[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
ON THE TRACK OF
ULYSSES
TOGETHER WITH
AN EXCURSION IN QUEST OF THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS
_TWO STUDIES IN ARCHÆOLOGY, MADE DURING A CRUISE AMONG THE GREEK ISLANDS_
BY
W. J. STILLMAN
[Illustration: (uncaptioned)]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_
1888
Copyright, 1887,
By W. J. STILLMAN.
_All rights reserved._
_The Riverside Press, Cambridge_:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
To
WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON.
_In times when the feverish ambition of our people so generally climbs
to distinction by ways offensive to the true intellectual and moral
life, and when we find the old standards of human dignity so often
forgotten; it renews one’s faith in the future of humanity to meet a man
whom neither the “Olympian dust” nor that of California has been able to
deflect from that line of perfect rectitude of life which, if existence
is to be anything but an indecent scramble, we must recognize as
entitling the man who holds it, to the highest respect of his
fellow-men. When besides this claim to our respect he has been able to
maintain undimmed the lustre of a name such as you bear, the distinction
is still brighter. If therefore my insignificant tribute were only as
the dust which, catching the sunshine, males it visible, let me offer
this dedication in recognition of the true standard of nobility as I
know it in your father’s son._
W. J. STILLMAN.
PREFACE.
The series of papers herewith committed to the more or less permanent
condition of book form were originally (less some development of their
arguments) printed in the _Century_ magazine, being the results of an
exploring visit to Greek lands taken as a commission for that
periodical. I have sought in them to solve, in a popular form, certain
problems in archæology which seemed to me to have that romantic interest
which is necessary to general human interest; and while necessarily, in
such a study, dealing much with conjecture, I have not ventured to
assume anything which I am not satisfied is true. The problem of the
so-called Venus of Melos is one of those which archæology has fretted
over for two generations, and I cannot pretend to have offered a
solution which will command assent from the severely scientific
archæologist; but I have an interior conviction, stronger than any
authority of ancient tradition to my own mind, that that solution is the
true one. I do not wish it to be judged as a demonstration, but as an
induction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable or
equally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part; and, for the
rest, I am satisfied to let it be taken by the rule of “highest
probability,” by which we solve to our satisfaction, more or less
complete, problems of the gravest importance—a rule, indeed, which is
for many such the only standard of truth. In archæology, as in some
other inexact sciences, opinion has with most people greater weight than
it always merits, but it should have weight in proportion to the
knowledge its originator may have of his subject. As to this I have done
all that any man can to penetrate to the material which exists for
forming an opinion, and I rest in the sincere conviction, sustained
through a study of many years, that the so-called Venus of Melos is
really the Niké Apteros of the restored temple dedicated to that
goddess.
I must acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of the _Century_
magazine in according me the use of the admirable illustrations
accompanying my text, which were put on the blocks by Harry Fenn from my
own sketches or photographs.
W. J. STILLMAN.
New York, _September, 1887_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES 1
THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY 50
THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS 75
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
The Route of Ulysses 1
Ithaca and adjoining Islands 3
West Coast of Scheria 8
Greek Boats and Rostrum of Roman Galley 13
Corfu, from the King’s Garden 14
Port of Phorcys and Neriton, from the Mouth of Ulysses’ Cave 28
Raven’s Cliff and the Fountain of Arethusa 34
The Site of Ithaca—Port Polis 36
Inscription found at Polis 39
The School of Homer 43
View of Samé from the West,—with parts of Pelasgic and Hellenic Walls
58
Crané from the Sea Shore 60
Distant View of Palé from the Citadel of Crané 63
Zante 64
Citadel of Cerigo 67
Landing-Place of the Cyprian Aphrodite or Astarte 73
The so-called Venus of Melos 82
Street in Castro 84
The Site of Old Melos, from the Port 85
Medicean Venus 88
Venus Urania 88
Capitoline Venus 88
Venus of the Vatican 89
Venus Anadyomene 89
Venus Victrix of the Louvre 89
Venus of Capua 90
Restoration of the Statue as proposed by Mr. Tarral 90
Fragments found at Melos attributed to the Statue 91
Victory of Brescia (Front) 92
Victory of Brescia (Side) 92
Victory raising an Offering (Temple of Niké Apteros, the Acropolis,
Athens) 93
Victory untying her Sandal (Temple of Niké Apteros, the Acropolis,
Athens) 96
Victories leading a Bull to Sacrifice (Temple of Niké Apteros, the
Acropolis, Athens) 97
The so-called Venus of Melos (Front) 99
The “Venus” Restored (Front. Traced from a Photograph of a living
Model) 99
The “Venus” Restored (Side. Traced from a Photograph of a living
Model) 100
The so-called Venus of Melos (Side) 100
Victory of Consani 104
Temple of Niké Apteros 105
Greek Coin 106
ON THE TRACK OF ULYSSES.
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF ULYSSES.]
What remains for exploration to find on the surface of our little earth?
The north and south poles, some outlying bits of Central Africa, some
still smaller remnants of Central Asia,—all defended so completely by
the elements, barbarism, disease, starvation, by nature and inhumanity,
that the traveler of modest means and moderate constitution is as
effectually debarred from their discovery as if they were the moon.
