EXCURSIONS IN ATTICA—PENTELICUS—MARATHON—DAPHNE—ELEUSIS.
This great loneliness is a feature that strikes the traveller almost
everywhere through the country. Many centuries of insecurity, and indeed
of violence, have made country life almost impossible; and now that better
times have come, the love and knowledge of it are gone. The city Athenian
no longer grumbles, as he did in Aristophanes’s day, that an invasion has
driven him in from the rude plenty and simple luxuries of his farming
life, where with his figs and his olives, his raisins and his heady wine,
he made holiday before his gods, and roasted his thrush and his chestnuts
with his neighbor over the fire. All this is gone. There remains, indeed,
the old political lounger, the loafer of the market-place, ever seeking to
obtain some shabby maintenance by sycophancy or by bullying. This type is
not hard to find in modern Athens, but the old sturdy Acharnian, as well
as the rich horse-breeding Alcmæonid, are things of the past. Even the
large profits to be made by market-gardening will not tempt them to adopt
this industry, and the great city of Athens is one of the worst supplied
and dearest of capitals, most of its daily requirements in vegetables,
fowls, eggs, etc., coming in by steamers from islands on the coast of
Thessaly. No part of the country of Attica can be considered even
moderately cultivated, except the Thriasian plain, and the valley of
Kephissus, reaching from near Dekelea to the sea. This latter plain, with
its fine olive-woods reaching down across Academus to the region of the
old long walls, is fairly covered with corn and grazing cattle, with plane
trees and poplars. But even here many of the homesteads are deserted; and
the country seats of the Athenians were often left empty for years,
whenever a band of brigands appeared in the neighboring mountains, and
threatened the outlying houses with blackmail, if not with bloodier
violence. Of late there is a steady improvement.
Nothing can be truer than the admirable description of Northern Attica
given in M. Perrot’s book on the Attic orators. He is describing Rhamnus,
the home of Antiphon, but his picture is of broader application.(74)
All these remarks are even more strongly exemplified by the beautiful
country which lies between Pentelicus and Hymettus, and which is now
covered with forest and brushwood. We passed through this vale one sunny
morning on our way to visit Marathon. There is, indeed, a road for some
miles—the road to the quarries of Pentelicus—but a very different one from
what the Athenians must have had. It is now a mere broad track, cut by
wheels and hoofs in the sward; and wherever the ruts become too deep the
driver turns aside, and makes a parallel track for his own convenience. In
summer days, the dust produced by this sort of road is something beyond
description; and the soil being very red earth, we have an atmosphere
which accounts to some extent for the remarkable color of the old
buildings of Athens. The way, after turning round the steep Lycabettus,
which, like Arthur’s Seat at Edinburgh, commands the town close by, passes
up the right side of the undulating plain of Attica, with the stony but
variegated slopes of Hymettus upon the right, and Pentelicus almost
straight ahead. As soon as the suburbs are passed we meet but one or two
country seats, surrounded with dark cypress and pepper trees; but outside
the sombre green is a tall, dazzling, white wall, which gives a peculiarly
Oriental character to the landscape. There is cultivation visible when you
look to the westward, where the village of Kephissia lies, among the
groves which accompany the Kephissus on its course; but up toward
Pentelicus, along the track which must once have been crowded with carts,
and heavy teams, and shouting drivers, when all the blocks of the
Parthenon were being hurried from their quarry to adorn the
Acropolis—along this famous track there is hardly a sign of culture.
Occasionally, a rough stubble field showed that a little corn had been
cut—an occasional station, with a couple of soldiers, shows why more had
not been sown. The fear of brigands had paralyzed industry, and even
driven out the scanty rural population.
[Illustration: Mount Lycabettus, Athens]
It strikes me, when speaking of this road, that the Greek roads cannot
have been at all so well constructed as the Roman, many of which are still
to be seen in England. Though I went upon the track of many of them, I but
once noticed the vestige of an old Greek road. There are here and there
wretched remains of Turkish roads—rough angular stones laid down across
the hills, in a close irregular pavement; but of the great builders of the
Parthenon and of Phyle, of Eleutheræ and of Eleusis, hardly a patch of
road-work has, so far as I know, remained.
