is shown particularly by the forms of the _sigma_ and _iota_. It was cut
roughly and by hands little used to such work, without any care for
symmetry in the disposition of the letters or of the lines, nor for the
uniformity of the letters. Some letters are lost in the fracture, others
by the wearing of the stone, and the entire inscription is mutilated in
the lower part.
“The reading, with the filling up, is as follows:—
τᾶς [Ἀ]θάνας
τᾶς (Ρ)[έ](ας)
χα[ὶ τ](ᾶ)ς Ἡρ
ας τα (ἔ) [ν]τεα
τῶ[ἱ]ερῶ οἱ
ἱε[ρ]εε[ς] (Κες-
π
“Translation: ‘Of Athena—of Rhea—and of Hera—the sacred utensils of the
temple—the priests, Kes—placed.’
“Probably the names of the three priests followed, the first commencing
with the letters Kes,—perhaps Kesiphron,—and there ought to follow τάδ’
ἒνεθεν or τάδε χάτεθεν, or similar expression. The inscription, then,
has nothing to do with a sarcophagus, or with the dead. It treats, on
the contrary, of a hidden treasure, that is to say, of the sacred
utensils of a temple in which were worshiped the three divinities,
Athena, Rhea, and Hera, each one having her peculiar priest. It is well
known that there is nothing new in this case of three divinities
worshiped in the same temple. We know that Athena was especially
reverenced in Ithaca, and are not surprised to find her first in the
list. Then to explain this inscription, it may be supposed that in some
perilous time of war, revolution, or other danger, these priests decided
to put in security the treasures of the temple and hid them in a safe
and secret place, leaving there this inscription, so that in any case
the nature and origin of the objects might be known. Probably they cut
the inscription themselves that no one else might be in the secret, and
this would explain the signs of haste and inexperience in the cutting,
while on the other hand the language, like the orthography, is correct.”
The attribution to a sarcophagus by Schliemann is difficult to explain
as a mistake. If it had been, as he says, on a sarcophagus that he found
the right half of the inscription, he must have found the whole; but the
fact is that there was in the whole pile of stones no fragment of
anything like a sarcophagus, an object unknown in Greece till centuries
later. The inscription had evidently been a mural tablet and was about
eighteen inches deep and of a shape and size which made it impossible to
take it for a fragment of a sarcophagus; and underneath the mass of
debris from which it was extracted the workmen found a pit, which was
excavated, they told me, without finding anything; nor, they said, was
any object of antiquity found with the stones, while Schliemann engraves
a lance head and a coin of about 300 B. C. which he says were found in
the sarcophagus. This proves nothing, for when anything is found the
absurd rigor of the Greek laws makes the concealment of it the first
object of the finder. If this pit, when discovered, had still contained
the sacred objects, what a find if archæology could have profited by it!
But as the Greek law in case of concealment would have punished the
excavator by confiscation, or in the best case by taking the half of the
objects found, the first precaution taken by the finder would have been
to remove, if possible, to a foreign shore, and if not, to melt down, if
of precious metal, the objects found. Until Greek legislation on
archæological research is more intelligent, it will be gravely
handicapped. The greater part of the value of an object is often to know
where it came from, and this we never know of objects found in Greece by
chance or private excavation. There was some years ago a report, which
had certainly considerable confirmation, of the discovery of a great
treasure in this very part of Ithaca; possibly it may have been this. If
we could have found the vessels of the temple, they would have given us
the art of the descendants of the Dorians in Ithaca at least six hundred
years B. C.; for this inscription is Doric, and dates from about that
time.
In any case, we may be confident that our inscription marks the site as
having been in the vicinity of a city of, or little later than, the
Homeric epoch, as, supposing the Odyssey to have been composed in 850 B.
C., only about two hundred and fifty years could have intervened between
its composition and the placing of this inscription; and we know of no
ethnic revolution which would have destroyed the Homeric city between
the Dorian invasion and the wars of Corinth.
[Illustration: THE SCHOOL OF HOMER.]
