ELIS—OLYMPIA AND ITS GAMES—THE VALLEY OF THE ALPHEUS—MOUNT
ERYMANTHUS—PATRAS.
The thousands of visitors, whose ships thronged the bay of Katakolo every
four years in the great old times, cannot have been fairly impressed with
the beauty of the country at first sight. Most other approaches to the
coast of Greece are far more striking. For although, on a clear day, the
mountains of Arcadia are plainly visible, and form a fine background to
the view, from the great bar of Erymanthus on the north, round to the top
of Lykæon far south-west, the foreground has not, and never had, either
the historic interest or the beauty of the many bays and harbors in other
parts of Greece. Yet I am far from asserting that it is actually wanting
even in this respect. As we saw the bay in a quiet summer sunset, with
placid water reflecting a sleeping cloud and a few idle sails in its amber
glow, with a wide circle of low hills and tufted shore bathed in a golden
haze, which spread its curtain of light athwart all the distance, so that
the great snowy comb of Erymanthus alone seemed suspended by some mystery
in the higher blue—the view was not indeed very Greek, but still it was
beautiful, and no unsuitable dress wherein the land might clothe itself to
welcome the traveller, and foretell him its sunny silence and its golden
mystery.
The carriage-way along the coast passes by sand-hills, and sandy fields of
vines, which were being tilled when we saw them by kindly but squalid
peasants, some of whom lived in wretched huts of skins, enclosed with a
rough fence. But these were probably only temporary dwellings, for the
thrift and diligence of the southern Greek seems hardly compatible with
real penury. Mendicancy, except in the case of little children who do it
for the nonce, seems unknown in the Morea.
A dusty ride of two hours, relieved now and then for a moment by the
intense perfume from the orange blossoms of gardens fenced with mighty
aloes, brought us to the noisy and stirring town of Pyrgos.(115) We found
this town, one of the most thriving in Greece, quite as noisy as Naples in
proportion to its size, full of dogs barking, donkeys braying, and various
shopkeepers screaming out their wares—especially frequent where young
shrill-voiced boys were so employed. Nowhere does the ultra-democratic
temper of new Greek social life show itself more manifestly than in these
disturbed streets. Not only does every member of human society, however
young or ill-disposed, let his voice be heard without reserve, but it
seems to be considered an infraction upon liberty to silence yelping dogs,
braying donkeys, or any other animal which chooses to disturb its
neighbors.
The whole town, like most others in Greece, even in the Arcadian
highlands, is full of half-built and just finished houses, showing a rapid
increase of prosperity, or perhaps a return of the population from country
life into the towns which have always been so congenial to the race. But
if the latter be the fact, there yet seems no slackening in the
agriculture of the country, which in the Morea is strikingly diligent and
laborious, reaching up steep hillsides, and creeping along precipices,
winning from ungrateful nature every inch of niggard soil.(116) This is
indeed the contrast of northern and southern Greece. In Bœotia the rich
plains of Thebes and Orchomenos are lying fallow, while all the rugged
mountains of Arcadia are yielding wine and oil. The Greeks will tell you
that it is the result of the security established by their Government in
those parts of Greece which are not accessible from the Turkish frontier.
They assert that if their present frontier were not at Thermopylæ but at
Tempe, or even farther north, the rich plains of northern Greece would not
lie idle through fear of the bandits, which every disturbance excites
about the boundaries of ill-guarded kingdoms.
The carriage road from Pyrgos up to Olympia was just finished, and it is
now possible to drive all the way from the sea, but we preferred the old
method of travelling on horseback to the terrors of a newly-constructed
Greek thoroughfare. There is, moreover, in wandering on unpaved
thoroughfares, along meadows, through groves and thickets, and across
mountains, a charm which no dusty carriage road can ever afford. We soon
came upon the banks of the Alpheus, which we followed as our main index,
though at times we were high above it, and at times in the meadows at the
water-side; at times again mounting some wooded ridge which had barred the
way of the stream, and forced it to take a wide circuit from our course,
or again crossing the deep cuttings made by rivulets which come down from
northern Elis to swell the river from mile to mile.
Our path must have been almost the same as was followed by the crowds
which came from the west to visit the Olympic games in classical days:
they must have ascended along the windings of the river, and as they came
upon each new amphitheatre of hills, and each new tributary stream, they
may have felt the impatience which we felt that this was not the sacred
_Altis_, and that this was not the famous confluence of the Kladeus. But
the season in which they travelled—the beginning of July—can never have
shown them the valley in its true beauty. Instead of a glaring dry bed of
gravel, and meadows parched with heat, we found the Alpheus a broad and
rapid river, which we crossed on horseback with difficulty; we found the
meadows green with sprouting corn and bright with flowers, and all along
the slopes the trees were bursting into bud and blossom, and filling the
air with the rich scent of spring. Huge shrubs of arbutus and of mastich
closed around the paths, while over them the Judas tree and the wild pear
covered themselves with purple and with white, and on every bank great
scarlet anemones opened their wistful eyes in the morning sun.
[Illustration: The Banks of the Kladeus]
When we came to the real Olympia the prospect was truly disenchanting.
However interesting excavations may be, they are always exceedingly ugly.
Instead of grass and flowers, and pure water, we found the classic spot
defaced with great mounds of earth, and trodden bare of grass. We found
the Kladeus flowing a turbid drain into the larger river. We found
hundreds of workmen, and wheel-barrows, and planks, and trenches, instead
of solitude and the song of birds. Thus it was that we found the famous
temple of Zeus.
This temple was in many respects one of the most celebrated in Greece,
especially on account of the great image of Zeus, which Phidias himself
wrought for it in gold and ivory, and of which Pausanias has left us a
very wonderful description (V. II, _sqq._). It was carried away to
Constantinople, and of course its precious material precluded all chance
of its surviving through centuries of ignorance and bigotry. The temple
itself, to judge from its appearance, was somewhat older than the days of
Phidias, for it is of that thickset and massive type which we only find in
the earlier Doric temples, and which rather reminds us of Pæstum than of
Athenian remains. It was built by a local architect, Libon, and of a very
coarse limestone from the neighborhood, which was covered with stucco, and
painted chiefly white, to judge from the fragments which remain. But it
seems as if the Eleans had done all they could to add splendor to the
building, whenever their funds permitted. The tiles of the roof were not
of burnt clay, but of Pentelican marble, the well-known and beautiful
invention of the Naxian Byzes. Moreover, Phidias and a number of his
fellow-workers or subordinates at Athens, as well as other artists, had
been invited to Olympia, to adorn the temple, and to them we owe the
pediments, probably also the metopes, and many of the statues, with which
all the sacred enclosure around the edifice was literally thronged.
Subsequent generations added to this splendor: a gilded figure of Victory,
with a gold shield, was set upon the apex of the gable; gilded pitchers at
the extremities; gilded shields were fastened all along the architraves by
Mummius, from the spoils of Corinth, and the great statue of Zeus within
still remained, the wonder and the awe of the ancient world.
