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[Illustration: <caption>]
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[Illustration: BRONZE CHARIOTEER FOUND AT DELPHI]
VACATION DAYS
IN GREECE
BY
RUFUS B. RICHARDSON
FORMERLY DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL OF
ARCHÆOLOGY, ATHENS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published, September, 1903
TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK
To
MY SON
THE COMPANION OF
MY TRAVELS
PREFACE
During a residence of eleven years in Greece I have formed the habit
of writing to certain periodicals descriptions of my journeys. The
occasion for making a book out of these articles was the suggestion on
the part of many members of the American School of Classical Studies,
at Athens, who had shared these journeys with me, that I should do
so, and so make the descriptions accessible to them. I yielded to
this suggestion all the more readily from the consideration that my
wanderings have taken me into many nooks and corners not usually
visited by those whose stay in the country is short.
Having seen the sunrise from most of the mountain-tops of the country,
having forded many of its rivers, and having caught the indescribable
color at early dawn and at evening twilight, from the deck of coasting
steamers, all along these fascinating shores, I felt it only right that
I should try to convey to others, less fortunate than myself, some
picture, however inadequate, of all this experience and enjoyment. All
that is here set down is, however, but a part of a larger picture that
is ever present in my memory.
For the most part I have avoided what has been most frequently
described. Athens, Olympia, and the much-visited Argive plain, I have
not touched upon, because I did not wish to swell the book by telling
thrice-told tales. I tell of what I have most enjoyed, in the hope that
readers may feel with me the charm of this poet's land, which has, more
than any other, "infinite riches in a little room."
The slight alterations that I have made in the original form of the
descriptions was made with the design of bringing them, in a measure,
up to the present time. I have also arranged them on a geographical
thread, running from the Ionian Islands, through Northern Greece to the
Peloponnesus. The two larger articles, on Sicily and Dalmatia, are not
simply tacked on. They belong to the subject, inasmuch as Sicily was
an important part of Hellas, as the Greeks called their country, and
inasmuch as Greek colonies once skirted the greater part of the coast
of Dalmatia.
In regard to the spelling of proper names, I have tried to shun
unusual appearances. But I have great objection to changing all the
Greek endings in _os_ into _us_, just because the Romans did so. I
also object to changing the Greek _k_ into _c_ where it will surely
be pronounced as an _s_. In the case of names that have become a part
of our English speech, I have, however, admitted these changes. The
result may not seem satisfactory, on account of the lack of a rigid
system; but I trust that it will be pardoned.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CORFU 3
A DAY IN ITHACA 13
DELPHI, THE SANCTUARY OF GREECE 24
DODONA 34
THE BICYCLE IN GREECE 47
ACARNANIA 54
ÆTOLIA 65
THERMOPYLÆ 79
THESSALY 90
AN ASCENT OF THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN IN GREECE 104
A JOURNEY FROM ATHENS TO ERETRIA 111
TAYGETOS AND KITHÆRON 119
STYX AND STYMPHALUS 128
AN UNUSUAL APPROACH TO EPIDAUROS 140
MESSENE AND SANDY PYLOS 151
A TOUR IN SICILY 173
DALMATIA 208
ILLUSTRATIONS
Bronze Charioteer Found at Delphi Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
Corfu. Mouth of the Old Harbor with "Ship of Ulysses" 10
Ithaca. Polis Bay from the North 20
Temple at Stratos 56
Thermon. Temple of Apollo in the Foreground 72
Thermopylæ. From the West 86
Meteora Monasteries 100
Sparta, with Taygetos in the Background 120
The Stygian Pool 130
Theatre at Epidauros 146
Bay of Navarino, with Old Pylos to the Right and
Sphakteria to the Left 158
Stone Quarry at Syracuse Called Latomia dei Cappucini 186
So-called Concordia Temple at Girgenti 194
Cattaro 214
Spalato. Palace of Diocletian. South Front 222
Clissa 234
MAP OF SICILY AND DALMATIA 173
MAP OF GREECE _at end of volume_
VACATION DAYS IN GREECE
CORFU
It is great good fortune to spend a week in Corfu on the way to Greece.
Seeing it from one end to the other, wandering through its olive
forests and vineyards, brings on a mild, or, in some cases, a wild,
intoxication without wine. What words fit the surrounding beauty but
"Islands of the Blessed," "Elysium," "Garden of Eden," "Paradise"? It
is not Heaven, after all, for one sees here the poor, lame, blind,
begging for small alms; but, as long as earth holds such corners as
Corfu, it is not all cursed.
To the traveller who has felt the intoxication of such a region, and
is impelled to report something of it, the impotence of words comes
home with special force. Naught but the painter's art seems adequate to
report Corfu. And, furthermore, painter as well as poet might here well
feel the weakness of his art. It is a great boon to have had this realm
of beauty brought upon the retina of the eye, and so communicated to
the soul.
One may, perhaps, be allowed to group the impressions that Corfu makes,
and report them with a plainness that aspires only to the office of a
photograph, resigning the attempt at coloring.
Before the eye lies one Corfu--the Corfu of to-day; but before the
mind are brought two others--the Kerkyra of Greek history and the
Scheria of Homer. The two latter compete with the former, and refuse
the present beautiful scene a monopoly of attention.
