west in the line. This justifies the saying of Empedocles above quoted,
being so large that the Parthenon could be lost in one corner of it, as
the wooden ladle was lost in Lady Wouter Van Twiller's pocket. It is
the most massive of Greek temples, in the sense in which the temple of
Zeus at Olympia is more massive than the Parthenon--_i.e._, its columns
and all its members are larger. So enormous were its dimensions that
the architect readily saw that he must deviate from the ordinary
rules of construction. Columns of friable stone fifty-five feet high,
supporting an unusually heavy entablature, needed support themselves.
Accordingly they were embedded in a continuous wall. What one here saw
was not a line of graceful columns between which and the cella one
could walk about, but only a great wall with half columns protruding
from it. These half columns were not really independent members. The
small blocks composing them run over into the wall to the right and
left. They simply serve to break up a monotonous wall, and to present
the appearance of columns. This contour, which is a little over a
semi-circumference, averages about twenty feet, being, of course,
greater at the bottom. A man's back, as was remarked by Diodorus
Siculus, easily fits into the flutings. The clearest idea, however, of
the large proportions of the temple I got by noting that the grooves
in a triglyph lying on the ground measured fifteen feet in length. It
would also be no exaggeration to say that a company could dance on the
top of one of the capitals lying about.
The inside of this temple must have been as peculiar as the outside.
The great question here is where to place the gigantic figures called
Atlantes or Telamones, male figures corresponding to the female figures
on the Erechtheum, but, unlike them, showing exertion, like Atlas in
the Olympia metope. Probably they stood on the lateral walls of the
cella, and, with their twenty-five feet, they would reach up to the
roof, like the second row of columns at Pæstum. The cella probably ran
clear through from one end of the temple to the other, and, while the
two divisions of the temple to the right and left of it, which were
as much closed as the cella itself, had entrances from the east, the
cella was probably entered from the west. One has to say "probably"
very often in speaking of the interior, because the temple has been
nearly all carried away to make the pier at Porto Empedocle, the harbor
of the modern city. As late as 1401 three columns were still standing
and carrying a piece of the architrave. But the temple entered very
early on the stage of dilapidation, for the reason that the roof was
never put upon it. For more than half a century, even from the time of
Theron, Akragas had wrought upon this monster building, and had not
finished it when the Carthaginian fury broke upon her. Although the
city rose again, and even prospered, it never saw a day for taking up
again such a gigantic enterprise.
Besides this temple of Olympian Zeus there was an older temple of
Zeus Polieus on the acropolis, to which an unusual interest attaches,
because it was built by Phalaris, of execrable memory, who, having
attached to himself a band of laborers for the construction of the
temple, by their help seized the sovereign power and subverted the
democracy. Down in the crypt of the Church of Santa Maria dei Greci
we were shown a regular stylobate of three steps, and on the top step
eight columns, the upper parts of which run up into the church, which
shows also columns of the other long side of the temple. Tradition
claims this as the identical temple built by Phalaris. But as the forms
of the columns forbid putting them back into the sixth century we do
better to identify them with the temple of Athena on the acropolis. The
temple built by Phalaris is to be sought, then, on the ground occupied
by the modern cathedral. Jove gave place to Jesus, and the virgin
goddess, as at Athens, to the Virgin Mother.
When we told our smiling host that we intended to ride in one day
from his hotel to Castelvetrano, the point of departure for Selinus,
he said the thing was impossible. We told him that, while we admitted
his judgment in all that pertained to horses, we were going to make
the sixty-two miles which, according to Baedeker, lay between us and
our goal between sunrise and sunset, however bad the road might be. He
then, like a true sportsman, got interested, offered to bet, and when
we declined begged us to telegraph back to him if we really did it.
As we had to wake up the cook the next morning, after waking up
ourselves, the sun was well up in the heavens before we got off. But
the coffee which cost us so much time must have told on our gait; for a
fellow-countryman, whom we first met two days later at Palermo, seemed
impressed by it, and rather proud of it. He asked, "Didn't I see you go
through Porto Empedocle the day before yesterday morning on bicycles?"
When we assented he said: "Well, I told the American Consul who was
with me, 'I bet dose vas American boys.'" And the next day he repeated,
as if pleased with his own sagacity, "I told the Consul, 'I bet dose
vas American boys.'"
