by being informed that a letter which I had hastily written to send
back to Athens would not even start for six days. This impression was
deepened by the information that the British Consul at Prevesa had,
during the seventeen years of his sojourn there, never thought of
going to Joannina, two days into the interior. This was our goal. The
excitement of visiting a country absolutely devoid of tourists is so
rare that one may be pardoned for giving way to it.
Of course one cannot travel here without an escort. Two mounted men
accompanied us everywhere in Turkey, and when we again came over the
Greek frontier we were met by a sergeant and six privates.
Our first day was nearly all spent in skirting the gulf and plain of
Ambrakia. One need not be impatient to get away from that beautiful
region. The first object which drew our attention was the ruins of
Nikopolis, about an hour out from Prevesa. The city was founded by
Augustus as a magnificent trophy of his victory at Actium, at the foot
of the hill on which he had pitched his tent before the battle. On
sailing into Prevesa the day before, we had passed over the very waters
once enlivened by that combat, and over which Antony, forgetting for
once to be a soldier, followed the wanton queen in flight and left the
world to Augustus.
The ruins of Nikopolis, spread out over several square miles, look
imposing in the distance; but, like most Roman ruins near at hand,
vulgar in comparison with Greek. The theatre is massive, and the
aqueduct inspires respect for the practical sense of the conquerors
of the world. The thought that St. Paul spent a winter here gives a
peculiar interest to the ruins.
By pressing your way up through a part of the square miles of
breast-high thistles about the theatre, you may reach the top of the
hill from which Augustus looked down and saw his enemy apparently
strong. The whole world for which he was about to grapple affords few
scenes of greater beauty than that which lay before his eye.
The road over which our carriage proceeded was a testimonial that the
Turks have been misrepresented by the traveller who said:
"It is a favorite idea with all barbarous princes that the badness of
the roads adds considerably to the natural strength of their dominions.
The Turks and Persians are undoubtedly of this opinion; the public
highways are, therefore, neglected, and particularly so toward the
frontiers."
The road was being made into a good one, but as long stretches of it
were covered with piles of dirt, and on a level three or four feet
above the older parts, getting on was attended with difficulty. But the
Turks could not be considered devoid of energy when they put so much
work upon the road which everybody was then prophesying would in a few
years pass into the hands of the Greeks. It may be that the "sick man"
thought he might yet use that road for military operations which would
trouble his southern neighbors. At any rate he did so.
Along the foot of the mountains which bound the plain of Ambrakia to
the north, out from under the well-built road, copious fountains of
clear, cold water gush, contributing to the river Luro, the ancient
Charadros, which here overflows its banks far and wide; and a most
luxuriant tangle of trees and vines, standing often in several inches
of water, impenetrable as an Indian jungle, astonishes one accustomed
to judge the vegetation of Greece by its eastern parts.
Our second day's journey was up the gorge of the Luro to its sources,
and then over a ridge into the plain of Joannina. For six hours we had
one continuous vale of Tempe. One does not hear enough of this region.
Who, for instance, ever hears of Rogus, a ruin which we passed toward
evening on the first day? Yet here is an acropolis which one sees from
a great distance--such an imposing affair that I supposed for a long
time that it must be Ambrakia. There are remains of fine old Hellenic
walls, on which stood Byzantine walls now badly crumbled. Leake
supposes Rogus to be the ancient Charadra.
Along with us went a large family of Jews, seeking among the Turks
a safer residence than the Ionian Islands, where just then the Jew
was made very uncomfortable. As we halted at noon of the first day
by a large oak-tree, on the shore of a brook, it was interesting to
see groups, Christian, Jew, and Turk, taking their meals at quite an
interval from one another, but all under the shade of the same tree.
As we came into Joannina, the Jews were subjected to a searching
examination, but we were not examined at all. We heard afterward that
the father of this family was suspected of bringing a lot of letters,
thus defrauding the Turkish Government of its postage fee.
