and front six, including them. The rollers on which the stones were
moved along, still lie around you on the steps. They have been left in
order to indicate that the temple was unfinished. But the strongest
evidence of this fact is the floor. In some spots (along the sides) the
pavement is laid down; in the middle, however, the red limestone rock
still projects higher than the level of the floor as partially laid; the
flooring, therefore, can not ever have been finished. There is also no
trace of an inner temple. Still less can the temple have ever been
overlaid with stucco; but that it was intended to do so, we may infer
from the fact that the abaci of the capitals have projecting points
probably for the purpose of holding the plaster. The whole is built of a
limestone, very similar to the travertine; only it is now much fretted.
The restoration which was carried on in 1781, has done much good to the
building. The cutting of the stone, with which the parts have been
reconnected, is simple, but beautiful.
The site of the temple is singular; at the highest end of a broad and
long valley, it stands on an isolated hill. Surrounded, however, on all
sides by cliffs, it commands a very distant and extensive view of the
land, but takes in only just a corner of the sea. The district reposes
in a sort of melancholy fertility--every where well cultivated, but
scarce a dwelling to be seen. Flowering thistles were swarming with
countless butterflies, wild fennel stood here from eight to nine feet
high, dry and withered of the last year's growth, but so rich and in
such seeming order that one might almost take it to be an old
nursery-ground. A shrill wind whistled through the columns as if through
a wood, and screaming birds of prey hovered around the pediments.
TAORMINA[38]
BY JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
When you have ascended to the top of the wall of rocks [at Taormina],
which rise precipitously at no great distance from the sea, you find two
peaks, connected by a semicircle. Whatever shape this may have had
originally from Nature has been helped by the hand of man, which has
formed out of it an amphitheater for spectators. Walls and other
buildings have furnished the necessary passages and rooms. Right across,
at the foot of the semicircular range of seats, the scene was built, and
by this means the two rocks were joined together, and a most enormous
work of nature and art combined.
Now, sitting down at the spot where formerly sat the uppermost
spectators, you confess at once that never did any audience, in any
theater, have before it such a spectacle as you there behold. On the
right, and on high rocks at the side, castles tower in the air--farther
on the city lies below you; and altho its buildings are all of modern
date, still similar ones, no doubt, stood of old on the same site. After
this the eye falls on the whole of the long ridge of Ætna, then on the
left it catches a view of the sea-shore, as far as Catania, and even
Syracuse, and then the wide and extensive view is closed by the immense
smoking volcano, but not horribly, for the atmosphere, with its
softening effect, makes it look more distinct, and milder than it
really is.
If now you turn from this view toward the passage running at the back of
the spectators, you have on the left the whole wall of the rocks between
which and the sea runs the road to Messina. And then again you behold
vast groups of rocky ridges in the sea itself, with the coast of
Calabria in the far distance, which only a fixt and attentive gaze can
distinguish from the clouds which rise rapidly from it.
We descended toward the theater, and tarried awhile among its ruins, on
which an accomplished architect would do well to employ, at least on
paper, his talent of restoration. After this I attempted to make a way
for myself through the gardens to the city. But I soon learned by
experience what an impenetrable bulwark is formed by a hedge of agaves
planted close together. You can see through their interlacing leaves,
and you think, therefore, it will be easy to force a way through them;
but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. If you
step on these colossal leaves, in the hope that they will bear you, they
break off suddenly; and so, instead of getting out, you fall into the
arms of the next plant. When, however, at last we had wound our way out
of the labyrinth, we found but little to enjoy in the city; tho from the
neighboring country we felt it impossible to part before sunset.
Infinitely beautiful was it to observe this region, of which every point
had its interest, gradually enveloped in darkness.
MOUNT ÆTNA[39]
BY WILL S. MONROE
By the ancients Ætna was supposed to be the prison of the mighty chained
giant Typhon, the flames proceeding from his breath and the noises from
his groans; and when he turned over earthquakes shook the island. Many
of the myths of the Greek poets were associated with the slopes of Ætna,
such as Demeter, torch in hand, seeking Persephone, Acis and Galatea,
Polyphemus and the Cyclops.