As we started the next morning toward Selinus, after passing the night
at Castelvetrano, I realized that this, more even than Syracuse, was my
chief object of interest in this long-delayed Sicilian journey.
The history of this short-lived colony of a colony is invested with
a pathetic interest. Planted by Sicilian Megara in 628 B.C., as an
outpost of Hellas toward the west, it was a standing challenge to the
Phœnicians. But there was not always war between Hellas and Canaan.
The Phœnicians, who had long been in possession of the west end of
the island, were bent on gain, while the Greek sought rather for a
free unfolding of his civic life; and so, Selinus, with a little
temporizing, got on with its neighbors.
There were some strange vicissitudes in Sicilian politics. From the
time when Carthage appeared in Sicily as a protector of the older
Phœnician settlements, Selinus saw its advantage in siding with her
against other rivals. On the great day of Himera, Gelon and Theron had
to contend against Selinus as well as against Carthage. This off-side
play was not, however, regarded by the other Sicilian cities as
sufficient cause for shutting Selinus out of the sisterhood of states.
But, while Selinus had an eye to profit, it did not, like Akragas,
forget the art of war. That she was a power in western Sicily in the
days when Carthage was so strangely inactive for seventy years after
Himera, is shown by an inscription of this time, which mentions a
victory won by the Selinuntians "with the aid of Zeus and Phobos and
Herakles and Apollo and Poseidon and the Tyndaridæ and Athena and
Malophoros and Pasikrateia and the other gods, but especially Zeus."
This drawing in of so large a part of the pantheon implies that it was
a great victory. Probably it was won from Segesta, that most hated
Elymian neighbor. But Segesta knew how to help herself. After she had
lured Athens to destruction in this same quarrel, she invoked the
Carthaginian on a mission of destruction. For the Carthaginian was not
subdued, but was biding his time, and, when he again fell upon Sicily,
it was his old ally, Selinus, that first felt the weight of his arm.
Then Zeus and Phobos seemed to forsake her. But her conduct was such
in that awful visitation that Hellas had no reason to blush for this
daughter.
The force which Hannibal led against her was, at the lowest estimate,
100,000, which was more than the total population of the city. The
first attack on the land side, where the walls were weak and out of
repair because no danger had threatened for years, was repulsed. A call
for help was sent to both Akragas and Syracuse. The former might have
had its contingent before the walls in three days, allowing one for the
messenger. But Akragas waited for the Syracusans, who were two days
farther off, to come and take them on the way. She paid the penalty
for this delay three years later. She, as well as Syracuse, ought to
have known that at Selinus they would be fighting for their own life.
Syracuse was, moreover, an ally of Selinus in the war against Athens,
which was finished only three years before with such eclat as to make
Syracuse a proper champion of the Greek cities against the great enemy.
It is probable that the call for help was sent out before the enemy
actually made its assault, but so speedy were the movements of the
Carthaginians that one might have expected even prompt aid to come too
late. Selinus, however, held out with such tenacity as to frustrate all
calculation. For nine days, in the consciousness that she stood as a
vanguard of Hellas, while the eastern hills were eagerly scanned for
the succor that was hourly expected, Selinus conducted a defence rarely
equalled in history.
There were not men enough to allow reliefs in defending the wall. The
same men stood at their posts day and night. The old men brought new
weapons, and sharpened those that were dull. The women carried food and
water. Even on the ninth day, when the fierce Iberian mercenaries broke
through the wall and the weary defenders, and got inside the city, the
defence did not cease. The city had to be taken house by house, men
and women hurling down stones from the house-tops until the supply was
exhausted. And now, house after house was pillaged by men spurred on by
the promise of free plunder given by Hannibal; and delicate women fell
into hands compared with which the claws of wild beasts were tender.
Soldiers paraded the streets with heads on the points of their spears
and strings of hands slung over their shoulders. Only 2,600 survivors
somehow found their way to Akragas.
On this very day a large force started from Syracuse; but when, united
with the contingent of Akragas, it confronted the Carthaginians, the
woe of Selinus was accomplished. Hannibal told these belated allies
that he had dealt Selinus only its deserts, and that even its gods had
pronounced against it. What a theme for a Jeremiah!