What then? I said to myself, searching for adventure. Let us begin the
tread-mill round again and rediscover. I took up the earliest book of
travel which remains to us, and set to burnish up again the golden
thread of the journey of the most illustrious of travelers, as told in
the Odyssey, the book of the wanderings of Odysseus, whom we
unaccountably call Ulysses, which we may consider not only the first
history of travel, but the first geography, as it is doubtless a
compendium of the knowledge of the earth’s surface at the day when it
was composed, as the Iliad was the census of the known mankind of that
epoch. Spread on this small loom, the fabric of the story, of the most
subtle design,—art of the oldest and noblest,—is made up with warp of
the will of the great gods, crossed by the woof of the futile struggles
of the lesser, the demi-gods, the heroes, and tells the miserable labors
of the most illustrious of wanderers, the type for all time of craft,
duplicity, and daring, as well as of faith and patient endurance.
[Illustration: ITHACA AND ADJOINING ISLANDS.]
But as Homer’s humanity mixes by fine degrees with his divinity, so his
_terra cognita_ melts away into fairy-land, and we must look for a trace
written on water before landing on identifiable shores. The story opens
finding Ulysses the prisoner of Love and Calypso, in Ogygia, a fairy
island of which the Greek of Homeric days had heard, perhaps, from some
storm-driven mariner, or which may be a bit of brain-land. The details
of the story make it very difficult even to conjecture where Ogygia was,
if it was.[1] How Ulysses leaves the island alone on a raft is told by
the poet in the fifth canto; how he got there the hero recounts in the
narration to Alcinoüs in Phæacia. Leaving Troy, he stops at Ismarus, a
town on the coast of Thrace, which he surprises and sacks; but, repulsed
by the inhabitants of the lands near by, rallying to the defense, and
visited by the wrath of the gods for his impiety, he is punished by a
three days’ gale, and reaches Cape Malea, where, unable to stem the
north wind which still persecutes him, he runs past Cerigo down to the
African coast, which he reaches in nine days. Here we enter into
semi-fable.[2] The Lotophagi seduce his men with their magic fruit which
brings oblivion, and he is obliged to fly again. This time he goes
north, and comes to an island which lies before the port of the Cyclops,
a terrible race: giants with one eye, and cannibals, over whose land the
smoke hangs like whirlwinds—evidently Sicily. This little island, where
the Greeks debark, is not to be identified, but is probably one of those
to the west of Sicily, called later the Ægades. Thence, after the famous
adventure of the Cyclops’ cave, one of the poet’s most marvelous
inventions (since every detail shows that there was no positive
knowledge of the land or its people—only a fantastic tradition), they
fly and arrive at the floating island of Æolus, still a creation of
mythology, and thence to the shores of the Læstrygonians, another
fabulous, man-eating race, in whose land the days are separated only by
a brief pretense of night; escaping thence with his single ship and
crew, Ulysses arrives at Æa, the island of Circe, from earliest
classical times identified with Cape Circeo, between Naples and Cività
Vecchia. Circe sends the hero to the land of the Cimmerians,[3] where
time touches eternity, and the shades of the dead come to visit the
unterrified living; and here Tiresias, the dead soothsayer, tells the
future wanderings of the Ithacan chief. Again, returning to Æa, he is
redirected toward home through the strait where Scylla and Charybdis
menace his existence. This we recognize by later tradition as the
Straits of Messina, but the fabulous so dominates the slight element of
geography in it, that it is clear that Homer never passed that way, and
gained his knowledge only from far remote report; while his second
passage—after the sacrilege committed in the Island of the Sun—through
the straits, is puzzling, and the recital makes it clear that till
Phæacia was reached the poet was not in _terra cognita_.
The indications are hardly reconcilable with the map. Leaving Circe to
go home, he passes the straits, and stopping at the Island of the Sun,
his comrades commit a sacrilege which leads to their destruction and his
being driven back to Ogygia through the straits, a solitary survivor.
But on his departure for Phæacia direct, he does not pass again through
the straits, evidently returning to the south of Sicily.
Released by Calypso, he goes on a raft with the sailing direction to
keep the Great Bear, “which is also called the Wain,” on his left,—that
is, he sails eastward, and for seventeen days splits the waves, and sees
on the eighteenth the wooded mountain of the island of the Phæacians,
the Scheria of the ancients. The continuity of tradition and the
consistency of the narrative leave me no doubt that this was our Corfu,
the uttermost of the lands positively known to the geography of that
day. The actuality of Scheria has been disputed by certain German
critics, who will have it that all the local allusions of the Odyssey
are imaginary. But in the Æneid, when Æneas is going to Butrintum, which
is now Butrinto, opposite Corfu on the Albanian coast, he says that no
land was in sight except Scheria. This makes it certain that in Virgil’s
time there was no question on the point.