Ætna was once a volcano in the Mediterranean and in the course of ages
it completely filled the surrounding sea with its lava. A remarkable
feature of the mountain is the large number of minor cones on its
sides--some seven hundred in all. Most of these subsidiary cones are
from three to six thousand feet in height and they make themselves most
strongly felt during periods of great activity. The summit merely serves
as a vent through which the vapors and gases make their escape. The
natural boundaries of Ætna are the Alcantara and Simeto rivers on the
north, west, and south, and the sea on the east.
The most luxurious fertility characterizes the gradual slopes near the
base, the decomposed volcanic soil being almost entirely covered with
olives, figs, grapes, and prickly pears. Higher up is the timber zone.
Formerly there was a dense forest belt between the zone of cultivated
land and the tore of cinders and snow; but the work of forest
extermination was almost completed during the reign of the Spanish
Bourbons. One may still find scattered oak, ilex, chestnut, and pine
interspersed with ferns and aromatic herbs. Chestnut trees of surprizing
growth are found on the lower slopes. "The Chestnut Tree of the Hundred
Horses," for which the slopes of Ætna are famous, is not a single tree
but a group of several distinct trunks together forming a circle, under
whose spreading branches a hundred horses might find shelter.
Above the wooded zone Ætna is covered with miniature cones thrown up by
different eruptions and regions of dreary plateau covered with scoriae
and ashes and buried under snow a part of the year. While the upper
portions of the volcano are covered with snow the greater portion of the
year, Ætna does not reach the limit of perpetual snow, and the heat
which is emitted from its sides prevents the formation of glaciers in
the hollows. One might expect that the quantities of snow and rain which
fall on the summit would give rise to numerous streams. But the small
stones and cinders absorb the moisture, and springs are found only on
the lower slopes. The cinders, however, retain sufficient moisture to
support a rich vegetation wherever the surface of the lava is not too
compact to be penetrated by roots. The surface of the more recent lava
streams is not, as might be supposed, smooth and level, but full of
yawning holes and rents.
The regularity of the gradual slopes is broken on the eastern side by
the Valle del Bove, a vast amphitheater more than three thousand feet in
depth, three miles in width, and covering an area of ten square miles.
The bottom of the valley is dotted with craters which rise in gigantic
steps; and, when Ætna is in a state of eruption, these craters pour
forth fiery cascades of lava. The Monte Centenari rise from the Valle
del Bove to an elevation of 6,026 feet. At the head of the valley is the
Torre del Filosofo at an altitude of 9,570 feet. This is the reputed
site of the observatory of Empedocles, the poet and philosopher, who is
fabled to have thrown himself into the crater of Ætna to immortalize his
name.
The lower slopes of Ætna--after the basin of Palermo--include the most
densely populated parts of Sicily. More than half a million people live
on the slopes of a mountain that might be expected to inspire terror.
"Towns succeed towns along its base like pearls in a necklace, and when
a stream of lava effects a breach in the chain of human habitations, it
is closed up again as soon as the lava has had time to cool." As soon as
the lava has decomposed, the soil produces an excellent yield and this
tempts the farmer and the fruit grower to take chances. Speaking of the
dual effect of Ætna, Freeman says: "He has been mighty to destroy, but
he has also been mighty to create and render fruitful. If his fiery
streams have swept away cities and covered fields, they have given the
cities a new material for their buildings and the fields a new soil rich
above all others."
SYRACUSE[40]
BY RUFUS B. RICHARDSON
The ruins of Syracuse are not to the casual observer very imposing. But
even these ruins have great interest for the archeologist. There is, for
example, an old temple near the northern end of Ortygia, for the most
part embedded in the buildings of the modern city, yet with its east end
cleared and showing several entire columns with a part of the architrave
upon them. And what a surprize here awaits one who thinks of a Doric
temple as built on a stereotyped plan! Instead of the thirteen columns
on the long sides which one is apt to look for as going with a
six-column front, here are eighteen or nineteen, it is not yet quite
certain which. The columns stand less than their diameter apart, and the
abaci are so broad that they nearly touch.
