testifying to what must have been in its day an enormous and impressive
palace. One can not go far in traversing it without noticing the traces
still evident enough of the fire that obviously destroyed it many
hundred, if not several thousand, years before Christ. Along the western
side have been discovered long corridors, from which scores of long and
narrow rooms were to be entered. These, in the published plans, serve to
give to the ruin a large share of its labyrinthine character. It seems
to be agreed now that these were the storerooms of the palace, and in
them may still be seen the huge earthen jars which once served to
contain the palace supplies. Long rows of them stand in the ancient
hallways and in the narrow cells that lead off them, each jar large
enough to hold a fair-sized man, and in number sufficient to have
accommodated Ali Baba and the immortal forty thieves. In the center of
the palace little remains; but in the southeastern corner, where the
land begins to slope abruptly to the valley below, there are to be seen
several stories of the ancient building. Here one comes upon the rooms
marked with the so-called "distaff" pattern, supposed to indicate that
they were the women's quarters.
The restorer has been busy here, but not offensively so. Much of the
ancient wall is intact, and in one place is a bathroom with a very
diminutive bathtub still in place. Along the eastern side is also shown
the oil press, where olives were once made to yield their coveted
juices, and from the press proper a stone gutter conducted the fluid
down to the point where jars were placed to receive it. This discovery
of oil presses in ancient buildings, by the way, has served in more than
one case to arouse speculation as to the antiquity of oil lamps such as
were once supposed to belong only to a much later epoch. Whether in the
Minoan days they had such lamps or not, it is known that they had at
least an oil press and a good one. In the side of the hill below the
main palace of Minos has been unearthed a smaller structure, which they
now call the "villa," and in which several terraces, have been uncovered
rather similar to the larger building above. Here is another throne
room, cunningly contrived to be lighted by a long shaft of light from
above falling on the seat of justice itself, while the rest of the room
is in obscurity.
It may be that it requires a stretch of the imagination to compare the
palace of Cnossos with Troy, but nevertheless there are one or two
features that seem not unlike the discoveries made by Dr. Schliemann on
that famous site. Notably so, it seems to me, are the traces of the
final fire, which are to be seen at Cnossos as at Troy, and the huge
jars, which may be compared with the receptacles the Trojan excavators
unearthed, and found still to contain dried peas and other things that
the Trojans left behind when they fled from their sacked and burning
city. Few are privileged to visit the site of Priam's city, which is
hard, indeed, to reach; but it is easy enough to make the excursion to
Candia and visit the palace of old King Minos, which is amply worth the
trouble, besides giving a glimpse of a civilization that is possibly
vastly older than even that of Troy and Mycenæ. For those who reverence
the great antiquities, Candia and its pre-classic suburb are distinctly
worth visiting, and are unique among the sights of the ancient Hellenic
and pre-Hellenic world.
CORFU[63]
BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN
From whichever side our traveler draws near to Corfu, he comes from
lands where Greek influence and Greek colonization spread in ancient
times, but from which the Greek elements have been gradually driven out,
partly by the barbarism of the East, partly by the rival civilization of
the West. The land which we see is Hellenic in a sense in which not even
Sicily, not even the Great Hellas of Southern Italy, much less than the
Dalmatian archipelago, ever became Hellenic. Prom the first historic
glimpse which we get of Korkyra,[64] it is not merely a land fringed by
Hellenic colonies; it is a Hellenic island, the dominion of a single
Hellenic city, a territory the whole of whose inhabitants were, at the
beginning of recorded history, either actually Hellenic or so thoroughly
hellenized that no one thought of calling their Hellenic position in
question. Modern policy has restored it to its old position by making it
an integral portion of the modern Greek kingdom.
