IN AND NEAR ATHENS
What Greece is like in spring, I do not know, when rains have fallen,
and round Athens the country is green, when the white dust perhaps does
not whirl through Constitution Square and over the garden about the
Zappeion, when the intensity of the sun is not fierce on the road to the
bare Acropolis, and the guardians of the Parthenon, in their long coats
the color of a dervish's hat, do not fall asleep in the patches of shade
cast on the hot ground by Doric columns. I was there at the end of the
summer, and many said to me, "You should come in spring, when it is
green."
Greece must be very different then, but can it be much more beautiful?
Disembark at the Piræus at dawn, take a carriage, and drive by Phalerum,
the bathing-place of the Athenians, to Athens at the end of the summer,
and though for just six months no rain has fallen, you will enter a bath
of dew. The road is dry and dusty, but there is no wind, and the dust
lies still. The atmosphere is marvelously clear, as it is, say, at
Ismailia in the early morning. The Hellenes, when they are talking quite
naturally, if they speak of Europe, always speak of it as a continent in
which Greece is not included. They talk of "going to Europe." They say
to the English stranger, "You come to us fresh from Europe." And as you
drive toward Athens you understand.
This country is part of the East, although the Greeks were the people
who saved Europe from being dominated by the races of Asia. All about
you--you have not yet reached Phalerum--you see country that looks like
the beginning of a desert, that holds a fascination of the desert. The
few trees stand up like carved things. The small, Eastern-looking
houses, many of them with flat roofs, earth-colored, white, or tinted
with mauve and pale colors, scattered casually and apparently without
any plan over the absolutely bare and tawny ground, look from a distance
as if they, too, were carved, as if they were actually a part of the
substance of their environment, not imposed upon it by an outside force.
The moving figure of a man, wearing the white fustanella, has the
strange beauty of an Arab moving alone in the vast sands. And yet there
is something here that is certainly not of Europe, but that is not
wholly of the East--something very delicate, very pure, very sensitive,
very individual, free from the Eastern drowsiness, from the heavy
Eastern perfume which disposes the soul of man to inertia.
[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS, WITH A VIEW OF THE AREOPAGUS AND MOUNT
HYMETTUS, FROM THE WEST]
It is the exquisite, vital, one might almost say intellectual, freshness
of Greece which, between Europe and Asia, preserves its eternal
dewdrops--those dewdrops which still make it the land of the early
morning.
Your carriage turns to the right, and in a moment you are driving along
the shore of a sea without wave or even ripple. In the distance, across
the purple water, is the calm mountain of the island of Ægina. Over
there, along the curve of the sandy bay, are the clustering houses of
old Phalerum. This is new Phalerum, with its wooden bath-houses, its one
great hotel, its kiosks and cafés, its shadeless plage, deserted now
except for one old gentleman who, like almost every Greek all over the
country, is at this moment reading a newspaper in the sun.
Is there any special charm in new Phalerum, bare of trees, a little
cockney of aspect, any exceptional beauty in this bay? When you have
bathed there a few times, when you have walked along the shore in the
quiet evening, breathing the exquisite air, when you have dined in a
café of old Phalerum built out into the sea, and come back by boat
through the silver of a moon to the little tram station whence you
return to Athens, you will probably find that there is. And from what
other bay can you see the temple of the Parthenon as you see it from the
bay of Phalerum?
You have your first vision of it now, as you look away from the sea,
lifted very high on its great rock of the Acropolis as on a throne.
Though far off, nevertheless its majesty is essentially the same, casts
the same tremendous influence upon you here as it does when you stand at
the very feet of its mighty columns. At once you know, not because of
the legend of greatness attaching to it, or because of the historical
associations clinging about it, but simply because of the feeling in
your own soul roused by its white silhouette in this morning hour, that
the soul of Greece--eternal majesty, supreme greatness, divine calm, and
that remoteness from which, perhaps, no perfect thing, either God-made
or, because of God's breath in him, man-made, is wholly exempt--is
lifted high before you under the cloudless heaven of dawn.
You may even realize at once and forever, as you send on your carriage
and stand for a while quite alone on the sands, gazing, that to you the
soul of Greece must always seem to be Doric. From afar the Doric
conquers.
