various other younger sons of royalty who had no thrones and
were out of business, but they all had the charity to
decline the dreary honor, and was laid out in a natural
hollow by Lycurgus, before Christ over three hundred years,
and was rebuilt something less than five hundred years later
by the Averof of that day, Herodes Atticus, whose body was
buried there. Then came the tumble and crumble of European
glory; the place fell into ruin, was covered with debris,
and lay forgotten or disregarded for a thousand years; after
which, King George took up the matter, and dug out the
remains as soon as he could get money for the job."
That was Averof's inspiration. Without it he would most likely have
spent his money in Alexandria, where he made it. Certainly without King
George to point the way the progress of Athens would have been a sorry
straggle instead of a stately march.
[Illustration: WE LOOKED ACROSS THE ENTRANCE AND THERE ROSE
THE ACROPOLIS, HIGH AGAINST THE BLUE]
The stadium seats fifty thousand, and has held half as many more when
crowded. In the revived Olympic games in 1896 the Greeks won twelve
prizes, the Americans followed with eleven, France carried off three,
and the English one. That was a good record for the Americans, and we
didn't fail to mention it, though I think most of us were thinking of
those older games, won and lost here under this placid sky, and of the
crowds that had sat here and shouted themselves hoarse as the victors
turned the goal. Then, standing high on the marble seats, we looked
across the entrance, and there rose the Acropolis, lifted high against
the blue, just as those old spectators had seen it so long ago. Through
half-closed lashes we re-created it in gleaming pentelican and so gazed
upon a vision, the vision they had seen.
[Illustration: HE WOULD SWING HIS ARMS AND BEGIN, "YOU SEE--!" THE REST
REQUIRED A MIND-READER]
It was hard to leave that place. It would have been harder, if it had
not been for the guide we had. He insisted on talking in some language
which nobody recognized, and which upon inquiry I was surprised to find
was English. He had learned it overnight, it having been discovered that
the guide engaged for our party had been detained--probably in jail--for
the same offence. Still our sample would have done better if he had sat
up later. As it was he knew just two words. He would swing his arms and
point to something and begin, "You see--!" The rest required a
mind-reader. The German guide was better--much better. I haven't a
perfect ear for German, but I concluded to join that party.
It was not far to the Temple of Jupiter--the group of fifteen
Corinthian columns which are all that remain of what Aristotle called "a
work of despotic grandeur." It must have been that. There were
originally one hundred and four of these columns, each nearly sixty feet
high and more than five and a half feet in diameter. Try to imagine
that, if you can!
Think of the largest elm-tree you know; its trunk will not be as thick
as that, nor as high, but it will give you a tangible idea. Then try to
imagine one hundred and four marble pillars of that size, the side
extending in double row the length of a city block, and the ends in
triple row a little less than half as far--pure-white and fluted,
crowned with capitals of acanthus leaves, and you will form some vague
idea of what Aristotle meant. We cramped our necks and strained our
eyes, gazing at the beautiful remnant of that vast structure, but we did
not realize the full magnitude of it until we came near a fallen column
and stood beside it and stepped its length. Even then it was hard to
believe that each of the graceful group still standing was of such size
as this.
Peisistratos the tyrant began this temple and picked the location, said
to be the spot where the last waters of the Deluge disappeared. It was
to be dedicated to Deucalion, the founder of the new race of mortals,
and the low ground was filled up and made level and bulwarked round with
a stone substructure, as good to-day as when it was finished,
twenty-five hundred years ago.
Peisistratos did not get the temple done. He died when it was only
fairly under way, and his sons did not remain in power long enough to
carry out his plans. He was a tyrant, though a gentle one, ambitious
and fond of all lovely things. He had his faults, but they were mainly
lovable ones, and he fostered a cultivation which within a century would
make Athens the architectural garden of the world.
The example of Peisistratos was followed lavishly during the next
hundred years, but his own splendid temple was overlooked. Perhaps
Pericles did not like the location and preferred to spend his money on
the Acropolis, where it would make a better showing. I don't know. I
know it was left untouched for nearly four hundred years, and then the
work was carried on by Antiochus of Syria, who constructed it on a grand
scale. But it killed Antiochus, too, and then it waited another three
hundred years for the Emperor Hadrian to come along, about 174 A.D., and
complete it, and renew it, and dedicate it to Jupiter Olympus, whose
reign by that time was nearly over.
