[Illustration]
It was our purpose to land on Rhodes the isle, not at Rhodes the town.
To visit the famous northern city where once stood the Colossus would
have been highly agreeable had opportunity presented itself; but as it
was we planned to coast along the southeasterly side of Rhodes and make
our landing at the little less celebrated and probably even more
picturesque site of Lindos. So in the morning we woke to find our vessel
rolling merrily in a cross sea just off the entrance to the little bay
that serves Lindos for a harbor,—a sea that stripped our breakfast table
of its few dishes and converted the floor of the saloon into a sea of
broken crockery. The waters of the bay proved calm enough when we had
slid past the imposing promontory on which stood the acropolis of
ancient Lindos, and felt our way across the rapidly shoaling waters to a
safe anchorage. The water was of a wonderful clarity as well as of
remarkable blueness, the bottom being visible for many fathoms and
seeming much more shoal than was the case in fact. We were able to go
quite close to shore before anchoring, and found ourselves in good
shelter from the wind that was then blowing, although well outside the
tiny inner port which lay at the foot of a steep bluff. Towering above
the whole town stood the precipitous and seemingly inaccessible
acropolis, its steep sides running down to the sea, the rich redness of
the rock contrasting on the one hand with the matchless blue of the
Ægean, and on the other with the pure whiteness of the buildings of the
town. The summit of the promontory was crowned with the ruin of a castle
of the Knights of Rhodes, who had once made this a famous stronghold in
the Middle Ages. In fact the residence of the knights had obliterated
the more ancient remnants of the classic period, which included a temple
of Athena; and the work of exhuming the Greek ruins from under the
débris of the Crusaders’ fortress was only just beginning when we landed
there.
From the ship, the most conspicuous object on the heights was the ruined
castle of St. John, the portal of which, giving the sole means of access
to the plateau on top of the promontory, was plainly to be seen as we
sailed in. It gave the impression of yellowish-brown sandstone from
below, a color which it shared with the goodly battlements that frowned
down from all sides of the citadel, even where the abruptness of the
declivity for something like three hundred feet made battlements a
seeming work of supererogation. Nestling under the shadow of the mighty
rock on the landward side lay the modern village of Lindos itself,
apparently freshly whitewashed and gleaming in the sun wherever the rock
failed to shelter it from the morning warmth. It was one of those
marvelously brilliant days that have made the Greek atmosphere so
famous—cloudless and clear, with that clearness that reveals distant
objects so distinctly, yet so softly withal. As for the nearer
prospects, they were almost trying to the eyes, under the forenoon glare
beating down on that immaculate array of close-set white houses and
shops.
Our boats set off shoreward across a placid sheet of water that varied
from a deep indigo at the ship to the palest of greens as it surged
among the fringes of slippery rock along the foot of the bluff. The
landing stage was but a narrow shelf of pebbly beach, from which a rough
paved way led steeply up to the town just above the sea. The contrast of
the blue sky and the white purity of the town was dazzling in the
extreme, and the glare accounted in a measure for the veiled women and
sore-eyed children we met in the courtyards of the town. Our own eyes
soon ached sufficiently to make us walk in single file along the shady
side of the high-walled streets, looking chiefly at the shadow and only
occasionally at the houses and shops as we wound along into the heart of
the village. But even these occasional glimpses revealed the most
fascinating of little details in the local architecture, curious Gothic
and Moorish windows surviving from a bygone day and ornamented with the
border of “rope” pattern worked in the stone. Almost everything had been
covered with the dazzling whitewash, save here and there a relic of
former days which was allowed to retain the natural color of the native
rock.
In most of the cases the actual dwellings were set well back from the
streets, which were extremely narrow and crooked. Between the highway
and the house was invariably a tiny courtyard, screened from the view of
passers by a lofty wall, always of white. The yards were occasionally to
be peered into, however, through a gate left temptingly ajar. These
diminutive courts were floored with pebble work in black and white
designs throughout their extent, save where the matron of the house had
a flower bed under cultivation. These beds and boxes of flowers were a
riot of color and filled the air with fragrance, while the green foliage
furnished a lively contrast with the dead white of the walls behind.
