to skirmish about the advertisements and tease yourself with dipping in
here and there before you plunge into the serial novel. It was absurd,
but my first visit in Athens was to the building of the Quadrennial
Exposition of the Industry and Art of Greece,—a long, painted wooden
structure, decked with flags, and called, I need not say, the Olympium.
To enter this imitation of a country fair at home, was the rudest shock
one could give to the sentiment of antiquity, and perhaps a dangerous
experiment, however strong in the mind might be the subtone of
Acropolis. The Greek gentleman who accompanied me said that the
exhibition was a great improvement over the one four years before. It
was, in fact, a very hopeful sign of the prosperity of the new state;
there was a good display of cereals and fruits, of silk and of jewelry,
and various work in gold and silver,—the latter all from Corfu; but
from the specimens of the fine arts, in painting and sculpture, I think
the ancient Greeks have not much to fear or to hope from the modern; and
the books, in printing and binding, were rude enough. But the specimens
from the mines and quarries of Greece could not be excelled elsewhere;
the hundred varieties of exquisite marbles detained us long; there
were some polished blocks, lovely in color, and you might almost say in
design, that you would like to frame and hang as pictures on the wall.
Another sign of the decadence of the national costume, perhaps more
significant than its disappearance in the streets, was its exhibition
here upon lay figures. I saw a countryman who wore it sneaking round one
of these figures, and regarding it with the curiosity of a savage who
for the first time sees himself in a mirror. Since the revolution the
Albanian has been adopted as the Grecian costume, in default of anything
more characteristic, and perhaps because it would puzzle one to say
of what race the person calling himself a modern Greek is. But the
ridiculous fustanella is nearly discarded; it is both inconvenient and
costly; to make one of the proper fulness requires forty yards of cotton
cloth; this is gathered at the waist, and hangs in broad pleats to the
knees, and it is starched so stiffly that it stands out like a half-open
Chinese umbrella. As the garment cannot be worn when it is the least
soiled, and must be done up and starched two or three times a week, the
wearer finds it an expensive habit; and in the whole outfit—the
jacket and sleeves may be a reminiscence of defensive armor—he has the
appearance of a landsknecht above and a ballet-girl below.
Nearly as rare in the streets as this dress are the drooping red caps
with tassels of blue. The women of Athens whom we saw would not take a
premium anywhere for beauty; but we noticed here and there one who wore
upon her dark locks the long hanging red fez and gold tassel, who might
have attracted the eye of a roving poet, and been passed down to the
next age as the Maid of Athens. The Athenian men of the present are a
fine race; we were constantly surprised by noble forms and intelligent
faces. That they are Greek in feature or expression, as we know the
Greek from coins and statuary, we could not say. Perhaps it was only the
ancient Lacedemonian rivalry that prompted the remark of a gentleman in
Athens, who was born in Sparta, that there is not a drop of the ancient
Athenian blood in Athens. There are some patrician families in the city
who claim this honorable descent, but it is probable that Athens is less
Greek than any other town in the kingdom; and that if there remain any
Hellenic descendants they must be sought in remote districts of the
Morea. If we trusted ourselves to decide by types of face, we should say
that the present inhabitants of Athens were of Northern origin, and that
their relation to the Greeks was no stronger than that of Englishmen
to the ancient Britons. That the people who now inhabit Attica and the
Peloponnesus are descendants of the Greeks whom the Romans conquered,
I suppose no one can successfully claim; that they are all from the
Slavonians, who so long held and almost exclusively occupied the Greek
mainland, it is equally difficult to prove. All we know is, that
the Greek language has survived the Byzantine anarchy, the Slavonic
conquest, the Frank occupation; and that the nimble wit, the
acquisitiveness and inquisitiveness, the cunning and craft of the modern
Greek, seem to be the perversion of the nobler and yet not altogether
dissimilar qualities which made the ancient Greeks the leaders of the
human race. And those who ascribe the character of a people to climate
and geographical position may expect to see the mongrel inheritors of
the ancient soil moulded, by the enduring influences of nature,
into homogeneity, and reproduce in a measure a copy of that splendid
civilization of whose ruins they are now unappreciative possessors.
Beyond the temporary Olympium, the eye is caught by the Arch of Hadrian,
and fascinated by the towering Corinthian columns of the Olympicum or
Temple of Jupiter. Against the background of Hymettus and the blue
sky stood fourteen of these beautiful columns, all that remain of
the original one hundred and twenty-four, but enough to give us an
impression of what was one of the most stately buildings of antiquity.