To the south of the present town, connected with it by a favorite walk
of the inhabitants of Corfu, a long and broad peninsula stretches boldly
into the sea. Both from land and from sea, it chiefly strikes the eye as
a wooded mass, thickly covered with the aged olive trees which form so
marked a feature in the scenery of the island. A few houses skirt the
base, growing on the land side into the suburb of Kastrades, which may
pass for a kind of connecting link between the old and the new city. And
from the midst of the wood, on the side nearest to the modern town,
stands out the villa of the King of the Greeks, the chief modern
dwelling on the site of ancient Korkyra. This peninsular hill, still
known as Palaiopolis, was the site of the old Corinthian city whose name
is so familiar to every reader of Thucydides. On either side of it lies
one of its two forsaken harbors. Between the old and the new city lies
the so-called harbor of Alkinoos; beyond the peninsula, stretching far
inland, lies the old Hyllaic harbor, bearing the name of one of the
three tribes which seem to have been essential to the being of a Dorian
commonwealth....
This last is the Corfu whose fate seems to have been to become the
possession of every power which has ruled in that quarter of the world,
with one exception. For fourteen hundred years the history of the island
is the history of endless changes of masters. We see it first a nominal
ally, then a direct possession, of Rome and of Constantinople; we then
see it formed into a separate Byzantine principality, conquered by the
Norman lord of Sicily, again a possession of the Empire, then a
momentary possession of Venice, again a possession of the Sicilian
kingdom under its Angevin kings, till at last it came back to Venetian
rule, and abode for four hundred years under the Lion of Saint Mark.
Then it became part of that first strange Septinsular Republic of which
the Czar was to be the protector and the Sultan the overlord. Then it
was a possession of France; then a member of the second Septinsular
Republic under the hardly disguised sovereignty of England; now at last
it is the most distant, but one of the most valuable, of the provinces
of the modern Greek kingdom.
Of the modern city there is but little to say. As becomes a city which
was so long a Venetian possession, the older part of it has much of the
character of an Italian town. It is rich in street arcades; but they
present but few architectural features; and we find none of those
various forms of ornamental window so common, not only in Venice and
Verona, but in Spalato, Cattaro, and Traü. The churches in the modern
city are architecturally worthless. They are interesting so far as they
will give to many their first impression of orthodox arrangement and
orthodox ritual. The few ecclesiastical antiquities of the place belong
to the elder city. The suburb of the lower slope of the hill contains
three churches, all of them small, but each of which has an interest of
its own.
RHODES[65]
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
Coming on deck the next morning at the fresh hour of sunrise, I found we
were at Rhodes. We lay just off the semicircular harbor, which is
clasped by walls--partly shaken down by earthquakes--which have noble,
round towers at each embracing end. Rhodes is, from the sea, one of the
most picturesque cities in the Mediterranean, altho it has little
remains of that ancient splendor which caused Strabo to prefer it to
Rome or Alexandria. The harbor wall, which is flanked on each side by
stout and round, stone windmills, extends up the hill, and becoming
double, surrounds the old town; these massive fortifications of the
Knights of St. John have withstood the onsets of enemies and the tremors
of the earth, and, with the ancient moat, excite the curiosity of this
so-called peaceful age of iron-clads and monster cannon. The city
ascends the slope of the hill and passes beyond the wall. Outside and on
the right toward the sea are a picturesque group of a couple of dozen
stone windmills, and some minarets and a church-tower or two. Higher up
the hill is sprinkled a little foliage, a few mulberry trees, and an
isolated palm or two; and, beyond, the island is only a mass of broken,
bold, rocky mountains. Of its forty-five miles of length, running
southwesterly from the little point on which the city stands, we can see
but little.
Whether or not Rhodes emerged from the sea at the command of Apollo, the
Greeks exprest by this tradition of its origin their appreciation of its
gracious climate, fertile soil, and exquisite scenery. From remote
antiquity it had fame as a seat of arts and letters, and of a vigorous
maritime power, and the romance of its early centuries was equaled if
not surpassed when it became the residence of the Knights of St. John. I
believe that the first impress of its civilization was given by the
Phoenicians; it was the home of the Dorian race before the time of the
Trojan War, and its three cities were members of the Dorian Hexapolis;
it was, in fact, a flourishing maritime confederacy strong enough to
send colonies to the distant Italian coast, and Sybaris and Parthenope
(modern Naples) perpetuated the luxurious refinement of their founders.