There is, indeed, one exception in this very neighborhood, to which we may
now naturally turn. The traveller who has wondered at the huge blocks of
the Propylæa and the Parthenon, and who has noticed the exquisite quality
of the stone, and the perfect smoothness which it has preserved to the
present day, will naturally desire to visit the quarry on Pentelicus from
which it was brought. The marble of Paros is probably the only stone found
superior to it for the purposes of sculpture. It is, however, harder and
of larger grain, so that it must have been more difficult to work. Experts
can tell the difference between the two marbles, but I confess that,
though M. Rousopoulos endeavored to teach it to me from specimens in the
Acropolis Museum, I was unable to attain a clear knowledge of the
distinction. The large blocks of Pentelican marble, however beautiful and
fine in grain, seem not unfrequently to have contained flaws, and possibly
the ascertaining of this defect may of old have been one of the most
difficult duties of the architect. It is supposed to have been done by
sounding the block with a hammer, a process which the Greeks would call
_κωδωνίζειν_. There are at present, close to the east front of the
Parthenon, several of these rejected blocks, and the lapse of ages has
brought out the flaw visibly, because damp has had time to penetrate the
stone, and stain its pure whiteness with a dark seam. But when it came
fresh from its native bed, and was all pure white, I presume the
difficulty must have been considerable. Possibly these blocks on the
Parthenon were injured in their transit, and left the quarries in sound
condition. For in going up the steep road to these quarries, in more than
one place a similar great block will be found tumbled aside, and left
lying at the very spot where we may suppose some accident to have happened
to crack it. This road, which in its highest parts has never been altered,
is a steep descent, rudely paved with transverse courses of stone, like
steps in pattern, and may have had wooden slides laid over it, to bring
down the product of the quarries to the valley. It is well worth while
going up for a night to the fine monastery not far off, where there is
ample shade of waving trees and plenty of falling water, in the midst of
steep slopes wooded with the fir—a cool and quiet retreat in the fierce
heat of summer.(75) From this place to the quarries is less than an hour’s
walk. The moderns still draw stone from them, but far below the spots
chosen by the ancients; and, of course, the remains of the old industry
are on an infinitely grander scale.
It is a laborious climb, up a road covered with small fragments of stone.
But at last, beneath a great face of marble all chipped with the work of
ancient hands, there is a large cool cavern, with water dripping from the
roof into ice-cold pools below, and besides it a quaint grotto chapel,
with its light still burning, and stone seats around, where the traveller
may rest. This place seems to have been the main source of the old
Athenian buildings. The high face of the rock above it is chipped, as I
have said, with small and delicate cutting, and hangs over, as if they had
removed it beneath, in order to bring down the higher pieces more easily.
Of course, they could not, and probably if they could, would not, have
blasted the stone; and, so far as I know, we are not informed by what
process they managed to loosen and bring down the great blocks from their
sites. The surface of the rock testifies to the use of some small and
delicate chisel. But whatever the process, they must have had machinery of
which we have lost all record, for no amount of manual work could possibly
have accomplished what they did in a few years, and accomplished it with a
delicacy which shows complete control of their materials. The beautifully
fitted walls of the chamber inside the left wing of the Propylæa preserve
an interesting piece of detail on the face of each square block, which is
perfectly fitted to its fellows; there still remains a rough knob jutting
out from the centre, evidently the handle used for lifting the stone, and
usually removed when all the building was completely finished. The
expenses of war and the dolors of a long siege caused the Propylæa to
remain unfinished, and so this piece of construction has survived.
