The First Sights in Athens.
9. The Morning Crowds bound for Athens.—It is very early in the
morning. The sun has just pushed above the long ridge of Hymettus,
sending a slanting red bar of light across the Attic plain, and
touching the opposite slopes of Ægaleos with livid fire. Already,
however, life is stirring outside the city. Long since, little market
boats have rowed across the narrow strait from Salamis, bringing the
island farmer’s produce, and other farmers from the plain and the
mountain slopes have started for market. In the ruddy light the marble
temples on the lofty Acropolis rising ahead of these hurrying rustics
are standing out clearly; the spear and helmet of the great brazen
statue of the Athena Promachos are flashing from the noble citadel, as
a kind of day beacon, beckoning onward toward the city. From the
Peiræus, the harbor town, a confused hum of mariners lading and
unlading vessels is even now rising, but we cannot turn ourselves
thither. Our route is to follow the farmers bound for market.
The most direct road from the Peiræus to Athens is hidden indeed, for
it leads between the towering ramparts of the “Long Walls,” two mighty
barriers which run parallel almost four miles from the inland city to
the harbor, giving a guarded passage in wartime and making Athens safe
against starvation from any land blockade; but there is an outside road
leading also to Athens from the western farmsteads, and this we can
conveniently follow. Upon this route the crowd which one meets is
certainly not aristocratic, but it is none the less Athenian. Here
goes a drover, clad in skins, his legs wound with woolen bands in lieu
of stockings; before him and his wolf-like dog shambles a flock of
black sheep or less manageable goats, bleating and baaing as they are
propelled toward market. After him there may come an unkempt,
long-bearded farmer flogging on a pack ass or a mule attached to a
clumsy cart with solid wheels, and laden with all kinds of market
produce. The roadway, be it said, is not good, and all carters have
their troubles; therefore, there is a deal of gesticulating and profane
invocation of Hermes and all other gods of traffic; for, early as it
is, the market place is already filling, and every delay promises a
loss. There are still other companions bound toward the city:
countrymen bearing cages of poultry; others engaged in the uncertain
calling of driving pigs; swarthy Oriental sailors, with rings in their
ears, bearing bales of Phœnician goods from the Peiræus; respectable
country gentlemen, walking gravely in their best white mantles and
striving to avoid the mud and contamination; and perhaps also a small
company of soldiers, just back from foreign service, passes, clattering
shields and spear staves.
[Illustration: Peasant going to Market]
10. The Gate and the Street Scenes.—The crowds grow denser as everybody
approaches the frequented “Peiræus Gate,” for nearly all of Attica
which lies within easy reach of Athens has business in the Market Place
every morning. On passing the gate a fairly straight way leads through
the city to the market, but progress for the multitude becomes slow.
If it is one of the main thoroughfares, it is now very likely to be
almost blocked with people. There are few late risers at Athens; the
Council of Five Hundred[*], the huge Jury Courts, and the Public
Assembly (if it has met to-day[+]) are appointed to gather at sunrise.
The plays in the theater, which, however, are given only on certain
festivals, begin likewise at sunrise. The philosophers say that “the
man who would accomplish great things must be up while yet it is dark.”
Athenians, therefore, are always awake and stirring at an hour when
men of later ages and more cold and foggy climes will be painfully
yawning ere getting out of bed.
[*] The “Boule,” the great standing committee of the Athenian people to
aid the magistrates in the government.
[+] In which case, of course, the regular courts and the Council would
hardly meet.
[Illustration: At the Street Fountain]
The Market Place attracts the great masses, but by no means all; hither
and thither bevies of sturdy slave girls, carrying graceful pitchers on
their heads, are hurrying towards the fountains which gush cool water
at most of the street corners. Theirs is a highly necessary task, for
few or no houses have their own water supply; and around each fountain
one can see half a dozen by no means slatternly maidens, splashing and
flirting the water one at another, while they wait their turn with the
pitchers, and laugh and exchange banter with the passing farmers’ lads.
Many in the street crowds are rosy-cheeked schoolboys, walking
decorously, if they are lads of good breeding, and blushing modestly
when they are greeted by their fathers’ acquaintances. They do not
loiter on the way. Close behind, carrying their writing tablets, follow
the faithful ‘pedagogues,’ the body-servants appointed to conduct them
to school, give them informal instruction, and, if need be, correct
their faults in no painless manner. Besides the water maids and the
schoolboys, from the innumerable house doors now opening the respective
masters are stepping forth—followed by one, two, or several serving
varlets, as many as their wealth affords. All these join in the crowd
entering from the country. “Athenian democracy” always implies a
goodly amount of hustling and pushing. No wonder the ways are a busy
sight!
11. The Streets and House Fronts of Athens.—Progress is slower near the
Market Place because of the extreme narrowness of the streets. They are
only fifteen feet wide or even less,—intolerable alleys a later age
would call them,—and dirty to boot. Sometimes they are muddy, more
often extremely dusty. Worse still, they are contaminated by great
accumulations of filth; for the city is without an efficient sewer
system or regular scavengers. Even as the crowd elbows along, a house
door will frequently open, an ill-favored slave boy show his head, and
with the yell, “Out of the way!” slap a bucket of dirty water into the
street. There are many things to offend the nose as well as the eyes
of men of a later race. It is fortunate indeed that the Athenians are
otherwise a healthy folk, or they would seem liable to perpetual
pestilence; even so, great plagues have in past years harried the
city[*].
