ARCADIA—ANDRITZENA—BASSÆ—MEGALOPOLIS—TRIPOLITZA.
There is no name in Greece which raises in the mind of the ordinary reader
more pleasing and more definite ideas than the name Arcadia. It has become
indissolubly connected with the charms of pastoral ease and rural
simplicity. The sound of the shepherd’s pipe and the maiden’s laughter,
the rustling of shady trees, the murmuring of gentle fountains, the
bleating of lambs and the lowing of oxen—these are the images of peace and
plenty which the poets have gathered about that ideal retreat. There are
none more historically false, more unfounded in the real nature and aspect
of the country, and more opposed to the sentiment of the ancients. Rugged
mountains and gloomy defiles, a harsh and wintry climate, a poor and
barren soil, tilled with infinite patience; a home that exiled its
children to seek bread at the risk of their blood, a climate more opposed
to intelligence and to culture than even Bœotian fogs, a safe retreat of
bears and wolves—this is the Arcadia of old Greek history. Politically it
has no weight whatever till the days of Epaminondas, and the foundation of
Megalopolis. Intellectually, its rise is even later, and it takes no
national part in the great march of literature from Homer to
Menander.(136) It was only famed for the marketable valor of its hardy
mountaineers, of whom the Tegeans had held their own even against the
power of Sparta, and obtained an honorable place in her army. It was also
noted for rude and primitive cults, of which later men praised the
simplicity and homely piety—at times also, the stern gloominess, which did
not turn from the offering of human blood.
I must remind the reader that rural beauty among the ancients, as well as
among the Renaissance visions of an imaginary Arcadia as a rustic
paradise, by no means included the wild picturesqueness which we admire in
beetling cliffs and raging torrents. These were inhospitable and savage to
the Greeks. It was the gentle slope, the rich pasture, the placid river
framed in deep foliage—it was, in fact, landscape-scenery like the valleys
of the Thames, or about the gray abbeys of Yorkshire, which satisfied
their notion of perfect landscape; and in this the men of the Renaissance
were perfectly agreed with them.
How, then, did the false notion of our Arcadia spring up in modern Europe?
How is it that even our daily papers assume this sense, and know it to be
intelligible to the most vulgar public? The history of the change from the
historical to the poetical conception is very curious, and worth the
trouble of explaining, especially as we find it assumed in many books, but
accounted for in none.
It appears that from the oldest days the worship of Pan had its home in
Arcadia, particularly about Mount Mænalus, and that it was already ancient
when it was brought to Athens at the time of the Persian Wars. The extant
Hymn to Pan, among the Homeric Hymns, which may have been composed shortly
after that date, is very remarkable for its idyllic and picturesque tone,
and shows that with this worship of Pan were early associated those trains
of nymphs and rustic gods, with their piping and dance, which inspired
Praxiteles’s inimitable Faun. These images are even transferred by
Euripides to the Acropolis, where he describes the daughters of Aglauros
dancing on the sward, while Pan is playing his pipe in the grotto
underneath (_Ion_, vv. 492, _sqq._). Such facts seem to show a gentle and
poetical element in the stern and gloomy mountaineers, who lived, like the
Swiss of our day, in a perpetual struggle with nature, and were all their
lives harassed with toil and saddened with thankless fatigue. This
conclusion is sustained by the evidence of a far later witness, Polybius,
who in his fourth book mentions the strictness with which the Arcadians
insisted upon an education in music, as necessary to soften the harshness
and wildness of their life. He even maintains that the savagery of one
town (Kynætha) was caused by a neglect of this salutary precaution. So it
happens that, although Theocritus lays his pastoral scenes in the uplands
of Sicily, and the later pastoral romances, such as the exquisite _Daphnis
and Chloe_, are particularly associated with the voluptuous Lesbos,
Vergil, in several of his _Eclogues_, makes allusion to the musical talent
of Arcadian shepherds, and in his tenth brings the unhappy Gallus into
direct relation to Arcadia in connection with the worship of Pan on
Mænalus. But this prominent feature in Vergil—borrowed, I suppose, from
some Greek poet, though I know not from whom—bore no immediate fruit. His
Roman imitators, Calpurnius and Nemesianus, make no mention of Arcadia,
and if they had, their works were not unearthed till the year 1534, when
the poetical Arcadia had been already, as I shall show, created. There
seems no hint of the idea in early Italian poetry;(137) for according to
the histories of mediæval literature, the pastoral romance did not
originate until the very end of the fourteenth century, with the
Portuguese Ribeyro, and he lays all the scenes of his idylls not in a
foreign country, but in Portugal, his own home. Thus we reach the year
1500 without any trace of a poetical Arcadia. But at that very time it was
being created by the single work of a single man. The celebrated Jacopo
Sannazaro, known by the title of Actius Sincerus in the affected society
of literary Naples, exiled himself from that city in consequence of a deep
and unrequited passion. He lay concealed for a long time, it is said, in
the wilds of France, possibly in Egypt, but certainly not in Greece, and
immortalized his grief in a pastoral medley of prose description and
idyllic complaint called _Arcadia_,(138) and suggested, I believe, by the
Gallus of Vergil. Though the learned and classical author despised this
work in comparison with his heroic poem on the Conception of the Virgin
Mary, the public of the day thought differently. Appearing in 1502, the
_Arcadia_ of Sannazaro went through sixty editions during the century, and
so this single book created that imaginary home of innocence and grace
which has ever since been attached to the name. Its occurrence
henceforward is so frequent as to require no further illustration in this
place.
