and we may still discover traces of the ancient road, and of the ruts
made by the wheels in the solid rock; and some remains of the long
walls. A convent and the custom-house now form the whole town; yet the
port is a very good harbour. According to Captain M. it is capable of
containing fifteen or twenty large ships, of the size of an English
frigate, and a great number of smaller ones; and in addition to this,
the road on the outside is so well sheltered by the island of Salamis,
and the holding ground is so good, that it may be esteemed almost equal
to a harbour.
We walked along the shore by the ruins of a Doric temple. The rocks are
cut, as they are about Athens, for the reception of buildings, and there
are moreover considerable quarries. The Syracusans confined their
Athenian prisoners in their quarries; and the Athenians placed here the
captives taken at Syracuse; but the stone of the Piræus is not so firm
as that of Syracuse, and the hills are of less extent; the prisoners
were consequently able to work their way out. It is rather a friable
limestone, containing shells. We crossed over from the port to what is
called the Tomb of Themistocles, but there are many difficulties in the
way of our belief. A level surface, now frequently covered by the sea,
was cut in the rocks, and on it was raised a lofty Ionic column; this
has been overthrown, but the pieces of the shaft remain, and even a
fragment of the capital, by which we are enabled to determine the order;
and close to the place on which it stood, some oblong sepulchres are cut
in the rock. In these, as in many of the tombs about Athens, there is a
sort of double grave; a deep groove separating the immediate receptacle
of the body from the rest of the rock, and there appears to have been a
cover to this receptacle, besides the larger one to the tomb or grave.
From this point we are able to trace the wall of the city by a continued
heap of stones along the whole of the winding coast, as far as Munychia.
This port consists of a somewhat elliptical basin, with a narrow and
shallow entrance. There are remains of a theatre, and of a temple in its
vicinity; and on the hill above are more considerable traces of another
theatre; besides tombs without number, some of which are very curious.
We were told of three temples, but we noticed only the foundations of
two, and missed also the vestiges of the citadel of the Piræus, and some
Cyclopean walls. The port of Phalerus was completed by artificial means,
into an almost circular form; parts of the piers remain, but the whole
is extremely shallow. To the east of the Piræus and of the bay of
Phalerus, is the small promontory of Cape Colias. It is composed of a
soft and recent limestone; even more so than that of the quarries above
mentioned, containing organic remains.
I must give you an account of another excursion which I made on the 7th
of March, in company with Mr. B. Our route passed through the
olive-groves, and we crossed several channels of the Cephisus, all alike
destitute of running water. The one farthest from Athens had most the
appearance of being the natural channel, as its banks were fringed with
bushes, but we did not find the traces of an ancient bridge, which are
said to exist in this part. On leaving the olive-grove we pass by one of
the small chapels so numerous about Athens; they are the erections of
individuals, and I believe service is performed in them once a year, on
the feast-day of the patron saint; and almost all of them contain some
fragments of antiquity. From Athens to the grove is a continued but very
gentle descent, the grove itself is nearly on a level, but on leaving it
we immediately begin to ascend. About a mile beyond it, on the road to
Daphne, there is a most admirable distant view of Athens, better perhaps
in the morning, when the parts are a good deal massed in shade, from the
light being behind them, than in the evening, when the details are
brought out by the setting sun. A conical hill on the right, at the
entrance of the defile between the hills Aigialos and Corydalus, is
supposed to be the ancient Pœcilon, and to have been crowned with a
temple of Apollo; but though there are almost everywhere abundant traces
of foundations, there is nothing which can be distinctly made out as the
remains of a temple. The rocks on the road, till we arrive at the foot
of this hill, are of mica slate; at that point we find the breccia
already mentioned as belonging probably to the Magnesian limestone, and
the upper part both of the Pœcilon, and of the adjoining mountains, is
of a limestone, which I imagined at the time to rest upon the breccia.
Daphne is a convent seated in the defile above-mentioned, where a wood
of pines (_Pinus maritima_, or _Halepensis_) stretches over the
Corydalus, and gives a charm to the scenery, which is felt the more from
the usual nakedness of the Athenian hills. There are a few architectural
fragments, and many squared stones at Daphne, and several foundations of
walls, but nothing of much consequence.
