UC-NRLF in;.::: $C 13D Ifi? ^•-^.s.xr^ 1 \. • • • • ; •• I * Greek Pictures H)vawn with pen anb pencil BY J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A.. D.D. FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, AUTHOR OF ' SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE,' 'greek life and THOUGHT,' ' RAMBLES AND STUDIES IN GREECE,' ETC. LONDON THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 4 BouvERiE Street, E.C. 4, and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard, E.C. 4. Jl^i^l LONDON: PUINTKD RY WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS, LIMITED. »«.';■; :{•'■■.''■■ ■''■■' ■'■'■■'■' The Victor's Crown. PREFACE. This volume has been written at the request of the Committee of the Religious Tract Society, the publishers of the * Pen and Pencil ' series of illustrated books of travel. It is subject to the conditions applied to all the volumes ; that is, it draws its pictures from all parts of Greece, and seeks to set forth latest and most accurate information in an interesting manner, without going deeply into those matters which can interest only the student and the specialist. It has not been an easy task to secure good engravings for the book. There are a large number of good photographs and sketches in existence of famous temples, works of art, and antiquities ; but the terror of the Greek brigand seems to have hitherto prevented the artist and the professional photographer from travelling far afield in Greece. Notwithstanding what has been done in recent years by the Hellenic Society, and by such amateurs as the late Mr. Macmillan, the Rev. W. Covington and others, there is much yet to be done in the way of making the fine scenery of 586467 6 PREFACE. Thessaly, Laconia, or Arcadia as familiar by means of sketches and photo- graphs as Norway, or Russia, or Spain. Special thanks have to be given to Mr. G. A.Macmillan for permission to use the photographs taken by his brother, the late Mr. Malcolm Macmillan, and Mr. Louis Dyer, from which the engravings are taken on pages 5, 167, 179, and 192; to the Rev. W. Covington for those on pages 7 and 153, and to Messrs. T. Cook and Sons for the use of the engravings on pages 216, 220, and 221. It is to be hoped that the rapidly improving facilities for travel in Greece, and the increased safety for travellers and tranquillity of the country, will induce much larger numbers to go and study the battlefields of Marathon and Mantinea, the sites of Olympia and Sparta, the beauties of the Vale of Tempe and the Gulf of Nauplia, and experience to the full the fascination of looking upon the scenes once familiar to Alcibiades, Socrates, Plato, and Euripides. Part of the Frieze of the Theatre of Dionysus, Athens. CONTENTS AND LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Greek National Dance .......... Frontispiece The Victor's Crown ........... page 5 Part of the Frieze of the Theatre of Dionysus, Athens ..... 7 Map of Greece 10 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Jannina, capital of Epirus : one of the places ceded to Greece by the Berlin Treaty . . page 12 Salamis Equestrian Figure from the Frieze of the Par- thenon page 13 16 CHAPTER II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. A Greek Harvest Home ..... 18 A Greek Woman of Mantoudi in the National Homer ....... 19 Dress ....... A Modern Greek in National Dress ... 22 A Mountain View on the Gulf of Corinth The Castle of Suli, in Epirus ...... 29 23 26 CHAPTER III. CORINTH. A Greek Musician ...... 33 Ruins of the old Temple at Corinth ... 37 Ancient Greek Temple at Psestum The Acro-Corinthus 39 43 CHAPTER IV. MEGARA, ELEUSIS, AND DAPHNE. Straits of Salamis 46 The Monastery of Daphne 50 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE PLAINS OF ATTICA. Sunium page 54 Niches for Votive Offerings on the Sacred Way to Eleusis 56 Piraeus (restored), showing the Long Walls The Mound at Marathon page 57 59 CHAPTER VI. The Acropolis from the South-west Temple of Theseus and Acropolis from the West Pericles ........ Sophocles ....... The Temple of Victory, Acropolis The Steps and Propylaea of the Acropolis Parthenon, Interior, Restored .... A Caryatid from the Erechtheum . Figures from the Pediment of the Parthenon (British Museum) ...... The Erechtheum ...... The Areopagus. ...... The Theatre of Dionysus at Athens. ATHENS. 64 Stalls in the Theatre at Athens . . . • 91 65 Doric Capital and part of Shaft ... 92 68 Ionic Capital with Shaft ..... 92 69 Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius (looking 72 East) ^Z 73 Demosthenes ....... 96 76 Attic Pottery 98 77 An Attic Tomb Relief 99 Funeral Tablet from the Cerameicus, Athens . 100 78 Muffled Figure, Tanagra loi 79 Ancient Greek Methods of Dressing the Hair. 83 (From the Tanagra Figurines.) . . . 102 90 CHAPTER Vn. CHRISTIAN ATHENS. The Laurium Silver Mines in Greece . . . The Church of St, 103 Details of Byzantine Church Ornamentation. Theodore at Athens . . 107 105 CHAPTER Vni. B(EOTIA. Head-dresses from the Tanagra Figurines . . 1 10 Terra- cotta Figurine, Tanagra . . . 112 Aula with Prsestas Specimens of Greek Artistic Dress Ordinary Greek Dress . . ns "3 114 Mount Parnassus CHAPTER IX. PHOCIS-DELPHI. 121 Delphi as it is To-day I2S CHAPTER X. THE PELOPONNESUS-ACH^EA. Greek Vases— Early' Classical Period , . 129 Plan of the Theatre and Stadium at Sikyon View on the Gulf of Corinth, near Vostitza . 133 131 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI. ELIS-OLYMPIA. Ruins of a Byzantine Church, near Elis . page 137 Greek Mountaineers ..... 138 Greek Hospitality . . . . . -139 Athlete using the Strigil or Flesh Brush (the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus) . . . . 142 Interior of the Great Temple at Olympia (restored) 147 Head of Zeus (Jupiter), known as the Otricoli Type page 148 The Venus of Melos (now in the Louvre) . . 149 The Nike of Paeonius found at Olympia . . 149 A Warrior of Marathon (about 480 B.C.) . .150 iEschines the Orator (about 330 B.C.) . . 150 CHAPTER XII. ARGOS, MYKEN^E, AND TIRYNS. Citadel of Argos . . . . . .152 The Gate of Lions at My kente . . . 153 The Gulf of Nauplia . . . . . -155 Nauplia, seen from Tiryns . . . . 156 Crete . . . . Gold Cups found by Dr. Schliemann in Tombs at Mykena; ....... 159 A Diadem of Gold from Mykense . . . 160 Pelasgic Masonry at Tiryns .... 163 164 The Plain of Messene The Valley of Sellasia . Ancient Sparta (restored) Langgada Pass CHAPTER XIII. SPARTA, MESSENE, MAINA, AND ARCADIA. 166 A Greek ' Pappas,' or Priest 167 The Battle-field of Tegea . 173 Temple of Apollo the Helper at Bassae 179 Karytena ..... 203 184 192 196 200 Cascade of the Styx Volo Mount Olympus CHAPTER XIV. NORTHERN GREECE. 204 Venetian Tower at Chalcis . 212 205 CHAPTER XV. THE GREEK ASPECTS OF MACEDONIA. General View of the Principal Monasteries of Meteora . . . . . . .216 Mount Athos .... Monastery of Holy Trinity, Trikkala 220 221 H '■f'-''''n>.— Equestrian Figure from the Frieze of the Parthenon. CHAPTER I, Introduction. PERHAPS the first reflection of the ordinary man, who looks at the map of Greece, and sees how tiny a fraction it occupies of the map of Europe, is to wonder how so small a place should have attained such great and lasting importance in the minds of men. How can it compare for one moment with those larger peninsulas which hold many millions more of men — how with those large kingdoms which are now naturally the leading powers of the civilised world ? A little more thought will soon get rid of this difficulty as any peculiar obstacle to the importance of Greece, for all history tells us that real greatness, and real importance (beyond supplying regiments), does not depend on size, but on other qualities. Even in the modern map of Europe, a visitor from another planet would not guess that the small island in the north-west called England was more important and more powerful than any area of the same size in the better climates and more fruitful soil of Southern Europe. And when we go back into the annals of the past, it seems almost a law that all the greatest interests of human nature are centred in some small spot, some focus of spiritual light, of intellectual energy, from which they radiate into the large tracts which have but small part in human progress. The area of Egypt is not nearly as large as that of Ireland, and yet H,. , GREEK PICTURES. for many centuries Egypt exceeded in importance all the other nations of the world put together. The plain of Mesopotamia was not larger, and yet from hence too the whole of Hither Asia was ruled and civilised. The Phoenicians swayed all the Mediterranean in their day, and here is the still more astonishing problem, reproduced long after by Venice, of a people who had little more than a town for their country swaying large districts, and ruling over millions of men. But why delay over lesser instances, when we have in Palestine the greatest and strangest of them all ? When our Lord ' was made flesh and dwelt amongst us,' His wisdom chose, not the greatest country of the world in situation, in size, in circumstances, but a small and remote country, inhabited by a people small in numbers, and isolated from other nations. It might have seemed to human wisdom a strange choice for the cradle of a new religion, intended to conquer the world. Even human wisdom can be taught, however, that the Divine selection was according to the analogy of all history. The importance of a country and its people has never depended on quantity, but on quality. The steadfast pertinacity of the Jews, their earnestness in maintaining and spreading their faith, showed clearly that to them in the first instance, and through them to larger nations, might the new faith be most fitly entrusted. Thus a small nation may have and perform a great mission, and so a small country may represent interests far vaster than were ever entrusted to the steppes of Asia or the prairies of America. I suppose that, next to Palestine, no more signal example of the law I have been explaining can be found than in the case of Greece. Unable to cope in population or in resources with the great kingdoms of the world, often held in subjection or in partial dependence by stronger neighbours, passing at last from master to master into downright slavery beneath the Turks, this wonderful peninsula has asserted and reasserted itself time after time with indestructible energy. It has absorbed its invaders, leavened its conquerors, dominated its masters. And so there is no spot of the same area in all the world, about which so much has been thought, and written, and said. And yet when we call Greece very small, it is by no means so small as might be inferred from a hasty look at the map. In the first place, its limits are not easily defined. Not only does it include the islands of the Levant, but, in its greater days, the coasts of Asia Minor and the ' Two Sicilies ' were counted, fairly enough, as parts of Greece. For they were inhabited by the Greek people, and belonged to the same great unit known as Hellenic country. But even laying aside this once lawful extension, as taking us far beyond the limits of a volume like the present, the actual surface of Greece and its coast lines are quite out of proportion to the indications of ordinary maps. For the country is almost wholly a moun- INTRODUCTION. 15 tainous country ; the islands are mountains, or chains of mountains, standing out of the sea, so that to cross any of these narrow shreds of land, as they appear on the map, is far longer, even in miles, than to sail round it. The coast line is so broken and indented, that it exceeds by hundreds of miles the bounding line of any European kingdom. If the mountains run into the sea, the sea also runs into the mountains, so that from a yacht the traveller may visit almost any spot in Greece without spending more than one night on shore. There is, therefore, more to see, more to be done, more variety of scene, more separation of landscape, than is at first conceivable. Each plain, the seat of old cities with their surrounding homesteads, is separated from the next, either by the sea or by chains of mountains, forming a real and lasting barrier. Boeotia is quite a new country, which you reach from Attica only by climbing mountains and crossing passes. Laconia is separated from Arcadia, Argos, Messene, by even greater obstacles. Even Corinth is severed from Megara, Megara from Eleusis, Eleusis from Athens, by barren and rugged hills, so that the traveller who passes from one to the other feels how natural it was to have in each of them a separate society and a distinct history. In Attica itself, as I have just said, Eleusis is separated by hills, and invisible from Athens, so much so that the historian tells us the people of Attica did not feel invaded so long as the Spartans ravaged that district. It was not till they crossed the Pass of Daphne and occupied Acharnai, that the disaster came home to the Athenians. And so also old legends speak of a time when not only Eleusis, but Marathon, equally out of sight of the ultimate capital, were independent, and obeyed rulers of their own. This it was which not only made the physical, but the political surface of Greece so various and interesting. The only modern parallel I can quote to the reader, is the occurrence of many independent cantons in Switzerland, where the several valleys are parted, as in Greece, either by sheets of water or great mountains. But whether it be severity of climate, or want of commercial outlets, or deficiency in that national genius which we are all trying to explain by natural causes, and without success, the Swiss are only like the Greeks in isolation, love of liberty, and love of mercenary service ; in historic greatness, in literary fame — despite Mtirten and Morgarten, despite Geneva and the Calvinists — Greece stands unchallenged and alone. It is all the more necessary to insist upon the beauty of Greek landscape, because as yet there are very imperfect means of reproducing it to the general reader. No great painter has made that fairyland his special " object ; even the photographer has only penetrated its wilder parts to reproduce artistic remains, old temples, tomb reliefs ; he has not turned aside — how could he.-* — to give even his cold travesties of the light and i6 GREEK PICTURES. colour of the hills and dales, its isles and woods. While, therefore, our pictures can give a very fair idea of the antiquities and the art treasures of the country^ we are in landscape very helpless, till modern painters extend their view, and embrace upon their canvas this southern Norway, this marine Switzerland, this fairest and most fascinating of all the countries in Europe. Salamis. Homer. CHAPTER II. First Impressions. THE day is not yet past, though I can see it passing away, when a voyage to Greece is still a serious thing, to be compassed with consideration and with advice, with consultation of guide-books and of friends, with calculations of time and of money. Even still, therefore, most travellers will hardly escape the peculiar excitement which attends a first visit to this famous land, and will count it a great day in their experience. Nearly twenty years ago, I enjoyed this intense delight, and even now the pages in which I sought to record it appear to me hardly antiquated. ' For many hours after the coasts of Calabria had faded into the night, and even after the snowy dome of Etna was lost to view, our ship steamed through the open sea, with no land in sight ; but we were told that early in the morning, at the very break of dawn, the coasts of Greece would be visible. So, while others slept, I started up at half-past three in the c 2 GREEK PICTURES. morning, eager to get the earliest possible sight of the land which still occupies so large a place in our thoughts. It was a soft, grey morning ; the sky was covered with light, broken clouds, the deck was wet with a passing shower, of which the last drips were still flying in the air ; and before u^, some ten miles away, the coasts and promontories of the Peloponnesus were reaching southward into the quiet sea. These long serrated ridges did not look lofty, in spite of their snow-clad peaks, nor did they look inhospitable, in spite of their rough outline, but were all toned in harmonious colour — a deep purple blue, with here and there, on the far Arcadian peaks, and on the ridge of Mount Taygetus, patches of pure snow. In contrast to the large sweeps of the Italian coast, its open seas, its long waves of mountain, all was here broken, and rugged, and varied. The sea was studded with rocky islands, and the land indented with deep, narrow bays. * I can never forget the strong and peculiar impression of that first sight of Greece ; nor can I cease to wonder at the strange likeness which rose in my mind, and which made me think of the bays and rocky coasts of the west and south-west of Ireland. There was the same cloudy, showery sky, which is so common there ; there was the same serrated outline of hills, the same richness in promontories, and rocky islands and land-locked bays. Nowhere have I seen a like purple colour, except in the wilds of Kerry and Connemara ; and though the general height of the Greek mountains, as the snow in May testified, was far greater than that of the Irish hills, yet on that morning, and in that light, they looked modest and homely, not dis- playing their grandeur, or commanding awe and wonder, but rather attracting the sight by their wonderful grace, and by their variety and richness of out- line and colour.'" This is the southern approach by sea — perhaps, after all, the least interesting. For now most travellers will prefer to go by Corfu and through the Ionian islands to Patras, from whence a train — yes, a puffing engine with square carriages — brings them by Sicyon, Corinth, Megara, Eleusis, to the capital. Most of the essential features of Greek landscape disclose themselves to the wondering eye on this exquisite journey. At dawn of day you come in sight of the Acro-Ceraunian Mountains, and that wild country, now Albania, which of old nursed Pyrrhus, the scourge of Rome ; Olympias, the Titanic mother of Alexander the Great ; and in after days a lesser Alexander, Scanderbeg, who was, neverthless, a great figure in the history of his day ; and as the Dorians of old came down from their mountains, and refreshed Southern Greece with their strong youth and their warlike virtues, so, in the Middle Ages, these Albanian mountaineers have brought both warlike spirit, bright costume, and beauty of person, to refresh the Hellenic race. There are still, even in Attica, districts where Albanian is the common language ; there are Albanian names famous in Greek annals, ' Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 3-5- FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 21 especially in the great War of Independence (i 821 -31), and even among the sailors of Hydra, so famed for their commercial enterprise and their deeds of war, the chief families were Albanian in origin. The Greeks, who possess with the other Ionian islands, Corfu, since the cession, by Mr. Gladstone's influence, feel very sore that the mainland opposite their principal island, the rugged nurse of the splendid youths one sees buying weapons and ammunition in the market of Corfu, should still belong to the Turks. But every effort to possess themselves of Joannina by diplomacy failed against the tough resistance of the Porte. At the present moment (1889), the Greeks have a very strong argument to urge in favour of their claims. While every spot in the kingdom of Greece is perfectly safe for strangers, and can be visited without escort or alarm, this very province of Jodnnina — the ancient Epirus — is so insecure that neither the Turkish nor the English Government will sanction any attempt to travel through it. There could be no fairer and more characteristic way of entering Greece, now that railways are threatening to carry people there by sleeping-cars and night mails, than to land from Corfu, and ride through Jodnnina over the passes of Mount Pindus to Meteora in Thessaly, and so to Volo. This excursion of four days from the Adriatic to the Levant would carry the traveller through splendid mountain passes, clothed with forest or with rich ever- green vegetation. He would see true and undebauched mountaineers in their homes, and would enjoy that peculiar pleasure, becoming rarer every day, of travelling in Europe his own master, unvexed by posts and their punctuali- ties, officials and their irksome patronage. Before I return from this Albanian digression, I will say a word about the costume which has become the national dress of the Greeks. The most characteristic feature is the fustanella, a white petticoat, which, like the Scottish kilt, gives its name to the whole attire. Wearing the fustanella in Greece is like ' wearing the kilt ' in Scodand. This petticoat is, however, far more troublesome and exacting than its Highland brother. In the first place, it must be as tight as possible round the waist ; and this is the reason that the king's guards at Athens, who wear it as their uniform, look so straight and well drilled. If you want a man to stand thoroughly upright, squeeze in his waist. The amount of white linen or calico is also enormous — perhaps twenty or thirty yards, plaited so densely that the whole thing stands out from the wearer after the manner of a ballet-dancer's attire. At first sight this strikes the stranger as ungraceful, especially as it is coupled with a tight leg-dress, and shoes turned up at the toes, with large woollen rosettes upon them. But the gaiters or greaves are richly embroidered, and of dark rich colours ; the open jacket or vest, with its hanging sleeves, is covered with rich ornament, and the broad leather belt is a study in itself, holding knives, pistols, tobacco — what not? It is in fact the only pocket, and a very capacious one, in the whole costume. The head-dress is not a {^z, but a 22 GREEK PICTURES. red cap with a long blue tassel, fitted tight to the head, and generally worn rakishly on one side. The general effect of a crowd dressed in this way is very brilliant — a great deal of white, both the clean white of linen and the duller cream-white of wool. This I take to have been the general tone of an old Greek crowd as well. Then there are the brilliant patches of scarlet in the head-dresses, and many jackets of dark blue, maroon, rich brown, as well as the beautiful embroideries upon white woollen coats, which are the most attractive of all. In wet weather, or in the winter, they carry besides a huge capote of very rough frieze, of home manufacture, which serves them as a saddle-cloth or a blanket as well as an overcoat. The dress of the women, when they still wear a national dress, is not so striking, nor do I feel very compe- tent to describe it. The obvious features are the display of coins — gold and silver — in the form of a broad necklace covering the throat, and so an Albanian or Phocian girl shows her fortune, and the large, loose great-coat or dressing-gown of wool, with red embroidery round the skirt, which is a shapeless garment, though of course far better than the modern horrors they adopt from the wandering traders, or the distorted echoes of European fashion. One of the curious features in this century is the admiration for national costume among all the people who have lost it, and the low esteem for it among all those who still pos- sess it. We, who have sunk all colour and design in grey tweeds and pot-hats, take artificial opportunities of decking ourselves out in these foreign and barbarous dresses, which the natural wearers lay aside, if possible, to adopt our uniform hideousness of attire. Even the beautiful tones of Eastern carpets, which we justly prize, and for which we pay large money, are now disappearing in the East before imitations of the staring discords of modern German manufacturers. To purchase a good Greek rug at Athens twenty years ago was easy enough. Now you will not A Modern Greek in National Dress. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 23 see one in a thousand at the bazaars — you must go to some left-behind place, like Salonica or Monastir, to find these relics of unconscious good taste. But I feel I am spending too many pages on these external features, and delaying the reader unduly on this entrance into Greece. Though Corfu (the old Corey ra) is now an essential part of the Hellenic kingdom, and a frequent summer residence of the king, there are many things in it peculiar to the history of the island, and not elsewhere to be found in these waters. It shares, of course, with Zante and the other Ionian islands, including even Cerigo (the old Cythera), the benefits derived from the English occu- pation^ — good roads, proper light- houses, and the notions of clean hotels and civilised appointments. These advantages make Corfu even now a pleasant and com- fortable place for residence. In antiquities, Corfu is curiously poor, seeing that it was a well-known Hellenic centre of wealth from old times, notori- ous indeed in Thucydides for its atrocities, as that great artist selected it for the gloomiest picture on his historical canvas, but of course also abounding in those treasures which, if now unearthed, would make the for- tune of any Greek town. But except the circular tomb of Menecrates with its old inscrip- \ tion, and the lamous archaic ^ greek Woman of Mantoudi in the National Dress. lion now preserved in the royal residence, there is hardly anything to be studied. Part of this dearth is no doubt due to the careful collections of precious things made by Lord Ockham (now Lord Lovelace), Mr. Woodhouse, and others, who lived in Corfu, and bought when buying was possible. Any one who examines the Woodhouse 24 GREEK PICTURES. Collection, now incorporated, but specified, in the British Museum, will see the sense of this observation. It is remarkable that Corfu has always held the pre-eminence among the Ionian islands, probably because it was the outpost to and from Italy. Both in climate and in fruitfulness it is not superior to Zante or Cephalonia ; indeed, the former is even fairer, and contains mineral wealth peculiar to itself. On the southern slopes of Cephalonia, and at Zante, the currant grape will grow, whereas even at Corfu the winters are too cold. The lemons and oranges of Zante are imported to Corfu. Nevertheless, these southern islands have never attained to any fame, if we except the steep rock of Ithaca, which made its reputation ages ago, by the inventions of the great poet who wrote the Odyssey. I dare not call him Homer, lest I should be suspected of old-fashioned views, and of holding that he was also the poet of the Iliad. I am already going very far in the retrograde direction when I speak of him in the singular, and when I say that he wrote his poem. The curious thing about him is this : that though he gives rightly the general character of Ithaca, as a rocky and barren island, he seems to have no real knowledge of the place in detail. The ingenious attempts made by firm believers like Dr. Schliemann and others, to identify the sites picturesquely described in the Odyssey, have resulted, I think, in total failure. But, nevertheless, Ithaca, as a name, will live in story for ever, and remains a monument of the power of poetry. But with this strange exception, and that of the Corcyrean massacres, to which I have already alluded, the statement with which I opened my Rambles and Studies remains true, that all the importance of Greece looks eastward, and that this Ionian or Adriatic side is the out-of-the-way, the backward, the forgotten part of the country. Let me add another curious negative testimony, which I have not before mentioned. When St. Paul came to preach the Gospel in Europe, he coasted the north and the east of the land ; he preached at Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth. The western country is never mentioned. From Greece his labours extend even to Italy — but he never takes the ordinary route. He never preaches at Patrae, at Zacynthus, at Corcyra. Nor do we hear of any of his fellow- workers or followers coming or going to these parts. There were, of course, special causes for the depopulation and decay of Western Greece in the period preceding St. Paul's labours. The country had been laid waste by the Romans, and had become mere pastures or barren lands. Roman lords like Pomponius Atticus owned large tracts in Epirus. A Roman exile like Caius Antonius could lord it as he chose in Cephalonia. There was, therefore, except at Nicopolis and Patrae, no population to be com- pared with that of the districts visited by the apostle. But at all times and at all epochs the unimportance of Western Greece is signal and curious. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 25 As the steamer makes her way southward, the great mountains unfold themselves, and disclose the entrance into the famous Gulf of Corinth — that long fiord which has witnessed more history and more politics than any library of books could adequately expound. To the right and to the left, as you enter this gulf, are the Alps, which have again and again been the nurses of liberty. There was a period in Greek history when all the greater states had become effete, had fallen under the power of Macedon, had sullied their great traditions, and were degraded to flattery and mendicancy in their public acts. The great historian of Greece, George Grote, when he comes to this condition of things at Athens, cites with disgust one of their fawning decrees, offering the honours of the state for a mess of pottage from a foreign king, and throws down his pen.' But in the mountains now before us, and on either side, both north and south, the hardy mountaineers of y^^tolia and Achaia, hitherto hidden from history and from fame, formed a new political life, that of Confederations, and renewed in the Greece of Polybius what the Greece of Thucydides and Xenophon had so nobly begun. Political liberty in a new form — the form copied by Switzerland and the United States of America — became again the appanage of the Hellenic race, and the ^tolian and Achaean Leagues enabled little towns and poor men to treat with kings and affect the policy of empires. When we are asked, as we sometimes are, what good there is in spending our lives over the details of ancient history, we have an answer ready, quite apart from the proper reply, that learning is a good thing in itself, and requires no support from the supposed advantages it may entail. The answer in the case of this Greece of Polybius (300-150 B.C.) which Grote thought beneath his attention, is that the great practical politicians of America, Hamilton and Madison, who laid down in their paper, the Federalist, the lines upon which that noble commonwealth was set up, made a distinct study of the Achaean League, and adopted from its arrange- ments many practical devices for the republic which was then coming into existence. To follow a successful experiment, or to avoid an acknowledged mistake, is a very different thing from trying a brand new theory. The /Etolians never gained so high a reputation. They were undoubtedly accurate prototypes of those vigorous and turbulent clephts who contributed in this century with such vigour to the liberation of Greece, and at the same time took good care to fill their own pockets. But both were the real and sincere advocates of liberty ; and whatever boldness and independence existed in the later history of Greece was very much due to these wild moun- taineers, who earned gold by mercenary service, in Syria, Egypt, and * Grote's Greece, conclusion of Chap, xcvi., which is the real close of the great work, though followed by a long appendix on Magna Grsecia. The words are : ' When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens both employed and recompensed her most eminent citizens, an historian accustomed to the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, feels that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.' 26 GREEK PICTURES. Carthage, and then came home to spend it at their capital Thermon, which was at one time a very museum of art and architecture. Another generation or two of successful trading in this century would have made the island of Hydra just such another settlement, fed and enriched by the labour of absentees, whose great ambition was to come home some day and display their wealth, in luxury and hospitality among their kindred. The interest of the northern coast used to centre at Naupactus, at the point where the two shores approached within two or three miles. There it was that various •^-^^ - A Mountain Vilw on tiil Gulj of Corinth. striking incidents both of war and diplomacy took place. In our day Naupactus no longer exists ; it is at Missolonghi that the greatest tragedies in the modern history of Greece took place. At Missolonghi the great poet who stirred all Europe for the cause ot Hellenic liberty lay down and died, when his task of liberation was but partly accomplished. At Missolonghi the brave defenders of their households and their homes showed the indomitable heroism which, in spite of their defeat and massacre, proved to the world that Greece could not longer exist in slavery, and that there was no choice for Europe between witness- ing the total extirpation of the population, or insisting upon the departure of the Turks. In this neighbourhood too, the other Philhellene to whom the Greeks owe most, nay, perhaps as much as they do to Byron, met his FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 27 death from the stray bullet of an Albanian sharpshooter. The daring deeds of Captain Abney Hastings have not received their full meed of praise in the current books upon Greece, though his friend Finlay has spoken out clearly, and told of his unselfishness, of his clear insight, of his originality in applying the newly discovered steam power to naval warfare. But our steamer brings us to the opposite shore, and we land at Patras. For to run a railway along the northern shore of the gulf would have been an engineering feat rather than a reasonable enterprise, seeing that the southern shore is a gentle slope, from which the mountains rise gradually into Arcadia. Patras, the ancient Patrae, was once a flourishing city in the Achaean League. When the rest of Greece sank under the oppressive friendship or the crushing vengeance of the Romans, Patrae still maintained an important position as a trading port, and, moreover, here it was that the great Pompey settled a large number of the pirates whom he had swept from the Levant in his famous admiralship of the year 67 B.C. It sounds so odd to the modern reader that a settlement of pirates should be thrust upon a respectable city, and should make it flourish, that I shall take the opportunity of saying a word about this Levantine piracy, now happily and at last a matter of history only. In early times, as the reader of Homer knows, piracy was thought rather a respectable trade. ' Are you a merchant,' somebody asks, quite politely, ' or are you making your livelihood by raiding upon the coasts .'