This temple, which was begun by Pisistratus, was not finished till
Hadrian's time, or until the worship of Jupiter had become cold and
sceptical. The columns stand upon a terrace overlooking the bed of
the Hissus; there coffee is served, and there we more than once sat at
sundown, and saw the vast columns turn from rose to gray in the fading
light.
Athens, like every other city of Europe in this age of science and
Christianity, was full of soldiers; we saw squads of them drilling here
and there, their uniforms sprinkled the streets and the cafés, and
their regimental bands enlivened the town. The Greeks, like all the rest
of us, are beating their pruning-hooks into spears and preparing for
the millennium. If there was not much that is peculiar to interest us in
wandering about among the shops, and the so-called, but unroofed and not
real, bazaars, there was much to astonish us in the size and growth of
a city of over fifty thousand inhabitants, in forty years, from the heap
of ruins and ashes which the Turks left it. When the venerable American
missionaries, Dr. Hill and his wife, came to the city, they were obliged
to find shelter in a portion of a ruined tower, and they began their
labors literally in a field of smoking desolation. The only attractive
shops are those of the antiquity dealers, the collectors of coins,
vases, statuettes, and figurines. Of course the extraordinary demand for
these most exquisite mementos of a race of artists has created a host of
imitations, and set an extravagant and fictitious price upon most of the
articles, a price which the professor who lets you have a specimen as
a favor, or the dealer who calmly assumes that he has gathered the last
relics of antiquity, mentions with equal equanimity. I looked in the
face of a handsome graybeard, who asked me two thousand francs for a
silver coin, which he said was a Solon, to see if there was any guile in
his eye; but there was not. I cannot but hope that this race which has
learned to look honest will some time become so.
Late in the afternoon we walked around the south side of the Acropolis,
past the ruins of theatres that strew its side, and ascended by the
carriage-road to the only entrance, at the southwest end of the hill,
towards the Piræus. We pass through a gate pierced in the side wall,
and come to the front of the Propylæa, the noblest gateway ever built.
At the risk of offending the travelled, I shall try in a paragraph to
put the untravelled reader in possession of the main features of this
glorious spot.
The Acropolis is an irregular oblong hill, the somewhat uneven summit of
which is about eleven hundred feet long by four hundred and fifty feet
broad at its widest. The hill is steep on all sides, and its final
spring is perpendicular rock, in places a hundred and fifty feet high.
It is lowest at the southwest end, where it dips down, and, by a rocky
neck, joins the Areopagus, or Mars Hill. Across this end is built
the Propylæa, high with reference to the surrounding country, and
commanding the view, but low enough not to hide from a little distance
the buildings on the summit. This building, which is of the Doric order,
and of pure Pentelic marble, was the pride of the Athenians. Its entire
front is about one hundred and seventy feet; this includes the central
portico (pierced with five entrances, the centre one for carriages) and
the forward projecting north and south wings. In the north wing was the
picture-gallery; the south wing was never completed to correspond, but
the balance is preserved by the little Temple of the Wingless Victory,
which from its ruins has been restored to its original form and beauty.
The Propylæa is approached by broad flights of marble steps, which were
defended by fortifications on the slope of the hill. The distant reader
may form a little conception of the original splendor of this gateway
from its cost, which was nearly two and a half millions of dollars, and
by remembering that it was built under the direction of Pericles at a
time when the cost of a building represented its real value, and not the
profits of city officials and contractors.
Passing slowly between the columns, and with many a backward glance over
the historic landscape, lingering yet lest we should abruptly break the
spell, we came into the area. Straight before us, up the red rock,
ran the carriage-road, seamed across with chisel-marks to prevent
the horses' hoofs from slipping, and worn in deep ruts by heavy
chariot-wheels. In the field before us a mass of broken marble; on the
right the creamy columns of the Parthenon; on the left the irregular
but beautiful Ionic Erechtheum. The reader sees that the entrance was
contrived so that the beholder's first view of the Parthenon should be
at the angle which best exhibits its exquisite proportions.
We were alone. The soldier detailed to watch that we did not carry off
any of the columns sat down upon a broken fragment by the entrance, and
let us wander at our will. I am not sure that I would, if I could,
have the temples restored. There is an indescribable pathos in these
fragments of columns and architraves and walls, in these broken
sculptures and marred inscriptions, which time has softened to the
loveliest tints, and in these tottering buildings, which no human skill,
if it could restore the pristine beauty, could reanimate with the Greek
idealism.
