our cook, adds lemon juice and eggs to the soup, which is a very
laudable addition, and generally gives us a sauce of these materials to
our boiled meat. We have good cauliflowers, generally brought in with a
little grated cheese over them. The cabbages also are good, but lettuce
and celery are very poor. Jerusalem artichokes supply the place of
potatoes, and these are all the vegetables that Athens furnishes at this
season. At first we found it difficult to have any milk, either morning
or evening, but that is now more abundant, and we have even added to our
breakfast-table, a dish called yergouti (γεργουτι), which is sour goat’s
milk curd, and I think it very good. The honey also is excellent. Our
evenings are lighted by long, wax candles, very thick at one end, and
very thin at the other, so that they would well deserve the name of
tapers.
You know the situation of Athens. The Acropolis crowns an abrupt and
rocky hill about five miles from the sea, and the ancient city spread
round its base, and over some other hills of the same nature to the
south and west, but the modern town is clustered principally on the
north-eastern side of the citadel. These hills, though steep and rugged
towards the top, slope gently at their bases into a fertile plain,
watered by the Cephisus, at the distance of about half a mile from
Athens. The upper part of this low tract is covered with olives; but
towards the Piræus, (which stands on a separate cluster of eminences) it
is marshy. The Ilissus passes close by the town among the hills, but
even at this season it is a dry channel, without water except at one
place, where a little spring rising at the foot of some marble rocks
which cross the channel, is supposed to be the fountain Callirrhoe or
Enneacrune, and serves for one of the washing-places of the inhabitants;
but whether the name be rightly given to it or not, it is I believe only
the reappearance of a little thread of water which the hollow actually
contains a little higher up, and is speedily lost again amongst loose
stones and rocks of mica slate. Yet in this part the rock is marked by
several artificial channels for water, and evidently polished by its
action, and there are likewise other similar channels higher up, and
unconnected with the bed of the river. The opposite slope of the ravine
was once crowned by the little Ionic temple, published in the first
volume of Stuart’s Athens; but that has now disappeared, nothing
remaining but the foundations of the semicircular apsis, added to make
it a church. About a mile above the town, a small current is led away
from the bed of the Ilissus, to supply modern Athens, but all together
would fall far short of the contents of a London gutter after a shower.
The Cephisus is said to present in its upper part a copious and
beautiful stream of excellent water, but it diminishes as it descends,
partly from being diverted for the purposes of cultivation, and partly
perhaps from the loose nature of the soil. We were told that even in
winter this larger river does not reach the sea, but this is calumny,
for it forms a pool between Cape Colias and Munychia, whence a stream
passes into the Saronic gulf, which I could hardly cross without getting
wetshod.
Returning to the ground at Athens, we find the Areopagus on the
north-western descent of the Acropolis, and forming an appendage to it:
a hollow to the south-west of these eminences, separates these from a
long hill, divided into three summits, now called the Musæum, the Pnyx,
and the Lycabettus; for the first name we have sufficient authority, the
second is not so clear, and for the last, I can find no reason, except
that we have the name in ancient authors, without knowing to what
eminence it was applied, and here is a hill without any other name; but
I shall use all these names, and some other doubtful ones, just as if
they rested on the most perfect chain of evidence, for the sake of
convenience.
The Musæum is very nearly as high as the Acropolis; the other summits
are lower: on the opposite side of the town, but at a greater distance,
the hill of St. George, supposed to be the ancient Anchesmus, overtops
them all; and its narrow summit is crowned with a small chapel.
To the south-east, on the other side of the Ilissus, our views are
bounded by the great, rounded mass of Hymettus; while from various
points looking up the stream, we perceive the more lofty, and more
picturesquely formed Pentelicus. Across the plain, and the Cephisus, is
the long range of Parnes, ending in the lower hills of Corydalus and
Aigialos; but if you wish to complete the picture, as seen from the
eminences about Athens, you must add to these objects the Saronic gulf,
with its surrounding mountains, the islands of Egina and Salamis, the
mountains of Megara, Cithæron, the Acropolis of Corinth, and mount
Cyllene; names crowded with recollections which spread a charm on every
spot over which the eye wanders.
