Vostizza--Battle of Lepanto--Parnassus--Livadia--Cave at Trophonius--
The Fountains of Oblivion and Memory--Chaeronea--Thebes--Athens
Vostizza was then a considerable town, containing between three and
four thousand inhabitants, chiefly Greeks. It stands on a rising
ground on the Peloponnesian side of the Gulf of Corinth. I say
stands, but I know not if it has survived the war. The scenery
around it will always make it delightful, while the associations
connected with the Achaian League, and the important events which
have happened in the vicinity, will ever render the site interesting.
The battle of Lepanto, in which Cervantes lost his hand, was fought
within sight of it.
What a strange thing is glory! Three hundred years ago all
Christendom rang with the battle of Lepanto, and yet it is already
probable that it will only be interesting to posterity as an incident
in the life of one of the private soldiers engaged in it. This is
certainly no very mournful reflection to one who is of opinion that
there is no permanent fame, but that which is obtained by adding to
the comforts and pleasures of mankind. Military transactions, after
their immediate effects cease to be felt, are little productive of
such a result. Not that I value military virtues the less by being
of this opinion; on the contrary, I am the more convinced of their
excellence. Burke has unguardedly said, 'that vice loses half its
malignity by losing its grossness'; but public virtue ceases to be
useful when it sickens at the calamities of necessary war. The
moment that nations become confident of security, they give way to
corruption. The evils and dangers of war seem as requisite for the
preservation of public morals as the laws themselves; at least it is
the melancholy moral of history, that when nations resolve to be
peaceful with respect to their neighbours, they begin to be vicious
with respect to themselves. But to return to the travellers.
On the 14th of December they hired a boat with fourteen men and ten
oars, and sailed to Salona; thence they proceeded to Crisso, and rode
on to Delphi, ascending the mountain on horseback, by a steep, craggy
path towards the north-east. After scaling the side of Parnassus for
about an hour, they saw vast masses of rock, and fragments of stone,
piled in a perilous manner above them, with niches and sepulchres,
and relics, and remains on all sides.
They visited and drank of Castalia, and the prophetic font, Cassotis;
but still, like every other traveller, they were disappointed.
Parnassus is an emblem of the fortune that attends the votaries of
the Muses, harsh, rugged, and barren. The woods that once waved on
Delphi's steep have all passed away, and may now be sought in vain.
A few traces of terraces may yet be discovered--here and there the
stump of a column, while niches for receiving votive offerings are
numerous among the cliffs, but it is a lone and dismal place;
Desolation sits with Silence, and Ruin there is so decayed as to be
almost Oblivion.
Parnassus is not so much a single mountain as the loftiest of a
range; the cloven summit appears most conspicuous when seen from the
south. The northern view is, however, more remarkable, for the cleft
is less distinguishable, and seven lower peaks suggest, in
contemplation with the summits, the fancy of so many seats of the
Muses. These peaks, nine in all, are the first of the hills which
receive the rising sun, and the last that in the evening part with
his light.
From Delphi the travellers proceeded towards Livadia, passing in the
course of the journey the confluence of the three roads where OEdipus
slew his father, an event with its hideous train of fatalities which
could not be recollected by Byron on the spot, even after the tales
of guilt he had gathered in his Albanian journeys, without agitating
associations.
At Livadia they remained the greater part of three days, during which
they examined with more than ordinary minuteness the cave of
Trophonius, and the streams of the Hercyna, composed of the mingled
waters of the two fountains of Oblivion and Memory.
From Livadia, after visiting the battlefield of Chaeronea (the
birthplace of Plutarch), and also many of the almost innumerable
storied and consecrated spots in the neighbourhood, the travellers
proceeded to Thebes--a poor town, containing about five hundred
wooden houses, with two shabby mosques and four humble churches. The
only thing worthy of notice in it is a public clock, to which the
inhabitants direct the attention of strangers as proudly as if it
were indeed one of the wonders of the world. There they still affect
to show the fountain of Dirce and the ruins of the house of Pindar.
But it is unnecessary to describe the numberless relics of the famous
things of Greece, which every hour, as they approached towards
Athens, lay more and more in their way. Not that many remarkable
objects met their view; yet fragments of antiquity were often seen,
though many of them were probably brought far from the edifices to
which they had originally belonged; not for their beauty, or on
account of the veneration which the sight of them inspired, but
because they would burn into better lime than the coarser rock of the
hills. Nevertheless, abased and returned into rudeness as all things
were, the presence of Greece was felt, and Byron could not resist the
inspirations of her genius.
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth!
Immortal! though no more; though fallen, great;
Who now shall lead thy scatter'd children forth
And long-accustom'd bondage uncreate?
Not such thy Sons who whilom did await,
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom,
In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait:
Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas' banks, and call thee from the tomb!
In the course of the afternoon of the day after they had left Thebes,
in attaining the summit of a mountain over which their road lay, the
travellers beheld Athens at a distance, rising loftily, crowned with
the Acropolis in the midst of the plain, the sea beyond, and the
misty hills of Egina blue in the distance.
On a rugged rock rising abruptly on the right, near to the spot where
this interesting vista first opened, they beheld the remains of the
ancient walls of Phyle, a fortress which commanded one of the passes
from Baeotia into Attica, and famous as the retreat of the chief
patriots concerned in destroying the thirty tyrants of Athens.
Spirit of freedom! when on Phyle's brow
Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train,
Couldst thou forebode the dismal hour which now
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain?
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain,
But every carle can lord it o'er thy land;
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain,
Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand,
From birth till death enslaved; in word, in deed unmann'd.
Such was the condition in which the poet found the country as he
approached Athens; and although the spirit he invoked has reanimated
the dejected race he then beheld around him, the traveller who even
now revisits the country will still look in vain for that lofty mien
which characterises the children of liberty. The fetters of the
Greeks have been struck off, but the blains and excoriated marks of
slavery are still conspicuous upon them; the sinister eye, the
fawning voice, the skulking, crouching, base demeanour, time and many
conflicts only can efface.
The first view of the city was fleeting and unsatisfactory; as the
travellers descended from the mountains the windings of the road
among the hills shut it out. Having passed the village of Casha,
they at last entered upon the slope, and thence into the plain of
Attica but the intervening heights and the trees kept the town
concealed, till a turn of the path brought it full again before them;
the Acropolis crowned with the ruins of the Parthenon--the Museum
hill--and the Monument of Philopappus--
Ancient of Days--august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone--glimmering through the dreams of things that were:
First in the race that led to glory's goal,
They won, and pass'd away:--is this the whole?
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!
The warrior's weapon, and the sophist's stole
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower,
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power.