landscape. The hills, wooded with oak, and swimming in soft blue vapor,
interlocked far before us, inclosing the loveliest green dells in their
embraces, and melting away to the break in Taygetus, which yawned in the
distance. On the right towered the square, embrasured castle of Passava
on the summit of an almost inaccessible hill--the site of the ancient
Las. Far and near, the lower heights were crowned with tall, white
towers.
MESSENIA[59]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
The plain of Messenia is the richest part of the Morea. Altho its groves
of orange and olive, fig and mulberry, were entirely destroyed during
the Egyptian occupation, new and more vigorous shoots have sprung up
from the old stumps and the desolated country is a garden again,
apparently as fair and fruitful as when it excited the covetousness of
the Spartan thieves. Sloping to the gulf on the south, and protected
from the winds on all other sides by lofty mountains, it enjoys an
almost Egyptian warmth of climate. Here it was already summer, while at
Sparta, on the other side of Taygetus, spring had but just arrived, and
the central plain of Arcadia was still bleak and gray as in winter. As
it was market-day, we met hundreds of the country people going to
Kalamata with laden asses....
We crossed the rapid Pamisos with some difficulty, and ascended its
right bank, to the foot of Mount Evan, which we climbed, by rough paths
through thickets of mastic and furze, to the monastery of Vurkano. The
building has a magnificent situation, on a terrace between Mount Evan
and Mount Ithome, overlooking both the upper and lower plains of the
Pamisos--a glorious spread of landscape, green with spring, and touched
by the sun with the airiest prismatic tints through breaks of heavy
rain-clouds. Inside the courts is an old Byzantine chapel, with
fleurs-de-lis on the decorations, showing that it dates from the time of
the Latin princes. The monks received us very cordially, gave us a
clean, spacious room, and sent us a bottle of excellent wine for dinner.
We ascended Ithome and visited the massive ruins of Messene the same
day. The great gate of the city, a portion of the wall, and four of the
towers of defense, are in tolerable condition. The name of Epaminondas
hallows these remains, which otherwise, grand as they are, do not
impress one like the cyclopean walls of Tiryns. The wonder is, that they
could have been built in so short a time--eighty-five days, says
history, which would appear incredible, had not still more marvelous
things of the kind been done in Russia.
The next day, we rode across the head of the Messenian plain, crossed
the Mount Lycæus and the gorge of the Neda, and lodged at the little
village of Tragoge, on the frontiers of Arcadia. Our experience of
Grecian highways was pleasantly increased by finding fields plowed
directly across our road, fences of dried furze built over it, and
ditches cutting it at all angles. Sometimes all trace of it would be
lost for half a mile, and we were obliged to ride over the growing crops
until we could find a bit of fresh trail.
The bridle-path over Mount Lycæus was steep and bad, but led us through
the heart of a beautiful region. The broad back of the mountain is
covered with a grove of superb oaks, centuries old, their long arms
muffled in golden moss, and adorned with a plumage of ferns. The turf at
their feet was studded with violets, filling the air with delicious
odors. This sylvan retreat was the birthplace of Pan, and no more
fitting home for the universal god can be imagined. On the northern side
we descended for some time through a forest of immense ilex trees, which
sprang from a floor of green moss and covered our pathway with summer
shade....
We were now in the heart of the wild mountain region of Messenia, in
whose fastnesses Aristomenes, the epic hero of the state, maintained
himself so long against the Spartans. The tremendous gorge below us was
the bed of the Neda, which we crossed in order to enter the lateral
valley of Phigalia, where lay Tragoge. The path was not only difficult
but dangerous--in some places a mere hand's-breath of gravel, on the
edge of a plane so steep that a single slip of a horse's foot would have
sent him headlong to the bottom.
In the morning, a terrible sirocco levante was blowing, with an almost
freezing cold. The fury of the wind was so great that in crossing the
exposed ridges it was difficult to keep one's seat upon the horse. We
climbed toward the central peak of the Lycæan Hills, through a wild dell
between two ridges, which were covered to the summit with magnificent
groves of oak. Starry blue flowers, violets and pink crocuses spangled
the banks as we wound onward, between the great trunks. The temple of
Apollo Epicurius stands on a little platform between the two highest
peaks, about 3,500 feet above the sea.