In the doorways of the dwellings within could be seen groups of bashful
women, and shy children hiding in their mothers’ skirts, who looked
furtively at us as we stopped hesitatingly before their gates. Growing
bolder we finally ventured to set foot within the courtyards now and
then, charmed with the sweetness of the tiny gardens; and at length we
made bold to enter and to walk over the pleasant firmness of the pebbly
pavements of white and black tracery to the doorways, where the women
gave a timid but welcoming good-day and bade us come in. The absence of
men was notable. We were later told that the male population of Lindos
was temporarily away, being largely employed in the construction of the
great dam at Assouan, on the Nile; and that in consequence the women had
practically the sole charge in Lindos at the time, which may have
accounted for the immaculateness of everything. We were likewise told
that in the evening a certain hour was reserved for the sole use of the
women, who might be free to wander at will through the streets, chiefly
to get water for their households, without fear of molestation. Lindos
for the time was an Adamless Eden, and as spick and span a town as it
would be possible to find on earth.
The houses into which we were welcomed proved to be as clean within as
without. The lower story apparently consisted as a general thing of a
single great room, with possibly a smaller apartment back of it for
cooking. This large room was the living room and sleeping room as well.
The floor was scrubbed until its boards shone. The walls were of the
universal white. On one side of the room—and occasionally on both
sides—was to be seen a sort of dais, or elevated platform, which
apparently served for the family bed. The bedding, including blankets
and rugs of barbaric splendor, was neatly piled on the platform or hung
over the railing of it. And it was here, according to all appearance,
that the entire household retired to rest in a body at night, in
harmonious contiguity.
What interested us most of all, however, was the decoration of the
rooms. Nearly every one that we entered was adorned with numerous plates
hung on the wall in great profusion, seldom more than two being of the
same pattern, and including all sorts of designs, from the valuable
Rhodian down to the common “willow” patterns of our own grandmothers’
collections at home. This heterogeneous array of plates puzzled us not a
little at first. It was so universal among the householders, and
representative of so wide a field of the ceramic art, that some
explanation of the presence of these plates seemed necessary. Later it
developed that the Rhodian custom has long been to mark the birth of
each child by the addition of a plate to the family collection, the
fewer duplicates the better. The agglomeration of these dishes that we
saw represented the family trees for generations. Despite the connection
presumably existing between the plates and the family history, however,
we found the women not reluctant to part with specimens for a price, and
we carried away not a few. The comparatively rare instances in which we
found any of the genuine and celebrated Rhodian ware, however, proved
that its great value was well known by the native women. Their prices in
such cases proved prohibitive, especially in view of the risk of
breakage involved in getting the plates home from so distant an island.
These plates, notable for the beauty of their design and for the
distinguishing rose pattern in the centre, are often to be found in
museum collections, and their great rarity and consequent value unfits
them for other uses than those of the collector. The few that we found
in Lindos were to be had for prices equivalent to about eighty dollars
apiece in our money, which seemed exorbitant until we were later told
that even one hundred dollars would have been reasonable enough for some
of the finer specimens. Indeed, it is getting to be rather unusual to
find one of these for sale at all.
There are opportunities enough, as we discovered, to purchase the famous
Rhodian embroidery; but we were cautioned to leave the bargaining to
experts familiar with values, for the infrequent visitor is almost
certain to be imposed upon in any such transaction. These embroideries,
or at least the older ones, are very elaborate creations of colored
wools on a background of unbleached linen, the colors being remarkably
rich and fresh despite their age, an age that is eloquently testified to
by the stains and worn places in the cloth. The subject of Rhodian
embroidery is a most interesting one, but too intricate and technical to
be gone into here. The study of the growth of certain well-defined
groups of conventionalized figures might well furnish material for a
considerable body of literature, if it has not already done so. We were
informed that the wealth of Rhodian embroidery was due to the ancient
custom—which may still exist among the Rhodian girls—to begin the
preparation of the nuptial gear at a tender age, they plying their
needles almost daily, until by the time they are marriageable they have
accumulated a surprising amount of bizarre blankets, cloths, and bits of
finery for their dower chests.