[*] The most fearful thereof was the great plague of 430 B.C. (during
the Peloponnesian War), which nearly ruined Athens.
The first entrance to Athens will thus bring to a stranger, full of the
city’s fame and expectant of meeting objects of beauty at every turn,
almost instant disappointment. The narrow, dirty, ill-paved streets
are also very crooked. One can readily be lost in a labyrinth of
filthy little lanes the moment one quits the few main thoroughfares.
High over head, to be sure, the red crags of the Acropolis may be
towering, crowned with the red, gold, and white tinted marble of the
temples, but all around seems only monotonous squalor. The houses seem
one continuous series of blank walls; mostly of one, occasionally of
two stories, and with flat roofs. These walls are usually spread over
with some dirty gray or perhaps yellow stucco. For most houses, the
only break in the street walls are the simple doors, all jealously
barred and admitting no glance within. There are usually no street
windows, if the house is only one story high. If it has two stories, a
few narrow slits above the way may hint that here are the apartments
for the slaves or women. There are no street numbers. There are often
no street names. “So-and-so lives in such-and-such a quarter, near the
Temple of Heracles;” that will enable you to find a householder, after
a few tactful questions from the neighbors; and after all, Athens is a
relatively small city[*] (as great cities are reckoned), very closely
built, and her regular denizens do not feel the need of a directory.
[* ]Every guess at the population of Athens rests on mere conjecture;
yet, using the scanty data which we possess, it seems possible that
_the population of all Attica_ at the height of its prosperity was
about _200,000 free persons_ (including the _metics_—resident
foreigners without citizenship); and a rather smaller number of
slaves—say 150,000 or less. Of this total of some 350,000, probably
something under one half resided in the city of Athens during times of
peace, the rest in the outlying farms and villages. _Athens may be
imagined as a city of about 150,000_—possibly a trifle more. During
serious wars there would be of course a general removal into the city.
So the crowd elbows its way onward: now thinning, now gaining, but the
main stream always working towards the Market Place.
12. The Simplicity of Athenian Life.—It is clear we are entering a
city where nine tenths of what the twentieth century will consider the
“essential conveniences” of life are entirely lacking; where men are
trying to be civilized—or, as the Greeks would say, to lay hold upon
“the true, the beautiful, and the good,” without even the absolute
minimum of those things which people of a later age will believe
separate a “civilized man” from a “barbarian.” The gulf between old
Athens and, for instance, new Chicago is greater than is readily
supposed[*]. It is easy enough to say that the Athenians lacked such
things as railways, telephones, gas, grapefruit, and cocktails. All
such matters we realize were not known by our fathers and grandfathers,
and we are not yet so removed from _them_ that we cannot transport
ourselves in imagination back to the world of say 1820 A.D.; but the
Athenians are far behind even our grandfathers. When we investigate,
we will find conditions like these—houses absolutely without plumbing,
beds without sheets, rooms as hot or as cold as the outer air, only far
more drafty. We must cross rivers without bridges; we must fasten our
clothes (or rather our “two pieces of cloth”) with two pins instead of
with a row of buttons; we must wear sandals without stockings (or go
barefoot); must warm ourselves over a pot of ashes; judge plays or
lawsuits on a cold winter morning sitting in the open air; we must
study poetry with very little aid from books, geography without real
maps, and politics without newspapers; and lastly, “we must learn how
to be civilized without being comfortable!”[+]
[*] See the very significant comment on the physical limitations of the
old Athenian life in Zimmern’s “_The Greek Commonwealth_,” p. 209.
[+] Zimmern, _ibid_.
Or, to reverse the case: we must understand that an Athenian would
have pronounced our boasted “civilization” hopelessly artificial, and
our life so dependent on outward material props and factors as to be
scarcely worth the living. He would declare himself well able to live
happily under conditions where the average American or Englishman would
be cold, semi-starved, and miserable. He would declare that _his_ woe
or happiness was retained far more under his own control than we retain
ours, and that we are worthy of contemptuous pity rather than of
admiration, because we have refined our civilization to such a point
that the least accident, _e.g._ the suspension of rail traffic for a
few days, can reduce a modern city to acute wretchedness.
Probably neither the twentieth century in its pride, nor the fourth
century B.C. in its contempt, would have all the truth upon its
side.[*] The difference in viewpoint, however, must still stand.
Preëminently Athens may be called the “City of the Simple Life.”
Bearing this fact in mind, we may follow the multitude and enter the
Marketplace; or, to use the name that stamps it as a peculiarly Greek
institution,—the Agora.
[*] The mere matter of _climate_ would of course have to come in as a
serious factor. The Athenian would have found his life becoming
infinitely more complex along the material side when he tried to live
like a “_kalos-k’agathos_”—_i.e._ a “noble and good man,” or a
“gentleman,”—in a land where the thermometer might sink to 15° below
zero Fahrenheit (or even lower) from time to time during the winter.