EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA—COLONUS—THE HARBORS—LAURIUM—SUNIUM.
There are two modern towns which, in natural features, resemble Athens.
The irregular ridge of greater Acropolis and lesser Areopagus remind one
of the castle and the Mönchsberg of Salzburg, one of the few towns in
Europe more beautifully situated than Athens. The relation of the
Acropolis to the more lofty Lycabettus suggests the castle of Edinburgh
and Arthur’s Seat. But here the advantage is greatly on the side of
Athens.
When you stand on the Acropolis and look round upon Attica, a great part
of its history becomes immediately unravelled and clear. You see at once
that you are placed in the principal plain of the country, surrounded with
chains of mountains in such a way that it is easy to understand the old
stories of wars with Eleusis, or with Marathon, or with any of the
outlying valleys. Looking inland on the north side, as you stand beside
the Erechtheum, you see straight before you, at a distance of some ten
miles, Mount Pentelicus, from which all the splendid marble was once
carried to the rock around you. This Pentelicus is a sort of intermediate
cross-chain between two main lines which diverge from either side of it,
and gradually widen so as to form the plain of Athens. The left or
north-western chain is Mount Parnes; the right or eastern is Mount
Hymettus. This latter, however, is only the inner margin of a large
mountainous tract which spreads all over the rest of South Attica down to
the Cape of Sunium. There are, of course, little valleys, and two or three
villages, one of them the old deme Brauron, which they now pronounce
Vravron. There is the town of Thorikos, near the mines of Laurium; there
are two modern villages called Marcopoulos; but on the whole, both in
ancient and modern times, this south-eastern part of Attica, south of
Hymettus, was, with the exception of Laurium, of little moment. There is a
gap between Pentelicus and Hymettus, nearly due north, through which the
way leads out to Marathon; and you can see the spot where the bandits
surprised in 1870 the unfortunate gentlemen who fell victims to the
vacillation and incompetence of people in power at that time.
On the left side of Pentelicus you see the chain of Parnes, which almost
closes with it at a far distance, and which stretches down all the
north-west side of Attica till it runs into the sea as Mount Corydallus,
opposite to the island of Salamis. In this long chain of Parnes (which can
only be avoided by going up to the northern coast at Oropus, and passing
into Bœotia close by the sea) there are three passes or lower points, one
far to the north—that by Dekelea, where the present king has his country
palace, but where of old Alcibiades planted the Spartan garrison which
tormented and ruined the farmers of Attica. This pass leads you out to
Tanagra in Bœotia. Next to the south, some miles nearer, is the even more
famous pass of Phyle, from which Thrasybulus and his brave fellows
recovered Athens and its liberty. This pass, when you reach its summit,
looks into the northern point of the Thriasian plain, and also into the
wilder regions of Cithæron, which border Bœotia. The third pass, and the
lowest—but a few miles beyond the groves of Academe—is the pass of Daphne,
which was the high road to Eleusis, along which the sacred processions
passed in the times of the Mysteries; and in this pass you still see the
numerous niches in which native tablets had been set by the worshippers at
a famous temple of Aphrodite.
On this side of Attica also, with the exception of the Thriasian plain and
of Eleusis, there extends outside Mount Parnes a wild mountainous
district, quite alpine in character, which severs Attica from Bœotia, not
by a single row of mountains, or by a single pass, but by a succession of
glens and defiles which at once explain to the classical student, when he
sees them, how necessary and fundamental were the divisions of Greece into
its separate districts, and how completely different in character the
inhabitants of each were sure to be. The way from Attica into Bœotia was
no ordinary high road, nor even a pass over one mountain, but through a
series of glens and valleys and defiles, at any of which a hostile army
could be stopped, and each of which severed the country on either side by
a difficult obstacle. This truly alpine nature of Greece is only felt when
we see it, and yet must ever be kept before the mind in estimating the
character and energy of the race. But let us return to our view from the
Acropolis.
If we turn and look southward, we see a broken country, with several low
hills between us and the sea—hills tolerably well cultivated, and when I
saw them in May all colored with golden stubbles, for the corn had just
been reaped. But all the plain in every direction seems dry and dusty;
arid, too, and not rich alluvial soil, like the plains of Bœotia. Then
Thucydides’s words come back to us, when he says Attica was “undisturbed
on account of the lightness of its soil” (_ἀστασίαστος οὖσα διὰ τὸ
λεπτόγεων_), as early invaders rather looked out for richer pastures. This
reflection, too, of Thucydides applies equally to the mountains of Attica
round Athens, which are not covered with rich grass and dense shrubs, like
Helicon, like Parnassus, like the glades of Arcadia, but seem so bare that
we wonder where the bees of Hymettus can find food for their famous honey.