Never mind who built it, now, or what creed was consecrated there. The
glory of the Golden Age rises on the hill above us, but I think one can
meet nothing more impressive than this in all Greece.
Hadrian's arch is just beyond the Temple of Jupiter, and we drove
through it on our way to the Acropolis. It is not a very big arch, nor
is it very impressive. I don't think Hadrian built it himself or it
wouldn't have been like that. It looks as if it had been built by an
economical successor.
However, it is complimentary enough. On the side toward what was then
the new part of Athens, called Hadrianople, is an inscription in Greek
which says "This is the City of Hadrian, and not of Theseus," and on
the side toward the Acropolis, "This is the old city of Theseus." And
old it was, for the newest temples on the Acropolis had been built six
hundred years even then.
It was only a little way to the foot of the Acropolis and the Theatre of
Dionysus. We have visited no place where I wished so much to linger.
This was the theatre of Greece in her Golden Age. Here Aeschylus and
Euripides had their first nights--or days, perhaps, for I believe they
were mostly matinees--and Sophocles, too, and here it was that the
naughty Aristophanes burlesqued them with his biting parodies. Here it
was they competed for prizes, and tried to be friends though
playwrights, and abused the manager when they got into a corner
together, and abused the actors openly, and vowed that some day they
would build a theatre of their own where they could present their own
plays in their own way, and where their suppressed manuscripts could get
a hearing.
Perhaps history does not record these things, but it does not need to. I
know a good many playwrights and managers and actors, and I know that
human nature has not changed in twenty-four hundred years. I know that
the old, old war was going on then, just as it is now, and will continue
to go on so long as there are such things as proscenium and auditorium,
box-office, gallery, and reserved seats.
I took one of the last named--a beautiful marble chair in the front row,
just below the plinth where once the throne of Hadrian sat--a chair with
an inscription which told that in the old days it was reserved for a
priest or dignitary--and I looked across the marble floor where the
chorus did its rhythmic march, and beyond to the marble stage-front with
its classic reliefs and the figure of Silenus whose bowed shoulders have
so long been the support of dramatic art. The marble floor--they called
it the Orchestra then--is no longer perfect, and grass and flowers push
their way up between the slabs. The reliefs are headless and scarred,
but the slabs are still the same the chorus trod, the place is still a
theatre, and one has but to close his eyes a little to fill it with
forms vague and shadowy indeed, as ghosts are likely to be, but
realities none the less. Our party had moved along now to other things,
and Laura and I lingered for the play.
It was much better than our theatres at home. There was no dazzle of
lights, no close air or smell of gas, and there was plenty of room for
one to put his feet. However, the play I did not care for so much as the
chorus. The acting was heavy and stilted, I thought, and declamatory. I
was inclined to throw a piece of the theatre at the leading man.
[Illustration: I WOULD HAVE APPLIED FOR A POSITION IN THE CHORUS MYSELF]
But the chorus! Why, the very words "Greek Chorus" have something in
them that rouses and thrills, and I know, now, the reason why. In
movement, in voice, in costume it was pure poetry. I would have applied
for a position in the chorus myself, but Laura suddenly announced that
the show was over and that everybody but us had gone long ago.
If I had lived in that elder day I should have gone mainly to the plays
of Aristophanes. They were gay and full of good things, and they were
rare, too, and poetic, even though they were not always more than skin
deep. That was deep enough for some of his contemporaries. Deep enough
for the popocrat Cleon, who tried to deprive Aristophanes of his
citizenship, in revenge.
Aristophanes wrote a play that acted like a mustard-plaster on Cleon. It
made him howl and caper and sweat and bring libel suits. Whereupon
Aristophanes wrote another, and when he could get no actor to take the
leading part--that of Cleon--he took it himself, and Cleon went to see
it and wore out his teeth on tenpenny nails during the performance. Yes,
I should have had a weakness for Aristophanes in those days, though I
wish he might have omitted that tragic satire which twenty years later
was to send Socrates the hemlock cup.