But, first, to be just to the present Corfu. The traveller who has
never been east of Italy, which was my case at the time of my first
visit in 1890, feels that he is here passing for the first time the
bounds between Europe and the Orient. The streets and squares of the
city, which contains a population of about 30,000--about one-third
of the population of the whole island--swarm with figures clad in
the most wonderful costumes, men and women vying with one another in
display of colors. The Corfiotes themselves contribute largely to this
display of costumes. From across the narrow strait come from Epirus
many Albanians, with their big white skirts and their kingly air, some
for trade and a quick return, and some for a longer stay. From the same
quarter come the no less picturesque people, partly Greek and partly
Wallachian--but who can give the component parts of the blood of these
people of Epirus?--who, having attempted to secure the consummation of
what the Congress of Berlin decreed, incorporation with Greece, were
treated as Turks usually treat insurgents, and were then living as
refugees in Corfu, awaiting the hour when Moslem rule shall recede
from the shores of Europe. Some of these men's costumes are ragged and
dirty, but with what an air the men walk in them. It is not a swagger,
but a king's gait. A well-dressed European gentleman can as little
compete with these men for attention as the Berlin palace can compete
with the picturesque ruins of Heidelberg. The clergy, who seem numerous
enough here to preach the Gospel to every creature, with their long
black gowns and high stiff caps, make quite a feature in the throng.
The military officers are also numerous and brilliantly dressed, but
are too much like ordinary Europeans to attract particular notice.
The vegetation here is also Oriental--oranges, lemons, figs, forests of
cactus and giant aloes abound. The four or five million olive-trees,
many sixty feet high, are the characteristic features of the island.
They form a beautiful background for the tall, dark-green cypresses.
But the vine presses hard upon the olive. It is great good fortune
to be here in the time of the grape harvest, even if one must
miss the oranges and the olives. One day in September I walked to
Palæokastritza, an old cloister on a rock looking out on the Ionian
Sea, sixteen miles from the city. The way was through a continuous
vineyard full of laborers. At this season of the year there is hardly
a drop of running water in the island. There are places where springs
and brooks and even rivers have been and will be again, but there are
none there now. The water in the wells and cisterns looks suspicious.
But one has a substitute for water that is just about as cheap. For
copper coin of the value of two cents a woman gave me a pile of grape
clusters, enough for four men. On my return I managed to signify with
my poor Greek to a man riding on a load of grapes that I would like to
change places with him. For three miles I rode stretched out on the
top of crates full of grapes, resting my tired feet, eating, by the
permission of the driver, from the top of the crates, while from the
bottom the precious juice oozed out and trickled into the dusty road. I
felt that I was playing Dionysos. Then it was that the vintagers, many
women and few men, came trooping picturesquely from the fields. They
looked so happy that it seemed as if the contagion of joy rested in the
vine. It seemed as if a touch of music would have converted them into a
Dionysiac chorus.
If Corfu had no classical history, it would still be historically
interesting. It has been spared that curse which rested so long on the
rest of Greece--Turkish occupation. The Turks dashed their forces in
vain in two memorable sieges against its rock forts. The high degree of
culture here, as compared with the rest of Greece, outside of Athens,
is partly due to this exemption. But there have been stimulating
influences from without. Rome, Byzantium, Naples, Venice, and England
have held sway here. The rule of Venice, to which the Corfiotes gave
themselves voluntarily, as they had formerly done to Rome, lasted
nearly six hundred years, with the interruption of the Anjou episode.
This rule was mild and beneficent. It was the Venetians who built the
fortifications which kept off the Turks, and which still form, though
to a less degree than twenty-five years ago, the characteristic feature
in the aspect of the city.
From Waterloo to 1864 England exercised a protectorate over this and
the six other Ionian Islands. Ten successive Lord High Commissioners,
of whom Gladstone was one, and whose monuments profusely deck the
esplanade, represented here the majesty of England. The English built
the present fine system of roads--paid for, of course, in Ionian
money. A kindly feeling prevails toward England because she yielded
to the strong desire of the inhabitants for union with the kingdom of
Greece. But the fact that the English, on their departure, blew up the
principal fortification of the harbor on the island Vido, and carried
away all the guns from the other forts, left a sting. The dismantled
fort was paid for in Ionian money, but the exigencies of European
politics demanded the dismantling. Austria had as much to say about
that as England.
But, sweeping away the name of Corfu, which arose in the Middle Ages,
and transferring ourselves back of all this foreign occupation and
centuries of semi-barbarism, let us introduce ourselves to the Greek
Kerkyra of Thucydides. Passing southward, a half a mile or so from the
esplanade of the present city, one comes along an isthmus between two
old harbors to an elevated peninsula, on which now stands the King's
villa in a beautiful garden. Here one is overpowered by historic
associations. Here lay the proud Greek colony established by Corinth
in 734 <sc>B.C.</sc>, a colony that first set the example of filial
ingratitude, and, feeling itself stronger than the mother city, joined
battle with her and defeated her in the first great naval battle of
Greeks against Greeks, in 665 B.C. From this rising ground the eye
dimly discerns in the distance, near the mainland opposite the southern
end of the island, the Sybota Islands, where the later great naval
battle between mother city and colony in the presence of an Athenian
fleet gave the occasion for the dreadful Peloponnesian war. From this
inner harbor, now abandoned and still, nearly silted up and yearly
submitting to the encroachment of vines upon its borders, the proud
fleet of Alcibiades and Nicias sailed for Syracuse. It was the alliance
with Kerkyra, the key to the voyage to Sicily, that lured the Athenians
to that ruin.