But let us turn from this poetical and imaginary country to the real
land—from Arcádia to Arcadía, as it is called by the real inhabitants. As
everybody knows, this Arcadia is the alpine centre of the Morea, bristling
with mountain chains, which reach their highest points in the great bar of
Erymanthus, to the N. W., in the lonely peak of “Cyllene hoar,” to the
N. E., in the less conspicuous, but far more sacred Lykæon, to the S. W.,
and finally, in the serrated Taygetus to the S. E. These four are the
angles, as it were, of a quadrilateral enclosing Arcadia. Yet these are
but the greatest among chains of great mountains, which seem to traverse
the country in all directions, and are not easily distinguished, or
separated into any connected system.(139) They are nevertheless
interrupted, as we found, by two fine oval plains—both stretching north
and south, both surrounded with a beautiful panorama of mountains, and
both, of course, the seats of the old culture, such as it was in Arcadia.
That which is southerly and westerly, and from which the rivers still flow
into the Alpheus and the western sea,(140) is guarded at its south end by
Megalopolis. That which is more east, which is higher in level, and
separated from the former by the bleak bar of Mænalus, is the plain of
Mantinea and Tegea, now represented by the important town of Tripolitza.
These two parallel plains give some plan and system to the confusion of
mountains which cover the ordinary maps of Arcadia.
The passage from Elis into Arcadia is nowhere marked by any natural
boundary. You ride up the valley of the Alpheus, crossing constantly the
streams, great and small, which come flowing into it from the spurs of
Erymanthus, from northern Arcadia, and the adjoining highlands of Elis.
The stream called Erymanthus, which is the old boundary, though called a
_λάβρος ποταμὸς_ by Polybius, does not strike the traveller here as it
does higher up in its course, and the only other confluent water worth
mentioning is the Ladon, which meets the Alpheus at some hours’ ride above
Olympia, but which counted of old as a river of Arcadia. This Ladon seems
to have specially struck Pausanias with its beauty, as he returns to it
several times; and later observers, such as M. Beulé, have corroborated
him, saying that on the banks of this river you may indeed find the
features of the poetical Arcadia—grassy slopes and great shady trees,
without the defiles and precipices so common in the inner country. The
Ladon and its valley in fact, though in Arcadia, partake of the character
of the neighboring Elis: it is the outer boundary of the real Alps. The
Alpheus, on the contrary, which is a broad, peaceful stream when it passes
into tamer country, comes through the wildest part of central Arcadia; and
if you follow its course upward, will lead you first past the ancient site
of Heræa, a few miles above the Ladon, and then through rugged and savage
mountains, till you at last ascend to the valley of Megalopolis, round
which it winds in a great curve. We did not follow this route, nor did we
ascend the valley of the Ladon, in spite of its reputed beauties. For we
were bound for Andritzena, a ride of eleven hours from Olympia, which lay
to the S. E., and within easy distance of the temple of Bassæ. We
therefore forded the Alpheus, just above the confluence of the Ladon,
where the two rivers form a great delta of sand, and the stream is broad
and comparatively shallow. The banks were clothed with brushwood, and
above it with a green forest, along the grassy margin of which scarlet
anemones were scattered like our primroses among the stems of the trees,
and varied with their brightness the mosses and hoary lichen. From this
point onward we began to cross narrow defiles, and climb up steeps which
seemed impossible to any horse or mule. We entered secluded mountain
valleys, where the inhabitants appeared to live apart from all the world,
and looked with wonder upon the sudden stranger. We rested beside tumbling
rivers, rushing from great wooded mountain sides, which stood up beside us
like walls of waving green. The snow had disappeared from these wild
valleys but a few weeks, and yet even the later trees were already clothed
with that yellow and russet brown which is not only the faded remnant, but
also the forerunner, of the summer green. And down by the river’s side the
gray fig trees were putting forth great tufts at the end of every branch,
while the pear trees were showering their snowy blossoms upon the stream.
But in one respect, all this lonely solitude showed a marked contrast to
the wilds of northern Greece. Every inch of available ground was
cultivated; all the steep hill sides were terraced in ridges with infinite
labor; the ravages of the winter’s torrent were being actively repaired.
There was indeed in some sense a solitude. No idlers or wanderers were to
be seen on the way. But the careful cultivation of all the country showed
that there was not only population, but a thrifty and careful population.
All the villages seemed encumbered with the remains of recent building;
for almost all the houses were new, or erected within very few years. The
whole of this alpine district seemed happy and prosperous. This, say the
Greeks, is the result of its remoteness from the Turkish frontier, its
almost insular position—in fact, of its being under undisturbed Hellenic
rule. No bandit has been heard of in Arcadia since the year 1847. Life and
property are, I should think, more secure than in any part of England.