Already in sight of Scheria, Ulysses is overtaken again by the wrath of
Poseidon, who unchains on him all his tempests; and, his raft wrecked in
open sea, himself swept away from it into the mountainous waves, he
regrets not having found a glorious death before Troy, seeing an
inevitable and unhonored end before him, with no funeral rites to give
his soul peace. Leucothea, the white goddess, throws into the black warp
a silver thread, and brings the story into new light and color. She
gives him an amulet which, by its magic, carries him through the last of
his grave perils, and preserves him when, with a great and wrathful
burst of wind, Poseidon disperses the timbers of his raft and leaves him
floating in the yeasty sea. He seizes on one of the timbers and
hopefully strikes out for the land. Athene comes once more to his aid.
She chains all the winds except Boreas, which, wafting him for two days
and nights to the southeast, gives place to a perfect calm. Ulysses,
raised on the summit of a huge wave, looks out and sees the land. But it
is a terrible, rock-bound coast. “He hears the roar of the waves that
break on the rocks, because the shock of the great waves against the
bare cliffs sounds fearfully, and the sea, far and wide, is covered with
foam. But there is no peaceable roadstead, no port, safe refuge of
ships; everywhere high, mountainous rocks and cliffs.” He appeals to the
gods for pity, and just then, “while he turns these thoughts in his
spirit and heart, an immense wave throws him on the bare shore. Then his
flesh would have been torn and his bones broken if Athene had not
inspired him. With both hands he clutches the rock and embraces it with
groans until the wave had withdrawn. He in this way escapes death, but
the return of the wave falls on him, strikes him, and withdraws him into
the open sea. He, emerging from the depths, more prudently coasts along,
swimming until he can find an opening in the rocks where he may enter,
and finally perceives the mouth of a river. He offers a prayer to the
river god, and is heard and peacefully received by the peaceable wave,
which lands him on the sandy shore.” The whole of the finale of the
fifth book is grand and imaginative, especially in the description of
the stormy sea and the condition of Ulysses as he sinks on the
hospitable sands exhausted, half dead from his long struggle and his two
days’ and nights’ swim, sustained only by one of the logs of his
raft;[4] but what to my present purpose is of most significance is the
striking description of the west coast of Corfu and the unmistakable
evidence of the mythologist giving way to the traveler. Here we strike
the veritable track of Ulysses, and here begin our researches. To reach
this point all the commerce of the Levant aids us—steamers from Trieste,
Brindisi, Naples, Patras, Malta, etc.
Here I found fit to my purpose a little yacht of twelve tons,
cutter-rigged and Malta-built, the _Kestrel_, with whose master and
owner I made my bargain, namely: he was to obey all my reasonable orders
for any voyage within the two archipelagos, find his ship and crew of
two sailors in all they needed for service and safety, do my cooking,
and insure himself, for the sum of fifteen pounds sterling a month for
three months; and while he was putting in stores, fitting new cables to
his anchors, and burnishing up a bit, we began to inspect Scheria.
[Illustration: WEST COAST OF SCHERIA.]
The popular tradition of to-day fixes the landing of Ulysses near the
actual city of Corfu, and an island is pointed out as the ship turned to
a rock; while the spot where he landed, and the scene of that most
charming of all the episodes of his wanderings, the meeting with
Nausicáa, is put at the “one-gun battery,” just south of the harbor of
Corfu. Nothing could comport less with the description of the Odyssey.
The Channel of Corfu, dividing the island from Epirus, is a land-locked
basin in which no such storm could arise as Ulysses encountered, and
along which no such rocks exist as are described in the poem. The
seventeen days’ drift from the westward before the tempest, and the next
two days after it, wafted by Boreas, show that he was in the open
Adriatic, and coasting along the rock-bound western coast of Scheria to
find an inlet where he might enter. The illustration shows the character
of this coast in entire concordance with the Odyssey; and there is near
the spot from which my view of the west coast of Scheria is taken, a
convent (which is visited by all the tourists who, having some days in
Corfu, care for the most picturesque part of the island), and which by
its name, Palæcastrizza, shows that it stands near the site of some
ancient city or fortress, as the term “Palæcastron” is never applied by
local tradition to any construction not belonging to the classical or
archaic epochs. Even Byzantine ruins never receive the epithet “palæos.”
No trace is now to be found of any prior structure near the convent,
which, while it probably has some relation to an antique site, certainly
is not on that of the city of Alcinoüs, which must have been farther
south where the shore breaks down to a plain. There used to be in the
island an old antiquity-hunter who brought from time to time to sell
clandestinely in the city, objects of gold and terra-cotta, vases, etc.,
dug up at a site which only he seems to have known, and of which he
would never disclose the location. On inquiring for him on this my last
visit to Corfu for these researches, he was not to be heard of. All that
we had learned from him was that the ruins of which he knew and where he
excavated in secret were somewhere on the western coast, which
corresponds to my hypothesis that the capital of Alcinoüs was there.