The rock here is generally limestone, but not all of one formation; in
the bottoms, and on the high mountains, it is united with mica slate.
Anchesmus, and the hills about Athens, if not of mountain lime, are
perhaps oolitic, though the stone is very hard and compact, and
frequently somewhat translucent, and I have not been able to discover
any shells in it. There is a conglomerate, where fragments of primitive
rocks are united by a calcareous cement, which seems to contain
magnesia, and may correspond with our magnesian limestone, while the
hills of the Piræus are of a soft calcareous sandstone, containing
shells of a much later period. A sandstone at the base of the Musæum is
perhaps gray wacke, but I will not detain you on a subject of which I
understand so little.
I have given you this description of the country, in order not to
interrupt by it the account of its antiquities, to which I will now
proceed. I had formed the most sanguine expectations of the beauty of
the edifices, and I was not disappointed. First-rate productions never
disappoint us, if we have formed a tolerably precise idea of what we are
to see. It is the expectation, not of the object, but of being surprised
and delighted, without any distinct notion of why this is to happen,
which is disappointed; and indeed the state of mind seems almost to
ensure that feeling, since it most readily takes place with those whose
previous habits have not led them to feel much interest in the objects
they are about to visit.
At Rome we see abundance of antiquities scattered about the streets, or
collected in museums, or still standing in their original situations;
and many of these are very beautiful both in design and workmanship.
About Naples too, there is an abundance of ancient fragments, but for
the most part, what remain on the ground are mere walls and vaults of
coarse stone, too imperfect to exhibit design, and entirely without
anything that may be called architecture; one may ramble for hours among
ruins without meeting with even a fragment of a column, or a bit of
marble. The temple at Pozzuoli forms an exception, but there, though you
have many of the parts, you have very little of the effect of the
architecture. The same is in some degree true of Pompei, arising from
the total deficiency of the superior parts, yet Pompei, as far as it
goes, is an admirable school of architecture, exhibiting the manner in
which the ancients, at least the Italian Greeks, applied their style of
building to private habitations. But there is nothing at Pompei of the
higher and more perfect style; and in general we find the execution very
indifferent, and in some instances miserably bad, even in their temples.
From Naples to Corfu, we meet with, I may almost say, no antiquities. In
the Ionian islands we may seek out with difficulty a few remaining
portions of a wall, a bit or two of a cornice, and one or two
inscriptions. At Patras they shew a single Corinthian capital of
indifferent workmanship; and in the road thence to Corinth, there is
nothing to be met with but one or two insignificant scraps of wall. At
the time therefore of our arrival at Corinth, we had experienced a long
abstinence from the principal object of our pursuit, and we were pleased
merely with the sight of the fragments of marble which are abundantly
scattered over the fields in the neighbourhood of that city, and still
more with one or two pieces of Corinthian shafts in the town, and with
the six Doric columns still erect, which have formed part of a temple.
At Cenchrea we were too late to see anything, and too impatient to get
to Athens, to stop to look about us at the Piræus. From that port we
could just see the top of the temple of Minerva in the Acropolis, a
sight which stimulated us still farther, and we were vexed that the
necessity of attending to our luggage would not permit us to proceed
rapidly. There are two roads into the town. We took the right-hand,
leaving on the left the monument of Philopappus, which has at a distance
merely the effect of a tower. The first object that struck our view was
the Temple of Jupiter Olympus, of which there remain sixteen lofty
columns still erect, and in their places. Except the Pantheon, Rome
offers no ruin of equal consequence, of good architecture, for neither
the Coliseum, nor any other theatre, nor amphitheatre in Italy can come
under that description. In rambling about to find a lodging, I passed by
the Monument of Lysicrates, the exquisite beauty of whose proportions
and details are sadly spoilt by its present situation, where the wall of
the court-yard of the monastery, joins that of the monastery itself, so
that one bit of it is seen in the street, one within the court, and
another in the inside of the house. You may imagine how this must spoil
a monument seven feet in diameter. In our first walk we passed by the
Tower of the Winds, now a place for the performance of dancing
dervishes, but incumbered with other buildings; and the mouldings and
sculptures of which are rather clumsy in design, as well as in the
execution. Behind this building there are remains of the aqueduct which
supplied the Clepsydra. Stuart has published it without being aware of
its purpose, and he has omitted to notice some remarkable peculiarities.
