hewn in pieces, may they be burned alive,”—and the scene in the
cathedral ended in a mob of monks and soldiers, who trampled upon
Flavian, the then primate of Constantinople, so that in three days
thereafter he died of his wounds.
It is as difficult to make real now upon this spot those fierce
theologic wars of Ephesus, as it is the fabled exploits of Bacchus and
Hercules and the Amazons in this valley; to believe that here were born
Apollo and Diana, and that hither fled Latona, and that great Pan lurked
in its groves.
We presently came upon the site of the great Temple of Diana, recently
identified by Mr. Wood. We encountered on our way a cluster of stone
huts, wretched habitations of the only representatives of the renowned
capital. Before us was a plain broken by small hillocks and mounds,
and strewn with cut and fractured stone. The site of the temple can be
briefly and accurately described as a rectangular excavation, perhaps
one hundred and fifty feet wide by three hundred long and twelve feet
deep, with two feet of water in it, out of which rises a stump of a
column of granite and another of marble, and two bases of marble. Round
this hole are heaps of fractured stone and marble. In this excavation
Mr. Wood found the statue of Diana, which we may hope is the ancient
sacred image, guarded by the priests as the most precious treasure of
the temple, and imposed upon the credulity of men as heaven-descended.
This is all that remains of one of the Seven Wonders of the world,—a
temple whose fame is second to none in antiquity; a temple seven times
burned and eight times built, and always with increased magnificence;
a temple whose origin, referable doubtless to the Cyclopean builders of
this coast, cannot be less than fifteen hundred years before our era; a
temple which still had its votaries and its rites in the fourth century.
We picked up a bit of marble from its ruins, as a help-both to memory
and imagination, but we went our way utterly unable to conceive that
there ever existed any such person as great Diana of the Ephesians.
We directed our steps over the bramble-grown plain to the hill Pion.
I suppose Pion may have been the acropolis of Ephesus, the spot of
the earliest settlement, and on it and around it clustered many of the
temples and public buildings. The reader will recall Argos, and Athens,
and Corinth, and a dozen other cities of antiquity, for which nature
furnished in the midst of a plain such a convenient and easily defended
hill-fortress. On our way thither we walked amid mounds that form a
street of tombs; many of the sarcophagi are still in place, and little
injured; but we explore the weed-hid ground with caution, for it is full
of pitfalls.
North of the hill Pion is a low green valley, encircled with hills, and
in the face of one of its ledges, accessible only by a ladder, we were
pointed out the cave of the Seven Sleepers. This favorite myth, which
our patriotism has transferred to the highlands of the Hudson in a
modified shape, took its most popular form in the legend of the Seven
Sleepers, and this grotto at Ephesus was for many centuries the object
of Christian and Moslem pilgrimage. The Christian legend, that in the
time of the persecution of Diocletian seven young men escaped to this
cave and slept there two centuries, and awoke to find Christianity the
religion of the empire, was adopted and embellished by Mohammed. In
his version, the wise dog Ketmehr, or Al Rakiin as the Koran names him,
becomes an important character.
“When the young men,” says Abd-el-Atti, “go along the side of the
hill to the cave, the dog go to follow them. They take up stones to
make him go back, for they 'fraid of him bark, and let the people know
where they hide. But the dog not to go back, he sit down on him hind,
and him look berry wise. By and by he speak, he say the name of God.
“'How did you know that?' ask him the young men.
“'I know it,' the dog say, 'before you born!'
“Then they see the dog he wise by Allah, and know great deal, and let
him to go with 'em. This dog, Ketmehr, he is gone, so our Prophet say,
to be in Paradise; no other dog be there. So I hope.”
The names of the Seven Sleepers and Ketmehr are in great talismanic
repute throughout the East; they are engraved upon swords and upon gold
and precious stones, and in Smyrna you may buy these charms against
evil.