There is something so unpractical in the Greek laws on the subject of
excavation and exportation of antique objects, that it is to be hoped
that the shrewd common sense of the people will ere long see their
impolicy. Excavation without permission from the Government, even on
one’s own land, is forbidden, which is not unreasonable considering all
things; but even when permission is accorded or when objects are found
by chance, the Government practically confiscates the find when the
finders are feeble, and levies a tax of half the value when they are
not. Everything, therefore, is done in secret, and exportation by
contraband is the only possible manner of profiting by one’s good
fortune. The peasant who finds an antique site carefully conceals it;
and the objects he finds, instead of enabling the archæologist to
classify the antiquities by reference to their provenance, are sold to
some one who removes them from the country, and so all clue is lost to
their true archæological position. As I shall have to show in the course
of these articles, grave loss to the science of archæology sometimes
occurs in this way. In this particular instance the loss to me is the
being unable to identify, with any probability, the place where or near
to which Ulysses landed, and where the classic meeting with Nausicáa
took place. When we get to Ithaca we shall find that the author of the
Odyssey knew well every foot of land he describes; and the scene of
Ulysses’ disaster, already translated, accords so well with the actual
topography that it is difficult to suppose that a mere inspiration
dictated it, and that the author was not well acquainted with the island
of Scheria, whose capital was Phæacia.
The claim of the city of Corfu to be the site of the ancient Phæacia
rests on nothing but the fact that it is the only city in the island;
but the ever-tranquil bay on which it lies, and the fact that Ulysses,
instead of searching for a place where he could land, would rather have
had to search for a place where he could not, shows conclusively that no
part of the eastern coast is entitled to the honor. The “one-gun
battery,” where local tradition places his landing, is perhaps the least
likely point, as no running stream is to be found near there. The lake,
which is now suggested as the tranquil water in which Ulysses came to
land, must then have been much larger than at present, and now in nowise
resembles a river: it is the half-filled arm of the sea into which a
wide basin of marshy land has been for centuries draining, but into
which no watercourse leads, and the view seen from above the “one-gun”
needs scarcely a commentary to show its entire incompatibility with the
Odyssey.
The capital of Alcinoüs was, we are told by Homer, founded by his father
Nausithoüs. His people were formerly inhabitants of Hyperia, “near the
Cyclops,” and were by these latter so ravaged and overborne that they
emigrated to Phæacia. The generally accepted location of the Cyclops in
Sicily suggests that Hyperia was probably there or in Italy; and that
the Phæacians may have been related to the Siculi; since the Pelasgi,
who invaded Italy from the north, and, uniting with the Umbri, spread
over the whole of southern Italy, expelling the aborigines, are
continually confounded by the earliest traditions with the Cyclops. As,
from all we know, the Tyrrhene Pelasgi were the earliest metal-workers
in that part of Europe,[5] and as the Cyclops, the children of
Hephaistos, the great metal-worker, are a mythological idealization of a
race of smiths who had a habit of covering the eyes, for protection from
sparks, with a screen in which a single hole was cut to see through,
which was transmogrified into a single eye in the middle of the
forehead, there is nothing unlikely in the inference that the Pelasgi
and Cyclops were identical, and that the Phæacians were refugees from
the conquest of southern Italy by that formidable people. That they were
not Greeks we know by their absence from the catalogue of the “Iliad,”
where all the Hellenic tribes were recorded in their places in the
league.
The Corfiotes of to-day boast of descent from the Phœnicians, and
certainly they are not to be measured by the same standard as the Greek
race in general. Their reputation for dishonesty has given rise to a
Greek proverb, which relegates a person of more than usual craftiness
and bad faith to the “Corfiotes.” “He behaves like a Corfiote” is the
greatest reproach the continental Greek can bring against a man who is
too clever in business matters. In character as well as history the
Corfiote has little in common with Greece. As he had no place inside the
line drawn around the Hellenic world at the great critical, even if
mythical, epoch assigned to the siege of Troy, so in his latest history
he has always maintained a position more or less apart. Diodorus Siculus
makes the Homeric name of the city, Phæacia, to have been derived from
Phæacus, son of Poseidon, and places his reign contemporary with the
Argonauts, as Phæacus protected Jason against the king of Iolcus when,
returning from Colchis with Medea, he took refuge at Scheria. Mythology
begins with it in the combat of Zeus and Poseidon in their struggle for
supremacy in the government of the universe, and finishes with Ulysses’
visit. History commences with the arrival of a colony of Corinthians
under Chersicrates, who built a city which he called Chrysopolis. This
was probably Corfu, for, as the immigration of Nausithoüs, coming from
Italian shores, first established itself on the coast looking toward
their old home, so the Corinthians, coming by the islands and the
Epirote shores, would find their first landing in the spacious and
tranquil bay formed by the crescent-shaped island, which, at its
extremes, approaches the mainland. The Hellene of Corinth brought all
the seeds of the virtues and vices of his national temperament to the
fertile soil of Corcyra, as it is henceforward called by the Hellenic
chronicles, colonization and war with their neighbors filling all their
early history. They founded, according to their tradition, Apollonia and
other cities on the mainland; but, as among the ruins of those cities
there are Pelasgic remains, it is not to be supposed that they were the
first colonists, but that they merely colonized, as the Romans did in
the later times, with a dominant population, cities in decline or too
weak to maintain their independence. This is, in ancient Greek history,
oftener the meaning of the word _colonize_ than the founding of a new
city. To get a clear idea of the condition of this part of the world at
the beginning of historical, or even heroic record, we must take into
consideration that an epoch of civilization, perhaps of empire, had long
preceded the awakening of the Hellenic national life; an epoch which
ought, perhaps, to be measured by centuries, if we could measure it at
all, and whose record is preserved in the stupendous ruins we call
Pelasgic, a name applied by the Greeks to a people who preceded them,
derived possibly from the Greek name of the stork, indicating a
migrating or wandering people,—wandering, probably, because their empire
had been broken up by some newer and stronger race, but which the
various remaining traditions accord in asserting to have once held great
rule in Italy, where they were known also as Tyrrhenians, in the
Peloponnesus, and in Crete. We shall see presently some indications of
the correctness of the assumption that they preceded by an infinite
period the great assemblage of Greeks, which the expedition to Troy
perhaps marks, perhaps symbolizes; but at present I have only to do with
the history and mythology of Corfu, which is in no way that we can
discover connected with the Pelasgi.