On the day of our visit, its pillars of pale bluish-gray limestone rose
against a wintry sky, its guardian oaks were leafless, and the wind
whistled over its heaps of ruin; yet its symmetry was like that of a
perfect statue, wherein you do not notice the absence of color, and I
felt that no sky and no season could make it more beautiful. For its
builder was Ictinus, who created the Parthenon. It was erected by the
Phigalians, out of gratitude to Apollo the Helper, who kept from their
city a plague which ravaged the rest of the Peloponnesus. Owing to its
secluded position, it has escaped the fate of other temples, and might
be restored from its own undestroyed materials. The cella had been
thrown down, but thirty-five out of thirty-eight columns are still
standing. Through the Doric shafts you look upon a wide panorama of gray
mountains, melting into purple in the distance, and crowned by arcs of
the far-off sea. On one hand is Ithome and the Messenian Gulf, on the
other the Ionian Sea and the Strophades....
We now trotted down the valley, over beautiful meadows, which were
uncultivated except in a few places where the peasants were plowing for
maize, and had destroyed every trace of the road. The hills on both
sides began to be fringed with pine, while the higher ridges on our
right were clothed with woods of oak. I was surprised at the luxuriant
vegetation of this region. The laurel and mastic became trees, the pine
shot to a height of one hundred feet, and the beech and sycamore began
to appear. Some of the pines had been cut for ship-timber, but in the
rudest and most wasteful way, only the limbs which had the proper curve
being chosen for ribs. I did not see a single sawmill in the
Peloponnesus; but I am told that there are a few in Euboea and
Acarnania....
As we approached Olympia, I could almost have believed myself among the
pine-hills of Germany or America. In the old times this must have been a
lovely, secluded region, well befitting the honored repose of Xenophon,
who wrote his works here. The sky became heavier as the day wore on, and
the rain, which had spared us so long, finally inclosed us in its misty
circle. Toward evening we reached a lonely little house, on the banks of
the Alpheus. Nobody was at home, but we succeeded in forcing a door and
getting shelter for our baggage. François had supper nearly ready before
the proprietor arrived. The latter had neither wife nor child, tho a few
chicks, and took our burglarious occupation very good-humoredly. We
shared the same leaky roof with our horses, and the abundant fleas with
the owner's dogs.
TIRYNS AND MYCENÆ[60]
BY J. P. MAHAFFY
The fortress of Tiryns may fitly be commented on before approaching the
younger, or at least more artistically finished, Mycenæ. It stands
several miles nearer to the sea, in the center of the great plain of
Argos, and upon the only hillock which there affords any natural scope
for fortification. Instead of the square, or at least hewn, well-fitted
blocks of Mycenæ, we have here the older style of rude masses piled
together as best they would fit, the interstices being filled up with
smaller fragments. This is essentially cyclopean building. There is a
smaller fort, of rectangular shape, on the southern and highest part of
the oblong hillock, the whole of which is surrounded by a lower wall,
which takes in both this and the northern longer part of the ridge. It
looks, in fact, like a hill-fort, with a large inclosure for cattle
around it.
Just below the northeast angle of the inner fort, and where the lower
circuit is about to leave it, there is an entrance, with a massive
projection of huge stones, looking like a square tower, on its right
side, so as to defend it from attack. The most remarkable feature in the
walls are the covered galleries, constructed within them at the
southeast angle. The whole thickness of the wall is often over twenty
feet, and in the center a rude arched way is made--or rather, I believe,
two parallel ways; but the inner gallery has fallen in, and is almost
untraceable--and this merely by piling together the great stones so as
to leave an opening, which narrows at the top in the form of a Gothic
arch. Within the passage, there are five niches in the outer side, made
of rude arches in the same way as the main passage. The length of the
gallery I measured, and found it twenty-five yards, at the end of which
it is regularly walled up, so that it evidently did not run all the way
round. The niches are now no longer open, but seem to have been once
windows, or at least to have had some lookout points into the hill
country.
