TARANTO
Cosenza is on a line of railway which runs northward up the Crati
valley, and joins the long seashore line from Taranto to Reggio. As it
was my wish to see the whole of that coast, I had the choice of
beginning my expedition either at the northern or the southern end; for
several reasons I decided to make straight for Taranto.
The train started about seven o'clock in the morning. I rose at six in
chill darkness, the discomfort of my room seeming worse than ever at
this featureless hour. The waiter--perhaps he was the landlord, I left
this doubt unsolved--brought me a cup of coffee; dirtier and more
shabbily apparelled man I have never looked upon; viler coffee I never
drank. Then I descended into the gloom of the street. The familiar
odours breathed upon me with pungent freshness, wafted hither and
thither on a mountain breeze. A glance upwards at the narrow strip of
sky showed a grey-coloured dawn, prelude, I feared, of a dull day.
Evidently I was not the only traveller departing; on the truck just
laden I saw somebody else's luggage, and at the same moment there came
forth a man heavily muffled against the air, who, like myself, began to
look about for the porter. We exchanged greetings, and on our walk to
the station I learned that my companion, also bound for Taranto, had
been detained by illness for several days at the _Lionetti_, where, he
bitterly complained, the people showed him no sort of attention. He was
a commercial traveller, representing a firm of drug merchants in North
Italy, and for his sins (as he put it) had to make the southern journey
every year; he invariably suffered from fever, and at certain
places--of course, the least civilized--had attacks which delayed him
from three days to a week. He loathed the South, finding no
compensation whatever for the miseries of travel below Naples; the
inhabitants he reviled with exceeding animosity. Interested by the
doleful predicament of this vendor of drugs (who dosed himself very
vigorously), I found him a pleasant companion during the day; after our
lunch he seemed to shake off the last shivers of his malady, and was as
sprightly an Italian as one could wish to meet--young, sharp-witted,
well-mannered, and with a pleasing softness of character.
We lunched at Sybaris; that is to say, at the railway station now so
called, though till recently it bore the humbler name of Buffaloria.
The Italians are doing their best to revive the classical place-names,
where they have been lost, and occasionally the incautious traveller is
much misled. Of Sybaris no stone remains above ground; five hundred
years before Christ it was destroyed by the people of Croton, who
turned the course of the river Crathis so as to whelm the city's ruins.
Francois Lenormant, whose delightful book, _La Grande Grece_, was my
companion on this journey, believed that a discovery far more wonderful
and important than that of Pompeii awaits the excavator on this site;
he held it certain that here, beneath some fifteen feet of alluvial
mud, lay the temples and the streets of Sybaris, as on the day when
Crathis first flowed over them. A little digging has recently been
done, and things of interest have been found; but discovery on a wide
scale is still to be attempted.
Lenormant praises the landscape hereabouts as of "incomparable beauty";
unfortunately I saw it in a sunless day, and at unfavourable moments I
was strongly reminded of the Essex coast--grey, scrubby fiats, crossed
by small streams, spreading wearily seaward. One had only to turn
inland to correct this mood; the Calabrian mountains, even without
sunshine, had their wonted grace. Moreover, cactus and agave, frequent
in the foreground, preserved the southern character of the scene. The
great plain between the hills and the sea grows very impressive; so
silent it is, so mournfully desolate, so haunted with memories of
vanished glory. I looked at the Crathis--the Crati of Cosenza--here
beginning to spread into a sea-marsh; the waters which used to flow
over golden sands, which made white the oxen, and sunny-haired the
children, that bathed in them, are now lost amid a wilderness poisoned
by their own vapours.
The railway station, like all in this region, was set about with
eucalyptus. Great bushes of flowering rosemary scented the air, and a
fine cassia tree, from which I plucked blossoms, yielded a subtler
perfume. Our lunch was not luxurious; I remember only, as at all worthy
of Sybaris, a palatable white wine called Muscato dei Saraceni.
Appropriate enough amid this vast silence to turn one's thoughts to the
Saracens, who are so largely answerable for the ages of desolation that
have passed by the Ionian Sea.
Then on for Taranto, where we arrived in the afternoon. Meaning to stay
for a week or two I sought a pleasant room in a well-situated hotel,
and I found one with a good view of town and harbour. The Taranto of
old days, when it was called Taras, or later Tarentum, stood on a long
peninsula, which divides a little inland sea from the great sea
without. In the Middle Ages the town occupied only the point of this
neck of land, which, by the cutting of an artificial channel, had been
made into an island: now again it is spreading over the whole of the
ancient site; great buildings of yellowish-white stone, as ugly as
modern architect can make them, and plainly far in excess of the actual
demand for habitations, rise where Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans
built after the nobler fashion of their times. One of my windows looked
towards the old town, with its long sea-wall where fishermen's nets
hung drying, the dome of its Cathedral, the high, squeezed houses,
often with gardens on the roofs, and the swing-bridge which links it to
the mainland; the other gave me a view across the Mare Piccolo, the
Little Sea (it is some twelve miles round about), dotted in many parts
with crossed stakes which mark the oyster-beds, and lined on this side
with a variety of shipping moored at quays. From some of these vessels,
early next morning, sounded suddenly a furious cannonade, which
threatened to shatter the windows of the hotel; I found it was in
honour of the Queen of Italy, whose _festa_ fell on that day. This
barbarous uproar must have sounded even to the Calabrian heights; it
struck me as more meaningless in its deafening volley of noise than any
note of joy or triumph that could ever have been heard in old Tarentum.