It is only when the traveller ascends the rocky slopes of the mountain
that he finds its rugged surface carpeted with quantities of little wild
flowers, too insignificant to give the slightest color to the mountain,
but sufficient for the bees, which are still making their honey as of old.
This honey of Hymettus, which was our daily food at Athens, is now not
very remarkable either for color or flavor. It is very dark, and not by
any means so good as the honey produced in other parts of Greece—not to
say on the heather hills of Scotland and Ireland. I tasted honey at Thebes
and at Corinth which was much better, especially that of Corinth made in
the hills toward Cleonæ, where the whole country is scented with thyme,
and where thousands of bees are buzzing eagerly through the summer air.
But when the old Athenians are found talking so much about honey, we must
not forget that sugar was unknown to them, and that all their sweetmeats
depended upon honey exclusively. Hence the culture and use of it assumed
an importance not easily understood among moderns, who are in possession
of the sugar-cane.
But amid all the dusty and bare features of the view, the eye fastens with
delight on one great broad band of dark green, which, starting from the
west side of Pentelicus, close to Mount Parnes in the north, sweeps
straight down the valley, passing about two miles to the west of Athens,
and reaching to the Peiræus. This is the plain of the Kephissus, and these
are the famous olive woods which contain with them the deme Colonus, so
celebrated by Sophocles, and the groves of Academe, at their nearest point
to the city. The dust of Athens, and the bareness of the plain, make all
walks about the town disagreeable, save either the ascent of Lycabettus,
or a ramble into these olive woods. The River Kephissus, which waters
them, is a respectable, though narrow river, even in summer often
discharging a good deal of water, but much divided into trenches and arms,
which are very convenient for irrigation.(59) So there is a strip of
country, fully ten miles long, and perhaps two wide on the average, which
affords delicious shade and greenness and the song of birds, instead of
hot sunlight and dust and the shrill clamor of the tettix without.
I have wandered many hours in these delightful woods listening to the
nightingales, which sing all day in the deep shade and solitude, as it
were in a prolonged twilight, and hearing the plane-tree whispering to the
elm,(60) as Aristophanes has it, and seeing the white poplar show its
silvery leaves in the breeze, and wondering whether the huge old olive
stems, so like the old pollarded stumps in Windsor Forest, could be the
actual sacred trees, the _μορίαι_, under which the youth of Athens ran
their races. The banks of the Kephissus, too, are lined with great reeds,
and sedgy marsh plants, which stoop over into its sandy shallows and wave
idly in the current of its stream. The ouzel and the kingfisher start from
under one’s feet, and bright fish move out lazily from their sunny bay
into the deeper pool. Now and then through a vista the Acropolis shows
itself in a framework of green foliage, nor do I know any more enchanting
view of that great ruin.
All the ground under the dense olive-trees was covered with standing corn,
for here, as in Southern Italy, the shade of trees seems no hindrance to
the ripening of the ear. But there was here thicker wood than in Italian
corn-fields; on the other hand, there was not that rich festooning of
vines which spread from tree to tree, and which give a Neapolitan summer
landscape so peculiar a charm. A few homesteads there were along the
roads, and even at one of the bridges a children’s school, full of those
beautiful fair children whose heads remind one so strongly of the old
Greek statues. But all the houses were walled in, and many of them seemed
solitary and deserted. The memories of rapine and violence were still
there. I was told, indeed, that no country in Europe was so secure, and I
confess I found it so myself in my wanderings; but when we see how every
disturbance or war on the frontier revives again the rumor of brigandage,
I could not help feeling that the desert state of the land, and the
general sense of insecurity, however irrational in the intervals of peace,
was not surprising.