The ancient Hellenes, divided, at enmity, incessantly warring among
themselves, were united in one sentiment: they called all the rest of
the nations "barbarians." The Parthenon gives them reason.
"Unintelligible folk" to this day must acknowledge it, using the word
"barbarian" strictly in our modern sense.
But the sun is higher, the morning draws on; you must be gone to Athens.
Down the long, straight, new road, between rows of pepper-trees, passing
a little church which marks the spot where a miscreant tried to
assassinate King George, and always through beautiful, bare country like
the desert, you drive. And presently you see a few houses, like the
houses of a quiet village; a few great Corinthian columns rising up in a
lonely place beyond an arch tawny with old gold; a public garden looking
new but pleasant,--not unlike a desert garden at the edge of the Suez
Canal,--with a white statue (it is the statue of Byron) before it; then
a long, thick tangle of trees stretching far, and separated from the
road and a line of large apartment-houses only by an old and slight
wooden paling; a big square with a garden sunken below the level you are
on, and on your right a huge, bare white building rather like a
barracks. You are in Athens, and you have seen already the Olympieion,
the Arch of Hadrian, the Zappeion garden, Constitution Square, and the
garden and the palace of the king.
Coming to Athens for the first time by this route, it is difficult to
believe one is in the famous capital, even though one has seen the
Acropolis. And I never quite lost the feeling there that I was in a
delightful village, containing a cheery, bustling life, some fine modern
buildings, and many wonders of the past. Yet Athens is large and is
continually growing. One of the best and most complete views of it is
obtained from the terrace near the Acropolis Museum, behind the
Parthenon. Other fine views can be had from Lycabettus, the solitary and
fierce-looking hill against whose rocks the town seems almost to surge,
like a wave striving to overwhelm it, and from that other hill,
immediately facing the Acropolis, on which stands the monument of
Philopappos.
It is easy to ascend to the summit of the Acropolis, even in the fierce
heat of a summer day. A stroll up a curving road, the mounting of some
steps, and you are there, five hundred and ten feet only above the level
of the sea. But on account of the solitary situation of the plateau of
rock on which the temples are grouped and of its precipitous sides, it
seems very much higher than it is. Whenever I stood on the summit of the
Acropolis I felt as if I were on the peak of a mountain, as if from
there one must be able to see all the kingdoms of the world and the
glory of them.
[Illustration: THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS ON THE SOUTHERN SLOPE OF THE
ACROPOLIS]
What one does see is marvelously, almost ineffably beautiful. Herodotus
called this land, with its stony soil and its multitudes of bare
mountains, the "rugged nurse of liberty." Though rugged, and often
naked, nevertheless its loveliness--and that soft word must be used--is
so great and so pure that, as we give to Greek art the crown of wild
olive, so we must give it surely also to the scenery of Greece. It is a
loveliness of outline, of color, and above all of light.
Almost everywhere in Greece you see mountains, range upon range, closing
about you or, more often, melting away into far distances, into outlines
of shadows and dreams. Almost everywhere, or so it seemed to me, you
look upon the sea. And as the outlines of the mountains of Greece are
nearly always divinely calm, so the colors of the seas of Greece are
magically deep and radiant and varied. And over mountains and seas fall
changing wonders of light, giving to outline eternal meanings, to color
the depth of a soul.
When you stand upon the Acropolis you see not only ruins which, taking
everything into consideration, are perhaps the most wonderful in the
world, but also one of the most beautiful views of the world. It is
asserted as a fact by authorities that the ancient Greeks had little or
no feeling for beauty of landscape. One famous writer on things Greek
states that "a fine view as such had little attraction for them," that
is, the Greeks. It is very difficult for those who are familiar with
the sites the Greeks selected for their great temples and theaters, such
as the rock of the Acropolis, the heights at Sunium and at Argos, the
hill at Taormina in Sicily, etc., to feel assured of this, however
lacking in allusion to the beauty of nature, unless in connection with
supposed animating intelligences, Greek literature may be. It is almost
impossible to believe it as you stand on the Acropolis.
