magnificent ruin! The view that we took of its walls and towers by the
full moon was something not to be forgotten. At Ægosthenæ we were on
the route so often travelled by the Spartans when they went over into
Bœotia to "regulate" its affairs, and it was under these walls that
the remnant of their beaten and disheartened army first stopped to
take breath on getting out of Bœotian territory after Leuctra. We had
planned to follow this entire route, but, since even this involved some
climbing, we agreed to take a little more climbing and go in a straight
line for Platæa, over the top of Kithæron, in spite of the fact that
the mountain wore a cap of cloud. So, having taken a very cold sea-bath
and another good look at the ruins of Ægosthenæ, which were only a
little less imposing by day than by moonlight, we scaled the height
with a single peasant for a guide, and his mule to carry our packs.
After many a look back on the increasingly beautiful scene behind us,
whenever the dark fir-trees, which cover the slopes and give the name
of "fir mountain" as a substitute for the old name Kithæron, allowed
it, we at last entered into the cloud just before reaching the top. In
the darkness of cloud and fir-trees we better felt that we were on the
mountain chosen by the Erinnyes for their abode, a place of howlings,
the scene of woe for Œdipus, Actæon, Pentheus, and Agave. Who would
wish for sunlight on such a spot? It would have been as inappropriate
as a cloud on Taygetos. While we were musing thus, suddenly there
came a rift in the cloud, and we saw the whole plain of Bœotia once,
twice, three times, and the spell of the Erinnyes was broken. We went
five hundred feet further down on the north side, where we seemed to
have left behind us the awful myths and to have come down into the
realms of history; for we were looking down into Platæa, which lay at
our feet. One of the brightest pages in Greek history is the unbroken
record of the heroism of Platæa, and when it was finally crushed one
might well have written over it, "dead on the field of honor." Its
Athenian leanings were abhorrent to Thebes, which always desired a
"big Bœotia." But no one could have done a better turn to Platæa than
did Thebes, when it espoused the cause of Persia and led away nearly
all the rest of Bœotia with it. At the close of "old Platæa's day" the
Panhellenic spirit of Platæa was rewarded by the Greeks in their giving
the fine old heroic city the prize of valor, and declaring its soil
forever sacred and inviolate. But the gods gave it a greater prize, in
that they made its name forever associated with the battle that made
Greece free.
It was again dark when we entered Thebes, and again we seemed to have
left the realm of bright history and to have come under the spell
of the awful myths of Cadmus's line, the horrors of Œdipus and his
fratricidal sons, dark horrors relieved only by the bright form of
Antigone.
STYX AND STYMPHALUS
Arcadia is a name to conjure with. It "throngs the pulses with the
fulness of the spring." It had been my lot to pass twice through
Southern Arcadia from east to west. But the great plains of Mantineia
and Megalopolis lie open to the sunlight, and have nothing weird or
even poetical about them. Even Lykosoura and Bassæ do not belong to the
Arcadia that furnished the stories about singing fishes and aquatic
mice. We must look elsewhere for those wonderful fountains, some of
which cured madness, while one not only cured drunkenness, but, passing
beyond the "touch not, taste not, handle not," made even the smell of
wine forever odious. It is recorded, by the way, that somebody set up
an inscription by this fountain, warning the traveller against drinking
of it. All these features belong to Northern Arcadia.
Mantineia is historically the most interesting city of Arcadia; and
yet I had twice looked from its walls through those deep gorges to the
north, knowing that just through the first one, almost in sight, lay
old Orchomenos, and longed to pass through that gateway, but had been
prevented by other claims upon my time. But in the summer of 1895 I
was allowed the delight of seven days in the saddle with two pleasant
companions in these uplands where reality is more inspiring than the
Louis Quatorze fictions that have been thrown around the name of
Arcadia.
To one accustomed to arid Attica and Argolis, the abundance of water
and trees in this region is most striking. The three great northern
mountains look bare enough at their tops; but they reach up and draw
down from the sky that store of moisture which Pentelicus and Arachnæon
are impotent to procure. Everywhere about them are rippling streams
lined with plane-trees, with here and there a magnificent chestnut
grove, and mountains covered with forests of pine and fir. Fields of
maize (with here and there a patch of hemp), watered by thousands of
little streams, diverted from the brooks, remind us of home. Around
Nonakris, which was almost the farthest point north reached in our
journey, is a wild tangle of vegetation which makes it difficult to
keep the paths, which follow along the streams, from becoming overgrown
and impassable. From this tangle we snatched many luscious blackberries
as we rode past, catching some briers with the berries.
