and style from its namesake in Constantinople, is retired, in a
delightful court, shaded by gigantic trees and cheered by a fountain. So
peaceful a spot we had not seen in many a day; birds sang in the trees
without disturbing the calm of the meditative pilgrim. In the portico
and also in the interior are noble columns of marble and verd-antique,
and in the dome is a wonderfully quaint mosaic of the Transfiguration.
We were shown also a magnificent pulpit of the latter beautiful stone
cut from a solid block, in which it is said St. Paul preached. As the
Apostle, according to his custom, reasoned with the people out of the
Scriptures in a synagogue, and this church was not built for centuries
after his visit, the statement needs confirmation; but pious ingenuity
suggests that the pulpit stood in a subterranean church underneath this.
I should like to believe that Paul sanctified this very spot with his
presence; but there is little in its quiet seclusion to remind one of
him who had the reputation when he was in Thessalonica of one of those
who turn the world upside down. Paul had a great affection for the
brethren of this city, in spite of his rough usage here, for he mingles
few reproaches in his fervent commendations of their faith, and comforts
them with the assurance of a speedy release from the troubles of this
world, and the certainty that while they are yet alive they will be
caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Happily the
Apostle could not pierce the future and see the dissensions, the
schisms, the corruptions and calamities of the Church in the succeeding
centuries, nor know that near this spot, in the Imperial Hippodrome, the
sedition of the citizens would one day be punished by the massacre of
ninety thousand,—one of the few acts of inhumanity which stains the
clemency and the great name of Theodosius. And it would have passed even
the belief of the Apostle to the Gentiles could he have foreseen
that, in eighteen centuries, this pulpit would be exhibited to curious
strangers from a distant part of the globe, of which he never heard,
where the doctrines of Paul are the bulwark of the Church and the
stamina of the government, by a descendant of Abraham who confessed that
he did not know who Paul was.
The oldest church in the city is now the Mosque of St. George, built
about the year 400, if indeed it was not transformed from a heathen
temple; its form is that of the Roman Pantheon. The dome was once
covered with splendid mosaics; enough remains of the architectural
designs, the brilliant peacocks and bright blue birds, to show what the
ancient beauty was, but the walls of the mosque are white and barn-like.
Religions inherit each other's edifices in the East without shame, and
we found in the Mosque of Eske Djuma the remains of a temple of Venus,
and columns of ancient Grecian work worthy of the best days of Athens.
The most perfect basilica is now the Mosque of St. Demetrius (a name
sacred to the Greeks), which contains his tomb. It is a five-aisled
basilica; about the gallery, over the pillars of the centre aisle, are
some fine mosaics of marble, beautiful in design and color. The Moslems
have spoiled the exquisite capitals of the pillars by painting them,
and have destroyed the effect of the aisles by twisting the pulpit and
prayer-niche away from the apse, in the direction of Mecca. We noticed,
however, a relaxation of bigotry at all these mosques: we were permitted
to enter without taking off our shoes; and, besides the figures of
Christian art left in the mosaics, we saw some Moslem pictures, among
them rude paintings of the holy city Mecca.
On our way to the citadel we stopped to look at the Arch of Constantine
before the Gate of Cassander,—a shabby ruin, with four courses of
defaced figures, carved in marble, and representing the battles and
triumphs of a Roman general. Fortunately for the reader we did not visit
all the thirty-seven churches of the city; but we made the acquaintance
in a Greek church, which is adorned with quaint Byzantine paintings, of
St. Palema, who lies in public repose, in a coffin of exquisite silver
filigree-work, while his skull is enclosed in solid silver and set with
rubies and emeralds. This may please St. Palema, but death is never so
ghastly as when it is adorned with jewelry that becomes cheap in its
presence.
The view from the citadel, which embraces the Gulf of Salonica and Mt.
Olympus, the veritable heaven of the Grecian pantheon, and Mt. Ossa and
Mt. Pelion, piercing the blue with their snow-summits, is grand enough
to repay the ascent; and there is a noble walk along the wall above the
town. In making my roundabout way through modern streets, back to the
bazaars, I encountered a number of negro women, pure Africans, who had
the air and carriage of the aristocracy of the place; they rejoiced
in the gay attire which the natives of the South love, and their fine
figures and independent bearing did not speak of servitude.