Each pier is of one stone, and the pilasters are cut upon it, so as to
lean inwards, as if to oppose the lateral thrust of the arch, a
precaution quite unnecessary as each arch is likewise formed out of a
single stone. Soon afterwards we came to the Portico of the market,
which though not to be compared to the best examples here, is yet a very
handsome building. We then passed by the building called by Stuart the
Stoa, or Portico; but which now seems more generally considered as the
Pantheon of Hadrian. The columns have more colour than those of the
temple of Jupiter, but they appear to be of the same material; the
capitals are poor in design, and the entablature badly composed, but it
is an antique, and we are sensible that it must have been a splendid
building. All these occur within the distance of a few paces: not much
farther is a fragment, supposed to be the Gymnasium, built by Ptolemy,
but this is merely a portion of marble wall.
After these comes the Temple of Theseus, and here I must detain you a
little; it is an almost perfect building of the best style of Grecian
art; supposed to be just prior to the administration of Pericles. You
have no conception of what a beautiful thing it is. It stands quite
detached, on a little point of land running out from the hill of the
Areopagus. The situation is admirable, better than that of the temple of
Jupiter Olympus; the building is more perfect, the material as good, or
indeed better; for this is of pure white marble, and the other has veins
and defective blocks. The workmanship appears to have been superior, but
the joints have been loosened, and some of the stones dislocated,
probably by the shock of an earthquake: it falls far short in magnitude,
but to make amends it is connected with the wonderful tale of Athenian
glory; while what remains at least of the other, is the work of some
later period. I have quite made up my mind, that the best situation for
almost any sort of building is an advancing point of land; not an
insulated summit, let that summit be high or low, sheltered or
unsheltered, and never in a hollow. Prior park near Bath, though
standing very high, is in a hollow, and loses half the praise its
architecture would obtain, if it were better placed. Half way down, on
the point forming one side of the little valley in which it stands, it
would be better sheltered, have a more pleasing variety of view, be more
accessible, and form incomparably a better object. The most admired
buildings generally occupy situations of this sort, and they sometimes
get a degree of credit for their architecture which should in fact be
given to their position. But the architecture of the temple of Theseus
is as beautiful as the site. The point it stands on is so little
elevated, that a person might leave Athens without perceiving it to be
placed on any hill at all, yet nobody can fail to observe that it is a
conspicuous object, and looks well in every point of view.
The cell of a Greek temple, is you know a simple, oblong building. In
the earlier periods it was probably nearly destitute of ornament, and
except for the cornice, and for the smallness of the dimensions, much
like a barn. Afterwards a porch was added, supported by columns, and the
entablature began to receive some embellishment. Even this disposition,
when the front came into view, was highly beautiful, and more so when an
additional range of columns was added to the portico. Afterwards columns
were added at the back also, by which means the variety and contrast
produced by them, would catch the attention from every point of view.
The next step was to continue the columns all round, and this is the
arrangement at the temple of Theseus.
The simple cell had, I believe, no peculiar appellation, and yet from
the great multitude of temples existing in ancient Greece, many of which
seem to have been very small, it is probable they were not uncommon.