Keeping round the hill Pion, we reached the ruins of the gymnasium,
heaps of stone amid brick arches, the remains of an enormous building;
near it is the north gate of the city, a fine marble structure, now
almost buried. Still circling Pion we found ourselves in a narrow
valley, on the other side of which was the long ridge of Conessus,
which runs southward towards the sea. Conessus seems to have been the
burial-place of the old town. This narrow valley is stuffed with remains
of splendid buildings, of which nothing is now to be seen but heaps of
fine marble, walls, capitals, columns, in prodigal waste. We stopped to
admire a bit of carving, or to notice a Greek inscription, and passed on
to the Stadium, to the Little Theatre, to the tomb of St. Luke. On one
of the lintels of the entrance of this tomb, in white marble, as fresh
as if carved yesterday, is a cross, and under it the figure of an
Egyptian ox, the emblem of that saint.
We emerged from this gorge to a wide view of the plain, and a glimpse
of an arm of the sea. On this plain are the scattered ruins of the old
city, brick, stone, and marble,—absolute desolation. On the left, near
the sea, is a conical hill, crowned by one of the towers of the ancient
wall, and dignified with the name of the “prison of St. Paul.” In
this plain is neither life nor cultivation, but vegetation riots over
the crumbling remains of Ephesus, and fever waits there its chance human
prey. We stood on the side of the hill Pion, amid the fallen columns
and heaped walls of its Great Theatre. It was to this theatre that
the multitude rushed when excited against Paul by Demetrius, the
silversmith, who earned his religion into his business; and here the
companions of Paul endeavored to be heard and could not, for “all with
one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the
Ephesians.” This amphitheatre for fifty thousand spectators is scooped
out of the side of the hill, and its tiers of seats are still indicated.
What a magnificent view they must have enjoyed of the city and the sea
beyond; for the water then came much nearer; and the spectator who may
have wearied of the strutting of the buskined heroes on the stage, or of
the monotonous chant of the chorus, could rest his eye upon the purple
slopes of Conessus, upon the colonnades and domes of the opulent
city, upon the blue waves that bore the merchants' ships of Rome and
Alexandria and Berytus.
The theatre is a mine of the most exquisite marbles, and we left its
treasures with reluctance; we saw other ruins, bases of columns, the
remains of the vast city magazines for the storage of corn, and solid
walls of huge stones once washed by the sea; we might have wandered for
days amid the fragments, but to what purpose?
At Ephesus we encountered no living thing. Man has deserted it, silence
reigns over the plain, nature slowly effaces the evidence of his
occupation, and the sea even slinks away from it. No great city that I
have seen is left to such absolute desolation; not Pæstum in its marsh,
not Thebes in its sand, not Ba'albek, not even Memphis, swept clean
as it is of monuments, for its site is vocal with labor and bounteous in
harvests. Time was, doubtless, when gold pieces piled two deep on this
ground could not have purchased it; and the buyers or sellers never
imagined that the city lots of Ephesus could become worth so little as
they are to-day.
If one were disposed to muse upon the vagaries of human progress, this
would be the spot. No civilization, no religion, has been wanting to it.
Its vast Cyclopean foundations were laid by simple pagans; it was in the
polytheistic belief of the Greeks that it attained the rank of one of
the most polished and wealthy cities of antiquity, famed for its arts,
its schools of poetry, of painting and sculpture, of logic and magic,
attracting to its opportunities the devout, the seekers of pleasure
and of wisdom, the poets, the men of the world, the conquerors and the
defeated; here Artemisia sheltered the children of Xerxes after the
disaster of Salamis; here Alexander sat for his portrait to Apelles (who
was born in the city) when he was returning from the capture of Sardis;
Spartans and Athenians alike, Lysander and Alcibiades, sought Ephesus,
for it had something for all; Hannibal here conferred with Antiochus;
Cicero was entertained with games by the people when he was on his way
to his province of Cilicia; and Antony in the character of inebriate
Bacchus, accompanied by Cleopatra, crowned with flowers and attended
by bands of effeminate musicians, made here one of the pageants of his
folly. In fact, scarcely any famous name of antiquity is wanting to the
adornment of this hospitable city. Under the religion of Christ it has
had the good fortune to acquire equal celebrity, thanks to the residence
of Paul, the tent-maker, and to its conspicuous position at the head of
the seven churches of Asia. From Ephesus went forth the * news of
the gospel, as formerly had spread the rites of Diana, and Christian*
churches and schools of philosophy succeeded the temples and gymnasia of
the polytheists. And, in turn, the cross was supplanted by the crescent;
but it was in the day when Islamism was no longer a vital faith, and
except a few beautiful ruins the Moslem occupation has contributed
nothing to the glory of Ephesus. And now paganism, Christianity, and
Moslemism seem alike to have forsaken the weary theatre of so much
brilliant history. As we went out to the station, by the row of booths
and coffee-shops, a modern Greek, of I do not know what religion,
offered to sell me an image of I do not know what faith.