We climbed the hill a little way to a grotto and drank of the spring of
Aesculapius and all our diseases passed away. It only cost a penny or
two, and was the cheapest doctor bill I ever paid. I never saw a
healthier lot than our party when they came out of the grotto and
started for the Odeon--the little theatre which Herodes Atticus built in
memory of his wife.
Two thousand years ago Cicero wrote home from Athens: "Wherever we walk
is history." We realize that here at the base of the Acropolis. From the
Theatre of Dionysus to the Spring of Aesculapius is only a step. From the
Spring to the Sanctuary of Isis is another step; from the Sanctuary to
the Odeon of Herodes is a moment's walk; the Pnyx--the people's
forum--is a stone's-throw away, and the Hill of Mars. All about, and
everywhere, great events have trod one upon the other; mighty mobs have
been aroused by oratory; mighty armies have rallied to the assault; a
hundred battles have drenched the place with blood. And above all this
rises the Acropolis, the crowning glory.
We postponed the Acropolis until after luncheon. There would have been
further riot and bloodshed on this consecrated ground had our conductor
proposed to attempt it then. Our Argonauts are a fairly well-behaved lot
and fond of antiquities, even though they giggle at the guide now and
then, but they are human, too, and have the best appetites I ever saw.
They would leave the Acropolis for luncheon, even though they knew an
earthquake would destroy it before they could get back.
We did stop briefly at the Pnyx hill--the gathering-place of the
Athenians--and stood on the rostrum cut from the living rock--the "Bema"
from which Demosthenes harangued the populace.
[Illustration: TOOK TURNS ADDRESSING THE MULTITUDE]
As usual Laura, age fourteen, and I got behind the party. We stood on
the Bema and took turns addressing the multitude, until we came near
being left altogether by the Diplomat and the Blue Elephant, who finally
whirled us away in a wild gallop to the hotel, which, thanks to Jupiter
and all the Olympian synod, we reached in time.
We made a new guide arrangement in the afternoon. It was discovered that
the guide for the German party could handle English, too, so we doubled
up and he talked to us first in one language, then in the other, and
those of us who knew a little of both caught it going and coming.
Perhaps his English was not the best, but I confess I adored it. He
lisped a little, and his voice--droning, plaintive, and pathetic--was
full of the sorrow that goes with a waning glory and a vanished day. We
named him Lykabettos because somehow he looked like that, and then, too,
he towered above us as he talked.
So long as I draw breath that afternoon on the Acropolis will live
before me as a sunlit dream. I shall see it always in the tranquil light
of an afternoon in spring when the distant hills are turning green and
forming pictures everywhere between mellowed columns and down ruined
aisles. Always I shall wander there with Laura, and resting on the steps
of the Parthenon I shall hear the sad and gentle voice of Lykabettos
recounting the tale of its glory and decline. I shall hear him say:
"Zen Pericles he gazzer all ze moany zat was collect for ze army and he
bring it here. But Pericles he use it to make all zese beautiful temple,
and by and by when ze war come zere was no moany for ze army, so zay
could not win."
Lykabettos' eyes wander mournfully in the direction of Sparta, whence
the desolation had come. Then a little later, pointing up to a rare
section of frieze--the rest missing--!
"Zat did not fall down, but stay zere, always ze same--ze honly piece
zat Lord Elgin could not take away," and so on and on, through that long
sweet afternoon.
I shall not attempt the story of the Acropolis here. The tale of that
old citadel which later became literally the pinnacle of Greek
architecture already fills volumes. I do not think Lykabettos was
altogether just to Pericles, however, or to Lord Elgin, for that matter.
True, Pericles did complete the Parthenon and otherwise beautify the
Acropolis, and in a general way he was for architecture rather than war.
But I do not find that he ever exhausted the public treasury on those
temples, and I do find where his war policy was disregarded when
disregard meant defeat. Still, if there had been more money and fewer
temples on the Acropolis, the result of any policy might have been
different, and there is something pathetically gratifying in the thought
that in the end Athens laid down military supremacy as the price of her
marble crown.
