townsmen “gave themselves to delights as if they would die to-morrow,
while they built their houses as if they were going to live forever.”
Little did these luxury-loving folk think that the very barbarians whose
trade was so enriching them would at last grow envious and snatch back
by force the wealth they had built up for their neighbors. Empedocles,
by the way, is one of the most picturesque characters in the whole story
of Sicily. A political leader and an engineer who did wonders for the
sanitation of the city, he refused supreme control when he might have
had it, and proclaimed himself a sort of primitive socialist early in
his career. But later in life he seems entirely to have forgotten his
previous socialistic theories. Dressed in a purple robe with a golden
girdle, brazen shoes, and a Delphic wreath for his thick hair, he
wandered from city to city proclaiming himself, in the words of one of
his own poems, the _Katharmoi_, “An immortal god, and no longer a mortal
man.”
Nearly a sixth of Sicily’s sulphur is exported from Porto Empedocle,
Girgenti’s ancient haven, six miles distant. From the station platform
one sees all around reddish-yellow and gray hills covered with small
dumps and pierced with scores of drives, dotted with little shanties and
pricklied over with chimneys where the miners are delving and smelting.
On the sidings near the depot scores of flat cars are heaped high with
huge pressed cakes of the sickly greenish-yellow sulphur, while the
roadway leading to the freight-house is fulvid with powdered brimstone,
and the atmosphere faintly suggests things infernal. In the city museum
the antiquarian may study the tile stamps of the Roman period--Girgenti
was Agrigentum then--for impressing the sulphur cakes before they
solidified.
Outside the station every train draws a barking crowd of _facchini_
(porters) and hotel-runners, from whom you escape into an hotel omnibus.
We chose a tiny, rickety, low-roofed vehicle, which had developed
rheumatism and gout in every complaining spring and joint. Delighted to
secure the only first class passengers who had come on that express, the
driver whipped up his three emaciated nags and we started on the long,
circuitous, heart-breaking climb up the steep hills to the citadel
above.
The bus was scarcely moving when a face appeared at the rear door, not
of the usual hotel porter who rides behind, but of a Murillo cherub,
brown-eyed and dark, with a lurking smile so ingenuous and charming that
one must have been stony-hearted indeed not to succumb to the spell of
his innocent sorcery.
The hotel on the Via Atenea--the only street in Girgenti worthy the name
of a thoroughfare--proved a seedy, disreputable looking establishment,
giving upon the narrow way in a black hole into which we plunged, to
find a pair of winding, cold stone stairs in the rear up which we
stumbled to the second story office. But the drawbacks of this inn--and
there are better ones in town--were fortunately most of them on the
outside. Our room was really comfortable, and the luncheon considerably
better than we dared expect, though the dessert, in a dirty glass
cake-dish, consisted of oranges, nespoli, or Japanese medlars, large raw
broad-beans, and something that looked like celery but proved to be
_finocchi_, or fennel, one of the staple foods of the people,
apparently a natural source of concentrated paregoric.
When the porter announced that our landau was waiting after luncheon, we
questioned the ability of the three mangy, half-starved horses--the same
team which had brought us from the railway station--to drive all the
afternoon over the amazingly steep and hilly roads; but assured that
these very animals had been doing the same work for “twenty years or
more” we started off congratulating ourselves on escaping the guides,
unnecessary nuisances.
As we stepped out at the little antique Gothic church of San Niccolà,
the cherub suddenly appeared before us.
“Hello! Where did you come from?” I inquired.
The lad only shook his head, but the coachman, whose face was all one
broad grin, waved his whip at the rear of the carriage. “_A dietro_--On
behind!”
It was true. For miles that child had clung to the rear axle in the
choking dust for the sake of a little silver. With an air of modest
assurance he introduced himself--“Alfonso Caratozzo, _signore_. I am
just twelve years old. For six years I have been the best guide in
Girgenti, and all the grand foreign gentlemen are much pleased with me.
I can show you everything.”
Alfonso’s large claim was fully justified by his conduct of our affairs,
his poetic appreciation not only of the beauties of the scenery but of
his own dignity and importance as counselor and pilot of the _forestieri
americani_--and no one who wishes a guide can do better than to inquire
for Alfonso the Wise!
