had for us no importance. Kephalovrysi was our goal. The visit was for
me tinged with some melancholy reflections. Less than a year before I
had been there with my friend, Charles Peabody, of Cambridge, and we
had been much excited at the thought that here lay Thermon, the head of
the Ætolian League, and so near the surface that a little excavation
would prove it. On my return to Athens I asked the Ephor General of
Antiquities to reserve the spot for us, which he said he would do.
But a few months later, when the Greek Archæological Society sent
Georgios Soteiriades into Ætolia to explore sites, this one was not
excepted; and he attacked it with great success. While I had to rejoice
that archæology had gained a triumph, I was sorry that an enthusiastic
American had not been the instrument. After a few miles of level road
along the east end of the lake, we toiled four or five miles up along
the face of the mountain enclosing it on the north side, and then
turning sharply away from the lake at Petrochori, a village perched
on the top of a ridge commanding as good a view as the one already
described, in a few minutes we had reached our goal.
Kephalovrysi has about a thousand inhabitants. It was not more than
ten minutes after we had settled ourselves in an eating-house when all
the boys of the place and most of the men, with a small representation
of the girls, gathered around and thronged in at the door, in spite of
the kicks and cuffs of the proprietor. Before we had fairly begun to
eat, the demarch appeared with his inseparable companion, the young
schoolmaster, the two who had last year escorted us to the ruins, at
the head of the whole school, which had been given a half-holiday
in honor of our arrival. This time it was a holiday without special
dispensation; but the boys were so absorbed in our bicycles, which were
the first ever seen in the place, that we had the demarch and the
schoolmaster almost to ourselves on the walk out to the ruins.
The excavation of these ruins called Palæo-Bazaar closes a chapter in
the topographical study of Ætolia, which began with Colonel Leake.
Pouqueville, indeed, prompted by the natural desire to give names to
the impressive ruins that met him on every hand, gave names, as he
himself confessed, "by a sort of lucky inspiration." A passage in
Polybius forms the basis for the topography of this central region
of Ætolia. It is the passage in which he describes how Philip V.,
the young King of Macedon, in 218 B.C., by a forced march from the
Acheloos, near Stratos, reached and destroyed Thermon in revenge for
the destruction of Dodona in the preceding year by the Ætolians, under
Dorymachos. In this narrative he mentions several towns to the right
and left of the line of march.
[Illustration: THERMON. TEMPLE OF APOLLO IN THE FOREGROUND]
Leake, who never travelled around the east end of the lake, made up his
mind that Thermon must be found at Vlocho, the most impressive ruin
and strongest fortified place in Ætolia, not far east of Agrinion.
Starting with this as a fact, he laid out the rest of the topography
accordingly. Two great difficulties, however, confronted Leake.
Polybius speaks of the lake as covering the left of the army during
a considerable part of the march, while Leake, placing Thermon at
Vlocho, cannot keep them from leaving it well to their right all the
way. The great topographer, who had successfully located Calydon by
transposing two passages in Strabo and inserting a negative, thought
it not venturesome to "restore" right for left in this passage of
Polybius, on the ground that there are many occurrences of such slips
in ancient writers. A second difficulty troubled him less. A march
from the Acheloos to Thermon, which is spoken of as a forced march, a
record march if you will, from the dawn of a summer day till late in
the afternoon, by hardy troops, cannot, if Vlocho is Thermon, be spun
out to more than fifteen miles, and that mostly over good ground. Leake
talks loosely of arrival at two o'clock in the afternoon, which hardly
does justice to the πολλῆς ὥρας of the text.
The prestige of Leake, his almost established record of never going
astray, led topographers generally to follow him, at least in the
location of Thermon. Bazin, indeed, having a conscience about changing
left to right, makes Philip march clear round the lake and reach Vlocho
in season to destroy that great citadel on the same day, a distance
of forty-five miles over some very bad ground, and that, too, on top
of a forced march the day before. A military man like Leake could not
have made this error, though he led Bazin into it by falsely locating
Thermon.
In spite of a growing belief, starting with Bursian and at last finding
exact expression in Lolling's selection of Palæo-Bazaar, that Thermon
was somewhere near the east end of the lake, Vlocho, the mighty hill
fortress, made such an impression that many regarded the discussion as
one in which it was still worth while to sum up the _pros_ and _cons_,
adding: "If Vlocho is not Thermon, give us some adequate name for it."