There is no other excursion in the immediate vicinity of Athens of any
like beauty or interest. The older buildings in the Peiræus are completely
gone. No trace of the docks or the _deigma_ remains; and the splendid
walls, built as Thucydides tells us with cut stone, without mortar or mud,
and fastened with clamps of iron fixed with lead—this splendid structure
has been almost completely destroyed. We can find, indeed, elsewhere in
Attica—at Phyle—still better at Eleutheræ—specimens of this sort of
building, but at the Peiræus there are only foundations remaining. Yet it
is not really true that the great wall surrounding the Peiræus has totally
disappeared. Even at the mouth of the harbor single stones may be seen
lying along the rocky edge of the water, of which the size and the square
cutting prove the use for which they were originally intended. But if the
visitor to the Peiræus will take the trouble to cross the hill, and walk
round the harbor of Munychia, he will find on the eastern point of the
headland a neat little café, with comfortable seats, and with a beautiful
view. The sea coast all round this headland shows the bed of the
surrounding sea wall, hewn in the live rock. The actual structure is
preserved in patches on the western point of this harbor, where the coast
is very steep; but in the place to which I refer, we can trace the whole
course of the wall a few feet above the water, cut out in the solid rock.
I know no scanty specimen of Athenian work which gives a greater idea of
the enormous wealth and energy of the city. The port of Munychia had its
own theatre and temples, and it was here that Pausanias saw the altar to
_the gods called the unknown_. The traces of the sea wall cease as soon as
it reaches the actual narrow mouth of the little harbor. I do not know how
far toward Phalerum it can be traced, but when visiting the harbor called
Zea(61) on another occasion, I did not observe it. The reader will find in
any ancient atlas, or in any history of Greece, a map of the harbors of
Athens, so that I think it unnecessary to append one here.
The striking feature in the present Peiræus, which from the entrance of
the harbor is very picturesque, is undoubtedly the rapid growth and
extension of factories, with English machinery and overseers. When last
there I found fourteen of these establishments, and their chimneys were
becoming quite a normal feature in Greek landscape. Those which I visited
were working up the cotton and the wool of the country into calico and
other stuffs, which are unfortunately coming into fashion among the lower
classes, and ousting the old costume. I was informed that boys were
actually forbidden to attend school in Greek dress, a regulation which
astonishes any one who knows the beauty and dignity of the national
costume.
[Illustration: The Peiraeus]
A drive to the open roadstead of Phalerum is more repaying. Here it is
interesting to observe how the Athenians passed by the nearest sea, and
even an open and clear roadstead, in order to join their city to the
better harbor and more defensible headland of Peiræus. Phalĕrum, as they
now call it, though they spell it with an _η_, is the favorite
bathing-place of modern Athens, with an open-air theatre, and is about a
mile and a half nearer the city than Peiræus. The water is shallow, and
the beach is of fine sand, so that for ancient ships, which I suppose drew
little water, it was a convenient landing-place, especially for the
disembarking of troops, who could choose their place anywhere around a
large crescent, and actually land fighting, if necessary. But the walls of
Athens, the long walls to Peiræus, and its lofty fortifications, made this
roadstead of no use to the enemy so long as Athens held the command of the
sea, and could send out ships from the secure little harbors of Zea and
Munychia, which are on the east side and in the centre of the headland of
Peiræus. There was originally a third wall, too, to the east side of the
Phaleric bay, but this seems to have been early abandoned when the second
long wall, or middle wall, as it was originally called, was completed.
At the opening of the Peloponnesian war it appears that the Athenians
defended against the Lacedæmonians, not the two long walls which ran close
together and parallel to Peiræus, but the northern of these, and the far
distant Phaleric wall. It cannot but strike any observer as extraordinary
how the Athenians should undertake such an enormous task. Had the enemy
attacked anywhere suddenly and with vigor, it seems hard to understand how
they could have kept him out. According to Thucydides’s accurate
detail,(62) the wall to Phalerum was nearly four miles, that to Peiræus
four and a half. There were in addition five miles of city wall, and
nearly three of Peiræus wall. That is to say, there were about seventeen
miles of wall to be protected. This is not all. The circuit was not
closed, but separated by about a mile of beach between Peiræus and
Phalerum, so that the defenders of the two extremities could in no way
promptly assist each other. Thucydides tells us that a garrison of 16,000
inferior soldiers, old men, boys, and _metics_, sufficed to do this work.
We are forced to conclude that not only were the means of attacking walls
curiously incomplete, but even the dash and enterprise of modern warfare
cannot have been understood by the Greeks. For we never hear of even a
bold attempt on this absurdly straggling fortification, far less of any
successful attempt to force it.