But I have delayed so long over preliminaries that I can hardly be just
to Joannina itself. In fact, to be just to Joannina one should write a
book, and not an article. As one approaches the great plain and lake
surrounded by snow-capped mountains, one feels that here, as now, must
always have been the principal settlement of the whole region. The name
Joannina (pronounced Yanina) appears in Byzantine annals as early as
the ninth century, when mention is made of a bishop of Joannina about
three hundred and fifty years after the last mention of a bishop of
Dodona. Though not standing on the same site, it is the successor of
Dodona. But its history is essentially Turkish. Perhaps its greatest
distinction is that it was the capital of Ali Pasha, who, in the first
twenty years of the present century, had established, by an energetic
unscrupulousness which reminds one of Demosthenes's picture of Philip
of Macedon, a sovereignty practically independent of the Sultan, almost
as large as the Sultan's other European possessions. Ali had a sort
of thirst for blood, which appears not to have belonged to Philip.
The Greeks, however, seem to have forgiven him the slaughter of their
fathers and mothers in deference to his genius, and to take a local
pride in the monster. Most of the stories told about him are records
of some murder or other. Most of the compliments which his satellites
used to pay him turned on the idea that he was a good butcher. A place
in the lake is still pointed out as the scene of the drowning of a
dozen or so Greek women whose morals, forsooth, were not up to the high
standard which Ali said he was going to set up. Some of them belonged
to the best families in Joannina, and could not believe that Ali meant
more than blackmail until the waters were closing over them, when they
shrieked and grasped at the boat so wildly that the executioners had to
become inhuman in order to carry out the commands of their lord.
But this Albanian Mussulman reckoned ill when he threw down the
gauntlet to the Sultan. Retiring to an island in the lake, when he
could no longer defend his capital, he was first stabbed treacherously
in a parley in which he thought he was going to make terms with his
master, and finally killed by shots fired through the floor from the
room under that in which he had taken refuge. His head and those of his
sons, who had not well supported their father in the struggle, were
fastened up over the door of the Seraglio in Constantinople.
One afternoon, after conversing awhile with the successor of Ali,
the present Vali or Governor-General of Epirus, if it can be called
conversing to take a cup of coffee with a man, and see him smoke
a cigarette, giving you meanwhile a few of his thoughts through
an interpreter, we went over to the island, and saw the room in a
monastery where Ali was slain. The floor was well perforated with
bullet-holes.
Ali had unwittingly paved the way for Greek independence. He had shown
that the power of the Sultan might be resisted for a while at least.
Some of the leaders of the Greeks, who made his camp their school of
war, felt that the evoking of a grand national sentiment would make
them able to resist to the end. When Ali fell in 1822, Greece was
already in arms.
Joannina, in the days of Ali, had, if we may believe reports, a
population of 50,000. It has now not more than half that number. The
Greeks are about three-quarters of the whole population, the other
quarter being divided between Turks and Jews, with considerable
preponderance in favor of the former, who still hold all the
offices, and show by their bearing that they are the ruling class.
One evening we visited the castle, which occupies a peninsula jutting
out into the lake, made an island by a moat across the neck. It was
positively scandalous the way those soldiers went in rags. Even the
noncommissioned officers, with their torn chevrons, seemed in harmony
with the walls and barracks, now tumbling to decay. But these awkward,
ragged fellows seemed to have signs of strength about them, and might
give a good report of themselves in battle. We lingered long over one
big gun, which bore marks of service at Shipka Pass. We were reminded
then that it would not do to leave out the Turk entirely in the
settlement of the Eastern question.
To the west of Joannina the population is largely Albanian. This class
of Albanians makes you feel that there may be some truth in the words
of an English traveller, who, in classifying the Albanians, speaks of
one class as "Albanians who never change their clothes." The chronology
of some of these garments of more than a hundred heterogeneous pieces
would be an interesting study. Rags are generally picturesque,
and these Albanians contribute somewhat to the picturesqueness of
Joannina's streets. They wear for the most part a white fez, darkened
by age and dirt, which distinguishes them from the people of the city,
who wear, almost to a man, the red fez. On one or two occasions when
Mr. Hill started to take a photograph in the streets, before he could
set up his camera, a perfect sea of red heads was formed in front of
it, and the very zeal to be photographed frustrated the attempt. It was
almost like evoking a mob.