The six large temples of Selinus lie in a worse condition than that in
which the Carthaginians left them. Earthquakes have been more active
here than at Akragas. But these ruins, in two large groups, one on the
acropolis and one on a plateau to the east, are the most interesting,
as well as the most impressive, ruins in Europe. Their interest lies
in the fact that they present us in tangible form the history of Greek
architecture as it unfolded itself in a provincial town. There is
Temple C (probably a Herakles temple; but archæologists have refrained
from giving doubtful names, and designated the temples by letters.
Perhaps the names given at Syracuse and Girgenti, though false,
are better pegs to serve the memory than letters), with "shapeless
sculpture," the well-known metope representing Perseus cutting off the
head of Medusa, and another with Heracles carrying the mischievous
Kerkopes flung over his shoulder. These grotesque attempts at
sculpture, as well as the general consideration that the first thought
of a colony was to erect a temple, allow us to date this oldest temple
of Selinus as early as 600 B.C. The architecture is vastly better than
the sculpture, a complete Doric style, with something of the clumsiness
which marks the venerable ruin at Corinth. Then we may notice Temple E,
probably a Hera temple, the southernmost of the three on the eastern
plateau, a large and beautiful temple, once most gorgeously painted,
and giving us, perhaps, more light than any other temple on the
subject of polychromy in Doric architecture. The metopes, the best
of which is Zeus receiving Hera on Mount Ida, mark this temple as a
product of the early part of the fifth century, about the time of the
temple of Zeus at Olympia. Then, at the other end of this line, on the
eastern plateau, is Temple G, so enormous that it is supposed, like its
brother at Akragas, to have been meant for none other than Zeus, the
King of the gods. It is a few feet longer and a few feet wider than the
great Akragas temple. Its date is given with a melancholy certainty;
for it, as well as the Akragas temple, was never finished. It may well
have taken a small community like this as much as the "forty and six
years" which the Temple of Jerusalem required to put up such a colossal
building. An especial interest attaches to it because we see it, as
it were, stopped midway in a lively process of coming into being.
Some of the huge drums are combined into columns, a few of which are
fluted from top to bottom, while others have a little start of fluting
at the top and bottom, and still others are only cut in the form of a
twenty-sided polygon. But one must go to Campo Bello, about five miles
distant, to feel in a still more lively manner the interruption of the
building process. Here one sees a cliff where in one case workmen had
just marked out, with a circular groove, a column-drum to be detached
from its bed. In another place is one around which workmen have hewn
for months, so that it is almost ready to be detached. Hard by are some
already detached and rolled a little distance toward Selinus; still
others are found transported half-way or more to the temple. The people
of the country are filled with wonder at the sight. They recognize the
fact that all these blocks were meant for the great temple; and some of
them told an early traveller that the women of Selinus used to carry
these stones on their heads from the quarry to the temple, spinning
flax all the way as they went, adding, with naïveté: "But, you know, it
was a race of women much larger than ours."
These interesting temples show, as they stand side by side, great
freedom in the application of the rules of Doric style. For instance,
the number of columns on the side of a hexastyle temple varies from
thirteen to seventeen. The number of steps also varies from two to six,
instead of the canonical three.
When we visited Segesta the next day and saw its temple, also
unfinished, as it was when the city was stricken down by the Greek
Agathocles, we felt little pity for this city which had stirred up so
much mischief for its foe, Selinus, and for its friend, Athens. But
perhaps, after all, this Elymian city's greatest crime was saying, "I
must live." If Selinus refused to accept this proposition, Segesta
called in Athens or Carthage, regardless of the woes that might in
consequence come upon those who disputed her right to live.
In shooting down from Segesta to the northern shore, without further
exploration of what may be called the country of Æneas, we got glimpses
of Mount Eryx, the favorite haunt of Venus; and later in the day the
train brought us to Palermo, "that wonderful cross-section of history."
But as it was not rich in Greek history our tour in western Hellas was
at an end.
DALMATIA
June, lovely June, has been the bringer of two good things to
me--Sicily and the Dalmatian coast; and now that the charm of the
latter is fresh it seems almost to outshine the former.
When I came on board the Austrian Lloyd steamer Galatea at Corfu I
had little idea of what awaited me. One reads of this "Norway of the
South," this "Switzerland in the sea"; but how little these comparisons
convey until the landscape has really been seen. My main purpose was
rest from the heat of Greece, and a more or less careful study of the
ruins of Spalato.