But it is time that we should leave the environs of Athens,(63) and wander
out beyond the borders of the Athenian plain into the wilder outlying
parts of the land. Attica is, after all, a large country, if one does not
apply railway measures to it. We think thirty miles by rail very little,
but thirty miles by road is a long distance, and implies land enough to
support a large population and to maintain many flourishing towns. We can
wander thirty miles from Athens through Attica in several directions—to
Eleutheræ, on the western Bœotian frontier; to Oropus, on the north; and
Sunium, on the south. Thus it is only when one endeavors to know Attica
minutely that one finds how much there is to be seen, and how long a time
is required to see it. And fortunately enough there is an expedition, and
that not the least important, where we can avoid the rough paths and
rougher saddles of the country, and coast in a steamer along a district at
all times obscure in history, and seldom known for anything except for
being the road to Sunium. Strabo gives a list of the demes along this
seaboard,(64) and seems only able to write one fact about them—a line from
an old oracle in the days of the Persian war, which prophesied that “the
women of Colias will roast their corn with oars,”(65) alluding to the
wrecks driven on shore here by the northwest wind from Salamis. Even the
numerous little islands along this coast were in his day, as they now are,
perfectly barren. Yet with all its desolation it is exceedingly
picturesque and varied in outline.
We took ship in the little steamer(66) belonging to the Sunium Mining
Company, who have built a village called Ergasteria, between Thorikos and
the promontory, and who were obliging enough to allow us to sail in the
boat intended for their private traffic. We left the Peiræus on one of
those peculiarly Greek mornings, with a blue sky and very bright sun, but
with an east wind so strong and clear, so _λαμπρός_, as the old Greeks
would say, that the sea was driven into long white crests, and the
fishing-boats were lying over under their sails. These fresh and strong
winds, which are constantly blowing in Greece, save the people very much
from the bad effects of a very hot southern climate. Even when the
temperature is high the weather is seldom sultry; and upon the sea, which
intrudes everywhere, one can always find a cool and refreshing atmosphere.
The Greeks seem not the least to fear these high winds, which are
generally steady and seldom turn to squalls. The smallest boats are to be
seen scudding along on great journeys from one island to another—often
with a single occupant, who sits holding the helm with one hand, and the
stern sheet with the other. All the ferry-boats in the Peiræus are managed
in this way, and you may see their great sails, like sea-gulls’ wings,
leaning over in the gale, and the spray dashing from the vessel’s prow. We
met a few larger vessels coming up from Syra, but on the whole the sea was
well-nigh as desert as the coast; so much so, that the faithful dog, which
was on board each of those boats, thought it his serious duty to stand up
on the taffrail and bark at us as a strange and doubtful company.
So, after passing many natural harbors and spacious bays, many rocky
headlands and bluff islands—but all desert and abandoned by track of man,
we approached the famous cape, from which the white pillars of the lofty
old temple gleamed brilliantly in the sun. They were the first and only
white marble pillars which I saw in Greece. Elsewhere, dust and age, if
not the hand of man, have colored that splendid material with a dull
golden hue; but here the sea breeze, while eating away much of the
surface, has not soiled them with its fresh brine, and so they still
remain of the color which they had when they were set up. We should fain
conjecture that here, at all events, the Greeks had not applied the usual
blue and red to decorate this marvellous temple; that—for the delight and
benefit of the sailors, who hailed it from afar, as the first sign of
Attica—its brilliant white color was left to it, to render it a brighter
beacon and a clearer object in twilight and in mist. I will not yet
describe it, for we paid it a special visit, and must speak of it in
greater detail; but even now, when we coasted round the headland, and
looked up to its shining pillars standing far aloft into the sky, it
struck us with the most intense interest. It was easy, indeed, to see how
Byron’s poetic mind was here inspired with some of his noblest lines.
When we turned from it seaward, we saw stretched out in _échelon_ that
chain of Cyclades, which are but a prolongation of the headland—Keos,
Kyphnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, and in the far distance, Melos—Melos, the
scene of Athens’s violence and cruelty, when she filled up, in the mind of
the old historian, the full measure of her iniquity. And as we turned
northward, the long island, or islet, of Helena, which stretches along the
point, like Hydra off that of Argolis, could not hide from us the mountain
ranges of Eubœa, still touched here and there with snow. A short run
against the wind brought us to the port of Ergasteria, marked very
strangely in the landscape by the smoke of its chimneys—the port where the
present produce of the mines of Laurium is prepared and shipped for
Scotland.
