In the very height of summer, I am told, the Athenians do condescend to
go to the pine-woods. They sleep during part of the day, and stay out
of doors at night, often driving into the country, and eating under the
trees or by the sea. But even in the heat of a rainless September,
if I may judge by my own experience, they prefer Constitution Square
and “the Dardanelles” to any more pastoral pleasures.
I did not imitate them, but followed the Via Sacra one morning, past
the oldest olive-tree in Greece, a small and corrugated veteran said to
have been planted in the time of Pericles, to the Convent of Daphni,
now fallen into a sort of poetic decay.
Once more I was among pine-trees. They thronged the almost park-like
slopes under Ægaleos. They crowded toward the little Byzantine church,
which stands on the left of the road on the site of a vanished temple
of Apollo, with remains of its once strongly fortified walls about it.
Lonely, but smiling, as though with a radiant satisfaction at its own
shining peace, is the country in whose bosom the church lies. A few
sheep, small, with shaggy coats of brown and white, were grazing near
it; a dog lay stretched out in the sun; and some lean, long-tailed
horses were standing with bowed heads, as if drowsing. An ancient and
very deep well was close by. In the marble well-head the friction of
many drawn cords has cut grooves, some of them nearly an inch in depth.
The court of the convent is roughly paved and is inclosed within rough
walls. In it are a few trees, an acacia or two, a wild pepper-tree,
and one gigantic cypress. From a branch near the entrance a big bell
hung by a chain. But the only sound of bells came to me from without
the walls, where some hidden goats were moving to pasture. Fragments
of broken columns and two or three sarcophagi lay on the hot ground
at my feet. To my right, close to the church, a flight of very old
marble steps led to a rustic loggia with wooden supports, full of red
geraniums and the flowers of a plant like a very small convolvulus.
From the loggia, which fronted her abiding-place, a cheerful, kindly
faced woman came down and let me into the church, where she left me
with two companions, a black kitten playing with a bee under the gilded
cupola.
The church, like almost all the Byzantine churches I saw in Greece,
is very small, but it is tremendously solid and has a tall belfry.
The exterior, stained by weather, is now a sort of earthy yellow;
the cupola is covered with red tiles. The interior walls look very
ancient, and are blackened in many places by the fingers of Time. Made
more than eight hundred years ago, the remains of the Byzantine mosaics
are very curious and interesting. In the cupola, on a gold ground, is
a very large head of a Christ (“Christos Pantokrator”), which looks
as though it were just finished. The face is sinister and repellent,
but expressive. There are several other mosaics, of the apostles,
of episodes in the life of the Virgin, and of angels. None of them
seemed to me beautiful, though perhaps not one looks so wicked as the
Christos, which dominates the whole church. Until comparatively recent
times there were monks attached to this convent, but now they are gone.
I passed through a doorway and came into a sort of tiny cloister,
shaded by a huge and evidently very ancient fig-tree with enormous
leaves. Here I found the remains of an old staircase of stone. As I
returned to the dim and massive little church, glimmering with gold
where the sunlight fell upon the mosaics, the eyes of the Christos
seemed to rebuke me from the lofty cupola. The good-natured woman
locked the door behind me with a large key, handed to me a bunch of the
flowers I had noticed growing in the loggia, and bade me “Addio!” And
soon the sound of the goat-bells died away from my ears as I went on my
way back to Eleusis.
There is nothing mysterious about this road which leads to the site
of the Temple of the Mysteries. It winds down through the pine-woods
and rocks of the Pass of Daphni into the cheerful and well-cultivated
Thriasian plain, whence across a brilliant-blue stretch of water, which
looks like a lake, but which is the bay of Eleusis, you can see houses
and, alas! several tall chimneys pouring forth smoke. The group of
houses is Eleusis, now an Albanian settlement, and the chimneys belong
to a factory where olive-oil soap is made. The road passes between the
sea and a little salt lake, which latter seems to be prevented from
submerging it only by a raised coping of stone. The color of this lake
is a brilliant purple. In the distance is the mountainous and rocky
island of Salamis.
When I reached the village, I found it a cheery little place of
small white, yellow, and rose-colored houses, among which a few
cypress-trees grow. Although one of the most ancient places in Greece,
it now looks very modern. And it is difficult to believe, as one
glances at the chimneys of the soap factory, and at two or three black
and dingy steamers lying just off the works to take in cargo, that
here Demeter was worshiped with mysterious rites at the great festival
of the Eleusinia. Yet, according to the legend, it was here that she
came, disguised as an old hag, in search of her lost Persephone; here
that she taught Triptolemus how to sow the plain, and to reap the first
harvest of yellow wheat, as a reward for the hospitable welcome given
to her by his father Celeus.