Nonakris was in ruins when Pausanias visited it, but past it flowed the
river Styx, the name of which is probably better known than any other
Arcadian name. It was a painful and somewhat dangerous toil of about
three hours from the nearest of the half-dozen villages which represent
the ancient Nonakris to the foot of the famous waterfall from which the
river comes down. I use the word "toil" rather than ascent, for, it
being impossible to force our way up the bed of the stream, we had to
climb down about half as much as up; in fact, it was, taken in the heat
of noonday, a more toilsome climb than the ascent of Aroania, which we
had made on the same day before daybreak.
[Illustration: THE STYGIAN POOL]
When, after all, we stood face to face with the fall our feeling was
one of disappointment. It was nearly the middle of September, and
though Aroania, holding snow in its gorges all the year round, may be
called with more propriety than Ætna "the nurse of snow," there was
little water falling, and we saw none of the rainbow effects mentioned
by some travellers. Still, as Herodotus speaks of a _little_ water,
and both he and Homer speak of this as _trickling_, we ought to be
content. After climbing down to the black pool at the foot of the
last rock over which the water poured, we took time to let the whole
setting of the Styx make its impression, which it could not fail to
do. It is the setting rather than the fall which has always made the
impression. Where Aroania is broken off on the east end so abruptly
that one can only think of it as cut off by some gigantic cleaver, down
over this front comes the Styx, not with a shoot, but hugging the
rock and deflected several times along its face. Pausanias says that
the precipice is the highest that he ever remembers to have seen, and
its height is recorded as upward of six thousand feet. As the mountain
throws out arms to the right and left of the fall, we have a place
fitted to throw a potent spell over the mind on a moonlight night or
at morning or evening twilight. It was here that the exiled Cleomenes,
the gifted but mad King of Sparta, made the chiefs of the Arcadians
swear to support him in his attempt to secure a return to Sparta by
force of arms. He doubtless took advantage of the knowledge that the
Arcadians had from remote times regarded this awful place as imparting
an especial sanctity to oaths, and that here particularly the warrior's
oath (_sacramentum_) was taken.
It is no wonder that the lively imagination of the Greek transferred
the earthly Styx to Hades, and represented the most awful and binding
oath of the gods, by which they pledged their immortality, as that one
which they swore by this hated and deadly water.
There is now, as there was in ancient times, a tradition that it is
dangerous to drink of this water; but so great was our heat and thirst
that, regardless of consequences, we drank deep at the Stygian pool. On
returning home, after an interval of several days, I was caught by a
lurking fever and general derangement of the system, which it required
several days to throw off. I am not going to decide whether this is an
example of the slowness and sureness of the gods in punishing impiety,
whether I carried off a little malaria from an intervening visit at
Stymphalus, or whether it was simply the result of drinking too much
cold water not merely from the Styx, but from many others of the
countless springs about Aroania.
Aroania, from which the Styx falls, although 7,725 feet high, is less
generally known than its great neighbors east and west. When I first
went to Greece I had forgotten that there was such a mountain. But
it is much higher than Erymanthos, and affords a better view than
Kyllene, which is about seventy feet higher. Pausanias, who was no
mountain climber, ascended Aroania. Perhaps he was possessed by the
idea of doing justice to everything connected with so holy a place.
Following in his footsteps, we walked up to a shepherd's enclosure, at
an altitude of 5,000 feet, accompanied by the owner of the flocks, who
was also later our guide to the Styx. Here we spent the night in the
open air, near a fire, wrapped in rugs. At half-past two we set out by
the light of an old moon and reached the summit at half-past four. For
two hours clouds swept past us with fierce velocity, and it was bitter
cold as well as wet. It began to appear as if the same misfortune was
upon us as befell us a month before, when we had climbed Parnassus to
be lost in a cloud whose lifting gave us only here and there a glimpse
of the world below. But now at last we did get the whole broad view
from Thessaly to Taygetos. The grandest feature of all was Parnassus
and the still higher mountains of Ætolia; but the most interesting and
instructive feature was Peloponnesus, stretched out before us like a
raised map. We could study its chains and ganglia of mountains.