But the spade, which has again substantiated its claims to be the best
archæologist, has relegated all this discussion to the limbo of old
notions. Whatever Vlocho was, it was _not_ Thermon. A score or more
of inscriptions found by Soteiriades at Palæo-Bazaar, speaking of the
affairs of the Ætolian League, show that he has found the capital.
What makes the identification absolutely certain is the inscription
containing the treaty between the Ætolians and Philip of Macedon, in
which it is provided that of two copies one shall be set up at Thermon,
and the other at Delphi, which was at the time the ecclesiastical
capital of the league. The French have found one copy at Delphi;
Soteiriades found the other, an exact duplicate, at Kephalovrysi.
After that, one surely need not go elsewhere to seek for Thermon.
A suggestive trifle was found here before the excavations, viz., a
life-size bronze thumb of good work, showing the dint of a hammer on
the knuckle. This probably belonged to one of the two thousand statues
destroyed by Philip.
Leaving Kephalovrysi at two o'clock, instead of taking the shortest
road to Agrinion along the north shore of the lake, at my suggestion,
which again sprung from the desire of seeing something new, we circled
the lake, following the line of Philip's retreat along the south side,
and identifying among other places the site of Trichonion, which gave
its name to the lake. Passing between this lake and its neighbor to
the west, we reached Agrinion just before dark, and found there a new,
clean hotel. The railroad is beginning to work its wonders even in
Agrinion.
This flourishing town of about ten thousand inhabitants, the centre of
the most important tobacco-growing region in Greece, and the capital
of Ætolia, has stolen its name from ancient Agrinion, which lay about
seven miles away on the Acheloos. Its real name is Vrachori, which is
still used by many who do not fancy the revamping of classical names,
especially when they are foisted on to towns that are not entitled to
them, and have an honorable history of their own which has been gained
under the name which it is proposed to set aside. Vrachori is such a
case.
Not till after dinner did we present ourselves at the house of the
doctor who had bountifully entertained my friend and me last year
for two nights. Both he and his wife seemed hurt that we had not all
four of us come unannounced straight to them, and extorted from us
the promise that on our return from Arta we would spend a night with
them. "But these things lay on the knees of the gods." After starting
off hopefully in the morning, when almost in sight of Stratos my
bicycle met with a collapse, which we tried in vain to remedy; and the
afternoon train bore me in great tribulation through the front door of
Ætolia back to Patras and Athens.
The next year, and pretty nearly every succeeding year, brought me
again to this most romantic part of Greece, so little known by modern
travellers, and so little famed in ancient history, but full of walls
and acropolises which cry out for a name. On the last of these visits
we climbed Vlocho on a rather hot day. To judge from the exhaustion
which even the strongest felt, as well as from the appearance of the
mountain, for Vlocho is really a mountain, we have here the highest
acropolis in Greece. It looks down upon Trichonis to the south and
back into the rugged peaks of Ætolia to the north, overtopping all the
foot-hills of those mountains. Its walls also match the commanding
position. It is no wonder that Leake took it for the great central
citadel of the Ætolians, none other than Thermon. But not only has
Thermon been positively identified, as has been already mentioned,
but Vlocho has been shown by an inscription found by Soteiriades to
be the acropolis of the Thestiæi, a merely tribal gathering place.
This solution is a surprise, a sort of anticlimax. It is an equally
great surprise that Thermon had no acropolis at all, but was a
gathering-place in a plain. Its situation, however, high up above the
mountainous north shore of Lake Trichonis near its eastern end, made
it difficult for an enemy to attack; and when Philip V. broke into the
nest of the robber brood, destroyed it, and got safely back to his
connections, it was the master stroke of that enterprising and rash boy
king. The Ætolians got a sweet revenge more than twenty years later,
when, at Kynoskephalæ, they contributed materially to Philip's crushing
defeat by Flamininus.
The usual approach to Thermon is from Agrinion over a level road
along the north shore until the middle of that shore-line is reached.