Here, at last, we found ourselves again among men; three thousand
operatives, many of them with families, make quite a busy town of
Ergasteria. And I could not but contrast their bold and independent looks,
rough and savage as they seemed, with what must have been the appearance
of the droves of slaves who worked the mines in old days. We were rowed
ashore from our steamer by two men called Aristides and Epaminondas, but I
cannot say that their looks betokened either the justice of the one or the
culture of the other.
We found ourselves when we landed in an awkward predicament. The last
English engineer remaining in the Mining Company, at whose invitation we
had ventured into this wild district, had suddenly left, that morning, for
Athens. His house was shut up, and we were left friendless and alone,
among three thousand of these Aristideses and Epaminondases, whose
appearance was, as I have said, anything but reassuring. We did what was
best to meet the difficulty, and what was not only the best thing to do,
but the only thing, and it turned out very well indeed. We went to the
temporary director of the mines, a very polished gentleman, with a
charming wife, both of whom spoke French excellently. We stated our case,
and requested hospitality for the night. Nothing could be more friendly
than our reception. This benevolent man and his wife took us into their
own house, prepared rooms for us, and promised to let us see all the
curiosities of the country. Thus our misfortune became, in fact, a very
good fortune. The night, however, it must be confessed, was spent in a
very unequal conflict with mosquitoes—an inconvenience which our good
hostess in vain endeavored to obviate by giving us a strong-smelling
powder to burn in our room, and shutting all the windows. But had the
remedy been even successful, it is very doubtful whether it was not worse
than the disease.
We started in the morning by a special train—for the company have a
private line from the coast up to the mines—to ascend the wooded and hilly
country into the region so celebrated of old as one of the main sources of
Athenian wealth. As the train wound its way round the somewhat steep
ascent, our prospect over the sea and its islands became larger and more
varied. The wild rocks and forests of southern Eubœa—one of the few
districts in Greece which seem to have been as savage and deserted in old
days as they are now—detached themselves from the intervening island of
Helena. We were told that wild boars were still to be found in Eubœa. In
the hills about Laurium, hares, which Xenophon so loved to hunt in his
Elean retreat, and turtle doves, seemed the only game attainable. All the
hills were covered with stunted underwood.
[Illustration: Laurium]
The mines of Laurium appear very suddenly in Attic history, but from that
time onward are a prominent part of the wealth of the Athenians. We know
that in Solon’s day there was great scarcity of money, and that he was
obliged to depreciate the value of the coinage—a very violent and
unprecedented measure, never repeated; for, all through later history,
Attic silver was so good that it circulated at a premium in foreign parts
just as English money does now. Accordingly, in Solon’s time we hear no
mention of this great and almost inexhaustible source of national wealth.
All through the reign of the Peisistratids there is a like silence.
Suddenly, after the liberation of Athens, we hear of Themistocles
persuading the people to apply the very large revenue from these mines to
the building of a fleet for the purpose of the war with Ægina.(67) The
so-called Xenophon _On the Attic Revenues_—a tract which is almost
altogether about these mines—asserts indeed that they had been worked from
remote antiquity; and there can be little doubt that here, as elsewhere in
Greece, the Phœnicians had been the forerunners of the natives in the art
of mining. Here, as in Thasos, I believe the Phœnicians had their
settlements; and possibly a closer survey of the great underground
passages, which are still there, may give us some proof by inscriptions or
otherwise.
But what happened after the Semitic traders had been expelled from Greek
waters?—for expelled they were, though, perhaps, far later from some
remote and unexplored points than we usually imagine. I suppose that when
this took place Athens was by no means in a condition to think about
prosecuting trade at Sunium. Salamis, which was far closer and a more
obvious possession, was only conquered in Solon’s day, after a long and
tedious struggle; and I am perfectly certain that the Athenians could have
had no power to hold an outlying dependency, separated by thirty miles of
the roughest mountain country, when they had not subdued an island
scarcely a mile from the Thriasian plain and not ten miles from Athens. I
take it, then, that the so-called _συνοικισμός_, or unifying of Athens, in
prehistoric times, by Theseus, or whoever did it, was not a cementing of
all Attica, including these remote corners, but only of the settlements
about the plains of Attica, Marathon, and Eleusis; and that the southern
end of the peninsula was not included in the Athens of early days. It was,
in fact, only accessible by a carefully constructed artificial road, such
as we hear of afterward, or by sea. The Athenians had not either of these
means of access at so early a period. And it is not a little remarkable
that the first mention of their ownership of the silver mines is
associated with the building of a fleet to contend with Ægina. I have no
doubt that Themistocles’s advice has been preserved without his reasons
for it. He persuaded the Athenians to surrender their surplus revenue from
Laurium, to build ships against the Æginetans, simply because they found
that without ships the Æginetans would be practically sole possessors of
the mines. They were far closer to Laurium by sea than Athens was by
land—closer, indeed, in every way—and I am led to suspect that, in the
days before Solon, the mines may have been secretly worked by Ægina, and
not by Athens. I cannot here enter into my full reasons, but I fancy that
Peisistratus and his sons—not by conquest, but by some agreement—got
practical possession of the mines, and were, perhaps, the first to make
all Attica really subject to the power of Athens.(68) But no sooner are
they expelled than the Æginetans renew their attacks or claims on Laurium;
and it is only the Athenian fleet which secures to Athens its possession.