But if there are no traces of the Homeric city, and none of earlier
construction in the immediate neighborhood of the site, there is in the
interior of the island, and in the northern lobe, which we see was
probably the special domain of the Ithaca of Ulysses, a most interesting
antiquity which is now known as the “school of Homer.” It is in all
probability a sacred place of the Pelasgic epoch, as on the rock above
it is a chapel whose substructions are clearly Pelasgic and most
probably the remains of a Pelasgic temple, which alone would account for
its preservation, and is probably also the reason of its conversion into
a Christian church. It is on a scale in keeping with all the remains we
have of the heroic epoch, about twelve by twenty feet, and though much
repaired in the modern adaptation, still shows its ancient dimensions
and style of building in the lower courses, too solid to have been
rearranged, though some of the upper stones have evidently been replaced
in later times. It stands on the brow of a low bluff, below the village
of Exoï and not far from the “field of Laertes,” which tradition points
out at a little hamlet below. Traces of other walls extend to the brink
of the precipice that overhangs the “school,” and round by the side is
an antique flight of steps, mostly preserved and cut in the solid rock,
that served as passage between the temple and the “school,” which may
have been the place of sacrifice or possibly an area for the holding of
the council. It is mainly cut in the rock at the foot of the precipice
on which the temple was built, with a double flight of steps, also cut
in the rock, descending to the ground below. It is not above fifteen
feet across at its widest, and the decomposition of the solid rock by
time and weather leaves only the general shape and character, with some
of the steps above and below it, still tolerably perfect. It was a
lovely place, and if the shade now thrown by the olive-trees which
surround it was anciently given by plane-trees, it would have been still
more striking. You look off on the sea and the distant island of Levkadi
with the mountains of Acarnania, and through the interstices of the
olive-trees you catch glimpses of the cultivated valley beneath, where,
if anywhere in this end of the island, old Laertes must have had his
field, as here only is tillage possible. North is the sea, south the
huge wall of Neriton, east the rugged mountain that looks out on the
inner sea, and west that on which Exoï is raised to the clouds and from
which one looks down on the Cephalonian channel at its foot. Like the
plain or valley between the Raven’s Cliff and Vathy for the southern
lobe, this is the only valley for the northern. The “school” is poised
thus midway between the valley and the mountain peak; and whether, as
the islanders pretend, it was the place where Homer read his poems, the
council place of the ancient heroes and kings, or the hieron of Pelasgic
priests whence the smoke of sacrifice went up to the great Zeus, the
choice of locality was one which suited alike its uses. The young wheat
was springing into head in all the interspaces of the close-standing
olive-trees, and the rocks above were overhung and draped with wild sage
and gemmed with wild flowers. The boy who guided us assured us that
there was a secret passage to the top of the rock, filled up now; and a
peasant passing by stopped to see what we might be saying or doing, and
finding that our interest was fixed on _palaia pragmata_, offered to
guide us to an ancient rock-cut well in the valley below. We found the
door which opens to the passage, which led down a stone-cut staircase to
the well, far in the ground; but as the well belonged to the priest, who
had the key in his pocket, and was, no one knew where, we had to be
content with the door, which was modern enough, though fitting an
opening cut in the rock very evidently ancient.
In this vicinity must, by the force of nature, have been the residence
of all the agricultural part of the population of the ancient Ithaca.
Says the poem:—
“Ulysses and his companions withdrew from the city and soon arrived at
the magnificent garden of Laertes, which the hero had formerly purchased
with his wealth after the many ills he had suffered. There stands his
dwelling, surrounded on all sides by a portico where the slaves who
cultivate his estate sleep and eat. In the porter’s lodge is an old
Sicilian,[6] who in this solitary place, far from the city, takes care
of the noble old man.... At these words he gives his arms to the
herdsmen who enter into the house of their master, while Ulysses, to
find Laertes, enters into the garden. The hero goes down into the great
vineyard and finds neither Dolias nor his sons, nor the other slaves.