* ' In these early days, when Phoenicians and Greeks first ventured far away along barbarous coasts, it seemed not to matter very much whether they made five hundred per cent, in barter with the natives, or simply took away what they could find, without paying for it at all. But what strikes us as very curious, is that, even in civilised and historical days, this great im- morality in condoning robbery and even murder on the highways of the sea never met with the stern reprobation it deserved. It was the real merit of those naval empires which held sway over the Levant — in the earliest days Crete, then Athens, then Rhodes — that by their vigorous police they kept the seas tolerably clear and safe for commerce. But the instant this vigilance was relaxed pirates reappeared, and arch-pirates are spoken of in the later days of Greek history (3rd and 2nd centuries b.c.) as a sort of naval magnates or admirals, with whom both Hellenistic kings and Roman generals treated as an independent power. There was a moment when the pirate question even became the problem of the world's peace. The exactions and violences of the Romans, the selling into slavery of vast numbers of free Greeks, the destruction of ancient maritime cities with a sailor popula- tion had thrown upon the world thousands of outcasts, in penury and want, full of bitterness and hatred against the dominant power, and ready to live by violence, and revenge themselves for their misfortunes. The great speech of Cicero in favour of the law proposed by Manilius, which made 28 GREEK PICTURES. Pompey admiralissimo of all the Roman fleets and coasts, gives us such frightful details of the daring and the cruelty of these pirates, that we must consider the circumstances I have just named, to account for the dreadful dis- organization of the world. But, on the other hand, Pompey's settlement gives us a clear sign that these people were to a great extent landsmen, and even landsmen of former respectability turned loose upon the sea. For when he settled them at Patras and elsewhere they seem to have returned to order and respect- ability, which buccaneers in the mediaeval sense would never have done. Virgil, in a famous passage in his Georgics, describes an old Cilician pirate who had taken to gardening in his new home, near Tarentum in Italy — a very mild and harmless pursuit for one who had perhaps made Roman officers walk the plank, and in any case had kidnapped and sold innocent children into hopeless slavery. All the plots of the extant Greek novels, which nobody reads nowadays, turn upon adventures with pirates. The hero or the heroine never escapes being kidnapped at some moment of their history. I will not follow the long history of violence and crime through all the Middle Ages, when Saracens, Turks, and so-called Christians, vied with each other in deeds of lawlessness, cruelty and revenge, through the coasts and islands of the Levant. Ultimately people ceased to inhabit the sea-board, on account of its insecurity ; and the main reason why the coasts of Southern Italy and of Greece still wear so desolate and lonely an aspect is that the ravages of pirates and disappearance of coast population has made the sea- board in most places a veritable solitude. These things are not so old even now. It was within our own century that Lord Exmouth bombarded the corsairs of Algiers, and that Byron lived among the perils of pirates in Greece. All through Byron's poetry, the pirate is represented as a sort of wild adventurer, revenging himself for some wrong of men or circumstances, and not without noble and picturesque environments. I fear his picture of the Greek or Albanian pirates, as regards good qualities, is no truer than Cooper's pictures of the North American savages, whose falsehoods, meanness, and terrible cruelty he disguised under a guise of invented chivalry.' What has really caused piracy to disappear from the Levant is not the increasing honesty or civilization of the people, for the brigand, or land- pirate, is still quite a usual phenomenon (beyond the kingdom of Greece), but the invention of steam, which has put into the hands of governments a perfectly effectual engine for pursuing and destroying the fastest felucca, while the expenses of building and maintaining steamers are far beyond the ' The real state of the case may be learned from Mr. Parkman's book on the Jesuit missions to these savages, when they were in no way touched by the vices of European immigration, but were still in what people imagine their pristine innocence and respectability. A more horrible picture of odious vice is hard to be found anywhere. Anything I have ever known of Greek pirates from reliable hearsay, or of Greek brigands, still so common in Levantine Turkey, corroborates my opinion that here too the influence of fiction has been to palliate odious crimes, and to cast a halo of poetry around the most degraded and disgusting of miscreants. FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 31 resources of any modern pirates. Certainly the nooks and corners, the safe hiding-places, and lofty look-out promontories, make this part of the world curiously well adapted for marine dishonesty. I believe the Malay Archi- pelago, with its very similar natural features, still maintains a reputation analogous to that of Byron's Greece in this unenviable particular. But we must leave these antiquarian considerations, and descend to the modern Patras, still a thriving port, and now the main point of contact between Greece and the rest of Europe. For, as a railway has now been opened from Patras to Athens, all the steamers from Brindisi, Venice, Trieste, put in there, and from thence the stream of travellers proceeds by the new line to the capital. The old plan of steaming up the long fiord to Corinth is abandoned ; still more the once popular route round the Morea, which, if somewhat slower, at least saved the unshipping at Lechseum, the drive in omnibuses across the isthmus, and reshipment at Cenchreae — all done with much confusion, and with loss and damage to luggage and temper. Not that there is no longer confusion. The railway station at Patras, and that at Athens, are the most curious bear-gardens in which business ever was done. The traveller (I speak of the year of our Lord 1889) is informed that unless he is there an hour before the time, he will not get his luggage weighed and despatched. And when he comes down from the comfortable hotel — exceptionally so for Greece — to find out what it all means, he meets the whole population of the town in possession of the station. Everybody who has nothing to do gets in the way of those who have ; everything is full of noise and confusion. I remember once waking up in an inn at Tripolitza (in Arcadia) with the consciousness that there were people in the room. I found a number of splendidly dressed people examining with perfectly innocent curiosity my appointments, feeling the edge of razors, hesitating over the use of tooth and nail brushes, wondering at tooth powder, &c. They had even strained the lock of a bag, to peep in and see what was inside. When I started up, and bade them be gone with no small impatience, they went out quietly, without the least sense that they were intruding. They had heard that a stranger had arrived. Probably, as they get up very early, they had waited some time to see what I was like. Then their curiosity overcame them, and they invaded my bedroom. The traveller in Greece must expect this sort of attention. He is stared at and criticised as fully as the Athenians of old criticised St. Paul or any other stranger, but without malice or ill-nature. At last the train steams out of the station, and takes its deliberate way along the coast, through woods of fir trees, bushes of arbutus and mastic, and the many flowers which stud the earth. And here already the traveller, looking out of the window, can form an idea of the delights of real Greek travel, by which he must understand mounting a mule or pony, and making his way along woody paths, or beside the quiet sea, or up the steep sides 32 GREEK PICTURES. of a rocky defile. Every half-hour the train crosses torrents coming from the mountains, which in flood times colour the sea for some distance with the brilliant brick- red of the clay they carry with them from their banks. The peacock blue of the open sea bounds this red water with a definite line, and the contrast in the bright sun is something very startling. Shallow banks of sand also reflect their pale yellow in many places, so that the brilliancy of this gulf exceeds anything I had ever seen in sea or lake. We pass the sites of ^gion, now Vostitza, once famous as the capital or centre (politically) of the Achaean League. We pass Sicyon, the home of Aratus, the great regenerator, the mean destroyer of that League, as you can still read in Plutarch's fascinating life of the man. But these places, like so many others in Greece, once famous, have now no trace of their greatness left above ground The day may, however, still come, when another Schliemann will unearth the records and fragments of a civilization distinguished even in Greece for refinement. Sicyon was a famous school of art. Painting and sculpture flourished there, and there was a special school of Sicyon, whose features we can still recognise in extant copies of the famous statues they produced. There is a statue known as the Canon statue, a model of human proportions, which was the work of the famous Polycleitus of Sicyon, and which we know from various imitations preserved in Rome and elsewhere. But we shall return in due time to Greek sculpture as a whole, and shall not interrupt our journey at this moment. All that we have passed through hitherto may be classed under the title of * first impressions.' The wild northern coast shows us but one inlet, the Gulf of Salona, with the little port of I tea at its mouth. This was the old highway to ascend to the oracle of Delphi on the snowy Parnassus, which we shall approach better from the Boeotian side. But now we strain our eyes to behold the great rock of Corinth, and to invade this, the first great centre of Greek life, which closes the long bay at its westernmost end. A Greek Musician. CHAPTER III. Corinth. FROM the earliest days down to the present century, Corinth has been just missing the position of the capital of Greece. Holding the key of the Morea from the north, crowned by the almost impregnable fortress once known among the fetters of Greece, provided with two harbours, and the traffic of eastern and western seas, the centre of the Hellenic peninsula, on the high road in all directions — the wonder is that from the outset Corinth did not claim and hold the first place among the cities of Greece. And yet at no time has this been the case. In very early days, there was certainly a great Phoenician settlement there, to which we may attribute the worship of Heracles, descended from the Tyrian Melcarth, the worship of Aphrodite, the Sidonian Astarte, as well as many lesser cults which characterise the religion of this city. The worship of Aphrodite in particular was marked by that peculiar licentious side which is so shocking in the idolatry of the Phoenicians. It might almost be said of them, as it has been of the Mexican Aztecs, that cruelty and lust were the main attributes of their deities, or at least of the worship which was thought acceptable to these deities by their worshippers. We do not know Corinth till the human sacrifices, which D 34 GREEK PICTURES. there as elsewhere must have stained the city's conscience, had been abolished by Greek humanity ; but the practices which disgraced the worship of Astarte survived in the service of the Corinthian Aphrodite up to the days of Pindar (500 B.C.), who addresses the female ministrants of the goddess in an ode of which, happily perhaps, but a brief fragment remains, of shocking significance. The Phoenicians left another indelible mark on Corinth, beside its religion. They left impressed upon it that trading spirit which, apart from actual trade, makes the wealth so acquired always timid in its boldness, shortsighted in its policy, submissive in its courage, never risking all for even the highest reward, ever making friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, and so wiser only for their generation than the children of light. Thus Athens, that risked all, won eternal supremacy over men. Corinth, with larger capital, more central situation, perhaps with a long start in culture, was never fit for the first place. In the poems of Homer, it is known as rich and impor- tant, but even then subject to the rule of Agamemnon of Mycenae, a city small and remote, with no such advantages as Corinth, and yet taking the supremacy in that part of the Peloponnesus. The very name of the city is not thoroughly fixed in Homer, who calls it Ephyre as well as Corinth, as if the latter name had difficulties in establishing its sway. The very form, indeed, suggests the analogous name of Tiryns, which in Greek should either be Tirys or Tirynthus, the ending in ns being disagreeable to Greek ears. If there ever was such a form as Corins, it gave way to the name we know, which had supplanted Ephyre before proper history dawns in Greece. When the so-called Heracleids and Dorians invaded the Morea, Corinth, like the rest, became subject to a Doric aristocracy, afterwards well- known as the Bacchiadse, who ruled over the older or Achaean population with more or less severity. But even then the trade of Corinth was assured, and there are few early facts or anecdotes about the city which do not turn upon the mercantile side of life. To Corinth belonged the honour of founding Syracuse, the queen of Sicilian cities, as well as the historic city on the island of Corcyra, which under the name of Corfu has remained famous and popular as a summer resort for Greeks, a winter resort for Northerns, up to the present day. Archias of Corinth was the founder of Sicilian greatness, and if his date was fixed at the tenth generation from his ancestor, the god Heracles, this invention of parentage and antiquity does not displace the fact that he carried the old Phoenician spirit of his city into the most brilliant of its developments, that of foreign colonization. At Corinth were first built ships of war, and their mettle first tried in battle between the mother city and its colony at Corfu. Thucydides puts this event at 664 B.C. ; about the time, in my opinion, when the colonization of Magna Graecia and of Sicily was being undertaken.' ' On this point I have given details in my History of Greek Literature^ vol. i. app. B, and in the Journal at Htllenic Studies, CORINTH. 35 Corinth, as might be expected, was the scene of one of those supplan- tations of Doric aristocrats by a despot who protected and promoted the interests of the older population ; and the history of the dynasty of Cypselus, as well as of the early adventures and successes of the founder, form one of the most attractive episodes in the fascinating history of Herodotus. Here is an extract for which the reader not familiar with that prince of narrators will thank me. ' The constitution of the Corinthians was formerly of this kind : it was an oligarchy, and those who were called Bacchiadae governed the city ; they intermarried only with their own family. Amphion, one of these men, had a lame daughter, her name was Labda ; as no one of the Bacchiadae would marry her, Eetion, son of Echecrates, who was of the district of Petra, though originally one of the Lapithae, and a descendant of Cseneus, had her. He had no children by this wife, nor by any other ; he therefore went to Delphi to inquire about having offspring ; and immediately as he entered, the Pythian saluted him in the following lines : " Eetion, no one honours thee, though worthy of much honour. Labda is pregnant, and will bring forth a round stone ; it will fall on monarchs, and will vindicate Corinth." This oracle, pronounced to Eetion, was by chance reported to the Bacchiadae, to whom a former oracle concerning Corinth was unintelligible, and which tended to the same end as that of Eetion, and was in these terms: "An eagle broods on the rocks ;^ and shall bring forth a lion, strong and carnivorous, and it shall loosen the knees of many. Now ponder this well, ye Corinthians, who dwell around beauteous Pirene and frowning Corinth." ' Now this, which had been given before, was unintelligible to the Bacchiadae ; but now, when they heard that which was delivered to Eetion, they presently understood the former one, since it agreed with that given to Eetion. And though they comprehended, they kept it secret, purposing to destroy the offspring that should be born to Eetion. As soon as the woman brought forth, they sent ten of their own number to the district where Eetion lived, to put the child to death ; and when they arrived at Petra, and entered the court of Eetion, they asked for the child ; but Labda, knowing nothing of the purpose for which they had come, and supposing that they asked for it out of affection for the father, brought the child, and put it into the hands of one of them. Now, it had been deter- mined by them in the way, that whichever of them should first receive the child, should dash it on the ground. When, however, Labda brought and gave it to one of them, the child, by a divine providence, smiled on the man who received it ; and when he perceived this, a feeling of pity restrained him from killing it ; and, moved by compassion, he gave it to the second, ' The words altihs, ' an eagle,' and Tfrpriffi, ' rocks,' bear an enigmatical meaning j the former intimating ' Eetion,' and the latter his birthplace, ' Petra.' D 2 36 GREEK PICTURES. and he to the third ; thus the infant, being handed from one to another, passed through the hands of all the ten, and not one of them was willing to destroy it. Having therefore delivered the child again to its mother, and gone out, they stood at the door, and attacked each other with mutual recriminations ; and especially the first who took the child, because he had not done as had been determined ; at last, when some time had elapsed, they determined to go in again, and that every one should share in the murder. * But it was fated that misfortunes should spring up to Corinth from the progeny of Eetion. For Labda, standing at the very door, heard all that had passed ; and fearing that they might change their resolution, and having obtained the child a second time might kill it, she took and hid it, in a place which appeared least likely to be thought of, in a chest ; being very certain, that if they should return and come back to search, they would pry everywhere ; which in fact did happen, but when, having come and made a strict search, they could not find the child, they resolved to depart, and tell those who sent them that they had done all that they had commanded. * After this, Eetion's son grew up, and having escaped this danger, the name of Cypselus was given him, from the chest. When Cypselus reached man's estate, and consulted the oracle, an ambiguous answer was given him at Delphi ; relying on which, he attacked and got possession of Corinth. The oracle was this : " Happy this man, who is come down to my dwelling; Cypselus, son of Eetion, king of renowned Corinth ; he and his children, but not his children's children." Such was the oracle. And Cypselus, having obtained the tyranny, behaved himself thus : he banished many of the Corinthians, deprived many of their property, and many more of their life. 'When he had reigned thirty years, and ended his life happily, his son Periander at first was more mild than his father ; but when he had communicated by ambassadors with Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, he became far more cruel than Cypselus. For having sent a nuncio to Thrasybulus, he asked in what way, having ordered affairs most securely, he might best govern the city. Thrasybulus conducted the person who came from Periander out of the city, and going into a field of corn, and as he went through the standing corn, questioning him about, and making him repeat over again, the account of his coming from Corinth, he cut off any ear that he saw taller than the rest, and having cut it off, he threw it away, till in this manner he had destroyed the best and deepest of the corn. Having gone through the piece of ground, and given no message at all, he dismissed the nuncio. When the nuncio returned to Corinth, Periander was anxious to know the answer of Thrasybulus ; but he said that Thrasybulus had given him no answer, and wondered he should have sent him to such a man, for that he was crazy, and destroyed his own property, relating what he had seen done by Thrasybulus. CORINTH. 37 * But Periander, comprehending the meaning of the action, and under- standing that Thrasybulus advised him to put to death the most eminent of the citizens, thereupon exercised all manner of cruelties towards his subjects ; for whatever Cypselus had left undone, by killing and banishing, Periander completed.' ' These were perhaps the greatest days of Corinth, for Periander counted afterwards among the Seven Sages of Greece, and Herodotus elsewhere tells us that when gold offerings were first proposed for the gods, there could only be found at Corinth a sufficient quantity of that precious metal. But nevertheless, all its commerce, and its power under the Cypselids, could not Ruins of the old Temple at Corinth. make it a serious rival to Sparta and Athens. In the great struggle with the Persians, Corinth fought indeed on the patriotic side, but not without suspicion. In the following century we find the Corinthians the foremost of the second-class powers, representing the grievances and difficulties of the lesser members of the Spartan Confederation, but nowhere taking a real lead in affairs. But I cannot here follow out this long and intricate history. Suffice it to say that the last struggle for old Greek independence, or what claimed to be such, was fought before Corinth, and that the sack and burning of that ' Herodotus, v. 92 (Bohn's translation). 38 GREEK PICTURES. ancient and splendid city by the Roman Mummius (146 B.C.) has always counted as one of the great tragedies in history. Polybius witnessed this terrible scene, and saw the most precious art treasures tossed about for the sport of the boorish legionaries. Of all the Corinth which has so far occupied us, but one relic remains, the Doric pillars represented on the previous page. The style of these pillars, in their proportions most like those of the great temple at Paistum in Italy, points to the seventh century B.C. ; in any case to a period not later than Periander, who was not improbably their builder, for these tyrants always sought to occupy men's minds and hands in beautifying the outward appearance and public buildings of their cities. They were art-patrons on principle. The rest of old Corinth is gone. The very site was cursed by the Romans, for their merchants desired to kill all competition in their trade, and were ready enough to call in religion to protect usury. Nevertheless, the great Julius Caesar disregarded both the greed of the speculators and the sanctions of their interested creed, and undertook to restore both Corinth and its sister in calamity as well as in mercantile prosperity, the city of Carthage. The idea of the great Caesar took hold on the trading world. We know little of the rebuilding of the city, save what Strabo tells us — that in digging for foundations people came upon the older tombs, in which were found quantities of antique pottery, which became high fashion at Rome under the title of N ecro-Corinthia. It was the curious semi-Oriental kind, with animals in red and black, now so common in our museums. So then under Augustus, in the first years of the Christian era, Corinth had just risen from its ashes, and resumed its position as one of the most important trading towns in the Levant. And, as might be expected, the Jews, who had for two centuries past occupied trading ports on the coast of Asia Minor, were ready to take advantage of the new foundation, where they could reside with freedom and without social disabilities among the new and mongrel population of traders who thronged into this revived centre of business. It has not, perhaps, been sufficiently noticed that this is the kind of town chosen by the Apostle Paul as the fruitful seat of his missionary labours — not the ancient seats of Greek aristocracy, such as Sparta, Argos, Athens, but those newer or newly-revived towns where there was a strong Jewish nucleus to begin with. The Macedonian towns, to which we shall come in due time in our peregrinations, were just of this kind. The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians were fortunately occupied with far more important topics than any description of the city and its society, so that it is only through indirect and casual allusion that they can give us any help. Still, a careful perusal of them, especially of the First, does show some details such as we should have expected from this new-old foundation, this collection of mercantile people under the favour of Roman enterprise. The CORINTH. ^l epistles, by the way, are not addressed to Corinth only, but to the surrounding country, the Second formally to all the Christians in Achaia, which at that time meant the province of Achaia, and included all that we now call Greece. But there were only two other towns in this province of the same composite character as Corinth — Patras, which I have already mentioned, and Nicopolis, whose ruins are still so imposing at the head of the Gulf of Arta. This latter was the foundation of Augustus, to celebrate his victory at Actium ; and he depopulated the neighbourhood to gather in people enough for his memorial city. It was to such composite cities that St. Paul specially turned his attention, in the first instance, no doubt, on account of the nucleus of Jews to be found there ; for though he was the Apostle of the Gentiles, the faith which he preached was always in connection with the Jewish religion, testified by their sacred books, developed in and from their nation. So we find in the First Epistle that he addresses Jews and Greeks in turn, referring the former, for instance, to the feast of unleavened bread in the fifth chapter ; and to the passage of the Red Sea, in the tenth — while, again, the constant reminder that he is not talking wisdom or philosophy, but preaching Christ, is intended for Hellenic readers. Thus he places in the forefront of the First Epistle these words : ' And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.' ^ In addition to this we find distinctly Roman disciples mentioned, Fortunatus, Achaicus, Caius, Prisca ; and we even hear that the meat market was known by its Latin name, macellum. He tells us, furthermore, as perhaps we might expect, that not many wise, or powerful, or noble persons had joined the new faith, which generally made its way first among the poor and the distressed ; but still, in the Second Epistle, he presses upon them the importance of sending contributions to Jerusalem, with the distinct implication that the Corinthian brethren were far better able to contribute than those of Macedonia, who had shown far greater readiness. It is not usually noticed that to the Jewish Christians this sending of gifts to Jerusalem was only the continuation of an old and universal habit among the diaspora, or Jews scattered abroad over the world, who had for centuries back supported and enriched the Temple with regular stated offerings, so that here again Christian was concatenated with Jewish practice. These facts are of great importance in accounting for the common confusion of Jews and Christians which took place among the Roman rulers of that century. Of course we might fairly expect that among so mixed a congregation variations of opinion should occur, and so the apostle urges a complaint not only of the heresies — an old and mild word for peculiar opinions in philosophy — but of the clefts or schisms — a strictly New Testament word — ' I Cor. ii. 2. 42 GREEK PICTURES. which agitated that Church. We are not surprised to find in the details which follow, that the sexual side of life occupied much of their attention. It had long been painfully prominent in their heathen cults ; and so the natural reaction against these shameful disorders led some to a strongly ascetic and celibate theory, while others asserted the laws of Nature. To this controversy St. Paul gives much of his attention. There is another problem which we naturally find discussed in his Corinthian letters, and in a manner perhaps to most readers unexpected — I mean the question of the gift of tongues. In a great trading port, or pair of ports, such as Cenchrese and Lechseum, which harboured ships from all parts of the known world, many men of many languages must have sojourned, and here, if anywhere, any miraculous power of teaching in foreign tongues would naturally find its scope. We find, too, that this gift was asserted at Corinth, but never for the purpose of reaching foreigners. It was exhibited within the Church, at her services, and, as St. Paul clearly says, to the confusion and detriment of these services. For no one could understand the speaker unless he were interpreted ; and so the apostle restricts the use of the gift, and demands that, the interpretation shall accomxpany it. Nevertheless — and this is a strong and curious corroboration of the narrative of the Acts — he does not for a moment deny this miraculous inspiration ; he even claims himself to have the gift of tongues more than any of his readers ; he will not forbid it absolutely in the churches ; the strange thing is, that he never thinks for one moment of exhorting that this curious gift shall be applied to the conversion of the heathen who did not understand Greek or Hebrew. He himself too, travelling over the world, and often meeting with barbarians, never, so far as we know, used any other language than Greek, or, exceptionally, the Hebrew of the day, in his teaching. So completely was the preaching of Christianity bound up with the language of the civilised world, which every cultivated man, Roman or Oriental, was bound to understand. The gift of tongues, so far as we are informed about it, was a miraculous manifestation of the Spirit upon certain occasions, and not a practical engine for the spreading of the Gospel. In this feature, then, the original preaching of the Gospel differs widely from the noble missionary efforts of recent centuries, when the Bible has been translated into myriad languages, and pious men spend years of their life in the acquisition of barbarous tongues. As regards distinctly local allusions, they are, as I have said, but few. There is the well-known reference to the Isthmian games, which might have been written and understood anywhere : ' Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize ? Even so run that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown ; but we an in- corruptible. I therefore so run, as not uncertainly ; so fight I, as not CORINTH. 43 beating the air : but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage ; lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.'' There is perhaps another local allusion in iii. 10-15 of the First Epistle ; which in talking of good architects laying good foundations, and building upon them with various materials, adds that the work of each will be tested by fire — a curious and not very obvious application, unless we suppose the writer to allude to the re-opening and re-handling of the old ruins of the city, which had been burnt to the ground, by the builders of New Corinth. Doubtless they found that some foundations, and even some walls, had withstood the conflagration, owing to the soundness of their construction ; others had not, and so there may have been special aptitude for a metaphor which seems far-fetched without some such explanation. But I am not going to write a commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and must therefore abandon this fascinating digression, which was introduced The Acro-Corinthus. only to give the Christian reader a special interest in this most pagan ot all Hellenic cities. As I said before, Corinth is gone : earthquakes and malaria have cleared away all but the great Doric pillars of one old temple ; and so in our own century, when Corinth once more had the chance of becoming the capital of Greece, the assembled delegates of the new nation (in 1829), after long discussion, decided against Corinth, and in favour of Athens, for the new capital — a great mistake from the archaeological point of view, for we should now have excavated the whole of ancient Athens, had its site lain clear, and possibly found precious things at Corinth, which has not yet been explored. But the fate of Corinth, as usual, was against its supremacy. Let us now, however, ascend the famous citadel, the Acro-Corinthus, so often the scene of historic conflicts. * A winding path leads up on the south-west side to the Turkish ' I Cor. ix. 24-27. 