Two days later we were at Lake Stymphalus. We hastened to bathe in
it. Had we plunged in we should probably have achieved distinction
as the first bathers in that lake; but the sight of a half a dozen
blood-suckers at our feet held us back, and, bathing _from_ the lake
rather than in it, we came away not much cleaner for the operation. But
we secured a practical insight into the nature of this lake, which is
like several larger and smaller lakes in Northeastern Arcadia. Strictly
speaking, it is no lake at all, but a mud-pond. Probably in no place is
the water more than four or five feet deep, and had we dived from any
part of the shore our heads would still be sticking in the mud.
In a normal condition of things there should be here neither lake
nor mud-pond, but only a plain with a river running through it, and
disappearing in a hole at the foot of the mountain at the southern
end. Mountains are so thickly strewn in Arcadia that streams cannot
get around them, and so have to go through them. In this case the
water was supposed to find its way out under the mountains to a point
somewhat south of Argos, where it rushes out of the mountain side as
a pure and full river, under the name of Erasinos. But such a hole,
called a _katabothra_, was always likely to get clogged, and, as a
stoppage might occur at a distance from the mouth, it might be very
difficult to clear it out. In spite of great care this katabothra was,
doubtless, sometimes stopped in ancient times. The horrible Stymphalian
birds which Heracles killed typify, it is supposed, the pestilence
which arose from such a stoppage. Such gigantic labors as forcing open
the katabothra are quite in keeping with the character of Heracles's
other labors, which included the purging of the stables of Augeas and
the draining of the marsh of Lerna, typified by the killing of the
Lernæan hydra. That birds should here be chosen to represent the evil
seems an apt touch of local coloring; for several times in our stay
around this lake the air was shaken by a rustling of wings, and flocks
of birds that looked like wild ducks settled down into the water or
flew up from it.
As a proof that the water of the lake in antiquity was not up to its
present level, we saw near the water's edge deep wheel ruts in the
rock, which would now be deeply covered by the water in the spring (for
besides the irregular variation, dependent on the more or less perfect
working of the katabothra, there must always have been the regular
variations, dependent on winter rains and summer drouth). Furthermore,
standing on the imposing walls of the acropolis of Stymphalus, on
a hill which projects from a mountain out into the marsh on its
western side, one sees foundations of temples and other buildings of
the lower town, hardly clear from water at the driest season of the
year. Archæological excavations here would probably be particularly
rewarding; but are absolutely impossible until the modern arrangements
for draining the lake, begun some years ago, are carried to a higher
stage of perfection than they have reached at present.
Of course there is no better drinking-water in Greece than that which
flows into Lake Stymphalus. It flows from the mountains round about.
Kyllene contributes a large share. It is only when it lies in the basin
and stagnates there that it becomes polluted. In Hadrian's reign an
aqueduct carried from this source a copious supply of water to populous
Corinth, furnishing both drinking-water about as good as that of Pirene
and the great amount required in the numerous baths.
Now that Athens is rapidly growing, its authorities are at their wits'
ends to find a proper supply of water for the pressing needs of so
large a city. All sorts of temporary expedients have been resorted
to to increase the regular supply from Pentelicus. But none of them
are adequate; and the minds of the far-seeing ones contemplate the
necessity of bringing water from Stymphalus. Certainly if Athens is to
grow at its present rate, and become a city with a population of two
hundred thousand or more, something as radical as this must be adopted.
The operations of Lake Pheneus are really more interesting and
important than those of Lake Stymphalus, owing to its greater size.