From the convent we rode to the Written-rock, at the farther end of the
same defile, on the road to Eleusis. Here, on a smoothed face of stone,
are several recesses for _ex voto_ tablets, or perhaps for little
statues or other offerings. The offerings are gone, but with some
difficulty we may trace portions of the inscriptions below them. Many of
these are covered with a thin deposit of hard stalagmite, which it
appears must have proceeded from the mere action of the weather on the
surface of the stone; for from the situation of the rocks, it is hardly
possible that any current of water should have passed over them. Before
arriving at the Written-rock, we may observe vestiges of the ancient
sacred way, supported in places on a sort of terrace, formed merely of
natural fragments found on the spot, untooled, and uncemented; and in
other places are marks of wheels, on a surface quite as uneven as that
of the road to the Piræus. There are said also to be traces of a temple
of Venus, but I could make nothing out. From this spot we walked to the
top of Ægialus, whence we enjoyed a glorious view over the gulf and
island of Salamis, the Thriasian plains of Eleusis, the mountains of
Kerata and Cithæron, and a distant view of snowy summits in the Morea.
Beyond this range of hills we find a salt lake. The beds of limestone
apparently corresponding with that of the immediate neighbourhood of
Athens, continue quite to the base of the hill, but it is probable that
the salt is deposited in a partial formation of the red marl, which may
intervene between this and the Magnesian limestone. The fertility of the
celebrated vale of Eleusis agrees well with such an idea; the red marl
often decomposing into a productive soil, when it can obtain sufficient
moisture. The water of this salt pool or lake, is kept up by a dam to
the height of two or three feet above the sea, and a copious current
issues from it. At a little distance there is another pool of the same
sort, which also furnishes a considerable issue of salt water. Pausanias
supposes these streams to originate from the sea on the eastern shore of
Attica. We returned along the shore, where the limestone rocks exhibit
large crevices, filled up with a yellowish stalagmite or alabaster.[31]
The breccia here appears again, and as I conceived at the time, running
under the limestone rock. A little, pleasant, but uncultivated valley,
opening to the shore, preceded our entrance to the defile on this side.
It is sprinkled with olive and carob trees, and with a thorny tree
something like an almond, now in full flower.[32] Corydalus is here also
covered with the _Pinus Halepensis_, but Ægialus has only bushes.
On the 26th of March I went up Hymettus, in company with Sir F. A. who
has been visiting Athens with a party from Corfu, among whom is Dr.
Skey. The road takes a direction nearly east, to the convent of St.
Cyrian, or as I understood the name, St. Sergian. It lies up the valley
of the Ilissus, and afterwards follows a ravine uniting with it, or
perhaps forming a part of it, for amongst the ravines descending from
this mountain, I find it difficult to decide which water-course ought to
preserve the name. In our way we observed a beautiful ornament over the
entrance of a _metokhi_, or farm establishment. The convent is embosomed
in a shady little hollow at the foot of the mountain, and has by it a
pretty copious spring of good water, which however soon disappears,
being either diverted, or evaporated among the olive-grounds, or lost
amongst the rocks and stones. There are some badly worked columns, and
some bad capitals, not originally made for them. There is also another,
but smaller and less perfect fragment of the ornament we had seen over
the gateway of the _metokhi_, and a ram’s head at the fountain. No doubt
this delicious spot was anciently appropriated, but nothing remains to
determine in what manner. Dr. S. and myself ascended the mountain from
this point on foot. The whole of it seems to consist of a limestone,
intimately connected with the mica slate, though the greater part
contains little or no mica; and not to be of the same nature with that
of the Musæum or Pnyx. I imagine the convent to stand about 400 feet
above the sea, and the mountain to rise about 1,600 feet above the
convent. On the side towards Athens it descends in rugged and uneven
slopes, but on the opposite side, it is very broken and precipitous. We
saw Parnassus, a mass of snow; Helicon, with two or three white stripes
