The outer walls are barbarically huge and heavy, and superb in color.
They gleam with a fierce-red gold, and are conspicuous from afar. The
almost monstrous, but impressive, solidity of Rome, heavy and bold,
indeed almost crudely imperious, is shown forth by them--a solidity
absolutely different from the Greek massiveness, which you can study
in the Doric temples, and far less beautiful. When you pass beyond and
this towering façade, which might well be a section of the Colosseum
transferred from gladiatorial Rome to intellectual Athens, you find
yourself in a theater which looks oddly, indeed, almost meanly, small
and pale and graceful. With a sort of fragile timidity it seems to be
cowering behind the flamboyant walls. When all its blanched marble
seats were crowded with spectators it contained five thousand persons.
As you approach the outer walls, you expect to find a building that
might accommodate perhaps twenty-five thousand. There is something
bizarre in the two colors, fierce and pale, in the two sizes, huge
and comparatively small, that are united in the odeum. Though very
remarkable, it seems to me to be one of the most inharmonious ruins in
Greece.
The modern Athenians are not very fond of hard exercise, and except in
the height of summer, when many of them go to Kephisia and Phalerum,
and others to the islands, or to the baths near Corinth for a “cure,”
they seem well content to remain within their city. They are governed,
it seems, by fashion, like those who dwell in less-favored lands. When
I was in Athens the weather was usually magnificent and often very
hot. Yet Phalerum, perhaps half an hour by train from Constitution
Square, was deserted. In the vast hotel there I found only two or three
children, in the baths half a dozen swimmers. The pleasure-boats lay
idle by the pier. I asked the reason of this--why at evening dusty
Athens was crammed with strollers, and the pavements were black with
people taking coffee and ices, while delightful Phalerum, with its
cooler air and its limpid waters, held no one but an English traveler?
“The season is over,” was the only reply I received, delivered with a
grave air of finality. I tried to argue the matter, and suggested that
anxiety about the war had something to do with it. But I was informed
that the “season” closed on a certain day, and that after that day the
Athenians gave up going to Phalerum.
The season for many things seemed “over” when I was in Athens.
Round-about the city, and within easy reach of it, there is fascinating
country--country that seems to call you with a smiling decision to
enjoy all Arcadian delights; country, too, that has great associations
connected with it. From Athens you can go to picnic at Marathon or at
Salamis, or you can carry a tea-basket to the pine-woods which slope
down to the Convent of Daphni, and come back to it after paying a visit
to Eleusis. Or, if you are not afraid of a “long day,” you can motor
out and lunch in the lonely home of the sea-god under the columns at
Sunium. If you wish to go where a king goes, you can spend the day
in the thick woods at Tatoï. If you are full of social ambition, and
aim at “climbing,” a train in not many minutes will set you down at
Kephisia, the summer home of “the fifty-two” on the slope of a spur of
Mount Pentelicus.
Thither I went one bright day. But, as at Phalerum, I found a deserted
paradise. The charming gardens and arbors were empty. The villas,
Russian, Egyptian, Swiss, English, French, and even now and then
Greek in style, were shuttered and closed. All in vain the waterfalls
sang, all in vain the silver poplars and the yellow-green pines gave
their shade. No one was there. I went at length to a restaurant to
get something to eat. Its door was unlocked, and I entered a large,
deserted room, with many tables, a piano, and a terrace. No one came.
I called, knocked, stamped, and at length evoked a thin elderly lady
in a gray shawl, who seemed alarmed at the sight of me, and in a frail
voice begged to know what I wanted. When I told her, she said there
was nothing to eat except what they were going to have themselves. The
season was over. Eventually she brought me _mastika_ and part of her
own dinner to the terrace, which overlooked a luxuriant and deserted
garden. And there I spent two happy, golden hours. I had sought the
heart of fashion, and found the exquisite peace that comes to places
when fashion has left them. Henceforth I shall always associate
beautiful Kephisia with silence, flowers, and one thin old woman in a
gray shawl.
[Illustration: THE TEMPLE OF POSEIDON AND ATHENE AT SUNIUM