historic spot in Attica, must at least visit the most historic spot
of all, the spot where it was fixed that Attica should remain Attica
and that Europe should remain Europe. Mr. Lowe, we may well believe,
stood alone in looking on the fight of Marathôn as a matter of small
importance, because the day which fixed the destiny of the world saw
only a comparatively small amount of slaughter. Mr. Lowe of course
really knew better; but there are those who really seem not to know
better, those who measure things only by their physical bigness, and
cannot take in either their results or their moral greatness. There
has often been far more blood shed to decide which of two Eastern
despots should have the mastery than was shed to decide that Europe
should not fall under the dominion of Eastern despots. Never surely
did the future fate of the world hang in the same way on the will of a
single man as when the arguments of Miltiadês won over the Polemarch
Kallimachos to give his vote for immediate battle. That vote was, as
it were, the very climax of European constitutional life. All rested
on the voice of one man, not because all authority was vested in one
man, but because it was vested in many. When the ten generals were
equally divided, Kallimachos gave the casting vote, and Europe remained
Europe. It is inconceivable that, if Athenian freedom had been then
crushed when it was still in its first childhood, the course of the
world’s history could have been what it has been. Enslaved Greece could
never have been what free Greece was. Athens and Megalopolis could have
been no more than an Ephesos or Milêtos. It may well be that, even if
the Eastern peninsula had been rent away from the Western world, the
central peninsula might still have stood its ground. The barbarian
might still have been checked, and checked for ever, by the hands of
Romans or Samnites or Lucanians. The Roman power might still have been
spread over the world; the Teuton and the Slave might still have come
to discharge their later mission within the Roman world; but a Roman
world, untutored by Greece, could never have been what the Roman world
of actual history was and is. The men who fought at Marathôn fought as
the champions of every later generation of European man. If on the
Akropolis of Mykênê we feel that we have some small share, the share
of distant kinsmen, in the cradle of the oldest European civilisation,
the subject of the oldest European literature--so, as we stand on the
barrow of the one hundred and ninety-two who died at Marathôn, we feel
that we have a nearer claim, the claim of men who come on pilgrimage to
the resting-place of men who died that European lands and European men
should be all that they have been.
In fact, on the plain of Marathôn, the famous saying of Johnson becomes
clothed with a fuller meaning than its author is likely to have thought
of. “That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain
force upon the plain of Marathôn.” The saying is true, if we think
merely of association, of example, of analogy. It becomes true in a
yet higher sense, if we look on the day of Marathôn as being all
that it truly is, as having fixed, not only the destiny of Athens,
but the destiny of Europe. And we may look on that spot from another
point of view, less wide indeed than this, but wider than that which
looks on it simply as the scene of a single event of the year 490
before our era. Even setting aside the event which has made Marathôn
famous with an undying fame, Marathôn would still have a considerable
history, mythical and real--a history some chapters of which come
within the memory of many of us. We must remember that, besides the
view which looks on Greece as being almost in her first youth on the
day of Marathôn, there is another view which looks on Greece as being
then already in her decline. The one view is true, if we think only of
Athenian democracy, of Athenian art, of Athenian poetry; the other
view is no less true in the general history of the Greek nation. When
the fight of Marathôn was fought, the bondage of the Greek nation had
already begun; the work which was ended by Mahomet the Conqueror had
been already begun by Crœsus and Cyrus. Asiatic Greece was already
enslaved; the fight of Marathôn was fought in order that European
Greece might not be enslaved like it. It may also flash across the
minds of some who tread the plain of Marathôn that the fight which
Miltiadês waged there in the cause of Hellenic freedom was not the last
fight which has been waged on the same ground in the same cause. On
that same plain, where the Athenians of one age fought to save Greece
from coming under the yoke of the Persian, the Athenians of another age
fought to free enslaved Greece from the yoke of the Turk. The modern
fight of Marathôn, the fight of July, 1824, hardly ranks among the
great events of the War of Independence, as its leader certainly does
not rank among the purest heroes of the War of Independence. Yet when
Gouras smote the janissaries of Omar of Karystos on the same ground on
which Miltiadês had smitten the hosts of Datis and Artaphernês, to an
eye which takes in the whole range of Grecian and European history,
the fact has something more about it than mere association, than mere
coincidence. The two fights of Marathôn were in truth only two stages
in one long tale, the tale of the undying struggle between civilisation
and the freedom of the West and the barbarian despotism of the Eastern
world.