The view from the top of Pentelicus is, of course, very striking, and
those who have no time or inclination to spend a day at Marathon itself
are usually content with a very fine view of the bay and the opposite
mountains of Eubœa, which can thence be had. But it is indeed a pity, now
that the country is generally quite safe, that after so long a journey as
that from England to Athens, people should turn back without completing
the additional fifteen miles which brings them to the site of the great
battle itself.
As we leave the track which leads up to the monastery above mentioned, the
country becomes gradually covered with shrubs, and then with stunted
trees—generally old fir-trees, all hacked and carved and wounded for the
sake of their resin, which is so painfully obtrusive in Greek wine. But in
one place there is, by way of change, a picturesque bridge over a rapid
rocky-bedded river, which is completely hidden with rich flowering
oleanders, and in which we found sundry Attic women, of the poorer class,
washing their clothes. The woods in this place were wonderfully rich and
scented, and the sound of the turtle doves was heard in the land.
Presently we came upon the thickly wooded corner, which was pointed out to
us as the spot where our unfortunate countrymen were captured in 1870, and
carried up the slopes of Pentelicus, to be sacrificed to the blundering of
the English Minister or the Greek Ministry,—I could not decide which,—and
more certainly to their own chivalry; for while all the captured Greeks
escaped during the pursuit, our English gentlemen would not break their
parole. These men are now held by the better Greeks to be martyrs for the
good of Greece; for this outrage first forced the Government to take
really vigorous measures for the safety of the country. The whole band
were gradually captured and executed, till at last Takos, their chief, was
caught in Peloponnesus, three or four years ago, and hanged at Athens. So
it came that I found the country (on all my visits, ’75, ’77, ’84, ’89)
apparently as safe as Ireland is to a traveller, and we required neither
escort, nor arms, nor any precautions whatever.
We had, indeed, a missive from the Greek Prime Minister, which we
presented to the Chief Police Officer of each town—a gentleman in the
usual scarlet cap and white petticoats, but carrying a great dog-whip as
the sign of his office. This custom, strange to say, dates from the days
of Aristophanes. But the Prime Minister warned us that, though things were
now safe, there was no permanent security. Any revolution in the
neighborhood (such, for example, as that in Herzegovina, which at that
time had not yet broken out) might, he said, send over the Turkish
frontier a number of outlaws or other fugitives, who would support
themselves by levying blackmail on the peasantry, and then on travellers.
We were assured that the Morea, which does not afford an easy escape into
Turkey, has been for years perfectly secure, and I found it so in several
subsequent journeys. So, then, any traveller desirous of seeing the
Peloponnesus—Sparta, Olympia, Mantinea, Argos, or even Central Greece—may
count on doing so with safety. Not so the visitor to Tempe and Mount
Pindus.(76) The Professors of the University with whom I talked were,
indeed, of a more sanguine opinion. They did not anticipate any recurrence
of the danger: they considered Greece one of the safest and quietest of
countries. Moreover, in one point they all seemed agreed. It was perfectly
certain that the presence of bandits would be at once known at Athens. Why
this was so, I was not informed, nor whether travellers would be at once
informed also. In any case, either M. Trikoupi or the British Minister can
be perfectly relied upon for advice in this matter.
So much for the safety of travelling in Greece, which is suggested by the
melancholy fate of Mr. Vyner and his friends, though that event is now so
long past. But one point more. It is both idle and foolish to imagine that
revolvers and daggers are the best protection against Greek bandits,
should they reappear. They never attack where they are visible. The first
notice given to the traveller is the sight of twenty or thirty muzzles
pointed at him from the covert, with a summons to surrender. Except,
therefore, the party be too numerous to be so surrounded and _visé_, so
that some could fight, even were others shot—except in such a case, arms
are only an additional prize, and a tempting one, for the clephts. It is,
indeed, very seldom that the carrying of arms is to be recommended to any
traveller in any land.