But with the fall of paganism and the formal extinction of the Olympic
games (394 A. D.) the glories of the temple fell into decay. The great
statue in the shrine was carried away to Byzantium; many of the votive
bronzes and marbles which stood about the sacred grove were transported to
Italy; and at last a terrible earthquake, apparently in the fifth century,
levelled the whole temple almost with the ground. The action of this
extraordinary earthquake is still plainly to be traced in the now
uncovered ruins. It upheaved the temple from the centre, throwing the
pillars of all the four sides outward, where most of them lie with their
drums separated, but still complete in all parts, and only requiring
mechanical power to set them up again. Some preliminary shakes had caused
pieces of the pediment sculptures to fall out of their place, for they
were found at the foot of the temple steps; but the main shock threw the
remainder to a great distance, and I saw the work of Alkamenes being
unearthed more than twenty-five yards from its proper site.
In spite of this convulsion, the floor of the temple, with its marble
work, and its still more beautiful mosaic, is still there, and it seemed
doubtful to the Germans whether there is even a crack now to be found in
it. About the ruins there gathered some little population, for many
fragments were found built into walls of poor and late construction; but
this work of destruction was fortunately arrested by a sudden overflow of
the Alpheus, caused by the bursting of one of the mountain lakes about
Pheneus. The river then covered all the little plain of Olympia with a
deep layer of fine sand and of mud. A thicket of arbutus and mastich
sprang from this fertile soil, and so covered all traces of antiquity,
that when Chandler visited the place 100 years ago, nothing but a part of
the cella wall was over ground, and this was since removed by neighboring
builders. But the site being certain, it only required the enterprise of
modern research to lay bare the old level so fortunately hidden by the
interposition of nature. The traveller who now visits Olympia can see the
whole plan and contour of the great temple, with all its prostrate pillars
lying around it. He can stand on the very spot where once was placed the
unrivalled image—the masterpiece of Phidias’s art. He can see the old
mosaic in colored pebbles, with its exquisite design, which later
taste—probably Roman—thought well to cover with a marble pavement. But far
above all, he can find in adjoining sheds(117) not only the remains of the
famous _Niké_ of Pæonius, which stood on a pedestal close to the east
front, but the greater part of the splendid pediment sculptures, which
will henceforth rank among the most important relics of Greek art. These
noble compositions have been restored with tolerable completeness, and now
stand next to the pediments of the Parthenon in conception and in general
design.
[Illustration: Statue of Niké, by Paeonius]
For even if the restoration were never accomplished, there is enough in
the fragments of the figures already recovered to show the genius of both
sculptors, but particularly of Alkamenes, the author of the western
pediment. This perfectly agrees with the note of Pausanias, who adds, in
mentioning this very work, that Alkamenes was considered in his day an
artist second only to Phidias.
It was objected to me by learned men on the spot, that the eastern
pediment, being the proper front of the temple, must have been the more
important, and that Pæonius, as we know from an inscription, boasts that
he obtained the executing of it by competition, thus proving that he was,
at least in this case, preferred to his rivals. But the decided
superiority of Alkamenes’s design leads me to suppose that the boast of
Pæonius only applies to the eastern pediment, and that probably the
western had been already assigned to Alkamenes. Nor do I agree with the
view that the eastern pediment must have been artistically the most
important. In several Greek temples—_e. g._, the Parthenon, the temple at
Bassæ, and in this—the great majority of visitors must have approached it
from the rear, which should accordingly have been quite the prominent side
for artistic decoration. Let me add that far more action was permitted in
the groups on this side, while over the entrance the figures were staid
and in repose, as if to harmonize with the awe and silence of the entering
worshippers. Be these things as they may, the work of Alkamenes is
certainly superior to that which remains to us of Pæonius in the eastern
pediment, and in his figure of winged Victory, which was, I think, greatly
overpraised by the critics who saw it soon after its discovery.(118)
The composition of the groups in the pediments and friezes has been
described by Pausanias (V. 10, §§ 6–10) in a passage of great interest,
which has given rise to much controversy. The general impression of Drs.
Hirschfeld and Weil, when I was at Olympia, was against the accuracy of
Pausanias, whom they considered to have blindly set down whatever the
local cicerones told him. That of Dr. Purgold was in his favor. The
traveller says, however, that the eastern pediment, in which, as already
remarked, it was not usual to represent violent action, depicted the
preparation of the chariot race between Pelops and Œnomaus. In the centre
was Zeus, whose torso has been recovered, and at the narrow ends of the
field were figures of the Alpheus and Kladeus, to the right and left of
the spectator respectively. These figures are partly recovered—graceful
young men lying forward on the ground, and raising their heads to witness
the contest.
It is worth pausing for a moment upon this disposition, which was so usual
as to be almost conventional in the pediments sculptured during the best
epochs of Greek art. In the centre, where the field was very high, and
admitted a colossal figure, it was usual to place the god whose providence
guided the events around him, and this god was represented calm and
without excitement. Then came the mythical event grouped on both sides;
but at the ends, where the field narrowed to an angle, it was usual to
represent the calmness or impassiveness of external nature. This was done
in Greek sculpture not by trees and hills, but by the gods who symbolized
them. So thoroughly was nature personified in Greek art, that its
picturesqueness was altogether postponed to its living conscious sympathy
with man, and thus to a Greek the proper representation of the rivers of
Olympia was no landscape, but the graceful forms of the river
gods—intelligent and human, yet calm spectators, as nature is wont to be.
The very same idea is carried out more characteristically in the pediment
of Alkamenes, where, in spite of the violent conflict of Centaurs and
Lapithæ, the central and extreme figures, as I shall presently notice, are
perfectly unmoved witnesses of lawless violence.
The arrangement of the rest of the eastern pediment was evidently quite
symmetrical. On Zeus’s right hand was Œnomaus, his wife Sterope, his
charioteer Myrtilus sitting before the four horses, and two grooms; on his
left, Pelops, Hippodamia, and a like number of horses and attendants. A
good many pieces of these figures have been found, sufficient to tempt
several art-critics to make conjectural restorations of the pediment, one
of which is now set up, I believe, in the museum at Berlin.
The western pediment, of which more, and more striking, fragments are
recovered, is more difficult to restore, because Pausanias is
unfortunately not nearly so precise in describing it, and because,
moreover, he is suspected of a serious blunder about the central figure.
Contrary to the precedent just mentioned, he says that this central figure
is Pirithous, whose wife is just being carried off by the Centaurs, and
ought therefore to be in violent excitement. But there had been found,
just before we arrived at Olympia, a colossal head, of the noblest
conception, which seems certainly to belong to the pediment sculptures,
and which must be the head of this central figure. It is perfectly calm
and divine in expression, and almost forces upon the spectator the
conclusion to which all the best judges lean, that it must be an Apollo,
and that this was the central figure, while Pirithous was more actively
engaged. There was on each side of this figure a Centaur carrying off, the
one a maiden (I suppose the bride) and the other a boy, and Kæneus and
Theseus at each side, coming to the rescue.