We hear of proceedings of Hippias about coinage,(69) which are adduced by
Aristotle as specimens of injustice, or sharp practice, and which may have
something to do with the acquisition of the silver mines by his dynasty.
But I must cut short this serious dissertation.
Our special train brought us up slowly round wooded heights, and through
rich green brakes, into a lonely country, from which glimpses of the sea
could, however, still be seen, and glimpses of blue islands, between the
hills. And so we came to the settlements of the modern miners. The great
Company, whose guests we were, had been started some years ago, by French
and Italian speculators, and Professor Anstead had been there as geologist
for some years. But the jealousy of the Greeks, when they found out that
profit was rewarding foreign enterprise, caused legislation against the
Company; various complications followed, so that at last they gladly sold
their interest to a native Company. In 1887 this Company was still
thriving; and I saw in the harbor a large vessel from Glasgow, which had
come to carry the lead to Scotland, when prepared in blocks—all the
produce being still bought by a single English firm.
When the Greeks discuss these negotiations about the mines they put quite
a different color on the affair. They say that the French and Italians
desired to evade fair payment for the ground-rent of the mines, trusting
to the strength of their respective governments, and the weakness of
Greece. The Company’s policy is described in Greece as an over-reaching,
unscrupulous attempt to make great profits by sharp bargains with the
natives, who did not know the value of their property. A great number of
obscure details are adduced in favor of their arguments, and it seemed to
me that the Greeks were really convinced of their truth. In such a matter
it would be unfair to decide without stating both sides; and I am quite
prepared to change my present conviction that the Greeks were most to
blame, if proper reasons can be assigned. But the legislative Acts passed
in their Parliament look very ugly indeed at first sight.
The principal Laurium Company(70) never enter the mines at all, but gather
the great mass of scoriæ, which the old Athenians threw out after smelting
with more imperfect furnaces and less heat than ours. These scoriæ, which
look like stone cinders, have been so long there that some vegetation has
at last grown over them, and the traveller does not suspect that all the
soil around was raised and altered by the hand of man. Owing to the power
of steam, and their railway, the present miners carry down the scoriæ on
trucks to the sea-coast, to Ergasteria, and there smelt them. The old
Athenians had their furnaces in the middle of the mountains, where many of
them are still to be seen. They sought chiefly for silver, whereas the
modern Company are chiefly in pursuit of lead, and obtain but little
silver from the scoriæ.
In many places you come upon the openings of the old pits, which went far
into the bowels of the mountains, through miles of underground galleries
and passages. Our engine-driver—an intelligent Frenchman—stopped the train
to show us one of these entrances, which went down almost straight, with
good steps still remaining, into the earth. He assured us that the other
extremity which was known, all the passage being open, was some two or
three miles distant, at a spot which he showed us from a hill. Hearing
that inscriptions were found in these pits, and especially that the name
of Nicias had been discovered there, we were very anxious to descend and
inspect them. This was promised to us, for the actual pits were in the
hands of another Greek Company, who were searching for new veins of
silver. But when we arrived at the spot the officers of the Company were
unwilling to let us into the pits. The proper overseer was
away—intentionally, of course. There were no proper candles; there were no
means of obtaining admission: so we were balked in our inquiry. But we
went far enough into the mouth of one of them to see that these pits were
on a colossal scale, well arched up; and, I suppose, had we gone far
enough, we should have found the old supports, of which the Athenian law
was so careful.