Morals are remarkably pure. If all Greece were occupied in this way by a
contented and industrious peasantry, undisturbed by ambition from within
or violence from without, the kingdom must soon become rich and
prosperous. It was not uncommon to find in these valleys two or three
secluded homesteads, miles from any village. This is the surest sign both
of outward security and of inward thrift, when people cut themselves off
from society for the sake of ample room and good return for their
industry. Late in the evening we entered the steep streets of the
irregular but considerable town of Andritzena.
We experienced in this place some of the rudeness of Greek travel. As the
party was too large to be accommodated in a private house, we sought the
shelter of a _ξενοδοχεῖον_, as it is still called—an inn with no chairs,
no beds, one tiny table, and about two spoons and forks. We were in fact
lodged within four bare walls, with a balcony outside the room, and slept
upon rugs laid on the floor. The people were very civil and honest—in this
a great contrast to the inn at Tripolitza, of which I shall speak in due
time—and were, moreover, considerably inconvenienced by our arrival during
the Passion Week of the Greek Church, when there is hardly anything eaten.
There was no meat, of course, in the town. But this was not all. No form
of milk, cheese, or curds, is allowed during this fast. The people live on
black bread, olives, and hard-boiled eggs. They are wholly given up to
their processions and services; they are ready to think of nothing else.
Thus we came not only to a place scantily supplied, but at the scantiest
moment of the year. This is a fact of great importance to travellers in
Greece, and one not mentioned, I think, in the guide-books. Without making
careful provision beforehand by telegraph, no one should venture into the
highlands of Greece during this very Holy Week, and it should be
remembered that it does not coincide with the Passion or Holy Week of the
Latin Church. It was just ten days later on this occasion; so that, after
having suffered some hardships from this unforeseen cause in remote parts
of Italy, we travelled into the same difficulty in Greece. But I must say
that a Greek fast is a very different thing from the mild and human
fasting of the Roman Catholic Church. We should have been well-nigh
starved had I not appealed, as was my wont, to the physician, _ὁ κύριος
ἴατρος_, of the town, a very amiable and cultivated man, and really
educated in the most philosophical views of modern medicine. He was well
acquainted, for example, with the clinical practice of the Dublin school,
as exemplified in the works of Graves and Stokes. It seems to me, from a
comparison of many instances, that in this matter of medicine, as indeed
generally, the Greeks show remarkable intelligence and enterprise as
compared with the nations around them. They study in the great centres of
European thought. They know the more important languages in which this
science can be pursued. A traveller taken ill in the remote valleys of
Arcadia would receive far safer and better treatment than would be his lot
in most parts of Italy.
The gentleman to whom I appealed in this case did all he could to save us
from starvation. He procured for us excellent fresh curds. He obtained us
the promise of meat from the mountains. He came to visit us, and tell us
what we required to know of the neighborhood. Thus we were able to spend
the earlier portion of the night in comparative comfort. But, as might
have been expected, when the hour for sleep had arrived our real
difficulties began. I was protected by a bottle of spirits of camphor,
with which my rugs and person were sufficiently scented to make me an
object of aversion to my assailants. But the rest of the party were not so
fortunate. It was, in fact, rather an agreeable diversion, when we were
roused, or rather, perhaps, distracted, shortly after midnight, by
piercing yells from a number of children, who seemed to be slowly
approaching our street.
On looking out a very curious scene presented itself. All the little
children were coming in slow procession, each with a candle in its hand,
and shouting _Kyrie Eleison_ at the top of its voice. After the children
came the women and the older men (I fancy many of the younger men were
absent), also with candles, and in the midst a sort of small bier, with an
image of the dead Christ laid out upon it, decked with tinsel and flowers,
and surrounded with lights. Along with it came priests in their robes,
singing in gruff bass some sort of Litany. The whole procession adjourned
to the church of the town, where the women went to a separate gallery, the
men gathered in the body of the building, and a guard of soldiers with
fixed bayonets stood around the bier of their Christ. Though the
congregation seemed very devout, and many of them in tears at the
sufferings of their Saviour, they nevertheless all turned round to look at
the strangers who chanced to witness their devotions. To those who come
from without, and from a different cult, and see the service of a strange
nation in a strange tongue, the mesquin externals are the first striking
point, and we wonder how deep devotion and true piety can exist along with
what is apparently mean and even grotesque. And yet it is in these poor
and shabby services, it is with this neglect or insouciance of detail,
that purer faith and better morals are found than in the gorgeous pageants
and stately ceremonies of metropolitan cathedrals.
We rose in the morning eager to start on our three hours’ ride to Bassæ,
where Ictinus had built his famous but inaccessible temple to Apollo the
Helper. The temple is very usually called the temple of Phigalía, and its
friezes are called Phigalian, I think, in the British Museum. This is so
far true that it was built for and managed by the people of Phigalía. But
the town was a considerable distance off,—according to Pausanias forty
stadia, or about five miles,—and he tells us they built the temple at a
place called Bassæ (the glades), near the summit of Mount Kotilion.
Accordingly, it ought to be consistently called the temple at or of Bassæ.