As we ascended the long saddle of country which lies between Pentelicus
and Hymettus, we came upon a fine olive-wood, with the same enormous stems
which had already excited our wonder in the groves of Academe. Indeed,
some of the stems in this wood were the largest we had seen, and made us
think that they may have been there since the days when the olive oil of
Attica was one of its most famous products, and its export was even
forbidden. Even then there were ancient stumps—_μορίαι_, as they were
called—which were sacred, and which no man who rented or bought the land
might remove; a restriction which seems hard to us, but was not so in
Greece, where corn grows freely in the shade of trees, and is even
habitually planted in orchards. But at all events, these old, gnarled,
hollowed stumps, with their tufts of branches starting from the pollarded
trunk, are a really classical feature in the country, and deserve,
therefore, a passing notice.
When we had got well between the mountains a new scene unfolded itself. We
began to see the famous old Euripus, with the mountains of Eubœa over
against us; and down to the south, behind Hymettus, till we reach the
extremity of Sunium, stretched a long tract of mountainous and barren
country which never played a prominent part in history, but where a
conical hill was pointed out to us as the site of the old deme Brauron. It
is, indeed, surprising how little of Attica was ever celebrated. Close by
the most famous city of the world are reaches of country which are as
obscure to us as the wilds of Arcadia; and we may suspect that the
shepherds who inhabited the _φελλέα_, or rocky pastures in the Attic
hills, were not much superior to those whom we now meet herding their
goats in the same region.
The plain of Marathon, as everybody knows, is a long crescent-shaped strip
of land by the shore, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which may be
crossed conveniently in three places, but most easily toward the
south-west, along the road which we travelled, and which leads directly to
Athens. When the Athenians marched through this broad and easy passage
they found that the Persians had landed at the northern extremity of the
plain—I suppose, because the water was there sufficiently deep to let them
land conveniently. Most of the shore, as you proceed southward, is lined
on the seaboard by swamps. The Greek army must have marched northward
along the spurs of Pentelicus, and taken up their position near the north
of the plain. There was evidently much danger that the Persians would
force a passage through the village of Marathon, farther toward the
north-west. Had they done this, they might have rounded Pentelicus, and
descended the main plain of Attica, from the valley below Dekelea.
Perhaps, however, this pass was then guarded by an outlying fort, or by
some defences at Marathon itself. The site of the battle is absolutely
fixed by the great mound, upon which was placed a lion, which has been
carried off, no one knows when or whither. The mound is exactly an English
mile from the steep slope of one of the hills, and about half a mile from
the sea at present; nor was there, when I saw it, any difficulty in
walking right to the shore, though a river flows out there, which shows,
by its sedgy banks and lofty reeds, a tendency to create a marshy tract in
rainy weather. But the mound is so placed that, if it marks the centre of
the battle, the Athenians must have faced nearly north; and if they faced
the sea eastward, as is commonly stated, this mound must mark the scene of
the conflict on their left wing. The mound is very large—I suppose thirty
feet high—altogether of earth, so far as we could see, and bears traces of
having been frequently ransacked in search of antiquities. Dr. Schliemann,
its latest investigator, could find nothing there but prehistoric flint
weapons.
[Illustration: Looking Toward the Sea from the Soros, Marathon]
Like almost every view in Greece, the prospect from this mound is full of
beauty and variety—everywhere broken outlines, everywhere patches of blue
sea, everywhere silence and solitude. Byron is so much out of fashion now,
and so much more talked about than read—though even that notice of him is
fast disappearing—that I will venture to remind the reader of the splendid
things he has said of Greece, and especially of this very plain of
Marathon. He was carried away by his enthusiasm to fancy a great future
possible for the country, and to believe that its desolation and the low
condition of the inhabitants were simply the result of Turkish tyranny,
and not of many natural causes conspiring for twenty centuries. He paints
the Greek brigand or pirate as many others have painted the “noble
savage,” with the omission of all his meaner vices. But in spite of all
these faults, who is there who has felt as he the affecting aspects of
this beautiful land—the tomb of ancient glory—the home of ancient
wisdom—the mother of science, of art, of philosophy, of politics—the
champion of liberty—the envy of the Persian and the Roman—the teacher,
even still, of modern Europe? It is surely a great loss to our generation,
and a bad sign of its culture, that the love of more modern poets has
weaned them from the study of one not less great in most respects, but far
greater in one at least—in that burning enthusiasm for a national cause,
in that red-hot passion for liberty which, even when misapplied, or wasted
upon unworthy objects, is ever one of the noblest and most stirring
instincts of higher man.