As for Lord Elgin, it may be, as is said, that he did carry off a
carload or so of the beautiful things when he had obtained from the
Government (it was Turkish then) permission to remove a few pieces. But
it may be added that the things he removed were wholly uncared for at
that time and were being mutilated and appropriated by vandals who, but
for Elgin, might have robbed the world of them altogether. As it is,
they are safe in the British Museum, though I think they should be
restored to Greece in this her day of reincarnation.
We stood before the Temple of Victory and gazed out on the Bay of
Salamis, where victory was won. We entered the Erechtheum, built on the
sacred spot where Athena victoriously battled with Poseidon for the
possession of Athens, and we stood in reverential awe before the marble
women that have upheld her portico so long. We crossed the relic-strewn
space and visited the Acropolis museum, but it was chilly and lifeless,
and I did not care for the classified, fragmentary things. Then we
entered the little enclosure known as Belvedere and gazed down on the
Athens of to-day.
If anybody doubts that modern Athens is beautiful, let him go to that
spot and look down through the evening light and behold a marble vision
such as the world nowhere else presents. Whatever ancient Athens may
have been, it would hardly surpass this in beauty, and if Pericles could
stand here to-day and gaze down upon the new city which has arisen to
preserve his treasures, I think he would be satisfied.
When the others had gone to visit the Hill of Mars, Laura and I wandered
back to the Parthenon, followed its silent corridors, and saw it all
again to our hearts' content. And when our eyes were tired, we rested
them by looking out between the columns to the hills, Hymettus and
Pentelicus, glorified in the evening light, wearing always their "violet
crown."
_They_ are unchanged. Races may come and go, temples may rise and totter
and crumble into dust. The old, old days that we so prize and
honor--they are only yesterdays to the hills. The last fragment of these
temples will be gone by and by--the last memory of their glory--but the
hills will be still young and wearing their violet crown, still turning
green in the breath of a Grecian spring.
Down through that splendid entrance, the Propylaea, at last, for it was
growing late. We had intended climbing the Hill of Mars, where St. Paul
preached, but we could see it plainly in the sunset light and there was
no need to labor up the stairs. I think it was about this time of the
day when St. Paul preached there. He had been wandering about Athens,
among the temples, on a sort of tour of observation, making a remark
occasionally--of criticism, perhaps--disputing with the Jews in the
synagogue, and now and again in the market-place. The story, told in the
seventeenth chapter of Acts, begins:
"Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the
Stoicks encountered him. And some said, 'What will this
babbler say?' Other some, 'He seemeth to be a setter forth
of strange gods,' because he preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection."
They brought St. Paul here to the Areopagus, that is, to Mars Hill,
where in ancient days an open-air court was held, a court of supreme
jurisdiction in cases of life and death. But it would seem that the
court had degenerated in St. Paul's time to a place of gossip and
wrangle. "For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent
their time in nothing else, but either to tell or hear some new thing."
Paul rose up before the assembly and made his famous utterance
beginning, "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too
superstitious." It was a fearless, wonderful sermon he delivered, and I
like to think that it was just at the hour when we saw the hill; just at
the evening-time, with the sunset glory on his face. Paul closed his
remarks with a reference to the resurrection, a doctrine new to them:
"And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked: and others said, 'We will hear thee again of the
matter.'"
Which they did, for that was nineteen hundred years ago, and the
churches of Greece to-day still ring with St. Paul's doctrine. We
climbed into our waiting carriages, and turning saw the Acropolis in the
sunset, as we had seen it in the sunrise that now seemed ages ago--which
indeed it was, for we had been travelling backward and forward since
then through the long millennial years.
* * * * *
I wanted to see Athens by night, and after dinner I slipped away and
bribed a couple of boatmen who were hovering about the ship to take me
ashore. It was not so far, but the wind and tide had kicked up a heavy
sea and I confess I was sorry I started. Every time we slid down one
wave I was certain we were going straight through the next, and I think
the boatmen had some such idea, for they prayed steadily and crossed
themselves whenever safety permitted.