The leisurely progress through the town required some time, occupied as
we were by frequent visits to the odd little houses in the quest of
curious wares to carry away. And by the time we had reached the centre
of the town, the hot sun made us glad indeed to step under a spacious
arch, washed underneath with a sky-blue tint which was restful to our
tired eyes, and thence to go into the cool and aromatic quiet of a very
old Greek church, where the glare of the sun on the white buildings
could be forgotten. Most notable of all the curious things shown us by
the attendant priest was the quaintly carved roof, which, after so much
excessive light out of doors, it was decidedly difficult to see at all
in the grateful gloom of the church.
We delayed but a little while there, for the acropolis above was the
ultimate goal of our visit to the spot. Thither we were conducted by the
Danish gentleman who had charge of the investigations being prosecuted
there. The way led out of the dense buildings of the town and along the
base of the overhanging cliff to the side toward the open sea, always
upward and above the flat roofs of the little town below, until we came
to the foot of the stairway of stone leading up through a defile in the
rock to the arched portal of the castle on the height. It was a long
flight of steps, one side against the smooth face of the rock, the other
unprotected. And at the foot of the impressive approach to the citadel
was one of the most interesting of the discoveries made on the site. It
was a gigantic sculpture in bas-relief hewn out of the face of the cliff
itself and representing, in “life size,” so to speak, the stern of an
ancient trireme. The relief was sufficiently high to give a flat space
on what was intended to be the deck of the ship, supposably as a
pedestal for some statue which has disappeared. The curved end of the
trireme with its sustaining bolt, the seat of the helmsman, and a blade
of one of the oars, were still intact, and as a large representation of
a classic ship the sculpture is doubtless unique, To all intents and
purposes it is as perfect to-day as when the artists first carved it.
[Illustration:
SCULPTURED TRIREME IN ROCK AT LINDOS
_From a Sketch by the Author_
]
In the grateful shade of the rock we sat and listened to the description
of the archæological work done on the spot by the Danes, which has not,
at this writing, been officially published, and therefore seems not
proper matter for inexpert discussion here. One interesting fact,
however, which we were told, was that, by means of certain records
deciphered from tablets found on the acropolis, it had been possible to
fix definitely the date of the statue of the Laocoön as a work of the
first century before Christ. This was established by the list of the
names of the priests, and of the sculptors who worked for them, at
periods which it proved possible to fix with a remarkable degree of
exactness.
[Illustration: ARCHED PORTAL OF ACROPOLIS. LINDOS]
We ascended to the height above, where we were permitted to wander at
will among the ruins. As from below, the chief features were those of
the medieval period, which had so largely swallowed up the temple of
Athena. Nevertheless the excavators had restored enough of the original
site from its covering of débris to reveal the vestiges of the old
temple and an imposing propylæa, with traces enough in fragmentary form
to enable making drawings of the structures as they probably appeared to
the ancient eye. For the rest the chief interest centred in the relics
of the abode of the knights. Just at the head of the grand entrance
stairway was the tower which defended the acropolis on its one
accessible side. The arched portal is very nearly perfect still, and one
passes under it, across a sort of moat, by means of an improvised bridge
of planks, where once, no doubt, a drawbridge served to admit or to bar
out at the will of the Grand Master of the ancient commandery. Beyond
the entrance hall lay a succession of vaulted halls and chambers leading
around to the open precincts of the acropolis, the most evidently
well-preserved buildings being the chapel of St. John and the house once
occupied by the Grand Master himself. All were of the brownish native
rock, and were unmistakably medieval in their general style of
architecture. On the open terraces above the entrance, little remained
to be seen save the heaps of débris and the faint traces of the classic
temples. But most impressive of all was the sheer drop of the rock on
all sides around the acropolis and the views off to sea and inland over
Rhodes. The precipices everywhere, save at the entrance alone, fell away
perpendicularly to the sea, which murmured two or three hundred feet
below. Nevertheless, despite the evident hopelessness of ever scaling
the height, the painstaking knights had built a wall with battlements
all about, less serviceable as protecting the inhabitants against
assault than for preserving them from falling over to a certain and
awful death themselves. The drop on the landward side was considerably
less, but quite as steep and quite as impregnable to would-be scaling
parties. Even a few munitions of war, in the shape of rounded stones
about the size of old-fashioned cannon balls seen in our modern military
parks, were to be found about the summit.