Never was the mixed civilization and pagan ancestry of the Sicilians of
to-day brought more vividly to our attention than in this little church
of San Niccolà. The attractive girl custodian was a perfect young
Saracen Sicilian, black-eyed and raven haired, with big gold and coral
earrings. Beside her Alfonso, as purely Greek as she was Moorish, looked
every inch a faun. The girl knew what stories she had to tell very well.
Alfonso, however, evidently bored by the history of ancient Akragas from
the day of its founding, whispered: “Pay no attention to her, _signore_.
She tells this to everybody!”
Shades of Diodorus--what should she tell!
Near by stands a little Roman building dating from the second century B.
C. Somehow it got the name of Oratory of Phalaris, though it certainly
was not in existence in Phalaris’s time. How strange that such a
building and such an idea should be associated with this most widely
advertised of Greek tyrants! Of all the disputed stories told of him,
that of the brazen bull is most widely known; and without his bull,
Phalaris would be no more than an hundred obscure tyrants in other Greek
cities. The legend declares that an artist named Perillos made a
monstrous hollow brazen bull in whose shoulder was a door through which
the victim could be thrust. When the fire underneath heated the
diabolical invention, the cries of the sufferer, issuing through the
nostrils, sounded like the roarings of the enraged animal. The tyrant,
with a proper sense of humor, immediately tested the efficiency of the
image upon its luckless inventor Perillos. In later times apologists
denied these stories; but Pindar, writing within a century after the
death of Phalaris, summed up Sicilian public opinion of that day very
tersely in the lines:
_“Phalaris, with blood defiled,_
_His brazen bull, his torturing flame,_
_Hand o’er alike to evil fame_
_In every clime!”_
Very different indeed are his praises of Theron of Akragas, one of the
greatest and best of the Greek tyrants, with whom he was contemporary.
The Second Olympian Ode is perhaps the most fulsome. Cary rendered it:
_“Theron for his conquering car_
_Shall spread a shout of triumph far and wide;_
_True to his friends, the people’s pride;_
_Stay of Akragas and flower_
_Of many a noble ancestor;_
_They, long toils and perils past,_
_By the rivers built at last_
_Their sacred bower, and were an eye_
_To light the land of Sicily._
_And I will swear_
_That city none, though she enroll_
_A century past her radiant scroll,_
_Hath brought a mortal man to light_
_Whose heart with love more genial glows,_
_Whose hand with larger bounty flows,_
_Than Theron’s._”
It was during the reign of Theron that the city, approaching the height
of its prosperity and pride, joined forces with Gelon and the Syracusans
in defeating Hamilcar’s Carthaginians in a tremendous battle at Himera.
The victors took an immense number of the defeated soldiers captive, and
Theron began to rush forward epoch making municipal improvements. The
slaves, being only human, could not last forever, and they were worked
hard while their strength endured, toiling in the stone quarries,
building the city wall, excavating a huge fishpond, and commencing the
construction of the magnificent temples along the southern rampart.
“Tyrant,” by the way, in that age of civilization, did not necessarily
mean a brutal, oppressive or fire-breathing monster. Indeed, some of the
tyrants were among the best rulers Greek Sicily ever had. As Freeman
says, “tyrant” meant a forceful usurper, a man who raised himself to
the supreme authority when kings and kingship were not only unlawful but
were not even the fashion.
Of the six glorious temples--among the most brilliant achievements of
the most brilliant period of Greek freedom in Sicily--only two remain
standing, at the verge of the hill, limned in all their marvelous Greek
severity and simplicity against the tender landscape. Overhead burns the
cobalt sky of Sicily; around them burgeon crimson poppies, delicate
buttercups and spurge, and other flowers innumerable. Flute-voiced birds
swing and sing in among the olives, in air languid with the perfume of
the almond in bloom.--And in the clear sunlight of the South, the
temples themselves glow with a golden radiance that must surely be a
faint reflection of the fires of the immortal gods.
Models of Doric simplicity, these temples consisted only of a windowless
shrine for the god, surrounded by an open colonnade, the whole covered
by a gabled roof. Their design was at once the result of the climate and
of Greek civilization. The religion was intimately connected with
devotion to the State; hence the homes of the gods, who were both the
patrons and companions of the people, were public buildings, their
porticoes open to the daily life and commerce, the intercourse of the
citizens.