The morning, as is not unusual in these Alps, was lowering and gloomy, and
as we and our patient mules climbed up a steep ascent out of the town, the
rain began to fall in great threatening drops. But we would not be
daunted. The way led among gaunt and naked mountain sides, and often up
the bed of winter torrents. The lateness of the spring, for the snow was
now hardly gone, added to the gloom; the summer shrubs and the summer
grass were not yet green, and the country retained most of its wintry
bleakness. Now and then there met us in the solitude a shepherd coming
from the mountains, covered in his white woollen cowl, and with a lamb of
the same soft dull color upon his shoulders. It was the day of preparation
for the Easter feast, and the lamb was being brought by this picturesque
shepherd, not to the fold, but to the slaughter. Yet there was a strange
and fascinating suggestion in the serious face surrounded by its symphony
of white, in the wilderness around, in the helpless patience of the
animal, all framed in a background of gray mist, and dripping with
abundant rain. As we wound our way through the mountains we came to glens
of richer color and friendlier aspect. The sound of merry boys and baying
dogs reached up to us from below as we skirted far up along the steep
sides, still seeking a higher and higher level. Here the primrose and
violet took the place of the scarlet and the purple anemone, and cheered
us with the sight of northern flowers, and with the fairest produce of a
northern spring.
At last we attained a weird country, in which the ground was bare, save
where some sheltered and sunny spot showed bunches of very tall violets,
hanging over in tufts, rare purple anemones, and here and there a great
full iris; yet these patches were so exceptional as to make a strong
contrast with the brown soil. But the main features were single oak-trees
with pollarded tops and gnarled branches, which stood about all over these
lofty slopes, and gave them a melancholy and dilapidated aspect. They
showed no mark of spring, no shoot or budding leaf, but the russet brown
rags of last year’s clothing hung here and there upon the branches. These
wintry signs, the gloomy mist, and the insisting rain gave us the feeling
of chill October. And yet the weird oaks, with their branches tortured as
it were by storm and frost—these crippled limbs, which looked as if the
pains of age and disease had laid hold of the sad tenants of this alpine
desert—were colored with their own peculiar loveliness. All the stems were
clothed with delicate silver-gray lichen, save where great patches of
velvety, pale green moss spread a warm mantle about them. This beautiful
contrast of gray and yellow-green may be seen upon many of our own
oak-trees in the winter, and makes these the most richly colored of all
the leafless stems in our frosty landscape. But here there were added
among the branches huge tufts of mistletoe, brighter and yellower than the
moss, yet of the same grassy hue, though of different texture. And there
were trees so clothed with this foreign splendor that they looked like
some quaint species of great evergreen. It seemed as if the summer’s
foliage must have really impaired the character and the beauty of this
curious forest.
At last we crossed a long flat summit, and began to descend, when we
presently came upon the temple from the north, facing us on a lower part
of the lofty ridge. As we approached, the mist began to clear away, and
the sun shone out upon the scene, while the clouds rolled back toward the
east, and gradually disclosed to us the splendid prospect which the
sanctuary commands. All the southern Peloponnesus lay before us. We could
see the western sea, and the gulf of Koron to the south; but the long
ridge of Taygetus and the mountains of Malea hid from us the eastern seas.
The rich slopes of Messene, and the rugged highlands of northern Laconia
and of Arcadia, filled up the nearer view. There still remained here and
there a cloud which made a blot in the picture, and marred the
completeness of the landscape.
Nothing can be stranger than the remains of a beautiful temple in this
alpine solitude. Greek life is a sort of protest for cities and plains and
human culture, against picturesque Alps and romantic scenery. Yet here we
have a building of the purest age and type set up far from the cities and
haunts of men, and in the midst of such a scene as might be chosen by the
most romantic and sentimental modern. It was dedicated to Apollo the
Helper, for his deliverance of the country from the same plague which
devastated Athens at the opening of the Peloponnesian War,(141) and was
built by the greatest architect of the day, Ictinus, the builder of the
Parthenon.
It was reputed in Pausanias’s day the most beautiful temple in
Peloponnesus, next to that of Athene Alea at Tegea. Even its roof was of
marble tiles, and the cutting of the limestone soffits of the ceiling is
still so sharp and clear, that specimens have been brought to Athens, as
the most perfect of the kind. The friezes, discovered years ago (1812),
and quite close to the surface, by Mr. Cockerell and his friends, were
carried away, and are now one of the greatest ornaments of the British
Museum. Any one who desires to know every detail of the building, and see
its general effect when restored, must consult Cockerell’s elaborate work
on this and the temple of Ægina. It affords many problems to the
architect. Each of the pillars within the cella was engaged or attached to
the wall, by joinings at right angles with it, the first pair only
reaching forward toward the spectator as he entered. The temple faces
north, contrary to the usual habit of the Greeks. In the very centre was
found a Corinthian capital—another anomaly in a Doric temple, and at the
epoch of Periclean art. In Mr. Cockerell’s restoration of the interior,
this capital is fitted to a solitary pillar in the centre of the cella,
and close to the statue of the god, which apparently faced sideways, and
looked toward the rising sun. It is a more popular theory that it was set
up much later, with some votive tripod upon it, and that it does not
belong to the original structure. The frieze in this temple was not along
the outside wall of the cella, but inside, and over the pillars, as the
narrow side aisle (if I may so call it) between the pillars and cella wall
was broken by the joining of the former, five at each side, with the
latter. I cannot but fancy that this transference of the friezes to the
inner side of the wall was caused by the feeling that the Parthenon
friezes, upon which such great labor and such exquisite taste had been
lavished, were after all very badly seen, being “skied” into a place not
worthy of them. Any one who will look up at the remaining band on the west
front of the Parthenon from the foot of the pillars beneath will, I think,
agree with me. At Bassæ there are many peculiarities in the Ionic
capitals, and in the ornamentation of this second monument of Ictinus’s
genius, which have occupied the architects, but on which I will not here
insist.(142) The general effect is one of smallness, as compared with the
Parthenon; of lightness and grace, as compared with the temple at Olympia,
the Doric pillars being here somewhat more slender than those of the
Parthenon, though the other proportions are not unlike. The style of the
frieze has been commented upon in all our histories of Greek art. The
effect produced is, moreover, that of lateness, as compared with the
Athenian sculptures; there is more exaggerated action, flying drapery and
contorted limbs, and altogether a conscious striving to give a strong
effect. But the execution, which was probably entrusted to native artists
under Attic direction, is inferior to good Attic work, and in some cases
positively faulty. Unfortunately, this part of the temple is in London,
not at Bassæ.