Little of this Kerkyra remains above ground. Perhaps much may yet be
found below. About twelve years ago excavations by Carapanos laid
bare a great quantity of terra-cottas. Perhaps it was a terra-cotta
manufactory that he discovered. The ruins of an old Doric temple lie on
the surface of the ground near a spring in an olive grove on the side
of the peninsula looking toward the mainland. The situation, 100 feet
above the strait, among the olives and near an ancient fountain, makes
one feel that he could have joined in doing honor to the dryads and
naiads with the throng that used to meet here. One of the antiquarians
of Corfu has lately advanced the view that these remains are those not
of a temple but of a bath. Blessed bathers!
It was not bad taste for the King of Greece to put his gardens on the
spot of the Gardens of Alkinoos. If I were King of Greece I would try
to compound with my subjects to take the business of ruling off my
hands and let me keep my Corfu home. It is no wonder that Elizabeth,
the Empress of Austria, sought relief from her troubles in her villa on
the other side of the inner harbor.
When a part of the Venetian works was being removed in 1843, where
the isthmus between the two old harbors joins the present city,
there was found a circular monument about twenty feet in diameter,
ending in a flat cone, and containing an inscription running almost
around the layer of stones just below the coping. It reads thus:
"This is the monument of Menekrates, son of Tlasias, of Œantheia by
birth. The people erected it in his memory, "for he served them
well as _proxenos_" (consul) "and he perished in the sea." This with
more, making six hexameters, now much more obscured than when first
discovered and copied, I made out by the help of a manual of epigraphy
in the rays of the sun just rising over the mountains of Epirus. The
archaic forms of the letters make it a remarkable inscription, which
may be dated as far back as 600 B. C. As I read this inscription,
a century older than the Persian war, and two centuries before
Thucydides, I thought, here surely one is in contact with Greek
antiquity.
The next day, in an upper room of the building used for both library
and high school, in company with the director, Professor Romanos,
and Professor Papageorgios, a gentleman who deserves the title
_philoxenos_, I read the other inscriptions of Corfu which have not
been lost in the labyrinths of the British Museum or elsewhere. Some
of these are of about the same age as that on the Menekrates monument,
but very clear as well as exceedingly interesting on account of the old
forms of the letters. They are mostly tomb inscriptions, telling of the
grief which all the world has felt over the loss of the brave and the
good.
[Illustration: CORFU. MOUTH OF THE OLD HARBOR WITH "SHIP OF ULYSSES"]
One need not linger too long over Kerkyra. It is a state which we
cannot love. We cannot forget that before Salamis it held its fleet off
the southern point of the Peloponnesus, waiting to see which way the
great struggle was going to incline. When Athens concluded the alliance
with her at the opening of the Peloponnesian war, many at Athens
felt it to be an unholy alliance, and that the burden of hatred thus
shouldered was almost a counterbalance to the winning of the second
navy in Greece. Thucydides draws an awful picture of the decimating
feuds, which seemed tinged with barbaric fury, between aristocracy and
commons. In his pages the island vanishes from view bathed in blood.
Long before the time of Thucydides the natives of this island stoutly
maintained their descent from the oar-loving Phæacians of Homer. Their
land was Scheria, the home of Alkinoos. This belief, in which they took
so much pride, really made them great as a naval power; and he who
would to-day take away the charm of Homeric tradition from this land,
which has been made by it into holy ground, would work it a greater
injury than one who should despoil it of its olive-trees. Of course,
our enjoyment of Homer does not depend on localizing his story:
"_Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben
Das allein veraltet nie._"
And yet the story of the Odyssey, localized here from gray antiquity,
one likes, while here, to believe; to read as if there had been nobody
to bring up any objections to its geography, or to reason about its
geography at all--to read it, in short, with Corfiote eyes and Corfiote
fancy.
Does not the very ship which Poseidon turned into stone, because it
conveyed Ulysses home, still stand at the mouth of the old inner
harbor? Yesterday I passed the bridge over the Potamo, where, according
to Gregorovius, Ulysses was cast ashore, and tumbled out of the
stream that had received him to sink exhausted in his long sleep
under the double tree. I can almost go farther here than I am asked
to go. Methinks that under yonder tree, which looks as if it might
count almost any number of centuries, the sturdy swimmer fell asleep
and awoke so sweetly. It does not matter that another place near the
entrance of the old harbor has come to honor in the mouths of the
natives as the spot of the meeting between Ulysses and Nausikaa. Our
mood adapts itself kindly to either locality. Somewhere hereabouts we
will let the sweet story have a local habitation. Let fancy for the
hour hold sway. Thus we are perchance brought nearer to the clever
voyager, the beautiful maid, the garrulous old king guided by his wife
in the midst of his sailor people. Ah! the fiction of Homer holds the
mind in more abiding thrall than the facts of Thucydides.