[Illustration: GREEK BOATS AND ROSTRUM OF ROMAN GALLEY.]
The first wars of Corcyra were, as was to be expected of an enterprising
people, with the mother country; but as in those days piracy was the
chief business of every maritime people, _war_ was perhaps only a normal
condition. The Persian invasion brought Corcyra into the Hellenic
league, but, with the duplicity of which the race furnished so many
instances in ancient times, the Corcyriote fleet only sailed, and took
good care not to be in time for the battle, fearing the vengeance of the
Persians. Their prudence brought on them, after the defeat of Xerxes at
Salamis, a combined attack of the Peloponnesian States. As the union of
these was always a challenge to Athens, she sided with the Corcyriotes,
and the resulting war plunged Corcyra into intestine and social strife,
in which the most horrible cruelties were perpetrated by the islanders;
and the animosities and renewals of revolt and war, which the divisions
of the classes of the population gave opportunity for, reduced the
island to anarchy and helplessness. Their subsequent history is one of
repeated subjugation and revolt. After losing even the relative
independence of alliance with Athens, they were conquered by Agathocles
of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, and finally by Rome.
[Illustration: CORFU, FROM THE KING’S GARDEN.]
From this time Corcyra was the base of the Roman military movements
against the Levantine enemies of the republic. The commanding position
of the island has, from that day to this, made it an object of the
covetousness of all the maritime powers of the Mediterranean by turns.
In the civil wars of Rome, the island espoused the part of Pompey, later
of Brutus and Cassius, and then, always unfortunate, of Antony. After
the battle of Actium, fought almost within sight of its shores, Corcyra
was besieged, taken, and rigorously punished by Augustus, and then
relegated to an obscurity out of which only the great Ottoman invasion
of Europe brought it. It was involved more or less in the Saracenic,
Bulgarian, Norman, and Neapolitan wars and invasions, and finally threw
itself into the arms of Venice to save itself from conquest by Genoa.
From this time (1386) the history of Corcyra, become Corfu, until the
overthrow of the republic by Napoleon, is identified with that of
Venice, and all the remains or structures in the island date from the
Venetian occupation.
In 1537 the troops of the Sultan, under the orders of the renegade
Barbarossa, made a descent on the island and laid siege to the city,
which, taken by surprise, was ill-provisioned and with a small garrison.
The Turkish fleet blockaded the port, and the troops beleaguered the
city by land. The garrison was under the terrible alternative of being
starved into surrender speedily or dismissing all the useless mouths.
The latter was, on the whole, safer, for the surrender would have been
disastrous even to the non-combatants, who were to Turkish barbarity no
less obnoxious than the soldiers. The old men, women, and children were
sent out of the city, perhaps the most horrible necessity which ever
befell brave men. A successful defense of the city justified, in a
military point of view, the terrible sacrifice; and, after a long and
obstinate siege, Barbarossa, his army nearly destroyed by battle and
pestilence, withdrew, defeated. The island was almost depopulated,
ravaged, and so utterly impoverished that Venice was obliged to send the
people seed-corn and beasts to till their fields. Nearly the whole of
the nobility of the island had been killed in the defense.
To be in readiness for a similar emergency, the Senate augmented the
already strong fortifications. The New Fort, as it is still called, was
constructed, and, with a paternal regard for the well-being of the
islanders, which Venice did not always show for her Greek insular
possessions, institutions were founded and regulations made which
contributed greatly to the prosperity of the island.
In 1716 a new and determined attack was made by the Turks, under the
leadership of Achmet III. Their fleet drove off that of Venice, and an
army of thirty thousand men was debarked and laid siege to the city,
whose defense was directed by Count Schulembourg. The outlying heights
were taken quickly, and the garrison, shut in the inner line of
fortifications, received the desperate assault of the Turks on the main
works with more desperate resistance. After twenty days of incessant
attack, the Turks carried the outworks, penetrated to the Place d’Armes,
which is under the walls of the New Fort, and attempted to scale the
walls themselves.
“The assault lasted more than six hours with an incredible fury. The
women brought assistance to the defenders, and the priests, crucifix in
hand, ran along the ramparts or threw themselves into the fight. Finally
a vigorous sortie terminated this bloody day. Attacked on every side,
the assaulting force beat a retreat and lost all the outposts it had
taken. A tempest, which had burst on them in the night, completed the
work of defeat, and, seized by panic, they embarked precipitately,
leaving baggage and artillery behind them. In forty-two days they had
lost fifteen thousand men.” (_Isles de la Grèce._)
The victory was commemorated by a statue to Schulembourg, which no
subsequent conquest has disturbed, and which stands on the parade-ground
among monuments of greater or less good taste (generally the latter), to
mark the history of the island in modern days.