The Greek religion was beautiful, rarely beautiful. But exclusive,
mysterious? No! Its rites were simple--choral hymns, rhythmic dances,
ceremonies executed by the citizens themselves. And the priests guarded
no occult sciences, as did the Egyptians; kept to themselves no written
hieroglyph unintelligible except to the initiate. They were laymen,
married men with families, soldiers, merchants, men engaged in every
walk of life.
Marvelous architects, those old fifth century Greeks! To give their low
and heavy buildings greater charm than was possible with mere straight
lines, they made their columns gently swelling; smaller at the top than
at the bottom. At the corners of the edifice they even sloped them
slightly inward. They bent the foundation upward a little in the middle,
and did the same thing with the long line of the entablature above. Yet
it would seem that they were given to gilding the lily. They covered the
rich golden travertine of which the edifices were built with a thin coat
of white stucco or mortar, upon which were painted striking ornaments in
many brilliant colors. It is hard to believe that the temples when
painted could have been as magnificent as they are to-day; yet they must
have been--who are we to impugn Greek taste!
[Illustration: The Temple of Concord “was used in the Middle Ages as the
Church of St. Gregory of the Turnips.”]
The Temple of Concord, because of its use in the Middle Ages as the
church of Saint Gregory of the Turnips, is one of the best preserved
pagan buildings in existence, all of its thirty-four giant columns still
standing. It makes a picture of beautiful and serene old age that
loses nothing by comparison with the eternal youth of its surroundings.
House of peace it has been called, and house of peace it still is, after
the storms and wars of more than fourteen centuries have ebbed and
flowed about its massive base.
The _custode_, a garrulous old soldier, insists on your instantly taking
the view from the architrave above the cella, which really is
magnificent. But you are not ready for that just yet. Why must these
caretakers always tease you to do something when you don’t want to!
Glimpsing the fat little red book in your pocket, he smiles
sardonically. “Ha! You wish to be let alone?” he exclaims. “Ha! You
believe the book of a German, not the word of a Sicilian. But does the
book tell you the Christians who turned this temple into a church were
the first Sicilians to embrace the Faith? No, _signore_--but you believe
your German book. Very good, believe it!” and he stalks away, secure in
his precious tradition.
From the Temple of Concord the road ascends gently, parallel to the
ancient wall, until it reaches the southeastern angle of the precipitous
plateau, occupied by the so-called Temple of Juno. Below it on the east
flows the San Biagio, zigzagging in a southwesterly direction to join
the Drago torrent, with which it enters the Mediterranean at the old
harbor of Emporio. Perched upon this lofty cliff, nearly four hundred
feet above the sea, the temple commands a wonderful view.
This structure is in far less perfect condition than the Temple of
Concord, only twenty-five whole columns standing, while everywhere the
mellow golden stonework is marked with peculiar dull, bloody stains
supposed to be traces of the fire set by the Carthaginians in 406 B. C.,
in their endeavor to burn the city. The tradition seems to have little
foundation in fact, for on other ruins, parts of the old Greek wall, and
even on some of the rocks of the vicinity, the same strange stains are
frequently visible, and appear to be a natural property of the stone,
possibly due to its exposure to the weather.
Here I sent Alfonso away on an errand, and another small boy guide hung
about us until we entered the holy of holies. Springing upon a shattered
block of marble which he said had been the altar where the huge statue
of Juno had once stood, he took an absurdly constrained position, and
cried: “Look, _signore_--Juno stood here--just like me!”
One of the most alluring ruins is the fragment, called for want of a
better name presumably, the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Embayed in a
grove of olive and almond, resting upon a veritable carpet of flowers
among which climb tangled vines, rise four stately columns, silhouetted
sharply against the dazzling sky, and supporting a honey-colored
fragment of entablature. And though the archæologists declare the
columns to have been taken from two different edifices and arbitrarily
joined, this detracts not a whit from the grace and beauty of the
restoration and its surroundings.