All Athens lies beneath you, pale, almost white, with hints of mauve and
yellow, gray and brown, with its dominating palace, its tiny Byzantine
churches, its tiled and flat roofs, its solitary cypress-trees and
gardens. Lycabettus stands out, small, but bold, almost defiant. Beyond,
and on every side, stretches the calm plain of Attica. That winding
river of dust marks the Via Sacra, along which the great processions
used to pass to Eleusis by the water. There are the dark groves of
Academe, a place of rest in a bare land. The marble quarries gleam white
on the long flanks of Mount Pentelicus, and the great range of Parnes
leads on to Ægaleos. Near you are the Hill of the Nymphs, with its
observatory; the rocky plateau from which the apostle Paul spoke of
Christ to the doubting Athenians; the new plantation at the foot of
Philopappos which surrounds the so-called "Prison of Socrates."
Honey-famed Hymettus, gray and patient, stretches toward the
sea--toward the shining Saronic Gulf and the bay of Phalerum. And there,
beyond Phalerum, are the Piræus and Salamis. Mount Elias rules over the
midmost isle of Ægina. Beneath the height of Sunium, where the Temple of
Poseidon still lifts blanched columns above the passing mariners who
have no care for the sea-god's glory, lies the islet of Gaidaronisi, and
the mountains of Megara and of Argolis lie like dreaming shadows in the
sunlight. Very pure, very perfect, is this great view. Nature here seems
purged of all excesses, and even nature in certain places can look
almost theatrical, though never in Greece. The sea shines with gold, is
decked with marvelous purple, glimmers afar with silver, fades into the
color of shadow. The shapes of the mountains are as serene as the shapes
of Greek statues. Though bare, these mountains are not savage, are not
desolate or sad. Nor is there here any suggestion of that "oppressive
beauty" against which the American painter-poet Frederic Crowninshield
cries out in a recent poem--of that beauty which weighs upon, rather
than releases, the heart of man.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS]
From this view you turn to behold the Parthenon. A writer who loved
Greece more than all other countries, who was steeped in Greek
knowledge, and who was deeply learned in archæology, has left it on
record that on his first visit to the Acropolis he was aware of a
feeling of disappointment. His heart bled over the ravages wrought by
man in this sacred place--that Turkish powder-magazine in the Parthenon
which a shell from Venetians blew up, the stolen lions which saw Italy,
the marbles carried to an English museum, the statues by Phidias which
clumsy workmen destroyed.
But so incomparably noble, so majestically grand is this sublime ruin,
that the first near view of it must surely fill many hearts with an awe
which can leave no room for any other feeling. It is incomplete, but not
the impression it creates.
The Parthenon, as it exists to-day, shattered, almost entirely roofless,
deprived of its gilding and color, its glorious statues, its elaborate
and wonderful friezes, its lions, its golden oil-jars, its Athene
Parthenos of gold and ivory, the mere naked shell of what it once was,
is stupendous. No memory of the gigantic ruins of Egypt, however
familiarly known, can live in the mind, can make even the puniest fight
for existence, before this Doric front of Pentelic marble, simple, even
plain, but still in its devastation supreme. The size is great, but one
has seen far greater ruins. The fluted columns, lifted up on the marble
stylobate which has been trodden by the feet of Pericles and Phidias,
are huge in girth, and rise to a height of between thirty and forty
feet. The architrave above their plain capitals, with its projecting
molding, is tremendously massive. The walls of the cella, or sanctuary
of the temple, where they still remain, are immense. But now, where
dimness reigned,--for in the days when the temple was complete no light
could enter it except through the doorway,--the sunlight has full
possession. And from what was once a hidden place the passing traveler
can look out over land and sea.
[Illustration: IN THE PORTICO OF THE PARTHENON]
Some learned men have called the Parthenon severe. It is wonderfully
simple, so simple that it is not easy to say exactly why it produces
such an overpowering impression of sublimity and grandeur. But it is not
severe, for in severity there is something repellent, something that
frowns. It seems to me that the impression created by the Parthenon as a
building is akin to that created by the Sphinx as a statue. It
suggests--seems actually to send out like an atmosphere--a tremendous
calm, far beyond the limits of any severity.