A DAY IN ITHACA
Ithaca was the first of the great Homeric places of renown to "swim
into my ken," if it can be said to have swum into my ken when I saw
it by the light of the full moon in sailing from Corfu to Patras.
But I became acquainted with Troy and Mycenæ long before I really
appropriated Ithaca. This I got by the method of gradual approach, a
method which has a certain charm only granted to one who is privileged
to reside a series of years near his goal.
On a journey to Dodona, the year after this moonlight view, our
steamer, in passing from Patras to Prevesa, put in at Bathy, officially
called Ithaca, on the east side of the island; and I had just one hour
ashore which was more tantalizing than satisfactory as far as studying
the topography of Ithaca was concerned; and yet one may believe that he
sees in the beautiful bay and harbor the very harbor of Phorkys, where
Ulysses landed after his twenty years' absence. The cave of the Nymphs,
where the jolly Phæacians laid him asleep with his treasures about him
was not visible; but we were told that this is now farther up the hill.
After an interval of several years, in which I had passed Ithaca
several times in the night, I set foot on it again in a more
satisfactory fashion. Taking refuge from the August heat of Athens in
the Ionian Islands, I was spending a few days in Argostoli, the chief
town of Kephallenia, and seized this opportunity to approach Ithaca
from the back side, so to speak. A drive of four hours brought us clear
across from the west side of Kephallenia to Samos on the east side,
over the high backbone of the island. During the last hour of the
journey, the descent, as "the sun was setting, and all the ways were
growing shady," our eyes were fastened upon Ithaca lying peacefully in
the bosom of Kephallenia--a beautiful sight.
As we had planned for only one day in Ithaca, we determined to make it
a long one, and started from Samos in a sail-boat at half-past two in
the morning; but, although the sail was filled most of the time, so
gentle was the breeze that, even supplemented by the work of the oars,
it did not bring us to Ithaca until half-past five. My boy of twelve
years, companion of many of my wanderings in Greece, was asleep most of
the way, but broke the parallel with Ulysses by waking up when the keel
touched the shore.
We landed at the foot of Mount Aëtos, on the top of which Gell and
Schliemann place the city of Ulysses, but deferred climbing this until
we might see whether our time and strength held out, and pushed at
once for our main goal, some ruins near Stauros, at the northern end of
the island, nine or ten miles distant. We followed all the way, with
an occasional cut-off, the fine carriage road made by the English,
to whose occupation the Ionian Islands owe most of their good roads,
notably the one on which we had crossed from Argostoli to Samos, which
required much difficult and expensive engineering. The road crossed
the backbone of Ithaca twice at points where this is somewhat low; but
in the last seven miles it followed the western shore about half way
up the steep slope which runs down into the sea, leaving almost no
strip of level coast. In fact, Ithaca smiles in very few spots, being
nearly all mountain, just the country to get attached to. Ulysses
naturally enough calls it "rugged, but a good bringer-up of boys,"
and adds: "I never could find anything sweeter than my native land."
In one respect it is doubtless somewhat changed. As we passed along
the foot of the principal mountain of the island, a bare height of
over 2,600 feet, I asked a peasant its name, and was glad to hear
him answer "Neriton." But this is now as undeserving of its constant
Homeric epithet of "leaf-shaking" as is Zakynthos of its epithet of
"woody." The denudation of the Greek mountains is a sad theme, and is
most strikingly illustrated in the Ionian Islands. Mount Aenos, over
5,000 feet high, on Kephallenia, had until about the beginning of the
present century its slopes covered with large pines, which were known
in all the world as _Abies cephalonica_. But at that time a destructive
fire swept away nearly half of this treasure; and two years ago about
one-third of the remainder went in the same way. What has occurred
here goes on every summer all over Greece; but the loss is in no case
so conspicuous as in this. I have seen Pentelicus burning for three
days--a brilliant illumination for Athens--and, in sailing from Poros
to Nauplia in midsummer, I counted twenty-six fires on the mountains of
Peloponnesus; but all these could do nothing more in the way of damage
than to help on a little the aridity into which Attica and the Argolid
are helplessly sinking. Where it scarcely ever rains during six months
of the year, the grass and weeds become like tinder, and a fire once
started from some shepherd's carelessness is difficult to stop.
Water was rather scanty on our road, and what we got came from
cisterns. Springs are, indeed, rare in Ithaca. But when we came to
the famous spring Melanhydro (Blackwater), near Stauros, in the hope
of finding something fine, we found the water not only warm, but
having three-quarters of a very ripe tomato in it, as well as pieces
of a big cactus stalk, and rather full of little pollywogs besides.
The proper care of springs is something which the Greeks do not seem
to appreciate. I have seen the famous spring Pirene on Acro-Corinth
treated even worse than this.
But if the water which we needed for our eighteen-mile walk in the
August sun was bad, we found consolation in grapes. I suspect, though
I cannot verify it from actual weighing, that my regular allowance of
grapes in an August or September day's walk in Greece is ten pounds.