The ruin, as we saw it, was very striking and unlike any other we had
visited in Greece. It is built of the limestone which crops up all over
the mountain plateau on which it stands; and, as the sun shone upon it
after recent rain, was of a delicate bluish-gray color, so like the
surface of the ground in tone that it almost seemed to have grown out of
the rock, as its natural product. The pillars are indeed by no means
monoliths, but set together of short drums, of which the inner row are but
the rounded ends of long blocks which reach back to the cella wall. But as
the grain of the stone runs across the pillars they have become curiously
wrinkled with age, so that the artificial joinings are lost among the wavy
transverse lines, which make us imagine the pillars sunk with years and
fatigue, and weary of standing in this wild and gloomy solitude. There is
a great oak-tree, such as I have already described, close beside the
temple, and the coloring of its stem forms a curious contrast to the no
less beautiful shading of the time-worn pillars. Their ground being a pale
bluish-gray, the lichens which invade the stone have varied the fluted
surface with silver, with bright orange, and still more with a delicate
rose madder. Even under a mid-day sun these rich colors were very
wonderful, but what must they be at sunset?
There is something touching in the unconscious efforts of Nature to fill
up the breaks and heal the rents which time and desolation have made in
human work. If a gap occurs in the serried ranks of city buildings by
sudden accident or natural decay, the site is forthwith concealed with
hideous boarding; upon which, presently, staring portraits of latest clown
or merriest mountebank mock as it were the ruin within, and advertise
their idle mirth—an uglier fringe around the ugly stains of fire or the
heaps of formless masonry. How different is the hand of Nature! Whether in
the northern abbey or in the southern fane, no sooner are the monuments of
human patience and human pride abandoned and forgotten, than Nature takes
them into her gentle care, covers them with ivy, with lichen, and with
moss, plants her shrubs about them, and sows them with countless flowers.
And thus, when a later age repents the ingratitude of its forerunners, and
turns with new piety to atone for generations of forgetfulness, Nature’s
mantle has concealed from harm much that had else been destroyed, and
covered the remainder with such beauty that we can hardly conceive these
triumphs of human art more lovely in their old perfection than in their
modern solitude and decay.
The way from Andritzena to Megalopolis leads down from the rugged
frontiers of Arcadia and Messene, till we reach the fine rolling plain
which has Karytena at its northern, and Megalopolis near its southern,
extremity. Our guides were in high spirits, and kept singing in turn a
quaint love song, which, after the usual timeless flourishes and shakes at
the opening, ended in the following phrase, which their constant
repetition stamped upon my memory:
[Illustration: Music]
The way was at first steep and difficult—we were still in the land of the
violet and primrose. But after an hour’s ride we came into a forest which
already showed summer signs; and here we found again the anemone, the
purple and white cistus, among shrubs of mastich and arbutus. Here, too,
we found the cyclamen, which is such a favorite in the green-houses and
gardens of England. We passed a few miles to the south of Karytena, with
its wonderful, and apparently impregnable Frankish fortress perched like
an eagle’s nest on the top of a huge cliff, from which there must be a
splendid outlook not only down the valley of Megalopolis, but into the
northern passes from Achaia, and the mountains of Elis. I can conceive no
military post more important to the Arcadian plain, and yet it seems to
have attained no celebrity in ancient history. From this fortress to the
southern end of the plain, where the passes lead to Sparta and to northern
Messene, there lies extended a very rich vein of country about twenty-five
miles long, and ten or twelve broad, with some undulation, but practically
a plain, well irrigated with rapid rivers, and waving with deep grass and
green wheat. There are flourishing villages scattered along the slopes of
the mountains, and all the district seems thoroughly tilled, except the
region south of the town, where forests of olives give a wilder tone to
the landscape.