So small is the inter-columnar space that archeologists incline to the
belief that in this one Doric temple there were triglyphs only over the
columns, and not also between them as in all other known cases.
Everything about this temple stamps it as the oldest in Sicily. An
inscription on the top step, in very archaic letters, much worn and
difficult to read, contains the name of Apollo in the ancient form....
The inscription may, of course, be later than the temple; but it is in
itself old enough to warrant the supposition that the temple was
erected soon after the first Corinthian colonists established themselves
in the island. While the inscription makes it reasonably certain that
the temple belonged to Apollo, the god under whose guiding hand all
these Dorians went out into these western seas, tradition, with strange
perversity, has given it the name of "Temple of Diana." But it is all in
the family.
Another temple ruin on the edge of the plateau, which begins about two
miles south of the city, across the Anapos, one might also easily
overlook in a casual survey, because it consists only of two columns
without capitals, and a broad extent of the foundations from which the
accumulated earth has been only partially removed. This was the famous
temple of Olympian Zeus, built probably in the days of Hiero I., soon
after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable.
One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a
distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues
with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the
original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens
of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian
invasion. In the second place, tradition, which, when rightly consulted,
tells so much, says that Archias, the founder of Syracuse, had two
daughters, Ortygia and Syracusa, which may point to two coordinate
settlements, Ortygia and Syracuse; the latter, which was on this temple
plateau, being subsequently merged in the former, but, as sometimes
happens in such cases, giving its name to the combined result.
Besides these temple ruins there are many more foundations that tell a
more or less interesting story. Then there are remains of the ancient
city that can never be ruined--for instance, the great stone quarries,
pits over a hundred feet deep and acres broad, in some of which the
Athenian prisoners were penned up to waste away under the gaze of the
pitiless captors; the Greek theater cut out of the solid rock; the great
altar of Hiero II., six hundred feet long and about half as broad, also
of solid rock. Then there is a mighty Hexapylon, which closed the
fortifications of Dionysius at the northwest at the point where they
challenged attack from the land side. With its sally-ports and rock-hewn
passages, some capacious enough to quarter regiments of cavalry, showing
holes cut in the projecting corners of rock, through which the
hitch-reins of the horses were wont to be passed, and its great
magazines, it stands a lasting memorial to the energy of a tyrant. But
while this fortress is practically indestructible, an impregnable
fortress is a dream incapable of realization. Marcellus and his stout
Romans came in through these fortifications, not entirely, it is true,
by their own might, but by the aid of traitors, against whom no walls
are proof.
One of the stone quarries, the Latomia del Paradiso, has an added
interest from its association with the tyrant who made himself hated as
well as feared, while Gelon was only feared without being hated. An
inner recess of the quarry is called the "Ear of Dionysius," and
tradition says that at the inner end of this recess either he or his
creatures sat and listened to the murmurs that the people uttered
against him, and that these murmurs were requited with swift and fatal
punishment. Certain it is that a whisper in this cave produces a
wonderful resonance, and a pistol shot is like the roar of a cannon; but
that people who had anything to say about the butcher should come up
within ear-shot of him to utter it is not very likely. Historians are
not quite sure that the connection of Dionysius with this recess is
altogether mythical, but that he shaped it with the fell purpose above
mentioned is not to be thought of, as the whole quarry is older than his
time, and was probably, with the Latomia dei Cappuccini, a prison for
the Athenians.
MALTA[41]
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
The city of Valetta, founded in 1566, by the grand master whose name it
bears, is the capital of Malta. The city of La Sangle, and the city of
Victoria, which occupy two points of land on the other side of the
harbor of the Marse, together with the suburbs of Floriana and Burmola,
complete the town; encircled by bastions, ramparts, counterscarps,
forts, and fortifications, to an extent which renders siege impossible!