The whole of the Parthenon, except the foundations, is of Pentelic
marble. And this marble is so beautiful a substance now after centuries
of exposure on a bare height to the fires of the sun, to the sea-winds
and the rains of winter, that it is impossible to wish it gilded, and
painted with blue and crimson. From below in the plain, and from a long
distance, the temple looks very pale in color, often indeed white. But
when you stand on the Acropolis, you find that the marble holds many
hues, among others pale yellow, cocoa color, honey color, and old gold.
I have seen the columns at noonday, when they were bathed by the rays of
the sun, glow with something of the luster of amber, and look almost
transparent. I have seen them, when evening was falling, look almost
black.
The temple, which is approached through the colossal marble Propylæa, or
state entrance, with Doric colonnades and steps of marble and black and
deep-blue Eleusinian stone, is placed on the very summit of the
Acropolis, at the top of a slope, now covered with fragments of ruin,
scattered blocks of stone and marble, sections of columns, slabs which
once formed parts of altars, and broken bits of painted ceiling, but
which was once a place of shrines and of splendid statues, among them
the great statue of Athena Promachos, in armor, and holding the lance
whose glittering point was visible from the sea. The columns are all
fluted, and all taper gradually as they rise to the architrave. And the
flutes narrow as they draw nearer and nearer to the capitals of the
columns. The architrave was once hung with wreaths and decorated with
shields. The famous frieze of the cella, which represented in marble a
great procession, and which ran round the external wall of the
sanctuary, is now in pieces, some of which are in the British Museum,
and some in Athens. A portion of this frieze may still be seen on the
west front of the temple. The cella had a ceiling of painted wood. On
one of its inner walls I saw traces of red Byzantine figures, one
apparently a figure of the Virgin. These date from the period when the
Parthenon was used as a Christian church, and was dedicated to Mary the
mother of God, before it became a mosque, and, later, a Turkish
powder-magazine. The white marble floor, which is composed of great
blocks perfectly fitted together, and without any joining substance,
contrasts strongly with the warm hues of the inner flutes of the Doric
columns. Here and there in the marble walls may be seen fragments of red
and of yellow brick. From within the Parthenon, looking out between the
columns, you can see magnificent views of country and sea.
Two other temples form part of the Acropolis, with the Propylæa and the
Parthenon, the Temple of Athene Nike and the Erechtheum. They are
absolutely different from the profoundly masculine Parthenon, and almost
resemble two beautiful female attendants upon it, accentuating by their
delicate grace its majesty.
The Temple of Nike is very small. It stands on a jutting bastion just
outside the Propylæa, and has been rebuilt from the original materials,
which were dug up out of masses of accumulated rubbish. It is Ionic,
has a colonnade, is made of Pentelic marble, and was once adorned with a
series of winged victories in bas-relief.
Ionic like the Temple of Nike, but much larger, the Erechtheum stands
beyond the Propylæa, and not far from the Parthenon, at the edge of the
precipice beneath which lies the greater part of Athens. A marvelously
personal element attaches to it and makes it unique, giving it a charm
which sets it apart from all other buildings. To find this you must go
to the southwest, to the beautiful Porch of the Caryatids, which looks
toward the Parthenon.
There are six of these caryatids, or maidens, standing upon a high
parapet of marble and supporting a marble roof. Five of them are white,
and one is a sort of yellowish black in color, as if she had once been
black, but, having been singled out from her fellows, had been kissed
for so many years by the rays of the sun that her original hue had
become changed, brightened by his fires. Four of the maidens stand in a
line. Two stand behind, on each side of the portico. They wear flowing
draperies, their hair flows down over their shoulders, and they support
their burden of marble with a sort of exquisite submissiveness, like
maidens choosing to perform a grateful and an easy task that brings with
it no loss of self-respect.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF ATHENE NIKE AT ATHENS]
I once saw a great English actress play the part of a slave girl. By
her imaginative genius she succeeded in being more than a slave: she
became a poem of slavery. Everything ugly in slavery was eliminated from
her performance. Only the beauty of devoted service, the willing service
of love,--and slaves have been devoted to their masters,--was shown in
her face, her gestures, her attitudes. Much of what she imagined and
reproduced is suggested by these matchlessly tender and touching
figures; so soft that it is almost incredible that they are made of
marble, so strong that no burden, surely, would be too great for their
simple, yet almost divine, courage. They are watchers, these maidens,
not alertly, but calmly watchful of something far beyond our seeing.