The quantity of scoriæ thrown out, which seems now perfectly
inexhaustible, is in itself sufficient evidence of the enormous scale on
which the old mining was carried on. Thus, we do not in the least wonder
at hearing that Nicias had one thousand slaves working in the mines, and
that the profits accruing to the State from the fines and head-rents of
the mines were very large—on a moderate estimate, £8000 a year of our
money, which meant in those days a great deal more.
The author of the tract on “Athenian Revenue” says that the riches of the
mines were absolutely unbounded; that only a small part of the silver
district had been worked out, though the digging had gone on from time
immemorial; and that after innumerable laborers had been employed the
mines always appeared equally rich, so that no limit need be put on the
employment of capital. Still he speaks of opening a new shaft as a most
risky speculation. His general estimate appears, however, somewhat
exaggerated. The writer confesses that the number of laborers was in his
day diminishing, and the majority of the proprietors were then beginners;
so that there must have been great interruption of work during the
Peloponnesian War. In the age of Philip there were loud complaints that
the speculations in mining were unsuccessful; and for obtaining silver, at
all events, no reasonable prospect seems to have been left. In the first
century of our era, Strabo (ix. i. 23) says that these once celebrated
mines were exhausted,(71) that new mining did not pay, and thus people
were smelting the poorer ore, and the scoriæ from which the ancients had
imperfectly separated the metal. He adds that the main product of the
mining district was in his day honey, which was especially known as
smokeless (_ἀκάπνιστον_), on account of its good preparation. This in
itself shows that the mining had decayed, for now all the flowers in the
neighborhood of the smelting are killed by the black fumes.
Our last mention of the place in olden times is that of Pausanias (at the
end of the second century A. D.), who speaks of Laurium, with the addition
that it had once been the seat of the Athenian silver mines!
There is but one more point suggested by these mines, which it is not well
to pass over when we are considering the working of them in ancient times.
Nothing is more poisonous than the smoke from lead-mines; and for this
reason the people at Ergasteria have built a chimney more than a mile long
to the top of a neighboring hill, where the smoke escapes. Even so, when
the wind blows back the smoke, all the vegetation about the village is at
once blighted, and there is no greater difficulty than to keep a garden
within two or three miles of this chimney. As the Athenians did not take
such precautions, we are not surprised to hear from them frequent notices
of the unhealthiness of the district, for when there were many furnaces,
and the smoke was not drawn away by high chimneys, we can hardly conceive
life to have been tolerable. What then must have been the condition of the
gangs of slaves which Nicias and other respectable and pious Athenians
kept in these mines? Two or three allusions give us a hideous insight into
this great social sore, which has not been laid bare, because the wild
district of Laurium, and the deep mines under its surface, have concealed
the facts from the ordinary observer. Nicias, we are told, let out one
thousand slaves to Sosias the Thracian, at an obolus a day each—the lessee
being bound to restore them to him the same _in number_.
The meaning of this frightful contract is only too plain. The yearly rent
paid for each slave was about half the full price paid for him in the
market. It follows that, if the slave lived for three years, Nicias made a
profit of 50 per cent. on his outlay. No doubt, some part of this
extraordinary bargain must be explained by the great profits which an
experienced miner could make—a fact supported by the tract on the
Revenues, which cannot date more than a generation later than the bargain
of Nicias. The lessee, too, was under the additional risk of the slaves
escaping in time of war, when a hostile army might make a special invasion
into the mountain district for the purpose of inflicting a blow on this
important part of Athenian revenue. In such cases, it may be presumed that
desperate attempts were made by the slaves to escape, for although the
Athenian slaves generally were the best treated in Greece, and had many
holidays, it was very different with the gangs employed by the Thracian
taskmaster. We are told that they had three hundred and sixty working days
in the year. This, together with the poison of the atmosphere, tells its
tale plainly enough.
And yet Nicias, the capitalist who worked this hideous trade, was the most
pious and God-fearing man at Athens. So high was his reputation for
integrity and religion, that the people insisted on appointing him again
and again to commands for which he was wholly unfit; and when at last he
ruined the great Athenian army before Syracuse, and lost his own life, by
his extreme devoutness and his faith in the threats and warnings of the
gods—even then the great sceptical historian, who cared for none of these
things, condones all his blunders for the sake of his piety and his
respectability.