It has been, as is seen by the marks on the surrounding rocks, at one
time some one hundred feet higher than in 1895, when it was a modest
lake of about three miles in diameter. In antiquity Heracles was called
in even here to make a long canal, traces of which have been noted by
modern travellers, straight through the plain to the katabothra at the
southern end. This canal was out of repair even in Pausanias's time,
and the river had reverted to its original tortuous bed. Here also the
stoppage of the katabothra has been fruitful of mischief. In ancient
times the strong city of Pheneos was forced to surrender by a general
who stopped the katabothra, imitating the tactics by which Agesipolis
took Mantineia. Once also in modern times a natural stoppage caused a
general desertion of the plain, and the water gradually rose until it
began to seem as if it would ultimately flow over the mountain-pass to
the south, and discharge itself into the plain of Orchomenos, which
already has its hands full with its own katabothra. But at the very
time of the arrival in Greece of the young King Otto, the accumulated
water forced the katabothra, and laid bare a tract of most richly
fertilized land, an event which was regarded as a blessing bestowed
upon the advent of the king. At the same time a great swelling of the
Ladon and the Alpheios, resulting in an overflow of Olympia, proved
conclusively, what the ancients appear to have known, that the water
of Pheneos flowed into the Ladon. Since the Alpheios proper, the
southern fork of the river to which the Ladon is the still greater
tributary, disappears twice before it achieves an uninterrupted course,
it is little wonder that the fancy of the Greek could picture it as
reappearing, even after a course under the sea, at the fountain of
Arethusa in Syracuse.
At the time of our visit Lake Pheneos was most impressive. Five
hundred feet higher than Lake Stymphalus, it was surrounded by grander
mountains, the steep slopes of which were thickly wooded on their
lower parts. It had as fine a setting as a lake could have. When I was
approaching it five years later from the south, I kept saying to my
companions, "Now I will show you one of the finest sights in Greece."
But as we advanced and more and more of the plain came into view,
I began to wonder what had become of the lake. It soon transpired
that it had repeated its old trick and slipped away again, leaving
some fertile territory, but a larger area of sand; and, what seemed
sadder than all else, converting a beautiful bit of scenery into a dry
valley, not altogether unlovely it must be confessed. I was, however,
much chagrined to be cheated out of my function as showman. Thus it
will ever be with these lakes. When the water rises so high as to have
weight enough to force out the obstruction which first produced the
lake, the lake seeks the sea; and the process of stopping and opening
will be repeated to the end of time.
In that part of Arcadia traversed by us there are no hotels and no
carriage-roads. Most of the nights we slept on rugs spread on the floor
of very plain houses. One night only did we have beds, in a so-called
inn at Kalavryta, our farthest point to the north. These beds--bad
success to them!--reminded us of the ancient conundrum, "When is a
bed not a bed?" They kept the promise to the ear and broke it to the
heart. We were more contented with the frank statement of the demarch
(mayor, if one may call him so) of a little village, in whose house we
spent our first night out: "You are very welcome to my house, but you
will have bugs." The prophecy was amply fulfilled before morning. In
no night of the whole journey were we spared this affliction. But the
exaltation of spirit in such a country is great enough to make one
speedily forget the annoyance to the flesh. Of course, a good deal of
this annoyance might have been avoided by taking along our own beds,
which would have involved only the paying for an extra horse. This plan
I have subsequently followed.
There was a sameness in our meals. So soon as we arrived at our night's
lodging we ordered four chickens, two for dinner and two to carry along
the next day in our saddle-bags for luncheon. This with bread and
unlimited grapes, without money and without price, provided us with two
meals a day, and in Greece one never thinks of taking anything more in
the early morning than a little coffee with bread. The grape season is
the favorable time to travel in Greece. Grapes are even more than bread
the staff of life; they assuage thirst as well as serve for food.
Our route was a long circuit which brought us back to Argos again
through Mantineia, Orchomenos, Kleitor, Kalavryta, Megaspeleon, Styx,
Pheneos, Stymphalus, Phlius, Nemea. It may be interesting to add that
the whole outlay was less than ten dollars apiece, of which more
than half went to the payment for horses. It is difficult to procure
anywhere so much pleasure at so little expense. How different is this
from the experience of the man who complained that he had spent years
in wandering about Europe paying a dollar for every fifty cents' worth
of pleasure!