And yet, as we sat upon the western steps of the temple dedicated to
Pallas Athene, I could imagine what this area was, say in the August
days of the great Panathenaic festival, when the gorgeous procession,
which I saw filing along the Via Sacra, returning from Eleusis, swept
up these broad steps, garlanded with flowers and singing the hymn to the
protecting goddess. This platform was not then a desolate stone heap,
but peopled with almost living statues in bronze and marble, the
creations of the genius of Phidias, of Praxiteles, of Lycius,
of Clecetas, of Myron; there, between the two great temples, but
overtopping them both, stood the bronze figure of Minerva Promachus,
cast by Phidias out of the spoils of Marathon, whose glittering helmet
and spear-point gladdened the returning mariner when far at sea, and
defied the distant watcher on the Acropolis of Corinth. First in the
procession come the sacrificial oxen, and then follow in order a band
of virgins, the quadriga, each drawn by four noble steeds, the élite
of the Athenian youth on horseback, magistrates, daughters of noble
citizens bearing vases and pateræ, men carrying trays of offerings,
flute-players and the chorus, singers. They pass around to the entrance
of the Parthenon, which is toward the east, and those who are permitted
enter the naos and come into the presence of the gold-ivory statue
of Minerva. The undraped portions of this statue show the ivory; the
drapery was of solid gold, made so that it could be removed in time
of danger from a public enemy. The golden plates weighed ten thousand
pounds. This work of Phidias, since it was celebrated as the perfection
of art by the best judges of art, must have been as exquisite in its
details as it was harmonious in its proportions; but no artist of our
day would dare to attempt to construct a statue in that manner. In its
right, outstretched hand it held a statue of Victory, four cubits
high; and although it was erected nearly five hundred years before the
Christian era, we are curious to notice the already decided influence of
Egyptian ideas in the figure of the sphinx surmounting the helmet of the
goddess.
The sun was setting behind the island of Salamis. There was a rosy
glow on the bay of Phalerum, on the sea to the south, on the side of
Hymettus, on the yellow columns of the Parthenon, on the Temple of the
Wingless Victory, and on the faces of the ever-youthful Caryatides
in the portico of the Erechtheum, who stand reverently facing the
Parthenon, worshipping now only the vacant pedestal of Athene the
Protector. What overpowering associations throng the mind as one looks
off upon the crooked strait of Salamis, down upon the bare rock of the
Areopagus; upon the Pnyx and the bema, where we know Demosthenes, Solon,
Themistocles, Pericles, Aristides, were wont to address the populace who
crowded up from this valley, the Agora, the tumultuous market-place, to
listen; upon the Museum Hill, crowned by the monument of Philopappus,
pierced by grottos, one of which tradition calls the prison of
Socrates,—the whole history of Athens is in a nutshell! Yet if one
were predetermined to despise this mite of a republic in the compass of
a quart measure, he could not do it here. A little of Cæsar's dust
outweighs the world. We are not imposed upon by names. It was, it could
only have been, in comparison with modern naval engagements, a petty
fight in the narrow limits of that strait, and yet neither the Persian
soldiers who watched it from the Acropolis and in terror saw the ships
of Xerxes flying down the bay, nor the Athenians, who had abandoned
their citadel and trusted their all to the “wooden walls” of
their ships, could have imagined that the result was laden with such
consequences. It gives us pause to think what course all subsequent
history would have taken, what would be the present complexion of the
Christian system itself, if on that day Asiatic barbarism had rendered
impossible the subsequent development of Grecian art and philosophy.
We waited on the Acropolis for the night and the starlight and the
thousand lights in the city spread below, but we did not stay for the
slow coming of the midnight moon over Hymettus.
On Sunday morning we worshipped with the Greeks in the beautiful Russian
church; the interior is small but rich, and is like a private parlor;
there are no seats, and the worshippers stand or kneel, while gilded
and painted figures of saints and angels encompass them. The ceremony
is simple, but impressive. The priests are in gorgeous robes of blue
and silver; choir-boys sing soprano, and the bass, as it always is in
Russian churches, is magnificent. A lady, tall, elegant, superb, in
black faced and trimmed with a stuff of gold, sweeps up to the desks,
kisses the books and the crucifix, and then stands one side crossing
herself. We are most of us mortal, and all, however rich in apparel,
poor sinners one day in the week. No one of the worshippers carries
a prayer-book. There is reading behind the screen, and presently the
priests bring out the elements of communion and exhibit them, the one
carrying the bread in a silver vessel on his head, and the other the
wine. The central doors are then closed on the mysterious consecration.