One rarely pays anything for these, inasmuch as they are much cheaper
than New England huckleberries. While it is considered _contra bonos
mores_ to take them without asking, peasants seem always glad to give
them. On the hottest part of the return journey, as we stopped at a
house and asked for grapes, the man of the house said that his vineyard
was two kilometres distant, but insisted upon going to it at once. This
I could not allow, whereupon, in spite of my protests, he got upon the
very top round of a rickety ladder, leaning against the wall of his
house, and, at the risk of his neck, pulled down from a vine running
over a high trellis two clusters which he feared were not ripe, as
proved to be the case. In the meantime his wife had been with great
difficulty restrained from setting before us eggs, bread, and cheese,
which we refused on the ground that we had just eaten. To be strictly
truthful, I ought to state that, not being enough used to the Greek
language to discriminate fine shades of meaning, I am not sure but that
the man meant to send his wife the two kilometres in question. Greek
custom would incline me to this supposition.
Although Ithaca is noted for its hospitality, this treatment is not
mentioned as an isolated, but as a typical case of Greek hospitality.
I doubt whether there is any people so hospitable as the Greek. The
longer I live here and the more I travel about, the more I am impressed
with this hospitality. It is not only on this rugged island where men
live by "wresting little dues of wheat and wine and oil," "an ill-used
race of men," one might be tempted to call them, that the stranger at
the gate must come in and have the best that the house affords; at
Platæa, six years ago one November night, a house-holder received the
American School at Athens, carrying more mud on their persons than it
is often the lot of four men to carry, into the only room in his house
which had a fire, turning out his family, who were evidently enjoying
it, to pass the night in a colder room. And they seemed to take it as a
matter of course.
But I have wandered from our goal. I had expected to find in the
remains near Stauros corroboration of my belief that here lay the
Homeric city. For I had long supposed, with Leake of the older
topographers, and Bursian, Partsch, and Lolling of the later ones,
that it must be here. Here are massive walls, rock-cut steps, ancient
cisterns, and the niches in the rock passing under the name of the
"School of Homer." But at the close of the day, in order not to be
unjust to the dissenters, I climbed Aëtos, and saw that the walls
there, resembling those of Tiryns, had about as good claim as those at
Stauros to be regarded as those of a Homeric fortress. The question
where the Odyssey locates the city is not at present to be decided by
remains, but by certain other indications which seem to point to the
region of Stauros.
The suitors of Penelope, who wished to kill Telemachus on his return
from "Sandy Pylos," lay in wait for him on an island called Asteris,
"midway between Ithaca and rugged Samos." Opposite the northern end of
the island, though much nearer to Samos (Kephallenia) than to Ithaca,
is the only island in the whole strait, needing to be magnified a
good deal to suit the story of the Odyssey; but what poet ever denied
himself the right to magnify? And looking toward this little island is
the only harbor on this (western) side of Ithaca, a deep indentation
running far into the land, now called "Polis Bay," a reminiscence of
the fact that a city once stood here. This name is a genuine survival
from old times, and not a revamping of a classical name, as is the
case with Mount Neriton. About this bay and up as far as Stauros, and
even farther to the west and north, is the main smiling spot of the
island. It was autopsy that I wanted more than anything else; and, as
I stood on the rocks near Homer's school, autopsy forced upon me the
conviction that here, and here only, must have been the important city
of the island, the city from which the faithful Paladin of Agamemnon
ruled not only Ithaca but also Kephallenia. Here, amid the remains
of an ancient settlement, one looks into three harbors about equally
distant, Polis on the west side of the island, a broader one on the
east side, now called Phrikes, in which we saw a good-sized vessel
anchored, and on the north end one still more capacious, probably the
Reithron of the Odyssey. The situation was well adapted to a city
ruling the island and possessing easy communication with the coast,
east and west.
[Illustration: ITHACA. POLIS BAY FROM THE NORTH]
It is not so very many years ago that general scepticism prevailed
about Homeric topography. But now, just as one smiles, in listening
to Dörpfeld's masterly exposition of the thoroughly excavated walls
of Troy, at the thought that "if Troy ever stood" was catalogued by
an almost contemporary poet with insoluble riddles, like "if Israel's
missing tribes found refuge here," so, in passing over Ithaca with the
Odyssey in hand, one smiles to think that not long ago Hercher could
maintain that there was no agreement between the Ithaca of the Odyssey
and the Ithaca of reality. It may be granted that Hercher knocked out
the somewhat visionary Gell; but he did not touch Leake; indeed, it
seems as if he had not read Leake at all. There is one passage in
the Odyssey which seemed to support Hercher, in which Ithaca is spoken
of as "a low island," and as "lying apart and farther to the west than
Samos and Zakynthos." How the poet, be he the original poet of the
Odyssey or an _epigonos_, ever happened to say this of Ithaca, the
rugged island lying close up against the eastern shore of Kephallenia,
no one has yet satisfactorily explained. But, apart from this Homeric
crux, there is a most gratifying coincidence between "the Land and the
Book." The topography of Ithaca has gained respect in proportion as
attempts have been given up to force Corfu into identity with the land
of the Phæacians.