The city of Rhodes itself was founded about four hundred years before
Christ, and the splendor of its palaces, its statues and paintings gave
it a pre-eminence among the most magnificent cities of the ancient
world. If the earth of this island could be made to yield its buried
treasures as Cyprus has, we should doubtless have new proofs of the
influence of Asiatic civilization upon the Greeks, and be able to trace
in the early Doric arts and customs the superior civilization of the
Phoenicians, and of the masters of the latter in science and art, the
Egyptians.
Naturally, every traveler who enters the harbor of Rhodes hopes to see
the site of one of the seven wonders of the world, the Colossus. He is
free to place it on either mole at the entrance of the harbor, but he
comprehends at once that a statue which was only one hundred and five
feet high could never have extended its legs across the port. The fame
of this colossal bronze statue of the sun is disproportioned to the
period of its existence; it stood only fifty-six years after its
erection, being shaken down by an earthquake in the year 224 B.C., and
encumbering the ground with its fragments till the advent of the Moslem
conquerors.
Passing from the quay through a highly ornamented Gothic gateway, we
ascended the famous historic street, still called the Street of the
Knights, the massive houses of which have withstood the shocks of
earthquakes and the devastation of Saracenic and Turkish occupation.
This street, of whose palaces we have heard so much, is not imposing; it
is not wide, its solid stone houses are only two stories high, and their
fronts are now disfigured by cheap Arab balconies; but the façades are
gray with age. All along are remains of carved windows. Gothic
sculptured doorways and shields and coats of arms, crosses and armorial
legends, are set in the walls, partially defaced by time and the respect
of Suleiman for the Knights, have spared the mementos of their faith and
prowess. I saw no inscriptions that are intact, but made out upon one
shield the words "voluntas mei est." The carving is all beautiful.
We went through the silent streets, waking only echoes of the past, out
to the ruins of the once elegant church of St. John, which was shaken
down by a powder-explosion some thirty years ago, and utterly flattened
by an earthquake some years afterward. Outside the ramparts we met, and
saluted, with the freedom of travelers, a gorgeous Turk who was taking
the morning air, and whom our guide in bated breath said was the
governor. In this part of the town is the Mosque of Suleiman; in the
portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are
exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the
crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of
some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving,
remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is
saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of
charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to
come and cook their food; it is in decay now, and the rooks were sailing
about its old, round-topped chimneys.
There are no Hellenic remains in the city, and the only remembrance of
that past which we searched for was the antique coin, which has upon
one side the head of Medusa and upon the other the rose (rhoda) which
gave the town its name. The town was quiet; but in pursuit of this coin
in the Jews' quarter we started up swarms of traders, were sent from
Isaac to Jacob, and invaded dark shops and private houses where Jewish
women and children were just beginning to complain of the morning light.
Our guide was a jolly Greek, who was willing to awaken the whole town in
search of a silver coin. The traders, when we had routed them out, had
little to show in the way of antiquities. Perhaps the best
representative of the modern manufactures of Rhodes is the wooden shoe,
which is in form like the Damascus clog, but is inlaid with more taste.
The people whom we encountered in our morning walk were Greeks or Jews.
The morning atmosphere was delicious, and we could well believe that the
climate of Rhodes is the finest in the Mediterranean, and also that it
is the least exciting of cities.
MT. ATHOS[66]
BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
Beyond Thasos is the Thracian coast and Mt. Pangaus, and at the foot of
it Philippi, the Macedonian town where republican Rome fought its last
battle, where Cassius leaned upon his sword-point, believing everything
lost. Brutus transported the body of his comrade to Thasos and raised
for him a funeral pyre; and twenty days later, on the same field, met
again that specter of death which had summoned him to Philippi. It was
not many years after this victory of the Imperial power that a greater
triumph was won at Philippi, when Paul and Silas, cast into prison, sang
praises unto God at midnight, and an earthquake shook the house and
opened the prison doors.