This Dalmatian line is adapted to one who wishes to travel lazily.
The stops as far as Spalato are longer than the passages; the boat,
however, starts in each case promptly according to the schedule. The
only exception was at Corfu; when all was ready, and we were just about
to hoist the anchor, a Greek boatman came up alongside with a barge
loaded with casks and boxes. It was so characteristic of a Greek.
While we were moving along the coast of Albania until late in the
afternoon, there was nothing new to look out for; and so there was
time to get acquainted with the ship and the passengers, to get one's
bearings. There were the rules for passengers printed in five parallel
columns--English, French, German, Italian, and Greek--emphasizing
the cosmopolitan constituency of the travelling public. In Europe,
and especially in the Orient, it always pays to read regulations,
particularly the English column, to see how foreigners wrestle with
our language. Rule 3 said: "Every damage is to be made good by the
person who _dit_ it." Rule 11: "It is prohibited to any passenger to
_middle_ with the command and direction of the vessel." As I had always
trusted to the captain to run his own ship, I felt safe on that point.
Particular anxiety for the ladies ran through the rules. One rule
was: "Gentlemen are not allowed to enter the cabins of the ladies,"
and as a final snapper at the end of the last rule was this sentence:
"Passengers having a right to be treated like persons of education will
no doubt conform themselves to the rules of good society by respecting
their fellow-travellers and paying a due regard to the fair sex." As we
had no ladies at all on board until the journey was about half finished
it began to seem as if they had been frightened away.
The captain, like most of the captains of this line, was of Slavic
origin. Of other languages than his own he knew only Italian. In this
he did all his "cussing" at every port; and it seemed to produce
everywhere the proper effect. His gentlest conversational tone was
like the blast of a trumpet and could be heard from stem to stern. I
took an early opportunity to go up to the bridge when he was there,
and remark apologetically that I was travelling _per vedere qualche
cosa_. His laconic reply was, "_Ma perchè no?_" With that I felt myself
installed on the bridge, and I spent more hours there during the voyage
than any one of the officers. Perhaps the third-class passengers
standing below suspected me of attempting to "middle with the command
and direction of the vessel."
Toward evening we passed Akrokeraunia, the massive headland ending
off a chain of mountains back of it over six thousand feet high, in
antiquity the cynosure of sailors crossing by the shortest line from
Italy to Greece. The modern name, Capo Duro, suggests its pitilessness.
There it stands running out to the northwest, and so bidding defiance
to the strongest wind of the region. The sea has beaten against it
since there was a sea; it has broken away a good deal of it, if we may
judge by a single isolated island thrown out in front of it. The high
mountains seem saying to the sea, "You waste your vain fury on those
lower rocks. What will you do when you come to us?" But it is the
business of the patient sea to help "draw down the Aonian hills," and
until there shall be no more sea Capo Duro must yield inch by inch.
Having passed Akrokeraunia, we turned sharply to the right, and
changed our course from north to south until we dropped anchor in
the harbor of Valona. As far as Cattaro the chief function of our
boat was the transportation of freight, and that was the reason why
the stops were so long. The captain was an ardent fisherman; hardly
was the anchor down when his little boat dropped astern, and he
fished sometimes far on into the night. He counted his catch not
by numbers, but by kilos; and since the other officers in a circle
around the stern, leaning over the taffrail, vied with the captain,
fish were plentiful on board. All along this shore were great forests
of holm-oak, and the cargo that we took on here was almost entirely
valonia, so much used in Europe by tanners.
In the night we got off, and I missed the site of the great ancient
city Apollonia, a little to the north of our stopping-place. But in
the forenoon we stopped at Durazzo, the ancient Dyrrhachium, which,
situated at the beginning of the great Via Egnatia, saw the passage of
so many Roman armies into Greece. Cæsar and Pompey passed that way to
their great struggle for the possession of the world. In earlier days
it was known under the name of Epidamnos, as the colony of Kerkyra
which set its mother city at war with her own mother city, Corinth, and
so lighted the fire that destroyed Greece in the dreadful Peloponnesian
war. At Durazzo my only first-class fellow-passenger got off.