But Byron may well be excused his raving about the liberty of the Greeks,
for truly their old conflict at Marathon, where a few thousand
ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined
Orientals, without any recondite tactics—perhaps even without any very
extraordinary heroism—how is it that this conflict has maintained a
celebrity which has not been equalled by any of the great battles of the
world from that day down to our own? The courage of the Greeks, as I have
elsewhere shown,(77) was not of the first order. Herodotus praises the
Athenians in this very battle for being the first Greeks that dared to
look the Persians in the face. Their generals all through history seem
never to feel sure of victory, and always endeavor to harangue their
soldiers into a fury. Instead of advising coolness, they especially incite
to rage—_ὀργῇ προσμίξωμεν_, says one of them in Thucydides—as if any man
not in this state would be sure to estimate the danger fully, and run
away. It is, indeed, true that the ancient battles were hand to hand, and
therefore parallel to our charges of bayonets, which are said to be very
seldom carried out by two opposing lines, as one of them almost always
gives way before the actual collision takes place. This must often have
occurred in Greek battles, for in one fought at Amphipolis Brasidas lost
seven men; at a battle at Corinth, mentioned by Xenophon—an important
battle, too—the slain amounted to eight;(78) and these battles were fought
before the days when whole armies were composed of mercenaries, who spared
one another, as Ordericus Vitalis says, “for the love of God, and out of
good feeling for the fraternity of arms.” So, then, the loss of 192
Athenians, including some distinguished men, was rather a severe one. As
to the loss of the Persians, I so totally disbelieve the Greek accounts of
such things that it is better to pass it by in silence.
Perhaps most readers will be astonished to hear of the Athenian army as
undisciplined, and of the science of war as undeveloped, in those times.
Yet I firmly believe this was so. The accounts of battles by almost all
the historians are so utterly vague, and so childishly conventional, that
it is evident that these gentlemen were not only quite ignorant of the
science of war, but could not easily find any one to explain it to them.
We know that the Spartans—the most admired of all Greek warriors—were
chiefly so admired because they devised the system of subordinating
officers to one another within the same detachment, like our gradation
from colonel to corporal. Orders were passed down from officer to officer,
instead of being bawled out by a herald to a whole army. But this
superiority of the Spartans, who were really disciplined, and went into
battle coolly, like brave men, certainly did not extend to strategy, but
was merely a question of better drill. As soon as any real strategist met
them they were helpless. Thus Iphicrates, when he devised Wellington’s
plan of meeting their attacking column in line, and using missiles,
succeeded against them, even without firearms: thus Epaminondas, when he
devised Napoleon’s plan of massing troops on a single point, while keeping
his enemy’s line occupied, defeated them without any considerable
struggle. As for that general’s great battle of Mantinea, the ancient
Rossbach, which seems really to have been introduced by some complicated
strategical movements, we owe our partial knowledge to the grudging aid of
the soldier Xenophon. But both generals were in the distant future when
the battle of Marathon was being fought.
Yet what signifies all this criticism? In spite of all skepticism, in
spite of all contempt, the battle of Marathon, whether badly or well
fought, and the troops at Marathon, whether well or ill trained, will ever
be more famous than any other battle or army, however important or
gigantic its dimensions. Even in this very war, the battles of Salamis and
Platæa were vastly more important and more hotly contested. The losses
were greater, the results were more enduring, yet thousands have heard of
Marathon to whom the other names are unknown. So much for literary
ability—so much for the power of talking well about one’s deeds. Marathon
was fought by Athenians; the Athenians eclipsed the other Greeks as far as
the other Greeks eclipsed the rest of the world, in literary power. This
battle became the literary property of the city, hymned by poet, cited by
orator, told by aged nurse, lisped by stammering infant; and so it has
taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the great decisive
battles which assured the liberty of the West against Oriental despotism.