In respect to Schliemann's and Gell's acropolis on Mt. Aëtos at the
narrowest part of the island, it must be granted that this was an
important fortress of the Homeric period, controlling communication
between the northern and southern halves of the island, as well as the
nearest approach from Samos, which was probably always in antiquity the
main city of Kephallenia. But that the main city of Ithaca was ever on
this eagle's eyrie is in accordance neither with antecedent probability
nor with the poet's story.
It is curious to see how different have been the estimates of the
height of this mountain, according as one wished to make it the site
of the Homeric Ithaca or not. And, indeed, the figures given in
different books which might be supposed to rest on measurements vary
also. Probably the figures given by Partsch, 380 metres, are correct.
This would make the top about 1,200 feet above the sea level, but only
about half that above the high ground over which the road from Bathy
passes to the mooring place--it can hardly be called a harbor--opposite
Samos. Partsch makes merry at "those whose faith can not only remove
mountains, but also make them lower than they actually are, and who
speak of the run up the steep sides of Aëtos as if it were only a
matter of half an hour." I was in my turn amused to find that in my
eagerness to go up this height and down again as soon as possible,
in order to take our boat back to Samos, I had made the ascent in
considerably less than half an hour. Perhaps the fleet-footed shepherd
boy who led me up may have taken me along a good deal faster than
Partsch would have gone making his way alone. He ought, however, to
have looked out not to spoil a good case by underrating the powers of
English pedestrians.
At half-past three we reached the shore, where our boat was tied by
the stern cables waiting for us, and we set sail for Samos in such a
splendid breeze from the north which had just sprung up, right on our
quarter, that no Homeric ship ever sped over the waters with more life
than ours. In just one hour and five minutes we landed in Samos, in
time for me, though tired, to wander before dark over the high hills
containing the acropolis of Samos, the remaining walls of which are
most impressive.
The next morning, starting with a carriage at half-past three, we
were at eight o'clock in Argostoli. During the slow ascent I kept my
eyes fastened upon Ithaca every moment when it was possible to do so.
I wanted to see the sunlight once more illumine that long chain of
four separate peaks stretched out in the sea from north to south; but
before sunrise we had already got into the gorge through which the
road pushes up to the top. Our first sight of the island was in the
evening twilight and our last in the morning twilight. As I thought it
over afterward I could not help thinking that there was an especial
propriety in this; for was not Ithaca pre-eminently a land of twilight?
NOTE.--Since excavating near Stauros in 1901 without finding any
Mycenæan remains, Professor Dörpfeld has come to the conclusion
that the true Homeric Ithaca was the Island of Leukas, that there
was a grand confusing of names prior to Strabo, so that what was
really the Homeric Same is now called Ithaca, and what was really
Dulichion is now called Kephallenia. Something like this had been
previously suggested in order to find a place for the Homeric
Dulichion, and also to place Ithaca where it would lie "farthest
out to the darkness" and "apart from the other islands." In these
two points Homer's geography has never been quite satisfactory,
but it is doubtful whether we shall get any revision of it which
will be entirely satisfactory. It is possible that the results of
Professor Dörpfeld's excavations on Leukas may bring to light such
Mycenæan remains as to make the scale tip in his favor. One point in
his contention seems certain, viz., that Leukas is geologically an
island, and as such should have found a place in the Homeric naming.
But the whole question is _adhuc sub judice_. #/
DELPHI, THE SANCTUARY OF GREECE
After a glorious day spent at Acro-Corinth, the American School, four
persons, set out on November 5, 1890, for a ten days' trip through
Central Greece. The first point of interest was Delphi.
As, in entrance into some fraternities, a rough and ridiculous
initiation increases the pleasure of membership, so in the present
case, perhaps, the rough and ridiculous approach to Delphi only served
to increase the appreciation of the glory there.
The little Greek steamer which coasts the Corinthian Gulf lay at anchor
at Corinth, ready to start at 5 P.M. But though it was so near that one
could throw a stone into it from the shore, we paid a drachma and a
half apiece for being rowed on board. The boatman got well paid for the
few strokes which it took him to cover that short distance.
We paid more than we ought. We had committed the fatal error of asking
the price instead of coolly jumping into the boat and paying half a
drachma apiece when we reached the steamer. All that we lacked was a
little knowledge of the country, the language, the people, and, more
than all, the prices. We were paying for our tuition. Six months
later, when I was much better informed, I was passing Chalkis, and
thought I would like to go ashore for an hour or so. I then asked the
boatman, by way of testing him, what he would charge to take me ashore
and bring me back again. He replied, "Six drachmas." I laughed, and
said, "Half a drachma." "All right," said he, "jump in." When one
"knows the ropes" the boatmen are very tractable; but the stranger
is at their mercy, because nowhere in Greece, not even at Piræus or
Patras, is there a pier for a steamer to tie up to. All this seems
managed in the interest of the boatmen.
After ascertaining that we should have to disembark at a very early
hour the next morning at Itea, the ancient Chaleion, the port of Delphi
(the ticket agent said five o'clock, and the steward of the boat said
three o'clock), we all selected state-rooms with care, undressed and
went to bed at the early hour of seven, with instructions to the
steward to wake us half an hour before the time of disembarkation.