But in Joannina, of all places in the world, one must not forget the
past, the great Hellenic past. This region was once called Hellopia
and the inhabitants Selloi, a variation for Helloi, and from here the
name appears to have been transmitted to the whole of Hellas. It is
quite a testimonial to the persistency of the old Hellenic spirit that
travellers all notice how pure is the Greek spoken in Joannina.
Three hours' ride across a range of hills to the south lies Dodona, at
the foot of Mount Tomarus, which at the time of our visit (in May) was
heavily capped with snow. This oldest oracle and sanctuary of Greece,
famous before Delphi was born, has a situation only a little less
imposing than Delphi. Until about twenty-five years ago one was still
in doubt in just what part of this region to look for the old famous
sanctuary. But at that time Carapanos, a wealthy Greek, settled that
question with the spade.
Procuring from the library, by the kindness of the professor of French
in the Lyceum, the two beautiful volumes in which Carapanos has given
the results of his work, I took them with me to the spot where he
found Dodona, and followed in his footsteps. This library, by the way,
contains a good many valuable books, new and old, but they are huddled
together in very close quarters, as the librarian sadly admitted,
employing the English phrase "pell-mell." But worse than the disorder
was the dampness. Carapanos's book of plates was mildewed and fallen
apart. Rich Greeks probably think their benefactions more safely
bestowed in Athens. Otherwise somebody would have given a new library
building to Joannina.
The walls that Carapanos discovered all have a singularly late
appearance, and there is a striking lack of pottery in the ground; but
the inscriptions and dedicatory offerings leave no doubt that this is
Dodona. The temples and the finely built theatre, one of the largest in
Greece, doubtless supplied the place of older and ruder buildings of
the time when all Hellas came to hear the voice of Father Zeus in the
rustling oak-leaves.
At the southeastern end of the lake of Joannina is a hill called
Kastritza, crowned by fortifications indicating the existence of just
such a city as one would look for to match this great plain and lake.
Here are walls about three miles in circuit, and, in a considerable
part of their extent, twenty feet high and twelve feet thick, of the
finest polygonal work. And yet, so little is known of the history of
Epirus, that even the name of this city cannot be ascertained with
certainty. Leake thought it was Dodona itself, placing the sanctuary,
however, at a little distance, on the spot now occupied by Joannina.
Kastritza might still be regarded as a possible candidate for Dodona,
inasmuch as sanctuaries in Greece were often at quite a remove from the
nearest town, as in the case of Epidauros and Oropos. But the fact that
very little is known of any _city_ called Dodona, as well as the fact
on the other side that the sanctuary excavated by Carapanos has a small
acropolis connected with it, makes it extremely improbable that this
great city, Kastritza, was Dodona.
The picturesqueness of the city of Joannina is matched by its grand
setting. Its lake is over a thousand feet above the sea, and streams
from the amphitheatre of the snow-covered mountains keep flowing into
it without finding any visible outlet. The color upon the mountains and
the lake at sunrise and sunset is often wonderful. Mount Mitzikeli,
which rises abruptly from the lake on its side opposite the city, is
a breeder of thunder-storms. (It must be remembered that this was the
abode of Jupiter Tonans in antiquity.) Sometimes at mid-day, when the
sun is shining to the east and west of Joannina, a storm-cloud will
come down over this mountain from the higher ones of the Pindus range
back of it and make straight for the city. What a place for a painter!
Leake tells of the difficulty he had in persuading the Italian
painter, Lusieri, to stay beyond a day or two here because he thought
he detected symptoms of malaria; but, adds Leake:
"The picturesque beauties of the place had such a powerful attraction
for him that he was induced to hazard a longer visit, until his fears
having been calmed by my own experience, and that of the Joanninites in
general, he prolonged his stay for six weeks. The longer he remained
the more he was impressed with the feeling that in the great sources of
his art, the sublime and beautiful, and in their exquisite mixture and
contrast, Joannina exceeds every place he had seen in Italy or Greece."