Of course, however, an excursion to Laurium, interesting as it might be,
were absurd without visiting the far more famous Sunium,—the promontory
which had already struck us so much on our sea voyage round the point,—the
temple which Byron has again hallowed with his immortal verse, and Turner
with his hardly less immortal pencil. So we hired horses on our return
from the mines, and set out on a very fine afternoon to ride down some
seven or eight miles from Ergasteria to the famous promontory. Our route
led over rolling hills, covered with arbutus and stunted firs; along
valleys choked with deep, matted grass; by the side of the sea, upon the
narrow ledge of broken rocks. Nowhere was there a road, or a vestige of
human habitation, save where the telegraph wire dipped into the sea,
pointing the way to the distant Syra. It was late in the day, and the sun
was getting low, so we urged our horses to a canter wherever the ground
would permit it. But neither the heat nor the pace could conquer the
indefatigable esquire who attended us on foot to show us the way, and hold
the horses when we stopped. His speed and endurance made me think of
Phidippides and his run to Sparta; nor, indeed, do any of the feats
recorded of the old Greeks, either in swimming or running, appear
incredible when we witness the feats that are being performed almost every
day by modern muscle and endurance. At last, after a delightful two hours’
roaming through the homely solitude, we found ourselves at the foot of the
last hill, and over us the shining pillars of the ruined temple stood out
against the sky.
There can be no doubt that the temple of Neptune on Mount Tænarum must
have been quite as fine as to position, but the earthquakes of Laconia
have made havoc of its treasures, while at Sunium, though some of the
drums in the shafts of the pillars have been actually displaced several
inches from their fellows above and below, so that the perfect fitting of
the old Athenians has come to look like the tottering work of a giant
child with marble bricks,—in spite of this, thirteen pillars remain,(72) a
piece of architrave, and a huge platform of solid blocks; above all, a
site not desecrated by modern habitations, where we can sit and think of
the great old days, and of the men who set up this noble monument at the
remotest corner of their land. The Greeks told us that this temple, that
at Ægina, and the Parthenon, are placed exactly at the angles of a great
equilateral triangle, with each side about twenty-five or thirty miles
long. Our maps do not verify this belief. The distance from Athens to
Sunium appears much longer than either of the other lines, nor do we find
in antiquity any hint that such a principle was attended to, or that any
peculiar virtue was attached to it.
We found the platform nearly complete, built with great square blocks of
poros-stone, and in some places very high, though in others scarcely
raised at all, according to the requirements of the ground. Over it the
temple was built, not with the huge blocks which we see at Corinth and in
the Parthenon, but still of perfectly white marble, and with that
beautifully close fitting, without mortar, rubble, or cement, which
characterizes the best and most perfect epoch of Greek architecture.(73)
The stone, too, is the finest white marble, and, being exposed to no dust
on its lofty site, has alone of all temples kept its original color—if,
indeed, it was originally white, and not enriched with divers colors. The
earthquake, which has displaced the stones in the middle of the pillars,
has tumbled over many large pieces, which can be seen from above scattered
all down the slope where they have rolled. But enough still remains for us
to see the plan, and imagine the effect of the whole structure. It is in
the usual simple, grand, Doric style, but lighter in proportions than the
older Attic temples; and, being meant for distant effect, was probably not
much decorated. Its very site gives it all the ornament any building could
possibly require.
It was our good fortune to see it in a splendid sunset, with the sea a
sheet of molten gold, and all the headlands and islands colored with hazy
purple. The mountains of Eubœa, with their promontory of Geræstus, closed
the view upon the north-east; but far down into the Ægean reached island
after island, as it were striving to prolong a highway to the holy Delos.
The ancient Andros, Tenos, Myconos were there, but the eye sought in vain
for the home of Apollo’s shrine—the smallest and yet the greatest of the
group. The parallel chain, reaching down from Sunium itself, was confused
into one mass, but exposed to view the distant Melos. Then came a short
space of open sea, due south, which alone prevented us from imagining
ourselves on some fair and quiet inland lake; and beyond to the south-west
we saw the point of Hydra, the only spot in all Hellas whose recent fame
exceeds the report of ancient days. The mountains of Argolis lay behind
Ægina, and formed with their Arcadian neighbors a solid background, till
the eye wandered round to the Acropolis of Corinth, hardly visible in the
burning brightness of the sun’s decline. And all this splendid expanse of
sea and mountain, and bay and cliff, seemed as utterly deserted as the
wildest western coast of Scotland or Ireland. One or two little white
sails, speeding in his boat some lonely fisherman, made the solitude, if
possible, more speaking and more intense. There are finer views, more
extensive, and perhaps even more varied, but none more exquisitely
interesting and more melancholy to the student of Ancient Greece.