It is remarkable that, altho the walls are made of perfectly rude
stones, the builders have managed to use so many smooth surfaces looking
outward, that the face of the wall seems quite clean and well built. At
the southeast corner of the higher and inner fort, we found a large
block of red granite, quite different from the rough, gray stone of the
building, with its surface square and smooth, and all the four sides
neatly beveled, like the portal stones at the treasury of Atreus. I
found two other similar blocks close by, which were likewise cut smooth
on the surface. The intention of these stones we could not guess, but
they show that some ornament, and some more finished work, must have
once existed in the inner fort. Tho both the main entrances have massive
towers of stone raised on their right, there is a small postern at the
opposite or west side, not more than four feet wide, which has no
defenses whatever, and is a mere hole in the wall.
The whole ruin is covered in summer with thistles, such as English
people can hardly imagine. The needles at the points of the leaves are
fully an inch long, extremely fine and strong, and sharper than any
two-edged sword. No clothes except a leather dress can resist them. They
pierce everywhere with the most stinging pain, and make antiquarian
research in this famous spot a veritable martyrdom, which can only be
supported by a very burning thirst for knowledge, or the sure hope of
future fame. The rough masses of stone are so loose that one's footing
is insecure, and when the traveler loses his balance, and falls among
the thistles, he will wish that he had gone to Jericho instead, or even
fallen among thieves on the way.
It is impossible to approach Mycenæ from any side without being struck
with the picturesqueness of the site. If you come down over the
mountains from Corinth, as soon as you reach the head of the valley of
the Inachus, which is the plain of Argos, you turn aside to the left, or
east, into a secluded corner--"a recess of the horse-feeding Argos," as
Homer calls it--and then you find on the edge of the valley, and where
the hills begin to rise one behind the other, the village of Charváti.
When you ascend from this place, you find that the lofty Mount Elias is
separated from the plain by two nearly parallel waves of land, which are
indeed joined at the northern end by a curving saddle, but elsewhere are
divided by deep gorges. The loftier and shorter wave forms the rocky
citadel of Mycenæ--the Argion, as it was once called.
I need not attempt a fresh description of the Great Treasury. It is in
no sense a rude building, or one of a helpless and barbarous age, but,
on the contrary, the product of enormous appliances, and of a perfect
knowledge of all the mechanical requirements for any building, if we
except the application of the arch. The stones are hewn square, or
curved to form the circular dome within, with admirable exactness. Above
the enormous lintel-stone, nearly twenty-seven feet long, and which is
doubly grooved, by way of ornament, all along its edge over the doorway,
there is now a triangular window or aperture, which was certainly filled
with some artistic carving like the analogous space over the lintel in
the gate of the Acropolis. Shortly after Lord Elgin had cleared the
entrance, Gell and Dodwell found various pieces of green and red marble
carved with geometrical patterns, some of which are reproduced in
Dodwell's book. Gell also found some fragments in a neighboring chapel,
and others are said to be built into a wall at Nauplia. There are
supposed to have been short columns standing on each side in front of
the gate, with some ornament surmounting them; but this seems to me to
rest on doubtful evidence, and on theoretical reconstruction. Dr.
Schliemann, however, asserts them to have been found at the entrance of
the second treasury which Mrs. Schliemann excavated, tho his account is
somewhat vague. There is the strongest architectural reason for the
triangular aperture over the door, as it diminishes the enormous weight
to be borne by the lintel; and here, no doubt, some ornament very like
lions on the other gate may have been applied.
There has been much controversy about the use to which this building was
applied, and we can not now attempt to change the name, even if we could
prove its absurdity. Pausanias, who saw Mycenæ in the second century
A.D., found it in much the same state as we do, and was no
better informed than we, tho he tells us the popular belief that this
and its fellows were treasure-houses like that of the Minyæ at
Orchomenus, which was very much greater, and was, in his opinion, one of
the most wonderful things in all Greece.