Then comes a steady climb until one gains an altitude of perhaps two
thousand feet, directly over the surface of the lake, and then another
more gentle climb away from the lake, and the goal is reached. There is
a fine carriage-road all the way.
The one thing that Ætolia, as well as Acarnania, lacks to make it
famous is the bard, or, failing him, the historian. No Homer or
Sophocles or Pindar has made the beautiful Lake Trichonis into a more
than earthly lake. The great historians have found elsewhere more
attractive themes than the wars of the men who inhabited these mighty
fortresses. The modern traveller likes to follow the footsteps of the
poets and historians; and so Attica, Argos, Bœotia, and Thessaly are
visited and enjoyed, while the stream passes by Ætolia and Acarnania
"on the other side." But there are some who will be drawn by that
beautiful Lake Trichonis, by the bountiful Acheloos, by the Gulf of
Ambrakia, and by the Gorge of Klissoura, which runs through Mount
Arakynthos, and only lacks a stream to make it surpass Tempe. This
number may increase so that in ten years more, demand creating supply,
even Arta may provide an inn where the weary traveller may lie down to
pleasant dreams.
THERMOPYLÆ
We twelve members of the American School had spent three rather cold
and rainy November days at Delphi, managing to see between the showers,
perhaps better called tempests, that kept sweeping up the valley of
the Pleistos, most of the important objects both in the museum and
in the excavation area. After so much tantalizing promise, followed
by disappointment, it began to seem very doubtful whether the six
bicyclists of the party could carry out their intention of prolonging
the trip into Thessaly. The morning of the fourth day looked about like
the three preceding mornings, except that the storm centre, on and
around Mount Korax to the west of Parnassus and Delphi, had at last
broken up. Just this little encouragement led five of us to move on,
and we slipped quickly down the long winding road to the foot of the
high slope on the top of which Delphi stands.
After we had toiled through mud to Amphissa, we began to reap the
benefits of a clearing and bracing north wind. We had an exhilarating
climb of three hours up the Amblema Pass, which leads over the ridge
connecting Parnassus with the still higher mountains to the west.
Before we got to the top, which is the backbone between the Corinthian
Gulf and the Gulf of Malis, a cold cloud, which we may as well call
a winter storm, came rushing out of the gap to meet us like an army
debouching from a covert. We began to fear that Doris, into which we
were going to pass, was another storm centre, and our feeling of pity
for the one man who had been prudent enough to take his bicycle back to
Athens began to change to envy. But after dropping a thousand feet or
more into Doris we got below the storm, and the roads became somewhat
drier. When we were at the level of that upland plain they were quite
good. Doris had been a storm centre in the morning, but at noon was
almost clear. What luck!
Confronting us on the north side of the plain was another mountain
barrier which shut out Thermopylæ from our view. Rain-clouds were
playing around this mountain. After luncheon at Gravia, it was a
matter of from two to three hours to get across the plain and partly
climb and partly circumvent this second barrier. And then came a most
exhilarating experience. Here was the sight of a lifetime. The Gulf of
Malis far below us, the road visible in all its extent winding like an
enormous serpent down the side of the mountain to the plain from two
to three thousand feet below us, and then running straight as an arrow
to Lamia, Mount Othrys in the background, Thermopylæ to the right,
and, soon after, Tymphrestos to the left, with the Spercheios winding
down from it. Historic associations apart--as if they ever could be
apart!--this is a landscape not easily surpassed. It is one of those
views which seem to gain in power with repetition. It was the fifth
time that I had seen and felt it; and I firmly believe that I had a
keener relish in the view than my companions who saw it for the first
time.
Bicycling down the face of a mountain like that, over curves that take
you half a mile or a mile in one direction, and then as far in the
other direction, is about the nearest approach to flying that has yet
been given to man. One seems to be floating in the ether, and dropping
at will down to the earth like a bird on the wing.