They are alive, but with a restrained life such as we are not worthy to
know, neither fully human nor completely divine. They have something of
our wistfulness and something also of that attainment toward which we
strive. They are full of that strange and eternal beauty that is in all
the greatest things of Greece, from which the momentary is banished, in
which the perpetual is enshrined. Contemplation of them only seems to
make more deep their simplicity, more patient their strength, and more
touching their endurance. Retirement from them does not lessen, but
almost increases, the enchantment of their very quiet, very delicate
spell. Even when their faces can no longer be distinguished and only
their outlines can be seen, they do not lose one ray of their soft and
tender vitality. They are among the eternal things in art, lifting up
more than marble, setting free from bondage, if only for a moment, many
that are slaves by their submission.
About two years ago this temple was carefully cleaned, and it is very
white, and looks almost like a lovely new building not yet completed.
Here and there the white surface is stained with the glorious golden hue
which beautifies the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the Odeum of Herodes, the
Temple of Theseus, the Arch of Hadrian, and the Olympieion. The interior
of the temple is full of scattered blocks of marble. In the midst of
them, and as it were faithfully protected by them, I found a tiny tree
carefully and solemnly growing, with an air of self-respect. Above the
doorway of the north front is some very beautiful and delicate carving.
This temple was once adorned with a frieze of Eleusinian stone and with
white marble sculpture. Its Ionic columns are finely carved, and look
almost strangely slender, if you come to them immediately after you have
been among the columns of the Parthenon. Majesty and charm are supremely
expressed in these two temples, the Parthenon and the Erechtheum, the
smaller of which is on a lower level than the greater. One thinks again
of the happy slave who loves her lord.
The group of magnificent, gold-colored Greco-Roman columns which is
called the Olympieion stands in splendid isolation on a bare terrace at
the edge of the charming Zappeion garden. In this garden, full of firs
and pepper-trees, acacias, palms, convolvulus, and pink oleanders, I saw
many Greek soldiers, wearied out with preparations for the Balkan war
against Turkey, which was declared while I was in Athens, sleeping on
the wooden seats, or even stretched out at full length on the light,
yellow soil. For there is no grass there. Beyond the Olympieion there is
a stone trough in which I never saw one drop of water. This trough is
the river-bed of the famous Ilissus!
The columns are very splendid, immense in height, singularly beautiful
in color,--they are made of Pentelic marble,--and with Corinthian
capitals, nobly carved. Those which are grouped closely together are
raised on a platform of stone. But there are two isolated columns which
look even grander and more colossal than those which are united by a
heavy architrave. The temple of which they are the remnant was erected
in the reign of Hadrian to the glory of Zeus, and was one of the most
gigantic buildings in the world.
From the Zappeion garden you can see in the distance the snow-white
marble Stadium where the modern Olympic and Pan-Hellenic games take
place. It is gigantic. When full, it can hold over fifty thousand
people. The seats, the staircases, the pavements are all of
dazzling-white marble, and as there is of course no roof, the effect of
this vastness of white, under a bright-blue sky, and bathed in golden
fires, is almost blinding. All round the Stadium cypress-trees have been
planted, and their dark-green heads rise above the outer walls, like
long lines of spear-heads guarding a sacred inclosure. Two comfortable
arm-chairs for the king and queen face two stelæ of marble and the
far-off entrance. The earthen track where the sports take place is
divided from the spectators by a marble barrier about five feet high,
and till you descend into it, it looks small, though it is really very
large. The entrance is a propylæum. It is a great pity that immediately
outside this splendid building the hideous panorama should be allowed to
remain, cheap, vulgar, dusty, and despicable. I could not help saying
this to a Greek acquaintance. He thoroughly agreed with me, but told me
that the Athenians were very fond of their panorama.
[Illustration: THE STADIUM, ATHENS]
In a straight line with the beautiful Arch of Hadrian, and not far off,
is the small and terribly defaced, but very graceful, Monument of
Lysicrates, a circular chamber of marble, with small Corinthian columns,
an architrave, and a frieze. It is surrounded by a railing, and
stands rather forlornly in the midst of modern houses.