44 GREEK PICTURES. drawbridge and gate, which are now deserted and open ; nor is there a single guard or soldier to watch a spot once the coveted prize of contending empires. In the days of the Achaean League, it was called one of the fetters of Greece, and indeed it requires no military experience to see the extraordinary importance of the place. Strabo speaks of the Peloponnesus as the Acropolis of Greece — Corinth may fairly be called the Acropolis of the Peloponnesus. It runs out boldly from the surging mountain-chains of the peninsula, like an outpost or sentry, guarding all approach from the north. In days when news was transmitted by fire signals, we can imagine how all the southern country must have depended on the watch upon the rock of Corinth. ' The day was too hazy when we stood there to let us measure the real limits of the view, and I cannot say how near to Mount Olympus the eye may reach in a suitable atmosphere. But a host of islands, the southern coasts of Attica and Boeotia, the Acropolis of Athens, Salamis and ^gina, Helicon and Parnassus, and endless ^tolian peaks, were visible in one direction ; while, as we turned round, all the waving reaches of Arcadia and Argolis, down to the approaches towards Mantinea and Karytena, lay stretched out before us. The plain of Argos, and the sea at that side, are hidden by the mountains. But without going into detail, this much may be said, that if a man wants to realise the features of these coasts, which he has long studied on maps, half an hour's walk round the top of this rock will give him a geographical insight which no years of study could attain.' ' The Isthmus, which is really some three or four miles north of Corinth, was of old famous for the Isthmian games, as well as for the noted diolkos, or road for dragging ships across. The games were founded about 586 B.C., when a strong suspicion had arisen throughout Greece concerning the fairness of the Elean awards at Olympia, and for a long time Eleans were excluded. In later days the games became very famous, the Argives or Cleonseans laying claim to celebrate them. It was at these games that Philip V. heard of the great defeat of the Romans by Hannibal, and resolved to enter into that colossal quarrel, which brought the Romans into Macedonia. The site of the stadium and of the temple of Isthmian Zeus, though well determined, has not, so far as I know, been yet systematically excavated. Close by I saw in 1889 the interrupted work of the canal which was at last to connect the eastern and western gulfs, and which when well nigh completed found its funds dissipated by the terrible crash of the Credit Mobilier in Paris, and now awaits another enterprise. The idea is old, and. often discussed, like that of the Isthmus of Suez. The Emperor Nero actually began the work, and the engineers of to-day resumed the cutting at the very spot where his workmen had left off. But if this very expensive work might have been of great service when sailing ships feared to round ' Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 342-344. CORINTH. 45 the notorious Cape of Malea, and when there was great trade from the Adriatic to the ports of Thessaly and Macedonia, surely all these advantages are now superseded. Steamers coming from the Straits of Messina would pay nothing to take the route of the Isthmus, in preference to rounding the Morea, and the main line of traffic is no longer to the Northern Levant, but to Alexandria. Even goods despatched from Trieste or Venice may now be landed at Patras, and sent on by rail to Athens ; so that the canal will now only serve the smallest fraction of the Levantine traffic, and even then, if the charges be at all adequate to the labour, will be avoided by circum- navigation. Amid the promotion of many useful schemes of traffic, this undertaking seems to me to stand out by its want of common sense. Indeed, had it been really important at any date, we may be sure that the Hellenistic Sovrans or Roman capitalists would have carried it out. But in classical days their smaller ships seem to have been dragged across upon movable rollers by slaves without much difficulty. tendon. SUttf/frxCt Ge«gl Estab\ '^.^'-^'^^^l Straits of Salamis. CHAPTER IV. Megara, Eleusis, and Daphne. THE journey from Corinth to the capital may either be undertaken by sea, passing among those myriad headlands, islands, coasts, which make the landscape in Greece so distinctive and so beautiful, or in the railway which trends along the precipitous coast, skirting those Scironian hills once famous for brigands in Greek legend, and commanding from its right windows, as I saw it in April 1889, an enchanting prospect across the Argolic gulf to y^gina, Salamis, and the coasts of Argolis. The outlines were gentle, but very various ; the setting sun was burnishing the glassy surface of the water into gold, and clothing the mountains and islands in rich rose colour and in purple. Our party were all old travellers, to whom Italy, Switzerland, and the northern highlands of Europe were quite familiar ; and yet we were all agreed that nowhere had any of us seen colour so rich, tones so soft, outlines so varied, not to speak of the great historic suggestions which make this tiny corner of Europe more satisfying to the traveller than all the combined wealth and waste of the Western world. Here again, too, we have impressed upon us the natural isolation of each Greek city with its surrounding plain. Corinth is isolated by steep moun- MEGARA, ELEUSIS, AND DAPHNE. 47 tains from Megara ; Megara, always Doric and Peloponnesian, by a strong bar ending in a bold promontory from Eleusis, the first Attic site on the way ; Eleusis again by a similar bar from the rest of Attica, so that the train wanders miles inland to find a pass into the proximate Athens. We cannot dally over Megara, in spite of its interesting history. It was the home of Theognis, the poet who of all others has painted for us the crimes and violences of the old aristocrats in the Greek cities, such as those whom Cypselus displaced in Corinth. The hatred and contempt for the lower classes which he displays is only equalled by that in France before the Revolution, which was so terribly avenged ; and indeed Thucydides details events at Corcyra in a civil war between the nobles and commons which equal in horrors the worst outrages of the Reign of Terror. Then we find Megara always the Doric outpost towards Attica, whose people nevertheless depended upon the Attic border markets, and when these were closed by war, Aristophanes brings upon his stage the starving Megarian ready to sell his daughters for bread. The port of Nicaea was joined to Megara by long walls, in imitation of those of Themistocles ; and even now the site of port and city is easily determined, as we land in the quiet bay, and look up at the thriving town, inhabited by Albanians still wearing the picturesque costume which Greek women so readily abandon for European tawdriness. Let us pass the barrier that separates us from Eleusis, and descend upon that more famous town. In these days it has even increased in interest, for the recent excavations have laid bare the old sites, and revealed to us the plan and peculiarities of the temple and service, which had no equal or rival in sanctity or in splendour. We knew well enough that great crowds attended the famous Mysteries of Demeter, but we did not know till lately that they were accommodated in the vast inner precincts of the temple, which was cut out of the live rock in its inner parts, and furnished with three rows of steps cut in the rock, so as to accommodate a great crowd of people. No other shrine, or inner room of a temple, is of anything like these dimensions, the temple itself being a Doric structure, with its front upon a lofty platform looking out on the Bay of Eleusis. I will only add, as regards the fine Doric style of the remains, that what at first appeared to us as clearly the work of the best Attic architects, now turns out to be excellent Roman imitation, done in consequence of some conflagration or earthquake which, in the first or second century a.d. — perhaps in Hadrian's time — ruined the old Doric temple. Both Dr. Dorpfeld and M. Philios, the learned Greek who is now set as overseer over these remarkable ruins, seem agreed upon this point, and it is only one more example how easily we can be imposed upon by good archaistic work, which imitates the genuine archaic. * It is, of course, the celebrated Mysteries — the Greater Eleusinia, as they were called — which give to the now wretched village of Eleusis, with its 48 GREEK PICTURES. hopeless ruins, so deep an interest. This wonderful feast, handed down from the remotest antiquity, maintained its august splendour all through the greater ages of Greek history, down to the times of decay and trifling, when everything else in the country had become mean and contemptible. To what did it owe this transcendent character ? It was not because it worshipped exceptional gods, for the worship of Demeter and Cora was an old and widely diffused cult all over Greece ; and there were other Eleusinia in various places. It was not because the ceremony consisted of mysteries, of hidden acts and words, which it was impious to reveal, and which the initiated alone might know. For the habit of secret worship was practised in every state, where special clans were charged with the care of special secret services, which no man else might know. Nay, even within the ordinary homes of the Greeks there were these Mysteries. Neither was it because of the splendour of the temple and its appointments, which never equalled the Panathenaea at the Parthenon, or the riches of Delphi or Olympia. There is only one reasonable cause, and it is that upon which all our serious authorities agree. The doctrine taught in the Mysteries was a faith which revealed hopeful things about the world to come ; and which — not so much as a condition, but as a consequence, of this clearer light, this higher faith — made them better citizens and better men. This faith was taught them in the Mysteries through symbols,^ through prayer and fasting, through wild rejoicings ; but, as Aristotle expressly tells us, it was reached not by intellectual persuasion, but by a change into a new moral state — in fact, by being spiritually revived. * Here, then, we have the strangest and most striking analogy to our religion in the Greek mythology ; for here we have a higher faith publicly taught — any man might present himself to be initiated — and taught, not in opposition to the popular creed, but merely by deepening it, and showing to the ordinary worldling its spiritual power. The belief in the goddess Demeter and her daughter, the queen of the nether world, was, as I have said, common all over Greece ; but even as nowadays we are told that there may be two kinds of belief of the same truths — one of the head and another of the heart — ^just as the most excellent man of the world, who believes all the creeds of the Church, is called an unbeliever, in the higher sense, by our Evangelical Christians : so the ordinary Greek, though he prayed and offered at the Temple of Demeter, was held by the initiated at the Mysteries to be wallowing in the mire of ignorance, and stumbling in the night of gloom — he was held to live without real light, and to die with- out hope, in wretched despair.' '^ The traveller from Eleusis will prefer to leave the train, and go by a * There seems no doubt, that some of these symbols, derived from old Nature-worship, were very gross, and quite inconsistent with modern notions of religion. But even these were features hallowed and ennobled by the spirit of the celebrants, whose reverence blinded their eyes, while lifting up their hearts. ^ Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 183-186. li MEGARA, ELEUS/S, AND DAPHNE, $i far shorter and more historical route along the ' sacred way,' up to the pass of Daphne, from whence he will presently obtiiin one of the finest views of Athens. But, before he comes to that, he will arrive at the curious Byzantine convent of Daphne, with its church still unrestored, and with its tombs of Frankish knights to remind him that when the old classical splendour was gone, Greece became in her turn the land of chivalry, where knights errant and crusaders turned aside from their sacred mission to indulge in the sports and amenities of the most luxurious and refined knightly courts. These were the days when the West indeed held the East, when the pleasaunce of Thebes, of Mistra or Clarentza could pose as th(i model of what the glories and delights of barons and ladies might attain. And with them they sought to introduce the Latin Church of the West, which came into many a conflict with the bigoted, conservative, meta- physical Eastern Church. A good example of this hostile contact is afforded by the monastery of Daphne. This sanctuary, with its now decaying walls, succeeded as usual to a pagan shrine with hardly altered name. The saints, still pictured in black and gold upon the walls, and worshipped upon their festivals, have become fantastic and unreal beings, well enough adapted to that mixture of superstition and rationalism which is the body of the Greek religion, and, despite a purer creed, not very far removed from the religious instincts of the old Hellenic race. Five, or six wretched monks still occupy this dilapidated building, vegetating in sleepy idleness ; they do nothing but repeat daily their accustomed prayers, and receive dues for allowing the people of the neighbouring hamlets to kiss, once or twice a year, a dreadful- looking Byzantine St. Elias, painted olive-brown on a gold background, or to light the nightly lamp at the wayside shrine of a saint black with smoke. The structure as we now see it is the construction of the Cistercians who accompanied Otho de la Roche from Champagne to his dukedom of Athens, and was established round a far older Byzantine church and monastery. Like all mediaeval convents, it is fortified, and the whole settle- ment, courts and gardens included, is surrounded by a crenelated wall originally about thirty feet high. There are occasional towers in the wall, and remains of arches supporting a walk all round the wall, of sufficient altitude for the defenders to look over the battlements. The old church in the centre of the court has had a narthex or nave added in Gothic style by the Benedictines, and here again are battlements, from which the monks could send down stones or boiling liquid upon assailants who penetrated the outer walls. Three sides of the court are surrounded by buildings ; beneath, massive arcades of stone for the kitchen, storerooms, and refectory ; above, wooden galleries supply the monks with their cells. Most of it is now in ruins, occupied in part by peasants and their sheep. But the church, both in its external simplicity and its internal grandeur, is remarkable for the splendid decoration of its walls with mosaics, which, alas ! have been allowed E 2 GREEK PICTURES. to decay as much from the indolence of the Greeks as the intolerance of the Turks. In fact, while some care and regard for classical remains have gradually been instilled into the minds of the inhabitants — of course, money value is an easily understood test — the respect for their splendid mediaeval remains has only gained Western intellects within the last two or three years, so that we may expect another generation to elapse before this new kind of interest will be disseminated among the possessors of so great a bequest from the Middle Ages. The interior of the church at Daphne is a melancholy example. From the effects of damp the mortar has loosened, and great patches of the precious mosaic have fallen to the ground. You can now pick up handfuls of glazed and gilded fragments, of which the rich surfaces were composed. Here and there a Turkish bullet has defaced a solemn saint, while the fires lit by soldiers in days of war, and by shepherds in time of peace, have, in many places, blackened the roof beyond recognition. Within the central cupola, a gigantic head of Christ on gold ground is still visible, or was so when I saw the place in 1889 ; but the whole roof was in danger of falling, and the Greek Government, at the instigation of Dr. Dorpfeld, are undertaking to stay the progress of decay, and so the building was filled with scaffolding. This, however, enabled us to mount close to the figures, which in the short and high building are seen with difficulty from the ground, and so we distinguished clearly round the base of the cupola the twelve apostles, in the bay arches the prophets, in the transepts the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Baptism, and the Transfiguration of Christ — all according to the strict models laid down for such ornaments by the Greek Church. The drawings are indeed stiff and grotesque, but the gloom and mystery of the building hide all imperfections, and give to these imposing figures in black and gold a certain majesty, which must have been felt tenfold by simple worshippers not trained in the habits of aesthetic criticism. We have, unfortunately, no records of their history in these convents, as is the case in so many Western abbeys, and the old chronicles of wars and pestilences seldom mention their quiet life. We should fain, says . M. Henri Belle, have followed the fortunes of these monks who left some fair abbey in Burgundy to catechize schismatics in this distant land, and bring their preaching to aid the sword of the crusaders ; but these crusaders were generally intent on exchanging their white cross for a crown, and were therefore not at all likely to favour the rigid proselytism of the Cistercians. It is very interesting to know that Innocent III., that great pope, who from the outset disapproved of the violent overthrow of the Christian Empire of the East, was the first to recommend both to the conquerors and their clergy such moderation as might serve to bring back the schismatic Greeks to the Roman fold. There are still extant several of his letters to the abbeys of the Morea, and to this abbey of the duchy of Athens, showing that even MEGARA, ELEUSIS, AND DAPHNE. 53 his authority and zeal in this matter were unable to restrain the bigotry of the Latin monks. There were frequent quarrels, too, between these monks of Daphne and their duke, and frequent appeals to the sovran pontiff to regulate the relations between the civil authority, which claimed the right of suzerain, and the religious orders, which claimed absolute independence, and immunity from all service. Still, in spite of all disputes, the abbey was the last resting-place of the Prankish Dukes of Athens, and in a vault beneath the narthex we have found several of their rude stone coffins, without inscription or ornament. One only has carved upon it the arms of the second Guy de la Roche, third Duke of Athens — two entwined serpents surmounted with two fleurs-de-lis, Guy II., says the chronicle, behaved as a gallant lord, beloved of all, and attained great renown in every kingdom. He sleeps here, not in the darkness of oblivion, but obscured by greater monuments of the greater dead. Yet I cannot but dally over this interesting piece of mediaeval history, the more so as it explains the strange title of Theseus, Duke of Athens, in Shakespere's immortal Midsunifner Nights Dream, as well as the curious fact, at least to classical readers, that the poet should have chosen Athens as a court of gracious manners, and suitable for the background of his fairy drama. SUNIUM. CHAPTER V. The Plains of Attica. A FEW minutes' drive from the monastery of Daphne brings us to the turn of the slope from which we gain our first, and perhaps most splendid view of Athens. Nearer to us is the long dark green belt of olives along the valley of the Kephissus. Over against us Hymettus shuts off the further and wilder tracts of Southern Attica. To the north reaches the rich plain till closed by Mount Pentelicus, though we see the pass which leads out over an easy incline north-east to Marathon. Close under us, stretching up towards Mount Parnes, almost behind us to the north-west, is the great deme of Acharnae, of which we hear so much in Aristophanes. The view is very beautiful, varied, and richly coloured ; yet, after all, its history far outruns its natural features. The situation of any city in such a plain, girdled by various mountains, commanding from its heights the sea and many islands, could not but be celebrated. Yet if Athens were like Berlin, in the midst of a desert of sandy flats, and Berlin in the place of Athens, the Greek town would be fascinating and delightful, the German relatively commonplace. Of course the best central point from which to survey the principal plain of Attica is from the Acropolis, or citadel of Athens. I do not feel that I can add much to what I have elsewhere written and rewritten on this splendid view : ' When you stand upon the Acropolis and look round upon Attica, a great part of its history becomes immediately unravelled and clear. You see THE PLAINS OF ATTICA. 55 at once that you are placed in the principal plain of the country, surrounded with chains of mountains in such a way that it is easy to understand the old stories of wars with Eleusis, or with Marathon, or with any of the outlying valleys. Looking inland on the north side, as you stand beside the Erechtheum, you see straight before you, at a distance of some ten miles, Mount Pentelicus, from which all the splendid marble was once carried to the rock around you. This Pentelicus is a sort of intermediate cross-chain between two main lines which diverge from either side of it, and gradually widen so as to form the plain of Athens. The left or north-western chain is Mount Parnes ; the right or eastern is Mount Hymettus. This latter, however, is only the inner margin of a large mountainous tract, which spreads all over the rest of South Attica down to the Cape of Sunium. There are, of course, little valleys, and two or three villages, one of them the old deme Brauron, which they now pronounce Vravron. There is the town of Thorikos, near the mines of Laurium ; there are two modern villages called Marcopoulos ; but on the whole, both in ancient and modern times, this south-eastern part of Attica, south of Hymettus, was, with the exception of Laurium, of little moment. There is a gap between Pentelicus and Hymettus, nearly due north, through which the way leads out to Marathon. ' On the left side of Pentelicus you see the chain of Parnes, which almost closes with it at a far distance, and which stretches down all the west side of Attica, till it runs into the sea as Mount Corydallus, opposite to the island of Salamis. In this long chain of Parnes (which can only be avoided by going up to the northern coast at Oropus, and passing into Bccotia close by the sea) there are three passes or lower points, one far to the north — that by Dekelea, where the present king has his country palace, but where of old Alcibiades planted the Spartan garrison which tormented and ruined the farmers of Attica. This pass leads you out to Tanagra in Boeotia. Next to the south, some miles nearer, is the even more famous pass of Phyle, from which Thrasybulus and his brave fellows recovered Athens and its liberty. This pass, when you reach its summit, looks into the northern point of the Thriasian plain, and also into the wilder regions of Cithaeron, which border Boeotia. The third pass, and the lowest — but a few miles beyond the groves of Academe — is the pass of Daphne, which was the high road to Eleusis, along which the sacred processions passed in the times of the Mysteries; and in this pass you still see the numerous niches in which votive tablets had been set by the worshippers at a famous temple of Aphrodite. * If we turn and look southward we see a broken country, with several low hills between us and the sea — hills tolerably well cultivated, and, when I saw them in May, all coloured with golden stubbles, for the corn had just been reaped. But all the plain in every direction seems dry and dusty ; 56 GREEK PICTURES. arid, too, and not rich alluvial soil, like the plains of Boeotia. Then Thucydides' words come back to us, when he says Attica was " undisturbed on account of the lightness of its soil," as early invaders rather looked out for richer pastures. This reflection, too, of Thucydides applies equally to the mountains of Attica round Athens, which are not covered with rich grass and dense shrubs, like Helicon, like Parnassus, like the hills of Arcadia, but seem so bare, that we wonder where the bees of Hymettus can find food for their famous honey. ' But, amid all the dustv and bare features of the view, the eve fastens with delight on one great broad band of dark green, which, starting from the left side of Pentelicus, close to Mount Fames in the north, sweeps straight down the valley, passing about two miles to the west of Athens, and Niches for Votive Offerings on the Sacred Way to Eleusis. reaching to the Piraeus. This is the plain of the Kephissus, and these are the famous olive woods which contain within them the deme Colonus, so celebrated by Sophocles, and the groves of Academe, at their nearest point to the city. The dust of Athens, and the bareness of the plain, make all walks about the town disagreeable, save either the ascent of Lycabettus, or a ramble into these olive woods. The river Kephissus, which waters them, is a respectable, though narrow river, even in summer often discharging a good deal of water, and dividing itself into trenches and arms, which are very convenient for irrigation. So there is a strip of country, fully ten miles long, and perhaps two wide on the average, which affords delicious shade and greenness and the song of birds, instead of hot sunlight and dust and the shrill clamours of the tettix without. THE PLAINS OF ATTICA. S7 * There is no other excursion in the immediate vicinity of Athens of any like beauty or interest. The older buildings in the Piraeus are completely gone. No trace of the docks or the deigma remains ; and the splendid walls, built, as Thucydides tells us, with cut stone, without mortar or mud, and fastened with clamps of iron fixed with lead — this splendid structure has been almost completely destroyed. We can find, indeed, elsewhere in Attica — at Phyle, still better at Eleutherae — specimens of this sort of building ; but at the Piraeus there are only foundations remaining. Yet it is not really true that the great wall surrounding the Piraeus has totally I'iR/tus (restored), showing the Long Walls. disappeared. Plven at the mouth of the harbour, single stones may be seen lying along the rocky edge of the water, of which the size and the square cutting prove the use for which they were originally intended. But if the visitor to the Piraeus will take the trouble to cross the hill, and walk round the harbour of Munychia, he will find on the eastern point of the headland a neat little caf6, with comfortable seats, and with a beautiful view. The sea-coast all round this headland shows the bed of the surrounding sea wall, hewn in the live rock. The actual structure is preserved in patches on the western point of this harbour, where the coast is very steep ; but, in the place to which I refer, we can trace the whole course of the wall a few 58 GREEK PICTURES. feet above the water, cut out in the soHd rock. I know no scanty specimen of Athenian work which gives a greater idea of the enormous wealth and energy of the city. The port of Munychia had its own theatre and temples, and it was here that Pausanias saw the altar to the gods called the unknown. The traces of the sea wall cease as soon as it reaches the actual narrow mouth of the little harbour.'' So much for the views and visits immediately round Athens. But this is only a small fraction of the country which can be seen by easy excursions from this famous capital. In every direction, towards every point of the compass, are splendid walks and drives occupying one, two, or three days, all replete with historical associations, as well as with natural beauty. To the north you may either ascend Mount Pentelicus with its marble quarries which supplied the Parthenon and Propylaea, or turn to the right into the plain of Marathon, or to the left to Tatoi or Dekelea. Or else you may turn east into the Diakria, or highlands, and, crossing Hymettus and the narrow straits, enter the wilds of Euboea, where the wild boar will still afford you sport. Or you can go south to the glittering Sunium, with its lead mines and its scoriae — a rare specimen of old Greek ugliness, beside one of their fairest temples — and then to ^Egina and Salamis, where every step reminds you of the legends of Pindar, the narrative of Herodotus, and the stage of Sophocles ; or you may turn west to Daphne, to Phyle, and the wild mountains which lead to Cithaeron, and into Bceotia. To describe in detail all this country would occupy the rest of this book. I must therefore be content with saying a word about two of these excursions, that to Phyle and that to Marathon. Each of them can be accomplished in a day, though for Marathon the distance demands a rather longer time. But each, as the scene of the liberation of Athens from threatened slavery, is of prime historical importance. At Marathon in 490 B.C. some 10,000 Greeks defeated a very large army of Persians, who had effected a landing, and were at the time soldiers of quite as high repute as the Greeks. In fact, Herodotus says that here first the Athenians dared to look the Persians in the face. For these were still in that day a great conquering race. Let us come closer to this historic scene. ' The plain of Marathon, as everybody knows, is a long crescent- shaped strip of land by the shore, surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, which may be crossed conveniently in three places, but most easily towards the south-west, along the road which we travelled, and which leads directly to Athens. When the Athenians marched through this broad and easy passage, they found that the Persians had landed at the northern extremity of the plain — I suppose, because the water was there sufficiently deep to let them land conveniently. Most of the shore, as you proceed southwards, is lined on the seaboard by swamps. The Greek army must have marched ' Rambles and Sticdies, pp. 131-138. THE PLAINS OF ATTICA. 59 northwards, along the spurs of Pentelicus, and taken up their position near the north of the plain. There was evidently much danger that the Persians should force a passage through the village of Marathon, farther towards the north-west. Had they done this, they might have rounded Pentelicus, and descended the main plain of Attica, from the valley below Dekelea. Perhaps, however, this pass was then guarded by an outlying fort, or by some defences at Marathon itself The site of the battle is absolutely fixed by the great mound, upon which was placed a lion, which has been carried off, no one knows where or whither. This mound is exactly an English mile from the steep slope of one of the hills, and about half a mile from the The Mound at Marathon. sea at present ; nor was there, when I saw it, any difficulty in walking right to the shore, though a river flows out there, which shows, by its sedgy banks and lofty reeds, a tendency to create a marshy tract in rainy weather. But the mound is so placed that, if it marks the centre of the battle, the Athenians must have faced nearly north ; and, if they faced the sea east- ward, as is commonly stated, this mound must mark the scene of the conflict on their left wing. The mound is very large — I suppose thirty feet high — altogether of earth, so far as we could see, and bears traces of having been frequently ransacked in search of antiquities. Dr. Schliemann, its latest investigator, could find nothing there but pre-historic flint weapons. 6o GREEK PICTURES. Like almost every view in Greece, the prospect from this mound is full of beauty and variety — everywhere broken outlines, everywhere patches of blue sea, everywhere silence and solitude. ' Byron may well be excused his raving about the liberty of the Greeks, for truly their old conflict at Marathon, where a few thousand ill-disciplined men repulsed a larger number of still worse disciplined Orientals, without any recondite tactics — perhaps even without any very extraordinary heroism in the actual conflict — has maintained a celebrity which has not been equalled by any of the great battles of the world, from that day down to our own. 'In spite of all scepticism, in spite of all contempt, the battle of Marathon, whether badly or well fought, and the troops at Marathon, whether well or ill trained, will ever be more famous than any other battle or army, however important or gigantic its dimensions. Even in this very war, the battles of Salamis and Plataea were vastly more important and more hotly contested. The losses were greater, the results were more enduring, yet thousands have heard of Marathon to whom the other names are unknown. So much for literary ability — so much for the power of talking well about one's deeds. Marathon was fought by Athenians ; the Athenians eclipsed the other Greeks as far as the other Greeks eclipsed the rest of the world in literary power. This battle became the literary property of the city, hymned by poet, cited by orator, told by aged nurse, lisped by stammering infant ; and so it has taken its position, above all criticism, as one of the greatest decisive battles which assured the liberty of the West against Oriental despotism.' ' The trip to Phyle is hardly less interesting than to Marathon, and through a very different country. It is usual to drive to the foot of the mountain, and then to have mules or ponies ready for the long and laborious ascent. The system of defence towards the Boeotian frontier seems to have been the establishing of strong forts, not within sight of the enemy but within a short distance of the summit of the passes leading into Attica. We may presume that in war times a picket or outpost was kept on the summit, which was within easy signalling range of the fort. From this, fire- signals acquainted Athens with the enemy's movements. The forts were strong by position and structure, and so an invading force must either delay to besiege them, or have an active intrenched force in its rear, cutting off supplies and intelligence from without, and ready to fall upon the retreating invaders, if they were defeated. Two of these forts — that called Eleutherse, on the high road to Thebes, and this one of Phyle — are still in good preserva- tion, evidently built at the best period of Greek building, and probably of the age of Pericles. We know that it was the regular practice to make young citizens serve for two years in outpost duty, before they settled ' Rambles and Studies, pp. 172-174, 176. THE PLAINS OF ATTICA. 