If you follow one of the streets which surround the town, at each step
that you take, you find yourself face to face with a cannon. Gibraltar
itself does not bristle more completely with mouths of fire. The
inconvenience of these extended works is, that they enclose a vast
radius, and demand to defend them, in case of attack, an enormous
garrison; always difficult to maintain at a distance from the mother
country.
From the height of the ramparts, one sees in the distance the blue and
transparent sea, broken into ripples by the breeze, and dotted with
snowy sails. The scarlet sentinels are on guard from point to point, and
the heat of the sun is so fierce upon the glacis, that a cloth stretched
upon a frame and turning upon a pivot at the top of a pole, forms a
shade for the soldiers, who, without this precaution, must inevitably be
roasted on their posts....
The city of Valetta, altho built with regularity, and, so to speak, all
in one "block," is not, therefore, the less picturesque. The decided
slope of the ground neutralizes what the accurate lines of the street
might otherwise have of monotony, and the town mounts by degrees and by
terraces the hillside, which it forms into an amphitheater. The houses,
built very high like those of Cadiz, terminate in flat roofs that their
inhabitants may the better enjoy the sea view. They are all of white
Maltese stone; a sort of sandstone easy to work, and with which, at
small expense, one can indulge various caprices of sculpture and
ornamentation. These rectilinear houses stand well, and have an air of
grandeur, which they owe to the absence of (visible) roofs, cornices,
and attics. They stand out sharply and squarely against the azure of the
heavens, which their dazzling whiteness renders only the more intense;
but that which chiefly gives them a character of originality is the
projecting balcony hung upon each front; like the "moucharabys" of the
East, or the "miradores" of Spain.
The palace of the grand masters--to-day the palace of the
government--has nothing remarkable in the way of architecture. Its date
is recent, and it responds but imperfectly to the idea one would form of
the residence of Villiers de I'lle Adam, of Lavalette, and of their
warlike ancestors. Nevertheless, it has a certain monumental air, and
produces a fine effect upon the great Place, of which it forms one
entire side. Two doorways, with rustic columns, break the uniformity of
the long façade; while an immense balcony, supported by gigantic
sculptured brackets, encircles the building at the level of the first
floor, and gives to the edifice the stamp of Malta. This detail, so
strictly local in its character, relieves what might be heavy and flat
in this architecture; and this palace, otherwise vulgar, becomes thus
original. The interior, which I visited, presents a range of vast halls
and galleries, decorated with pictures representing battles by sea and
land, sieges, and combats between Turkish galleys and the galleys of the
"Religion." ...
To finish with the knights, I turned my steps toward the Church of St.
John--the Pantheon of the Order. Its façade, with a triangular porch
flanked by two towers terminating in stone belfries, having for ornament
only four pillars, and pierced by a window and door, without sculpture
or decoration, by no means prepares the traveler for the splendor
within.
The first thing which arrests the sight is an immense arch, painted in
fresco, which runs the whole length of the nave. This fresco, unhappily
much deteriorated by time, is the work of Matteo Preti, called the
Calabrese; one of those great second-rate masters, who, if they have
less genius, have often more talent than the princes of the art. What
there is of science, facility, spirit, expression, and abundant
resource, in this colossal picture, is beyond description.
Each section of the arch contains a scene from the life of St. John, to
whom the church is dedicated, and who was the patron of the Order.
These sections are supported, at their descent, by groups of
captives--Saracens, Turks, Christians, and others--half naked, or clad
in the remains of shattered armor, and placed in positions of
humiliation or constraint, who form a species of barbaric caryatides
strikingly suited to the subject. All this part of the fresco is full of
character, and has a force of coloring very rare in this species of
picture. These solid and massive effects give additional strength to the
lighter tone of the arch, and throw the skies into a relief and distance
singularly profound. I know no similar work of equal grandeur except the
ceiling by Fumiana in the Church of St. Pantaleone at Venice,
representing the life, martyrdom, and apotheosis of that saint. But the
style of the decadence makes itself less felt in the work of the
Calabrese than in that of the Venetian. In recompense of this gigantic
work, the artist had the honor, like Carravaggio, to be made a Knight
of the Order.