In this winding down the mountain-side we crossed probably more than
once the path by which the Greek traitor led Hydarnes and his Ten
Thousand Immortals around in the rear of the Greeks and cut off their
retreat. But it was getting too late now to see and study Thermopylæ
by the light of that day. Lamia was our goal, a city where one finds
comfortable quarters and good eating. We had heard far back on the road
that the bridge over the Spercheios had been carried away two years
before, and had not yet been replaced. Some said that we should find a
boat to ferry us over, while others said that there was neither bridge
nor ferry, which seemed incredible, since we were on the great highway
from the Corinthian Gulf to northern Greece. But when we reached the
Spercheios at twenty minutes before five o'clock the worst that had
been told us came true. No ferry-man was there. One sorrowful-looking
Greek who was, figuratively speaking, in the same boat with us,
suggested that we go back to a village called Moschochori, which we had
passed about two miles back, the road leaving it about a quarter of a
mile to the east. He thought that we should there find the ferry-man,
who had abandoned his post a little too early, and had left his boat
in plain sight bound to a tree with chain and padlock. This suggestion
had the advantage that, in case we failed to find the boatman and to
induce him to return, we might at least find shelter in the village,
poor as it was, which would in the cold weather be better than passing
the night in the open air.
I had on two former occasions failed to reach Lamia at nightfall and
been obliged to pass the night in this region; once in 1890, very
near where we were then standing, in a barn filled with corn-husks,
and again, ten years later, under the hospitable roof of the chief of
police at Molo, to the east of Thermopylæ. But this time it seemed as
if, with a sufficient outlay of energy, we ought to pass over Jordan
into a land of milk and honey. The first step was to go back. Just
where we were turning from the high-road to go into the village there
met us a man on horseback, who proved to be the village doctor going
to visit a sick woman. The husband of the patient was trotting along
behind him. No sooner did the doctor hear our story than he turned to
the man following him, and said: "Go into the village and tell the
ferry-man that if he doesn't get back to the ferry as fast as his
legs can carry him I will split his head for him. Tell him there are
strangers waiting to get over to Lamia." The word "stranger" has great
power in Greece. If the stranger is not, as in Homer, under the special
protection of Zeus, he is under the protection of all good men, which
is perhaps quite as efficient.
At this point came a curious turn. The man who was to call the
ferry-man said: "But the ferry-man will not believe me when I tell him
that strangers are waiting." The doctor saw the point, and said: "Yes,
one of you must go with him." I decided that I was needed, and after a
hard tramp quite a distance through mud about a foot deep--I would not
abate one tittle of nine inches--I saw the effect of the message. The
ferry-man saddled a horse and shot off in the direction of the missing
bridge as if he believed the doctor was ready to do what he had said
he would do. When we reached the ferry all was in readiness for our
passage, and, shortly after seven o'clock we sat down to dinner in
Lamia. As the doctor and his follower went over in the same ferry-boat
it is a fair inference that they had also a personal interest in
stirring up the ferry-man.
The fact that this bridge had been lacking for two years on the
only high-road which leads directly from Thessaly, not only to the
Corinthian Gulf, but also, by a fork in Doris, to Bœotia and Attica,
is a sign of the times. The people of Lamia complain against the
Government, for this is a national road made and neglected by the
general Government. Incomplete in 1890 when I first went over it
on foot, it was completed at great expense, and it seems reckless
extravagance to neglect it now. Greece might better afford to spare
on its army and navy, and put the savings into internal improvements.
The bridge over the Peneios, on the high-road between Trikkala and
Larisa, the two principal cities of Thessaly, has been down for eight
or ten years and its place has been supplied by a ferry-boat. The
long-projected railroad, designed to connect Athens with Larisa,
and ultimately with Europe, was nearly half finished in 1894, and
until 1902 nothing was done to carry on the work, or to save from
disintegration the part already finished. After a lapse of eight years
a new company has taken up the work and is vigorously pushing it;
but the old material has been declared to be of no value. A sense of
waste in such matters makes one feel that Greece is far from being a
Switzerland in thrift. It hardly affords a basis upon which a "greater
Greece" can be built up.