Of third-class passengers we had a plenty, and a nondescript
crowd they were; in other words, they beggared description. Some
were magnificently dressed; but even those who were in rags were
picturesque. If a painter had been present he would have been troubled
by an _embarras de richesse_. Red and yellow were the prevailing
colors in that motley crowd; gold embroidery was abundant. The few
women present kept pretty well in the background, and took little or
no part in the exuberant jollity of the men, who sang and danced in
true Oriental style, keeping for the most part a somewhat monotonous
droning, but rising sometimes into frenzy. This, continued far on into
the evening hours, was bewitching. The situation was, or at least
seemed to be, made for my special benefit. I seemed to have a private
steamer, with the captain and crew working for me, and these fantastic
and jolly people amusing me, who had promised not even "to _middle_."
But the next day I was brought from reverie to my senses by the coming
of first-class passengers. At Dulcino, the first of the two harbors
recently gained by Montenegro, which thus became a maritime state, the
Mayor of the town came on board to travel _via_ Cattaro up to Cettinje,
the capital, a long way around, but the way of least resistance. _He_
did not break the charm, for a more gorgeously dressed and finer-shaped
man one seldom sees. Scores of Montenegrins of the singers and dancers
of the preceding evening, cooks and gardeners returning to their homes
from Constantinople, where they are in great demand, crowded around
this magnate and kissed his hand in true Oriental style, which he took
in patriarchal fashion. This was in keeping with the scenes of the day
before; but this giant's wife and children were nothing but ordinary,
plain people. At the next port, Antivari, a regular European lady,
the wife of the Lloyd agent, came on board with the whole population
of the village to give her a send-off; and we at once stepped out of
dream-land.
I now fell into another mood. The whole voyage, with its long and
frequent stops, began to seem a regular lark, and I so entered into
the spirit of the thing that I determined at the next stop to get my
bicycle up out of the hold and get a little acquaintance with the
country which lay back of the long mountain line of coast. As we were
booked to stop at Cattaro forty-four and a half hours, that seemed a
good place to begin. The big Montenegrins had interested me so much I
would go up and see where such fellows grew.
Who can describe the Gulf, or, as they call it there, the Bocche di
Cattaro? It enjoys the distinction of being "perhaps the finest harbor
in the world." There is a break in the coast line; as you go in you
find yourself in a broad bay; but that is not all; you pass through
another opening, into another bay, and so on, the mountains growing
higher all the time until, by passing five channels, one so narrow that
it used to be stopped by a chain, and so is called to-day Catena, you
reach the fifth bay, on the east shore of which, nestled up against
the base of a high dark mountain, one of those from which the region
Montenegro got its name, lies Cattaro, a town of five or six thousand
inhabitants, the outpost of Austria to the south. For a brief period at
about the end of the Napoleonic wars, Montenegro held this place and
the Bocche. No doubt all Montenegrins long to possess it again; for it
is their natural outlet to the sea, from which the thin line of Austria
here shuts them out, except for the poor harbors farther south.
Much history has been enacted around this gulf, which was a prize too
valuable not to be striven for. In fact, it is a paradise like few on
earth. All the way through the devious passages one is reminded of Lake
Lucerne by the mountain banks and of Como by the tropical vegetation.
Many of the officers of the Austrian Lloyd have their homes on these
shores. Our captain and at least one of the other officers spent two
days here with their families. The latter brought back word that an
American king named Morgan had just visited the Bocche on his yacht.
[Illustration: CATTARO]
We arrived shortly after noon; but it took me just an hour and a
half to get my bicycle through the custom-house. The officials hardly
knew what to do with it. Probably no bicycle had ever entered that
port, and it may be a long time before another enters. I have no doubt
that they thought me a fool for bringing mine in; and one could hardly
blame them for the thought. The Austrian officials, however, are so
affable--I have never met an exception--that one cannot think of losing
his own patience. In the cool of the day, in order to test the road,
I walked, with a very little riding, up the zigzag road, getting a
little taste of what awaited one who would go to Cettinje, and then
dropped down again in twenty minutes after the sun had gone down. I had
had enjoyment enough to pay for the experiment, and had come to the
conclusion, on perhaps rather insufficient data, that on the next day,
with good weather, I could get to Cettinje and back if I girded myself
to it, so slight is the lateral distance on the map.