But on the other figures Pausanias is silent; and there were certainly two
beautiful mountain or river nymphs at the extremities—lying figures, with
a peculiar head-dress of a thick bandage wrapped all round the hair—which
are among the most perfect of the figures recovered. It seems also certain
that Pirithous must have been somewhere on the pediment; and this would
suggest another figure to correspond to him at the other side, for these
groups were always symmetrical. In this case Pausanias has omitted four
figures at least in his description, and seems to have besides mistaken
the largest and most important of all. The Germans cite in proof of these
strictures his passing remark on the Metopes, representing the labors of
Herakles, on one of which was (he says) Herakles about to relieve Atlas,
whereas this slab, which has been found, really represents Herakles
carrying the globe, and one of the Hesperidæ assisting him, while Atlas is
bringing to him the apple.
This criticism will seem to most ordinary people too minute, and I am
rather disposed to think well of Pausanias as an intelligent traveller,
though he, of course, made some mistakes.
But since the above words were written sufficient time has elapsed not
only to bring the excavations to an end, but to study more carefully the
recovered fragments, and offer a calmer judgment as to their merits. On
the whole, the strong feeling of the best critics has been one of
disappointment. The design of both pediments still seems to me masterly,
especially that of Alkamenes, but there can be no doubt that the execution
is far below that of the Parthenon marbles. There are some positive
faults—inability to reproduce drapery (while the nude parts are very true
to nature), and great want of care in other details. It must be urged in
answer that the pediments were meant to be seen about forty feet from the
ground, and that the painting of the figures must have brought out the
features of the drapery neglected in the carving. However true this may
be, we can answer at once that the workmen of Phidias did not produce this
kind of work. The first quality of the Attic school was that
conscientiousness in detail which meets us in every great age of art.
So serious have these difficulties appeared to some, that they have
actually suspected Pausanias of being misled, and having falsely
attributed the work of obscure local artists to Alkamenes, and perhaps
also falsely to Pæonius. They say that nothing is more common with vulgar
cicerones than to attribute to a great master any old work of uncertain
origin. Others, who will not proceed to such extremes, hold that only the
general design was made by the two sculptors, and its execution handed
over to local artists. This may probably have been the case. But I am
disposed to infer from the overpraised _Niké_, which certainly is the work
of Pæonius, that he was not an artist of the quality of the great Attic
school.(119) The whole external work of the temple seems to represent a
stage of art rather earlier and ruder than the school of Phidias. This is
eminently the case with the Metopes, which can hardly be later in date
than 460 B. C., or pre-Phidian in time.
Very different is the impression produced by the greatest and most
priceless gem of all the treasures at Olympia—the Hermes of Praxiteles,
which was actually found on the very spot where it was seen and described
by Pausanias, fallen among the ruins of the temple which originally
protected it. This exquisite figure, much smaller than life-size,
represents the god Hermes holding the infant Dionysus on one arm, and
showing the child some object now lost. The right arm and the legs from
below the knees are gone; the right foot with its sandal, an exquisite
piece of work with traces of gold and red, has been recovered. It is
remarkable that the back of the statue is unfinished, and the child
treated rather as a doll than a human infant; the main figure, however,
now widely known through copies, is the most perfect remnant of Greek art.
The temple in which the statue was found, the venerable Heræon, is the
most interesting of all the Olympian buildings in its plan, and has solved
for us many problems in Greek architecture. The acute researches of Dr.
Dörpfeld have shown that the walls were not of stone, but of sun-dried
bricks, and that the surrounding pillars had gradually replaced older
wooden pillars, one of which was still there when Pausanias saw the
building. The successive stone pillars and their capitals were of the same
order, Doric, but varied in measurements and profile according to the
taste of the day. So then this ancient building showed, like our English
cathedrals, the work of successive centuries in its restoration. The roof
and architrave were evidently of wood, for all trace of these members has
vanished; but we learn from remains of the old “treasuries” described by
Pausanias that in very old times wood and mud bricks were faced with
colored terra cotta, moulded to the required form, and that this ornament
was still used after stone had replaced bricks and mud as the material of
the walls and architrave. These curious details, and many others, have
been the main result of the architectural inquiries made by the Germans
into the archaic buildings at Olympia; but it would be tedious to the
reader of this book were I to turn aside to discuss technical details. He
will find them all put with great clearness, and indeed with elegance, in
Bötticher’s _Olympia_. The complete results of the excavations are now to
be found in the official work issued by the German Government on the
explorations.
Unfortunately, there only remains one very realistic head of a boxer from
a large class of monuments at Olympia, that of the portrait statues of
victors at the games, of which one was even attributed to Phidias, and
several to Alkamenes, in Pausanias’s time. All these were votive statues,
set up by victors at the games, or victors in war, and in the early times
were not portraits strictly speaking, but ideal figures. Later on they
became more realistic, and were made in the likeness of the offerer, a
privilege said at one time only to have been accorded to those who had won
thrice at Olympia.
The commemoration of gymnastic victories by these statues seems to have
completely supplanted the older fashion of triumphal odes, which in
Pindar’s day were so prized, and so dearly bought from lyric poets. When
these odes first came to be composed, sculpture was still struggling with
the difficulties of human expression, and there was no one who would not
feel the great artistic superiority of Pindar’s verse to the cold
stiffness of the archaic reliefs of the same epoch, which attempt
portraiture. The portrait of Aristion by Aristokles, the similar relief by
Anxenor the Naxian, and the relief of the discus thrower, are sufficient
examples of what sculptured portraits were in comparison with the rich
music of Simonides and Pindar. But while lyric poetry passed into the
higher service of tragedy, or degenerated into the extravagance of the
later dithyramb, sculpture grew into such exquisite perfection, and was of
its very nature so enduring and manifest, that the Olympic victor choose
it as the surest avenue to immortal fame. And so it was up to Pausanias’s
day, when every traveller could study the records of the games at Olympia,
or even admire the most perfect of the statues in the palaces of Roman
Emperors, whither they were transferred.
But the day came when the poets were avenged upon the sculptors. Olympia
sank under general decay and sudden catastrophe. Earthquakes and
barbarians ravaged its treasury, and while Pindar was being preserved in
manuscript, until his resurrection in the days of printing, the invasion
of the Kladeus saved the scanty remains in the _Altis_ from destruction
only by covering them with oblivion. Now, in the day of its resurrection,
pedestal after pedestal with its votive inscription has been unearthed,
but, except the _Niké_ of Pæonius, no actual votive statue had been
recovered when I saw the excavations, after two years of labor.
The river Alpheus, which has done such excellent work in its inundations,
does not confine itself to concealing antiquities, but sometimes discovers
them. Its rapid course eats away the alluvial bank which the waters have
deposited ages ago, and thus encroaches upon old tombs, from which various
relics are washed down in its turbid stream. The famous helmet dedicated
by Hiero, son of Deinomenes, was discovered in the river in this way; and
there is also in the Ministry of Public Instruction a large circular band
of bronze, _riveted_ together where the ends meet, with very archaic
zigzag and linear patterns, which was found in the same way some twenty
years ago, and which seems to me of great interest, as exhibiting a kind
of workmanship akin to the decorations in the Schliemann treasure of
Mycenæ. There is also a rude red earthen pot in the Turkish house on the
Acropolis at Athens, which is decorated with the same kind of lines. It is
very important to point out these resemblances to travellers, for there is
such endless detail in Greek antiquities, and so little has yet been
classified, that every observation may be of use to future students, even
though it may merely serve as a hint for closer research.