Olympian Jupiter it was who had--as befitted the king of the gods--the
largest temple. Indeed, after the vast temple of Diana at Ephesus, this
was the largest Greek shrine ever built. Now all there is to be seen is
a vast formless heap of cut stones in a living sea of brilliant yellow
bloom. Unafraid, these star-eyed flowerets lovingly enfold shattered
column and pediment, creep up into the sacred close of the cella or
sanctuary, and kiss the huge prone figure of one of the thirty-eight
titanic Atlantides or caryatides, about twenty-five feet in height,
which are believed to have supported the entablature. The colossal
edifice measured about three hundred and seventy-two feet long, at least
one hundred and eight-two wide, and probably about one hundred twenty
high.
And these are not all, by any means. There are more ruins of temples,
within and without the walls, more interesting to explore than to read
about; there are Christian catacombs and tombs; the megalithic wall, and
the Porta Aurea, the Golden Gate that looks straight out over the golden
southern sea. And there are also some very interesting antiquities on
view in the Museum--but beware the specious vendors of relics who hang
around the temples and the hotels. The Greeks of twenty centuries ago
did not stamp their products, “Made in Germany!”
All along the way are vast numbers of peculiar white lumps on grass and
leaves and walls, clinging like burrs to even the fruit and treetrunks.
“They are snails, Excellency,” explained Alfonso, “and very good to eat.
After it rains they grow big and fat. Then they are very sweet.”
Springing down from the box, the child tore a fat snail from the wall,
and hopping up again, cracked it open skillfully with his teeth, drew
out and ate the quivering mollusc. Waving his hand toward some more
large specimens on the wall, he asked: “Excellency would like some too?”
“Excellency has just had his luncheon,” opportunely interposed the
driver. “Snails are not good for dessert.”
Within the acropolis again, we dismissed the landau out of pity for the
wretched horses, and rambled about on foot. Before reaching the
Cathedral we passed Alfonso’s home, where he introduced us to his family
with all the éclat of a noble presenting friends at court; and poor as
these Sicilians were, we found among them all--father, mother, aunt,
cousin, three sisters and a brother--no lack of that inborn courtesy
which distinguishes the Latin peasant.
Collectively the family showed us the church of Santa Maria dei Greci,
in which are supposed to be incorporated the scanty remains of the
principal sanctuary of either Zeus Atabyrius or Minerva, while some
urchin, locked out and so deprived of all opportunity for tips,
playfully stoned the church door. The Cathedral is more interesting,
though the apse is over richly stuccoed, covered with scrolls and
cherubs in gold and white. One of its chief treasures is a madonna,
painted by Guido Reni, though not comparable to his best work. In the
sacristy is a really fine old white marble sarcophagus of the Roman
period, bearing reliefs of the myth of Hippolytus and Phædra.
But nothing within is comparable to the view from one of the windows at
the sunset hour. It recalls the Biblical prophecies of Canaan with the
chalky roads for the milk, and the gold of the daisies, mustard and
marigolds for the honey of this Promised Land. The chief charm of the
scene as the hills lie weltering under the fading glory of the sinking
sun are these same milky roads, flowing through the verdant swards and
vales. In the background the ugly, prosaic sulphur pits, dumps and
chimneys make splashes of harsh modern color in this world-old
landscape. It is a scene unforgettable. Slowly, gently, the soft
rosy-bluish evening haze creeps up the hillside; bit by bit the purple
shadows deepen, the soft harmonies of tender green melt into the blur
of the background, and only the creamy highways stand out distinct.
Not so very many years ago this entire region was unsafe because of the
brigands. Now one may go anywhere about Girgenti with perfect security.
Nevertheless, a pair of Carabinieri--they always travel in pairs, by the
way--gorgeous in all their glory of black and scarlet, with cockaded
cocked hats, were always somewhere within range when we were outside the
city proper. They seemed to take as keen an interest in the ruins as we
did, though temples must have been an old story to them.
Alfonso spoke to one of these kindly familiars whom we passed,
struggling to make his greeting as careless as the familiar “Hello!” of
the American streets. Good humoredly the Carabiniero answered him, and
as we went on, the boy remarked with innocent egotism: “You saw him,
_signore_? He is my friend. You are with me, and he would let nothing
happen to you. It is good to know the police--as I do!”