Standing at the entrance, you look out upon the scattered masonry of the
walls of Mycenæ, on the hillock over against you. Close behind this is a
dark and solemn chain of mountains. The view is narrow and confined, and
faces the north, so that, for most of the day, the gate is dark and in
shadow. We can conceive no fitter place for the burial of a king,
within sight of his citadel, in the heart of a deep natural hillock,
with a great solemn portal symbolizing the resistless strength of the
barrier which he had passed into an unknown land. But one more remark
seems necessary. This treasure-house is by no means a Greek building in
its features. It has the same perfection of construction which can be
seen at Eleutheræ, or any other Greek fort, but still the really
analogous buildings are to be found in far distant lands--in the raths
of Ireland, and the barrows of the Crimea.
"And yet how lovely in thine age of woe,
Land of lost gods and godlike men, are thou!
Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow,
Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now:
Thy fanes, thy temples to the surface bow,
Commingling slowly with heroic earth,
Broke by the share of every rustic plough:
"Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild:
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields;
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair."
--From Byron's "Childe Harold."
IX
THE GREEK ISLANDS
A TOUR OF CRETE[61]
BY BAYARD TAYLOR
Crete lies between the parallels of 35 degrees and 36 degrees, not much
farther removed from Africa than from Europe, and its climate,
consequently, is intermediate between that of Greece and that of
Alexandria. In the morning it was already visible, altho some thirty
miles distant, the magnificent snowy mass of the White Mountains
gleaming before us, under a bank of clouds. By ten o'clock, the long
blue line of the coast broke into irregular points, the Dictynnæan
promontory and that of Akroteri thrusting themselves out toward us so as
to give an amphitheatric character to that part of the island we were
approaching, while the broad, snowy dome of the Cretan Ida, standing
alone, far to the east, floated in a sea of soft, golden light. The
White Mountains were completely enveloped in snow to a distance of 4,000
feet below their summits, and scarcely a rock pierced the luminous
covering. The shores of the Gulf of Khania, retaining their
amphitheatric form, rose gradually from the water, a rich panorama of
wheat-fields, vineyards and olive groves, crowded with sparkling
villages, while Khania, in the center, grew into distinctness--a
picturesque jumble of mosques, old Venetian arches and walls, pink and
yellow buildings, and palm trees. The character of the scene was Syrian
rather than Greek, being altogether richer and warmer than anything in
Greece.
Khania occupies the site of the ancient Cydonia, by which name the Greek
bishopric is still called. The Venetian city was founded in 1252, and
any remnants of the older town which may have then remained, were quite
obliterated by it. The only ruins now are those of Venetian churches,
some of which have been converted into mosques, and a number of immense
arched vaults, opening on the harbor, built to shelter the galleys of
the Republic. Just beyond the point on which stands the Serai, I counted
fifteen of these, side by side, eleven of which are still entire. A
little further, there are three more, but all are choked up with sand,
and of no present use. The modern town is an exact picture of a Syrian
seaport, with its narrow, crooked streets, shaded bazaars, and turbaned
merchants. Its population is 9,500, including the garrison, according to
a census just completed at the time of our visit. It is walled, and the
gates are closed during the night....
Passing through the large Turkish cemetery, which was covered with an
early crop of blue anemones, we came upon the rich plain of Khania,
lying broad and fair, like a superb garden, at the foot of the White
Mountains, whose vast masses of shining snow filled up the entire
southern heaven. Eastward, the plain slopes to the deep Bay of Suda,
whose surface shone blue above the silvery line of the olive groves;
while, sixty miles away, rising high above the intermediate headlands,
the solitary peak of Mount Ida, bathed in a warm afternoon glow, gleamed
like an Olympian mount, not only the birthplace, but the throne of
immortal Jove. Immense olive trees from the dark-red, fertile earth;
cypresses and the canopied Italian pine interrupted their gray monotony,
and every garden hung the golden lamps of its oranges over the wall. The
plain is a paradise of fruitfulness....