In the afternoon we came in sight of snowy Mt. Athos, an almost
perpendicular limestone rock, rising nearly six thousand four hundred
feet out of the sea. The slender promontory which this magnificent
mountain terminates is forty miles long and has only an average breadth
of four miles. The ancient canal of Xerxes quite severed it from the
mainland. The peninsula, level at the canal, is a jagged stretch of
mountains (seamed by chasms), which rise a thousand, two thousand, four
thousand feet, and at last front the sea with the sublime peak of Athos,
the site of the most conspicuous beacon-fire of Agamemnon. The entire
promontory is, and has been since the time of Constantine, ecclesiastic
ground; every mountain and valley has its convent; besides the twenty
great monasteries are many pious retreats. All the sects of the Greek
church are here represented; the communities pay a tribute to the
Sultan, but the government is in the hands of four presidents, chosen by
the synod, which holds weekly sessions and takes the presidents,
yearly, from the monasteries in rotation. Since their foundation these
religious houses have maintained against Christians and Saracens an
almost complete independence, and preserved in their primitive
simplicity the manners and usages of the earliest foundations.
Here, as nowhere else in Europe or Asia, can one behold the
architecture, the dress, the habits of the Middle Ages. The good
devotees have been able to keep themselves thus in the darkness and
simplicity of the past by a rigorous exclusion of the sex always
impatient of monotony, to which all the changes of the world are due. No
woman, from the beginning till now, has ever been permitted to set foot
on the peninsula. Nor is this all; no female animal is suffered on the
holy mountain, not even a hen. I suppose, tho I do not know, that the
monks have an inspector of eggs, whose inherited instincts of aversion
to the feminine gender enable him to detect and reject all those in
which lurk the dangerous sex. Few of the monks eat meat, half the days
of the year are fast days, they practise occasionally abstinence from
food for two or three days, reducing their pulses to the feeblest
beating, and subduing their bodies to a point that destroys their value
even as spiritual tabernacles. The united community is permitted to keep
a guard of fifty Christian soldiers, and the only Moslem on the island
is the solitary Turkish officer who represents the Sultan; his position
can not be one generally coveted by the Turks, since the society of
women is absolutely denied him. The libraries of Mt. Athos are full of
unarranged manuscripts, which are probably mainly filled with the
theologic rubbish of the controversial ages, and can scarcely be
expected to yield again anything so valuable as the Tishendorf
Scriptures.
At sunset we were close under Mt. Athos, and could distinguish the
buildings of the Laura Convent, amid the woods beneath the frowning
cliff. And now was produced the apparition of a sunset, with this
towering mountain cone for a centerpiece, that surpassed all our
experience and imagination. The sea was like satin for smoothness,
absolutely waveless, and shone with the colors of changeable silk, blue,
green, pink, and amethyst. Heavy clouds gathered about the sun, and from
behind them he exhibited burning spectacles, magnificent fireworks, vast
shadow-pictures, scarlet cities, and gigantic figures stalking across
the sky. From one crater of embers he shot up a fan-like flame that
spread to the zenith and was reflected on the water. His rays lay along
the sea in pink, and the water had the sheen of iridescent glass. The
whole sea for leagues was like this; even Lemnos and Samothrace lay in a
dim pink and purple light in the east. There were vast clouds in huge
walls, with towers and battlements, and in all fantastic shapes--one a
gigantic cat with a preternatural tail, a cat of doom four degrees long.
All this was piled about Mt. Athos, with its sharp summit of snow, its
dark sides of rock.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] From "Pictures from Italy." Dickens made his trip to Italy in 1844.
[2] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
by permission of, the publishers. Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
Translated by John Durand.
[3] Begun in 1386. Its architects were Germans and Frenchmen.
[4] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
Translated by John Durand.