The plain in the present day is quite bare of trees, and, as Colonel Leake
observed, appears to have been so at the time of the battle, from the
vague account of its evolutions. There was a little corn and a few other
crops about the great tumulus; and along the seashore, whither we went to
bathe, there was a large herd of cows and oxen—a sight not very usual in
Greece. When we rushed into the shallow blue water, striving to reach
swimming depth, we could not but think of the scene when Kynægirus and his
companions rushed in armed to stop the embarkation of the Persians. On the
shore, then teeming with ships of war, with transports, with fighting and
flying men, there was now no sign of life, but ourselves in the water, and
the lazy cattle and their silent herdsmen looking upon us in wonder; for,
though very hot, it was only May, and the modern Greek never thinks it
safe to bathe till at least the end of June—in this like his Italian
neighbor. There was not a single ship or boat in the straits; there was no
sign of life or of population on the coast of Eubœa. There was everywhere
that solitude which so much struck Byron, as it strikes every traveller in
Modern Greece. There was not even the child or beggar, with coins and
pieces of pottery, who is so troublesome about Italian ruins, and who has
even lately appeared at the Parthenon, the theatre at Argos, and a few
other places in Greece. We asked the herdsman for remnants of arms or
pieces of money: he had seen such things picked up, but knew nothing of
their value. Lord Byron tells us he was offered the purchase of the whole
plain (six miles by two) for about £900. It would have been a fine
speculation for an antiquarian: but I am surprised, as he was, rather at
the greatness than at the smallness of the price. The Greek Government
might very well, even now, grant the fee-simple to any one who would pay
the ordinary taxes on property, which are not, I was told, very heavy. But
still the jealousy of the nation would not tolerate a foreign speculator.
I have already spoken (p. 154) of the position of the pass of Daphne, and
how it leads the traveller over the ridge which separates the plain of the
Kephissus from the Thriasian plain. I have also spoken at length of the
country about the Kephissus, with its olive woods and its nightingales.
When we go through the pass of Daphne—of its monastery I shall speak in
another chapter—a perfectly new view opens before us. We see under us the
Thriasian plain, well covered with ripening corn and other crops; we see
at the far side of the crescent-shaped bay the remains of Eleusis. Behind
it, and all round to the right up to where we stand, is an amphitheatre of
hills—the spurs of Mount Parnes, which from Phyle reach due south down to
where we stand, and due west to the inland of the Thriasian plain, till
they meet and are confounded with the slopes of Cithæron, which extend for
miles away behind Eleusis. On the sea-side, to our left, lies the island
of Salamis, so near the coast that the sea seems a calm inland lake, lying
tortuously between the hills.
Many points of Greek history become plain to us by this view. We see how
true was the epithet “rocky Salamis,” for the island, though it looks very
insignificant on our maps, contains lofty mountains, with very bare and
rocky sides. The student of Greek geography in maps should note this
feature. Thus, Ithaca on the map does not suggest the real Ithaca, which
from most points looks like a high and steep mountain standing out of the
sea. We begin also to see how Salamis was equally _convenient_ (as the
Irish say) to both Megara and Attica, if we consider that Eleusis was
strictly a part of Attica. The harbor of the Peiræus, for example, would
be quite useless if an enemy were watching it from Salamis. But we also
come to see the sense of the old legend, that Eleusis had originally a
separate king or government from that of Athens, and that the two cities
once carried on war against each other. The towns are but a few miles
apart; but their respective plains are so distinctly and completely
separated by the pass of Daphne, that not one acre of the territory of
Eleusis can be seen from Athens, nor of Athens from Eleusis. So also,
lastly, we come to feel how natural is the remark of Thucydides, that the
population of Athens, when the Lacedæmonians invaded Attica, and came no
farther than the Thriasian plain, did not feel the terrors of a hostile
invasion, as the enemy was not in sight; but when he crossed the pass, and
began to ravage Acharnæ and the vale of Kephissus, then indeed, though
Eleusis was just as near, and just as much their own, they felt the
reality of the invasion, and were for the first time deeply dejected. This
is a good example of that combined farness and nearness which is so
characteristic about most neighboring cities in Greece.