We arrived, however, and I took the little train for the Theseus
station. I wanted to get a near view of the temple and I thought night
would be a good time. I would have walked there but I did not quite know
the way. So I got into a carriage and said "Theseum," and the driver
took me to a beer-saloon. It was a cheerful enough temple, but it was
not classic. When I had seen it sufficiently, I got into the carriage
and said "Theseum" again, and he took me to a theatre. The theatre was
not classic, either, being of about the average Bowery type. So I got
into the carriage and said "Theseum" again, and he took me to a
graveyard. It didn't seem a good time to visit graveyards. I only looked
through the gate a little and got back into the carriage and said the
magic word once more and was hauled off to a blazing hotel.
That wouldn't do either. These might be, and doubtless were, all
Theseums, but they were that in name only. What I wanted was the
sure-enough, only original Theseum, set down in the guide-book as the
best-preserved temple of the ancient Greek world. I explained this to a
man in the hotel who explained it to my driver and we were off, down a
beautiful marble business street, all closed and shuttered, for Athens
being a capital is a quiet place after nightfall--as quiet as
Washington, almost.
We were in front of the old temple soon. It was fairly dark there and
nobody about. There was a dog barking somewhere, but I did not mind
that. Dogs are not especially modern, and this one might be the
three-headed Cerberus for all I knew or cared. What I wanted was to see
the old temple when other people had gone to bed and the shadows had
shut away the less-fortunate near-by architecture. They had done that
now; the old temple might be amidst its earliest surroundings so far as
I could see.
I walked up and down among its graceful Doric columns and stepped its
measurements, and found it over a hundred feet long and nearly fifty
wide; then I sat down on the step and listened to Cerberus bark--he had
all three heads going at once now--and tried to imagine the life that
had gathered there when this old fane was new. It is one of the temples
of that brief golden period when all Athens burst into architectural
flower. It was dedicated to Theseus and Hercules, and perhaps to a few
other heroes and demi-gods and goddesses that they happened to think of
when they laid the corner-stone.
One story has it that it was built on the spot where the Marathon runner
fell dead, after telling in a word his news of victory. I like to
believe that this is true. I like to reassemble the crowds here--the
anxious faces waiting for the earliest returns from that momentous
struggle which would decide the fate of Greece. I like to picture that
panting, white-faced runner as he dashes in among them and utters his
single glad cry as his soul goes out, and I like to believe that this
temple, dedicated to other heroes, was established here in his memory.
But for Marathon there would have been no Golden Age--no Pericles, no
Parthenon, no splendid constellation of names that need not be repeated
here. The victory of Marathon was the first great check to a Persian
invasion that would have Orientalized not only Greece, but all Europe.
So it is proper that a temple should be built on the spot where that
great news was told, and proper, too, that of all the temples of that
halcyon time this should remain the most perfect through the years.
XVI
ATHENS THAT IS
On the road that leads from the old market-place, up past the Theseum to
the Acropolis, there is a record of a humble but interesting sort. On
the lower corner block of an old stone house, facing the highway, are
three inscriptions. Two of them have been partly erased, but the third
is quite legible, and one who knows Greek can read plainly a description
of the property in metes and bounds and the original Greek word for
"hypothecated," followed by "1000 drachmas."
It is a "live" mortgage, that is what it is, and it has been clinging to
that property and piling up interest for more than two thousand years.
The two half-obliterated inscriptions above it were once mortgages, too,
but they were paid some time, and cancelled by erasure. The third one
has never been satisfied, and would hold, like enough, in a court of
law.
The owner of the property wrestled with that mortgage, I suppose, and
struggled along, and died at last without paying it. Or perhaps the
great war came, with upheaval and dissolution of things in general.
Anyway, it was never paid, but has stayed there century after century,
compounding interest, until to-day the increment of that original
thousand drachmas would redeem Greece.
I was half a mind to look up the heirs of that old money-lender and buy
their claim and begin their suit. Think of being involved in a tangle
that has been stringing along through twenty-three centuries, and would
tie up yesterday, to-day, and forever in a hard knot! I would have done
it, I think, only that it might take another twenty-three centuries to
settle it, and I was afraid the ship wouldn't wait.