There is great curiosity at present about the relics and idols of dead
religions, and a brisk manufacture of them has sprung up; it is in the
hands of sceptics who indifferently propagate the images of the Virgin
Mary or of the chaste huntress Diana.
The swift Asiatic train took us back to Smyrna in a golden sunset.
We had been warned by the agent not to tarry a moment beyond eight
o'clock, and we hurried breathless to the boat. Fortunately the
steamer had not sailed; we were in time, and should have been if we had
remained on shore till eight the next morning. All night long we were
loading freight, with an intolerable rattling of chains, puffing of the
donkey-engine, and swearing of boatmen; after the novelty of swearing in
an Oriental tongue has worn off, it is no more enjoyable than any other
kind of profanity.
XII.—THE ADVENTURERS.
WE sailed away from Smyrna Sunday morning, with the Achille more crowded
than when we entered that port. The second-class passengers still
further encroached upon the first-class. The Emir of Damascus, with all
his rugs and beds, had been pushed farther towards the stern, and more
harems occupied temporary pens on our deck, and drew away our attention
from the natural scenery.
The venerable, white-bearded, Greek bishop of Smyrna was a passenger,
also the tall noble-looking pasha of that city, just relieved and
ordered to Constantinople, as pashas are continually, at the whim of the
Sultan. We had three pashas on board,—one recalled from Haifa, who had
been only twenty days at his post. The pasha of Smyrna was accompanied
by his family, described on the register as his wife and “four
others,” an indefinite expression to define an indefinite condition.
The wife had a room below; the “four others” were penned up in a
cushioned area on the saloon deck, and there they squatted all day,
veiled and robed in white, poor things, without the least occupation
for hand or mind. Near them, other harems of Greeks and Turks, women,
babies, slaves, all in an Oriental mess, ate curds and green lettuce.
We coasted along the indented, picturesque shore of Asia, having in
view the mountains about ancient Pergamus, the seat of one of the seven
churches; and before noon came to Mitylene, the ancient Lesbos, a large
island which bears another Mount Olympus, and cast anchor in the bay
upon which the city stands.
By the bend of the bay and the opposite coast, the town is charmingly
land-locked. The site of Mitylene, like so many of these island cities,
is an amphitheatre, and the mountain-slopes, green and blooming with
fruit-trees, are dotted with white houses and villages. The scene is
Italian rather than Oriental, and gives one the general impression of
Castellamare or Sorrento; but the city is prettier to look at than
to explore, as its broad and clean streets, its ordinary houses and
European-dressed inhabitants, take us out of our ideal voyaging, and
into the regions of the commonplace. The shops were closed, and the
country people, who in all countries appear to derive an unexplained
pleasure in wandering about the streets of a city hand in hand, were
seeking this mild recreation. A youthful Jew, to whom the Sunday was
naught, under pretence of showing us something antique, led us into the
den of a Greek, to whom it was also naught, and whose treasures were
bags of defaced copper coins of the Roman period.
Upon the point above the city is a fine mediaeval fortress, now a
Turkish fort, where we encountered, in the sentinel at the gate, the
only official in the Orient who ever refused backsheesh; I do not know
what his idea is. From the walls we looked upon the blue strait, the
circling, purple hills of Asia, upon islands, pretty villages, and
distant mountains, soft, hazy, serrated, in short, upon a scene of
poetry and peace, into which the ancient stone bastion by the harbor,
which told of days of peril, and a ruined aqueduct struggling down the
hill back of the town,—the remnant of more vigorous days,—brought no
disturbance.