This Thessalonica was doubtless a healthful and attractive place at the
time Cicero chose to pass a portion of his exile here, but it has now a
bad reputation for malaria, which extends to all the gulf,—the malaria
seems everywhere to have been one of the consequences of the fall of
the Roman Empire. The handbook recommends the locality for its good
“shooting”; but if there is any part of the Old World that needs
rest from arms, I think it is this highway of ancient and modern
conquerors and invaders.
In the evening, when the lights of the town and the shore were reflected
in the water, and a full moon hung in the sky, we did not regret our
delay. The gay Thessalonians, ignorant of the Epistles, were rowing
about the harbor, circling round and round the steamer, beating the
darabouka drum, and singing in that nasal whine which passes for music
all over the East. And, indeed, on such a night it is not without its
effect upon a sentimental mind.
At early light of a cloudless morning we were going easily down the Gulf
of Therma or Salonica, having upon our right the Pierian plain; and I
tried to distinguish the two mounds which mark the place of the great
battle near Pydna, one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ,
between Æmilius Paulus and King Perseus, which gave Macedonia to the
Roman Empire. Beyond, almost ten thousand feet in the air, towered
Olympus, upon whose “broad” summit Homer displays the ethereal
palaces and inaccessible abode of the Grecian gods. Shaggy forests still
clothe its sides, but snow now, and for the greater part of the year,
covers the wide surface of the height, which is a sterile, light-colored
rock. The gods did not want snow to cool the nectar at their banquets.
This is the very centre of the mythologie world; there between Olympus
and Ossa is the Yale of Tempe, where the Peneus, breaking through a
narrow gorge fringed with the sacred laurel, reaches the gulf, south of
ancient Heracleum. Into this charming but secluded retreat the gods and
goddesses, weary of the icy air, or the Pumblechookian deportment of
the court of Olympian Jove, descended to pass the sunny hours with
the youths and maidens of mortal mould; through this defile marks of
chariot-wheels still attest the passages of armies which flowed either
way, in invasion or retreat; and here Pompey, after a ride of forty
miles from the fatal field of Pharsalia, quenched his thirst. Did the
Greeks really believe that the gods dwelt on this mountain in clouds and
snow? Did Baldwin II. believe that he sold, and Louis IX. of France that
he bought, for ten thousand marks of silver, at Constantinople, in the
thirteenth century, the veritable crown of thorns that the Saviour wore
in the judgment-hall of Pilate?
At six o'clock the Cape of Posilio was on our left, we were sinking
Olympus in the white haze of morning, Ossa, in its huge silver bulk, was
near us, and Pelion stretched its long white back below. The sharp cone
of Ossa might well ride upon the extended back of Pelion, and it seems a
pity that the Titans did not succeed in their attempt. We were leaving,
and looking our last on the Thracian coasts, once rimmed from Mt. Athos
to the Bosphorus with a wreath of prosperous cities. What must once have
been the splendor of the Ægean Sea and its islands, when every island
was the seat of a vigorous state, and every harbor the site of a
commercial town which sent forth adventurous galleys upon any errand of
trade or conquest! Since the fall of Constantinople, these coasts
and islands have been stripped and neglected by Turkish avarice and
improvidence, and perhaps their naked aspect is attributable more to the
last owners than to all the preceding possessors; it remained for
the Turk to exhaust Nature herself, and to accomplish that ruin, that
destruction of peoples, which certainly not the Athenian, the Roman,
or the Macedonian accomplished, to destroy that which survived the
contemptible Byzantines and escaped the net of the pillaging Christian
crusaders. Yet it needs only repose, the confidence of the protection
of industry, and a spirit of toleration, which the Greeks must learn
as well as the Turks, that the traveller in the beginning of the next
century may behold in the Archipelago the paradise of the world.
We sailed along by the peninsula of Magnesia, which separates the Ægean
from the Bay of Pagasæus, and hinders us from seeing the plains of
Thessaly, where were trained the famous cavalry, the perfect union
of horse and man that gave rise to the fable of centaurs; the same
conception of double prowess which our own early settlers exaggerated in
the notion that the Kentuckian was half horse and half alligator. Just
before we entered the group of lovely Sporades, we looked down the long
narrow inlet to the Bay of Maliacus and saw the sharp snow-peaks of Mt.