6i down to their civic duties. In these forts, then, they must have learned the art of war, the complicated passes and defiles of the Attic highlands, and those various experiences which change the foolish and helpless recruit into the smart, handy, resourceful soldier. Any one who has seen, for example, our regiments in Egypt when first arriving, and after a year or two of campaign, will know exactly what I mean. So the young Attic peripoli^ or patrols, guarded the frontiers, and learned to know the intricate ways through the mountains. The way from Athens leads north-west through the rich fields of the old deme of Acharnae ; and we wonder at first why they should be noted as charcoal-burners. But as we approach Mount Parnes, we find that the valley is bounded by tracts of hillsides fit for nothing but pine forest. A vast deal of wooding still remains ; it is clear that these forests were the largest and most convenient to supply Athens with fire-wood or charcoal. As usual there are many glens and river-courses through the rugged country through which we ascend — here and there a village, in one secluded nook a little monastery, hidden from the world, if not from its cares. There is the usual Greek vegetation beside the path, not perhaps luxuriant to our Northern eyes, but full of colour of its own — the glowing anemone, the blood-red poppy, the delicate cistus on a rocky surface, with foliage rather grey and silvery than green. The pine trees sound as the breeze sweeps up the valleys, and lavish their vigorous fragrance through the air. There is something inexpressibly bracing in this solitude, if solitude it can be called, where forest speaks to the eye and ear, and fills the imagination with the mystery of its myriad forms. Now and then too the peculiar cadence of those bells which hardly varies throughout all the lands of the South, tells you that a flock of goats, or goat-like sheep, is near, attended by solemn silent children, whose eyes seem to have no expression beyond that of vague wonder in their gaze. These are the flocks of some village below, not those of the nomad Vlachs, who bring with them tents and dogs, and make gipsy encampments in the unoccupied country. At last we see high over us the giant fort of Phyle, set upon a natural precipice, which defends it amply for half its circuit. Its sudden appearance in Greek history is in the days of the Thirty Tyrants (403 b.c), when many murders and exiles of patriotic citizens had taken place, and the fortunes of Athens, after the surrender of the city to the Spartans two years before, were indeed at the lowest ebb. Her only remaining treasure — that liberty which had so often stirred the citizens to great deeds — was now taken from her; free discussion in the market-place, and fair trial in the courts were suppressed. It seemed, indeed, that all was lost, even honour, when the news spread through Greece that the fort of Phyle had been seized by Thrasybulus, and a small party of Athenian exiles. It is quite incorrect to say that he could have built the fort, which must have taken years and 62 GREEK PICTURES. vast slave labour to construct ; he may possibly have repaired some spots where the masonry had given way, for the Thirty Tyrants seem to have neglected this and other outposts ; nor had the disasters of the previous years allowed the Athenians to think about these outlying fortifications. The point of occupation was well chosen, for, while it was near enough to Athens to afford a sure refuge to those who could escape by night and fly to the mountain, its distance (some fifteen miles), and the steep and rugged ascent, made it impossible for weak and aged people to crowd into it, and mar the efficiency of the garrison. With the increase of his force Thrasybulus began successful raids into the plain, then a rapid movement to Piraeus ; ultimately, as may be read in all the histories, he accomplished the liberation of his native city. Let me add, before passing on, that the conduct of the restored democracy, both in discharging the state obligations incurred by the tyrants, and in adhering loyally to their generous act of amnesty, is quite the most remarkable passage in the history of a state which, if always intellectually brilliant, was not often morally splendid. But we too must delay no longer to invade the sacred city which we can see from afar down through the valleys of Mount Parnes. Temple of Theseus and Acropolis from THE West. CHAPTER VI. Athens. THE geographer Strabo, who, though a great traveller, seems never to have visited Athens, puts off his readers very ingeniously with the exclamations of wonder borrowed from an artificial rhetorician. Any modern writer who takes upon him to describe this unique city cannot but feel some sympathy with this piece of literary dishonesty ; for as all men have agreed that no language can be adequate to the task, it seems an audacious thing to court preordained failure. Yet to write a book on Greece, and omit Athens, would of course be absurd. Much more reasonable is the course pursued by the editor of the excellent French Guides Joanney who gives a separate volume on Athens and Attica, to be followed by a second on the rest of Greece. This division expresses justly the relative importance of the F 66 GREEK PICTURES. famous capital in regard to the rest of the country. What the readers of this book may reasonably expect is a sketch of Athenian history, avoiding details, and yet clear enough to afford them a picture which their imagination can grasp and reproduce. Let us then set ourselves to the task. The first appearance of Attica in legend is as that part of Greece (with Arcadia) which was not peopled by successive invaders, but by an old and indigenous population. The legend is here false. For though that district was not, like Boeotia and other rich tracts of land, the constant battle- ground of new invaders, we know both that the Ionian Greeks came into Attica with the migration of the Aryans from the East, and also that, long after that, the Phoenicians had their settlements, and established their religion at Athens. The legends of the reign of Theseus, on the other hand, contain germs of the first important stage of Attic history. In the first place, it was he who brought the neighbouring towns and villages together, and made Attica 07ie, with Athens for the capital. Up to his day each valley — Eleusis, Marathon, &c. — had been separate and independent. This was the case all over Greece ; and it was precisely in proportion to the earliness and completeness of such amalgamations that Greek states attained greatness. So Sparta, Argos, Thebes gradually took the step taken far earlier by Attica, and, last of all, Epaminondas attempted the same thing for Arcadia by the foundation of i Megalopolis. In the second place, the many stories of his conflicts with the Amazons — the mythical garb of the armed priestesses of the Sidonian Astarte — show that Phoenician influences were now opposed and overcome by the rising national spirit of the Greeks. When we come down to real history, this Eastern influence is gone, save perhaps in the luxury of dress and ornament described by Thucydides as existing in older Attic life-r-flowing robes, long tresses of hair, and gold ornaments being worn among men. His language suggests to us figures like those of the old Assyrians rather than those of any Greeks we know in history. From these days and these manners date the bee-hive tombs found at Menidi or Spata in Attica, where they laid their dead in vaulted chambers of stone, with urns, and ornaments of gold and ivory. The long line of mythical kings, with their adventures, which formed the subject of many tragedies, such as the Erechtheus of Mr. Swinburne in our day, ended with the division of power among the rival families of nobles, who made the principal office rotatory — at length annual ; and with this change, in 683 B.C. (probably the earliest genuine date in Greek history), the annals of Attica commence. But here, as elsewhere, the government by aristocratic clans turned out both tyrannous and extravagant. After the elaborate purifications for bloodguilt and consequent pestilence by Epimenides, a semi-fabulous wonder-worker, we have the great economic and political reforms of Solon, the second founder of Athenian greatness. The recognition of wealth as a sister claim with ancestry to power and authority in ruling A THENS. 67 the State saved the Attic aristocracy, as it has saved the English, for many a generation. Solon is a great historical figure ; we have fragments of his poetry, as well as the general sketch of his legislation, and we can well endorse the general verdict of the nation which placed him among the Seven Sages of Greece. He foresaw clearly the chronic danger arising from the non-existence of a standing military force in the hands of the govern- ment. If a revolution were attempted, no prompt assistance could be expected from peaceable and busy citizens. Hence it was that he made neutrality in such a conflict penal — an idle enactment, but a declaration of political foresight. What Solon anticipated actually happened. Amid the conflicts of parties, a clever and ambitious noble made himself the champion of the common people, and seized the supreme power. But, most fortunately, he was far more than a mere tyrant, and by his wise patronage of art and literature may fairly be called the third founder of Attic greatness. For to him are due the first dissemination among the people of epic poetry, of the nascent drama, of a taste for architecture and plastic art, of that inclination for aesthetic pleasures whereby he sought to wean them from over- attention to politics. Of course, his opposition to Solon, whom he merely set aside without a single act of unnecessary violence, his education of his sons, who, though his heirs in artistic matters, were also the distorters of his policy into that of licentious oppression, his many namesakes, inferior tyrants, that made the title to stink in the nostrils of the nation ; all these things have detracted, perhaps justly, from his fame. Nevertheless it can never be forgotten that the Athens of Pisistratus was distinctly the first artistic Athens. Thespis began his rude tragedies in those days ; choral and gnomic poets at the Attic court, as well as the public recitations of Homer, paved the way, by educating the people, for the public who could understand and appreciate Pindar and ^schylus. So too we may refer to him the first notions of great temples, which, by adorning the city, would also honour the gods ; and doubtless the curious figures recently found among the foundations of old buildings on the Acropolis are to be referred to his day. If, there- fore, the first political Athens we know is that of Solon, the first artistic Athens is that of Pisistratus, in the middle of the sixth century B.C. The Acropolis of that day was very far different even in surface from the splendid area of Pericles. Instead of the great plateau, which the victorious democracy created by tossing in all the ruins of the Persian fury between the surrounding wall and the central rock, we must conceive the surrounding wall of the Acropolis, which was the refuge for the citizens from the open town below in case of danger, as a necklace, so to speak, round a high cone, on the sides and top of which were many small temples and secular buildings. All these and the votive offerings were painted with bright, perhaps even gaudy colours ; and the type of the many goddesses who stand F 2 68 GREEK PICTURES. in the Acropolis Museum, is more Oriental than Greek, more barbaric than civilised. There is perhaps no recent discovery which has told us more of the cradle stage of Greek art, and which has more shocked the ordinary visitor to Athens. Here in the very heart and shrine of the purest and most perfect sculpture the world has ever seen, the astonished visitor walks in upon a gallery of stony smirking ladies, all with conventional tresses, dresses, and types of face, in whom beauty, or indeed nature, is totally absent. And it is not their rudeness so much as their conventionality which shocks us. Yet this art was the immediate antecedent to the really artistic work which led by natural development to Phidias. Nor was Phidias a hundred years posterior to this apparently hide-bound growth. But consider what a hundred years they were ! In the middle of them came that great invasion and overthrow of the Persians, which had upon Greece an effect as great as the French Revolution had upon Europe in the last century. For this pressing external danger was nearly synchronous with that great political development into civic liberty of which Athens was the clearest type. The tyrants were expelled for their private vices, and a consti- tution was formed, far in advance of that of Solon, which found its first trial in the defence of Greece against the overwhelming masses of the Oriental despot. The liberation from the despots was in 510 B.C. Apart from struggles with neighbours, such as ^gina, the Persian conflicts lasted from 490 to 479, and were doubtless viewed with terror a year or two before the storm burst. I must refer to the immortal narrative of Hero- dotus, so often transcribed by later historians, for the details of this war — how timidity and treachery tied the hands of the Greeks, how even the oracle of Delphi gave up the patriotic side, how, against all chances and probabilities which man could compute, the hand of God — shown not only in the creation of men worthy of the occasion, but in the shaping of circumstances so as to turn human wisdom into folly, and human great- ness into vanity — ordained victory for the disunited, vacillating, quarrelling Greeks. Afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt, might have been the motto of the war, though there were three shocks of battle, in which both Athenians and Spartans showed that they could look the warlike Persians in the face. Out of this war then Athens came victorious, and presently the leader Pericles. A THENS. 69 of maritime Greece, rapidly assuming imperial powers, and acquiring a wealth unknown to older generations. The marvellous circumstances of the city produced that generation of extraordinary energy, to whom even the modern Americans must cede in the pace of their development. This is the day when Attic art became the model for all the world ; when sculptors and architects attained, almost suddenly, that unequalled skill in portraying and idealising Nature, in planning and working with splendid materials, which has ever since been the delight and the despair of artists. It is to the middle of the fifth century B.C., and a little later, that we can refer those buildings which still draw the world to see their defaced fragments at Athens, or in the gloomy chambers of the British Museum. This then is the Athens which has fascinated the imagination of men, the Athens of Pericles and Phidias, of Thucydides and Sophocles, of Myron and Polygnotus, of Aristophanes and Cleon, of Phormion and Demos- thenes.* There are two towns in Europe which remind the visitor strongly of Athens. The one is Edinburgh, the other is Salzburg. Both have the peculiarity of being situated round a rocky fortress, which rises from the streets ; both possess a higher hill of less importance, though apparently dominating the town from a short distance. But while Salz- burg has besides many splendid sub- alpine features, a rushing river, a showy belt of mountains in sight, which make this town the most beauti- ful in all Europe, Edinburgh has surroundings far more analogous to those ot Athens. It has its castle, as I have said, and its Arthur's Seat, corresponding to the Acropolis and Mount Lycabettus at Athens ; it has also rolling country ' The general killed at Syracuse. Sophocles. 70 GREEK PICTURES. around, hills of moderate height, and a seaport within a few miles. Thus it commands sea and hills in a manner not unlike Athens. The modern city of Athens has covered most of the ancient site first with poor hovels and shops, then with showy mansions, and so destroyed all the suggestions of antiquity which an abandoned site might have preserved. But out of it and over it stands the great rock, which even centuries of neglect and of violence could hardly impair, though they shattered and mangled its buildings in detail. The first thing any visitor must do is to ascend the rock, and study both the details around him and the panorama displayed on every side. The last thing he will do, after all his arrangements for departure are complete. Is to hurry up once more to the immortal rock, to take another last view, and tear himself with a great wrench from the one spot which he may fairly say is the greatest and most fascinating he ever saw in his life. The traveller through America feels disposed to class the Americans in two large categories — Into those who have, and those who have not, seen Europe. In a similar kind of way, one feels inclined to class those who travel in Europe for instruction and for pleasure into two distinct classes — those who have, and those who have not, seen the Acropolis. I do not, of course, include among the former those tourists who have stopped at the Piraeus for some hours, and driven up to Athens and back, who are told by some guide- books still tolerated among semi-civilised men, that a few hours are enough to devote to Athens. Such people cannot be said to see any place they visit, least of all Athens. But a proper honest study of the Acropolis is an epoch in the art training of any man, and, so far as the aesthetic side of man influences his morals, a progress in purity and in tolerance. I say the latter, because he will learn, what is now perhaps conceded, but what was generally denied in the great Gothic revival of the last generation, that classic architecture can be as religious, as minutely conscientious, as dignified as the Norman French cathedrals. I say it furthermore because he will learn that the most artistic of all nations thought it right to colour the white marble of both statues and temples with brilliant hues. I say the former because he will learn how a great idea, a noble plan, should dominate even the most exquisite artistic details, how the sculptor, however great, must subordinate himself to the architect, and work not for himself, but for the perfection of the building. He will further learn that the shackles so put upon the artist, far from checking his genius, have elicited the most exquisite resources of his imagination. The composition of a worthy group to fill the triangular space (pediment) formed by the east and west gables of a temple produced results greater than all the unshackled work of the same artists, just as the top of a round barrel suggested to Raphael one of his most charming subjects. But let us descend to some details. The sacred rock, as I have said, ATHENS. 71 was early fortified and covered with buildings and votive offerings. But the capture of the place by the Persians in 480 h.c, and the burning and defacing of all the monuments, left the victorious and returning Athenians in the face of a grave problem. What were they to do for the restoration of the temples and shrines of their gods ? The tamest and most obvious course was to restore with minute fidelity all that had been damaged, and make the Acropolis as like as possible to that of Pisistratus. But a great original age of art, a generation of unparalleled energy, a period of rapid growth in design and in the control of materials, could never be satisfied with such a solution. Athens was now richer, nobler, greater, than she ever had been, and must accordingly live up to her enhanced renown. I am not sure that the artists . even regretted very deeply the hostile defacing of the old monuments, for in this way only could they be set aside with safety, as no longer worthy of the gods and the imperial city. No doubt there must have been a conflict between the old-fashioned party and the new ; but if there was, the wisdom of the fathers was so completely turned to the children that the defaced buildings were not only pulled down, but, with the defaced statues, piled into the places where the declivity was being transformed into a terrace. Never were the gods of a nation treated with more signal disrespect. There are the archaic figures which have been discovered, one after another, in the excavations of the platform formed round the Parthenon ; and in the raised wall there are drums of the pillars of the older temples, notably of the Parthenon of Cimon, which was smaller and ruder than that of Pericles, though built on a much more carefully finished substruction of stone slabs. I suppose this very careful building of mere walls on stone foundations is the only point in Pisistratic or Themistqclean architecture which is not surpassed by the greater age which supervened. I remember Dr. Dorpfeld telling me at Athens that such was the exquisite care and finish of every detail in the Parthenon, notably of the invisible parts, that he regarded it as a piece of extravagance worth executing once, but never again to be repeated. I observed that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when men helped to build great churches as a good work, to effect the salvation of their souls, a similar lavishing of artistic care on details out of sight was also to be found. Nor can we regret that spirit which does work splendidly and exactly for the love of God, or for the love of the work itself, regardless of the notice or the praise of men. When the visitor now makes his way round the approach to the famous sanctuary, and comes in sight of the great flight of stairs leading to the entrance gate, or Propylxa, he sees above him, on the right, a sort of protruding bastion crowned by a little Ionic temple, that of Athena as Victory. This building was surrounded by a parapet of upright marble slabs adorned with figures of winged Victories, which are famous for their 72 GREEK PICTURES. delicate beauty. The whole structure is indeed of the same character, and affords us the first example of what can be done by sensible restoration. All the pillars and walls were set up in recent years from the fragments lying about in confusion where the Venetians or Turks had built their lofty tower, now fortunately removed. Nobody will now argue that this restoration was not really valuable ; and if the same principle was applied to the many pillars of the Parthenon, which lie prostrate almost as they were blown down in 1687, that greater building would regain some of its pristine majesty. But before us stands the great Propylaea, or entrance portico of the The Temple of Victory, Acropolis. architect Mnesicles, which was hardly less celebrated than the Parthenon, and which we find copied, alas ! by some Roman builder of Hadrian's time at Eleusis. But even there the building is so noble that it passed till yesterday for the work of the rival of Ictinus. The plan of this gateway is that now known to us as the regular prehistoric design adopted at the palaces of Tiryns and of Troy. Let me describe this very ancient form of entrance more minutely. The actual door, whether single or double, was set in the wall, where it turned upon wooden hinges set in bronze cups, which worked in a stone hollow fitted to them — the frame or setting of the door being of stone. But the door was protected or ornamented both A THENS. 73 inwards and outwards by a portico or vestibule, consisting of an architrave supported by two pillars, between which was the main entrance, while outside each of them was another side entrance, just as we see it carried out in all those simpler temple fronts called temples in antis, where the front wall is, so to speak, broken or stopped with pilasters, leaving an open front supported by two pillars, between which you enter the temple. In the oldest buildings this construction was of sun-dried bricks and of wood. The walls were of brick, and where they stopped, and exposed an end likely to be worn by traffic or weather, they were finished with a wooden coating, of ■* :*1 The Steps and Propyl-Ea of the Acropolis. which the later square pilasters are the survival in stone. The upper beam spanning the open passage was also a long beam of wood, supported by two wooden stems, set on stone bases. Remains of this construction have been found, and carefully described by Dr. Dorpfeld in his masterly chapter to be found in Dr. Schliemann's Tiryns. This, too, is the very plan which we see ennobled and perfected in the Propylsea of Mnesicles. But all the earlier members of wood and brick are now replaced by beautiful Pentelic marble ; the depth of the porticoes is increased, and, for variety's sake, while the outer row of pillars in both directions are Doric, the richer Ionic order is employed for the inner 74 GREEK PICTURES. supports, which are under the marble roof. It had been easy enough, in the case of the old wooden porticoes, to find a strong beam, or beams, of oak, long enough to span the opening above. But it required no small labour to quarry and bring up to the Acropolis, still more to set over pillars twenty-five feet high, beams of marble twenty-two feet long. Yet this was done, care being taken, as in the case of almost all stone architraves, to use a pair of parallel beams, in case of a flaw or crack in one of them. These mighty marble cross-beams are still to be seen at the gateway, and lead the visitor at once to marvel with what mechanical appliances the Athenians accomplished such triumphs. For among other things noted by Plutarch in his Life of Pericles is the rapidity with which most of these perfectly finished and everlasting buildings were, so to speak, run up. There seems to be no evidence that they employed more than the primitive aids of ropes, rollers, and inclined planes, which we see at work in extant pictures of Egyptian and Assyrian transportation of colossal statues. There are, as Professor Tarbell pointed out to me, stray mentions of a windlass (eXt^), and once of a pulley {rpoyCkia) in Aristophanes and in Plato ; but even if these casual and rare notices be held to imply the common and developed use of such contrivances for great mechanical difificulties, the performances of the Athenian architects will appear very wonderful to those who study them. One power they possessed which can hardly be over- rated — an unlimited supply of slave labour, which they could apply lavishly, and without care how many lives they sacrificed. And we know that even now the human hand, with its manifold action directed by intelligence, is by far the most perfect mechanical engine constructed. Balancing the temple of Nike on the right bastion, there is thrown forward on the left a beautifully simple Doric structure, which may have been a guard-room, or the artistic survival of that once requisite feature, for the defences of the Acropolis were now mere ornament ; the city walls were the real safeguard. Here the visitor first sees what wall-building in marble could be, what the exquisite fitting of the blocks, what the contempt for mortar or other binding, when everything sat firm by its weight and fitting. The marble drums of the pillars are so smoothly joined that the nail runs without hindrance down the fluting. In the centre of each is a square plug of cypress wood, into which fits a circular piece of the same wood, so that it was possible to work round a new block after it was set on. But the fluting was no doubt worked on the pillars after they were set up, as was no doubt a great deal of the surface finishing. In many places are still remaining the protruding ends of stone left on an otherwise smoothed surface, for the purpose of giving a hold for ropes to lift it to its place. The colouring of this majestic structure is gone ; the blue and gold and red have long since vanished ; but the glaring white of the marble has not been recovered, save where some new breakage shows the inside of a Parthenon, Interior, restored. ATHENS. 17 sfA^v^;.v^^ta?i;«**4^«f^>^^ o u V^J block ; for all the Acropolis has been toned to golden brown by the constant sandstone dust which now, as in the days of Aristophanes, sweeps over the light and friable soil of Attica, When we pass the Pro- pylsea, and stand before the temples which occupy the places of honour in the sacred enclosure, we have standing separately the most perfect specimens of those two orders of architecture which we saw combined in the gateway. * As the traveller stands at the inner gate of the Propylaea, he notices at once all the perfect features of the ruins. Over his head are the enormous architraves of the Propylsea — blocks of white marble over twenty- two feet long, which span the gateway from pillar to pillar. Opposite, above him and a little to the right, is the mighty Parthenon, not identical in orientation, as the architects have observed, with the gateway, but vary- ing from it slightly, so that sun and shade would play upon it at moments differing from the rest, and thus pro- duce a perpetual variety of lights. This principle is observed in the setting of the Erechtheum also. To the left, and directly over the town, stands that beau- tifully decorated little Ionic temple, or combination of temples, with the stately caryatids looking inwards and towards the Parthenon. These, two buildings are the most perfect examples we have of their respective styles. We see the objects of the artists who built them, at first sight. The one A Caryatid from the Erechtheum. 78 GREEK PICTURES. is the embodiment of majesty, the other of grace. The very ornaments of the Parthenon are large and massive ; those of the Erechtheum for the most part intricate and deHcate. Accordingly, the Parthenon is in the Doric style, or rather in the Doric style so refined and adorned as to be properly called the Attic style. The sculptured decorations of the Parthenon are of three kinds, or applied in three distinct places. In the first place, the two triangular pediments over the east and west fronts were each filled with a group of statues more than life-size — the one representing the birth of Athene and the other her contest with Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. Some of the figures from one of these are the great draped headless women in the centre of the Parthenon room of the British Museum : other fragments of those broken by the Venetians are preserved at Athens. There are, secondly, the metopes, or plaques of stone in- serted into the frieze between the triglyphs, and carved in relief with a single small group on each. The height of these sur- faces does Figures from the Pediment of the Parthenon (British Museum). not exceed four feet. There was, thirdly, a band of reliefs running all round the external wall at the top of the cella, inside the surrounding pillars, and opposite to them, and this is known as the frieze of the cella. It consists of a great Panathenaic procession, starting from the western front, and proceeding in two divisions along the parallel north and south walls, till they meet on the eastern front, which was the proper front of the temple. Among the Elgin marbles there are a good many of the metopes, and also of the pieces of the cella frieze, preserved. Several other pieces of the frieze are preserved at Athens, and altogether we can reconstruct fully three- fourths of this magnificent composition. ' The extraordinary power of grouping in the designs of Phidias is very completely shown us in the better-preserved band of the cella frieze. Tu£ Erecutheum. ATHENS. 