The Stadium and Hippodrome, which lie farther away from the river, and
right under the conical hill called Kronion, have not yet, I believe, been
completely investigated; but they may no doubt offer us some new and
interesting evidences on the management of the famous Olympian games.
These games were not at all what most people imagine them to be. I will,
therefore, delay the reader with some details concerning this most
interesting side of old Greek life.
The establishment of games at Olympia was assigned by the poets to
mythical ages, and not only is there a book of the Iliad devoted to
funeral games, but in Pindar’s eleventh Olympic Ode this particular
establishment is made coeval with the labors of Herakles. Whether such
evidence is indeed conclusive may fairly be doubted. The twenty-third book
of the Iliad, which shows traces of being a later portion of the poem,
describes contests widely differing from those at Olympia, and the
mythical founders enumerated by Pausanias (v. 7) are so various and
inconsistent that we can see how obscure the question appeared to Greek
archæologists, even did we not find at the end of the enumeration the
following significant hint:—“But after Oxylus—for Oxylus, too, established
the contest—after his reign it fell out of use till the Olympiad of
Iphitus,” that is to say, till the first Ol., which is dated 776 B. C.,
Oxylus being the companion of the Herakleidæ, who obtained Elis for his
portion. Pausanias adds that when Iphitus renewed the contest, men had
forgotten the old arrangements, and only _gradually came to remember
them_, and whenever they recollected any special competition they added it
to the games. This is the excellent man’s theory to account for the
gradual addition of long races, of wrestling, discus throwing, boxing, and
chariot racing, to the original sprint race of about 200 yards, which was
at first the only known competition.
[Illustration: Kronion Hill, Olympia]
The facts seem to me rather to point to the late growth of games in
Greece, which may possibly have begun as a local feast at Olympia in the
eighth century, but which only rose to importance during the reign of the
despots throughout Greece, when the aristocrats were prevented from
murdering one another, and compelled to adopt more peaceful pursuits.(120)
It was in the end of the seventh and opening of the sixth centuries that
the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games show by their successive
establishments the rapid spread of the fashion, and a vast number of local
contests diffused through every district in Greece the taste and the
training for such competitions.(121) These games lasted all through
classical Greek history—the Olympian even down to later times, for they
were not abolished till nearly 1200 years (Ol. 294) had elapsed since
their alleged foundation. But the day of their real greatness was gone
long before. Cicero indignantly repudiates the report that he had gone to
see such games, just as a pious earl, within our memory, repudiated the
report that he had attended the prize-fight between Sayers and Heenan. The
good generals of earlier centuries, such as Alexander the Great and
Philopœmen, set their faces against athletics as bad training for
soldiers. Nay, even earlier, the Spartans, though they could contend with
success in the _pentathlon_, when they choose, did not countenance the
fiercer competitions, as engendering bad feeling between rivals, and, what
was worse, compelling a man to declare himself vanquished, and feel
disgraced. The Athenians also, as soon as the sophists reformed education,
began to rate intellectual wrestling as far superior to any bodily
exercise. Thus the supremacy of Athens and Sparta over the other Greek
cities in the fifth century marked, in my opinion, the real turning-point
in the Greek estimate of athletics, and the fact that the great odes of
Pindar sing the glories of no Spartan, and only twice, very briefly, those
of Athenians, seems to indicate that even then men began to think of more
serious rivalries and more exciting spectacles than the festive meetings
at Olympia. In the very next generation the poets had drifted away from
them, and Euripides despises rather than admires them. The historians take
little notice of them.
Two circumstances only tended strongly to keep them up. In the first
place, musical competitions (which had always been a part of the Pythian)
and poetical rivalries were added to the sports, which were also made the
occasion of mercantile business, of social meetings, and not seldom of
political agitation. The wise responses of the Delphic oracle were not a
little indebted to the information gathered from all parts of the Hellenic
world at the games, some important celebration of which, whether at Nemea,
the Isthmus, or the greater meetings, occurred every year.
Secondly, if the art of poetry soon devoted itself to the higher objects
of tragedy, and created for itself the conflict which it celebrated, the
art of sculpture became so closely connected with athletics as to give
them an æsthetic importance of the highest kind all through Greek history.
The ancient habit of setting up ideal statues of victors, which were made
special likenesses if the subject was specially distinguished, supplied
the Greeks with a series of historical monuments and a series of physical
types not elsewhere to be matched, and thus perhaps the most interesting
part of Pausanias’s invaluable guide-book to Greece is his collection of
notes (lib. vi., 1–20) on various statues set up in this way at Olympia,
of which he mentions about two hundred, though he only professes to make a
selection, and though several of the finest had already been carried off
by Roman emperors.
These things kept alive the athletic meetings in Greece, and even
preserved for them some celebrity. The sacred truce proclaimed during the
national games was of inestimable convenience in times of long and bitter
hostilities, and doubtless enabled friends to meet who had else been
separated for life.(122) But the Panathenaic festivals were better
exponents of fourth century taste in Greece. There music and the drama
predominated. Professional displays became equally admired as a pastime
and despised as a profession; and I have no doubt that the athlete who
spent his life going about from one contest to another in search of
gymnastic triumphs was held in like contempt by Brasidas and by Cleon, by
Xenophon and by Agesilaus.
In the days of Solon things had been very different. He appointed a reward
of 500 drachmas, then a very large sum, for victors at Olympia, 100 for
those at the Isthmus, and for the others in proportion. Pindar sings as
if, to the aristocrats of Ægina, or the tyrants of Sicily, no higher
earthly prizes were attainable. But we must not transfer these
evidences—the habit or the echo of the sixth century B. C.—to the days of
political and educated Greece, when public opinion altered very
considerably on the advantage and value of physical competition. This
being once understood, I will proceed to a short analysis of the sports,
and will attempt to criticise the methods adopted by the old Greeks to
obtain the highest physical condition, the nature of the competitions they
established, and the results which they appear to have attained.
The Greeks of Europe seem always to have been aware that physical exercise
was of the greatest importance for health, and consequently for mental
vigor, and the earliest notices we have of education include careful
bodily training. Apart from the games of children, which were much the
same as ours, there was not only _orchestic_ or rhythmical dancing in
graceful figures, in which girls took part, and which corresponded to what
are now vulgarly called _callisthenics_, but also gymnastics, in which
boys were trained to those exercises which they afterward practised as
men. In addition to the _palæstras_, which were kept for the benefit of
boys as a matter of private speculation in Athens, and probably in other
towns, regular _gymnasia_ were established by the civic authorities, and
put under strict supervision as state institutions to prevent either
idleness or immorality.(123) In these gymnasia, where young men came in
the afternoon, stripped, oiled themselves, and then got a coat of dust or
fine sand over the skin, running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, and throwing
with the dart were commonly practised.