OEta, at the foot of which are the marsh and hot springs of Thermopylae.
We passed between Skiathos and Skopelos,—steep, rocky islands, well
wooded and enlivened with villages perched on the hillsides, and both
draped in lovely color. In the strait between Skiathos and Magnesia
the Greek vessels made a stand against the Persians until the defeat
at Thermopylae compelled a retreat to Salamis. The monks of the Middle
Ages, who had an eye for a fertile land, covered the little island with
monasteries, of which one only now remains. Its few inhabitants are
chiefly sailors, and to-day it would be wholly without fame were it not
for the beauty of its women. Skopelos, which is larger, has a population
of over six thousand,—industrious people who cultivate the olive and
produce a good red wine, that they export in their own vessels.
Nearly all day we sailed outside and along Euboea; and the snow dusting
its high peaks and lonely ravines was a not unwelcome sight, for the day
was warm, oppressively so even at sea. All the elements lay in a languid
truce. Before it was hidden by Skopelos, Mt. Athos again asserted its
lordship over these seas, more gigantic than when we were close to it,
the sun striking the snow on its face (it might be the Whiteface of the
Adirondacks, except that it is piled up more like the Matterhorn),
while the base, bathed in a silver light, was indistinguishable from
the silver water out of which it rose. The islands were all purple, the
shores silver, and the sea around us deeply azure. What delicious color!
Perhaps it was better to coast along the Euboean land and among
the Sporades, clothed in our minds with the historic hues which the
atmosphere reproduced to our senses, than to break the dream by landing,
to find only broken fragments where cities once were, and a handful of
fishermen or shepherds the only inheritors of the homes of heroes. We
should find nothing on Ikos, except rabbits and a hundred or two of
fishers, perhaps not even the grave of Peleus, the father of Achilles;
and the dozen little rocky islets near, which some giant in sportive
mood may have tossed into the waves, would altogether scarcely keep
from famine a small flock of industrious sheep. Skyros, however, has not
forgotten its ancient fertility; the well-watered valleys, overlooked
by bold mountains and rocky peaks (upon one of which stood “the lofty
Skyros” of Homer's song) still bear corn and wine, the fig and
the olive, the orange and the lemon, as in the days when Achilles, in
woman's apparel, was hidden among the maidens in the gardens of King
Lycomedes. The mountains are clothed with oaks, beeches, firs, and
plane-trees. Athens had a peculiar affection for Skyros, for it was
there that Cymon found the bones of Theseus, and transported them thence
to the temple of the hero, where they were deposited with splendid
obsequies, Æschylus and Sophocles adding to the festivities the
friendly rivalry of a dramatic contest. In those days everything was for
the state and nothing for the man; and naturally—such is the fruit of
self-abnegation—the state was made immortal by the genius of its men.
Of the three proud flagstaffs erected in front of St. Mark's, one,
for a long time, bore the banner of Euboea, or Negropont, symbol of the
Venetian sovereignty for nearly three centuries over this island, which
for four centuries thereafter was to be cursed by the ascendency of
the crescent. From the outer shore one can form little notion of the
extraordinary fertility of this land, and we almost regretted that a
rough sea had not driven us to take the inner passage, by Rootia and
through the narrow Euripus, where the Venetian-built town and the Lion
of St. Mark occupy and guard the site of ancient Chalkis. The Turks made
the name of Negropont odious to the world, but with the restoration
of the Grecian nationality the ancient name is restored, and slowly,
Euboea, spoiled by the Persians, trampled by Macedonians and Romans,
neglected by Justinian (the depopulator of the Eastern Empire), drained
by the Venetians, blighted by the Osmanlis, is beginning to attract the
attention of capital and travel, by its unequalled fertility and its
almost unequalled scenery.