8 1 along which the splendid Panathenaic procession winds its triumphal way. Over the eastern doorway were twelve noble sitting figures on either side of the officiating priest, presenting the state robe, or peplos, for the vestment of Athene. These figures are explained as gods by the critics ; but they do not, in either beauty or dignity, excel those of many of the Athenians forming the procession. A very fine slab, containing three of these figures, is now to be seen in the little museum in the Acropolis. This group over the main entrance is the end and summary of all the procession, and corresponds with the yearly ceremony in this way, that, as the state entrance, or Propyla^a, led into the Acropolis at the west end, or rear of the Parthenon, the procession in all probability separated into two, which went along both sides of the colonnade, and met again at the eastern door. Accordingly, over the western end, or rear, the first preparations of the procession are being made, which then starts along the north and south walls ; the southern being chiefly occupied with the cavalcade of the Athenian knights, the northern with the carrying of sacred vessels, and leading of victims for the sacrifice. The frieze over the western door is still in its place ; but, having lost its bright colouring, and being in any case at a great height, and only visible from close underneath, on account of the pillars and architrave in front, it produces no effect, and is hardly discernible. Indeed, it evidently was never more than an architectural ornament, in spite of all its artistic beauty. '' In its great days, and even when the antiquarian Pausanias saw it in the second century, nay, even when Alaric the Goth surveyed it in the fifth, the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as with shrines. It was not merely the Holy of Holies first in Hellenic, then even in Christian times ; it was also a museum and palace of art. At every step and turn the traveller met objects of veneration and of interest. There were still many archaic specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee, for since Hadrian's day the fashion of admiring the antique as such was as widespread as it is in modern Europe ; there were still, in spite of the plundering of enemies and lovers of art, many of those masterpieces which commanded the common admiration of the artist and of the public. Even all the sides and slopes of the rock were honeycombed into sacred grottoes, with their altars and their gods, or studded with votive monuments. Al. these points of interest in their detail are gone. The sacred caves were for ages filled with rubbish, and desecrated with worse than neglect. And now that archaeological interest has overcome the neglect of men, these ancient ornaments are defaced by the excavator, who, while he brings to light many treasures of history and of art, leaves the surface he has worked broken and defaced with hideous rubbish. There are left but the remnants of the surrounding wall, the marvellous array of archaic figures in the museum, * Ramblts and Studies^ pp. 85, 89, 92. c 82 GREEK PICTURES. and the ruins, already described, of the three principal buildings, which were the envy and the wonder of the civilised world. In the immediate neighbourhood of the Acropolis is a lesser hill, of which the name is even more familiar to the ordinary reader — the Areopagus. And sloping up against it, on another side, are the two theatres, that of Roman plan, due to Herodus Atticus in Hadrian's time, and that far more famous place where the tragedies and comedies of the great Greek masters were produced, the theatre of Dionysus — that is, sacred to the festivals of the god. Within sight of this latter are the colossal columns of the great Roman-Greek temple of Jupiter, remodelled and carried out by Hadrian ; while within view of the Areopagus is that gem of Doric grace, the so-called temple of Theseus, contrasting in every way with the splendour of the Hellenistic conception of Hadrian and his architects. In the one, grace and symmetry, in the other, size and ornate majesty, were the ideal in view. The Areopagus is now, as may be seen from the annexed cut, a bare rocky knoll, upon which evidences of old cutting show that it was smoothed for seats, and perhaps some wooden structure applied, to make the rude stones more comfortable. It was suitable to that antique and venerable court that the judges, especially when trying cases of blood- guiltiness, and of religious pollution, should have their sittings in the open air. This has, therefore, been a commonly adopted view of the working of this court, nor am I aware of any reason against it, save that so many of our preconceptions about Greek life turn out false. Those who ascended from the Agora came first to a platform of considerable interest, upon which I will digress for a few moments. Plato makes Socrates say, in his famous De/efice, that a copy of Anaxagoras, even when scarce, could be bought on the orchestra for a drachme, which represented three days' wages of an ordinary labourer in those days. I will now explain to the reader what this means. On the north-west slope of the Areopagus, and Qot far above the level of the market-place or old Agora, there is a small semicircular platform, backed by the rising rock. ' This, or some platform close to it, which may now be hidden by accumulated soil, was the old orchestra, possibly the site of the old theatre, but in historical times a sort of reserved platform, where the Athenians, who had their town bristling with statues, allowed no monument to be erected save the figures of Harmodius and Aristogiton, which were carried into Persia, replaced by others, afterwards recovered, and of which we may have a copy in the two fighting figures, of archaic character, now in the Museum of Naples. It was doubtless on this orchestra, just above the bustle and thoroughfare of the Agora, that booksellers kept their stalls, and here it was that the book of Anaxagoras could be bought for a drachme. * Here then was the place where that physical philosophy was disseminated which first gained a few advanced thinkers ; then, through Euripides, leavened G 2 ATHENS. 85 the drama, once the exponent of ancient piety ; then, through the stage, the Athenian public also, till we arrive at those Stoics and Epicureans who came to teach philosophy and religion, not as a faith but as a system, and to spend their time with the rest of the public in seeking out novelties of creed and of opinion, as mere fashions with which people chose to dress their minds. And it was on this very Areopagus, where we are now standing, that these philosophers of fashion came into contact with the thorough earnestness, the profound convictions, the red-hot zeal of the Apostle Paul. The memory of that great scene still lingers about the place, and every guide will show you the exact place where the apostle stood, and in what direction he addressed his audience. There are, I believe, even some respectable commentators who transfer their own estimate of St. Paul's importance to the Athenian public, and hold that it was before the court of the Areopagus that he was asked to expound his views. This is more than doubtful. The blasis philosophers who probably yawned over their own lectures, hearing of a new lay preacher, eager to teach and apparently convinced of the truth of what he said, thought the novelty too delicious to be neglected, and brought him forth- with out of the chatter and bustle of the crowd, probably past the very orchestra where Anaxagoras' books had been proselytising before him, and where the stiff old heroes of Athenian history stood, a monument of the escape from political slavery. It is even possible that the curious knot of idlers did not bring him higher than this platform, which might well be called part of Mars' Hill. But if they chose to bring him to the top, there was no hindrance, for the venerable court held its sittings in the open air, on stone seats ; and when not thus occupied, the top of the rock may well have been a convenient place of retirement for people who did not want to be disturbed by new acquaintances, and the constant eddies of new gossip in the market-place. 'It is, however, of far less import to know on what spot of the Areopagus Paul stood, than to understand clearly what he said, and how he sought to conciliate as well as to refute the philosophers who, no doubt, looked down upon him as an intellectual inferior. He starts naturally enough from the extraordinary crowd of votive statues and offerings, for which Athens was remarkable above all other cities of Greece. He says, with a slight touch of irony, that he finds them very religious indeed, so religious that he even found an altar to a god professedly unknown, or perhaps unknowable.' Probably St. Paul meant to pass from the latter sense of the word dyv(o(TTo<;, which was, I fancy, what the inscription meant, to the former, which gave him an excellent introduction to his argument. Even the use of ' Though iyvwffTos may surely have this meaning, I do not find it suggested in any of the commentaries on the passage. They all suppose some superstitious precaution, or else some case of the real inscription being effaced by time, and supplied in this way. The expression in Pausanias— the gods called unknown, rois 6i/ofia(ofievois iyvda-Tois — seems to suggest it as a regular title, and we know that there were deities whose name was secret, and might not be pronounced. But in the face of so many better critics, I will not insiat upon this interpretation. 86 GREEK PICTURES. the singular niciy have been an intentional variation from the strict text, for Pausanias twice over speaks of altars to the gods, who are called the ayvoiajoi (or mysterious) ; but I cannot find any citation of the inscription in the singular form. However that may be, our Authorized Version does not preserve the neatness of St. Paul's point : " I find an altar," he says, " to an unknown god. Whom then ye unknowingly worship. Him I announce to you." But then he develops a conception of the great One God, not at all from the Jewish, but really from the Stoic point of view. He was preach- ing to Epicureans and to Stoics — to the advocates of prudence as the means, and pleasure as the end of a happy life, on the one hand ; on the other to the advocates of duty, and of life in harmony with the Providence which governs the world for good. There could be no doubt to which side the apostle must incline. Though the Stoics of the market-place at Athens might be mere dilettanti, mere talkers about the honestum, and the great soul of the world, we know that this system of philosophy produced at Rome the most splendid constancy, the most heroic endurance — I had almost said the most Christian benevolence. It was this stern and earnest theory which attracted all serious minds in the decay of heathenism. ' Accordingly, St. Paul makes no secret of his sympathy with its noble features. He describes the God whom he preaches as the benevolent Author of the beauty and fruitfulness of Nature, the great Benefactor of mankind by His providence, and therefore not without constant and obtrusive witnesses of His greatness and His goodness. But he goes much farther, and treads close upon the Stoic pantheism when he not only asserts, in the words of Aratus, that we are His offspring, but that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being." ' * His first conclusion, that the Godhead should not be worshipped or even imaged in stone or in bronze, was no doubt quite in accordance with more enlightened Athenian philosophy. But it was when he proceeded to preach the Resurrection of the Dead, that even those who were attracted by him, and sympathised with him, turned away in contempt. The Epicureans thought death the end of all things. The Stoics thought that the human soul, the offspring — nay, rather an offshoot — of the Divine world-soul, would be absorbed into its parent essence. Neither could believe the assertion of St. Paul. When they first heard him talk of yesus and Anastasis, they thought them some new and strange deities. But when they learned that Jesus was a man ordained by God to judge the world, and that Anastasis was merely the Anastasis of the dead, they were greatly disappointed ; so some mocked, and some excused themselves from further listening,' ' I will add but one point of interpretation concerning this famous chapter of the Acts, It is usual to criticise the Authorized Version, and say that St. Paul could not have meant at the outset of his speech to offend ' Rambles and Studies ^ p. I20, et seq. ATHENS. 87 the assembled philosophers by calling them superstitious. Accordingly the translation preferred is very religious. The objectors seem not to be aware that the word used by St. Paul, in a comparative or weaker form, is the very word, Deisidamoft, used for the title of a famous play of Menander, in which the principal character was a Superstitious Man. I think the Revised Version therefore rightly translates : * Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious^ nor should it have given religious in the margin as an alternative. These reflections lead us naturally to the consideration of the early history of Christianity in Athens, but we will postpone this interesting subject till we have done with classical and pagan Attica. As I said before, we have within our close view the very perfect and interesting Temple of Theseus. This, like so many other of the Athenian ruins, owes its present good condition to its transformation into a church, and so it remains to us, with its giant brother at Pa;stum, the most complete example of that chaste and severe style. But, as is so common with our finest ruins, it is passed over in silence by our classical texts, or at least so vaguely is it noticed, that to the present day no one can tell by whom or when it was built, or to what god or hero it was really dedicated. The subjects treated in the extant sculptures point as much to the worship of Herakles as of Theseus ; the peculiarities of its building — for these temples, like the mediaeval Gothic churches, though all very similar, are yet all original and peculiar in some features — point to a date earlier than the more graceful and perfect Parthenon. But then the builders of that day were quite capable of doing an archaic piece of work by way of variety — we know that Ictinus did so at Bassse — and for that reason our inference from its severer lines to its greater antiquity is not quite safe. We pass from this side of the Acropolis to the south-east, and proceed to say a word upon the great theatre of Dionysus. But we pass on the way the lesser theatre of Herodus Atticus, which supplies us with an excellent specimen of the Roman theatre, contrasted in many respects with the Greek. It is far steeper, and built up at the back of the stage with stories of brickwork arcades ; the stage walls are joined to the semicircle of the spectators' seats, instead of leaving open side entrances for the chorus to enter the orchestra. The effect of the whole building is cold and gloomy, oppressive with its high walls, and quite different in its effect from that of all the sunny cheerful relics of the bright Hellenic spirit. There had once been on or near this side a famous circular-roofed building for concerts, called the Odeum, and built in the days of Pericles. How far more precious would have been any relic of this perfect epoch ! As we wander on we come to the now unearthed foundations of the temple of ^^sculapius, which was apparently, unlike the rest, deliberately destroyed by the Christians in the fifth century, because this god specially 88 GREEK PICTURES. posed as the saviour of men from disease and death, and was specially credited with many miracles of healing. But here there is nothing of more than antiquarian interest ; we naturally hurry on to where the pickaxe has recovered for us, though not till 1862, something tangible and easy to be understood — the very interesting remains of the famous theatre in which the Athenians received the higher and better part of their moral teaching. This is a point never to be forgotten by those in whom Puritan traditions have sown a wholesome dread of the modern stage and its surroundings. It is indeed true that all serious dramatists, even in modern days, have asserted themselves as moral teachers, and so have the better and greater novelists, who have succeeded to the work and popularity of the playwrights. But the accessories of the drama have been so unworthy of this mission ; actors as a class have been, since the days of Aristotle, so generally loose and reckless in their lives, that we cannot wonder at the strong prejudice subsisting among the graver classes against this form of so-called public teaching. There was no question about this when y^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides composed in rivalry pieces to be acted in honour of the gods, and for the benefit of the great imperial democracy of Athens. For, in the first place, they represented no vulgar everyday griefs or misfortunes, but those of great legendary heroes and heroines far removed from their own days ; in the second, they uniformly represented the triumph of virtue and greatness over cruelty and vice, not in the vulgar form of earthly rewards and earthly happiness, but in that nobler triumph which wins the sympathy X'<^ Head-dresses from the Tanagra Figurines. CHAPTER VIII. BCEOTIA. WE have perhaps delayed too long in Attica, and must hasten to take the reader over some other historical scenes, about which cluster historic memories almost as splendid as those of Attica. The most important neighbour and rival of Athens all through her history was Thebes ; and had Thebes succeeded in amalgamating Boeotia with herself at an early date, after the manner of the legendary, but very real unification of Attica under Theseus, it is more than likely that Thebes would have been the real capital of Northern Greece in Hellas proper. For the territory of Boeotia was very rich and fruitful, especially so long as the Lake Copais in its centre was kept drained — a piece of economy hardly ever practised since the days of the mythical Minyans who made Orchomenos the leading town of Boeotia down to the operations of 1886. The Theban infantry was always, when properly handled, superior in fighting power to the hoplite of Attica, and the perpetual wars and battles for which the land was but too notorious — they called it Mars' Parade — must have inured the peasant to the sounds and sights of war. Nevertheless Thebes and the surrounding Boeotia are only redeemed from the obscurity of Acarnania or Locris by this fact — the constant recurrence of battles, and by the very occasional and sudden arising of some genius of the highest order, whom even Attic jealousy and detraction could BCEOTIA. Ill not class among the Boeotian pigs. As regards the former point, it is not merely that famous fights, where famous men fell, were frequent in that hill- surrounded plain, but that several times the whole fate of Greece was determined by a single battle in Boeotia. Here are some of these capital cases. In 478 B.C. the question of Persian domination over Greece was finally settled by the defeat and death of Mardonius at Plataea. Passing by the great battles of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartan rule over Greece was crushed by Epaminondas at Leuctra in 371 B.C. The liberties of Greece finally succumbed to Philip at Chaeronea in 338, and to Alexander at Thebes in 335 p.c. The great issue between ithe Roman Sylla and the Asiatic Mithridates was decided by the other great fight of Chaeronea in 86 B.C. And if the later great Roman conflicts were decided further north, the possession of Greece was certainly once more decided by the great defeat of Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, with all his knights by the grand Catalan company of Spanish mercenaries near Orchomenos on March 15th, 131 1 a.d. This strange catalogue is surely enough to give dignity to a country among historians, to whom great battles are more important than any other historical events. To those who desire intellectual glories as a guarantee for the greatness of Boeotia, the list opens with Hesiod, the rival, and even the successful rival, according to legend, of Homer. The earliest Greek farming quite naturally comes into literature through a Boeotian singer. Then we have the Phoenix Pindar, matchless among lyric poets, and Corinna, who with Sappho vindicates the literary fame of the female sex among the Greeks. Epaminondas, the first and perhaps the greatest of Greek strategists and tacticians, in the proper sense, and his companion Pelopidas, were in their generation the first men in Greece. Then, after a long interval, comes the Chaeronean Plutarch, who in his own person makes a St. Martin's summer in Greek literature, and has perhaps influenced the world more than any other single name in the whole of Greek letters. Even in the mediaeval gloom, the splendid castle and pleasaunce of St. Omer on the Cadmea of Thebes, and the wonderful acts of the younger St. Luke, attest that both luxury and asceticism attained higher distinction in Boeotia than could be claimed either by Athens or by any other Greek city in the Middle Ages. We must not therefore accept the jibes of the witty Athenians, in whose assumed contempt of the Boeotians there lay the same suspicion of conscious inferiority that lies in the Irish ridicule of English stolidity. But it was the real misfortune of this important province or division of Hellas, that while Thebes never attained to the complete supremacy gained by Argos, Sparta, Athens, in their respective districts, the lesser towns, such as Thespiae, Orchomenos, Plataea, never were able to stand independent and alone, and develop themselves into a separate stream of history beside the predominant and often domineering Thebes. It was in fact a case of that partial 112 GREEK PICTURES. conquest which carries with it all the disadvantages both of independence and of subjection. Let us now therefore, without prejudice, leave Attica, and take a ramble through this interesting country. It is separated from Attica by so complex a chain of mountains and defiles that no traveller can be surprised at the contrasts of the two countries. It requires hours of driving or riding to surmount all the passes round Phyle or west of Eleusis, and penetrate over Cithseron — Kitheron, as they pronounce it — to the historic site of the border town of Plataea. I have in another work described the way, which passes by one of the finest extant Greek forts — that known as Eleutherae — which unfortunately has not been pictured, so far as I know, since Dodwell brought out in the beginning of the century his famous ArchiBO logical Tour in Greece. The position of the fort is closely analogous to that I have already described at Phyle. The very first place on our de- scent into Boeotia is Plataea, or rather the miserable village on its site — ^ Plataea so famous in the thrilling narrative of the ninth book of Hero- dotus, hardly less famous in the terrible picture of Thucydides, who records its sudden seizure in peace by the Thebans, then, after their massacre, its great siege by the Lacedaemonians,^ ending with its surrender after the night adventure, by which most of the garrison escaped, and then the debate and judicial massacre of the remainder. Nowhere in his crabbed and contorted rhetoric does Thucydides approach real eloquence more than in the spirited defence he puts into the mouth of the surrendering Plataeans. There is, then, no small town in Greece with a more brilliant history, and none more completely effaced since its ruin by the Spartans and Thebans. Nor has it attained as yet any new celebrity by reason of excavations. But Its day may yet come. From Its streets, or, when It was fortified, from its walls, it was easy to command a view of all the hither plain of Boeotia. For Boeotia consists of two plains, separated by a low saddle of land, and surrounded with high Terra-Cotta Figurine, Tanagra. BCEOTIA. "3 mountains, from the slopes of which tumble rivers, flowing inward into the country. The city of Thebes is now among the most uninteresting in Greece. Very few antiquities have been found there, nor is there, as at Tanagra, that rich treasure of tombs with their charming terra-cotta figurines, which have taught us so much about the every-day dress of Greek ladies. It is from these, some of them in house dress, some muffled for cold out of doors, that we find out how very different from ordinary life were the dresses of the statues of the gods and goddesses, which were once supposed to be taken by the sculptors from actual life. Indeed, anyone who attempts to drape herself in the garb of a Greek statue will find no small difficulty Jl,CCU' Specimens of Greek Artistic Dress. in so doing, and for that reason we add to our pictures from the Tanagra figurines two studies of the method of assuming the classic garb, so majestic and apparently simple, in Greek statuary, where a single garment falls in beautiful lines about the figure. It must be remembered that our Greek statues are all in conventional dress, just as much as almost all our modern statues, which represent men not only in classical garb but in obsolete armour, or in knee-breeches and pig-tails, or some other bygone fashion, which is thought more dignified. I am not sure that even the terra-cotta figurines are strictly true to ordinary life, and so give a picture — the work no doubt of reconstruction from the imagination — which may possibly give a view as near to actual life as may be of the interior of a Greek house, with the women at work. 114 GREEK PICTURES. The Greek mansion was always framed on the same plan as the modern palaces in Italy, which now represent it : it was a square or squares of building round an open court, ornamented within with fountains and statues. The rooms round the court opened upon a colonnade, through which light reached the rooms, which were small, not well ventilated, and very dark, if we are to trust the evidence of Pompeii, But we must remember that the climate was hot, and that all public business was done in the market-place, or in large theatres constructed for the purpose. The interior aspect of a Ordinary Greek Dress. Greek house, as given in the accompanying plate, was rather graceful and refined than splendid. It was only in Roman days that palaces grew up like our modern great private houses. All traces of the Cadmea, once a great and mighty fortress, are now gone. But that is to be accounted for by the fact that the knights of the noble family of St. Omer had made there the most splendid mediaeval residence in Prankish Greece. It was the favourite resort of the Dukes of Athens, who preferred it to their Attic dominion. This famous castle and pleasaunce was adorned with mosaics and frescoes, and is described as fit for BCEOTIA. Its an emperor in the Chronicle of the Morea. No doubt all the ruins of the old Cadmea were utilised for this palace, where dwelt for a century the ideal of chivalry — mailed knights that seemed giants to the Greeks, fair ladies with fairer provinces as their dower, troubadours, and minstrels. The Burgundian court at Thebes spoke as good French as the Parisians ; and on their way to the Holy Land the Crusaders loved to dally in this fascinating outpost of Prankish culture. The deliberate and complete destruction of the Aula with Priest as. St. Omer Castle by the brutal Catalans has deprived us of a very valuable and curious specimen of mediaeval architecture. Not that there were wanting other Prankish castles in Greece. They crown many noble sites through the Morea with their bold remains, and under the modern Greek name of Palaeocastra not less than one hundred and fifty have been identified. We know that the castle of Clarentza in Elis, of which a great tower remains, was also a happy resort for pilgrim- I 2 ii6 GREEK PICTURES. knights on their way to Cyprus and Jerusalem, and the ruins of Mistra — the mediaeval Sparta — still show remains of solid and ornamental thirteenth- century building. But the rest seem built in haste, and for war rather than for pleasure ; that of Hugo de Bruyeres at Karytena in Arcadia stands on so steep a cliff that we wonder how horses could have been brought into it. There are many, however, which are due not to the Prankish but to the Venetian conquerors. The Prankish conquest of Constantinople in 1204 carried in its train this curious occupation of Greece for a century by these adventurers, who brought with them their language, their religion, their poetry, and their manner of life, and who lived apart as a strange dominant race in their castles over a vastly more numerous submissive population of Greeks, who found these new masters perhaps less oppressive than the Byzantine governors. Por Byzantine corruption in provincial administration may be compared with the worst days of the Roman praetors and proconsuls. Perhaps the only serious oppression now attempted was that by the Latin clergy, who tried to proselytise their Greek brethren, and wrest into their own hands all the ecclesiastical property of the Orthodox Church. The ruling knights seem to have curbed the grasping ambition of the clerics, and many Greek churches and dioceses still survived, so that with the solid traditions and superior learning of the Greeks, a successful resistance was made to the Latin invasion. The people adhered to their old ways, and when the conquerors were overthrown their influence vanished, and they left litde trace of their occupation beyond their vacant and deserted castles. Once more the toughness or indeed the indestructibility of the Greek civilisation asserted itself. What hordes of Slav barbarians could not do, companies of knights and missions of monks and bishops could not do more effectually. But the isolation of the races made this result inevitable. We know that the conquerors never thought of adopting the language of the country. The Latin priests tried to force on people who used an indigenous Liturgy the jargon of an unknown tongue. The minstrels ot the court not only sang in old Prench or Proven9al, but wholly ignored all the legends and glories of Greece. It is very remarkable that even the conquered masses learned more of Western, than the Western conquerors of Greek, literature. There are now published Greek mediaeval epics which weave into the adventures of Greek heroes features from Prankish legends ; so that actually in this obscure literature, only known to the students of mediaeval Greek, there are some traces of what Gregorovius picturesquely calls the marriage of Faust and Helen. ^ The vacant and modern Thebes, where even the new houses have been wrecked in our day by earthquakes, and where now nothing seems cultivated but gardens of roses, is perhaps the best halting-place for this brief digression upon one of the most curious and neglected moments of ' This is an allusion to the second part of Goethe's Fatts^, where this union has its mystical meaning. BCEOTIA. 117 Greek history. In those days Thebes was confessedly superior to Athens in wealth and importance, especially on account of its silk manufactories, which had attracted many Jews, and which was an industry so thriving that when the Normans first conquered Boeotia, they took care to carry off to Sicily a large number of the silk growers and weavers, in order to naturalise that precious craft in their Western kingdom. Unless there may be some improvement since I saw the plain a few years ago, its agriculture has gone back to the condition of old Hesiod, who in his Works and Days gives many advices, but omits all mention of manuring the land. If the farmer can move from field to field and take up fallow or unused land, when he has for the moment exhausted his former holding, such an omission does not matter ; and this no doubt was the state of Boeotia in Hesiod's day. Such it has been in the new kingdom of Greece till the recent vigour and firmness of the Tricoupis Government has established safety, and so promoted industry throughout the land. There is no doubt that the soil of Boeotia is very rich and fertile, and ought to supply the growing capital with many things which come a long way in ships, especially with meat, which is now chiefly supplied in tins from America, for there is good grazing land here, while there is none in Attica. Hesiod, indeed, on the slopes of Ascra, speaks of the climate as bitter in winter, severe in summer, never pleasant, and the land he cultivated was probably not in the depth of the rich plain. But his tame and prosaic advices are in great contrast to Pindar's richness, who, if any poet can, reflects the deep soil, the fatness, the luxury of Boeotian life. There is no poet more un-Attic in his splendour, more foreign to that dry and pure chastity of style which breathes the light air of Attic soil. The other towns in this Theban plain which once had a name were Tanagra in the north, the scene of more than one battle between Athenians and Thebans ; Leuctra in the south, on the way to the Isthmus, where Epaminondas with his new tactics crushed the Spartan supremacy in a day (371 B.C.); and Thespise, mentioned by Aristotle for its exclusive con- stitution, seeing that no tradesman might walk the agora of the privileged classes till he had abandoned his money-making for ten years ; mentioned by later writers for its famous Eros of Praxiteles, which tourists thronged to see, which was plundered by Nero, restored, and then lost in the decay of all the art of Greece. So it is that there is hardly a mile of this land where we cannot evoke great memories which lend an imperishabie charm even to desolation and decay. The American school has recently undertaken excavations in the northern part of this plain, not far from Tanagra, but as yet the results are not accessible. Whenever railways literally open up the soil, we may hope for striking discoveries, but the strange barrenness of results in the line which goes by the Isthmus to Patras makes us less hopeful. Here, however, all deep cuttings were either unnecessary or were avoided, and so perhaps such finds as that of the Roman necropolis of York Ii8 GREEK PICTURES. were not to be expected. Still, in a country so densely populated as the ancient Boeotia, we may be certain that large disturbance of the soil will certainly produce some startling discoveries. Let us now pass from the plain of Thebes to the more western plain of Orchomenos, till recently occupied over more than half its area by the Copaic lake. It is separated by a mere saddle of ground from the Theban district, and yet its history has been in many respects distinct. In old days, when the so-called Minyae were in Greece, Orchomenos was their principal stronghold. We see upon the acropolis the walls of that stronghold, and Dr. Schliemann has lately excavated the great tomb, known as their treasure-house to Pausanias. The lesser towns in this plain are also famous for battles, and battles often analogous to those of the Theban land. If the Spartans and Athenians crushed the eastern invaders of Greece on the battlefield of Platsea, the valour and efficiency of Sylla's Roman legions, de- feating vast numbers by discipline and steadiness on the plain of Chaeronea, crushed the great army of the Oriental Mithridates, which had poured out its multitudes over Greece. If Greek met Greek in the fatal tug of war at Leuctra, where Thebans defeated Spartan invaders, Greek met Macedonian on the plain of Chseronea also, when the heavy cavalry and phalanx of Philip overthrew the best infantry of Athens and of Thebes. In each battle a new genius showed a new power in war — Epaminondas the effect of an attacking column at one point of the enemy's line, Alexander the similar effect of a charge of heavy cavalry. I have already spoken of the famous battle of 131 1 A.D., when the Spanish infantry re-established i the superiority of that arm in war over the feudal cavalry, cut to pieces the Prankish knights, and succeeded to their dominion. The mountains which surround these plains are peculiarly picturesque, gloomy Cithaeron on the Attic side, looking towards the east, the rich slopes of Helicon, which bound Boeotia on the south, sending their numerous silvery streams to water the over-fertile marshes about Copais — to the west the giant Parnassus, veiling his head in the clouds, the outpost of the still loftier and gloomier mountains which make ^tolia and Acarnania the true Switzerland of Northern Greece. So here again we have a distinctive and separate section of the country, which has an almost isolated position, and follows out its own interests, to the damage or detriment of the general state of Greece. The Boeotians were never famed for broad patriotism — what Greeks indeed ever were ? — unless they could contrive to cloak their ambition under plausible names. And the Boeotians above the rest were given, we are told, to sensual luxury, so much so that the condition of things described by Polybius, when there were more festivals than days, and when no law business had been transacted for years, seems to us altogether impossible.' Fortunately the character of the country is redeemed ' Cf. my Greek Life and Thought, p. 467. BCEOTIA. 