near the top; Cyllene, and a long range from it, deeply capped with
snow, and Delphi in Eubœa, where the snow descended in ribs almost half
way down; all the other mountains were clear, and we had an extensive
and varied prospect of sea and land, but the day was not favourable. A
very deep ravine tending to the west, tempted Dr. S. and myself to its
examination. Some of the rocks were of a very white and pure marble, but
there were no marks of its having been quarried. Others were of breccia,
lying on the steep slope of the mountain, and broken off abruptly, so as
to have at first sight, the appearance of running under the marble. The
ravine is two or three miles in length, covered with bushes, and in the
upper part are trees of the _Pinus Halepensis_, but we descended without
seeing or hearing any signs of any animal bigger than an insect, and
very few of them. The weather during the first part of our stay at
Athens was in general very fine and pleasant, the glass rising to near
60° in the shade during the day. The wind was sometimes cold, but we had
hardly any rain. A high wind when it occurs is particularly inconvenient
to me, as I have no sufficient means of fastening the window-shutters of
my room. On the night of the 20th of January we had a good deal of snow,
and on the following morning every thing was covered. About the middle
of February we frequently saw heavy clouds, and rain or snow falling on
the mountains. The thermometer has never been so low as 30°, and it is
well that it seldom approaches even to the freezing point, for on such
occasions the effects are very unpleasant; no milk, no eggs, no linen
can be washed; in fact nothing proceeds, and all the shops are shut;
while at home, the chambers pervious in all directions to the winds,
formed a very poor protection against the keen north-easter, which made
the latter part of February and the earlier part of March, very much
like a March month in England. We had even a little snow on the 20th.
I found soon after my arrival that Mr. B. had engaged a Greek master,
who as he said, put him in a fever whenever he came. I therefore engaged
our consul to recommend another, who was, as I discovered on his first
visit, hardly able to speak a word of Italian; what was worse, he did
not at all understand the art of teaching, nor was he ready in
comprehending what was required of him. Neither Mr. B.’s master nor mine
have any distinct notions of grammar, and perhaps the modern Greek, or
Romaic, can hardly be said to have a grammar, or even to be a written
language; for the books published by Coray and others in Germany and
Italy, are written in a compound of ancient and modern, which each
author makes for himself, and which a Greek of these degenerate days can
understand very imperfectly, unless he be acquainted with the ancient
Hellenic. After twelve lessons, in which I made very little progress, I
dismissed my teacher, and S. is now trying his hand with him. He has at
least the merit of being very good tempered, and so willing to teach,
that he never leaves us till he is fairly turned out of the room.
Nothing can be more different in sound than the ancient Greek, as spoken
by one of their descendants, and the language called Greek by us; and
this is owing to two circumstances: the attention which the moderns pay
to accent rather than quantity; and the pronunciation of the vowels. An
Englishman, I believe, entirely disregards all the marks of accent, and
places the principal stress upon the penultima, if it be long; and on
the antepenultima, if the penultima be short; thus transferring to one
language, the arbitrary rule acknowledged in another, and with whatever
authority there is, decidedly against him. The marks of accent are said
to have been of late invention, but they were surely intended to denote
something in the intonation of the language. If ancient, they might have
lost their meaning at an early period, and have been preserved by habit;
but if they were additions, they had reference to a pronunciation which
then existed, and probably to one which had long existed, for we all
know with how much difficulty innovations are admitted into an
established language. By the same rule, the _spiritus_ must have had
some meaning, but the modern Greeks wholly neglect it. They read by
accent, and I think in general without any regard to quantity; but when
the subject is poetry, the quantity becomes perceptible, and the ear
readily distinguishes some degree of rhythm.