At the end of the service the holy elements are brought out, the
communicants press up, kiss the cross, take a piece of bread, and then
turn and salute their friends, and break up in a cheerful clatter of
talk. In contrast to this, we attended afterwards the little meeting,
in an upper chamber, of the Greek converts of the American Mission,
and listened to a sermon in Greek which inculcated the religion of
New England,—a gospel which, with the aid of schools, makes slow but
hopeful progress in the city of the unknown God.
The longer one remains in Athens the more he will be impressed with two
things: the one is the perfection of the old art and civilization, and
what must have been the vivacious, joyous life of the ancient Athenians,
in a climate so vital, when this plain was a garden, and these beautiful
hills were clad with forests, and the whispers of the pine answered the
murmurs of the sea; the other is the revival of letters and architecture
and culture, visible from day to day, in a progress as astonishing as
can be seen in any Occidental city. I cannot undertake to describe,
not even to mention, the many noble buildings, either built or in
construction, from the quarries of Pentelicus,—the University, the
Academy, the new Olympium,—all the voluntary contributions of wealthy
Greeks, most of them merchants in foreign cities, whose highest ambition
seems to be to restore Athens to something of its former splendor. It is
a point of honor with every Greek, in whatever foreign city he may
live and die, to leave something in his last will for the adornment or
education of the city of his patriotic devotion. In this, if in nothing
else, they resemble the ancient patriots who thought no sacrifice too
costly for the republic. Among the ruins we find no palaces, no sign
that the richest citizen used his wealth in ostentatious private
mansions. Although some of the Greek merchants now build for themselves
elegant villas, the next generation will see the evidences of their
wealth rather in the public buildings they have erected. In this little
city the University has eighty professors and over twelve hundred
students, gathered from all parts of Greece; there are in the city forty
lady teachers with eight hundred female pupils; and besides these there
are two gymnasiums and several graded schools. Professors and teachers
are well paid, and the schools are free, even to the use of books. The
means flow from the same liberality, that of the Greek merchants, who
are continually leaving money for new educational foundations. There is
but one shadow upon this hopeful picture, and that is the bigotry of the
Greek church, to which the government yields. I do not now speak of
the former persecutions suffered by the Protestant missionaries, but
recently the schools for girls opened by Protestants, and which have
been of the highest service in the education of women, have been obliged
to close or else “conform” to the Greek religion and admit priestly
teachers. At the time of our visit, one of the best of them, that
of Miss Kyle of New York, was only tolerated from week to week under
perpetual warnings, and liable at any moment to be suppressed by the
police. This narrow policy is a disgrace to the government, and if it
is continued must incline the world to hope that the Greeks will never
displace the Moslems in Constantinople.
In the front of the University stands a very good statue of the
scholar-patriot Korais, and in the library we saw the busts of other
distinguished natives and foreigners. The library, which is every day
enriched by private gifts, boasts already over one hundred and thirty
thousand volumes. As we walked through the rooms, the director said
that the University had no bust of an American, though it had often been
promised one. I suggested one of Lincoln. No, he wanted Washington; he
said he cared to have no other. I did not tell him that Washington
was one of the heroes of our mythic period, that we had filled up a
tolerably large pantheon since then, and that a century in America was
as good as a thousand years in Byzantium. But I fell into something of a
historic revery over the apparent fact that America is as yet to Greece
nothing but the land of Washington, and I rather liked the old-fashioned
notion, and felt sure that there must be somewhere in the United States
an antiquated and rich patriot who remembered Washington and would like
to send a marble portrait of our one great man to the University of
Athens.
XXIX.—ELEUSIS, PLATO'S ACADEME, ETC.
THERE was a nightingale who sang and sobbed all night in the garden
before the hotel, and only ceased her plaintive reminiscence of Athenian
song and sorrow with the red dawn. But this is a sad world of contrasts.
Called upon the balcony at midnight by her wild notes, I saw,—how can
I ever say it?—upon the balcony below, a white figure advance, and
with a tragic movement of haste, if not of rage, draw his garment of
the night over his head and shake it out over the public square; and I
knew—for the kingdom of knowledge comes by experience as well as
by observation—that the lively flea was as wakeful in Greece as the
nightingale.