In the morning, the horses were brought to us at an early hour, in
charge of a jolly old officer of gendarmes, who was to accompany us. As
far as the village of Kalepa, there is a carriage road; afterward, only
a stony path. From the spinal ridge of the promontory, which we crossed,
we overlooked all the plain of Khania, and beyond the Dictynnæan
peninsula, to the western extremity of Crete. The White Mountains, tho
less than seven thousand, feet in height, deceive the eye by the
contrast between their spotless snows and the summer at their base, and
seem to rival the Alps. The day was cloudless and balmy; birds sang on
every tree, and the grassy hollows were starred with anemones, white,
pink, violet and crimson. It was the first breath of the southern
spring, after a winter which had been as terrible for Crete as for
Greece.
After a ride of three hours, we reached a broad valley, at the foot of
that barren mountain mass in which the promontory terminates. To the
eastward we saw the large monastery of Agia Triada (the Holy Trinity),
overlooking its fat sweep of vine and olive land.... In the deep, dry
mountain glen which we entered, I found numbers of carob-trees. Rocks of
dark-blue limestone, stained with bright orange oxydations, overhung us
as we followed the track of a torrent upward into the heart of this
bleak region, where, surrounded by the hot, arid peaks, is the Monastery
of Governato.
We descended on foot to the Monastery of Katholiko, which we reached in
half an hour. Its situation is like that of San Saba in Palestine, at
the bottom of a split in the stony hills, and the sun rarely shines upon
it. Steps cut in the rock lead down the face of the precipice to the
deserted monastery, near which is a cavern 500 feet long, leading into
the rock. The ravine is spanned by an arch, nearly fifty feet high.
At Agia Triada, as we rode up the stately avenue of cypresses, between
vineyards and almond trees in blossom, servants advanced to take our
horses, and the abbot shouted, "Welcome," from the top of the steps. We
were ushered into a clean room, furnished with a tolerable library of
orthodox volumes. A boy of fifteen, with a face like the young Raphael,
brought us glasses of a rich, dark wine, something like port, some jelly
and coffee. The size and substantial character of this monastery attests
its wealth, no less than the flourishing appearance of the lands
belonging to it. Its large courtyard is shaded with vine-bowers and
orange trees, and the chapel in the center has a façade supported by
Doric columns.
THE COLOSSAL RUINS OF CNOSSOS[62]
BY PHILIP S. MARDEN
The ruins [of the Cnossos palace] lie at the east of the high road, in a
deep valley. Their excavation has been very complete and satisfactory,
and while some restorations have been attempted here and there, chiefly
because of absolute necessity to preserve portions of the structure,
they are not such restorations as to jar on one, but exhibit a fidelity
to tradition that saves them from the common fate of such efforts.
Little or no retouching was necessary in the case of the stupendous
flights of steps that were found leading up to the door of this
prehistoric royal residence, and which are the first of the many sights
the visitor of to-day may see.
It is in the so-called "throne room of Minos" that the restoring hand is
first met. Here it has been found necessary to provide a roof, that
damage by weather be avoided; and to-day the throne room is a dusky
spot, rather below the general level of the place. Its chief treasure is
the throne itself, a stone chair, carved in rather rudimentary
ornamentation, and about the size of an ordinary chair. The roof is
supported by the curious, top-heavy-looking stone pillars, that are
known to have prevailed not only in the Minoan but in Mycenæan period;
monoliths noticeably larger at the top than at the bottom, reversing the
usual form of stone pillar with which later ages have made us more
familiar. This quite illogical inversion of what we now regard as the
proper form has been accounted for in theory, by assuming that it was
the natural successor of the sharpened wooden stake. When the ancients
adopted stone supports for their roofs, they simply took over the forms
they had been familiar with in the former use of wood, and the result
was a stone pillar that copied the earlier wooden one in shape. Time, of
course, served to show that the natural way of building demanded the
reversal of this custom; but in the Mycenæan age it had not been
discovered, for there are evidences that similar pillars existed in
buildings of that period, and the representation of a pillar that stands
between the two lions on Mycenæ's famous gate has this inverted form.