan training that to take advantage of people in the matter of property was regarded as a merit, if the dishonesty was not detected, and if it was not a breach of some special law or custom. In Xenophon’s Anabasis (iv. 6) there is a curious allusion to this trait of the Spartan character. The Greek army had come to a pass occupied by a hostile force. Instead of trying to carry it by direct assault Xenophon suggested that soldiers should be sent up the shoulder of the hill to turn the position. “But,” he said, addressing his Spartan colleague Cheirisophus, “stealing a march upon the enemy is more in your line than mine. For I understand that you, the full citizens and peers of Sparta, practise stealing from your boyhood upwards, and that it is held no way base, but even honourable, to steal such things as the law does not distinctly forbid. And in order that you may steal with the greatest effect and take pains to do it in secret, the custom is to flog you if you are found out. Here, then, you have an excellent opportunity of displaying your skill. Take good care that we be not found out in stealing possession of the mountain now before us, for if we are found out we shall be well beaten.” To this pleasantry Cheirisophus rejoined: “Why, as for that, you Athenians also, as I learn, are capital hands at stealing the public money, and that, too, in spite of prodigious peril to the thief. Nay, your most powerful men steal most of all—at least if it be the most powerful men among you that are raised to official command. So that this is a time for you to exhibit your training as well as for me to exhibit mine.”

There was no place where the love of money was more prevalent than in Sparta, and that in spite of the fact that till a comparatively late period the possession of gold and silver by private individuals was forbidden. For a long time the only metal in circulation was iron, in such heavy pieces that it was impossible for any one to carry much money with him, or even to store it in his house. When Lysander brought home what was left of the large amount of gold and silver he had received from Cyrus for the prosecution of his schemes, strong objection was taken to its admission by some of the Ephors, as being at variance with the principles laid down by Lycurgus. It was only on the understanding that the treasure was to be the property of the state, and not of any private individual, that their objections were overruled, though their scruples about accepting the money did not prevent them from withholding from their allies any share of the spoil. The Lycurgean system was doomed, owing to the change which had come over the views of the leading men, as the result of foreign travel, and the bribery to which they had become habituated, especially in their relations with Persia. The wealth and magnificence of their famous general, Lysander, who was the first Greek to receive divine honours in historic times, and who is the most typical representative of imperial Sparta, present a striking contrast to the severe simplicity of his forefathers. Even a greater evil than the personal self-seeking which began to prevail was the collective selfishness by which the Spartans had long been distinguished. As a rule, they were comparatively indifferent to the general interests of the Hellenic race, and on more than one occasion they showed that they were ready to sacrifice these interests for their own immediate advantage, currying favour with the Persians at the cost of the liberties of the Asiatic Greeks, and envying and grieving at the naval empire of Athens, while they failed to take advantage of their own opportunities

Near the village of Neochori, on the road from Ithome to Meligula.

for building up an empire on land, in which they could have retained their supremacy without trampling on the rights and liberties of other Greek states. If Sparta had possessed a few more men of the type of Brasidas—men of a generous and catholic spirit as well as of consummate ability in war—its own life and the life of ancient Greece might have been indefinitely prolonged.

It was one of the penalties of the narrow discipline of Sparta that it produced so few really great men. The body was cultivated at the expense of the mind, and little or no importance was attached to intellectual pursuits. Music was almost the only form of art generally cultivated, and that chiefly because of its connection with military drill. The victory of Agis at Mantinea in 418 B.C., when he was taken by surprise, was largely due to the inspiring and regulative influence of the fifes and war-songs (which were as cheering and not so exciting as the speeches delivered on the other side), as well as to the superior mode of transmitting orders from the general, through the various gradations of rank (down to the enomotarch in charge of some twenty-five men), as compared with the public proclamation by a herald, which was customary elsewhere. Even for their music they are said to have been indebted to foreign teachers—to Tyrtæus, whose stirring strains raised their spirits at a most trying crisis in their history; to Terpander, who added three strings to the lyre, completing the octave; and to Alcman, the last to train a popular and voluntary chorus. Not only in their military drill, but also in their public processions and choral dances, music played a great part in their civilisation. People of all ranks and classes (not excepting even the kings) and of all ages, were expected to undergo training at the hands of the chorus-master and take their allotted place in the public celebrations. To this day you may sometimes see on festive occasions well-dressed men and women joining with the children in a choral dance on the public road.

One great defect in the Spartan discipline was the want of a natural home-life for the growth of family affection and social culture. Their city was more like an armed camp in the midst of a hostile population than the capital of a civilised state. The military distinction to which they sacrificed everything else fostered a spirit of imperious pride, which became their ruling passion, as it was indeed their chief reward for their unsparing self-denial. For a long time they were regarded as practically invincible, so much so that when nearly 300 of them surrendered at Sphacteria to an immensely superior force of Athenians, it created quite a sensation throughout Greece. The description of them given by Demaratus to Xerxes, that Spartans must either conquer or die, expressed the character which they not only claimed for themselves but which was popularly attributed to them by the whole Hellenic race, and it procured for them an honourable reception wherever they appeared in time of peace. In war they had the support of the periœci, as they were called, the inhabitants of the country towns and more mountainous parts of Laconia, to whom they conceded