The next day we took Thermopylæ at our leisure, passing out from Lamia
over the Spercheios on the bridge of Alamana, at which Diakos, famous
in ballad, resisted with a small band a Turkish army, until he was at
last captured and taken to Lamia to be impaled. Luckily this one bridge
over the Spercheios remains, and Thessaly has a road open to the east
through Thermopylæ and Atalante. The day was perfect, a day to make an
old man young. We were like boys at play, in spite of the overpowering
associations of the place. We sat down in the sunlight and dabbled
with our feet in the hot sulphur stream, which has given its name to
the place, Thermopylæ meaning "Hot Gates," and when a serious shepherd
came and looked at us in wonderment we regarded him as the "Old Man
of Thermopylæ," in that character-sketch, "There was an old man of
Thermopylæ who never did anything properly." We had him photographed
in that character, and fancied him doomed to return for a space to the
scene of his excesses and to behave himself "properly." We then went
through the pass as far east as Molo, and after taking luncheon there
returned to the pass for serious study, _i.e._, for tracing as far as
possible the position and movements of the antagonists in the great
battle.
It may be taken as a well-known fact that the Spercheios has since
the time of Herodotus made so large an alluvial deposit around its
mouth that, if he himself should return to earth, he would hardly
recognize the spot which he has described so minutely. The western
horn, which in his time came down so near to the gulf as to leave
space for a single carriage-road only, is now separated from it by
more than a mile of plain. Each visit to Thermopylæ has, however,
deepened my conviction that Herodotus exaggerated the impregnability of
this pass. The mountain spur which formed it did not rise so abruptly
from the sea as to form an impassable barrier to the advance of a
determined antagonist. It is of course difficult ground to operate
on, but certainly not impossible. The other narrow place, nearly two
miles to the east of this, is still more open, a fact that is to be
emphasized, because many topographers, including Colonel Leake, hold
that the battle actually took place there, as the great battle between
the Romans and Antiochos certainly did. This eastern pass is, to be
sure, no place where "a thousand may well be stopped by three," and
there cannot have taken place any great transformation here since
classical times, inasmuch as this region is practically out of reach
of the Spercheios, and the deposit from the hot sulphur streams, which
has so broadened the theatre-shaped area enclosed by the two horns,
can hardly have contributed to changing the shape of the eastern horn
itself. Artificial fortification was always needed here; but it is very
uncertain whether any of the stones that still remain can be claimed as
parts of such fortification. It is a fine position for an inferior
force to choose for defence against a superior one; but while it
cannot be declared with absolute certainty that this is not the place
where the fighting took place, yet the western pass fits better the
description of Herodotus. Besides this, if the western pass had been
abandoned to the Persians at the outset the fact would have been worth
mentioning.
[Illustration: THERMOPYLÆ. FROM THE WEST]
As to the heroic deed itself, the view that Leonidas threw away his
own life and that of the four thousand, that it was magnificent but
not strategy, not war, does not take into account the fact that Sparta
had for nearly half a century been looked to as the military leader
of Greece. It was audacious in the Athenians to fight the battle of
Marathon without them, and they did so only because the Spartans did
not come at their call. Sparta had not come to Thermopylæ in force, it
is true; but her king was there with three hundred of her best men.
Only by staying and fighting could he show that Sparta held by right
the place she had won. It had to be done. "So the glory of Sparta
was not blotted out." Had Sparta shown the white feather here, and a
retreat would have been interpreted as showing the white feather, she
would have lost prestige with the rest of the Greeks; and in that case
it is as good as certain that Platæa would never have been fought.
But besides showing the high statecraft which the occasion demanded,
Leonidas was performing the simple duty of obedience to Spartan law,
not to retreat before an enemy. He had been sent to hold the post; and
he stayed to the end; and there is no more stirring clarion note in
all that high-pitched story of the Persian war in Herodotus than the
epitaph inscribed on the monument to the fallen Spartans, "Stranger,
tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws."
Whether Simonides felt the need of simplicity and brevity, or whether
Spartan taste prescribed it, it is at any rate most fitting that
boasting is omitted. The deed was so great that one little note of
brag, or even some little amplifying and embellishing, would have
belittled it. It is stirring to read those other equally brief and
equally simple lines of Simonides inscribed on the monument erected for
the total number who fought and fell: "Four thousand from Peloponnesus
fought here with three millions."
One may have read, and read often, the description of the battle in the
school-room, but he reads it with different eyes on the spot, when he
can look up at the hillock crowned with a ruined cavalry barrack just
inside the western pass and say to himself: "Here on this hill they
fought their last fight and fell to the last man. Here once stood the
monuments to Leonidas, to the three hundred, and to the four thousand."