[Illustration: Salamis from Across the Bay]
The wretched modern village of Eleusis is picturesquely situated near the
sea, on the old site, and there are still to be seen the ruins, not only
of the famous temple of Demeter, but also of the Propylæa, built
apparently in imitation of that of Mnesicles on the Acropolis at Athens,
though the site of both temple and Propylæa are at Eleusis low, and in no
way striking.
These celebrated ruins are wretchedly defaced. Not a column or a wall is
now standing, and we can see nothing but vast fragments of pillars and
capitals, and a great pavement, all of white marble, along which the
ancient wheel-tracks are distinctly visible. There are also underground
vaults of small dimensions, which, the people tell you, were intended for
the Mysteries. We that knew what vast crowds attended there would not give
credence to this ignorant guess; and indeed we knew from distinct evidence
that the great ceremony took place in a large building specially
constructed for the purpose. The necessary darkness was obtained by
performing the more solemn rites at night; not by going down beneath the
surface of the earth.
The Greek _savants_ have at last laid open, and explained, the whole plan
of the temple, which was built by Ictinus, in Pericles’s time, but
apparently restored after a destructive fire by Roman architects copying
faithfully the ancient style. The excavators have shown that the shrine
had strange peculiarities. And this is exactly what we should expect. For
although no people adhered more closely to traditional forms in their
architecture, no people were more ready to modify these forms with a view
to practical requirements. Thus, as a rule, the cella, or inner chamber of
the temple, only contained the statue of the god, and was consequently
small and narrow. In the temple at Eleusis has been found a great inner
chamber about 59 yards by 54, hewn out of the rock in the rear of the
edifice, and capable of accommodating a large assembly.(79) Here then it
seems the initiated—probably those of the higher degree, _epoptæ_ as they
were called—witnessed those services “which brought them peace in this
world, and a blessed hope for the world to come.”
The way into the temple was adorned with two Propylæa—one of the classical
period, and by Philo (311 B. C.), another set up by a Roman, App. Claudius
Pulcher, in 48 B. C., after you had passed through the former. The great
temple, raised upon a natural platform, looks out toward Salamis, and the
narrow line of azure which separates it from the land. Turning to the left
as you stand at the temple front, the eye wanders over the rich plain of
Eleusis, now dotted over with villages, and colored (in April) with the
rich brown of ploughing and the splendid green of sprouting wheat. This
plain had multiplied its wealth manifold since I first saw it, and led us
to hope that the peasants were waking up to the great market which is near
them at Athens. The track of the old sacred way along the Thriasian plain
is often visible, for much of the sea-coast is marshy, so the road was cut
out in many places along the spurs of the rocky hill of Daphne. The
present road goes between the curious salt-lakes (Rheitoi) and the
shore—salt-lakes full of sea-fish, and evidently fed by great natural
springs, for there is a perpetual strong outflow to the tideless sea. I
know not whether this natural curiosity has been explained by the learned.