Dolias has led them far away to gather thorns to make hedges round the
inclosure. Ulysses finds his father digging round the root of a tree in
the garden. Laertes is dressed in a dirty patched tunic; around his legs
he has bound, to preserve them, greaves of sewn leather; gloves protect
his hands, and his head is covered by a cap of goat-skin, which
completes his mournful appearance....
“‘Ah,’ replied Laertes, ‘if you are Ulysses, if you are my son returned
to this island, describe to me a sure sign that I cannot mistake.’
“‘See first,’ replies Ulysses, ‘this wound, which long ago on Parnassus
a wild boar gave me with his tusk, when I went to Autolycus to bring the
presents which he here had promised me. Then listen, I will describe to
you the trees of your beautiful garden which you gave me, and I asked of
you in my childhood as I ran behind you. We passed through your
inclosure; you told me the name of every tree, and you gave me thirteen
pear-trees, ten apple-trees, forty fig-trees, and then you promised to
give me fifty rows of vines in full bearing.’”
The legends of the modern population of Ithaca must not be confounded
with real local tradition, transmitted from ancient times. They are
unquestionably the reflection of literary statement, the reiterated
conclusions of students more or less well informed as to the true
archæological bases of opinion. The attribution of the particular spot
we visited as the garden of Laertes is doubtless due to reading of the
Odyssey, and, like the location of the “Castle of Ulysses” on Aëtos,
arose from a popular rendering of the story as handed down by literature
and converted into legend, which is located wherever the crude
antiquarianism of the people judges best. An instance of the real
tradition which has a distinct value in archæological research is that
of the preservation of the name Polis for the abandoned site where
unquestionably the Homeric city stood; and this simple indication is
sufficient to prove that Ithaca was never entirely depopulated and
repeopled by Slavs, because in this case the continuity of tradition
would have been lost, and there is no ruin to restore it in modern
times, even if it were capable of surviving the interruption. If it had
simply been handed down by a Slavonic colony, it would have been “Arad”
instead of “Polis,” while, if the depopulation had once been complete,
names which are not now understood by the present inhabitants could not
have originated with them. If the name had sprung from the presence of
ruins, the site on Aëtos would have received it instead of its present
legendary appellation, so that in no way can we explain the survival of
the name Polis for the site, or the names Anoï and Exoï, except by
supposing them to have clung to the places from Homeric times through a
continuous population of Hellenic stock, however thinned. Another
curious incident illustrates the tenacity of this kind of survival. As
we were passing through one of the villages, I heard one child calling
to others to run to see the barbarians, οἱ βάρβαροι (_várvari_), just as
the Greek children of ancient times would have called us,—_i. e._,
foreigners, people who spoke a strange language, a babble,
unintelligible sounds like those of children. I heard it twice and could
not be mistaken, though a Greek friend to whom I related it would have
it that they said βαυάροι (Bavarians), since in continental Greece,
Bavarian (German) has been a term of contempt from the days of King
Otho. But I am certain of the word; and besides, the children of Ithaca
never had anything to do with the Bavarians, as they were under the
Ionian Government till after the fall of Otho and the departure of the
Bavarians.
On the whole, I think that there is the strongest ground of probability
for these conclusions: that, whatever may be the relation of the real
Ulysses to Ithaca, the hero as conceived and represented in the Odyssey,
the Ulysses of the Homeric poems, _if he was an actuality_, lived at the
site known as Polis; and that this site, and all the others mentioned in
the poem, were known by the author of it from personal inspection. The
inscription found at Polis is in Doric Greek, which gives us a right to
conclude that the city continued to be inhabited by the mixed
population, result of the Dorian immigration; while the entire oversight
of the Pelasgic site on Aëtos indicates the total interruption of race
connection and the immense interval which must have come between its
construction and the transfer of the seat of power to Polis, as, if
still habitable when the new race took possession, it would, like
Nericus, Samé, and Crané, which we shall examine in Cephalonia, have
been made the basis of the newer city. That it was then utterly
abandoned, we conclude, not only from the neglect of it by Ulysses in
the passages we have noticed, but from the fact that while Samé, on the
other island, sends suitors, and Ithaca itself (the city) adds its
quota, no allusion is made to any from any other place in the island. In
short, the total silence through the whole poem in regard to any place
which can be by possibility connected with Aëtos, justifies my
concluding that it was as much an abandoned ruin in the time of Homer as
now.