Sound slumber, which comes to men wearied with tramping, often makes
hours seem short; but, when we were waked, it seemed incredible that we
could have had the night's sleep that we had so carefully planned. Our
watches soon gave the dreadful corroboration to our suspicions. It was
only nine o'clock in the evening.
The boat had skipped Antikyra, shortening the journey by several
hours, and was going to stop only half an hour before passing over
to Galaxidhi, the ancient Oeantheia. In all my experience in Greece
there was only one other case of a steamer being _ahead_ of time.
But oh! the hours both day and night that I have spent waiting for
belated steamers; and no inconsiderable part of these hours has been
spent at Itea. Three times, after patience had failed, I have taken a
sail-boat across to the Peloponnesian shore, to strike the more regular
communication by rail.
When we were fairly landed, the ridiculous part of our initiation was
completed, and the rough part began. I would fain pass over that night
in the hotel at Itea. It was no worse, however, than almost any night
that the traveller passes in places called by courtesy hotels in the
country towns of Greece.
Itea, after being for years the despair of travellers, received, as
a result of the increased travel brought about by the excavation of
Delphi, two very good lodging-houses, and, instead of being known as
cheap and nasty, it became a place where one could be fleeced in good
style.
The next morning we proceeded a mile or more along the shore to the
east, until we identified the ruins of the ancient port of Delphi,
Kirrha, which, we are told, the Amphictyons twice destroyed in a rage,
though it seems quite un-Greek to do so unreasonable a thing as to
destroy the harbor through which one must continue to land. Leaving
Kirrha, and putting ourselves about on the track of the old visitors of
the holy place of Delphi, who came from Peloponnesus, we passed through
miles of the finest olive orchard in Greece to the site of the ancient
Krissa at the head of the plain, the old Homeric town which appears to
have yielded reluctantly to rising Delphi the control of this region.
After the joy of the plain came the joy of climbing the rugged rocks
for hours until it seemed as if Delphi must be in the clouds. This
double reward for the double initiation suddenly ended when, turning
a sharp spur of rock, we found ourselves in the grand natural theatre
which was Delphi. Even to one who had never read of it, and did not
know what it was to the Greeks, the mere sight of the place must still
be one of the finest views in the world. But to one who has come to
look on the sanctuary of ancient Greece it is this and more also. The
Phædriadæ, which rise sheer behind the wretched village of Kastri,
shutting out the higher snow-clad Parnassus from view, seem like no
earthly rocks. The Pleistos seems like no earthly river, as it murmurs
far below, as if about to tell the sea that it had passed Delphi. Mount
Kirphis, fronting the Phædriadæ, and closing the great theatre, seems
privileged to have been allowed to stand silently gazing on all that
went on in that holy place, and to have been its appointed warder,
shutting it in from the eyes of all who would not struggle up here
through the mountain passes.
But from reverie to fact the little village of Kastri rudely recalls
us. Villagers inform us of a "_megale catastrophe_." Two nights before,
at midnight, a mountain torrent had come down over the Phædriadæ,
tearing through the village, sweeping away two of the miserable houses,
and rendering several of the adjacent ones unsafe. One child was
killed, and everybody thoroughly frightened.
All inquired anxiously whether there was not a chance of the village
being soon purchased for purposes of excavation. Visitors from the
neighboring town of Arachova, who seemed happy that they were not
living in Kastri, said that probably many Kastriots would soon leave
their homes anyway, and move to Arachova.
The most important thing in Delphi was, of course, the temple of
Apollo, in which was the oracular chasm, influences from which
controlled Greece so long. Fragments of the temple lay all around,
near and in the houses built above its ancient floor. This floor was
so near the surface of the soil that one saw quite a portion of it.
By digging away a few feet of earth in one place, an opening was laid
bare, by which one could pass down into a series of vaults beneath this
floor. Pomtow, who visited Delphi in 1884, counted himself as the third
man who had ever crawled in through these vaults. But the exploit
subsequently became so common that a fixed price of twelve drachmas was
allowed workmen for removing the earth. Perhaps a hundred persons have
undergone this crawling process, from which one came out covered with
dirt from head to foot, but satisfied that he has seen all that was to
be seen of the world-renowned temple.
The village school was a striking sight. Attracted by a loud buzzing
sound near the house of the keeper of antiquities, with whom we lodged,
we ventured in at the open door whence the sound proceeded, and found
about forty boys apparently repeating something after the teacher,
who, clad somewhat like the shepherd in the play of "Œdipus," as given
at Harvard University, looked like anything but a learned man. He
proved to be a gentleman, however, in spite of his rough mantle. After
school we ventured with him into his house, from which his family had
fled, because a river of mud had flowed through the cellar, and left
the walls in a tottering condition. He seemed to possess but little,
and yet he took down from the rafters a cluster or two of half-dried
grapes, and gave them to us, exhibiting the time-honored Greek
hospitality.