Romance, mythology, and history start out of the waves on' either
hand; at twilight we were entering the Cyclades, and beginning to feel
the yet enduring influence of a superstition which so mingled itself
with the supremest art and culture, that after two thousand years its
unreal creations are nearly as mighty as ever in the realms of poetry
and imagination. These islands are still under the spell of genius, and
we cannot, if we would, view them except through the medium of poetic
history. I suppose that the island of Andros, which is cultivated
largely by Albanians, an Illyrian race, having nothing in common with
the ancient Ionians, would little interest us; if we cared to taste its
wine, it would be because it was once famous throughout Greece, and
if we visited the ruins of its chief city, it would be to recall an
anecdote of Herodotus: when Themistocles besieged the town and demanded
tribute, because the Andrians had been compelled to join the fleet of
Xerxes at Salamis, and threatened them with the two mighty deities of
Athens, Persuasion and Necessity, the spirited islanders replied that
they were protected by two churlish gods, Poverty and Inability.
It was eleven o'clock at night when we sailed between Keos and Helena,
the latter a long barren strip that never seems to have been inhabited
at all, except from the tradition that Helen once landed there; but Keos
and its old town of Iulis was the home of legends and poets, and famous
for its code of laws, one of which tended to banish sickness and old age
from its precincts, by a provision that every man above sixty should end
his life by poison. Its ancient people had a reputation for purity and
sobriety, which was probably due to the hegira of the nymphs, who were
frightened away to the mainland by a roaring lion. The colossal image of
the lion is still to be seen in marble near the ruins of the old city.
The island of the Cyclades, which we should have liked most to tread,
but did not see, is Delos, the holy, the religious and political centre
of the Greek confederation, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, the
seat of the oracle, second only to that of Delphi, the diminutive and
now almost deserted rock, shaken and sunken by repeated earthquakes,
once crowned with one of the most magnificent temples of antiquity,
the spot of pilgrimage, the arena of games and mystic dances and poetic
contests, and of the joyous and solemn festivities of the Delian Apollo.
We were too late to see, though we sat long on deck and watched for
it by the aid of a full moon, the white Doric columns of the temple of
Minerva on Sunium, which are visible by daylight a long distance at sea.
The ancient mariners, who came from Delos or from a more adventurous
voyage into the Ægean, beheld here, at the portals of Attica, the
temple of its tutelary deity, a welcome and a beacon; and as they
shifted their sails to round the cape, they might have seen the shining
helmet of the goddess herself,—the lofty statue of Minerva Promachus
on the Acropolis.
XXVIII.—ATHENS.
IN the thought of the least classical reader, Attica occupies a space
almost as large as the rest of the world. He hopes that it will broaden
on his sight as it does in his imagination, although he knows that it
is only two thirds as large as the little State of Rhode Island. But
however reason may modify enthusiasm, the diminutive scale on which
everything is drawn is certain to disappoint the first view of the
reality. Who, he asks, has made this little copy of the great Athenian
picture?
When we came upon deck early in the morning, the steamer lay in the
land-locked harbor of the peninsula of Piræus. It is a round, deep,
pretty harbor; several merchant and small vessels lay there, a Greek and
an Austrian steamer, and a war-vessel, and the scene did not lack a look
of prosperous animation. About the port clusters a well-to-do village of
some ten thousand inhabitants, many of whom dwell in handsome houses. It
might be an American town; it is too new to be European. There, at the
entrance of the harbor, on a low projecting rock, are some ruins of
columns, said to mark the tomb of Themistocles; sometimes the water
nearly covers the rock. There could be no more fitting resting-place for
the great commander than this, in sight of the strait of Salamis, and
washed by the waves that tossed the broken and flying fleet of Xerxes.
Beyond is the Bay of Phalerum, the more ancient seaport of the little
state. And there—how small it seems!—is the plain of Athens,
enclosed by Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes. This rocky peninsula
of Piræus, which embraced three small harbors, was fortified by
Themistocles with strong walls that extended, in parallel lines, five
miles to Athens. Between them ran the great carriage-road, and I suppose
the whole distance was a street of gardens and houses.