It is a pity that the pictures which Lusieri painted here were lost at
sea.
The exit from this place, where tourists are never seen and where
newspapers are strictly prohibited, into the Greek world of talk and
bustle was as interesting as the approach to it. Our road lay over the
great pass of the Pindos into Thessaly, the pass over which Julius
Cæsar led his army, when he was about to grapple with Pompey. For the
first day's ride the Arachthos was our road. We crossed it more than
twenty times, when it was a credit to our horses not to be carried down
the stream. Of course, keeping one's feet entirely out of the water was
impossible. At last we came to the end of that day's journey, where
the stream had dwindled to a harmless looking brook at the Wallachian
town of Metzovo. These Wallachians, especially the women, look entirely
different from the people round about. They talk a sort of Latin and
are supposed to be a remnant of the old Roman colony of Dacia. The
quaint old town, where this curious old people is wedged in among other
peoples, is within two hours of the backbone of Pindos, over which we
passed the next morning. Within an area of a few square miles here
nearly all the rivers of Greece that flow all the year round have their
head waters.
It was with something of a feeling of exaltation that we left our
Turkish guards behind at the ridge of Pindos and soon found ourselves
tracing the ever-widening streamlet, which was soon to become the broad
Peneios, down into the land of the Greeks, not only of Greek gods and
heroes of the past, but of the Greek men of to-day, who have at last
here inherited what their fathers possessed.
THE BICYCLE IN GREECE
It has been repeatedly suggested to me, by the regrets of a
considerable number of the members of the American School at Athens,
that I should give some public expression to the utility of the
bicycle in Greece. I put aside certain temptations to praise the
bicycle generally, and speak of it only as a help here in the study of
archæology.
Every year men come to us saying: "I left my wheel at home, thinking it
would be of little use in this rough country." After some reflection
on the difficulty of having it sent over after them, they rent wheels
a few times, after which, deterred partly by the awkwardness of
having to hunt up a wheel for every little excursion, and partly by
suffering from the poorer quality of wheels that are to be had on loan,
they drop the habit of bicycling. But the wheel has been so keenly
appreciated here by generations of students that this dropping out
is to be very much deprecated. Archæology does not consist entirely
in the study of books and museums. That it does largely so consist
it must be confessed; but a legitimate and important part of Greek
archæology is the knowledge of the face of the country; the tracing
out of its ancient routes, going over the passes and climbing now and
then a mountain; the skirting its coasts; the visiting its places of
great renown; the studying of its battle-fields; and the seeing of the
landscapes on which rested the eyes of Pericles and Epaminondas, of
Sophocles and Pindar. Especially important is this for one who has but
one year to spend in Greece. It is well for him, even at the expense of
some time which might well be spent in the museum or in the library,
so to fill his mind with the landscapes of Greece that, when he goes
back and stands before his classes and speaks, for example, of Leuctra,
he may be looking with the mind's eye upon the slopes down which the
Spartans came charging, the opposite slope where the Thebans stood, and
the valley between, where they clashed. The class is then sure to catch
some of this vivid presentation, and feel that they have almost seen
Leuctra themselves. If, then, one should spend the whole of his year
in museums and libraries, we might say to him, "This ought ye to have
done, and not to have left the other undone."
Granted that one wishes to see the country and to become familiar with
it, so that he will read Greek history, and Greek poetry, too, with
other eyes, the bicycle becomes evidently indispensable. To take an
example: One morning, to shake off a headache incurred by sitting too
long in a close room at an invaluable meeting of the German School the
night before, I bicycled with a member of our school, who had never
been there before, to Liopesi (Pæania), the birthplace of Demosthenes,
stayed long enough to chat with the villagers and take a glass of
their resined wine, with which one is supposed to drink in the gift
of talking modern Greek, and came back to Athens, all in three hours,
taking it very leisurely at that, and returning by a roundabout way,
reached home full of oxygen and _sans_ headache. We might have walked,
to be sure, but not to Pæania, unless we had given the whole day to it.