The present Greeks pronounce the _iota_, the _eta_, the _upsilon_, and
the two diphthongs ει and οι, all exactly alike, and resembling, when
short, our short _i_, when long our double _ee_. The English
pronunciation may be wrong, but that of the Greeks cannot be right. It
is very improbable that the ancients should have added letters to the
alphabet to express sounds for which they had already characters. And
unless something of importance has been lost, we must at least deny them
all praise of ingenuity in the formation of their alphabet. What I have
above mentioned, are the most striking particulars of the present
pronunciation, but there are others of considerable importance. No
difference is made between the _epsilon_, and the _ai_ diphthong; none
between the _omicron_ and _omega_ in common conversation. _Beta_ is
pronounced like our _v_; _delta_, like _th_ in thy; _gamma_, before α,
ο, or ω, is a guttural, bearing the same relation to the guttural _chi_,
as our hard _g_ bears to _k_. Before the other vowels and diphthongs,
_gamma_ is _y_ consonant with a guttural prefixed. _Kappa_ is like our
_k_ before the α, ο, or ω, but before the other vowels and diphthongs,
it takes a _y_ consonant in addition, and this at Athens, and I believe
in most places, is very frequently corrupted into our soft _ch_. Since
all the languages which have deduced their mode of writing from the
Greeks, give two sounds to each of those two letters (for _c_, not _k_,
is the legitimate daughter of the _kappa_) it is highly probable that
some such difference existed in the original. _Upsilon_ after a vowel is
_v_ or _f_. These particulars should, I think, be attended to, in
transferring modern Greek or Romaic words into our own language.[33]
Some names are naturalized, and these I would not attempt to alter; but
in writing down the few places which will be less known to you, I have
followed a regular system; β is _v_; δ _th_; γ and κ I leave as _g_ and
_k_; χ, I have ventured to express by _kh_, which avoids the ambiguity
of our _ch_. In the vowels and diphthongs, α is _a_; αι is _æ_: a
recurrence to the old mode which suits tolerably well with our
pronunciation, ε is _e_; ει is _ei_; η is _ee_; which is sometimes short
with us, as in _been_, as well as with the modern Greeks; ι is _i_; ο
and ω are both _o_; οι, _œ_; υ is _f_ or _v_, according as it is
actually sounded when it follows a vowel; _y_ in other cases. This plan
you see leaves the etymologies quite as clear as at present, and if it
do not follow all the niceties of pronunciation, which it would be
difficult to express to an English eye, these niceties are not well
settled among the Greeks themselves. I have also added the accent,
without which our idea of the word is very imperfect.
The modern Greeks do not pretend that their grammar is the same as that
of their ancestors. In many words they form all the oblique cases, by
the omission of the _s_ of the nominative; as, ὁ Σωκράτης, makes in the
genitive and accusative (they have no dative) τοῦ and τον Σωκράτη; in
the vocative case it ought by theory to make ω Σώκρατες, in which case
the position of the accent would be changed. I was considering one day
whether I had ever observed this to take place, when the little Greek
servant of the house began calling the second son of my landlord; she
began with Θεμιστόκλη, but as he did not answer it was changed to
Θεμίστοκλη, and afterwards to Θεμιστοκλῆ. It seems to me that in
vocatives there is a natural tendency to strengthen and lengthen the
last syllable, but I have no system to account for her throwing back the
accent at the second call, for she certainly never changed the
terminating vowel. In the pronouns, the genitives μοῦ, μᾶς, and σᾶς, are
used for all cases, but I am told that at Constantinople, the dative is
preserved: τοῦ λόγουμου, signifies, _I myself_, τοῦ λόγουσου, thyself,
&c. I do not understand on what principle this idiom is founded. In
verbs the modern Greeks have lost the infinitive. They have retained a
preter-perfect tense in the indicative, but form the future by a
compound of θέλω; however, they seem to be in a fair way of forming a
new future by contracting θέλω into θὰ, and incorporating it with the
verb.