This sort of physical training I conceive to have grown up with the growth
of towns, and with the abandonment of hunting and marauding, owing to the
increase of culture. Among the aristocrats of epical days, as well as
among the Spartans, who lived a village life, surrounded by forest and
mountain, I presume field sports must have been quite the leading
amusement; nor ought competitions in a gymnasium to be compared for one
moment to this far higher and more varied recreation. The contrast still
subsists among us, and our fox-hunting, salmon-fishing, grouse-shooting
country gentleman has the same inestimable advantage over the city
athlete, whose special training for a particular event has a necessary
tendency to lower him into a professional. There is even a danger of some
fine exercises, which seemed common ground for both, such as boating and
cricket, being vulgarized by the invasion of this professional spirit,
which implies such attention to the body as to exclude higher pursuits,
and which rewards by special victories, and by public applause rather than
by the intrinsic pleasure of sport for its own sake. Thus the Spartans not
only objected to boxing and the pankration, in which the defeated
competitor might have to ask for mercy; they even for general purposes
preferred field-sports, for which they had ample opportunities, to any
special competitions in the strength of particular muscles. But in such
places as Athens and its neighborhood, where close cultivation had caused
all wild country and all game to disappear, it was necessary to supply the
place of country sport by the training of the gymnasium. This sort of
exercise naturally led to contests, so that for our purpose we need not
separate _gymnastic_ and _agonistic_, but may use the details preserved
about the latter to tell us how the Greeks practised the former.
There is no doubt that the pursuit of high muscular condition was early
associated with that of health, and that hygiene and physical training
were soon discovered to be closely allied. Thus Herodicus, a trainer, who
was also an invalid, was said to have discovered from his own case the
method of treating disease by careful diet and regimen, and to have thus
contributed to the advancement of Greek medicine. Pausanias also mentions
(vi. 3, 9) the case of a certain Hysmon, an Elean, who, when a boy, had
rheumatism in his limbs, and on this account practised for the pentathlon,
that he might become a healthy and sound man. His training made him not
only sound, but a celebrated victor.
It would be very interesting to know in detail what rules the Greeks
prescribed for this purpose. Pausanias tells us (vi. 7, 9) that a certain
Dromeus, who won ten victories in long races at various games (about Ol.
74, 485 B. C.), was the first who thought of eating meat in his training,
for that up to that time the diet of athletes had been cheese from wicker
baskets (_ἐκ τῶν ταλάρων_).(124) It must be remembered that meat diet was
not common among the Greeks, who, like most southern people, lived rather
upon fish, fruit, and vegetables, so that the meat dinners of Bœotia were
censured as heavy and rather disgusting. However, the discovery of Dromeus
was adopted by Greek athletes ever after, and we hear of their compulsory
meals of large quantities of meat, and their consequent sleepiness and
sluggishness in ordinary life, in such a way as to make us believe that
the Greeks had missed the real secret of training, and actually thought
that the more strong nutriment a man could take, the stronger he would
become. The quantity eaten by athletes is universally spoken of as far
exceeding the quantity eaten by ordinary men, not to speak of its heavier
quality.
The suspicion that, in consequence, Greek athletic performances were not
in speed greater than, if even equal to, our own, is however hard to
verify, as we are without any information as to the time in which their
running feats were performed. They had no watches, or nice measures of
short moments of time, and always ran races merely to see who would win,
not to see in how short a time a given distance could be done.
Nevertheless, as the course was over soft sand, and as the vases picture
them rushing along in spread-eagle fashion, with their arms like the sails
of a windmill—in order to aid the motion of their bodies, as the Germans
explain (after Philostratos)—nay, as we even hear of their having started
shouting, if we can believe such a thing, their time performances in
running must have been decidedly poor.(125)
In the Olympic games the running, which had originally been the only
competition, always came first. The distance was once up the course, and
seems to have been about 200 yards. After the year 720 B. C. (?) races of
double the course, and long races of about 3000 yards were added;(126)
races in armor were a later addition, and came at the end of the sports.
It is remarkable that among all these varieties hurdle races were unknown,
though the long jump was assigned a special place, and thought very
important. We have several extraordinary anecdotes of endurance in running
long journeys cited throughout Greek history, and even now the modern
inhabitants are remarkable for this quality. I have seen a young man keep
up with a horse ridden at a good pace across rough country for many miles,
and have been told that the Greek postmen are quite wonderful for their
speed and lasting. But this is compatible with very poor performances at
prize meetings.
There were short races for boys at Olympia of half the course. Eighteen
years was beyond the limit of age for competing, as a story in Pausanias
implies, and a boy who won at the age of twelve was thought wonderfully
young. The same authority tells us of a man who won the sprint race at
four successive meetings, thus keeping up his pace for sixteen years—a
remarkable case. There seems to have been no second prize in any of the
historical games, a natural consequence of the abolition of material
rewards.(127) There was, naturally, a good deal of chance in the course of
the contest, and Pausanias evidently knew cases where the winner was not
the best man. For example, the races were run in heats of four, and if
there was an odd man over, the owner of the last lot drawn could sit down
till the winners of the heats were declared, and then run against them
without any previous fatigue. The limitation of each heat to four
competitors arose, I fancy, from their not wearing colors (or even
clothes), and so not being easily distinguishable. They were accordingly
walked into the arena through an underground passage in the raised side of
the stadium, and the name and country of each proclaimed in order by a
herald. This practice is accurately copied in the present Olympic games
held at Athens every four years.
The next event was the wrestling match, which is out of fashion at our
prize meetings, though still a favorite sport in many country districts.
There is a very ample terminology for the various tricks and devices in
this contest, and they have been explained with much absurdity by
scholiasts, both ancient and modern. It seems that it was not always
enough to throw your adversary,(128) but that an important part of the
sport was the getting uppermost on the ground; and in no case was a man
declared beaten till he was thrown three times, and was actually laid on
his back. It is not worth while enumerating the various technical terms,
but it may be observed that a good deal of what we should call foul play
was tolerated. There was no kicking, such as there used to be in wrestling
matches in Ireland, because there were no boots, but Pausanias mentions
(vi. 4, 3) a man who did not know how to wrestle, but defeated his
opponents by breaking their fingers. We shall return to this point when
speaking of the _pankration_.