The ruins at Eleusis are disappointing to the ordinary traveler,
though interesting to the archæologist. They have none of the pathetic
romance which, notwithstanding the scoldings of many vulgar persons
set forth in a certain visitors’ book, broods gently over poetic
Olympia. Above the village is a vast confusion of broken columns,
defaced capitals, bits of wall, bits of pavement, marble steps, fallen
medallions, vaults, propylæa, substructures, scraps of architraves
carved with inscriptions, and subterranean store-rooms. In the pavement
of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple
of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts
made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated
bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to
find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is
little or none. Nevertheless, even now, it is not possible in the midst
of this tragic _débâcle_ to remain wholly unmoved. Indeed, the very
completeness of the disaster that time and humanity have wrought here
creates emotion when one remembers that here great men came, such men
as Cicero, Sophocles, and Plato; that here they worshiped and adored
under cover of the darkness of night; that here, seeking, they found,
as has been recorded, peace and hope to sustain them when, the august
festival over, they took their way back into the ordinary world along
the shores of sea and lake. Eleusis is no longer beautiful. It is a
home of devastation. It is no longer mysterious. A successful man is
making a fortune out of soap there. But it is a place one cannot
easily forget. And just above the ruins there is a small museum which
contains several very interesting things, and one thing that is superb.
This last is the enormous and noble upper part of the statue of a
woman wearing ear-rings. I do not know its history, though some one
assured me that it was a caryatid. It was dug up among the ruins, and
the color of it is akin to that of the earth. The roughly undulating
hair is parted in the middle of a majestic, goddess-like head. The
features are pure and grand; but the two things that most struck me,
as I looked at this great work of art, were the expression of the face
and the deep bosom, as of the earth-mother and all her fruitfulness.
In few Greek statues have I seen such majesty and power, combined with
such intensity, as this nameless woman shows forth. There is indeed
almost a suggestion of underlying fierceness in the face, but it is the
fierceness that may sometimes leap up in an imperial nature. Are there
not royal angers which flame out of the pure furnaces of love? This
noble woman seems to me to be the present glory of Eleusis.
The mountainous island of Salamis, long and calm, with gray and orange
rocks, lies like a sentinel keeping guard over the harbor of the
Piræus. It is so near to the mainland that the sea between the two
shores looks like a lake, lonely and brilliant, with the two-horned
peak called “the throne of Xerxes” standing out characteristically
behind the low-lying bit of coast where the Greeks have set up an
arsenal. Whether Xerxes did really watch the famous battle from a
throne placed on the hill with which his name is associated is very
doubtful. But many travelers like to believe it, and the kind guides of
Athens are quite ready to stiffen their credulity.
The shores of this beautiful inclosed bit of sea are wild. The water is
wonderfully clear, and is shot with all sorts of exquisite colors. The
strip of mainland, against which the liquid maze of greens and blues
and purples seems to lie motionless, like a painted marvel, is a tangle
of wild myrtle and dwarf shrubs growing in a sandy soil interspersed
with rocks. Gently the land curves, forming a series of little shallow
bays and inlets, each one of which seems more delicious than the
last as you coast along in a fisherman’s boat. But, unfortunately,
the war-ships of Greece often lie snug in harbor in the shadow of
Salamis not far from the arsenal, and, as I have hinted already, their
commander-in-chief has little sympathy with the inquiring traveler. I
shall not easily forget the expression that came into his face when,
in reply to his question, “What did you come here for?” I said, “To
visit the scene of the celebrated battle.” A weary incredulity made
him suddenly look very old; and I believe it was then that, taking a
pen, he wrote on the margin of his report about me that I was “a very
suspicious person.”
It is safer, especially in war-time, to keep away from Salamis; but if
you care for smiling wild places where the sea is, where its breath
gives a vivid sense of life to the wilderness, you may easily forget
her myrtle-covered shores and the bays of violet and turquoise.
Of the many wonderful haunts of the sea which I visited in Greece, Cape
Sunium is perhaps the most memorable, though I never shall forget the
glories of the magnificent drive along the mountains between Athens and
Corinth. But Sunium has its ruined temple, standing on a great height.
And in some of us a poet has wakened a wondering consciousness of its
romance, perhaps when we sat in a Northern land beside the winter fire.
And in some of us, too, an immortal painter has roused a longing to see
it, when we never thought to be carried by our happy fate to Greece.
In going to Sunium I passed through the famous mining district of
Laurium, where now many convicts work out their sentences. In ancient
times slaves toiled there for the benefit of those citizens who had
hereditary leases granted by the state. They worked the mines for
silver, but now lead is the principal product. It happened that just as
we were in the middle of the dingy town, or village, where the miners
and their families dwell, for only some of them are convicts, a tire
of the motor burst. This of course delayed us, and I was able to see
something of the inhabitants. In Athens I had heard that they were a
fierce and ill-mannered population. I found them, on the contrary, as
I found almost all those whom I met in Greece, cheerful, smiling, and
polite. Happy, if rather dirty, children gathered round us, delighted
to have something to look at and wonder about. Men, going to or coming
from the works, paused to see what was the matter and to inquire where
I came from. From the windows of the low, solid-looking houses women
leaned eagerly out with delighted faces. Several of the latter talked
to me. I could not understand what they said, and all they could
understand was that I came from London, a circumstance which seemed
greatly to impress them, for they called it out from one to another
up the street. We carried on intercourse mainly by facial expression
and elaborate gesture, assisted genially by the grubby little boys.