Railroads will take you already to many parts of Greece, and one can
now proceed by rail from the northern border of Thessaly to Kalamata at
the southern end of Messenia. But even railroads cannot do all for us
that the bicycle does. Exercise, open air, and, perhaps more than all,
the delight in propelling one's self, will make one prefer the wheel.
We can reach Eleusis by bicycle as quickly as the train takes us, and
choose our own time for starting, without the alternative of sitting
some time at the station or losing the train.
There are many other charming spots in Attica where no railroad comes
in to help. Marathon and Salamis are two such places, to which we make
excursions every year. One afternoon in May two of us started out from
Athens at half-past two, proceeding aimlessly eastward against a rather
pronounced wind. Suddenly the thought struck us that Marathon lay
in front of us. A definite goal is always inspiring, and we struck a
good gait for Marathon. We reached it before five o'clock, and after
passing ten minutes on the top of the historic mound came back to
Athens for dinner at quarter before eight. Last year some of us rode
out on Thanksgiving Day through Dekeleia to a point where we saw Oropos
and the Eubœan Gulf at our feet, and Dirphys, the highest mountain in
Eubœa, rising opposite us, and then turned around with the recollection
of one of the finest views in the world to add to enjoyment of our
Thanksgiving dinner. In twenty minutes, had we so wished, we could have
been in Oropos. On any day, one can start out from Athens and reach
the end of Attica in any direction, and get home to an early dinner.
In fact, we have sometimes taken dinner at home after straying as
far as Megara and Thebes. The acquaintance which some members of our
school have gained with Attica, in all its nooks and corners, by single
day's bicycle-riding, is something noteworthy; and when, in 1897, on
Thanksgiving Day, we turned out ten men for a ride across Salamis
to Megara for a luncheon, and came home by the shore road, we felt
considerable _esprit de corps_.
The notion of foreigners that the roads of Greece are bad compared
with those of other countries is an error. A bicycle journey through
Italy and Sicily disabused me of that notion. The worst road that I
ever tried was that between Caserta and Naples, and the next worse
was that leading into Rome from the north. There are, of course, some
bad roads in Greece; but even Sicily, to say nothing of worse roads
in Italy, cured me of complaining against Greece. For a pure pleasure
ride, the road between Tripolitza and Sparta would be hard to match
anywhere in the world. It is in capital condition, and, on account of
its gentle grade, involves very little walking. Six hours suffice for
the journey in either direction, and the view either way is superb. The
ride through Ætolia and Acarnania, regions considered half civilized
in the classical period of Greek history, but always fine in natural
beauty, with big lakes, and rivers that "move in majesty" (a rare thing
in Greece), and hedged in by high mountains, is perhaps the best in
Greece. One rides from the shore of the Corinthian Gulf opposite Patras
to Arta (Ambrakia) in two days, with a comfortable night at Agrinion,
passing the historic Messolonghi and visiting the ruins of Calydon,
Pleuron, Œniadæ, Stratos, Limnæa, and Amphilochian Argos, while to the
right and left are other ruins which invite one to make détours if one
is not in a hurry. And one ought not to omit the recently excavated
Thermon, the ancient capital of Ætolia, even if it does cost an extra
day. The long-known and impressive ruins of Œniadæ, the chief city in
Acarnania, also invite one to linger a whole day instead of spending a
few hours in passing.
The first five cities of ancient Greece in renown and interest were
Athens, Sparta, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth. One can ride from Athens
to Thebes or Corinth and back in a single day; he can also reach Argos
from Athens in a day, leaving a rather long day's work for reaching
Sparta. Any good bicyclist would find it no great matter to leave
Thebes and pay his respects to Athens on the first day, visit Corinth
and Argos on the next day, and sleep comfortably at Sparta the next
night.