119 in later days by the brilliant and gentle genius of Plutarch, who tells us that he dwelt in his small and deserted Chaeronea, lest it might grow smaller. 'The fort on the rock (called Petrachus in old days) is, indeed, very large — perhaps the largest we saw in Greece, with the exception of that at Corinth ; and, as usual in these buildings, the wall follows the steepest escarp- ments, raising the natural precipice by a coping of beautifully hewn and fitted square stones. The artificial wall is now not more than four or five feet high ; but even so, there are only two or three places where it is at all easy to enter the enclosure, which is fully a mile of straggling outline on the rock. The view from this fort is very interesting, commanding all the plain of the Lake Copais, it also gives a view of the sides of Parnassus, and of the passes into Phocis, which cannot be seen till the traveller reaches this point. Above all, it looks out upon the gate of Elatea, about ten miles north-west, through which the eye catches glimpses of secluded valleys in Northern Phocis. ' Having surveyed the view, and fatigued ourselves greatly by our climb in the summer heat, we descended to the old theatre, cut into the rock where it ascends from the village — the smallest and steepest Greek theatre I had ever seen. But, small as it is, there are few more interesting places than the only spot in Chaeronea where we can say with certainty that here Plutarch sat — a man who, living in an age of decadence, and in a country village of no importance, has, nevertheless, as much as any of his country- men, made his genius felt all over the world. Apart from the great stores of history brought together in his Lives, which, indeed, even now are our only source for the inner life and spirit of the greatest Greeks of the greatest epochs, the moral effect of these splendid biographies, both on poets and politicians through Europe, can hardly be overrated. From Shak- speare and Alfieri to the wild savages of the French Revolution, all kinds of patriots and eager spirits have been fascinated and excited by these wonderful portraits. Alfieri even speaks of them as the great discovery of his life, which he read with tears and with rage. There is no writer of the Silver Age who gives us anything like so much valuable information about earlier authors, and their general character. More especially the inner history of Athens in her best days, the personal features of Pericles, Cimon, Alcibiades, Nicias, as well as of Themistocles and of Aristides, would be completely, or almost completely, lost, if this often despised but invaluable man had not written for our learning. And he is still more essentially a good man — a man better and purer than most Greeks — another Herodotus in fairness and in honesty. ' As the day was waning, we were obliged to leave this most interesting place, and set off again on our ride home to Lebadea. We had not gone a mile from the town when we came upon the most pathetic and striking of all the remains in that country^ — the famous lion of Chaeronea, which the I20 GREEK PICTURES. Thebans set up to their countrymen who had fallen in the great battle against Philip of Macedon in the year 338 B.C. It is of bluish-grey stone, they call it Boeotian marble or limestone, and is a work of the highest and purest merit. The lion is of that Asiatic type which has little or no mane, and seemed to us couchant or sitting in attitude, with the head not lowered to the fore paws, but thrown up. The expression of the face is ideally perfect — rage, grief, and shame are expressed in it, together with that noble calmness and moderation which characterise all Greek art. The object of the monument is quite plain without reading the affecting, though simple, notice of Pausanlas : " On the approach to the city," says he, " is the tomb of the Boeotians who fell in the battle with Philip. It has no inscrip- tion ; but the image of a lion is placed upon it as an emblem of the spirit of these men. The inscription has been omitted — I suppose, because the gods had willed that their fortune should not be equal to their valour." ' * It is, I think, rather remarkable, that after Thebes had so long, in the Middle Ages, taken the lead from Athens, on account of the richness of its soil and its valuable silk manufacture, it should itself have given way to Livadia, the old Lebadea, which was made by the Turks the capital of this province of their dominions. No doubt Livadia holds the keys of the roads from Salona through Phocis, and so bars the way from western to eastern Hellas by road. But then Elatea is just as Important a pass from the north, and so perhaps is Oropus, the northern town on the way Into Attica. It is more than probable therefore that hygienic reasons were the real determinants, and that the malarious character of the Boeotian plain was the real cause of the desertion of the old capital. We have the same causes here active that are so striking in that part of Italy which the Greeks had once peopled with many rich towns, I mean the coasts of Magna Graecia. Where once great wealth and industry tilled all the land, and kept the climate whole- some, there is now such malaria, that the traveller along the line which passes through the cities of Metapontum, Sybaris, Locrl, down to Rheglum, sees at every station in the summer fever-stricken officials attended by doctors, themselves ordinary officials of the railway company. When the bridges are broken by the torrents which rush from the now stripped and barren mountains, It is hardly possible to mend them In summer, from the prostration of all the workmen with fever, whereas during most of the winter the water is too high to permit any repairs. Yet formerly the superior diligence and energy of the Greek and the Italian races had solved this health problem and overcome this difficulty, which puzzles the modern engineer. * Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 227-233. Mount Parnassus. CHAPTER IX. Phocis — Delphi, WE start from Livadia into the Alps of Phocis, a country always poor, never remarkable for great men, but nevertheless very prominent at certain moments of Greek history. There is hardly any distinction between the adjoining districts of Phocis and Doris, which latter was always held to be the cradle of that Dorian race which once conquered the Pelopon- nesus, and ever after took the lead beside Athens in the Greek world. The Phocians, being hardy mountaineers, had a good reputation as fighting men, especially in the mercenary armies which absorbed all the poorer population, that dwelt in barren glens and gorges. But Phocis, unlike the sister districts of ^^tolia and Acarnania, was a thoroughfare for all the civilised world, since in its centre was the great temple, oracle, and bank of Delphi, approached either from Boeotia by way of Livadia, or by sea from the Gulf of Salona. There were probably few more beaten thoroughfares in the country, and, moreover, few roads more picturesque, or better worth while for the modern tourist to attempt. It is stiff work, riding along precipices, and up gloomy gorges, with rocks overhanging the way, and great pines 122 GREEK PICTURES. sighing in the breeze. The country is now even more desolate than it was when Demosthenes drew his pathetic picture of its ruin and enslavement by Philip of Macedon. Yet twice at least, as we are told, Phocis was the centre of interest in the liberation of Greece from barbarian invasion : first, when a division of the Persians (480 B.C.) sought to rifle the rich temple of Delphi, and were driven back in panic-stricken flight by the personal manifestation of the God Apollo, who crushed his foes with the aid of an earthquake, and left them an easy prey to the pursuing Phocians. The second instance, the attack of the Gauls under Brennus, in 279 B.C., is reported in the last book of Pausanias with details so similar to those of Herodotus, that I have else- where conjectured his account to have been taken from a lost epic poet, who copied the narrative of Herodotus to adorn his song.' These famous struggles, together with such legends as the battle of Apollo with the Python, celebrated in the extant Homeric Hymn, and the first act in the tragedy of Qidipus, who slew his father, Laius, at a spot where the road divided — still shown on the eastern slopes of Parnassus — make of Phocis no outlying or semi-Hellenic land like ^tolia, but an integral portion of the Hellas which has fascinated the world. Mount Parnassus, too, with its snowy summit, its wild forest, its Corycian cave, has become the conventional home for poetical inspiration, even down to the wretched book which sought to teach our boys the quantities of Greek and Latin words, and was entitled Gradus ad Parnassum. Yet for all that Mount Parnassus never produced, so far as we know, a real poet ; for the metrical responses composed by the priests of Delphi, of which we have many, though they may have seemea very awful, with their deliberate obscurity, to the anxious inquirer, have to 14s a very doggerel air. The best source for the extant specimens is the work of Herodotus, who quotes them on many occasions. Our best poetic picture of this famous place is the beautiful play called Ion of Euripides, which represents the fair boy living in the service of the temple, like another Samuel, in youth and purity, and yet made the centre of a great moral tragedy, and torn from his retreat into the turmoil of royal state and a royal inheritance. The opening monody of this play is among the finest passages of Greek tragedy. The only other picture of the country, and of the famous shrine, is the work of the traveller Pausanias, to whom we owe an inestimable picture of the Greece of the second century a.d. He is particularly full and explicit on Phocis and its famous temple. Let us say a word on the important moral influence of this shrine and its effect upon Greek history, ' Homer speaks in the Iliad of the great wealth of the shrine ; and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo supposes its whole antecedents completed. But seeing that the god Apollo, though originally an Ionian god, as at Delos, was here worshipped distinctively by the Dorians, we shall not err if ' Cf, Greek Life and Thought, p. 158. BCEOTIA. H3 we consider the rise of the oracle to greatness coincident with the rise and spreading of the Dorians over Greece — an event to which we can assign no date, but which, in legend, comes next after the Trojan War, and seems on the threshold of real history. The absolute submission of the Spartans, when they rose to power, confirmed the authority of the shrine, and so it gradually came to be the Metropolitan See, so to speak, in the Greek religious world. It seems that the influence of this oracle was, in old days, always used in the direction of good morals and of enlightenment. When neighbouring states were likely to quarrel, the oracle was often a peace- maker, and even acted as arbitrator — a course often adopted in earlier Greek history, and in which they again anticipated the best results of our nineteenth-century culture. So again, when excessive population demanded an outlet, the oracle was consulted as to the proper place, and the proper leader to be selected ; and so all the splendid commercial development of the sixth century b'.c, if not produced, was at least guided and promoted by the Delphic Oracle. Again, In determining the worship of other gods, and the founding of new services to great public benefactors, the oracle seems to have been the acknowledged authority, thus taking the place of the Vatican in Catholic Europe, as the source and origin of new dogmas, and of new worships and formularies. *At the same time the treasure-house of the shrine was the largest and safest of banks, where both individuals and states might deposit treasure, — nay, even the states seem to have had separate chambers, — and from which they could also borrow money, at fair interest, in times of war and public distress. The rock of Delphi was held to be the navel or centre of the earth's surface, and, certainly in a social and religious sense, this was the case for all the Greek world. Thus the priests were informed, by perpetual visitors from all sides, of all the last news — of the general aspect of politics — of the new developments of trade — of the latest discoveries in outlying and barbarous lands — and were accordingly able, without any supernatural inspi- ration, to form their judgments on wider experience and better knowledge than anybody else could command. This advice, which was really sound and well-considered, was given to people who took It to be divine, and acted upon it with implicit faith and zeal. Of course the result was, in general, satisfactory, and so even individuals came to use it as a sort of high confessional, to which they came as pilgrims at some important crisis of their life; and finding by the response that the god seemed to know all about the affairs of every city, went away fully satisfied with the divine authority of the oracle. 'This great and deserved general reputation was not affected by occasional rumours of bribed responses or of dishonest priestesses. Such things must happen everywhere; but, as Lord Bacon long ago observed, human nature is more affected by affirmatives than negatives — that is to 124 GREEK PICTURES. say, a few cases of brilliantly accurate prophecy will outweigh a great number of cases of doubtful advices or even of acknowledged corruption. So the power of the Popes has lasted in some respects undiminished to the present day, and they are still regarded by many as infallible, even though historians have published many dreadful lives of some of them, and branded them as men of worse than average morals. ' The greatness — nay, the almost omnipotence — of the Delphic Oracle lasted from the invasion of the Dorians down to the Persian War, certainly more than three centuries, when the part which it took in the later struggle gave it a blow from which it seems never to have recovered. When the invasion of Xerxes was approaching, the Delphic priests, informed accurately of the immense power of the Persians, made up their minds that all resist- ance was useless, and counselled absolute submission or flight. According to all human probabilities they were right, for nothing but a series of blunders could possibly have checked the Persians. But surely the god ought to have inspired them to utter patriotic responses, and thus to save them- selves in case of such a miracle as actually happened. ' It is with some sadness that we turn from the splendid past of Delphi to its miserable present. The sacred cleft in the earth, from which rose the cold vapour that intoxicated the priestess, is blocked up and lost. As it lay within the shrine of the temple, it may have been filled by the falling ruins, or still more completely destroyed by an earthquake. But, apart from these natural possibilities, we are told that the Christians, after the oracle was closed by Theodosius, filled up and effaced the traces of what they thought a special entrance to hell, where communications had been held with the Evil One. ' The three great fountains or springs of the town are still in existence. The first and most striking of these bursts out from between the Phsedriades — two shining peaks, which stand up one thousand feet over Delphi, and so close together as to leave only a dark and mysterious gorge or fissure, not twenty feet wide, intervening. The aspect of these twin peaks, so celebrated by the Greek poets, with their splendid stream, the Castalian fount, bursting from between them, is indeed grand and startling. A great square bath is cut in the rock, just at the mouth of the gorge ; but the earthquake of 1870, which made such havoc of Arachova, has been busy here also, and has tumbled a huge block into this bath, thus coverings the old work, as well as several votive niches cut into the rocky wall. This was the place where arriving pilgrims purified themselves with hallowed water. * In the great old days the oracle gave responses on the seventh of each month, and even then only when the sacrifices were favourable. If the victims were not perfectly without blemish, they could not be offered ; if they did not tremble all over when brought to the altar, the day was PHOCIS— DELPHI. 125 thought unpropitious. The inquirers entered the great temple in festal dress, with olive-garlands and stemmata, or fillets of wool, led by the oo-toi, or sacred guardians of the temple, who were five of the noblest citizens of Delphi. The priestesses, on the contrary — there were three at the same time, who officiated in turns — though Delphians also, were not considered of noble family. When the priestess was placed on the sacred tripod by the chief interpreter, or 11/30^177179, over the exhalations, she was seized with frenzy, often so violent that the 00-tot were known to have fled in terror, and she herself to have become insensible, and to have died. Her ravings in this Delphi as it is To-day. state were carefully noted down, and then reduced to sense, and of old always to verses, by the attendant priests, who, of course, interpreted discon- nected words with a special reference to the politics and other circumstances of the inquirers. 'This was done in early days in perfect good faith. With the decline of religion there were of course many cases of corruption and of partiality ; and, indeed, the whole style and dignity of the oracle gradually decayed with the decay of Greece itself. Presently, when crowds came, and states were extremely jealous of the right of precedence in inquiring of the 126 GREEK PICTURES. god, it was found expedient to give responses every day, and this was done to private individuals, and even for trivial reasons. So also the priests no longer took the trouble to shape the responses into verse ; and when the Phocians in the Sacred War (355-46 B.C.) seized the treasures, and applied to military purposes some ten thousand talents, the shrine suffered a blow from which it never recovered. Still, the quantity of splendid votive offerings which were not convertible into ready money made it the most interesting place in Greece, next to Athens and Olympia, for lovers of the arts ; and the statues, tripods, and other curiosities described there by Pausanias, give a wonderful picture of the mighty oracle even in its decay. ' When the Emperor Julian, the last great champion of paganism, desired to consult the oracle on his way to Persia, in 362 a.d., it repHed : " Tell the king the fair- wrought dwelling has sunk into the dust : Phoebus has no longer a shelter or a prophetic laurel, neither has he a speaking fountain ; the fair water is dried up." Thus did the shrine confess, even to the ardent and hopeful Julian, that its power had passed away, and, as it were by a supreme effort, declared to him the great truth which he refused to see — that paganism was gone for ever, and a new faith had arisen for the nations of the Roman empire.' ' I know no better example to prove the moral dignity of the old Delphic worship than the story told by Herodotus : 'When Leutychides, on his arrival at Athens, demanded back the hostages, the Athenians had recourse to evasions, not wishing to give them up ; and said that two kings had deposited them, and it would not be right to deliver them up to one without the other. When the Athenians refused to give them up, Leutychides addressed them as follows : " O Athenians, do whichever you yourselves wish ; for if you deliver them up, you will do what is just ; and if you do not deliver them up, the contrary. I will, however, tell you what once happened in Sparta respecting a deposit. We Spartans say that about three generations before my time there lived in Lacedsemon one Glaucus, son of Epicydes ; we relate that this man both attained to the first rank in all other respects, and also bore the highest character for justice of all who at that time dwelt at Lacedsemon. We say that in due time the following events befel him : A certain Milesian, having come to Sparta, wished to have a conference with him, and made the following statement : 'I am a Milesian, and am come, Glaucus, with the desire of profiting by your justice ; for since throughout all the rest of Greece, and particularly in Ionia, there was great talk of your justice, I considered with myself that Ionia is continually exposed to great dangers, and that on the contrary Peloponnesus is securely situated, and consequently that with us one can never see the same persons retaining property. ' Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 245-252, PHOCIS— DELPHI. 127 Having, therefore, reHected and deliberated on these things, I have deter- mined to change half of my whole substance into silver, and deposit it with you, being well assured that, being placed with you, it will be safe. Do you, then, take this money, and preserve these tokens ; and whosoever possessing these shall demand it back again, restore it to him.' '"The stranger who came from Miletus spoke thus. But Glaucus received the deposit, on the condition mentioned. After a long time had elapsed, the sons of this man who had deposited the money came to Sparta, and having addressed themselves to Glaucus, and shown the tokens, demanded back the money. Glaucus repulsed them, answering as follows : * I neither remember the matter, nor does it occur to me that I know any of the circumstances you mention ; but if I can recall it to my mind, I am willing to do everything that is just ; and if indeed . I have received it, I desire to restore it correctly ; but if I have not received it, I shall have recourse to the laws of the Greeks against you. I therefore defer settling this matter with you for four months from the present time.' ' *' The Milesians, accordingly, considering it a great calamity, departed, as being deprived of their money. But Glaucus went to Delphi to consult the oracle, and when he asked the oracle whether he should make a booty of the money by an oath, the Pythian assailed him in the following words : ' Glaucus, son of Epicydes, thus to prevail by an oath, and to make a booty of the money, will be a present gain : swear away then, for death awaits even the man who k6eps his oath. But there is a nameless Child of Perjury, who has neither hands nor feet ; she pursues swiftly, until, having seized, she destroys the whole race, and all the house. But the race of a man who keeps his oath is afterwards more blessed.' Glaucus, having heard this, entreated the god to pardon the words he had spoken. But the Pythian said, that to tempt the god, and to commit the crime, were the same thing. Glaucus, therefore, having sent for the Milesian strangers, restored them the money. With what design this story has been told you, O Athenians, shall now be mentioned. There is at present not a single descendant of Glaucus, nor any house which is supposed to have belonged to Glaucus ; but he is utterly extirpated from Sparta. Thus it is right to have no other thought concerning a deposit, than to restore it when it is demanded." Leutychides having said this, but finding the Athenians did not even then listen to him, departed.' ' This narrative may well be compared with the splendid passage quoted from Sophocles, and may again remind us of the apostle's words, ' These, not knowing the law, are a law unto themselves, and do the works of the law written in their hearts, their consciences accusing or else excusing one another.' And when he says in the same connection, ' The just shall live by his faith ' (or steadfastness), and speaks of the grace of God being ' Herodotus, vi. 86. 128 GREEK PICTURES. * revealed /rom faith to faith' it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he regarded these lesser lights of conscience as part of the same great revelation — the candle of the Lord set up in men's hearts, which may be obscured by superstition, but can hardly be extinguished without a long national degradation, and, if I may say so, a special training in vice. It is hardly worth our while, in our artistic review of Greece, to wander out into wild ^tolia, which is but a repetition of Phocis, without the historical interests. There was, indeed, a period when the wild ^tolians were the greatest power in Greece, and they were the last and the toughest champions for Greek liberty against the successors of Alexander, and against the Romans. Their capital, Thermus, too, was once filled with statues and other works of art, which they had acquired in their many raids, and in the mercenary service which was so lucrative in the third century B.C. But of all these things not a trace remains, nor do I know that the site of Thermus, which Philip V. of Macedon sacked, has yet been identified. So too the Acarnanians, who lived further west still, were of little account till the Emperor Augustus founded the city of Nicopolis on the Gulf of Arta, and drafted into it all the surrounding population. The remains of this city, on the Gulf of Arta, still attest its splendour, and we know from Strabo that it was a thriving centre in his day — one of the few that remained in Greece. The one town along the rough southern coast which attracts modern sympathies, is beside the giant head- land over against Patras — Missolonghi, noted for the heroic defence made by its population against the Turks in the War of Liberation, noted also for the scene of Byron's end. Here it was that perhaps the only pure ambition the poet ever showed was cut short by an early death. He was a great power in exciting European sympathy with the Greeks ; his poems brought home the conflict to every house in England, and over the continent of Europe few writers have had so universal a popularity. He might almost have attained to the throne of Greece, had he survived ; but the purest and noblest part of his work for Greece was accomplished, and the liberated nation have never forgotten their obligations to Mpyron, as they spell his name in modern Greek. Greek Vases— Early Classical Period. CHAPTER X. ' The Peloponnesus — Acuma. WE pass now from what was considered continental Greece to the ' Island of Pelops,' a land narrowly escaping the fate of Sicily, and only held on to the continent by the isthmus of Corinth, which we have already described. But the northern land, separated by the narrow fiord called the Gulf of Corinth, approaches it so nearly in another place, the ancient Naupactus, that invaders who could not pass the fortress of Corinth could easily cross by boats the narrow water — not two miles, if I judged it aright — which divides the opposing capes. It is, in fact, told in legend that the great Dorian invasion which altered the whole history of the Peloponnesus took place by this route. In the Middle Ages, for some unexplained reason, the famous peninsula adopted a new name — Morea, of which the origin is hidden in darkness, nor can scholars even agree upon the language from which it is taken. Strabo compared its form to that of a mulberry leaf, but he should have added, that it is laid upon a quadrilateral of four very high points — Mount Kyllene (now Ziria), Mount Chelmos and Erymanthus together, Mount Lykseon in Messene, the least distinct of the four groups, and Mount Taygetus in Laconia, the most distinct, next to the solitary Kyllene. These Alps, surrounded generally by lesser mountains, rise to an altitude above 6500 feet, and enclose a wild district of gorges and valleys known as Arcadia. The general character of all the provinces, if I may so call them, of the island of Pelops are clearly marked. When you approach the sea, you have rich valleys, the alluvial deposit of the rivers ; and here of course were K I30 • GREEK PICTURES, settled the principal cities — Argos on the valley of the Inachus, Sparta on that of the Eurotas, Olympia on that of the Peneus. The natural site for the capital of Messene was the rich valley of the Pamisus. But beside these famous cities were others situated either close to seaports, like Corinth, Patrae, Pylos, or occupying alpine plains, like Tegea and Mantinea, and afterwards Megalopolis. Thus the peninsula was an epitome of all the varieties and contrasts which made Greek life the brilliant, uncertain, picturesque medium for genius and energy of all kinds. Corinth was the centre of trade ; and after it was destroyed, Patrse took up its place, and has maintained it to this day. Sikyon and Argos were centres of art, where great sculptors and painters made schools which attracted pupils from all Greek lands. Sparta was long the home and citadel of all the military perfection of Greece in training and drill, so that Spartan infantry was for centuries thought invincible, till one day it was crushed by the superior tactics of Epaminondas. In Elis was held the greatest of Greek festivals, which came in the end to mark the chronology of the whole people by its Olympiads ; and here every kind of art, music, poetry, sculpture, architecture, was called in to beautify the great shrine of the god, whose nod, as Homer says, made all the heavens shake. Every kind of government, too, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, tyranny, was to be found within these narrow bounds ; and if actual men of letters, poets, and orators seem rare from this side of Hellas, the chief patronage which made them prosper came from Sikyon, Argos, Sparta, when the brilliancy of Athens had not shown itself, or was dimmed by disaster. The early lyric poets, especially, were stimulated by the favour of Sparta and the contests at Olympia, where even prose authors read their works, while rhetoricians declaimed their eloquence. But we must not prolong these generalities, and must hasten to give the reader some details. Already we have spoken of Patras, and the landing there to take the train along the coast for Corinth, with the noble mountains of Achsea towering to the south, and sending down many torrents which rush red into the blue waves, as we saw them after a night's rain. And the reader knows already Corinth, with its great citadel. Between Patrse and Corinth are two remarkable sites, both famous in the last days of Greek politics — ^gium (now Vostitza) and Sikyon — both famous in the history of the Achaean League. The older Sikyon had been situate nearer the sea, but Demetrius, the famous Besieger, had laid out a new city on a higher site, and adorned it with all the appointments which were required for civilised life. We can still trace the theatre and stadium for races, but the town has not yet undergone thorough excavation of the site. This was the birthplace of the famous Aratus, the hero of the Achaean League ; and the reader who wishes to know more must open the fascinating Life of Aratus by Plutarch, and read how this famous man was exiled, and how he recovered by a daring enter- THE PELOPONNESUS— ACH^A. 131 prise his home, and freed it from the tyrants. He must also, however, remember, while he reads the constant raving of Aratus, and indeed of Plutarch, against tyrants, that according to the evidence of the sensible Strabo, the city had long been ruled by respectable tyrants, who protected the life and property of the citizens, and patronised art, which always flourished under their hands. One of them, we are told, was murdered by conspirators while he was attending the lectures of a Peripatetic ^ philosopher, without ceremony or body-guard. But the mad hatred of tyrants and tyranny has so long been a common- place, that their vileness is generally assumed as a ne- cessary part of the definition of the tide. Indeed, many Plan ok the Theatre and Stadium at Sikyon. great authorities, Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, and Plutarch, agree in their language on this point. But they reflect and represent not the popular feeling, which was never very averse to them ; they reflect the old aristocracy, K 2 132 GREEK PICTURES. to v/hom tyrants were abominable, because the first step in a tyranny was to disarm, exile, or shackle those wild aristocrats, who were in the habit of oppressing the people, and riding rough-shod over the poor and the weak. To these latter a tyrant was generally a great protection against turbulent superiors, and hence it happened that, however much abused by the literary aristocrats, tyrants were perpetually reappearing at all epochs in all parts of the Greek world. There were, of course, cruel and bloodthirsty tyrants, like those notorious in story — Phalaris of Agrigentum, Nabis of Sparta, Apollo- dorus of Cassandra ; like those painted in the Republic of Plato, the Hiero of Xenophon, and the Dion of Plutarch. But in all these cases the average was good and profitable to the country ; it is the notable excep- tions which have been brought before the public, and have produced a false and unjust prejudice against a whole class. This much I feel bound to say in passing concerning the class which Aratus pursued all his life with relentless and unreasoning hate. All this fury did not save the great Achaean from crimes as great as theirs, when he betrayed his League to the Macedonian Antigonus, and abused the absolute power for a moment conferred upon him by committing a series of semi-judicial executions, which were simply murders, accompanied with torture of the victims. Let us pass on to /Egium, the modern Vostitza, which is at least still remarkable for its beautiful situation. It was here that the old Ach^an League, when consisting of twelve small Achaean towns, had its meetings.