It is, of course, the celebrated Mysteries—the _Greater Eleusinia_, as
they were called—which give to the now wretched village of Eleusis, with
its hopeless ruins, so deep an interest. This wonderful feast, handed down
from the remotest antiquity, maintained its august splendor all through
the greater ages of Greek history, down to the times of decay and
trifling—when everything else in the country had become mean and
contemptible. Even Cicero, who was of the initiated himself, a man of wide
culture and of a skeptical turn of mind—even Cicero speaks of it as _the_
great product of the culture of Athens. “Much that is excellent and
divine,” says he,(80) “does Athens seem to me to have produced and added
to our life, but nothing better than those Mysteries, by which we are
formed and moulded from a rude and savage life to humanity; and indeed in
the Mysteries we perceive the real principles of life, and learn not only
to live happily, but to die with a fairer hope.” These are the words of a
man writing, as I have said; in the days of the ruin and prostration of
Greece. Can we then wonder at the enthusiastic language of the Homeric
Hymn,(81) of Pindar,(82) of Sophocles,(83) of Aristophanes,(84) of
Plato,(85) of Isocrates,(86) of Chrysippus(87)? Every manner of
writer—religious poet, worldly poet, skeptical philosopher, orator—all are
of one mind about this, far the greatest of all the religious festivals of
Greece.
To what did it owe this transcendent character? It was not because men
here worshipped exceptional gods, for the worship of Demeter and Cora was
an old and widely diffused cult all over Greece: and there were other
Eleusinia in various places. It was not because the ceremony consisted of
mysteries, of hidden acts and words, which it was impious to reveal, and
which the initiated alone might know. For the habit of secret worship was
practised in every state, where special clans were charged with the care
of special secret services, which no man else might know. Nay, even within
the ordinary homes of the Greeks there were these Mysteries. Neither was
it because of the splendor of the temple and its appointments, which never
equalled the Panathenæa at the Parthenon, or the riches of Delphi, or
Olympia. There is only one reasonable cause, and it is that upon which all
our serious authorities agree. The doctrine taught in the Mysteries was a
faith which revealed hopeful things about the world to come; and which—not
so much as a condition, but as a consequence, of this clearer light, this
higher faith—made them better citizens and better men. This faith was
taught them in the Mysteries through symbols,(88) through prayer and
fasting, through wild rejoicings; but, as Aristotle expressly tells us, it
was reached not by intellectual persuasion, but by a change into a new
moral state—in fact, by being spiritually revived.
Here, then, we have the strangest and most striking analogy to our
religion in the Greek mythology; for here we have a higher faith publicly
taught,—any man might present himself to be initiated,—and taught, not in
opposition to the popular creed, but merely by deepening it, and showing
to the ordinary worldling its spiritual power. The belief in the Goddess
Demeter and her daughter, the queen of the nether world, was, as I have
said, common all over Greece; but even as nowadays we are told that there
may be two kinds of belief of the same truths—one of the head and another
of the heart—just as the most excellent man of the world, who believes all
the creeds of the Church, is called an unbeliever, in the higher sense, by
our Evangelical Christians; so the ordinary Greek, though he prayed and
offered at the Temple of Demeter, was held by the initiated at the
Mysteries to be wallowing in the mire of ignorance, and stumbling in the
night of gloom—he was held to live without real light, and to die without
hope, in wretched despair.(89)
[Illustration: Temple of Mysteries, Eleusis]
The very fact that it was not lawful to divulge the Mystery has prevented
the many writers who knew it from giving us any description by which we
might gain a clear idea of this wonderful rite. We have hints of various
sacred vessels, of various priests known by special technical names; of
dramatic representations of the rape of Cora, and of the grief of her
mother; of her complaints before Zeus, and the final reconciliation. We
hear of scenes of darkness and fear, in which the hopeless state of the
unbelievers was portrayed; of light and glory, to which the convert
attained, when at last his eyes were opened to the knowledge of good and
evil.
But all these things are fragmentary glimpses, as are also the doctrines
hinted of the Unity of God, and of atonement by sacrifice. There remains
nothing clear and certain, but the unanimous verdict as to the greatness,
the majesty, and the awe of the services, and as to the great spiritual
knowledge and comfort which they conveyed. The consciousness of guilt was
not, indeed, first taught by them, but was felt generally, and felt very
keenly by the Greek mind. These Mysteries were its Gospel of
reconciliation with the offended gods.