The episode of the voyage of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, which
brings into the Odyssey the western shore of the Peloponnesus, is, with
the exception of some unimportant allusions, the only interjection of
continental Greece into the poem.
We went over to look for some trace of the sage Nestor, but as usual
found that while the people had enough of the after-growth of legend out
of the Odyssey, they knew absolutely nothing of the antique site. I had
no guide then to lead me to the Pylos where the ship of Telemachus found
“the Pyleans scattered along the shore offering a sacrifice to Neptune,
black bulls without a spot.”
The bay of Navarino is a vast marine lake, known to us mainly by its
being the locality of the decisive combat between the fleets of the
great European powers and the Turkish and Egyptian, which decided the
destiny of modern Greece. We ran in from the open Adriatic, whose waters
were uncomfortably agitated by the south-west wind, glad of the safe and
convenient anchorage. But a sleepier place than the modern substitute
for the “sandy Pylos” I have never found in Greece. Nobody could give me
a word of direction, and all our searching round the extended sheet of
water for the antique site, only perhaps to be recognized by some
half-hidden remnant of Pelasgian walls, was fruitless; we neither saw
nor heard of any ruin. We paid a visit to the splendidly picturesque old
Venetian fortress commanding the entrance of the bay, which perhaps has
used up the stones of Nestor’s Pylos, and which has looked down on one
of the most murderous combats of modern naval history. It is garrisoned
by a little guard of Greek soldiers, and its keep is the prison of the
district. The gate is a good sample of the fortifications by which the
Venetian Republic held her Eastern possessions.
THE ODYSSEY, ITS EPOCH AND GEOGRAPHY.
The mythical world which had for its centre Ithaca, and for its chief
people Penelope and Ulysses, was out of all proportion larger than the
Europe of to-day; for it comprised the whole known world, from the
shadows of Cimmeria to the clouds that gave birth to the Nile. Its
geography, however, has a value to archæology and prehistory which has
not been fully recognized. The date and place of origin of the Odyssey
will never be determined with any high degree of certainty, but in
dealing with epochs that comprise unmeasured centuries we need not fear
a variation of two or three. And the collation of traditions from the
same mythical world will help us to this approximation to the probable
date of Homer’s life, if not that of Ulysses.
Gladstone, in the “Juventus Mundi,” has made use of an argument which,
even if not sound as to the Trojan war, I believe to be good for the
Odyssey. The earliest authentic records in Greek history reveal Greece
as under the control of two races, the Ionians and the Dorians, elements
whose antagonisms have been the chief cause of the disasters and ruin of
Greece.
But neither Dorians nor Ionians were the dominant race when the Odyssey
was written, as neither Ionians nor Dorians appear in the record. The
Greeks of the Trojan war are always called Achaioi, and the Dorians were
evidently, as a dominant race, unknown to the author of the Homeric
poems. Now, as they came into Greece about 1000 B. C., and as our
researches show the island of Ithaca, with which Homer was well
acquainted, to have become Dorian with the rest of Greece, the substance
of the Odyssey must have been earlier than we have supposed, and could
hardly have been as late as 850 B. C., unless the Dorian so-called
invasion was an immigration spreading very slowly from the main line of
its movement, and its stock still a recognizably new people. Nor does
any possible modification of the Homeric poems in the recitals,
continued over centuries, affect this argument in the least, as, being
common property of all the bards and all the tribes, they were liable to
be modified in the various versions according to the localities and
local knowledge of the singers; and, one “rhapsody” being preserved by
one tribe and another by another, of this hardly homogeneous people, the
traces of the modifications received in their migrations could not be by
the philology of the date of their collation so effaced as to leave no
marks of their incomplete restoration.