[5] From "The Story of Pisa." Published by E. P. Dutton & Co.
[6] From "Pictures From Italy."
[7] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
[8] From "Travels in Italy."
[9] A German friend with whom Goethe was traveling.
[10] From "Pictures from Italy."
[11] From "Italy: Rome and Naples." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
Translated by John Durand.
[12] This term designates a road built along the rocky shore of a
seaside, being a figurative application of the architectural term
"cornice."--Translator's note.
[13] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
[14] From a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, written in 1819.
[15] From "Pictures from Italy."
[16] From "Journeys in Italy." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Brentano's. Copyright, 1902.
[17] The memoir writer.
[18] From "Journeys in Italy." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Brentano's. Copyright, 1902.
[19] From "Unknown Switzerland." Published by James Pott & Co.
Politically, Lake Lugano is part Swiss and part Italian.
[20] The St. Gothard.
[21] From a letter to Thomas Love Peacock, written in 1818.
[22] From "The Spell of the Italian Lakes." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co. Copyright, 1907.
[23] From "Remarks on Several Parts of Italy in the Years 1701, 1702,
1703."
[24] In the town are now about 1,500 people; in the whole territory of
the republic, 9,500. San Marino lies about fourteen miles southwest from
Rimini.
[25] At the present time, fourteen hundred years; so that San Marino is
the oldest as well as the smallest republic in the world.
[26] From "French and Italian Note-Books." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, Houghton, Mifflin Co., publishers of Hawthorne's
works. Copyright, 1871, 1883, 1889.
[27] The author's son, Julian Hawthorne.
[28] From "Italian Cities." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1900.
[29] From "Italy: Florence and Venice." By special arrangement with, and
by permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1869.
[30] From "Historical and Architectural Sketches: Chiefly Italian."
Published by the Macmillan Co.
[31] From "Cities of Southern Italy and Sicily."
[32] From "Letters of a Traveler."
[33] From "Historical and Architectural Sketches: Chiefly Italian."
Published by the Macmillan Co.
[34] From "Sicily: The Garden of the Mediterranean." By special
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co.
Copyright, 1909.
[35] From "The History of Sicily." Published by the Macmillan Co.
[36] The Greek name for Girgenti.
[37] From "Travels in Italy."
[38] From "Travels in Italy."
[39] From "Sicily: The Garden of the Mediterranean." By special
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, L. C. Page & Co.
Copyright, 1909.
[40] From "Vacation Days in Greece." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1903.
[41] From "Constantinople." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Henry Holt & Co. Copyright, 1875.
[42] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[43] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons.
[44] From the "Description of Greece." Pausanias was a Greek traveler
and geographer who lived in the second century A.D.--in the time of the
Roman emperors, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.
[45] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[46] The Venetian commander who bombarded the Parthenon in 1687.
[47] Edward Dodwell (1767-1832), an English traveler and archeologist,
notable for his investigations in Greece when it had been little
explored, and author of various records of his work.--Author's note.
[48] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[49] This very pattern, in mahogany, with cane seats, and adapted, like
all Greek chairs, for loose cushions, was often used in Chippendale
work, and may still be found in old mansions furnished at that
epoch.--Author's note.
[50] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[51] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons.
[52] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[53] From "Greece and the Aegean Islands." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1907.
[54] From the "Description of Greece." Pausanias wrote in the time of
Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.
[55] From "Vacation Days in Greece." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1903.
[56] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1875.
Salonica, formerly Turkish territory, was added to the territory of
Greece in 1913, under the terms of the treaty of peace that followed the
Balkan war against Turkey.
[57] From "In the Levant." By special arrangement with, and by
permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1875.
[58] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons.
[59] From "Travels in Greece and Russia," Published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons.
[60] From "Rambles and Studies in Greece." Published by the Macmillan
Co.
[61] From "Travels in Greece and Russia." Published by G. P. Putnam's
Sons.
[62] From "Greece and the Ægean Islands." By special arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright,
1907.