Marathôn, like Eleusis, gives us the usual lesson in Greek geography,
and makes us better understand the greatness of that wonderful change
which fused all the towns of Attica into a single commonwealth. We see
at once that Marathôn--the name was, at least in later use, extended to
the whole Tetrapolis--was, no less than Eleusis, designed, according
to the common laws of Greek political geography, to form a separate
state, distinct from Athens. Indeed it is more thoroughly cut off than
Eleusis. In the view from the Akropolis, Pentelikos altogether hides
the Marathônian plain; while, though Eleusis is actually kept out of
sight by Aigaleôs, Kithairôn and the other greater heights beyond it
suggest the existence of the Thriasian plain. Marathôn therefore,
naturally enough, has a long mythical history distinct from that of
Athens. Not only Thêseus, but Hêraklês and the Hêrakleidai figure in
it, and legend tells of a fight of Marathôn earlier than either of
those which history records. Hêraklês remained in historical times the
chief object of local worship, and it was by his sanctuary that the
Athenian host encamped before, what we suppose we must call, the second
battle. Athênê too, as on other spots of Attic soil, was not without
her temple by the marsh. Marathôn does not appear in the Catalogue any
more than Eleusis, and for the same reason as Eleusis. But its name
appears in the Odyssey in a passage which may suggest some geographical
reflections:
Ὤς ἄρα Φωνήσασ’ ἀπέβη γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη
Πὸντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον· λίπε δὲ Σχερίην ἐρατεινήν·
Ἴκετο δ’ ἐς Μαραθῶνα καὶ εὐρυάἈγυιαν Ἀθήνην,
Δῦνε δ’ Ἐρεχθῆος πυκινὸν δόμον·
If Scheriê really be Corfu, this may seem a most unexpected route to
Athens, and yet it is hardly more wonderful than the route by Syra
by which the modern traveller often actually goes. In history the
first appearance of Marathôn is when Peisistratos lands there on his
return from exile. The second is when the son of Peisistratos led the
Persian host thither, as a fitting place for the use of the cavalry
which after all they seemed not to have used. No battle in history
has been more minutely examined, and that in some cases by men who
united technical military knowledge with a thorough knowledge of the
country. Colonel Leake, to mention only one inquirer, has done all
that the union of both qualities could do, though one is amazed at
his constantly referring to Herodotus as a contemporary writer. Yet,
after all his labours, after all the labours of Mr. Finlay and others,
everybody complains that the narrative of Herodotus is unsatisfactory.
The comments of Dean Blakesley strike us as among the most acute
that have been made. One may doubt whether Herodotus had ever been
there; he certainly shows no knowledge of the ground. He makes no
mention of the marshes which form so marked a feature in the character
of the Marathônian plain. The marshes lie between the sea and the
fighting-ground, as the fighting-ground lies between the marsh and the
mountains. The marsh is not only not mentioned by Herodotus, but his
account seems almost inconsistent with its existence. But Pausanias
saw the picture in the Poikilê which showed the Persians falling into
the marsh. It is like appealing to the Bayeux Tapestry from the later
accounts of the battle of Senlac. Pausanias, though he lived so many
ages after, was in this way really nearer to the time than Herodotus.
The picture commemorated the fact; Herodotus tells the story as it
had grown up a generation later. By that time, as Dean Blakesley says,
the story had come under the operation of the law by which “popular
tradition rapidly drops all those particulars of a battle which evince
strategic genius, and substitutes for them exaggerated accounts of
personal bravery.” Miltiadês, as a good general, took advantage of
the ground, and largely owed his success to the nature of the ground.
Popular tradition made everything be done by sheer hard fighting.