^ It is now a small but pleasant town, with a population of fishermen and vine-dressers, or rather currant-dressers, for here that small grape, so popular in England under the name of currant {i.e. Corinthian grape), thrives and produces a very valuable crop, as well as excellent wine. But to modern travellers the main reason for stopping at Vostitza is that from this place we can most easily make an excursion to the largest and perhaps most famous of the single monasteries in Greece, the Great Cave, or Mega- spelion, where within a wall of rock are stories of chambers holding hundreds of monks, and reminding one either of a set of swallows' nests or a wasps' nest — as a matter of fact, the rocky wall of one side of a glen, having three caves within it, one over the other. They have faced the three mouths with a great wall, about i8o feet long by lOO high, and pierced nine stories of tiny windows, from which the approaching traveller, labouring up the steep ascent to the gateway, can see curious faces peering in dozens. They have thrown out balconies too, just as on the walls of the Athos monasteries, and have an outer gate as well as an inner. Here, too, all the bells of the monastery jangle out of tune to proclaim the advent of a visitor, and the highly ornamented church occupies the central grotto. As regards the ornaments of this church, the nature of the services, and the manners ^ The reader should carefully distinguish it from ^goe, near Pella, the ancient seat of the Macedonian kings, where they were still buried in later days. THE PEL OPONNESUS—A CH.EA . 133 of the monks, I will reserve what I have to say till we reach Mount Athos, on our exit from this journey. For the Greek monk, wherever you find him, is precisely of the same type. All his habits, his politenesses, his questions, his views of religion and politics are the same. This great cavern, however, has the additional glory of having saved 3000 women and children from the Turks and Egyptians in the War of Liberation, nor was the fortress, View on the Gulf of Corinth, near Vostitza. with its extraordinary natural defences, ever subdued in that terrible war. The decoration of the church is due to an artist monk of Nauplia, who painted it in 1653, and this, coupled with the specimen we have of decorative painting at the Pha^neromene of Salamis, done in 1723, shows how a persistent school of painting flourished among the monks from early days. The great master at Athos is Panselinos, who lived in the twelfth century. 134 GREEK PICTURES. Here the holiest eikon. is shown as the work of the EvangeUst Luke. But the artist who has given rise to this story was a Cretan monk of the twelfth century, for whom they have substituted the greater name both here and elsewhere in Greece. The monks of Megaspelion are perhaps prouder of their cellar than of their chapel, though the wine they make is not so good as that to be found in many of the villages of these wild highlands. But whatever doubt there may be about these points, there is none that the Archbishop Germanos here raised the standard of revolt, with its white cross, in 1821, and from this stronghold came forth those heroes of the War of Independence who can never be forgotten by their enfranchised country. The library is badly kept, and not rich in valuable documents. Probably the charter of John Palaeologus, or golden bulla, is the most interesting of their books. ' I had visited,' says M. Henri Belle, * many convents in the East and the West, and few have caused me such disappointment as that of Megaspelion. I found there neither the ascetic spirit of Meteora, that other Greek monastery, nor the spirit of penitence of the Grande Chartreuse ; nothing reminded me of the activity and industry of the abbeys of St. Gall in Switzerland, and of La Trappe in France, or of Mount Melleray in Ireland ; you find there no trace of the artistic and intellectual greatness of Monte Cassino, or of the devotion of the monks of St. Bernard, still less the indefatigable energy of the monks of St. Benedict.' But there are few, if any, of the famous retreats laid in a scene so splendid as that of the Greek monastery. Nature has done all she could to clothe it with dignity. In all directions there are splendid excursions ; first of all to the falls of the Styx, which suggested to the ancients that river of the nether world, black and cold, which bound even the gods by the inviolable oath in its name. There are splendid alpine climbs up Mount Chelmos, and a very rough and precipitous way, leading by the village of Kalavryta to Tripotamo, and thence to Olympia. The country is wild beyond description, and yet perfectly safe for any traveller, without arms, without escort, without any precaution whatever. In the larger villages you see a man walking about with a dog-whip, and you are told that this is the policeman. Military pickets or patrols there are none. I will not say that there is no crime whatever in the Morea. When elections take place, there is such excitement that men are not rarely stabbed or shot, but this is from political hate or jealousy. There are no doubt cases of theft, of murder from jealousy among married women. But as offences against travellers, beyond occasional extortion, are unknown, so also, I was informed that illegitiniate children hardly occur in the Morea. The penalties exacted — death to the father, disgrace to the mother, at the hands of her relatives — have secured the population against this kind of vice ; and so we are in presence of a society in many respects so primitive as to be barbarous, in others so pure and strict as to put to shame the leading nations of Europe. THE PELOPONNESUS— ACH^A. 135 It is remarkable that in old days the mountaineers in the wild centre of the Peloponnesus were regarded as poor behind-hand specimens of Greeks. It was in the plains and on the coast that the great races lived. Things have changed so completely now, that if you wish to see a pure Greek of a high type, with the fair skin, blue eyes, and flaxen hair which Homer praises in Menelaus, you must go to the mountains or to remote islands with no traffic. The modern Greek of the seaports is essentially a mongrel Levantine, with all the talents and vices of that conglomerate of races impressed upon his very countenance. He it is who has given their bad name to the modern Greeks. He it is that once supplied pirates, and even now sometimes supplies brigands. Like the waters of his ports, which harbour in their tideless waves the filth of centuries, so the Levantine ports, Greek and Asiatic, have long been the sink of human depravity. But let no one transfer the impression they produce to the honest mountaineers who inhabit Greece. There he will find simplicity, fairness, independence, and a great natural dignity, as common features of the peasantry. The old inhabitants of Achaea, that strip of narrow coast and high slopes along the north shore of the Morea, were of this character, a poor and honest people, not distinguished in Greek history till the greater states had decayed, when their League, of which we first hear about the year 300 11. c, came into notice, as affording a model of confederation, or the union of several states, in themselves small or weak, for the purpose of mutual defence or protection. Thus it was that the Achaeans had sought to protect themselves against their stronger neighbours, above all, against the roving pirates and marauders that became so notorious in the great wars after Alexander's death. When mercenary wars had lasted a long time, and many poor Achaeans had earned wealth in Egypt and in Asia, this Achaean League began to take a leading place in the Greek world. The reader must consult the special histories, such as Mr. Freeman's Federal Govemfnent, or my own Greek Life and Thought from Alexaiider to the Roman Conquest, for details as to this remarkable constitution, and its effect upon later Hellenistic history. It was the last, and in many respects the most perfect essay in constitution-making of the Greeks ; and it is greatly to the credit of the practical men who founded the American Republic that they carefully studied their Polybius, and framed many details of their Federation upon the examples to be found in the Achaea of Aratus. The early numbers of the Federalist, conducted by Hamilton and Madison, which Mr. Freeman has quoted in his book, show very curiously how the same sort of solution was applied to the same kind of difficulty in far distant ages, far distant climes, and enormous disparity in area. When Pausanias, the famous traveller of the second century a.d., describes this corner of Greece, its constitutional splendour was not what fascinated that antiquarian. It was rather the legendary splendour of having furnished royal 136 . GREEK PICTURES. families for the ancient colonists who went from Greece proper to settle in the rich coasts of Asia Minor. There, in great cities like Miletus, tradition upheld the origin of their nobility from Achaean chiefs, then perhaps a name widely applied over Greece, but in Pausanias' day identified with the strip of land covered by the League. This League extended ultimately into Arcadia, which was naturally to be expected, for Northern Elis and Arcadia are separated from Achsea by no certain bounds ; indeed, in these wild mountain gorges I found it well-nigh impossible to tell when I had passed from one to the other. As therefore much of what I have now said applies to Arcadia, so much of what may hereafter be said of Arcadia applies to this country. The lofty watershed which separates the sources of what flows into the gulf from what flows into the Alpheus southward, is the only natural boundary, but in a wilderness of Alps this line is neither well marked nor easily found. The ridge of Erymanthus (Olonos) is indeed a very striking feature, looking either from Elis northward, or from Patras southward ; but when we pass eastward of this great snowy ridge the heights of Chelmos are by no means so distinct. Let us cross over towards the south-west, and pass into Elis, the land of the Alpheus, the whilome sanctuary of Greece where the noise of arms was not heard, the meeting-place for exiles and long separated friends, the land hallowed by the great Olympic festival. Ruins of a Dyzantine Church, near Eus. CHAPTER XI. Elis — Olympia. AMONG the many beautiful rides through Greece none is more beautiful than that from either Patras or Vostitza, through the mountains of Achaia to Olympia, now the great centre of attraction in Elis. It is possible to skirt round the mountains by driving round from Patras by the coast, passing near the town of Clarentza, one of the principal residences of chivalry in mediaeval times, and also near the site of the ancient Elis, where the training was done for Olympia, and where all the solemn oaths and preparations of the judges were made in preparation for the feast. But these are now only sites, and the scenery is not to be compared to that of the other route, which though exceedingly rough has no dangers, and may be accomplished in two days. It is quite amazing what wonderful ascents and descents can be made 138 GREEK PICTURES. on the mules or ponies of the country. Nothing seems too precipitous for them, nor does one ever hear of an accident from their falling. You wander along the sides of great gorges, sometimes descending to the rivers which hurry along beneath, sometimes rising to a thousand feet above the stream ; you pass through great undisturbed forests, where the leaves layered for centuries make the ground noiseless with their softness, and noisy with their myriad rustling. As you pass through these woods you see countless wild flowers, especially anemones, irises, orchids, showing over the russet leaf mould, and are fain to dismount and seek the roots, to carry home as a trophy of your travel. Not once in ten miles do you meet habitations, not twice a day any travellers. It is a curious peaceful solitude, with stray patches cultivated in isolation, generally in some position of strength or utter de- viousness, which protected men from their foes in the troubles of sixty years ago. Here and there you come upon patches of a Turkish road, a hard rough pavement of small stones, torturing to the human foot, and, perhaps equally so to the mules for which they were constructed. When you ascend to great heights to cross some saddle in the mountains, you obtain views over whole tracts of alpine country reaching far down into Arcadia, with long vistas into rich valleys and countless variety of peak and serrated ridge. And then you plunge into the depths down some strip of pine forest, which reaches up from beneath and makes it possible to clamber down zig-zag its almost perpendicular slope. These experiences must be made to be understood ; to the stranger there is added the excitement of real and present danger, though one cannot hear that it is often turned into reality. Whether you come suddenly upon one of the villages, or whether you climb into one you have seen across a deep ravine for some hours without being able to reach it, the inhabitants turn out to gaze at you ; they give you very good red wine for a copper ; when it is not full of resin, nothing can be more refreshing. Greek Mountaineers, ELIS—OLYMPIA. 139 But the habit of the country is to chop the stems of the fir trees — you can see whole forests wounded in this way — and gather the gum which flows from the tree, which they put into the wine, both to preserve it and to make it wholesome. As far back as Plutarch's day the nation had come to like it ; and it is said that at the royal table at Athens there are now princesses who will not drink any other beverage. There are several streams down which the traveller can make his way to the valley of the Alpheus, in which Olympia is situated ; either down the rushing Ery- manthus, past the site of the ancient Psophis, or down the Ladon, which Pausanias calls the fairest of Greek rivers, or down the Kladeos, from the old Turkish fortress of Lala to the very site of Olympia. The country gra- dually grows tamer ; the rude mountains sink into undulat- ing hills ; the rushing tor- rents become babbling rivers ; the trees increase in size and variety, and many flowering shrubs, especially the wild pear and Judas tree, variegate the colour of the woods. The only halting-place in this journey is either Divri or Tripotamo. When the traveller con- siders that every four years 5 all possible routes must have been thronged with crowds of the ancient Greeks, especially the many exiles from their homes, who could there only meet and talk with their relatives in safety ; when he remembers that these mountains must have seen artists, poets, musicians, orators making their way to the great assembly, he cannot but grieve over the beautiful desolation through which he now reaches the same goal — Olympia, though the crowded festival is gone, and there remain only the ruins of its buildings to reward his enterprise ; and yet these ruins are hardly to be equalled in Europe for interest. Greek Hospitality. 140 GREEK PICTURES. When the French under General Maison occupied the Morea in 1829, and so accomplished the good work commenced at Navarino of expelling the Egyptians and Turks, some French savants in his staff made superficial excavations here, which disclosed not only the tesselated floor of the temple, but some fragments of sculpture, which now adorn the museum of the Louvre. This was one of the many benefits conferred on art and to civilisation by this well-timed occupation. Before we enter upon a closer description of the athletics of the Greeks, as well as the actual remains now visible at Olympia, it may be well to give the general reader some of the broad facts in the history of the famous place. The Greeks, of course, traced the origin of the festival to mythical times. It had been established by the god Herakles, on his return from one of his numerous adventures, and Pindar, in an extant ode, has given us a poetic account of this foundation, according to the current beliefs of his day. To any one who considers that the athletic sports so brilliantly described in the twenty-third book of Homer's Iliad correspond in hardly a detail to those established at Olympia, this belief in a very early and solemn initiation of the festival, even by some ancient hero turned into a god by popular admiration, will not hold water. And there was quite another account of the matter, which recorded that the several contests were added one after the other at fixed and well-known intervals. Their successive additions are particularly specified in Pausanias' account of Olympia. The archaeologists, however, held that the old and complete establishment by Herakles had passed into oblivion, and that the various contests were gradually revived, but not originated in historical times — a mere subterfuge to save the credit of Pindar and his legends. The next point on which most of the ancients were agreed was that the regular celebration every four years began with Iphitus, King of Elis, assisted or patronised by the celebrated Lycurgus ; though, so far as we can make out, the date assigned to Iphitus does not agree with the date assigned to Lycurgus, and though we know very well that the Spartan discipline never encouraged athletic training, but preferred the pursuit of game and other field exercises. However, the short or sprint race of two hundred yards, always the event of the festival — probably because it was the oldest, perhaps because it was the first, and its victor gave his name to mark that period of four years — was said to have been won by Corcebus, in the year corresponding to our 776 B.C. ; and from that time onward a regular register seems to have been kept, by which ultimately the Greek historians came to mark events. This list was therefore held to be of the last importance ; the late copies surviving of it have been edited with care, and even the sceptical Grote sets down the year 776 e.g. as the point where real and trustworthy Greek history begins. But the older Greeks said that there were twenty-seven victors anterior ELIS—OLYMPIA. 141 to Coroebus, and that the list began properly with the god Herakles. And this was in strict consonance with their practice in all genealogies. The Spartan kings, for example, were traced back in regular lists to the same god, Herakles. And at Halicarnassus Sir C. Newton found, among other inscribed stones, a genealogy of priests, made in the second century b.c, that is to say, in late and sceptical times, when the list was traced back through twenty-six generations to the god Poseidon. I suppose it was the fact that the Olympic register did not begin with a god — that twenty-seven names which would have established that commencement of the series were missing — which deceived modern scholars, and made them believe in the genuineness of this wonderful list. So sure was I of the contrary that I positively predicted the excavations at Olympia would produce no evidence of any such list. For Pausanias, in his long and elaborate survey of the most ancient extant votive statues, could not find anything older than the so-called thirty-third Olympiad. But in addition to all these arguments, Plutarch, at the opening of his Life of Numa, has actually told us who made out the register, and that he did it at a late period, and upon insufficient evidence. It was the sophist Hippias of Elis, who did this work for his fellow-citizens at some time shortly after 4CX) b.c. Of course the early part of it was mostly made up from guesses, traditions, and even from deliberate invention. So that we must no longer soothe ourselves with the convenient belief that we have a sure and fixed starting-point for our Greek chronology. There is far better evidence that shortly after the year 600 b.c. athletic contests came into fashion, and that the conduct of the Eleans in the management of the games was so censured that rival meetings sprang up, of which the Pythian (at and beneath the town of Delphi, already described), the Isthmian, on the narrow neck of land north of Corinth, and the Nemean, between Corinth and Argos, became famous. An echo reaches us of the cause of this movement, in the notice that no Elean was allowed to compete at the Isthmus, and also in the story told by Herodotus, that the Eleans sent to Psammetichus II., King of Egypt, about 590 b.c, to ask him how they might best arrange the details of their festival. Why they chose this distant king as an adviser does not appear. He replied that he should — as they desired his opinion — advise them to exclude every Elean from their own contest. It appears very plainly from this that they had been favouring unduly their own people, and had awarded prizes to them against other Greeks whom the audience thought entitled to the honour. These facts show that in the year 600 B.C., roughly speaking, the Olympic festival had become one of public interest to the Greeks of the Peloponnesus and of Phocis, and that the local management was distrusted. It is likely that as a mere local meeting, the games were much older, but on this point we have no trust- worthy evidence. I think the oldest definite notice in Pausanias points 142 GREEK PICTURES. to the twenty-ninth meeting, which corresponds to our 665 B.C. But whether this date is not part of the artificial scheme of Hippias, we cannot tell. It was not tilb^the middle of the sixth century B.C. that the rise of luxury at the courts of the tyrants, and the consequent development of the fine arts, led to the production of various artistic offerings, especially of votive statues. The victor was permitted to set up a bronze or marble statue of him- self at Olympia. Nothing contributed more to the development of Greek art than this fact. As the competitors were then allowed to appear naked, the statues also, in contrast to the older clothed and painted figures of wood, were made to represent the naked human form, and instead of attempting to represent ideal beauty in a god, some attempt was made to reproduce the figure and face of a perfectly trained and developed man. Together with this stimulus to statuary, came the fashion of employing lyric poets to compose triumphal odes for the cele- bration of these victories. And we still have in the odes of Pindar magnificent specimens of what could be produced by the Greeks, even at demand and for pay, in the way of poetry. The poems of Pindar have ever since been the unattain- able models for all lyric poets. But the accompaniments of dance and music, which they required for their production — it was a combination like Wagner's operas — are now gone irrevocably. The odes of Gray will give the English reader a Athlete using the Strigil or Flesh Brush faint echo of them ; though tO me the (THE APOXVOMENOS OF LVSIPPUS). ^^^.^^ ^^ ^^^^^^^ j^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ to that of Pindar, so that I should prefer the opening of Queen Mad as a modern, though also a very faint, parallel. The rise of Athens and Sparta successively, neither of which patronised the Olympian games as the lesser states did, appears to have damaged the international importance of the games ; nevertheless they were still of such recognised public weight ELIS—OL YMPIA. 1 43 that the territory of Elis was considered sacrosanct, that the period of the quadrennial games was regarded as a solemn truce in the time of war, and that all Greeks of all states were enabled to travel thither and meet their friends and their enemies under the protection of this great national holy- day. It is a wonder that we do not hear more frequently of doings at the feast under these exceptional circumstances. In two or three rare cases Sparta and Argos had interfered, and taken the celebration out of the hands of the Eleans, but this was an outrage, and was remembered for centuries. The days came when even this ancient home of peace and of country life was violated, and the Eleans were compelled to arm themselves to repel invasion ; but with the decay of Greece, the subjugation by Macedonia, and the consequent spread of Greek manners and customs over the world, the importance of this and the other feasts distinctly increased. It was the meeting-place for all those whom the violent convulsions among the various states had deprived of their homes, and who were wandering about as pirates, as mercenaries, as aliens without civic rights, in strange cities. From this centre all political news were scattered abroad ; negotiations were here undertaken by the artists who came ostensibly for performances ; conspiracies against the ruling powers were no doubt also frequent enough. Moreover, the habit for rhetoricians and lyric poets to advertise their works by recitation had come more and more into fashion, so that I conclude that if the Olympic games were inferior or had degenerated in the way of mere athletic contests, they had certainly not lost in what may be called national Hellenic importance. So it was that when Alexander, wearied of the constant sullen resistance to his policy on the part of the leading Hellenic states, issued a public letter to the assembled Greeks at Olympia that he would restore all exiles to their homes, some twenty thousand such people heard the proclamation with transport, and immediately prepared to reassert their rights at home. We can imagine with what delight the relatives who had come from that home to see their exiled friends at the sacred truce embraced them, and began to lay plans for ousting the intruders who had taken possession of their property ; and so we are not surprised that this last missive of the great conqueror threw all Greece into a fever, and produced the Lamian War, in which Antipater, the regent of Alexander, was so nearly overpowered. With the subjugation of Greece under the Romans, Olympia naturally declined in importance, for the Romans never condescended to enter the arena naked, and to contend with their subjects. Cicero, indeed, speaks with such annoyance of the report that he had gone to the games at the moment of political excitement between Caesar and Pompey, that we feel they had come down to something like the modern Derby. As regards the decay of this kind of sport, I will only add that Alexander the Great, as well as Philopoemen, the military genius of the Achaean League, disliked J44 GREEK PICTURES. this kind of exercise, as not conducive to good soldiering ; and that the disfavour of such leading men must have had a most serious effect in turning ambitious young men from engaging in them. They advocated the sound principle that the exercise obtained in field sports, especially in hunting dangerous game, which are practised without special physical training, and without special contests upon fixed days as a climax of the training, is superior in many ways to the gymnasium and the racecourse. In our own day the same contrast subsists between the training of the sons of English gentlemen and the sons of foreigners of the same rank. While we regard such games as cricket and football, and such sports as hunting, shooting, and salmon fishing, the highest and best training for manly qualities, the Germans and other foreign nations are reduced to gymnastic exercises under the direction of a professional master, which may perhaps be better in strengthening particular muscles, but wholly inferior In developing that spirited element In the soul which Plato considered the ally of reason against the Inroads of the baser passions. At the Olympic games, just as at modern meetings, we hear of ' running for the pot,' and we know that there were athletes who made the circuit of various such festivals for the purpose of gain. This professional aspect of things is well-nigh Impossible in genuine field sports, such as Xenophon loved, and Alexander, and Phllopcemen, and Polybius. The following details concerning the contests, which I have gathered with great care, and already expounded elsewhere, will be of interest to the reader. ' 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 two hundred yards. After the year 720 B.C., races of double the course, and long races of about three thousand yards, were added ; races in armour were a later addition, and came at the end of the sports. ' 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 short 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. 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 ELIS—OLYMPIA. 145 four competitors arose, I fancy, from their not wearing colours (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 favourite 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, 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. ' 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 alleged 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 exceptions to this is in the establishing of contests for boys, which seem always to have come imme- diately before the corresponding competition for men. But we only know that both wrestling and the contest of five events (pentathlon) were dated from the 1 8th Olympiad (710 B.C.), and are not informed in what order each was appointed. ' The question of the long jump is 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. Further- more, 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 a 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 vTvlp to. o-KoiixixaTa (beyond the digging) was a constantly repeated phrase. ' There remain the two severest and most objectionable sports — boxing and the pankration. The former came first (01. 23), the other test of strength not being admitted till Ol. ^^ (650 B.C.). But one special occasion L 146 GREEK PICTURES. 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 IfidvTes, 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 (/AetXt;)(at) 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. ' 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 was usual 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.' ' The recent excavations of the Germans, which had been suggested not only by the description of Pausanias, but by the early probing of Maison's Frenchmen (above, p. 140), have brought to light at Olympia artistic remains of architecture and sculpture, second in importance only to those at Athens. The great temple of Zeus, the main edifice of the whole Altis, or sacred enclosure, has been unearthed, and found just as the great earthquake which destroyed it in the fifth or sixth century a.d. left it. All the pillars were luckily thrown outwards by a shock striking the floor from beneath, and the higher parts, containing the sculptures of the gable and frieze, were landed some fifty feet away in the soft alluvial clay, which received them gently, and presently, with new floods from the Alpheus, covered them up in mud. There were, of course, many pieces carried away for Byzantine building in the dark ages, and many portions of statues and reliefs were doubtless put into the lime-kiln by the barbarians who occupied the Altis ; a great Byzantine wall of defence was even constructed wholly of ancient debris across the site. But, on the whole, the circumstances have been unusually favourable. The noses of most of the pediment figures are intact, and to any one who has wandered through the museums of Greece and Italy, and felt the perpetual grief of beautiful faces marred by a shattered nose, and the annoyance of beautiful faces destroyed by a restored nose, will know ' Rambles and Studies in Greece, pp. 283-291. ELIS—OLYMPIA. U7 how important is this detail in our appreciation of ancient sculpture. The great drums of the Doric pillars are lying so strictly in their order that they could be set together again with mere mechanical labour. This great temple of massive Doric style was adorned in its triglyphs with scenes from the life of Herakles, of which some slabs were discovered in the gables with two great compositions — the eastern by Poeonios, the western by Alkamenes, a rival of Pheidias — of which the principal figures are Interior of the Great Temple at Olympia (restored). recovered. The eastern group represents a stationary group of figures preparing for the chariot race of Pelops ; the western is tossed about in the wild confusion of the conflict of the drunken Centaurs with the Lapithse at the marriage feast of the hero Peirithous. In the centre of each group, where the gable was at its full height and allowed scope for a large standing figure, was a god — the Providence which guides human events visibly portrayed, but calm and without emotion at the quarrels of men. At L 2 148 GREEK PICTURES. the flat angles of the triangular space were recumbent figures of the local rivers and nymphs, to indicate the personified scenery in which the mythical events took place. This habit of representing a mountain or a river by its tutelary god was a well-known device of the Greek sculptor, by which he avoided the difficulties of representing scenery, and also satisfied the Greek instinct of making all Nature full of conscious life. The interior of the temple is always described as of a splendour not equalled even in the Parthenon; for there, in the midst of countless treasures of offerings, was the colossal statue of Zeus by Pheidias, which was the grandest effort of the grandest sculptor that has ever lived. Pausanias says the only fault in the aspect of it was that you felt if Zeus were to rise from his throne his head would go through the roof, which was too low for the size of the figure. In one hand he held a sceptre with a golden eagle on the top, in the other a golden figure of victory ; the general type of the head is probably reproduced in the famous bust known as the Jupiter of Otrlcoli. This match- less work of art was carried away to Constantinople, when the games were abandoned and the temple falling into decay, where it was burned In one of the many fires which ravaged that capital ; but It is very curious how silently the great works of classic art disappeared In Byzantine days. The stray notice which I have just cited is only accidental, and not quite trustworthy. The other great masterpiece of Pheidias, the Athene within the Parthenon of Athens, a statue made of gilded surface with Ivory extremities, disappeared no one knows how or whither ; so did the great bronze Athene outside the temple ; so did, in fact, all the great statues which stood in the Greek temples. Perhaps we have a solitary specimen in the celebrated Venus of MIlo or Melos, which was found on that island K,«.uiiieii-e Head of Zeus (Jupiter), known as the Otricoli Type, ELIS—OLYMPIA. 