The Temple of Theseus, or more properly of Hercules, on the other side
of the town, is a beautifully preserved building, lovely in color, very
simple, very complete. It is small, and is strictly Doric and very
massive. Many people have called it tremendously impressive, and have
even compared it with the Parthenon. It seems to me that to do this is
to exaggerate, to compare the very much less with the very much greater.
There really is something severe in great massiveness combined with
small proportions, and I find this temple, noble though it is, severe.
Athens contains several very handsome modern buildings, and one that I
think really beautiful, especially on a day of fierce sunshine or by
moonlight. This is the Academy, which stands in the broad and airy
University Street, at whose mouth are the two cafés which Athenians call
"the Dardanelles." It is in a line with the university and the national
library, is made of pure white marble from Pentelicus, and is very
delicately and discreetly adorned with a little bright gold, the
brilliance of which seems to add to the virginal luster of the marble.
The central section is flanked by two tall and slender detached columns
crowned with statues. Ionic colonnades relieve the classical simplicity
of the façade, with some marble and terra-cotta groups of statuary. The
general effect is very calm, pure, and dignified, and very satisfying.
The Athenians are proud, and with reason, of this beautiful building,
which they owe to the generosity of one of their countrymen.
Modern Athens, despite its dust, is a delightful city to dwell in.
Nobody in it looks rich,--that dreadful look!--and scarcely anybody
looks poor. The king and the princes stroll casually about the streets,
or may be met on the Acropolis or walking by the sea at Phalerum. I was
allowed to wander all over the palace gardens, which are full of palms
and great trees, and which resemble a laid-out wood. A Rumanian friend
of mine told me that one day when he was in the garden, on turning a
corner, he came upon the king and queen, with the crown-princess, who
had just come down from the terrace in front of the royal apartments.
All the center of the palace was burned out more than a year ago, and is
now being slowly rebuilt. Greece is the home of genuine democrats, but
democracy is delightful in Greece. Nobody thinks about rank, and
everybody behaves like a gentleman. The note of Athens is a perfectly
decorous liveliness, which is never marred by vulgarity. The stranger is
welcomed and treated with the greatest possible courtesy, and he is
never bothered by objectionable people such as haunt many of the cities
of Italy, and of other lands where travelers are numerous. Athens indeed
is one of the most simpatica of cities, wonderfully cheerful, simply
gay, of a perfect behavior, yet unceremonious.
I have said that the Greeks are democrats. Nevertheless, like certain
other democrats of whom one has heard, there are Greeks who love to
think that they are not quite as all other Greeks. America, I am
informed, has her "four hundred." Greece has her "fifty-two." In New
York the "four hundred" consider themselves the advance-guard of
fashion, if not of civilization. In Athens the "fifty-two" rejoice in a
similar conviction. They do daring things sometimes. There is a
card-game beloved of the Greeks called "Mouse." The fifty-two have
introduced bridge and despise "Mouse." In Athens they frequent one
another's houses. In the summer they "remove" to Kephisia in the
pine-woods, where there are many pleasant, and some very fantastic,
villas, and where picnics, tennis, and card-parties, theatrical
performances and dances, fleet the hours, which are always golden, away.
They are sometimes criticized by the "outsiders," for even gods are
subject to criticism. People say now and then, "What will the fifty-two
do next?" or, "Really there is no end to the folly of the fifty-two!"
But have not similar remarks been heard even at Newport or upon Fifth
Avenue pavements? Nevertheless, despite the fifty-two, you have only to
look at the thin and decrepit palings of King George's garden to
realize that at last you have found the true democracy, and a democracy
sensible enough to understand the advantage of possessing a royal
family. Every society needs a leader, and royalty leads far more
effectively than any one else, however self-assured, however glittering.
The Greeks are not without wisdom.