When the wrestling was over there followed the throwing of the discus and
the dart, and the long leap, but in what order is uncertain; for I cannot
accept as evidence the pentameter line of Simonides, which enumerates the
games of the pentathlon, seeing that it would be impossible to vary them
from the order he gives without great metrical difficulties. Our only safe
guide is, I think, the date of the origin of each kind of competition, as
it was plainly the habit of the Greeks to place the new event next after
those already established. The sole exception to this is in the
establishing of contests for boys, which seem always to have come
immediately before the corresponding competition for men. But we are only
told that both wrestling and the contest of five events (pentathlon) dated
from the 18th Ol. (710 B. C.), and are not informed in what order each was
appointed.(129)
[Illustration: Entrance to the Stadium, Olympia]
The discus-throwing was mainly to test distance, but the dart-throwing to
strike a mark. The discus was either of stone or of metal, and was very
heavy. I infer from the attitude of Myron’s discobolus, as seen in our
copies, that it was thrown without a preliminary run, and rather hurled
standing. This contest is to be compared with our hammer-throwing, or
putting of weights. We are, however, without any accurate information
either as to the average weight of the discus, or the average distance
which a good man could throw it. There is, indeed, one ancient specimen
extant, which was found at Ægina, and is now preserved among the bronze
antiquities at Munich. It is about eight inches in diameter, and something
under four pounds in weight. But there seem to have been three sizes of
discus, according as they were intended for boys, for grown youths
(_ἀγένειοι_), or for men, and it is not certain to which class this discus
belongs. Philostratos mentions one hundred cubits as a fine throw, but in
such a way as to make it doubtful whether he is not talking at random and
in round numbers. Similarly, we have no details concerning the javelin
contest. But I suspect that here, if anywhere, the Greeks could do what we
cannot; for the savages of to-day, who use spears, can throw them with a
force and accuracy which is to us quite surprising. It is reported by
trustworthy travellers that a Kaffir who comes suddenly on game will put a
spear right into an antelope at ten or twelve yards’ distance by an
underhand chuck, without taking time to raise his arm. This is beyond the
ability of any English athlete, however trained.
The question of the long jump is more interesting, as it still forms a
part of our contests. It is not certain whether the old Greeks practised
the running jump, or the high jump, for we never hear of a preliminary
start, or of any difficulty about “breaking trig,” as people now call it.
Furthermore, an extant epigram on a celebrated athlete, Phayllus of
Kroton, asserts that he jumped clean over the prepared ground (which was
broken with a spade) on to the hard ground beyond—a distance of forty-nine
feet. We cannot, of course, though some German professors believe it,
credit this feat, if it were a single long jump, yet we can find no trace
of anything like a hop, step, and jump, so that it seems wonderful how
such an absurdity should be gravely repeated in an epigram. But the
exploit became proverbial, and to leap _ὑπὲρ τὰ σκάμματα_ (beyond the
digging) was a constantly repeated phrase.
The length of Phayllus’s leap would be even more incredible if the
competition was in a standing jump, and yet the figures of athletes on
vases which I have seen strongly favor this supposition. They are
represented not as running, but as standing and swinging the dumb-bells or
_ἁλτῆρες_ (jumpers), which were always used by the older Greeks, as
assisting them materially in increasing their distance. I can imagine this
being the case in a standing jump where a man rose with the forward swing
of the weights, but in a running jump the carrying of the weights must
surely impede rather than assist him. I know that Irish peasants, who take
off very heavy boots to jump, often carry one in each hand, and throw them
backward violently as they rise from the ground; but this principle is not
admitted so far as I know, by any scientific authority, as of the
slightest assistance.
We hear of no vaulting or jumping with a pole, so that in fact the leap
seems an isolated contest, and of little interest except as determining
one of the events of the pentathlon, in which a man must win three in
order to be declared victor. This pentathlon, as comprising gentlemanly
exercise without much brutality, was especially patronized by the
Spartans. It was attempted for boys, but immediately abandoned, the strain
being thought excessive for growing constitutions.
There remain the two severest and most objectionable sports—boxing and the
pankration. The former came first (Ol. 23), the other test of strength not
being admitted till Ol. 33 (650 B. C.). But one special occasion is
mentioned when a champion, who was competing in both, persuaded the judges
to change the order, that he might not have to contend against a specially
famous antagonist when already wounded and bruised. For boxing was, even
from Homeric times, a very dangerous and bloody amusement, in which the
vanquished were always severely punished. The Greeks were not content with
naked fists, but always used a special apparatus, called _ἱμάντες_, which
consisted at first of a weight carried in the hand, and fastened by thongs
of hide round the hand and wrist. But this ancient cestus came to be
called the gentle kind (_μειλίχαι_) when a later and more brutal invention
introduced “sharp thongs on the wrist,” and probably increased the weight
of the instrument. The successful boxer in the Iliad (Epeius) confesses
that he is a bad warrior, though he is the acknowledged champion in his
own line; but evidently this sport was not highly esteemed in epic days.
In historical times it seems to have been more favored. There was no doubt
a great deal of skill required for it, but I think the body of the
evidence goes to prove that the Greeks did not box on sound principles,
and that any prominent member of the P. R. with his naked fists would have
easily settled any armed champion of Olympian fame. Here are my reasons:
The principle of increasing the weight of the fist as much as possible is
only to be explained by the habit of dealing swinging or downward strokes,
and is incompatible with the true method of striking straight home
quickly, and giving weight to the stroke by sending the whole body with
it. In Vergil’s description a boxer is even described getting up on
tip-toe to strike his adversary on the top of the head—a ridiculous
manœuvre, which must make his instant ruin certain, if his opponent knew
the first elements of the art. That this downward stroke was used appears
also from the anecdote in Pausanias, where a father seeing his son, who
was ploughing, drive in the share which had fallen out with strokes of his
fist, without a hammer, immediately entered him for the boys’ boxing match
at Olympia. The lad got roughly handled from want of skill, and seemed
likely to lose, when the father called out: “Boy, give him the plough
stroke!” and so encouraged him that he forthwith knocked his adversary out
of time.
It is almost conclusive as to the swinging stroke that throughout
antiquity a boxer was not known as a man with his nose broken, but as a
man _with his ears crushed_. Vergil even speaks of their receiving blows
on the back. Against all this there are only two pieces of evidence—one of
them incredible—in favor of the straight home stroke. In the fight between
Pollux and Amykos, described by Theocritus (_Idyll_ 22), Pollux strikes
his man on the left temple, _καὶ ἐπέμπεσεν ὤμῳ_, which may mean, “and
follows up the stroke from the shoulder.” But this is doubtful. The other
is the story of Pausanias (viii. 40, 3), that when Kreugas and Damoxenos
boxed till evening, and neither could hit the other, they at last agreed
to receive stroke about, and after Kreugas had dealt Damoxenos one on the
head, the latter told him to hold up his hand,(130) and then drove his
fingers right into Kreugas, beneath the ribs, and pulled out his entrails.
Kreugas of course died on the spot, but was crowned as victor, on the
ground that Damoxenos had broken his agreement of striking _one_ blow in
turn, by striking him with five separate fingers! But this curious
decision was only one of many in which a boxing competitor was
disqualified for having fought with the intention of maiming his
antagonist.
Little need be added about the pankration, which combined boxing and
wrestling, and permitted every sort of physical violence except biting. In
this contest a mere fall did not end the affair, as might happen in
wrestling, but the conflict was always continued on the ground, and often
ended in one of the combatants being actually choked, or having his
fingers and toes broken. One man, Arrachion, at the last gasp, broke his
adversary’s toe, and made him give in, at the moment he was himself dying
of strangulation. Such contests were not to the credit either of the
humanity or of the good taste of the Greeks, and would not be tolerated
even in the lowest of our prize rings.