149 near the ruins of a temple, and which we now know to have been the work of a late sculptor, archaising in style, and copying the great models of Pheidias. The two most important single figures, indeed the only two single The Venus of Mklos (now in the Louvre). The Nike of Pi«oNius found at Olympia. figures of importance found at Olympia, are the Nike (Victory) of Poeonius and the Hermes of Praxiteles. The former was set upon a very high pedestal, and represented a winged woman just alighting from heaven. Most of the figure, though mutilated, has now been picked up. But the face has apparently been hacked away from the head, and the arms are ISO GREEK PICTURES. missing. Nevertheless, when compared with the reliefs of the Nike temple at Athens, and the splendid Nike of Samothrace, it gives us a very clear notion of the general type of the goddess in sculpture, a type almost as fixed as the types in the iconography of the Byzantine saints. This figure, which had A Warrior of Marathon (about 480 B.C.). yEsCHINES THE OrATOR (ABOUT 33O B.C.). just been discovered when I was for the second time at Olympia, was received by its finders with an exaggerated enthusiasm, and, though dating from the best epoch, and the work of a sculptor of the highest repute, it does not compare favourably with the far later, and so far anonymous, work of the sculptor of Samothrace. ELIS—OLYMPIA. 151 In one respect, however, the excavations have proved disappointing. As regards portrait statues of athletes, of which there were specimens by all the great masters, even by Pheidias, who hardly ever condescended to such work, we have recovered only one bronze head, very realistic and coarse of type, of a boxer. So that we are still beholden to the copies in Italian museums of the athletes of Pythagoras of Rhegium, of Polycleitus, and of Lysippus, to tell us what these portrait statues were. More interesting perhaps, as we are speaking of portraiture in sculpture, are the representations of poets and artists, sometimes purely imaginary, as is the famous bust of Homer, sometimes only idealised Nature, like the famous statues of Sophocles (in the Lateran at Rome) and ^schines (in the Naples Museum). The development of these figures, and of the athlete of Lysippus already mentioned, from the rude reliefs in the days of the battle of Marathon, are very striking, and we accordingly give on the preceding page the extreme members of the series. The bust of Sophocles is probably a copy of that set up in the restored or reconstructed theatre of Dionysus at Athens by Lycurgus when he was minister of finance (about 330 b.c). The other statues (of the orators) are of about the same date. Unfortunately our examples of inter- mediate stages in sculpture are very scanty. But we may hope that in a few years further discoveries will enable us to show the particular steps in the rapid progress of this wonderful art from rude convention to truth, from truth to beauty, from beauty to perfection in the representation of the human figure. The other objects of art found at Olympia are archaic bronzes, hundreds of little votive cows in bronze, found under the ashes of the great altar ; foundations of various treasure-houses, used as banks by sundry Greek cities ; fragments of Alexandrian and Roman architecture. But upon these the reader must consult some more special work. Citadel of Argos. CHAPTER XII. Argos, Myken^, and Tiryns. INSTEAD of proceeding at once southward to Messene and Elis, we shall now cross the peninsula and visit the other great site where modern excavation has revealed to us the treasures of bygone days — I mean the province of Argos, known of old by its famous capital, but to us by the astonishing discoveries made by my friend, Dr. Schliemann, on the sites of the two capitals older than Argos, and once its rivals — I mean the sites of Mykense and Tiryns. There is also in this most important section of the Peloponnesus the interesting fort and harbour of Nauplia, celebrated as far back as the oldest Greek legends, and Epidauros, where we have now recovered the great theatre built by the statuary Polycleitus, and once famed as the most perfect in Greece. So then Argos, where every step is full of historic suggestions, has many points of the highest archaeological interest. There was a day when Argos, not Sparta, was the leading capital in the Peloponnesus, and this is expressed by the legend which gives to the eldest brother of the Heracleids who conquered the land, the province of preference, and fixes him at Argos. From this mythical personage the royal families of Argos, and even the noblest Corinthians, loved to derive their genealogy ; and many a notable Argive personage, like the tyrant CITADEL OF ARGOS. 155 Pheidon, has been put back a hundred years in time for the purpose of calling him the tenth from Herakles. I have else- where shown this to have been done in the case of Archias, the founder of Syracuse, who was considered a contemporary of Pheidon. It is one of the most ingenious points in Cur- tius' Greek History to have proved the same kind of error about Pheidon. We were all taught to put him in 747 B.C., which was called the eighth Olympiad ; he seems really to belong to the year 660 B.C. But this is what may be called learned speculation. You can approach Argos through the mountains from Corinth, over rugged hills and dales covered with brushwood, and meadows full of arbutus and mastic, anemones and cistus, asphodel and sweet- smelling thyme, and then you come into the valley of the Inachus, high up from the sea, close to Mykenae. When I first went this route there was only a mule-track, and very rough riding it was. Since then they have advanced to a carriage road, and now, I be- lieve, to a branch railway from Corinth, so that what once re- quired two laborious days, now can be performed in a few hours. And yet how glad I am that I saw Greece before all these modern improve- ments — with its women in' their 156 GREEK PICTURES. rich home-made costume, as they still wear it about Megara, with even their mules covered with rugs of splendid Oriental colours, which now alas ! are being displaced by the modern German taste. King Otho and his court have indeed much to answer for in Greece. They introduced good bread at Athens, and the good restaurants, but they also made dreadful things in dress the fashion, so that the poor country-women think it good style to abandon their picturesque woollen skirts and shaggy overcoats (I know no better name) for calicoes of arsenic green and magenta. You can also reach Argos by steamer from Athens — one of the best of all ways to see Greek life and scenery to the best advantage — landing at the picturesque port of Nauplia. The Gulf of NaupHa is very beautiful, and a sunset seen from the little port, with the gulf in the foreground, and the sun sinking behind the Arcadian moun- tains, is a sight one never forgets. From Nauplia to Argos is only a drive of an hour and a half, and on the way, not far outside the gates, we meet with the rock of Tiryns, standing out of the plain. But I will now take the reader on at once to the old capital, before we enter upon the consideration of the pre-historic splendours around us. The town of Argos is a typical Greek town, flat and unsightly, made of mud houses, with a semi-oriental bazaar, and hardly any accommodation for strangers. They naturally stay at Nauplia, so that an innkeeper would have little custom ; and as it is the notion of this profession in Greece that an occasional guest must be made to pay extravagantly, because the host has so few opportunities for profit, it is well to beware of venturing into any inn in such a town without a strict bargain. On the other hand, I found private hospitality here and everywhere in Greece most abundant and kindly, provided travellers will not go in large parties, for whom there is not accommodation in the modest homes of the willing hosts. Twice over at Argos have I met with the most generous treatment from ARGOS, MYKENjE, AND TIRYNS. 157 a gentleman whom I now, in the days of increased travelling, fear to name, lest my gratitude might bring upon him new and unexpected demands. It is not easy to define the limits of Argos. You find yourself in the middle of fruit gardens, with oranges, lemons, oleanders, roses, growing within mud fences, and you imagine it a suburb of the town, whereas you are really in its centre. When seen from its fortress above, it shows that peculiar character which I cannot remember anywhere else save in the towns of Canada, of a collection of gardens and orchards with their houses making up a city. The type of the people is peculiarly fair. If you see the children coming out of school, you will be surprised how few have the brown skin and black eyes and hair of real Southrons. The most valuable produce of the plain is tobacco, which, if properly grown, would supply all the country round with considerable wealth. * Turning round a corner, you stumble upon a priest, followed by two acolytes carrying upon a cross-stick between them a copper cauldron of water, with the Byzantine cross upon the handle. It is the pappas returning from a baptism. The Orthodox Church still practises baptism by immersion. For this purpose infants are generally carried to the neighbouring church ; in case they are delicate, or in case their parents can pay a sufficient fee, the pappas goes to the house, mumbles some prayers among the assembled household, and, seizing the infant by the arm, plunges it three times into the cauldron. Though this treatment is sometimes fatal to life, the orthodoxy of the people and their clergy will not tolerate any modification of the ritual of this sacrament.' On the slope of the ascent to the Larissa or fortress is a great theatre, larger, I think, than that of Athens ; for it is said to measure 150 yards in diameter, and to be capable of holding 20,000 people. Of course it was intended as a place of assembly for the whole free popu- lation as well as for a theatre. There are no ornaments or carved seats preserved, as there are at Athens. But the view from the higher tiers, looking eastward towards Nauplia, across the rich plain and the gulf, is hardly less beautiful than that from Nauplia over the same ground westward. In 1822, the castle of Larissa, which looms down from the top of Mount Chaon, 1000 feet above the theatre, was held by the insurgents, whom the Turks besieged there for many weeks. In the end the Turkish army was taken in the rear by other insurgents coming from Corinth, and destroyed. The Greeks fought singing the patriotic songs of their poet Rhigas, which turned their shepherds and peasants into real soldiers. Wonderful stories are now told of their individual heroism. Perhaps these acts have been exaggerated, but the fact remains, that without any leaders of genius, or even of high character, the Greek people persisted in this awful struggle for ten years, and finally obtained their liberty. It is false and ridiculous to 158 GREEK PICTURES. translate these rude and ignorant shepherds into just and wise heroes, so that they have suffered unduly, when they were found to deviate widely from the antique type invented by the pedants for the old Greeks, and foisted by enthusiasts upon the new. When the heroism of this enslaved people is mentioned, there are never wanting those who expose in them acts of treachery, cruelty, and duplicity, which are so exaggerated as to obscure the grand general features of the insurrection — the love of liberty and the spirit of sacrifice. Thus the mountaineers of Maina (the old ' free Laconians '), when summoned by the new national government to come and defend Argos, began, when they came from their homes, by pillaging all the Greek villages which they found recently deserted, and they then went back and hid their spoil in the mountains ; but when this was over, they rallied round their standard, and fought with the utmost bravery against the Turks. But the notion of profiting by patriotism, of taking rewards or even pay for personal services while doing the service of the country, is as old as Demosthenes, and is expounded in the coolest way by his rival Hypereides. But we must leave the capital, the historic centre of the province, to visit the pre-historic centres, which were famous long before Argos rose to power, and which have quite recently recovered their ancient importance, owing to the genius and perseverance of that indefatigable excavator, Dr. Schliemann. After he had won his first laurels by discovering the real site of New Ilium, and then proving that the universal belief of classical days was correct, which placed the Troy of Homer at or under the same site, he undertook to examine the old sites in Argolis, which are indeed well marked, but seemed such barren rock as to allow little chance of finding many underground treasures. Let us consider for a moment what hints or suggestions were to be found in the old writers — hints which seemed plain enough when he utilised them, though nobody else had ever thought of applying them in a practical way. The relation of the three capitals of Argolis to each other is not very easily determined. Lying in a triangle, of which we may call the base the four miles between Tiryns and Argos, the sides the eight miles from either to the vortex at Mykense, far up the valley of the Inachus, this much is certain, that in Homer's poetry, Mykenai is the chief city, and the home of the most splendid royalty, while nevertheless one of the most notable heroes, Diomede, is King of Argos. He is also lord of Tiryns, which in the poem is alluded to as a strong fort, but no longer as a separate capital or resi- dence. In the legends, however, of the Perseids, and of the birth of Herakles, Tiryns is so prominent that we can hardly avoid considering it as the earliest capital of the country, probably settled and fortified by invaders who came from the sea, and ruled till they or some rival race founded and fortified Mykenai, evidently to defend the head of the plain, so that the principal danger then lay not seawards, but towards the mountains of ARGOS, MYKEN^, AND 'TIRYNS. 159 Corinth. It is probable that at this time forest and perhaps careful irrigation made the head of the valley the most fertile part, whereas, when the trees of the hills were cut down, and the irrigation was neglected, the centre of gravity, agriculturally, moved down to Argos, near the sea, which Homer calls very thirsty — why I know not, seeing that the plain is watered by two rivers, considerable for that country, the Inachus and Erasinus, and that the coast between Argos and Tiryns was always marshy, so that even the legends place there the famous swamps of Lerna, with its horrible hydra, which Herakles slew. Thus Argos succeeded to the heritage of both Tiryns and Mykenae, and destroyed these cities, for the purpose of unifying or centralising the power, probably under the royalty of Pheidon, somewhere in the seventh century u.c. Late Greek writers have spread the notion that Mykenae and Gold Cups found by Dr. Schliemann in Tombs at MYKENiE. Tiryns lasted till after the Persian wars, because citizens from both are named in the catalogue of the Greeks who conquered, both by Herodotus and on a tripod inscription recovered at Constantinople, which was actually contemporary. But I was able to show that these were only a few loyal exiles, magnified in importance because of their loyalty to Greece, when Argos took the Persian side, or behaved with mean neutrality. I also pointed out that ^schylus, the patriotic poet who fought at Marathon and Salamis, who must have shared in the general ill-will against Argos, never- theless knew so little about Mykenae, that he violates all Homeric tradition, and lays the scene of his great dramas about Agamemnon at Argos, while he never even once mentions Mykenae. This proves so clearly that Argos did not conquer and raze that city in consequence of the part she took in the Persian wars, that I predicted to Dr. Schliemann, when commencing his excavations, that he would find neither inscriptions, nor coins, nor any i6o GREEK PICTURES. Other of those many objects which existed in every Greek town after the year 500 B.C. The results verified exactly these predictions. All the treasure, all the stone carvings, all the orna- ments found there were strictly pre-historic, or so archaic as to be rather pre- Homeric than post- Persian in character. But I must descend from these specu- lations to some easier details. The famous lion-gate at Mykenae was a thing long cited and admired, though the later Greeks, such as Pausanias and Strabo, seem either not to know it or to neglect it. But this massive portal, with its strange heraldic lions over the great lintel, with its ashlar masonry of great squared stones, showed plainly enough that here had once dwelt men who had vast re- sources of labour under their hands. But it was not till Schliemann's researches that dif- ferences were observed in the building of the walls. Most of the circuit was in polygonal or irregular masonry, whereas here the ashlar or rectangular building was actually set as a facing of ruder work behind it, evidently by later hands. It seemed likely, therefore, that this ancient fort had been occupied by successive races, who made improvements in their art of construction. Burrowed into the hill facing Mykense were also the famous ' Treasury of Athens ' and its fellows — beehive tombs built ARGOS, MYKENiE, AND TIRYNS. i6i with an art fully equal to that of the lion-gate, therefore probably belonging to the same race. Unfortunately this great beehive tomb has long since been rifled, so that we had no evidence of its contents, save that it was coated within with bronze plates, of which some of the fastening nails survive, and that we know there was some ornament in the triangular aperture over the door corresponding to the lion-slab of the gateway. The aperture was intended to relieve the lintel stone of excessive superincumbent weight, and it was filled with a thin limestone slab carved by way of ornament. So far then we feel that a race of splendid builders had succeeded to an older and ruder people, and had either remodelled the older work or built additional monu- ments in their own style. Thus, in many cathedrals throughout Europe, old Romanesque or Norman work has been cut away, or faced with Perpen- dicular, with Renaissance, or even eighteenth century classical work, hiding what was really beautiful with what we now feel to have been far inferior, if not positively hideous. But no one felt this duality of the work at Mykenae, till Dr. Schliemann, finding within the circuit wall one spot with a deep accumulation of soil, probed this spot, and found first a circuit of upright slabs, then stone slabs which appeared to be sepulchral monuments, and at last, far beneath them, a group of tombs full of treasure, but of a very different construction indeed from that of the famous * Treasury.' For here the bodies were crammed into a space too small for them, not laid in a great chamber with a high vaulted roof over them, and the offerings or other objects with them were simply thrown in upon them, not laid out, as they would be in a spacious chamber. Not that these objects were either rude or cheap. In the first place, the head and bust of some of the dead were covered with golden masks, while around and over them lay dozens of beautiful gold cups, of which we give specimens on page 159, as well as rosettes of gold, an ox head in gold and silver, bronze swords, cauldrons, and many more objects of various kinds for which the reader must either consult Dr. Schliemann's splendid record Mykence, or go to the museum at Athens and examine them for himself But I fear he will not see upon them the beautiful red bloom that astonished us when we first beheld them ; for the zealous curators of the Athenian Museum had unfortunately taken to polishing them when I was last at Athens, and so we shall lose that flavour of antiquity so very exquisite, and so suggestive of the fact that no lapse of centuries will cause gold to rust, whereas it reduces silver vessels to mere lumps of oxidised rust. This is the true value of gold, and the reason why the human race has from the first recognised its peerless qualities. Into the identifications of the bodies with Agamemnon and his family I need not here enter. Nothing was more natural in the first moment of enthusiasm; and yet now that we have been able to reflect over it calmly, nothing seems to me more certain than that the bodies found by M 1 62 GREEK PICTURES. Dr. Schliemann belong to a date far anterior to the Homeric poems, or even to the worthies whose traditions they preserved. For, In the first place, there succeeded, as I have said, another race of great builders, and even In what we know of these latter we cannot Identify the dress, the weapons, the manners, the life of the heroes as described by Homer. A huge gap seems to separate the Mykense of Schliemann from that of Homer, and but that the consistent epithet of much golden Is especially applied to it by the poet or poets, we could well Imagine the pre-historlc greatness of the place to have passed Into oblivion, and its Hellenic supremacy to have been a new and distinct growth. But I will not go so far as this ; it is enough to assert the superior antiquity of the tombs and their occupants to any- thing told in Homer. We must not forget to add that in addition to these deep-sunk earthen tombs, Dr. Schliemann discovered several more beehive tombs in the Immediate neighbourhood ; proving that the * Treasury of Athens ' was no solitary work, but represented the deposit of one of a line of kings. As the Greek legends describe an earlier family, the Perseids, expelled by the richer Pelopids who came from Lydia, Adler has suggested calling the ruder tombs the Perseld, and the beehive buildings the Pelopid epoch of Mykenae. What additional light have we obtained from the subsequent excavation of the sister fort at TIryns ? For this too must be added to the crown of glory earned by our veteran friend, whose book called Tiryns is hardly less interesting than his MykencB. It represents even a superior stage In the art of excavation. For while in his former researches he had mainly occupied himself digging holes, to probe, and then to reach his treasure, the work at Tiryns consisted in taking off layers of soil, by which floors, walls, and so ground plans were disclosed. This Is the true method, by which we can find the successive dates of any building, represented by strata ; and by this careful process it became possible for Dr. Dorpfeld to reconstruct the whole plan of the palace at Tiryns, which the reader may wonder at in Dr. Schliemann's book. Did this palace belong to the Perseld or the Pelopid era ? To judge from the building of the walls of Tiryns, I should say, the earlier. The giant fort is put together of huge rough stones, certainly not squared, though possibly roughly hewn, to make them fit more easily, and present a face outwards. It has only recently been proved by Dr. Dorpfeld, through these very excavations, that there was once mortar in the Interstices, though in all the exposed portions It was long since washed away. The oft- described galleries within the wall, with apertures looking outward made like very rude Gothic arches, seem to have been intended for granaries, perhaps sleeping room for slaves, but not for siege purposes. Far more interesting than these great walls, with their gate-tower ARC OS, MYKENJE, AND TIRYNS. 163 commanding the approach, which leads up so as to have the right or un- shielded side of the assailants exposed to the defenders, is the plan of the palace, on the uppermost part of the rock, which is approached through two separate gates in addition to the main entrance gate. It is very interest- ing to note that the so-called temple in antis, that is to say, with only two pillars filling the opening left in the enclosing wall, which ends on either side of them in two square pilasters — this simple plan, so common in the older or simpler temples, was copied from the pre-historic gateways evidently universal in early times. Those at Tiryns were partly of wood. The actual gate had a portico looking either way, with an upper cross-beam of wood forming the architrave, and supported by two pillars of wood, set on stone Pelasgic Masonry at Tiryns. bases, found in their place by Schliemann. The side walls were of sun- dried bricks, and to protect the face or end which was next the pillars, it was cased in wood — the prototype of the square pilasters which stand outside either pillar, forming the frame of the wide aperture in the front wall which forms the entrance. Within these gates were floors, stamped hard, of clay, on some of which were rude designs, and inside the court, one great chamber, with evidences of a hearth in the middle for the men ; detached from it, and not easily accessible, was a similar chamber intended for the ladies. The upper stories, being all of wood, and the roofs — which consisted, no doubt, as they now do through remoter Greece, of reeds and shingle, laid flat upon wooden beams and laths— are totally gone. But on some of the walls were rude but handsome ornaments, especially rosettes, in M 2 i64 GREEK PICTURES. that blue glass paste which we still find in Egypt, and which is alluded to by- Homer, There was even a bath-room found, of which the floor was made of one stone, twelve feet by nine, with a raised edge, into which upright wooden panels were set, to withstand the splashing of the walls ; and in the midst, the fragments of a large terra-cotta tub, in which the kings of Tiryns, or their guests, bathed. A hole pierced in the stone floor, with a pipe leading through the building outward, made the use of this room quite unmistakable. These are only a few of the many curiosities found at Tiryns, and destined to make its excavation one of the most important performances in recent archaeology. There were, then, once in Argos great kings, living in strong palaces, as Homer described them, and in considerable luxury, being furnished not only with what the country could produce, but with the luxuries of foreign trade, amber, gold, orna- ments of Egyptian and Oriental manu- facture, even ostrich eggs, of which a frag- ment was found at Mykense. Let the reader remember that the amber came from the North Sea or Baltic, the ostrich ^^^ from far inland in Africa, and he will see that even in those re- mote days, a thousand years or more before Christ, there was that lively traffic by caravans, and by ships, which meet us in the Bible narrative of the lives of the earliest patriarchs. The old Greek legends consistently ascribe this early Argive power and civilisation to foreign and Oriental invaders. There seems little reason to doubt the truth of this impression. We know that the Phoenicians discovered and developed trade in the Mediterranean by means of their ships, and it is more than likely that the so-called kingdom of Minos in Crete, that great island fortress in the Southern Levant, with its mighty mountain tops in their snow the beacon for southern sailors, symbolises the first empire of these traders in the tents of Javan. Nothing was more natural, when they crept up the bleak and barren coast from Malea, which affords no refuge for ships, that they should hail with delight the first great open bay, with good anchorage and rich lands lying close to the sea. Thus the earliest forts of the invaders from the Crete. ARGOS, MYKENJE, AND TIRYNS. 165 south-east would most naturally be placed in the very district where we find these pre-historic castles. It was formerly our great difficulty to fill the supposed gap between the days of Homer and the first dawn of real Greek history — a gap imagined to be three centuries wide. It is now our difficulty to fill, not this gap, which we have reduced to very small dimensions, but the gap which separates the Homeric civilisation from what went before. For we have now discovered an early culture so different from what is known as Greek, that it is indeed hard to realise how Greek art and its style were developed from such beginnings. Oriental affinities are plain enough ; what we desire to learn, and some day we shall learn it, is the gradual progress from the art of Tiryns and Mykense to the archaic art of the Parthenon contemporary with the Persian wars. The Plain of Messene. CHAPTER XIII. Sparta, Messene, Maina, and Arcadia. THERE are various ways of approaching Sparta, though in old days its great military strength consisted in not being accessible to an army except down the narrow and easily defended valley of the Upper Eurotas. Now, in the days of peace, you can either go by sea to Gythium, the old port, and drive on a good carriage road, nay, even in a diligence, in five hours to New Sparta ; or else you can approach it from Kalamata in Messene, by coming through the splendid Langada pass in Mount Taygetus, or else of course you may approach by any of the northern paths till you come to Sellasia, the site of the great battle where Macedon finally overcame the power of Sparta (221 b.c), and follow down the Eurotas into the famous and rich valley of the old stronghold of Greek aristocracy. For at no time could any other Greeks pretend to the dignity of Spartan nobles. They stood, like the English gentleman in Europe, perhaps disliked, envied, ridiculed, but still the type which every foreigner is proud to adopt, and which he secretly admires. SPARTA, MESSENE, MAINA, AND ARCADIA. 169 As we have now been dallying in Argos, it will perhaps be most suitable that I should repeat the experiences I had in 1884, when I passed by way of Astros into Sparta. ' The morning was perfectly fair and calm, and the great mountain chains of the coast were mirrored in the opal sea, as we passed the picturesque rocky fort, which stands close to Nauplia in the bay, the residence of the public executioner. The beauty of the Gulf of Argos never seemed more perfect than in the freshness of the morning, with the rising sun illuminating the lofty coasts. Our progress was at first by the slow labour of the oar ; but as the morning advanced, there came down a fresh west wind from the mountains, which at intervals filled our lateen sail almost too well, and sent us flying along upon our way. In three hours we rounded a headland, and found ourselves in the pretty little bay of Astros. * Of course the whole population came down to see us. They were apparently as idle, and as ready to be amused, as the inhabitants of an Irish village. But they are sadly wanting in fun. You seldom hear them make a joke or laugh, and their curiosity is itself curious from this aspect. After a good deal of bargaining we agreed for a set of mules and ponies to bring us all the way round the Morea, to Corinth if necessary, though ultimately we were glad to leave them at Kyparissia, at the opposite side of Peloponnesus, and pursue our way by sea. The bargain was eight drachmas per day for each animal ; a native, or very experienced traveller, could have got them for five to six drachmas. * Our way led up a river-course, as usual, through fine olive trees and fields of corn, studded with scarlet anemones, till after a mile or two we began to ascend from the level of the coast to the altitudes of the central plateau, or rather mountain system, of the Morea. Here the flora of the coast gave way to fields of sperge, hyacinths, irises, and star-of- Bethlehem. Every inch of ascent gave us a more splendid and extended view back over coasts and islands. The giant tops of the inner country showed themselves still covered with snow. We were in that district, so little known in ancient history, which was so long a bone of contention between Argos and Sparta, whose boundaries seem never to have been fixed here by any national landmark. When we had reached the top of the rim of inland Alps, we ascended and descended various steeps, and rounded many glens, reaching in the end the village of H agios Petros, which we had seen before us for a long time, while we descended one precipice and mounted another to attain our goal. * We were accommodated as well as the worthy demarch could manage for the night ; and early in the morning we climbed up a steep ascent to obtain the high plateau, very bleak and bare, which is believed by the people to have been the scene of the conflict of Othryades and his men I70 GREEK PICTURES. with the Argive three hundred. A particular spot is still called crrovs