From that day to this, with the exception of an occasional _émeute_,
nothing has come to disturb the peace of Corfu, and the once so splendid
courage of the inhabitants has gone out like a fire without a draught.
There is probably no province of the Hellenic kingdom so devoid of
martial spirit or the virtues that grow out of it. It is now a most
delightful winter resort, a Fortunate Isle left out of the current of
political events and given over to invalids and sportsmen, who find on
the opposite Albanian coast the best shooting on the Mediterranean. The
old citadel, with its double peak, serves as a light-house to the lines
of steamers which furrow the Adriatic, cross, and make Corfu their
_entrepôt_ between Trieste, Venice, Brindisi, Alexandria,
Constantinople, and Smyrna.
The English occupation endowed the island with good roads, most of which
are maintained in fair condition still; and a winter’s sojourn here
lacks nothing which could be expected in the compass of ten by thirty
miles, with two posts per week from Europe. The fruits are those of the
northern Mediterranean in great perfection, the oranges being only
second to those of Crete; the waters are still well supplied with fish,
though the people do all they can to exterminate them by the use of
dynamite in fishing; and the Bella Venezia is a hotel which, though
still strange to the resources of our American caravansaries, is more
appropriate to the ways of the East and of idle people than are ours.
The kindly, honest old host, appropriately known as Dionysos, lacks but
little of giving to the stranger the hospitality of Alcinoüs. And life
is so cheap that one who has worn out the world and realized an income
of a thousand dollars a year may find a Macarian peace in an upper room
of the Bella Venezia, with windows looking out on the beautiful
mountains of Epirus, snow-clad all winter, and the bright blue of the
intervening sea, with the coming, going, and merely passing ships of all
nations; and, when the sun is low, have a comfortable carriage to thread
the labyrinths of the immense olive groves which form almost the only
shade in the island. Here one meets men of all races—Turkish reliefs on
their way from Stamboul to Durazzo, or Scutari of Albania; white-skirted
palikars from Epirus; Eastern Jews, with their characteristic long
robes; Persians, Montenegrins, Peloponnesians, etc., who, changing
steamers here, or glad to breathe a land air during the stay in port of
their steamers, stroll up and down the parade, with the easy-going
townsmen and tourists of all nations, seeing the island in comfort or
rushing over it in the custody of Cook or Gaze, to carry away a confused
remembrance of Corfu and Syra, hardly recalling which was which.
Ulysses was dismissed from Scheria loaded with presents. The modern
voyager is not so fortunate. The souvenirs of Corfu which he will carry
with him, whether antique or modern, will rarely recompense him for the
outlay. The bric-à-brac shops abound in false antiques, arms from
Epirus, Greek laces, and Eastern embroideries, which no wise buyer
meddles with, dear beyond measure as they are. Be content with the
moderate _pension_ of the Bella Venezia, and tempt not Mercury in his
favored island; he was the god of thieves as well as merchants, and was
never better worshiped in his capacity of joint protector than in the
bric-à-brac shops of Corfu.
Ulysses went to Ithaca in one night, in what must have been, for the
time, the quickest passage on record, and a great credit to the rowers
of King Alcinoüs. Nothing like it is to be expected to-day, though it is
not impossible still, and the steamer which does the service makes a
long, roundabout voyage. Our yacht, though small, was too big for
rowing, and we had no special motive, as Ulysses had, to get quickly to
Ithaca. As our route lay by Santa Maura, which has to do with the story
of the Odyssey, if not with the wanderings from Troy, we turned aside
from his course to visit it. Nericus, as it was called in Homeric
nomenclature, probably formed part of the realm of the Ithacan kings,
Laertes mentioning his conquest of it; but it is not mentioned in the
catalogue, and we may conclude was not Greek. It is barely separated
from the mainland by a narrow channel, cut by the Corinthians through a
flat, which more anciently, however, must have been a shallow arm of the
sea. The action of the elements is filling it up again, so that time may
unite it to the Acarnanian shore, as in the Homeric days; for Laertes,
in recalling to Ulysses some of his old exploits (Odyssey, book 24),
says: “Ah, that it had pleased Zeus, Apollo, Athene, to have borne me to
your palace, such as I was when, at the head of the Cephalonians, I
took, _on the continent_, the proud city of Nericus!” In the catalogue
of the Iliad we find that “Ulysses commands the magnanimous
Cephalonians; the warriors of Ithaca; those of shady Neriton, of
Crocyles, of the barren Ægilipos; those of Samos [Samé of Cephalonia,
not the island Samos], of Zacynthus [Zante], and of the adjoining
continent. Twelve ships whose sides were painted red followed him.” But
Nericus occurs nowhere.