I will conclude this sketch by giving some account of the general
management of the prize meetings.
There was no want of excitement and of circumstance about them. In the
case of the four great meetings there was even a public truce proclaimed,
and the competitors and visitors were guaranteed a safe journey to visit
them and to return to their homes. The umpires at the Olympic games were
chosen ten months before at Elis, and seem to have numbered one for each
clan, varying through Greek history from two to twelve, but finally fixed
at ten. They were called both here and at the other great games
_Ἑλλανοδίκαι_, judges of the Hellenes, in recognition of their national
character. Three superintended the pentathlon, three the horse races, and
the rest the other games. They had to reside together in a public
building, and undergo strict training in all the details of their
business, in which they were assisted by heralds, trumpeters, stewards,
etc. Their office was looked upon as of much dignity and importance.
When the great day came, they sat in purple robes in the semicircular end
of the racecourse—a piece of splendor which the modern Greeks imitate by
dressing the judges of the new Olympic games in full evening dress and
white kid gloves. The effect even now with neatly-clothed candidates is
striking enough; what must it have been when a row of judges in purple
looked on solemnly at a pair of men dressed in oil and dust—_i. e._, in
mud—wrestling or rolling upon the ground? The crowd cheered and shouted as
it now does. Pausanias mentions a number of cases where competitors were
disqualified for unfairness, and in most of them the man’s city took up
the quarrel, which became quite a public matter; but at the games the
decision was final, nor do we hear of a case where it was afterward
reversed.(131) They were also obliged to exact beforehand from each
candidate an oath that he was of pure Hellenic parentage, that he had not
taken, or would not take, any unfair advantage, and that he had spent ten
months in strict training. This last rule I do not believe. It is absurd
in itself, and is contradicted by such anecdotes as that of the sturdy
plough-boy quoted above, and still more directly by the remark of
Philostratos (_Γυμν._ 38), who ridicules any inquiry into the morals or
training of an athlete by the judges. Its only meaning could have been to
exclude random candidates, if the number was excessive, and in later times
some such regulation may have subsisted, but I do not accept it for the
good classical days. There is the case of a boy being rejected for looking
too young and weak, and winning in the next Olympiad among the men, But in
another instance the competitor disqualified (for unfairness) went mad
with disappointment. Aristotle notes that it was the rarest possible
occurrence for a boy champion to turn out successful among the full-grown
athletes, but Pausanias seems to contradict him, a fair number of cases
being cited among the selection which he makes.
There is yet one unpleasant feature to be noted, which has disappeared
from our sports. Several allusions make it plain that the vanquished, even
vanquished boys, were regarded as fit subjects for jibe and ridicule, and
that they sneaked home by lanes and backways. When the most ideal account
which we have of the games gives us this information, we cannot hesitate
to accept it as probably a prominent feature, which is, moreover,
thoroughly consistent with the character of the old Greeks as I conceive
it.(132)
The general conclusion to which all these details lead us is this, that
with all the care and with all the pomp expended on Greek athletic
meetings, despite the exaggerated fame attained by victors, and the solid
rewards both of money and of privileges accorded them by their grateful
country, the results attained physically seem to have been inferior to
those of English athletes. There was, moreover, an element of brutality in
them, which is very shocking to modern notions: and not all the ideal
splendor of Pindar’s praises, or of Pythagoras’s art, can raise the Greek
pankratiast as an athlete much above the level of a modern prize-fighter.
But, nevertheless, by the aid of their monumental statues, their splendid
lyric poetry, and the many literary and musical contests which were
combined with the gymnastic, the Greeks contrived, as usual, to raise very
common things to a great national manifestation of culture which we cannot
hope to equal.
For common they were, and very human, in the strictest sense. Dry-as-dust
scholars would have us believe that the odes of Pindar give a complete
picture of these games; as if all the booths about the course had not been
filled with idlers, pleasure-mongers, and the scum of Greek society!
Tumbling, thimble-rigging, and fortune-telling, along with love-making and
trading, made Olympia a scene not unlike the Derby. When the drinking
parties of young men began in the evening, there may even have been a
_soupçon_ of Donnybrook Fair about it, but that the committee of
management were probably strict in their discipline. From the Isthmian
games the successful athletes, with their training over, retired, as most
athletes do, to the relaxation afforded by city amusements. One can
imagine how amply Corinth provided for the outburst of liberty after the
long and arduous subjection of physical training.
But all these things are perhaps justly forgotten, and it is ungrateful to
revive them from oblivion. The dust and dross of human conflict, the blood
and the gall, the pain and the revenge—all this was laid aside like the
athlete’s dress, and could not hide the glory of his naked strength and
his iron endurance. The idleness and vanity of human admiration have
vanished with the motley crowd, and have left us free to study the deeper
beauty of human vigor with the sculptor, and the spiritual secrets of its
hereditary origin with the poet. Thus Greek gymnastic, with all its
defects—perhaps even with its absurdities—has done what has never been
even the dream of its modern sister; it stimulated the greatest artists
and the highest intellects in society, and through them ennobled and
purified public taste and public morals.
When we left Olympia, and began to ascend the course of the Alpheus, the
valley narrowed to the broad bed of the stream. The way leads now along
the shady slopes high over the river, now down in the sandy flats left
bare in the summer season. There are curious zones of vegetation
distinctly marked along the course of the valley. On the river bank, and
in the little islands formed by the stream, are laurels, myrtles, and
great plane-trees. On the steep and rocky slopes are thick coverts of
mastich, arbutus, dwarf-holly, and other evergreens which love to clasp
the rocks with their roots; and they are all knit together by great
creeping plants, the wild vine, the convolvulus, and many that are new and
nameless to the northern stranger. On the heights, rearing their great
tops against the sky, are huge pine-trees, isolated and still tattered
with the winter storms.
“Ces adieux à l’Elide,” adds M. Beulé, “laissent une pure et vive
impression. Rarement la nature se trouve en si parfaite harmonie avec les
souvenirs. On dirait un théâtre éternel, toujours prêt pour les joies
pacifiques, toujours paré pour les fêtes, et qui, depuis dix-huit siècles,
attend ses acteurs qui ont disparu.”
[Illustration: The Valley of the Alpheus]
Travellers going from Olympia northward either go round by carriage
through Elis to Patras—a drive of two days—or by Kalavryta to Megaspilion,
and thence to Vostitza, thus avoiding the great Alps of Olonos (as
Erymanthus is now called) and Chelmos, which are among the highest and
most picturesque in Greece. After my last visit to Olympia (1884) I was so
tantalized by the perpetual view of the snowy crest of Olonos, that I
determined to attempt a new route, not known to any of the
guide-books,(133) and cross over the mountain, as directly as I could,
from Olympia to Patras. It was easy for me to carry out this plan, being
accompanied by a young Greek antiquarian, M. Castroménos, and by Dr.
Purgold from Olympia, who had travelled through most of Greece, but was as
anxious as I was to try this new route.