And when I got into the car to go we were all the best of friends.
The machine made the usual irritable noises, but from the good people
of Laurium came only cries of good-will, among them that pleasant
admonition which one hears often in Greece: “Enjoy yourself! Enjoy
yourself!”
When Laurium was left behind, we were soon in wild and deserted
country. Now and then we passed an Albanian on horseback, with a
gun over his shoulder, a knife stuck in his belt, or we came upon a
shepherd watching his goats as they browsed on the low scrub which
covered the hills. All the people in this region are Albanians, I was
told. They appeared to be very few. As we drew near to the ancient
shrine of Poseidon we left far behind us the habitations of men. At
length the car stopped in the wilderness, and on a height to my left I
saw the dazzling white marble columns of the Temple of Sunium.
Almost all the ruins I saw in Greece were weather-stained. Their
original color was mottled with browns and grays, with saffron, with
gold and red gold. But the columns of Sunium have kept their brilliant
whiteness, although they stand on a great, bare cliff above the sea,
exposed to the glare of the sun and to the buffeting of every wind of
heaven. They are raised not merely on this natural height, but also on
a great platform of the famous Poros-stone. In the time of Byron there
were sixteen columns standing. There are now eleven, with a good deal
of architrave. These columns are Doric, and are about twenty feet in
height. They have not the majesty of the Parthenon columns, but, on the
contrary, have a peculiar delicacy and even grace, which is lacking
both in the Parthenon and in the Theseum. They do not move you to awe
or overwhelm you; they charm and delight you. In their ivory-white
simplicity, standing out against the brilliant blue of sea and sky on
the white and gray platform, there is something that allures.
Upon one of the columns I found the name of Byron carved in bold
letters. But I looked in vain for the name of Turner. Byron loved the
Cape of Sunium. Fortunately, nothing has been done to make it less
wonderful since his time. It is true that fewer columns are standing
to bear witness to the old worship of the sea-god; but such places
as Sunium are not injured when some blocks of marble fall, but when
men begin to build. Still the noble promontory thrusts itself boldly
forward into the sea from the heart of an undesecrated wilderness.
Still the columns stand quite alone. All the sea-winds can come to
you there, and all the winds of the hills--winds from the Ægean and
Mediterranean, from crested Eubœa, from Melos, from Hydra, from
Ægina, with its beautiful Doric temple, from Argolis and from the
mountains of Arcadia. And it seems as though all the sunshine of heaven
were there to bathe you in golden fire, as though there could be none
left over for the rest of the world. The coasts of Greece stretch away
beneath you into far distances, curving in bays, thrusting out in
promontories, here tawny and volcanic, there gray and quietly sober in
color, but never cold or dreary. White sails, but only two or three,
are dreaming on the vast purple of Poseidon’s kingdom--white sails of
mariners who are bound for the isles of Greece. Poets have sung of
those isles. Who has not thought of them with emotion? Now, between the
white marble columns, you can see their mountain ranges, you can see
their rocky shores.
Behind and below me I heard a slight movement. I got up and looked. And
there on a slab of white marble lay a snow-white goat warming itself
in the sun. White, gold, and blue, and far off the notes of white were
echoed not only by the mariner’s sails, but by tiny Albanian villages
inland, seen over miles of bare country, over flushes of yellow, where
the pines would not be denied.
There is an ineffable charm in the landscape, in the atmosphere, of
Greece. No other land that I know possesses an exactly similar spell.
Wildness and calm seem woven together, a warm and almost caressing
wildness with a calm that is full of romance. There the wilderness
is indeed a haven to long after, and there the solitudes call you as
though with the voices of friends.
As I turned at last to go away from Poseidon’s white marble ruin, a
one-armed man came up to me, and in English told me that he was the
guardian of the temple.
“But where do you live?” I asked him, looking over the vast solitude.
Smiling, he led the way down to a low whitewashed bungalow at a
little distance. There, in a rough but delicious loggia, paved and
fronting the sea, I found two brown women sitting with a baby among
some small pots of flowers. Remote from the world, with only the
marble columns for neighbors, with no voice but the sea’s to speak
to them, dwell these four persons. The man lived and worked for many
years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lost his arm in some
whirring machinery. Now he has come home and entered the sea-god’s
service. Pittsburgh and the Hellenic wilderness--what a contrast! But
my one-armed friend takes it philosophically. He shrugs his shoulder,
points to his stump, and says, “I guess I couldn’t go on there like
this, so I had to quit, and they put me here.”
They put him “here,” on Cape Sunium, and on Cape Sunium he has built
himself a house and made for himself a loggia, white, cool, brightened
with flowers, face to face with the purple sea, and the isles and
the mountains of Greece. And at Sunium he intends to remain because,
unfortunately, having lost an arm, he is no longer wanted in Pittsburgh.
I gave him some money, accepted the baby’s wavering but insistent hand,
and left him to his good or ill fortune in the exquisite wilderness.
(To be continued)
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