I walked all round the island part of the town; lost myself amid its
maze of streets, or alleys rather, for in many places one could touch
both sides with outstretched arms, and rested in the Cathedral of S.
Cataldo, who, by the bye, was an Irishman. All is strange, but too
close-packed to be very striking or beautiful; I found it best to
linger on the sea-wall, looking at the two islands in the offing, and
over the great gulf with its mountain shore stretching beyond sight. On
the rocks below stood fishermen hauling in a great net, whilst a boy
splashed the water to drive the fish back until they were safely
enveloped in the last meshes; admirable figures, consummate in graceful
strength, their bare legs and arms the tone of terra cotta. What slight
clothing they wore became them perfectly, as is always the case with a
costume well adapted to the natural life of its wearers. Their slow,
patient effort speaks of immemorial usage, and it is in harmony with
time itself. These fishermen are the primitives of Taranto; who shall
say for how many centuries they have hauled their nets upon the rock?
When Plato visited the Schools of Taras, he saw the same brown-legged
figures, in much the same garb, gathering their sea-harvest. When
Hannibal, beset by the Romans, drew his ships across the peninsula and
so escaped from the inner sea, fishermen of Tarentum went forth as
ever, seeking their daily food. A thousand years passed, and the fury
of the Saracens, when it had laid the city low, spared some humble
Tarentine and the net by which he lived. To-day the fisher-folk form a
colony apart; they speak a dialect which retains many Greek words
unknown to the rest of the population. I could not gaze at them long
enough; their lithe limbs, their attitudes at work or in repose, their
wild, black hair, perpetually reminded me of shapes pictured on a
classic vase.
Later in the day I came upon a figure scarcely less impressive. Beyond
the new quarter of the town, on the ragged edge of its wide,
half-peopled streets, lies a tract of olive orchards and of seed-land;
there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The
wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years
old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil--the
generous southern soil--the merest scratch of a furrow. I could not but
approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face,
his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep
respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, it was as though I
listened to one of the ancestors of our kind. Stopping in his work, he
answered my inquiries with careful civility; certain phrases escaped
me, but on the whole he made himself quite intelligible, and was glad,
I could see, when my words proved that I understood him. I drew apart,
and watched him again. Never have I seen man so utterly patient, so
primaevally deliberate. The donkey's method of ploughing was to pull
for one minute, and then rest for two; it excited in the ploughman not
the least surprise or resentment. Though he held a long stick in his
hand, he never made use of it; at each stoppage he contemplated the
ass, and then gave utterance to a long "Ah-h-h!" in a note of the most
affectionate remonstrance. They were not driver and beast, but comrades
in labour. It reposed the mind to look upon them.
Walking onward in the same direction, one approaches a great wall, with
gateway sentry-guarded; it is the new Arsenal, the pride of Taranto,
and the source of its prosperity. On special as well as on general
grounds, I have a grudge against this mass of ugly masonry. I had
learnt from Lenormant that at a certain spot, Fontanella, by the shore
of the Little Sea, were observable great ancient heaps of murex
shells--the murex precious for its purple, that of Tarentum yielding in
glory only to the purple of Tyre. I hoped to see these shells, perhaps
to carry one away. But Fontanella had vanished, swallowed up, with all
remnants of antiquity, by the graceless Arsenal. It matters to no one
save the few fantastics who hold a memory of the ancient world dearer
than any mechanic triumph of to-day. If only one could believe that the
Arsenal signified substantial good to Italy! Too plainly it means
nothing but the exhaustion of her people in the service of a base ideal.
The confines of this new town being so vague, much trouble is given to
that noble institution, the _dazio_. Scattered far and wide in a dusty
wilderness, stand the little huts of the officers, vigilant on every
road or by-way to wring the wretched soldi from toilsome hands. As
became their service, I found these gentry anything but amiable; they
had commonly an air of _ennui_, and regarded a stranger with surly
suspicion.
When I was back again among the high new houses, my eye, wandering in
search of any smallest point of interest, fell on a fresh-painted
inscription:--
"ALLA MAGNA GRAECIA. STABILIMENTO
IDROELETTROPATICO."
was well meant. At the sign of "Magna Graecia" one is willing to accept
"hydroelectropathic" as a late echo of Hellenic speech.