In Lesbos we are at the source of lyric poetry, the Æolian spring
of Greece; here Alcæus was born. Here we come upon the footsteps of
Sappho. We must go back to a period when this and all the islands of
these heavenly seas were blooming masses of vegetation, the hills hung
with forests, the slopes purple with the vine, the valleys laughing with
flowers and fruit, and everywhere the primitive, joyful Greek life. No
doubt, manners were somewhat rude, and passions, love, and hate, and
revenge, were frankly exhibited; but in all the homely life ran a
certain culture, which seems to us beautiful even in the refinement
of this shamefaced age. The hardy youth of the islands sailed into far
seas, and in exchange for the bounty of their soil brought back foreign
fabrics of luxury. We know that Lesbos was no stranger to the Athenian
influence, its scholars had heard Plato and Aristotle, and the warriors
of Athens respected it both as a foe and an ally. Charakos, a brother
of Sappho, went to Egypt with a ship full of wine, and returned with the
beautiful slave Doricha, as part at least of the reward of his venture.
After the return of Sappho and her husband from their flight into
Sicily, the poet lived for many years at Mitylene; but she is supposed
to have been born in Eresso, on the southwestern point of the island,
where the ruins of the acropolis and remains of a sea-wall still mark
the site of the famous town. At any rate, she lived there, with her
husband Kerkylas, a landed proprietor and a person of consequence, like
a dame of noble birth and gentle breeding as she was; and in her verse
we have a glimpse of her walking upon the sandy shore, with her little
daughter, the beautiful child whom she would not give up for the kingdom
of Lydia, nor for heavenly Lesbos itself. That Sappho was beautiful as
her image on the ancient coins represents her, and that she was consumed
by passion for a handsome youth, the world likes to believe. But Maximus
of Tyre says that she was small and dark;—graces are not so plenty,
even in heaven, that genius and beauty can be lavished upon one person.
We are prone to insist that the poet who revels in imagination and
sounds the depth of passion is revealing his own heart, and that the
tale that seems so real must be a personal experience. The little
glimpse we have of Sappho's life does not warrant us to find in it the
passionate tempest of her burning lyrics, nor is it consistent with her
social position that she should expose upon the market-place her passion
for the handsome Phaon, like a troubadour of the Middle Ages or a
Zingara of Bohemia. If that consuming fire was only quenched in the sea
at the foot of “Leucadia's far-projecting rock of woe,” at least
our emotion may be tempered by the soothing knowledge that the leap must
have been taken when the enamored singer had passed her sixtieth year.
We did not see them at Mitylene, but travellers into the interior speak
of the beautiful women, the descendants of kings' daughters, the
rewards of Grecian heroes; near old Eresso the women preserve the type
of that indestructible beauty, and in the large brown eyes, voluptuous
busts, and elastic gait one may deem that he sees the originals of the
antique statues.
Another famous woman flits for a moment before us at Lesbos. It is the
celebrated Empress Irene, whose cruelty was hardly needed to preserve a
name that her talent could have perpetuated. An Athenian virgin and an
orphan, at seventeen she became the wife of Leo IV. (a. d. 780), and at
length the ruler of the Eastern Empire. Left the guardian of the empire
and her son Constantine VI., she managed both, until the lad in his
maturity sent his mother into retirement. The restless woman conspired
against him; he fled, was captured and brought to the palace and lodged
in the porphyry chamber where he first had seen the light, and where he
last saw it; for his eyes were put out by the order of Irene. His very
existence was forgotten in the depths of the palace, and for several
years the ambitious mother reigned with brilliancy and the respect of
distant potentates, until a conspiracy of eunuchs overturned her power,
and she was banished to Lesbos. Here history, which delights in these
strokes of poetic justice, represents the empress earning her bread by
the use of her distaff.
As we came from Mitylene into the open sea, the view was surpassingly
lovely, islands green and poetic, a coast ever retreating and advancing,
as if in coquetry with the blue waves, purple robing the hills,—a
voyage for poets and lotus-eaters. We were coming at night to Tenedos,
to which the crafty Greeks withdrew their fleet when they pretended to
abandon the siege, and to old Troy, opposite; we should be able to feel
their presence in the darkness.