In short, almost every detail of this memorable fight seems shrouded in
uncertainty. It is hard to fix the exact position of either army, and
the very name of Marathôn has perhaps shifted its place. The site of
the old town seems quite as likely to be, not at the modern Marathôn,
but, as Colonel Leake puts it, at Brana. Yet, amid all this doubt,
there is essential certainty. Of the work that was done that day, of
the general site, there is no doubt, and the most living and speaking
monument of all is there to bear its witness. We stand, not, as the
poet puts it, on the Persians’ grave, but on the mound which covers the
ashes of the men of Athens who fell that day. Within the space between
the bay with its blue waters and the hills which fence in the plain,
the fate of Europe was fixed. We stand on the mound; the eye passes
over the hills, from Probalinthos to the cape of Kynosoura. We look
on the older and the newer candidate of the name of Marathôn; we look
on the hill where older legends fixed the home of Pan, and where the
later name of Drakonera speaks of some older or later dragon myth. We
know that it was within these bounds that the might of Asia was broken
by the force of two Hellenic cities. Standing on that mound, instead
of dreaming, as the poet dreamed in the days of enslaved Greece, we
may call to mind how, in the cycle of human things, another triumph of
Europe over Asia was won on the same spot, and if there be, as other
poets tell us, two special voices which call to freedom, no spot could
be better chosen for the work that was done there than the Marathônian
plain. Once that land was said to be
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord.
Now the foreign lord is gone, and for the rest no change is needed. The
mountains are there, the sea is there, and, almost as imperishable as
themselves, the mound of the fallen heroes is there also. At no great
distance from the mound, some stones remain which are held to mark the
separate monument of the leader of that day’s battle. Standing there,
by the grave of Miltiadês, we think of that day only. On the plain of
Marathôn, we will not think either of Paros or of Chersonêsos.
While we write, perhaps no inopportune moment, the news comes that
Greece has lost the last and the noblest of her later heroes. The man
of other times in whom all his countrymen trusted--the man before whom
the chiefs of contending parties could lay their jealousies aside--is
taken away from his country in the moment of her utmost need. One tie
which binds us to the past is rudely snapped, when the last of the
heroes of the past, the last of the ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν, passes away
from the work to which his county had again called him. After a life
of ninety years and more--a life in which the severest of censors,
whose scourge spared neither Greek nor Englishman, could not find
a single flaw--the hero of the fire-ships is no more. The name of
Constantine Kanarês is added to the same roll of departed worthies as
Miaoulês and Botzarês, as Church and Hastings. And in the long list of
men who for so many ages have done honour to the Hellenic name, among
the chosen few whose glory no speck tarnishes, along with Phormiôn and
Kallikratidas, men of his own calling and his own element, the pen of
history will engrave no nobler name than the name of him who has just
gone, of him who has as truly died in the service of his country as if
he had fallen fifty years back, like Kynaigeiros himself by the shore
of Marathôn.
The Saronic Gulf.
Travelling in Greece has in some measure to be done backwards. The
stranger who reaches Athens, as it will often be convenient to reach
it, by way of Syra, and who does not mean to cross the bounds of the
Greek kingdom, will naturally take Athens on his way homewards. The
voyage from Syra to Athens is a voyage made from the rising to the
setting sun. In the like sort Athens itself is the practical centre
for many points which lie to the west of it, and which geographically
form further steps on the return journey. To a traveller of the age
of Pausanias, one of the earliest of antiquarian travellers in the
modern sense, Athens might have seemed a strange centre for a journey
in the Argolic land, with Mykênê as its main object. Mykênê was in his
day as desolate as it is now, but Argos and Corinth were in a very
different case. In his day Argos and Corinth were united by a carriage
road, as there is hope that they may before long be united again. The
sea was then less thoroughly the highway of Hellas than it had been
in earlier times, or than it has become again in later times. Now the
traveller who has not a frame of extra hardihood will most likely
look on Mykênê and what naturally goes with Mykênê as an excursion
to be done from the capital, an excursion as great a part of which
as possible is to be made by water. That is to say, the most natural
approach to the Argolic land will be to most travellers by sea from
Peiraieus to Nauplia. The traveller will thus begin his researches
with one of those charming voyages among islands and peninsulas which
form so special a feature in Greek travel. The voyage from Peiraieus
to Nauplia strongly brings out some of the characteristics of Greek
geography and history. As Sulpicius remarked long ago, famous cities
lie close together. We better understand the nature of Greek politics
and Greek warfare when we fully take in the fact that so many of the
contending powers lay within sight of one another. This feeling comes
strongly into the mind when we look down from such a point as the hill
of Brescia and see the commonwealths of Lombardy grouped as it were in
order before us. But there is a wide difference between commonwealths
thus grouped, almost as it were in regular array, marked each by its
tower rising from the boundless plain, and commonwealths the site of
each of which forms a marked natural feature, an island, a promontory,
an inland hill. We see why the duration of the Greek commonwealths was
far longer than those of Lombardy, and why they were not in the same
way easily brought together under the hands of a few powerful lords.