Nothing illustrates so strikingly the change in the condition of
civilization as the relations between the ancient and modern chief
cities of the Greek islands. The substitute for the stately Nericus is a
low, flat, uninteresting town, built on the plain which lies north of
Nericus, and next the roadstead. To the east lie the rugged mountains of
Acarnania and the Gulf of Arta; north, in full view, is the modern
fortress of Prevesa; further, and to the east, Arta, the ancient
Ambracia; and the long strip of low coast which stretches away from
Prevesa northward is dotted with masses of ruin—those of the imperial
Nicopolis, monument of the victory of Actium, won in those blue waters.
The idle shepherds of those days, watching their sheep on these hills,
saw the crash of prows, the flight of Egypt, and the shame of Antony.
Perhaps, through this very channel, where the light-draft caïque now
glides, to gain the shelter of the islands going southward, ran the
fugitive ships of Cleopatra; for this was evidently the channel by which
the craft of those days avoided the stormy capes of Cephalonia and the
southern point of Nericus. Standing on the eastern brow of the hill on
which the old city stood, and on which its ruins still mark a noble
past, is the citadel. Along the plain, among the olives, the fragments
of tombs lie spread like flocks of sleeping sheep. The port was on the
bay now connected with the northern roadstead by the Corinthian Channel;
and two or three underground passages, in part cut in solid rock, one
being high enough for a man to walk in upright, and cut as cleanly and
evenly as the walls of a chamber, connect it with the citadel which
dominates the northern part of the island, where the fertile plains lie.
The ruins are of various ages, embracing Pelasgic, but mainly later, and
coming down to Roman times; and the great extent of the Pelasgic
_enceinte_, which almost everywhere underlies the Hellenic and Roman
work, shows the great early importance of the city. The citadel is bold
and commanding, and looks out on the northern and western seas on one
side, and the Corinthian Channel and the inland sea on the other, and
down to Ithaca, which, indeed, is visible from some points.
The post-Homeric name of Nericus was Leucadia. Æneas is represented as
having debarked there, and Apollo had a temple on the heights which
terminate the island to the south. From the cliffs which overlook the
Adriatic on that side, Sappho is said to have leaped into the sea,
overcome by the sorrows of her unhappy love. “Sappho’s Leap” is the name
of the cliff to this day, and my Corfiote captain, as we glided by, told
me how the place was celebrated because the Duchess of the island had
jumped off into the sea from it, and that the people had put up a great
inscription in memory of it. He had never seen it, and didn’t know
exactly where the leap was made; but I think he was very excusable for
his ignorance, as the action of the sea, driven as it is sometimes by
the furious southwest wind into a very “hell of waters,” which consume
the rock in their fury, must long ago have brought down all that
classical times had seen of the rock, and changed the face of the cliff
entirely. As it now is, I could find hardly a point where a new Sappho
would have found a welcome so gentle as the embrace of the Adriatic;
masses of fallen rock and stony beach would have given a harsher but
more speedy end.
Mythology says that when Adonis was killed, Aphrodite, seeking him
through all the earth, finally found him lying dead in the temple of the
Erythræan Apollo. The Sun-god, to cure her grief, counseled her to throw
herself from the cliffs of Leucadia into the sea, where she would find
oblivion. Here Zeus, who seems to have found obstacles in the way of his
legitimate marriage, and to have wooed Hera at first with less success
than attended his mortal loves, found by the same process a salutary
indifference to the charms of his divine sister and afterwards spouse,
to which temporary coolness on his part might, perhaps, be ascribed his
ultimate success with the fickle fair.
And here, in practical historical times, criminals condemned to death
were thrown into the sea. The people (who even now preserve a certain
sympathy with the criminal class) used to tie numbers of birds to the
limbs of the condemned and cover them with feathers to break the force
of their fall, and then send boats to pick them up. If they survived,
they were pardoned.
In modern times nothing has occurred to signalize Santa Maura, or
“Levkadi,” as it is indifferently called. It was taken and retaken by
Turks and Venetians, and finally passed with the rest of the Ionian
Islands to the heirs of Venice. Its people are a mild, hospitable race,
to whom the stranger is a guest almost in the antique sense.
We loitered along with a feeble west wind, under the western shore, bold
and desolate, of Levkadi, its high peaks above us breaking into ravines,
and the ravines ending in cliffs, doubled “Sappho’s Leap,” and before us
lay Ithaca, the ten-years-sought-for island. To the north was still
visible a dim film which we knew to be Corfu; nearer, one less dim,
which we recognized by its outline to be Paxos, an island without
history and without interest, but which tradition asserts to have been
once united to Corfu and separated by an earthquake. The breeze
quickened at night-fall as we went round the point of the Leukadian
cliffs, and before us lay the inland sea, which, separating Santa Maura,
Ithaca, Cephalonia, and Zante from the mainland, is a sort of
smooth-water channel for ships coming out of the Gulf of Patras, or of
Corinth, as it is indifferently called, or running in there from Corfu
and the upper Adriatic. The bolder portions of Ithaca are almost utterly
denuded rock. One hollow, like a great theatre, opens northward between
two bold rocky peninsulas, and this is the vale from which the Odyssean
city drew its prosperity. Olive-trees and vineyards still cover its
slopes, and suggestions of white villages flashed out from the silvery
green sea of olive orchards as we flitted by, running under the eastern
shore to catch the breeze that blew down from the mountain as the sun
sank. We had all the wind our cutter could carry, and bowled along
through the smooth water in the lee of the island like a steamer. Far
ahead we saw, in the gathering night, a faint glimmer of light, which
seemed too faint for a light-house, and too steady for a house-light,
and which perplexed us exceedingly, as no light was indicated on the
chart; but, creeping along shore, we found that it was a tiny chapel
standing on a long and menacing peninsula of bare rock, in the window of
which burned a lamp,—in all probability the fulfillment of a vow made by
some devout Greek sailor who had escaped the teeth of this Scylla; or
the perpetuation of an antique custom, when the little chapel of St.