In the morning the north-wind arose,—it seems to blow constantly
from Boeotia at this time of the year,—but the day was bright and
sparkling, and we took carriage for Eleusis. It might have been such a
morning—for the ancient Athenians always anticipated the dawn in their
festivals—that the Panathenaic processions moved along this very Via
Sacra to celebrate the Mysteries of Ceres at Eleusis. All the hills
stood in clear outline,—long Pentelicus and the wavy lines of Parnes
and Corydallus; we drove over the lovely and fertile plain, amid the
olive-orchards of the Kephissus, and up the stony slope to the narrowing
Pass of Daphne, a defile in Mt. Ægaleos; but we sought in vain the
laurel grove, or a single specimen of that tree whose twisted trunk and
outstretched arms express the struggle of vanishing humanity. Passing
on our right the Chapel of St. Elias, on a commanding eminence, and
traversing the level plateau of the rocky gorge, we alighted at the
Monastery of Daphne, whose half-ruined cloister and chapel occupy the
site of a temple of Apollo. We sat for half an hour in its quiet, walled
churchyard, carpeted with poppies and tender flowers of spring, amid the
remains of old columns and fragments of white marble, sparkling amid the
green grass and blue violets, and looked upon the blue bay of Eleusis
and Salamis, and the heights of Megara beyond. Surely nature has a
tenderness for such a spot; and I fancied that even the old dame who
unlocked for us the chapel and its cheap treasures showed us with some
interest, in a carving here and a capital there, the relics of a former
religion, and perhaps mingled with her adoration of the Virgin and the
bambino a lurking regard for Venus and Apollo. A mile beyond, at the
foot of a rocky precipice, are pointed out the foundations of a temple
of Venus, where the handbook assured us doves had been found carved
in white marble; none were left, however, for us, and we contented
ourselves with reading on the rock Phile Aphrodite, and making a vain
effort to recall life to this sterile region.
Enchanting was the view as we drove down the opening pass to the bay,
which spreads out a broad sheet, completely landlocked by the irregular
bulk of Salamis Island. When we emerged through the defile we turned
away from the narrow strait where the battle was fought, and from the
“rocky brow” on which Xerxes sat, a crowned spectator of his
ruin, and swept around the circular shore, past the Rheiti, or
salt-springs,—clear, greenish pools,—and over the level Thriasian
Plain. The bay of Eleusis, guarded by the lofty amphitheatre of
mountains, the curving sweep of Ægaleos and Kithæron, and by Salamis,
is like a lovely lake, and if anywhere on earth there could be peace,
you would say it would be on its sunny and secluded shores. Salamis
appears only a bare and rocky island, but the vine still flourishes in
the scant soil, and from its wild-flowers the descendants of the Attic
bees make honey as famous as that of two thousand years ago.
Across the bay, upon a jutting rocky point, above which rises the crown
of its Acropolis, lies the straggling, miserable village of Eleusis.
Our first note of approach to it was an ancient pavement, and a few
indistinguishable fragments of walls and columns. In a shallow stream
which ran over the stones the women of the town were washing clothes;
and throngs of girls were filling their pails of brass at an old well,
as of old at the same place did the daughters of Keleos. Shriller tones
and laughter mingled with their incessant chatter as we approached, and
we thought,—perhaps it was imagination,—a little wild defiance
and dislike. I had noticed already in Athens, and again here, the
extraordinary rapidity with which the Greeks in conversation exchange
words; I think they are the fastest talkers in the world. And the Greek
has a hard, sharp, ringing, metallic sound; it is staccato. You can see
how easily Aristophanes imitated the brittle-brattle of frogs. I have
heard two women whose rapid, incessant cackle sounded exactly like
the conversation of hens. The sculptor need not go further than these
nut-brown maids for classic forms; the rounded limbs, the generous bust,
the symmetrical waist, which fashion has not made an hour-glass to mark
the flight of time and health. The mothers of heroes were of this mould;
although I will not say that some of them were not a trifle stout for
grace, and that their well-formed faces would not have been improved by
the interior light of a little culture. Their simple dress was a white,
short chemise, that left the legs bare, a heavy and worked tunic, like
that worn by men, and a colored kerchief tied about the head. Many
of the men of the village wore the fustanella and the full Albanian
costume.