Mr. Mahaffy, who occasionally arrives at untrustworthy conclusions on
things which he has not sufficiently studied, but who yields to few
in keenness of observation on the things which he has really studied,
has some good remarks on the geographical separation between state and
state which was brought about by the physical features of the country,
above all by the mountain ranges. Athens and Thebes were, as modern
states go, very near to one another, but Athens and Thebes had real
difficulties in getting at one another. The sea indeed was, whether
for peaceful or for war-like purposes, not a barrier but a highway,
but just as the physical position of the Greek commonwealths gave them
a more distinct national being, so the long and winding coasts of the
islands and peninsulas on which so many of them were placed gave them,
near as they lay together, an actual extent of territory altogether
out of proportion to their nearness. Thus, short as the life of the
commonwealths of ancient Greece seems to us, it was at least far longer
than the life of the commonwealths of mediæval Italy. Of the last, the
few that survived were just those whose geographical position enabled
them to survive. Venice and Genoa speak for themselves; so does Ragusa
on the other side of the great gulf. Lucca too, it has been well
observed, was, just like Athens and Thebes, cut from its neighbour Pisa
by mountains which hindered either of the once rival states from seeing
each other.
With this train of thought in our minds, we may start on our voyage
from Peiraieus to Nauplia, the first stage of our journey from Athens
to Mykênê. The heights of Megaris, the Akrokorinthos itself, come
within the distant view; but, as our course is marked out, of Megara
and Corinth we shall see something more and nearer, while of the other
states which border the gulf we take our nearest glimpse on the present
voyage. From the Akropolis of Athens, from not a few other points of
Attic soil, we have looked down on the varied outlines of the two rocky
islands which form the main features of the maritime landscape. Farther
from us lies Aigina, eyesore of Peiraieus; nearer lies Salamis, the
proudest name, save one, in Athenian history. In the general view one
island is as prominent as the other, and we naturally ask the cause
of the wide difference in their history. Aigina is itself a famous
island; Salamis is simply an island which became the scene of one of
the most famous of events. One of those caprices of destiny which,
above all, make and mar the fortunes of commercial states, made Aigina
for a while one of the great powers of Greece. The rival of Athens on
the element which belonged to Aigina before it belonged to Athens,
she became first the subject, then the victim, of her rival. So, when
again an independent state in after days, she underwent a blow no less
fearful at the hands of Rome and her Aitolian and Pergamene allies.