A grave commissionnaire,—I do not know but he would call himself an
embassy,—from one of the hotels of Athens, came off and quietly
took charge of us. On our way to the shore with our luggage, a customs
officer joined us and took a seat in the boat. For this polite attention
on the part of the government our plenipotentiary sent by the officer
(who did not open the trunks) three francs to the treasury; but I do
not know if it ever reached its destination. We shunned the ignoble
opportunity of entering the classic city by rail, and were soon whirling
along the level and dusty road which follows the course of the ancient
Long Wall. Even at this early hour the day had become very warm, and the
shade of the poplar-trees, which line the road nearly all the way, was
grateful. The fertile fields had yet the freshness of spring, and were
gay with scarlet poppies; the vines were thrifty. The near landscape was
Italian in character: there was little peculiar in the costumes of the
people whom we met walking beside their market-wagons or saw laboring
in the gardens; turbans, fezes, flowing garments of white and blue and
yellow, all had vanished, and we felt that we were out of the Orient
and about to enter a modern city. At a half-way inn, where we stopped
to water the horses, there was an hostler in the Albanian, or as it is
called, the Grecian national, costume, wearing the fustanella and the
short jacket; but the stiff white petticoat was rumpled and soiled, and
I fancied he was somewhat ashamed of the half-womanly attire, and shrank
from inspection, like an actor in harlequin dress, surprised by daylight
outside the theatre.
This sheepish remnant of the picturesque could not preserve for us any
illusions; the roses blooming by the wayside we knew; the birds singing
in the fields we had heard before; the commissionnaire persisted in
pointing out the evidences of improvement. But we burned with a secret
fever; we were impatient even of the grateful avenue of trees that hid
what we at every moment expected to see. I do not envy him who without
agitation approaches for the first time, and feels that he is about to
look upon the Acropolis! There are three supreme sensations, not twice
to be experienced, for the traveller: when he is about to behold the
ancient seats of art, of discipline, of religion,—Athens, Rome,
Jerusalem. But it is not possible for the reality to equal the
expectation. “There!” cried the commissionnaire, “is the
Acropolis!” A small oblong hill lifting itself some three hundred and
fifty feet above the city, its sides upheld by walls, its top shining
with marble, an isolated fortress in appearance! The bulk of the city
lies to the north of the Acropolis, and grows round to the east of it
along the valley of the Ilissus.
In five minutes more we had caught a glimpse of the new excavations of
the Keramicus, the ancient cemetery, and of the old walls on our left,
and were driving up the straight broad Hermes Street towards the palace.
Midway in the centre of the street is an ancient Byzantine church, which
we pass round. Hermes Street is intersected by Æolus Street; these two
cut the city like a Greek cross, and all other streets flow into them.
The shops along the way are European, the people in the streets are
European in dress, the cafés, the tables in front of hotels and
restaurants, with their groups of loungers, suggest Paris by reminding
one of Brussels. Athens, built of white stone, not yet mellowed by
age, is new, bright, clean, cheerful; the broad streets are in the
uninteresting style of the new part of Munich, and due to the same
Bavarian influence. If Ludwig I. did not succeed in making Munich look
like Athens, Otho was more fortunate in giving Athens a resemblance to
Munich. And we were almost ashamed to confess how pleasant it appeared,
after our long experience of the tumble-down Orient.
We alighted at our hotel on the palace place, ascended steps decked with
flowering plants, and entered cool apartments looking upon the square,
which is surrounded with handsome buildings, planted with native and
exotic trees, and laid out in walks and beds of flowers. To the right
rises the plain façade of the royal residence, having behind it a
magnificent garden, where the pine rustles to the palm, and a thousand
statues revive the dead mythology; beyond rises the singular cone of
Lycabettus. Commendable foresight is planting the principal streets with
trees, the shade of which is much needed in the long, dry, and parching
summer.
From the side windows we looked also over the roofs to the Acropolis,
which we were impatient and yet feared to approach. For myself, I
felt like deferring the decisive moment, playing with my imagination,
lingering about among things I did not greatly care for, whetting
impatience and desire by restraining them, and postponing yet a little
the realization of the dream of so many years,—to stand at the centre
of the world's thought, at the spring of its ideal of beauty. While
my companions rested from the fatigue of our sea voyage, I went into the
street and walked southward towards the Ilissus. The air was bright and
sparkling, the sky deep blue like that of Egypt, the hills sharp and
clear in every outline, and startlingly near; the long reach of Hymettus
wears ever a purple robe, which nature has given it in place of its pine
forests. Travellers from Constantinople complained of the heat: but
I found it inspiring; the air had no languor in it; this was the very
joyous Athens I had hoped to see.