I confess I had not understood the history of the celebrated foundation of
Megalopolis, until I came to study the features of this plain. Here, as
elsewhere, personal acquaintance with the geography of the country is the
necessary condition of a living knowledge of its history. As is well
known, immediately after the battle of Leuctra the Arcadians proceeded to
build this metropolis, as a safeguard or makeweight against the
neighboring power of Sparta. Pausanias, who is very full and instructive
on the founding of the city, tells us that the founders came from the
chief towns of Arcadia—Tegea, Mantinea, Kleitor, and Mænalus. But these
cities had no intention of merging themselves in the new capital. In fact,
Mantinea and Tegea were in themselves fully as important a check on Sparta
in their own valley, and were absolutely necessary to hold the passes
northward to Argos, which lay in that direction. But the nation insisted
upon all the village populations in and around the western plain (which
hitherto had possessed no leading city) amalgamating into Megalopolis, and
deserting their ancient homes. Many obeyed; Pausanias enumerates about
forty of them. Those who refused were exiled, or even massacred by the
enraged majority. Thus there arose suddenly the _great city_, the latest
foundation of a city in Classical Greece. But in his account it seems to
me that Pausanias has omitted to take sufficient note of the leading
spirit of all the movement—the Theban Epaminondas. No doubt, the
traveller’s Arcadian informants were too thoroughly blinded by national
vanity to give him the real account, if indeed, they knew it themselves.
They represented it as the spontaneous movement of the nation, and even
stated it to have been done in imitation of Argos, which in older times,
when in almost daily danger of Spartan war, had abolished all the
townships through Argolis, and thus increased its power and consolidated
its population.
But the advice and support of Epaminondas, which made him the real
founder, point to another model. The traveller who comes, after he has
seen northern Greece, into the plain of Megalopolis, is at once struck
with its extraordinary likeness to that of Thebes. There is the same
circuit of mountains, the same undulation in the plain, the same abundance
of water, the same attractive sites on the slopes for the settlements of
men. It was not then Argos, with its far remote and not very successful
centralization, but Thebes, which was the real model; and the idea was
brought out into actuality not by Arcadian but by Theban statesmanship.
Any Theban who had visited the plain could not but have this policy
suggested to him by the memory of his own home. But here Epaminondas seems
to have concealed his influence, and carried out his policy through
Arcadian agents, merely sending 1000 Thebans, under Pammenes, to secure
his allies against hostile disturbances, whereas he proceeded to the
foundation of Messene in person, and with great circumstance, as the
dreams and oracles, the discussions about the site, and the pomp at the
ceremony amply show, even in the cold narrative of Pausanias. But
Megalopolis, though a great and brilliant experiment, was not a lasting
success. It was laid out on too large a scale, and in after years became
rather a great wilderness than a great city.(143) It was full of splendid
buildings—the theatre, even now, is one of the most gigantic in Greece.
But the violences of its foundation, which tore from their homes and
household gods many citizens of ancient and hallowed sites, were never
forgotten. It was long a leading city in politics, but never became a
favorite residence, and fell early into decay. “Although,” says Pausanias
(8. 33), “the _great city_ was founded with all zeal by the Arcadians, and
with the brightest expectations on the part of the Greeks, I am not
astonished that it has lost all its elegance and ancient splendor, and
most of it is now ruined, for I know that Providence is pleased to work
perpetual change, and that all things alike, both strong and weak, whether
coming into life or passing into nothingness, are changed by a Fortune
which controls them with an iron necessity. Thus Mycenæ, Nineveh, and the
Bœotian Thebes are for the most part completely deserted and destroyed,
but the name of Thebes has descended to the mere acropolis and very few
inhabitants. Others, formerly of extraordinary wealth, the Egyptian Thebes
and the Minyan Orchomenus and Delos, the common mart of the Greeks, are
some of them inferior in wealth to that of a private man of not the
richest class; while Delos, being deprived of the charge of the Oracle by
the Athenians who settled there, is, as regards Delians, depopulated. At
Babylon the temple of Belus remains, but of this Babylon, once the
greatest city under the sun, there is nothing left but the wall, as there
is of Tiryns in Argolis. These the Deity has reduced to naught. But the
city of Alexander in Egypt, and of Seleucus on the Orontes, built the
other day, have risen to such greatness and prosperity, because Fortune
favors them.... Thus the affairs of men have their seasons, and are by no
means permanent.” These words of Pausanias have but increased in force
with the lapse of centuries. The whole ancient capital of the Arcadians
has well-nigh disappeared. The theatre, cut out from the deep earthen
river bank, and faced along the wings with massive masonry, is still
visible, though overgrown with shrubs; and the English school of Athens is
now prosecuting its exploration (1892).
The ancient town lay on both sides of the river Helisson, which is a broad
and silvery stream, but not difficult to ford, as we saw it in spring, and
Pausanias mentions important public buildings on both banks. Now there
seems nothing but a mound, called the tomb of Philopœmen, on the north
side, with a few scanty foundations. On the south side the stylobate of at
least one temple is still almost on the level of the soil, and myriads of
fragments of baked clay tell us that this material was largely used in the
walls of a city where a rich alluvial soil afforded a very scanty supply
of stone—a difficulty rare in Greece. The modern town lies a mile to the
south of the river, and quite clear of the old site, so that excavations
can be made without considerable cost, and with good hope of results. But
the absence of any really archaic monument has, till recently, damped the
ardor of the archæologists.