Our steamer, as we have intimated, was a study of nationalities and
languages, as well as of manners. We were English, American, Greek,
Italian, Turkish, Arab, Russian, French, Armenian, Egyptian, Jew,
Georgian, Abyssinian, Nubian, German, Koor-land, Persian, Kurd; one
might talk with a person just from Mecca or Medina, from Bagdad, from
Calcutta, from every Greek or Turkish island, and from most of the
capitals of Europe. A couple of Capuchins, tonsured, in brown serge
with hanging crosses, walked up and down amid the throng of Christians,
Moslems, and pagans, withdrawn from the world while in it, like beings
of a new sex. There was a couple opposite us at table whom we could
not make out,—either recently married or recently eloped, the man
apparently a Turkish officer, and his companion a tall, showy woman, you
might say a Frenchman's idea of physical beauty, a little like a
wax Madonna, but with nothing holy about her; said by some to be a
Circassian, by others to be a French grisette on an Eastern tour; but
she spoke Italian, and might be one of the Continental countesses.
The square occupied by the emir and his suite—a sort of bazaar of
rugs and narghilehs—had music all day long; a soloist, on three
notes, singing, in the Arab drawl, an unending improvised ballad, and
accompanying himself on the mandolin. When we go to look at and listen
to him, the musician betrays neither self-consciousness nor pride,
unless you detect the latter in a superior smile that plays about
his lips, as he throws back his head and lets his voice break into a
falsetto. It probably does not even occur to his Oriental conceit
that he does well,—that his race have taken for granted a thousand
years,—and he could not be instructed by the orchestra of Von Bulow,
nor be astonished by the Lohengrin of Wagner.
Among the adventurers on board—we all had more or less the appearance
of experiments in that odd assembly—I particularly liked the French
prestidigitateur Caseneau, for his bold eye, utter self-possession, and
that indefinable varnish upon him, which belonged as much to his dress
as to his manner, and suggested the gentleman without concealing the
adventurer. He had a taste for antiquities, and wore some antique gems,
which had I know not what mysterious about them, as if he had inherited
them from an Ephesian magician or a Saracenic doctor of the black
art. At the table after dinner, surrounded by French and Italians,
the conjurer exhibited some tricks at cards. I dare say they were not
extraordinary, yet they pleased me just as well as the manifestations
of the spiritists. One of them I noted. The trickster was blindfolded. A
gentleman counted out a pack of cards, and while doing so mentally fixed
upon one of them by number. Caseneau took the pack, still blinded, and
threw out the card the gentleman had thought of. The experiment was
repeated by sceptics, who suspected a confederate, but the result was
always the same.
The Circassian beauty turned out to be a Jewess from Smyrna. I believe
the Jewesses of that luxurious city imitate all the kinds of beauty in
the world.
In the evening the Italians were grouped around the tables in the
saloon, upon which cards were cast about, matched, sorted, and
redistributed, and there were little piles of silver at the corners,
the occasional chinking of which appeared to add to the interest of the
amusement. On deck the English and Americans were singing the hymns
of the Protestant faith; and in the lull of the strains of “O mother
dear, Jerusalem,” you might hear the twang of strings and the whine of
some Arab improvisatore on the forward deck, and the chink of changing
silver below. We were making our way through a superb night,—a
thousand people packed so closely that you could not move without
stepping into a harem or a mass of Greek pilgrims,—singing hymns,
gambling, listening to a recital of the deeds of Antar, over silver
waves, under a flooding moon, and along the dim shores of Asia. That
mysterious continent lay in the obscurity of the past; here and there
solitary lights, from some shepherd's hut in the hills or fortress
casemate by the shore, were the rents in the veil through which we saw
antiquity.
XXIII.—THROUGH THE DARDANELLES.
THE Achille, which has a nose for freight, but none for poetry, did not
stop at Tenedos, puffed steadily past the plain of Troy, turned into the
broad opening of the Dardanelles, and by daylight was anchored midway
between the Two Castles. On such a night, if ever, one might see the
evolution of shadowy armies upon the windy plain,—if, indeed, this
conspicuous site was anything more than the theatre of Homer's
creations,—the spectators on the walls of Ilium, the Greeks hastily
embarking on their ships for Tenedos, the joyful procession that drew
the fatal gift into the impregnable walls.