VIII
THE ROAD TO SYRACUSE
To the northwest of Girgenti the country is honeycombed with sulphur
pits and it is not very hard to credit the ancient myth that the gates
of Hades opened here. After the train leaves the trunkline of the
railway at Aragona-Caldare, tunnels and sulphur mines make up most of
the scenery. This entire district has a smitten look, and on the bleak
rolling plains and rugged hills are dreary towns whose chief charm, as
they flit past in a continuous gray motion picture, lies in their
historical suggestions. The most important and flourishing city we pass
is Caltanisetta, the center of the sulphur industry, which produces more
than half a million tons annually. The mines are most of them primitive
in the extreme, and machinery is practically unknown, while in many of
them fuel is so scarce and costly that the operators burn the raw
sulphur itself in their _calcaroni_ or smelters.
Shortly before reaching Santa Catarina Xirbi, the junction town where
the tracks join the Palermo line, we have our first glimpse of Mt. Ætna,
its snowy cap hanging in the distance like a low white cloud. Small
gorges and tunnels follow in rapid succession, and the train pants
upward in tortuous curves through the barren valleys, until we look up
at Castrogiovanni, the Enna of the ancients. It lies in an almost
perfect horseshoe on a precipitous rock, and so surrounded by nearly
perpendicular approaches, so walled in by Nature with beetling crags,
that none of its innumerable ancient besiegers was ever able to storm
it. Treachery--and once starvation--did for it what armed assault never
could. Livy rightly called it “a city inexpugnable,” and it probably is
so yet, for it has recently been strongly fortified after the most
approved modern style. The ascent is by a road which--well, try it for
yourself. But the town, once reached, pays for the climb in its
magnificent views. It is the navel (_umbilicus Siciliæ_) of Sicily, and
from the loftiest tower of the former citadel there sweeps away a
mountain cyclorama such as not even Switzerland can excel--Ætna, peaks
without number, range on range and tier on tier, melting into the haze
of heaven. Towns, thousands of feet in the air, cling desperately to the
steep, unfriendly sides, or perch precariously on the tops of
needle-pointed mountains. And on the South, beyond hills and plain,
dimples the ultramarine of the African sea.
For centuries before the adventurous Greeks colonized the hill, Enna was
the principal home of a Sicilian goddess, the patron of natural
fertility and of the harvest, whom the Greeks identified with their own
Demeter, and the later Romans with Ceres. Not a stone of her temple is
left, and we can do little more than speculate upon its site, said to
have been where the old citadel now stands. About two hours to the south
by carriage is that once lovely little lake of Pergusa, where Pluto met
and straight-way stole the lovely Proserpina to be the queen of his dark
realm. It was then a district so fair that Diodorus said the hounds
often lost the scent of their quarry, so rich was the fragrance of the
flowers. But alas! the spot is blasted now. Gone are the splendid shade
trees in whose branches the singing messengers of spring carolled; gone
all the beauty of Pergusa, now but a dirty little pond, where peasants
steep their flax. But at least we can think of it still in Ovid’s words:
“A spot at the bottom of a shady vale, watered by the plenteous spray of
a stream that falls from wooded heights; where Nature decks herself in
all her varied hues, where the ground is beauteous, carpeted with
flowers of many tints.”
Ætna appears again soon after the entrance to the valley of the Dittaino
is passed, and beckons with such insistence that the train hesitates
only a moment--at the station for Valguarnera Assoro--right before the
railway restaurant. It is a tumbledown little shack with a big sign:
_Ristorante G. Galliano_. If you are on good enough terms with the
Signor Conductor, he may wait long enough for you to have a sip of the
excellent country wine and a taste of the “beautiful goat” the
redoubtable Galliano purveys to such as can pay his very modest price. A
few miles farther on is the station for Agira, which occupies the site
of one of the very oldest Sikelian cities, lying back from the railroad,
up in the hills. Later it was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus,
who gives a picturesque account of his native village.
Half an hour later the railway emerges from the hills upon the plain of
Catania--so productive of grain that from the very beginnings of local
history it has been known as the granary of Sicily--and leaving the main
line at Bicocca, puts Catania and the great volcano behind, heading
southward for Syracuse. Fine crops appear around the famous Lake
Lentini, Sicily’s largest inland body of water, varying from about nine
to twelve miles in circumference, according to the season. It is a
dreary tarn, looking so like a big mud puddle or a meadow overflowed by
stagnant salt water that it is easy to credit the tales of the mephitic
vapors and exhalations and fevers which have made it the scourge of the
neighborhood.