But to return a moment to the school. No sooner had we arrived than
a dead silence fell upon the crowd. The boys took seats on the long
benches resting on the bare earth, and reading of Herodotus in modern
Greek began. The first boy, with a voice pitched as high as a steam
whistle of small dimensions and high pressure, started off to see how
much he could read in a given time. If he saw a period coming, he would
catch for breath, and dash over it like a locomotive putting on extra
steam to take an up grade. To our utter amazement, the next boy beat
the first both in pitch and rapidity. The teacher, without a word,
watched the process with apparently rising satisfaction. Meanwhile a
boy passed to and fro in the front benches, keeping things wonderfully
quiet by striking the ears of the smaller boys with a little twig.
No sooner had we returned to our quarters on our first evening in
Delphi, and begun to read the register of people who had visited the
house in the past, than, just as we were noticing the name of Bayard
Taylor, a peal of thunder reverberated through the great gorge,
followed by peal on peal, with rain and lightning, lasting nearly
all night. It was so impressive that we wished to expose ourselves
to the rain in order the better to see and hear. A sheltering roof,
however, was the best place from which to enjoy the storm as much
as was possible while disturbed by thoughts of the poor villagers,
exposed to further sufferings and fears. He who has not seen Delphi in
a thunder-storm has not seen it in all its majesty. It seems made for
such spectacles.
The excavations inaugurated by the French School at Athens, soon after
our visit, have changed the aspect of Delphi in many respects. As the
work has proceeded, I have made annual pilgrimages thither. While
one finds the results of intense interest, and sees each year some
additional important building brought to light, temple upon temple, the
theatre, the stadion, the numerous treasuries of the different cities
of Greece with their sculptured adornment, it is still the place itself
that impresses one most of all. If one walks through the ruins just
at night-fall, one need not ask why the Greeks considered this spot
sacred. It is in itself "an awful place." Olympia lies in a charming
sunny valley. It was as appropriate to the brilliant games that were
held there as was Delphi to the deep religious transactions and the
awful oracle that spoke the doom of men and states. There were games
at Delphi, as there was religion at Olympia; but at Olympia the games
became at least as prominent as the worship of Father Zeus, while at
Delphi it was always religion that was paramount.
It would be contrary to the plan of this book to describe in full the
excavations of Delphi. It may be said that the results were in some
ways disappointing to some people. From certain passages in ancient
authors sprung a belief that statues in Delphi might be as "thick
as hops." The five hundred bronze statues that Nero is said to have
carried away must have made only a small hole in the total number of
seventy-three thousand reported by Pliny to have been still remaining
in his time. Even if one suspects an error in the text, we know that
Demetrios of Phaleron, who passed for a fairly modest man, had three
hundred and sixty statues erected to him at Athens during the short
time in which he directed the affairs of Athens. And taking this as a
sample of the way statues multiplied, we can the more readily swallow
Pliny's numerals. At any rate, Delphi is classed by him with Olympia
and Athens as the third of the places where statues most abounded.
But, for many years after Pliny's time, Delphi doubtless lay open to
plunder. The bronzes were melted up and the marbles made into lime.
The yield of statues from the excavations has, it is true, been smaller
than many expected it to be. But it would be most absurd to say that
the work has been disappointing. The bronze charioteer alone, probably
a subsidiary figure in the group dedicated by a member of the Syracusan
family, Gelon, Hieron, Polyzalos, would have set the stamp of success
upon the enterprise. And, apart from this, there is a whole museum
full of statuary of the utmost importance in the history of sculpture.
Tombs of the Mycenæan period with rich contents have also added to
the interest of the excavations, more important in some aspects than
those of Olympia. It will be years before the enormous quantity of
inscriptions can be published.
The French excavators are to be congratulated upon the ease with which
they got rid of their earth. Their dumping-cars were easily brought
to the edge of the gorge of the Pleistos, and the contents shot down
thousands of feet, never to trouble them more. How I have envied them
when working at Corinth, where one of the chief difficulties has been
to find a proper dumping-place for the enormous deposit of from twenty
to thirty feet of earth. At Olympia, also, the brook Kladeos was very
serviceable in carrying off the dump. It is a pity that one cannot
always find an excavation site close by a serviceable river.
DODONA
My friend, Mr. Arthur Hill, the British Vice Consul at Piræus, being
about to make a business trip through Epiros in the spring of 1891,
invited me to join him. Without this invitation I should have travelled
Greece very unsymmetrically, leaving out all the country west of
the great Pindos range. It is fair to call this Greece, although,
in defiance of the arrangements of the treaty of Berlin, most of it
remains politically Turkish.
At Patras we took a little Greek coasting steamer late at night, and,
with only one incident worth mentioning, arrived a little after noon
the next day at Prevesa on Turkish territory. The one incident was a
stop of an hour in the wonderfully retired harbor on the east coast of
Ithaca. If Homer had this in mind in describing the harbor of Phorkys
he might well say that the ships needed no cable there. Even half an
hour on shore for a short Homeric reverie was something to be thankful
for. On our boat was a man who looked for all the world like the
weather-beaten Ulysses returning from his twenty-years' absence. To my
disgust he did not get off at Ithaca to hunt up Penelope, but went on
to Leukas.