Temples of the second sort were said to be in _antis_, because in them
the flank walls were prolonged beyond the front, so as to form the sides
of the porch, and these prolongations were terminated in pilasters
having three faces: which pilasters were called _antæ_. The third
arrangement was called _prostyle_; the fourth _amphiprostyle_; the fifth
_peripteral_: besides these were also the _dipteral_ temples, having two
rows of columns round the cell, (such was the temple of Jupiter Olympus
in this place) and _pseudodipteral_, which differed from the dipteral by
the want of the inner range of columns, and from the peripteral by
having a much larger space between the cell and the surrounding
colonnade. In all these, the same general form was preserved, a simple
oblong; and you see that in all of them, I can account for the
admiration bestowed upon them by a recurrence to my favourite maxim of
simplicity of form, and richness of detail. This richness of detail has
its limits, and the work may be overloaded, even when the ornaments do
not (as they frequently do in Italian architecture,) interrupt, or
obscure the simplicity of the design: but the liberty allowed is very
wide. The simple cell must always have been deficient in that respect,
for though the walls and cornices might be richly ornamented, yet these
details could not have produced sufficient effect on the whole
composition; for that purpose it is necessary that the building should
be divided into principal masses, whose position with respect to each
other must produce some degree of variety and intricacy. The temple in
antis must also in some degree be deficient in richness, and I know no
temple of this sort which has been much admired; but the prostyle, and
still more the amphiprostyle, if well proportioned, will always be
admitted into the rank of beautiful buildings. From almost every point
of view you see at least one column gracefully detaching itself from the
mass of the building, and the nakedness of the side walls contrasts with
the bright lights and shadows of the ends, and claims our admiration
even when compared with the higher finish of the peripteral temple. The
eye however will not be satisfied with some intricacy in the disposition
of the general masses; it will require a similar gratification when it
comes to examine the details; and we find this accomplished by fluting
the columns, moulding the capitals, dividing the frieze at least by
triglyphs, and frequently placing sculpture in the intervals between
them; adorning the pediments with sculpture, and placing antefixæ, or
ornamental convex tiles along the eaves.
The ancients used two sorts of tiles in covering each building; the
first were flat, but turned up at the edges, they were trays with the
ends cut off, made a little smaller at one end than at the other, that
they might lap one into the other; but if such tiles were simply laid
side by side, the water would run in between them, and to prevent this,
other semicircular, or semipolygonal, _i. e._ convex tiles, were placed
over the joint. These tiles ran in ribs, from the ridge of the roof down
to the eaves, and the last of them at the eaves, had an elevated and
ornamented end; and the range of these ornamented ends, which in the
celebrated edifices of Athens, were of white marble, running above the
cornice, greatly enhanced the appearance of splendour, and must have had
considerable influence even on the distant appearance of the building.
In temples of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, the richness of
decoration was carried still farther, though there was by no means the
difference between those, and a highly finished Doric temple, which
might at first sight be imagined. However between a Doric prostyle
temple, and a dipteral temple of the Corinthian order, the distance is
immense, yet each has peculiar beauties, and he who prefers the one, has
no right to reproach with want of taste, him who approves the other.
To return to the temple of Theseus; all the ornaments of the roof are
gone; the sculptures of the pediment have disappeared. Those of the
frieze exist only in the front, and on the four adjacent metopes in each
side. The two columns between the antæ of the pronaos (or porch) have
been removed to make room for the apsis, or semicircular terminating
recess of the Greek church; and the corresponding ones of the posticum
have been very much damaged. An arch of rough stones occupies the place
of the original roof of the cell. Many of the marble beams and slabs
which formed the ceiling of the peristyle still remain, the rest is
open. In general effect, the building thus loses something by want of
shade, and more by the loss of its roof ornaments; yet enough remains to
exhibit the great beauty of the ancient Greek temple.