The aspect of the present Megalopolis is very pleasing. Its streets are
wide and clean, though for the most part grown over with grass, and a
single dark green cypress takes, as it were, the place of a spire among
the flat roofs. We found the town in holiday, and the inhabitants—at least
the men—in splendid attire. For the women of the Morea have, alas!
abandoned their national costume, and appear in tawdry and ill-made
dresses. Even the men who have travelled adopt the style of third-rate
Frenchmen or Germans, and go about in tall hats, with a dirty gray plaid
wrapped about their shoulders. To see these shoddy-looking persons among a
crowd of splendid young men in Palikar dress, with the erect carriage and
kingly mien which that very tight costume produces, is like seeing a
miserable street cur among a pack of fox-hounds. And yet we were informed
that, for political reasons, and in order to draw the Greeks from their
isolation into European habits, the national dress is now forbidden in the
schools!
We were welcomed with excellent hospitality in the town, and received by a
fine old gentleman, whose sons, two splendid youths in full costume,
attended us in person. Being people of moderate means, they allowed us,
with a truer friendliness than that of more ostentatious hosts, to pay for
the most of the materials we required, which they got for us of the best
quality, at the lowest price, and cooked and prepared them for us in the
house. We inquired of the father what prospects were open to his handsome
sons, who seemed born to be soldiers—the ornaments of a royal pageant in
peace, the stay of panic in battle. He complained that there was no scope
for their energies. Of course, tilling of the soil could never satisfy
them. One of them was secretary to the _Demarchus_, on some miserable
salary. He had gone as far as Alexandria to seek his fortune, but had come
home again, with the tastes and without the wealth of a rich townsman. So
they are fretting away their life in idleness. I fear that such cases are
but too common in the country towns of Greece.
The people brought us to see many pieces of funeral slabs, of marble
pillars, and of short and late inscriptions built into house walls. They
also sold us good coins of Philip of Macedon at a moderate price. The
systematic digging about the old site undertaken by the English school
will probably bring to light many important remains.(144) There is a
carriage road from Megalopolis to Argos, but the portion inside the town
was then only just finished, so we preferred riding as far as Tripoli.
Travellers now landing at Argos will find it quite practicable to drive
from the coast to this central plain of Arcadia, and then begin their
riding. There is now, alas! a railway from Argos to Tripoli in progress.
By this means even ladies can easily cross the Morea. Two days’ driving to
Megalopolis, two days’ riding to Olympia, and an easy day’s drive and
train to Katakalo, would be the absolute time required for the transit.
But the difficulty is still to find a comfortable night’s lodging between
the first and second day’s ride, both of them long and fatiguing journeys.
Andritzena is too near Megalopolis, and not to be recommended without
introductions. But there is probably some village on another route which
would afford a half-way house. From Tripoli and from Megalopolis, which
command their respective plains, excursions could be made to Mantinea, to
Sparta, and best of all to Kalamata, where a coasting steamer calls
frequently.
[Illustration: A Greek Peasant in National Costume]
As we rode up the slopes of Mount Mænalus, which separates the plain of
Tegea from that of Megalopolis, we often turned to admire the splendid
view beneath, and count the numerous villages now as of old under the
headship of the _great town_. The most striking feature was doubtless the
snowy ridge of Taygetus, which reaches southward, and showed us the course
of the Eurotas on its eastern side, along which a twelve hours’ ride
brings the traveller to Sparta. The country into which we passed was wild
and barren in the extreme, and, like most so-called mountains in Greece,
consisted of a series of parallel and of intersecting ridges, with short
valleys or high plateaus between them. This journey, perhaps the bleakest
in all Peloponnesus, until it approaches the plain of Tegea, is through
Mount Mænalus, the ancestral seat of the worship of Pan, and therefore
more than any other tract of Arcadia endowed with pastoral richness and
beauty by the poets. There may be more fertile tracts farther north in
these mountains. There may in ancient times have been forest or verdure
where all is now bare. But in the present day there is no bleaker and more
barren tract than these slopes and summits of Mænalus, which are wholly
different from the richly wooded and well carpeted mountains through which
we had passed on the way from Elis. Even the asphodel, which covers all
the barer and stonier tracts with its fields of bloom, was here scarce and
poor. Dull tortoises, and quick-glancing hoopoes, with their beautiful
head-dresses, were the only tenants of this solitude. There was here and
there a spring of delicious water where we stopped. At one of them the
best of our ponies, an unusually spirited animal, escaped up the mountain,
with one of our royal-looking young friends, who had accompanied us in
full costume, for want of other amusement, in hot pursuit of him. We
thought the chase utterly hopeless, as the pony knew his way perfectly,
and would not let any one approach him on the bare hillsides; so we
consolidated our baggage, and left them to their fate. But about two hours
afterward the young Greek came galloping after us on the pony, which he
had caught—he had accomplished the apparently impossible feat.
At last, after a very hot and stony ride, with less color and less beauty
than we had ever yet found in Greece, we descended into the great valley
of Tripoli, formerly held by Tegea at the south, and Mantinea at the
north. The modern town lies between the ancient sites, but nearer to
Tegea, which is not an hour’s ride distant. The old Tripolis, of which the
villages were absorbed by Megalopolis, is placed by the geographers in
quite another part of Arcadia, near Gortyn, and due north of the western
plain. The vicissitudes of the modern town are well known; its importance
under the Turks, its terrible destruction by the Egyptians in the War of
Liberation;(145) even now, though not a house is more than fifty years
old, it is one of the largest and most important towns in the Morea.