So we started on a beautiful spring morning, up the valley of the Kladeos,
with all the trees bursting into leaf and blossom, and the birds singing
their hymns of delight. The way was wooded, and led up through narrow and
steep, but not difficult glens, until, on a far higher level, we came in
three or four hours to the village of Lala, once an important Turkish
fort. Here was a higher plain, from which we began to see the plan of that
vast complex of mountains which form the boundaries of the Old Elis,
Achaia, and Arcadia, and which have so often been the scenes of difficult
campaigns. From Lala, where we breakfasted, we crossed a sudden deep
valley, and found ourselves, on regaining the higher level, in a vast oak
forest, unlike anything I had yet seen in Greece. The trees had been
undisturbed for centuries, and the forest was even avoided in summer by
the natives, on account of the many poisonous snakes which hid in the deep
layers of dead leaves. In that high country the oaks were just turning
pink with their new buds, and not a green leaf was to be seen, so we could
trust to the winter sleep of the snakes, while we turned aside again and
again from our path, to the great perplexity of the muleteers, to dig up
wood anemones of all colors, pale blue, pink, deep crimson, scarlet,
snowy-white, which showed brilliantly on the brown oak-leaf carpet.
We spent at least two hours in riding through this forest, and then we
rose higher and higher, passing along the upper edge of deep glens, with
rushing streams far beneath us. The most beautiful point was one from
which we looked down a vast straight glen of some fifteen miles, almost as
deep as a cañon, with the silvery Erymanthus river pursuing its furious
course so directly as to be clearly visible all the way. But though
ascending the river from this point, where its course comes suddenly round
a corner, the upper country was no longer wooded, but bleak, like most of
the Alpine Arcadia, a country of dire winters and great hardship to the
population, who till an unwilling soil on the steep slopes of giant
precipices.
We were much tempted to turn up another tortuous glen to the hidden nest
of Divri, where the Greeks found refuge from Turkish prosecution in the
great war—a place so concealed, and so difficult of access, that an armed
force has never penetrated there. But the uncertainties of our route were
too many to admit of these episodes, so we hurried on to reach the Kahn of
Tripotamo in the evening—a resting-place which suggested to us strongly
the inn where St. John is reported to have slept in the apocryphal _Acts_
of his life. Being very tired with preaching and travelling, he found it
so impossible to share the room with the bugs, that he besought them in
touching language to allow him to sleep; practically in virtue of his
apostolic authority, he ordered them out of the house. They all obeyed,
but when in the morning the apostle and his companions found them waiting
patiently outside the door, he was so moved by their consideration for
him, that he permitted them to return and infest the house.
Nor were the bugs perhaps the worst. Being awakened by a crunching noise
in the night, I perceived that a party of cats had come in to finish our
supper for us, and when startled by a flying boot, they made our beds and
bodies the stepping stones for a leap to the rafters, and out through a
large hole in the roof. By and by I was aroused by the splashing of cold
water in my face, and found that a heavy shower had come on, and was
pouring through the cats’ passage. So I put up my umbrella in bed till the
shower was over—the only time I felt rain during the whole of that voyage.
I notice that Miss Agnes Smith, who travelled through these parts in May,
1883, and had very similar experiences at Tripotamo, was wet through
almost every day. We did not see more than two showers, and were moreover
so fortunate as to have perfectly calm days whenever we were crossing high
passes, though in general the breeze was so strong as to be almost stormy
in the valleys.
Next morning we followed the river up to the neighboring site of Psophis,
so picturesquely described by Polybius in his account of Philip V., and
his campaigns in Elis and Triphylia.(134) This town, regarded as the
frontier-town of Elis, Arcadia, and Achaia, would well repay an
enterprising excavator. The description of Polybius can be verified
without difficulty, and ruins are still visible. We found out from a
solitary traveller that our way turned to the north, up one of the
affluents of the Erymanthus, and so we ascended in company with this
worthy man to a village (Lechouri) under the highest precipices of Olonos.
He was full of the curiosity of a Greek peasant—Who were we, where did we
come from, were we married, had we children, how many, what was our
income, was it from land, was it paid by the State, could we be dismissed
by the Government, were we going to write about Greece, what would we say,
etc., etc.? Such was the conversation to which we submitted for the sake
of his guidance. But at last it seemed as if our way was actually at an
end, and we had come into an impassable _cul-de-sac_. Perpendicular walls
of rock surrounded us on all sides except where we had entered by
constantly fording the stream, or skirting along its edge. Was it possible
that the curiosity of our fellow-traveller had betrayed him into leading
us up this valley to the village whither he himself was bound? We sought
anxiously for the answer, when he showed us a narrow strip of dark
pine-trees coming down from above, in form like a little torrent, and so
reaching with a narrow thread of green to the head of the valley. This was
our pass, the pine-trees with their roots and stems made a zigzag path up
the almost perpendicular wall possible, and so we wended our way up with
infinite turnings, walking or rather climbing for safety’s sake, and to
rest the laboring mules. Often as I had before attempted steep ascents
with horses in Greece, I never saw anything so astonishing as this.
When we had reached the top we found ourselves on a narrow saddle, with
snowy heights close to us on both sides, the highest ridge of Olonos
facing us a few miles away, and a great pine forest reaching down on the
northern side, whither our descent was to lead us. About us were still
great patches of snow, and in them were blowing the crocus and the
cyclamen, with deep blue scilla. Far away to the south reached, in a great
panorama, the mountains of Arcadia, and even beyond them the highest tops
of Messene and Laconia were plainly visible. The air was clear, the day
was perfectly fine and calm. To the north the chain of Erymanthus still
hid from us the far distance. For a long time, while our muleteers slept
and the mules and ponies rested, we sat wondering at the great view. The
barometer indicated that we were at a height of about 5500 feet. The
freshness and purity of the atmosphere was such that no thought of hunger
and fatigue could mar our perfect enjoyment. In the evening, descending
through gloomy pines and dazzling snow, we reached the village of Hagios
Vlasos, where the song of countless nightingales beguiled the hours of the
night, for here too sleep was not easily obtained.
The journey from this point to Patras, which we accomplished in twelve
hours, is not so interesting, and the traveller who tries it now had
better telegraph for a carriage to meet him as far as possible on the way.
By this time a good road is finished for many miles, and the tedium and
heat of the plain, as you approach Patras, are very trying. But with this
help, I think no journey in all Greece so well worth attempting, and of
course it can be accomplished in either direction.
Patras is indeed an excellent place for a starting-point. Apart from the
route just described, you can go by boat to Vostitza, and thence to
Megaspilion. There are, moreover, splendid alpine ascents to be made for
those who like such work, to the summits of Chelmos and Olonos
(Erymanthus), and this is best done from Patras. Moreover, Patras is
itself a most lovely place, commanding a noble view of the coast and
mountains of Ætolia across the narrow fiord, as well as of the Ionian
islands to the N. W. Right opposite is the ever-interesting site of
Missolonghi. Last, and perhaps not least, there is at Patras a most
respectable inn, indeed I should call it a hotel,(135) where the traveller
who has spent ten days of rough outing in Peloponnesus will find a haven
of rest and comfort. From here steamers will carry him to Athens round the
coast, or home to Italy.