Nicholas, protector of sailors, was a temple of Neptune, whom the saint
replaces in function and respect of the seafarer. Nothing is more
interesting in this part of the world than the evidences of the unbroken
continuity of religious tradition, and the gradual change of paganism
into Christianity,—if, indeed, the change has taken place, which in
certain districts I am scarcely disposed to admit. The little chapels
which one finds planted by the seaside or solitary roadside in all the
Greek islands, and even on the mainland, will generally be found to have
some antique material in them, some evidence of the earlier shrine which
honored one of the Greek gods. The Olympians have their homologues if
not their homonyms. Zeus goes back to his awful antique dignity of the
All-father, the original sole deity of the Pelasgian, worshiped in a
temple not made by hands, under the speaking oak of Dodona, the one God,
maker of heaven and earth, the Dyaus or Sky-father of our Aryan
ancestors, and Zeus (Deus, Divus) of the western branch of the family;
but his creatures and children fall into the lower rank of saints:
Apollo becomes St. Elias (Helios); Athena, the Virgin Mary; Ares, St.
George; Poseidon, St. Nicholas, etc., etc.
We left St. Nicholas and his night-light behind us, and, rounding a cape
into the Bay of Vathy, saw in the dim distance the light of the outer
light-house, and met the wind coming out of the bay. It was late, and
beating up the bay would be a long job; so we turned in and left the
navigation to the sailors. The next morning we woke, as Ulysses did,
under the shadow of Neriton, where the Phæacians had left him sleeping.
“In one part of Ithaca is the port of Phorcys, the old man of the sea;
the bold promontories forming the circuit protect it from the great
waves and the sounding winds. The ships which have once entered it may
lie without cables. At its extremity is a bushy olive-tree whose shadow
hides a delicious grotto and shady retreat, sacred to the Nereids. In
this asylum, refreshed by an inexhaustible fountain, are placed the
vases and the jars of stone.... It has two entrances: one, looking
toward the north, is for the use of men; the other, to the east, is more
divine. Never man enters there: it is the path of the immortals.
“The olive-tree and the grotto are known to the Phæacians. There they
go. The ship runs half-way up the beach, so strong is the stroke of the
rowers. Then these land, carrying Ulysses, still plunged in profound
sleep, and lay him on the sand, wrapped in brilliant blankets and woven
linen.”
Waking, he is bewildered by the artifice of Athena, and does not
recognize his native island; but finally, when he appeals to the Goddess
to tell him the truth, if he be in Ithaca, she replies to him:—
“Now I will show you the localities of Ithaca, that you may doubt no
more. There is the port of Phorcys, old man of the sea; there, at the
extremity of the port, the bushy olive-tree, and under its shade a
delicious grotto, dark resting-place, and sacred to the nymphs. This is
the vaulted grotto where often you sacrificed entire hecatombs to the
nymphs. There is Mount Neriton, shadowed by forests.”
The identification of this little bay or “port” is the one contested
point of the topography, and, on account of its greater commodiousness,
Port Vathy (at the left as we enter the roadstead) is maintained by some
authorities to be the “port of Phorcys.” The geology of the two bays is
conclusive evidence in favor of that which the Greeks now call Port
Dexia (the right-hand port), as Port Vathy has not, and by its
geological formation never could have had, a beach such as Homer
describes, and which was indispensable to the ancient sailor, while that
of Dexia is superb—a soft, unbroken stretch of sand. Other objections we
shall meet further on.
[Note.—The puzzling question of the forms of classical names in these
articles has been carefully considered, and the difficulty of adapting
consistent classical orthography to popular archæology seems too great
to be overcome in this place.]
CHAPTER II.
The changes of the conditions of existence in what we call civilization
resemble, a good deal more than we generally imagine, the progress of a
horse in a tread-mill. Comparing the evidences of a higher prosperity
which history affords with what we now find in Ithaca, we have ample
ground to suppose that, while our part of the world has made certain
advances, this has rather retrograded. A scanty population, the greater
part of the island indeed uninhabited; ruins of great cities where now
there is not a shepherd’s hut; a wretched, sordid life in which not even
poetry, the offspring of sorrow, can find a foothold; utter
insignificance in the world of men,—this is what the island of Ulysses,
which fills so large a part of the Old World’s poetry, shows us to-day.
We woke like Ulysses under the shadow of Neriton, but not like him under
the olive’s shade. Our yacht was anchored in a tranquil and land-locked
bay, Port Vathy (the deep), round the shores of which stretch and gleam,
white in the sun, the houses of the modern capital of Ithaca, a dull,
utterly uninteresting town, neither whose past nor present is worth a
note.