I now come to another part of the detail, in which our knowledge of the
practice of the Greeks is very imperfect, and of which the good sense or
good taste may be considered very doubtful; there have been painted or
gilt ornaments, or probably both, within the peristyle of the temple of
Theseus, and the same thing occurs in that of Minerva; we do not see in
the present edifice any traces of external painting,[26] but some marks
of it may be traced on the Parthenon, and in one or two other instances,
and particularly in the temple of Jupiter, in the island of Egina, and
it is therefore conjectured that a similar finish was given to those of
Athens. Perhaps this painting was not in any of these cases coeval with
the building, for Pliny, I think, mentions the painted soffites as an
invention of the age of Alexander. That at Egina seems to have been of
the gayest hues. The subject of the sculpture in the pediment of that
temple was a combat, with a statue of Minerva standing armed in the
middle. Some of the figures are clothed, (these fight with bows and
arrows) others who have swords and shields are naked. On the flesh no
marks of paint have been discovered, but they are found in the dress and
on the shields. That of Minerva was blue with a red border, (I write
from memory, and perhaps may have reversed the colours) but in general
there is only sufficient mark remaining to determine that something has
been laid on, but not enough to distinguish precisely what was the
colour, or whether the effect has not been produced by a mordaunt to fix
the gilding. You will observe that this painting was not to imitate
nature; for deception, if attainable, would be absurd; but to give
relief and effect to the figures, and different parts of the building.
Would this contribute to the general richness of effect? Supposing it
done as well as possible, would it please a correct taste? My prejudices
are strongly against it, yet I should extremely like to see a temple so
decorated with all its colours perfect. Gilding, if applied with
judgment, certainly enhances the beauty of a building (and my prejudices
were once strongly against that also), and there seems no reason _à
priori_, why colours should not have a similar effect. Within the
peristyle we may more readily admit them. It would be like colours and
gilding on the inside of a room, a practice which has obtained
everywhere, and in all ages. It may seem rather extravagant to employ
white marble to receive the colours, but if the colour be better than
white, white marble is a very good substance to paint upon, and perhaps
no other would have retained the traces so long. In the temple of
Theseus the architrave and frieze are continued uninterruptedly on the
inside of the columns; from these, marble beams or joists, were laid,
reaching to the wall of the cell, and between these, marble slabs of
considerable thickness, each slab being perforated by square holes, and
a small square of marble applied to close each perforation, making them
into coffers. At the top of the frieze, and at the corresponding height
of the wall of the cell, was a flat band, on which was painted a Greek
fret, and some mouldings ornamented with leaves; one of the displaced
beams has flowers in this part; I believe it is one which has belonged
to the ceiling of the pronaos, and not to that of the peristyle; but all
these, you well understand, are regular architectural leaves and
flowers, not copies of natural ones. The mouldings in the coffers are
painted with eggs and leaves, and in the soffite of each coffer was a
star, which appears to have been of gold on a blue ground. There was no
carving to any of the mouldings. This description would nearly apply to
all the temples of the Grecian Doric order. I do not know how the
colouring has been managed in the other orders.
In England, we colour the walls and leave the ceilings white; the Greeks
on the contrary seem to have coloured the ceiling and left the walls
white; and still in their houses, we may see whitewashed plaster walls,
and painted, wooden ceilings. Whether painted or carved, there is a
marked difference between the ornamental style of the Greeks and Romans.
The former made their ornaments much smaller in proportion to the
building than the latter, and there is a degree of simplicity and
elegance of design, and a neatness and delicacy of execution in Greek
buildings, which you would seek for in vain in Italy; while on the other
hand, in the Roman edifices, there is a full and rich magnificence,
which is not to be found in those of Greece. The beauty of both is, that
the same feeling is observed throughout, and that in each building, all
the parts are in perfect harmony. While in modern structures it
frequently happens that one beauty is copied from one ancient building,
and another from another, and their union only produces disgust. This
difference of character was preserved, though perhaps in a less degree,
even to the latest times of Grecian art; and at Rome, there are one or
two buildings which exhibit indications of Greek taste, and have been
supposed on that account to be the production of Greek artists.
The capitals of the temple of Theseus (if I may venture to find any
fault in so perfect a design) are rather flat: the overhanging of the
architrave, a common feature in this order, does not displease, but the
advance of the fillet beyond the triglyphs is offensive.