The pavement of the church is composed of four hundred tombs of knights,
incrusted with jasper, porphyry, verd-antique, and precious stones of
various kinds, which should form the most splendid sepulchral mosaics
conceivable. I say should form, because at the moment of my visit, the
whole floor was covered with those immense mats, so constantly used for
carpeting the southern churches--a usage which is explained by the
absence of pews or chairs, and the habit of kneeling upon the floor to
perform one's devotions. I regretted this exceedingly; but the crypt and
the chapel contain enough sepulchral wealth to offer some atonement.
VIII
THE MAINLAND OF GREECE
ON ARRIVING IN ATHENS--THE ACROPOLIS[42]
BY J. P. MAHAFFY
There is probably no more exciting voyage, to any educated man, than the
approach to Athens from the sea. Every promontory, every island, every
bay, has its history. If he knows the map of Greece, he needs no
guide-book or guide to distract him; if he does not, he needs little
Greek to ask of any one near him the name of this or that object; and
the mere names are sufficient to stir up all his classical
recollections. But he must make up his mind not to be shocked at "Ægina"
or "Phalrum," and even to be told that he is utterly wrong in his way of
pronouncing them.
It was our fortune to come into Greece by night, with a splendid moon
shining upon the summer sea. The varied outlines of Sunium, on the one
side, and Ægina on the other, were very clear, but in the deep shadows
there was mystery enough to feed the burning impatience of seeing all in
the light of common day; and tho we had passed Ægina, and had come over
against the rocky Salamis, as yet there was no sign of Peiræus. Then
came the light on Psyttalea, and they told us that the harbor was right
opposite. Yet we came nearer and nearer, and no harbor could be seen.
The barren rocks of the coast seemed to form one unbroken line, and
nowhere was there a sign of indentation or of break in the land. But
suddenly, as we turned from gazing on Psyttalea, where the flower of the
Persian nobles had once stood in despair, looking upon their fate
gathering about them, the vessel had turned eastward, and discovered to
us the crowded lights and thronging ships of the famous harbor. Small it
looked, very small, but evidently deep to the water's edge, for great
ships seemed touching the shore; and so narrow is the mouth, that we
almost wondered how they had made their entrance in safety. But we saw
it some weeks later, with nine men-of-war towering above all its
merchant shipping and its steamers, and among them crowds of ferryboats
skimming about in the breeze with their wing-like sails. Then we found
out that, like the rest of Greece, the Peiræus was far larger than it
looked.
It differed little, alas! from more vulgar harbors in the noise and
confusion of disembarking; in the delays of its custom-house; in the
extortion and insolence of its boatmen. It is still, as in Plato's day,
"the haunt of sailors, where good manners are unknown." But when we had
escaped the turmoil, and were seated silently on the way to Athens,
almost along the very road of classical days, all our classical notions,
which had been seared away by vulgar bargaining and protesting,
regained their sway.
We had sailed in through the narrow passage where almost every great
Greek that ever lived had some time passed; now we went along the line,
hardly less certain, which had seen all these great ones going to and
fro between the city and the port. The present road is shaded with great
silver poplars, and plane trees, and the moon had set, so that our
approach to Athens was even more mysterious than our approach to the
Peiræus. We were, moreover, perplexed at our carriage stopping under
some large plane trees, tho we had driven but two miles, and the night
was far spent. Our coachman would listen to no advice or persuasion. We
learned afterward that every carriage going to and from the Peiræus
stops at this half-way house, that the horses may drink, and the
coachman take "Turkish delight" and water. There is no exception made to
this custom, and the traveler is bound to submit. At last we entered the
unpretending ill-built streets at the west of Athens....
We rose at the break of dawn to see whether our window would afford any
prospect to serve as a requital for angry sleeplessness. And there,
right opposite, stood the rock which of all rocks in the world's history
has done most for literature and art--the rock which poets, and orators,
and architects, and historians have ever glorified, and can not stay
their praise--which is ever new and ever old, ever fresh in its decay,
ever perfect in its ruin, ever living in its death--the Acropolis of
Athens.