We have settled here into a very regular course of life. I rise between
one and two, Turkish time, which begins at sunset, and is reckoned in
twice twelve hours. We breakfast at three. At first we had tea, but our
stock being exhausted, we now take coffee; in the winter we used eggs
instead of milk, but as the spring came on, milk became plentiful. We
stay at home studying Romaic or modern Greek, or completing and
arranging the observations of the preceding day till seven or eight, and
then go out and examine some building in its details, as far as we can
make them out, and about twelve return to dinner. After this S. smokes
two or three pipes, and I used to get through one, in order to be in the
fashion, but I have now abandoned the attempt, and only take a whiff or
two when I am paying visits. These pipes consist of wooden tubes about 6
feet long; those made of the shoots of the cherry tree are reckoned
best. They have a bowl of earthenware at one end, some of the best and
most beautiful of which are made at Thebes, and an amber mouth-piece at
the other. It is said that you may use one of these from the mouth of a
person who has the plague, without any danger of infection, but I had
rather not try the experiment. A little tray is placed on the ground to
receive the bowl of your pipe, as the tube is of course too long to be
managed by the hand.
This course has been occasionally interrupted by visiting, especially
during the carnival, of which I shall give you an account presently, and
sometimes by our attention to occasional objects of curiosity. One of
these is the exhibition of the dancing dervises, who use the tower of
the winds as the place of their devotions, but they do not always dance.
Mr. Sharp and myself entered just as they begun their chaunt, and walked
through the midst of them to the gallery appropriated to the reception
of strangers, without their taking the least notice of us. They were not
at that time all assembled, and the greatest number present at one time
was twenty-eight, besides a young man with a child in his arms, who took
but little part in the ceremony, and went away before it was half over.
The performers were of all ages, from six to sixty, and one old man, I
should suppose, to be much more. You know all the orientals sit with
their legs crossed under them, and as these are covered by their long
garments, they look as if they had none, but the body seems a pivot
placed in a socket. The performers sing, and move their bodies backward
and forward without bending them, which very much strengthens this idea,
and you may conceive what a ridiculous effect it has. They began
chaunting slowly, and not loud, but got faster and louder as they
proceeded, three boys all the while beating a drum with straps of hard
leather. Suddenly the chaunt changed, and another set of words was used.
Each chaunt consists of only two or three words, but I have not yet
learned what they are. After a short pause they began a third chaunt.
Each chaunt was quicker and more animated than the preceding, and some
of the young men seemed exhausted by the effort; for independently of
repeating the words as fast, and as loud as they can, without allowing
themselves to take breath, they move the body incessantly backward and
forward, with the head nodding this way and that, as if it were loose
upon the shoulders. Some exerted themselves very much, others used no
violent effort. The former began to pant for breath, and occasionally to
utter a sort of groan, but on a sudden, all stopt, with their hands
crossed on the breast, and the head bowed down; after they had raised
themselves again, one of them began what I suppose was a hymn, but the
singing is not at all to the taste of the rest of Europe; being very
monotonous and performed through the nose. After this we had more
chaunting, and during one interval, it was part of the ceremony to look
at the palms of their hands, and in another occasionally to cover their
faces with them. At last they all bowed down with their lips to the
ground, and after a short space, got up and kissed each other. The
younger ones kissed the hand of the oldest, who in return put it upon
their heads, apparently giving them his blessing. They then departed,
much to my disappointment, as I had hoped to see the dance.
On another occasion I was more fortunate, and witnessed the conclusion
of the ceremony. After the part before described, they threw off their
upper robes and began to dance, moving in a circle with advancing and
retreating steps, as in the common dance of the country, but without
hopping; an old man came forward into the centre of the circle, and
performed the same sort of motion, but with more violence, and after him
several others successively presented themselves; stamping and flinging
about their arms and heads in the most extravagant manner. Their
head-dresses during this exertion came off, and the long hair which had
been confined under them floated over their shoulders, and added to
their picturesque appearance. Many had the first part of the head
shaved, but all had long hair, generally almost black. At one time two
came into the circle together, and holding each other’s hands, whirled
round with great rapidity. It was a problem after we came out, whether
this were fanaticism or imposture. The younger ones seemed to join in it
rather as good fun, than from either the one or the other, and as they
begin very young, they probably repeat it as they get older from habit,
without any thought of religion in the performance, but merely with a
view to get money; but in the leaders, it would be difficult to find a
softer name than imposture. They are supported without being at all
esteemed, and are said to be more licentious than the generality of the
Turks.