Salamis has no such history. The isle of the Aiakids, the subject
of the poetical oratory of Solon, once disputed between Megara and
Athens, became an integral part of the Attic land, the scene of the
great fight where Athenian and Aiginetan fought side by side against
the barbarian. But Salamis had no share in the glories of Aigina,
though she had some share in her sorrow. Aigina has a history of her
own, though a history in which her relations towards Athens play the
chief part. The history of Salamis is simply a part of the history of
Attica. Long indeed after the days of Solôn or of Periklês she suffered
at Athenian hands only less severely than Aigina had done, but that was
when Athens, tossed to and fro from one Macedonian lord to another,
suspected Salamis of treacherous dealings with one to whom the city
was for a while hostile. Salamis has gained a separate being in the
days of Kassandros, as Eleusis has again a separate being in the days
of the Thirty. Is the cause of this difference between the conquered
rival and the incorporated territory to be found in the fact that there
was no power in the Argolic _Aktê_ which could possibly draw Aigina to
itself--the island was far more likely to attract its neighbours on
the mainland--while Salamis lay near enough to the Attic coast to come
within the range of that strange influence which made the history of
Attica so opposite to that of all other Hellenic lands? As Eleusis and
Marathôn could be fused into Athens, so could Salamis; but Aigina lay
out of that influence, and lay within no other. Aigina, too powerful
to be incorporated with Athens, became, as we have seen, the rival
and victim of Athens, while Salamis, weaker and less powerful, became
indeed her victim, but in the character, not of a foreign enemy, but of
a home district charged with treason.
We pass then by Salamis. We muse on the great sea-fight; we muse
specially as we pass by the little dependency of Salamis, that isle
of Psyttaleia, beloved by Pan, where Aristeidês dealt the last blow
against the noblest of the Persian host. These things happened at
Salamis and Psyttaleia, but they were not the work of the men of
Salamis and Psyttaleia, even if Psyttaleia had any men. But we do see
the work of the men of Aigina, the memory of the greatness of Aigina,
as we draw near the coast of the historic isle, and the temple of
Panhellenian Zeus looks down upon us from its height. We pass round
the northern end of the island; we mark the modern town, and the
fringe of fertile land which lies between the sea and the soaring and
jagged heights of the island. We catch a glimpse of Epidauros, city of
Asklêpios, and our thoughts wander away to the second Epidauros on the
Lakonian coast, to the third Epidauros far away, parent of Ragusa and
all her argosies. We pass by Methana, of all peninsulas the nearest
to an island, cleaving to the Argolic _Aktê_ as the _Aktê_ cleaves to
Peloponnêsos, as Peloponnêsos cleaves to Hellas, as Hellas and the
adjoining lands cleave to the general mass of Europe. We pass on to
the spots famous in later as well as in earlier times, to some which
are famous in later times only. Kalaureia, with its Amphiktiony, is
perhaps less thought of than modern Pôros, the arsenal of Greece, the
scene of stirring events in the war which made Greece free. We skirt
the Troizenian land, but Troizên itself hardly comes within our ken;
and, if Pôros disputes the place with Kalaureia, Hermionê cannot even
attempt to dispute the place in our thoughts with the islands lying off
her shore which the warfare of modern days has made so illustrious.
There lie the homes of those famous Albanian colonists, two of the
three great nurseries of the seamen of Hellas. Their fate has been what
to shallow observers may seem a strange one, but which simply follows
the commonest laws of human nature. Specially privileged under the
Turk, they were foremost in the war against the Turk. Delivered from
his yoke, they have greatly fallen from the position which they held
under his yoke. The explanation is simple. The Hydriots, independent
in their own island on the single condition of furnishing men to the
Sultan’s navy, enjoyed that kind of half-freedom which makes men long
more keenly for perfect freedom. They know better what freedom is than
those who are utterly crushed down, and, as they know better what it
is, they also know better how to win it. In such cases we always hear
the silly charge of ingratitude--gratitude seemingly being due to the
invader if, for his own ends, he leaves his victim something. Hydra
then, the land of Miaoulês, was foremost in the strife simply because
it could be foremost. But when the strife was over, Hydra lost not
a little. That is to say, what was lost by Hydra was won by Greece
as a whole. In the days of bondage Hydra flourished, because it was
comparatively free. With the establishment of general freedom, Hydra
lost all special privilege; commerce, as commerce always will, went to
such spots as best suited it; Peiraieus and Syra rose as Hydra went
down. Yet Hydra and Spetza at least form part of free Greece. Psara,
the isle of Constantine Kanarês, is still in bondage. It is something
to stand before the house of the last of the old heroes, to look out on
Salamis, and to remember that, when the battle was fought, Themistoklês
too was ἄπολις ἀνήρ. By a happy analogy men speak of that house as
Caprera; the owner of Caprera is ἄπολις ἀνήρ also.