It is impossible that any idea of archæological consistency had led to
the exclusion of the Dorians from the Odyssey. If the Dorians had been
ruling in Greece when it was composed, it seems to the last degree
improbable that they could have been so completely ignored, if it were
but for the deference to be paid the rulers of half the Greek world; and
whether we look at the invariable practice of all early poets to adapt
their work to their own times and surroundings, or to the entire
consistency of the work in this respect,—too complete to be due to the
study of utterly unscientific or illiterate later times,—I think it is
to be admitted as probable that the Odyssey was composed before the
great ethnical revolution in Greece was complete.
The purely local evidence supports this hypothesis to a certain extent,
and in this topography and geography I propose to wander as far as it is
possible to do so with advantage to our knowledge of the Odyssean world.
Corfu was inhabited by a race alien to the Greek, and which recognized
its descent from the Siculi displaced by the Pelasgi from Sicily.
Opposite Ithaca lies the more important island of Cephalonia, to which
Ithaca is now completely subordinate, but which then was less important
apparently than Ithaca, in all probability only because it was only
partly Hellenic. Now, the earliest classical name of this Island,
_Kephallenia_, was derived from Cephalus, a mythical hero who appears to
have been contemporary with Minos. But this name is never applied to it
in the Odyssey. Of the island nothing is said, but of the chief city,
Samos (a colony from which gave its name to the Asiatic island now known
under that appellation), Homer has much to say. It lies clearly in sight
from Ithaca, from which it is separated only by a narrow strait, and is
one of the prominent objects in the view from Ithaca. It was originally
one of that line of prehistoric cities whose only record is in the
stones of their walls, and from these we learn that it was a very
ancient coast settlement, which, unlike the city on Aëtos, survived
through successive civilizations until history got hold of it. In
Ulysses’ day it must have been a rich place, for it furnished
twenty-four pretendants to the hand of Penelope. “There are first
fifty-two young men, the chosen of Dulichios—six servants accompany
them; twenty-four have come from Samos; twenty from Zakynthos [Zante];
and from Ithaca were twelve, the bravest.” But the author of the Odyssey
seems to have had no personal knowledge of the topography of Cephalonia,
and mentions no other locality in the island. Tradition tells us that
the island was peopled by Telebœans, a people driven from the continent
by Achilles,—before the siege of Troy, therefore, but subsequent to
Cephalus; but this is one of the confusions of mythology, as Cephalus
found the Telebœans in the island. The usual condensation of history
into myth leaves very little clear in these early traditions. Races
become personified in individuals, and the work of centuries is
attributed to a life-time and an individual. Whether Cephalus was in
reality a race or a man it is impossible to do more than conjecture, but
though the poems mention the _Kephallenes_, the entire ignoring of its
topography and traditions, even of the visit of the Argonauts to it,
makes it difficult to believe that it was chiefly inhabited by a race
kindred to that of Ithaca when Homer knew it, because Homer was too much
disposed to make use of the antique traditions when apposite, to have
left unnoticed that of Jason at Palé.
Cephalus having, according to the legend, killed his wife Procris,
mistaking her for a wild animal as she, excited to jealousy by his
devotion to the chase, which she attributed to another love, hid herself
in the thickets to watch him, was banished from Athens, and, wandering
in exile, came to Thebes, just then under excitement owing to the
Telebœans of Cephalonia having killed the brothers of Alcmena, wife of
the Theban Amphytrion, and he was requested to take charge of the
expedition to avenge the murder. He succeeded in conquering the island
and gave it his name. His descendants reigned there two generations,
after which, the latest rulers of his blood being recalled to Attica by
the oracle, a federative republic succeeded, formed by the four
principal cities, or perhaps by the four which had survived the changes
of race, for there are more than four antique sites. Those which history
has preserved as having submitted to the Romans in the year of Rome 563
were Samé, Nesia, Crané, and Palé.
The city of Samé alone presents, in the annals of historical times, any
interest, and this is sad and glorious. Livy says that at the end of the
Ætolian war the Romans sent to Cephalonia to know whether they would
submit or try the fortune of war, as they seem to have joined in the war
with the Ætolians, though he gives no record of the part they took. He
gives the account, brief and tragic, of the fate of the city, which I
will neither dilute nor abbreviate:—