AN UNUSUAL APPROACH TO EPIDAUROS
Perhaps the best way to study thoroughly a country, as well as to
enjoy it, is to do what we do at home, namely, to wander over it at
leisure, letting impressions settle in on us without making efforts to
gather information. Unfortunately, we seldom have time to do this in a
foreign country. I count it, therefore, as a privilege that during two
successive summers a residence, once on the island of Kalauria, now
called Poros, and once on the mainland opposite to it, in the territory
of Troezen, furnished me an opportunity to become acquainted in this
delightful way with a most interesting part of Greece. Not only did
I pay frequent visits to the temple on the island, where Demosthenes
committed suicide--a temple at that time being excavated by Swedish
archæologists, but I also made several excursions to Troezen, Methana,
and Ægina, and once, breaking through the high mountain which opposite
Poros approaches the sea, I worked my way over it across the eastern
prong of plane-tree-leaf-shaped Peloponnesus to the old Dryopian town
of Hermione, which, in its beautiful situation at the innermost recess
of a deep bay, rivals Troezen.
For several weeks during one of these summers Mr. Kabbadias, the Greek
Ephor-General of Antiquities, was our next neighbor; and subsequently,
when he was excavating at Epidauros, where he worked for five years
after his brilliant success on the Athenian acropolis, an invitation
from him was the occasion of my making a still longer excursion. My
companion was a Greek neighbor. As it was summer, we made an early
start, sailing along two hours to the harbor of Troezen, where we took
horses which had preceded us. At five o'clock we were in the saddle.
For an hour or more we skirted the shore as far as the nature of the
land (if we may call bare rocks land) would allow it, passing in the
rear of Methana, that jagged _sierra_ which from Athens forms an
impressive background for Ægina, and is itself projected against the
higher mountains of the mainland. Then coming to a point where these
mountains fall sheer into the sea some fifteen hundred feet, we were
obliged to turn inland. The path, foreseeing the jumping-off place,
took the turn betimes by climbing up with many a zigzag a face of the
mountain which was not quite perpendicular. After a long pull we passed
on our right a village called Lower Phanari, which looked so much like
an eyrie that one might think "Lower" was added in jest. But when
with still more toil we reached another village called Upper Phanari,
and looked down upon the other, we recognized the seriousness of the
distinction. There it lay, with its fifty-one houses, so far below us
that it seemed almost level with the sea.
Why anybody should ever choose to live so high up on the rocks as
Upper Phanari was not at first apparent. But after a halt here for
luncheon (brought with us, of course, for no traveller counts on living
on such a region), and after two hours of refreshing sleep on wooden
benches, we moved downward and inland, and in a quarter of an hour
came upon one of those little plains which supported so many villages
in ancient Greece. In this case an ancient village, the name of which
we may never know, and which occupied the site of Upper Phanari, where
it has left substantial traces of itself in the shape of walls, must
have got a scanty support from this little plain. Both ancients and
moderns, rather than live in the plain, preferred to live on the rocks
above, although it entailed carrying the produce and drinking water a
mile, that they might live in sight of the beloved sea. Our downward
turn was soon exchanged for another upward one, our course being all
the time northward and parallel to the shore. Once a great gap in the
range separating us from the sea revealed not only the sea, but the
whole of Methana, which, with all its height, was so low that we looked
over its peaks down into the sea. About four o'clock, refusing a turn
into a broad mountain valley to the left, we turned sharply to the
right and broke through the mountains by a narrow gorge, and were again
on the outside with the whole Saronic Gulf before us. It was such a
display of beauty that one shrinks from enumerating its details. What
immediately arrested our attention was that which lay at our feet. Here
the mountains receded a little, giving place to a paradise of vines
and trees, which made a marked contrast to the brown mountains on the
one hand, and the blue sea on the other. The boundary lines of each
color were very sharp. A large opening, very little of which we could
see, ran back into the mountain to the left of the plain. Through this
opening a stream came down, flowing even in the summer, a rare thing in
Eastern Greece.
This plain contained the ancient town of Epidauros, and three hours'
distant, up through the opening in the mountains, lay the sanctuary
of Æsculapius, called to-day the Hieron or Holy Place, which gave the
town its importance. One travelling from Athens to Nauplia by sea is
attracted by this single opening on the whole eastern shore of Argolis.
But much as one would like to turn in here and explore the great
opening, and go this way up to the "holy place," the steamers take
him along past it, unless he perchance gets off at Ægina, and trusts
himself to a sail-boat to take him across. Travellers generally have
to follow the beaten track; and I had visited the Hieron four times
by the longer route from Nauplia before it befell me to approach it
by this road, which was trodden by the greater part of the tens of
thousands who came to seek salvation from Æsculapius.