The views from this elevated height were superb, not only off across the
sea to the mountainous land of Asia Minor, but inland toward the rocky
interior of Rhodes herself. The land just across the little depression
in which the white town lay, rose to another though less commanding
height, in the slopes of which the excavator said they had but recently
unearthed some ancient rock tombs. Beyond, the country rolled in an
undulating sea of green hills—a pleasant land as always, and doubtless
as flowery as of old when she took her name from the rose (rhodos) and
when the wild pomegranate flower gave Browning’s “Balaustion” her
nickname. As a colony of the Athenian empire she stood loyal to the
Attic city down to 412 B.C., in those troublous days of the
Peloponnesian war, when the star of Athens waned and most of the
Rhodians at last revolted. Those who still clung to Athens probably went
away as Balaustion did, and returned, if at all, only after Athens had
been laid waste to the sound of the flute. Under the Roman domination
Rhodes enjoyed a return to high favor, and Tiberius selected the smiling
isle as his place of banishment. For siding with Cæsar, Cassius punished
the island by plundering it. For centuries after, it was overrun by the
Arabs; and from them it was taken by the Byzantines, who turned it over
to the Knights of St. John, who took the new name of the Knights of
Rhodes, fortified the spot as we saw, and held it for a long time
against all comers, down to 1522, when the Sultan Solyman II. reduced
it. It is still Turkish territory, and of the finds made by the
archæologists on the site of Lindos, the great bulk have been sent to
Constantinople, including several hundred terra cotta figurines. The
zealous Turks, the excavators complained, had taken away their books on
landing, with the result that they had led a lonely life of it, their
only diversion being their labors on the acropolis.
We had no chance to inspect the interior of the island, which other
visitors have described in glowing colors as most attractive in the
profusion of its almost tropic verdure and its growths of cactus,
oleander, myrtle, figs, and pomegranates. Like Cos, Rhodes was an
ancient seat of culture, greatly favored by students, and the site of a
celebrated university. Æschines founded here a famous school of oratory,
and in later years the institution was honored by the patronage of no
less a personage than the Roman Cicero. Of these, of course, we saw no
trace.
Neither had we any opportunity to visit the ancient capital, “Rhodes the
town,” which boasts the ruins of a very similar castle of the knights.
As for the famous Colossus, which nearly everybody remembers first of
all in trying to recall what were the wonders of the world, it no longer
exists. But in passing one may remark that the notion that this gigantic
statue bestrode the harbor has been exploded, destroying one of the most
cherished delusions of childhood which the picture in the back of
Webster’s Unabridged contributed not least of all in producing, in the
past two generations.
There were three celebrated cities in Rhodes in its golden age—Lindos,
Ialysos, and Kameiros—which, with Cos, Cnidos, and Halicarnassus, formed
the ancient Dorian “hexapolis,” or six cities, four of which it had been
our good fortune to visit within the past two days. The city of Rhodes
was formed comparatively late by inhabitants from the three original
cities of the island, and became a prosperous and influential port. The
inhabitants were seafaring people and developed a high degree of skill
in navigation, with an interesting corollary in their code of maritime
law, from which a faint survival is found in the doctrine of “general
average” in our own admiralty practice, sometimes referred to as the
Rhodian law, and having to do with the participation of all shippers in
such losses as may be occasioned by throwing a part of the cargo
overboard to save the whole from loss. To visit Kameiros and the
interior would have been interesting but impossible, and we found our
consolation for the inability to visit other Rhodian sites in the
loveliness of Lindos, with its acropolis above and its pure white walls
below, its gardens, its courtyards, and its collections of plates. And
we left it with regret—a regret which was shared no doubt by the lonely
Danish explorer whom we left waving adieu to us from the shore as we
pulled away across the shallow waters of the harbor to the steamer, and
turned our faces once more toward the west and that Athens of which
Balaustion dreamed.
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