Their manners are charming and excellent. I had an unusual opportunity
of putting them to the test. I was in Athens just before and just after
the declaration of war against Turkey, when spies were everywhere, when
a Turkish spy was discovered in Athens disguised as a Greek priest, and
a woman was caught near Lycabettus in the act of poisoning the
water-supply of the city. One morning early, when I was on the sea near
Salamis in a small boat with a Greek fisherman, I was arrested on
suspicion of being a spy, and was brought before the admiral in supreme
command of the fleet. My passport was in Athens at my hotel, the admiral
evidently disbelieved my explanations, and I was handed over to the
police at the Piræus, accompanied by a report from the admiral in which,
as was afterward made known to me, he stated that I was "a very
suspicious character." And now to the test of Hellenic good manners.
[Illustration: THE ACADEMY, MOUNT LYCABETTUS IN THE BACKGROUND]
Eventually a guard of police carrying rifles was sent to convey me from
the Piræus to Athens, and in the middle of the afternoon I was obliged
to walk as a prisoner through the streets of the Piræus, to take the
tram to Phalerum, to get out there and wait for half an hour at a
railway-station, and to travel in the train to Athens. In Athens I was
made to walk three times, always guarded closely, through the principal
streets and squares of the city, and twice past my hotel in the
Constitution Square during the most busy hour of the day. Eventually, at
night, I was released. Now, the Hellenes are considered by many people
to be very inquisitive. During my public exposure as a prisoner I met
with no really disagreeable curiosity from the crowd. Many people
discreetly inquired of my guards who I was and what I had done, and
naturally a great many more stared at me. But nobody followed me and my
attendants as we marched on our way from one police station to another,
to the War Office, etc. There was no pushing or jostling, such as there
would certainly have been in an English town if a prisoner with guards
was exposed to the public gaze. Curiosity was, as a rule, almost
carefully dissembled, and inquiries were made with a charming
discretion. I confess I felt grateful to the Greeks that day, though not
to the admiral who had me arrested, or to the police who put me to so
much inconvenience. And I was grateful for one thing more, that I was
released just in time to see King George's arrival in Athens on the eve
of the war.
The Hellenes are not an enthusiastic people, as a rule. They are
critical, intellectual, sometimes rather cynical. But that night they
gave way to emotion. Great crowds were lined up in Constitution Square,
and were massed on the brow of the hill before the palace, when at
length the police let me go. Darkness had long since fallen, but the
square was illuminated brightly. All the balconies were packed with
people. The terrace before the Grande Bretagne was black with
sight-seers. And everywhere in the forefront were rows of eager,
vivacious Greek children, many of them the soldiers of the future.
We had to wait for a very long time. But at last the king came in an
open carriage, driving with "the Diádochos," as the crown-prince is
always called in Greece. Both were in uniform. There was no ceremonial
escort, so the people formed an unceremonial one. They ran with the
carriage, shouting, waving their hats and handkerchiefs, cheering till
they were hoarse, and crying, "War! War!" The great square rang with the
clapping of thousands of hands. "Never before," said a Greek to me, "has
the king had such a reception." When the carriages containing the rest
of the royal family and the ministers had gone by, we ran in our
thousands to the palace. Above the great entrance porch there is a
balcony, and after a short time slim King George stepped out, rather
cautiously, I thought, upon it, followed by all the princes and
princesses. It was very dark, but a footman accompanied his Majesty,
holding an electric light, and we had our speech.
[Illustration: THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS, EARLY MORNING]
The king read the first part of it in a loud, unemotional voice, bending
sometimes to the light. But at the close he spoke a few words extempore,
commending the Hellenic cause, if war should come, to the mercy of God.
And then, again with precaution, he retired into the palace amid a storm
of cheers.
I was afterward told that, with the whole of the royal family, his
Majesty had been standing upon some loose planks which spanned an abyss.
The royal palace, owing to the disastrous fire, is not yet what it
seems. Fortunately, the Greek army has proved more solid, and the God of
battles, so solemnly invoked by their king, has been favorable to the
arms of the Greeks. No one, I think, who was in Greece during that time
of acute tension, who saw the feverish preparations, the devotion of the
toiling soldiers, the ardor of the volunteers; no one who witnessed, as
I did, the return to Athens of the "American Greeks," who gave up
everything and crossed the ocean to fight for their little, splendid
country, could wish it otherwise.
The descendants of those who made the Parthenon have shown something of
that Doric soul which is surely the soul of Greece.
THE ENVIRONS OF ATHENS
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AND ATHENE AT SUNIUM]