The whole place was in holiday, it being the Greek Easter Day, and
hundreds of men in full costume crowded the large square in the middle of
the town. There is a considerable manufacture of what are commonly called
Turkey carpets, and of silk; but the carpets have of late years lost all
the beauty and harmony of color for which they were so justly admired, and
are now copied from the worst Bavarian work—tawdry and vulgar in the
extreme. They are sold by weight, and are not dear, but they were so
exceedingly ugly that we could not buy them. This decadence of taste is
strange when compared with the woollen work of Arachova. If the colors of
the Arachovite rugs were transferred to the carpets of Tripoli, nothing
could be more effective, or more likely to attract English buyers. I could
not learn that any passing travellers save some Germans, are now ever
tempted to carry them home.
It is my disagreeable duty to state that while the inn at Tripoli was no
better than other country inns in Arcadia, and full of noise and
disturbance, the innkeeper, a gentleman in magnificent costume, with a
crimson vest and gaiters, covered with rich embroidery, also turned out a
disgraceful villain, in fact quite up to the mark of the innkeepers of
whom Plato in his day complained. We had no comforts, we had bad food, we
had the locks of our baggage strained, not indeed by thieves, but by
curious neighbors, who wished to see the contents; we had dinner, a
night’s lodging, and breakfast, for which the host charged us, a party of
four and a servant, 118 francs. And be it remembered that the wine of the
country, which we drank, is cheaper than ale in England. We appealed at
once to the magistrate, a very polite and reasonable man, who cut it down
to 84 francs, still an exorbitant sum, and one which our friend quietly
pocketed without further remonstrance. It is therefore advisable either to
go with introductions, which we had (but our party was too large for
private hospitality), or to stipulate beforehand concerning prices. I
mention such conduct as exceptional—we met it only here, at Sparta, and at
Nauplia; but I fear Tripoli is not an honest district. A coat and rug
which were dropped accidentally from a mule were picked up by the next
wayfarer, who carried them off, though we had passed him but a few hundred
yards, and there could be no doubt as to the owners. Our guides knew his
village, and our property was telegraphed for, but never reappeared.
The site of Tegea, where there is now a considerable village, is more
interesting, being quite close to the passes which lead to Sparta, and
surrounded by a panorama of rocky mountains. The morning was cloudy, and
lights and shades were coursing alternately over the view. There were no
trees, but the surface of the rocks took splendid changing hues—gray,
pink, and deep purple—while the rich soil beneath alternated between
brilliant green and ruddy brown. As the plain of Megalopolis reminded me
of that of Thebes, so this plain of Tegea, though infinitely richer in
soil, yet had many features singularly like that of Attica, especially its
bareness, and the splendid colors of its barren mountains. But the climate
is very different at this great height above the sea; the nights, and even
the mornings and evenings, were still chilly, and the crops are still
green when the harvest has begun in Attica. There are a good many remains,
especially of the necropolis of Tegea, to be found scattered through the
modern village, chiefly in the walls of new houses. One of these reliefs
contained a very good representation of a feast—two men and two women, the
latter sitting, and alternately with the men; the whole work seemed
delicate, and of a good epoch. These and other remains, especially an
excellent relief of a lion, are now gathered into the little museum of the
village of Piali, which occupies part of the ancient site. The circuit of
the ancient walls and the site and plan of the great temple of Athena Alea
have also recently been determined. The temple, rebuilt by Scopas about
395 B. C., had Corinthian as well as Ionic capitals, though externally
Doric in character. Some remarkable remains of the pediment, especially a
boar’s head, are now in the Museum at Athens.
The way to Argos is a good carriage road through the passes of Mount
Parthenion, and is not unlike the bleak ride through Mænalus, though there
is a great deal more tillage, and in some places the hillsides are
terraced with cultivation. It was in this mountain that the god Pan met
the celebrated runner Phidippides, who was carrying his despatch about the
Persian invasion from Athens to Sparta, and told him he would come and
help the Athenians at Marathon. This Mount Parthenion, bleak and bare like
Mount Mænalus, and yet like it peculiarly sacred to Pan, “affords
tortoises most suitable for the making of lyres, which the men who inhabit
the mountains are afraid to catch, nor do they allow strangers to catch
them, for they think them sacred to Pan.” We saw these tortoises, both in
Mænalus and Parthenion, yet to us suggestive not of harmony but of
discord. Two of them were engaged in mortal combat by the road side. They
were rushing at each other, and battering the edges of their shells
together, apparently in the attempt to overturn each other. After a long
and even conflict, one of them fled, pursued by the other at full speed,
indeed far quicker than could be imagined. We watched the battle till we
were tired, and left the pursuer and the pursued in the excitement of
their deadly struggle. The traveller who goes by the new railroad over
this ground will never see sights like this.
These were the principal adventures of our tour across Arcadia. The
following night we rested in real luxury at the house of our old
guest-friend, Dr. Papalexopoulos, whose open mansion had received us two
years before, on our first visit to Argos.