F.G.a/?d A.C.E.ALLINSON LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Class GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS BY FRANCIS GREENLEAF ALLINSON {^Professor of Classical Philology in Brown University) AND ANNE C. E. ALLINSON BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY MDCCCCIX OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 3 >f^^ QEItERAL ^^'v COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY FRANCIS G. ALLINSON AND ANNE C. E. ALLINSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published December tqoQ TO A. C. E. AND S. C. A. 204089 PREFACE THE purpose of this book is to interpret Greek lands by literature, and Greek literature by local associations and the physical environ- ment. Those who possess an intimate acquaintance with Greek or who have the good fortune to stay long in Greece will be able to draw upon their own resources. Many travellers, however, must curtail their visit to a few weeks or months, and it is hoped that to them this book may prove useful as a companion in travel, while to a wider range of readers it may prove suggestive in appraising what is most vital in our "Hellenic heri- tage." To keep within reasonable bounds it has seemed necessary to limit our survey to those portions of the mainland of Greece and those islands, immediately adjacent in the Gulf of ^gina, which may be easily visited during a short stay in Athens as headquarters. But the visitor cannot be too strongly urged to avail himself of opportunities to visit the remoter islands and the shores of Asia Minor, which are so beautiful a part of the Greek world and have played so brilliant a r61e in Greek history and literature. In quoting or summarizing the literature the limita- tions of space are obvious. Selections have been made viii PREFACE which to us seemed most fairly to interpret the coun- tries and sites. It is hoped that these will not only prove representative when taken together but will recall much that has perforce been omitted. Purely learned treatises in Greek have not been cited except by way of illustration. The historical geographer Strabo, of the time of Augustus, has offered suggestive material ; and Pausanias, of the second century of our era, the pious and often charming writer of the " Guide- book to Greece," has, as was inevitable, been the cicerone in many places. History it has seemed proper to use chiefly to explain the literature, or, especially in the case of Herodotus and Thucydides, as itself part of the noblest prose liter- ature. But in different chapters emphasis has been laid, to some extent, upon different elements, such as myth and legend, prehistoric tradition, the history of certain epochs in classic times, the demands of religion, the growth of the artistic impulse or the bloom of the Attic period. By this means we have hoped, without too much repetition, to suggest a fairly adequate outiine of the different factors in Greek civilization. The intro- ductory chapter is intended to provide the essential background for the others. Forms of art other than literature are only inciden- tally touched upon. Archaeological information or dis- cussion, except as illustration, is precluded by the pur- pose of the book, which deals with the literature and the land as being permanent possessions that are not PREFACE ix essentially modified by the successive data of archae- ology, necessarily shifting from month to month. In translating Greek authors it has seemed best, as a rule, to offer new versions, rendering the thought as literally as is consistent with our idiom or, in the case of poetry, with the exigencies of English verse. The anapaestic dimeters and, in the dialogue parts of the drama, the six-stress iambic verse have been retained; less uniformly the elegiac couplet; and, occasionally only, the heroic hexameter. Elsewhere poetry has been usually turned by rhymed verse or by rhythmic prose. Some existing translations or paraphrases have been used, for which credit has been given in the text or the footnotes. Moreover, in most of the citations from Pau- sanias Mr. Frazer's admirable translation has been used without explicit mention, and for this we make acknow- ledgment here. In translating Pindar many turns of expression have been taken from the beautiful trans- lation of Ernest Myers, although, when they are not expressly credited, the versions have been rewritten. While it is hoped that full credit has thus been given wherever it is due, there are doubtless expressions here and there remaining in the memory from numerous commentators on Greek authors that form a common stock in trade for the translator. In transliterating Greek names we have followed, as a rule, familiar English usage. Among many books of reference there are a few to which we are especially indebted. We have used con- X PREFACE stantly Mr. J. G. Frazer's "Commentary on Pausa- nias," which includes a wealth of outside references, as, for example, citations from other travellers beginning with Dicaearchus, the entertaining geographer of the fourth century b. c. We are also indebted to Curtius's "History of Greece" and Tozer's "Geography of Greece"; Dr.W. Judeich's " Topographie von Athen" (especially for Piraeus); Professor Ernest Gardner's "Ancient Athens," which should be in the hands of every visitor to Athens; and Miss J. E. Harrison's " Primitive Athens." Professor J. B. Bury's " History of Greece" has been constantly suggestive. On modem Greece Schmidt's "Das Volksleben der Neugriechen" and SirRennell Rodd's "Customs and Lore of Modem Greece" have furnished definite material. Among the numerous editions of Greek authors necessarily consulted we are under special obligations to Professor Gildersleeve's " Pindar, the Olympian and Pythian Odes," and to Professor Smyth's "Melic Poets." Certain quotations in the text, not provided for in the footnotes, are acknowledged in the Appendix, in which are also given, for the sake of comparison, exact references to the Greek. Our personal thanks are due to Professor J. Irving Manatt, of Brown University, for valuable suggestions and criticism of several chapters, and to Professor Walter G. Everett for his discussion of the section on Greek philosophy. We are also especially indebted to Professor Herbert Richard Cross of Washington PREFACE xi University, St. Louis, for placing at our disposal his water-color sketch of the Propylaea, from which the frontispiece is taken, and to Professors C. B. Gulick and G. H. Chase of Harvard University for assistance in obtaining the impression of the coin upon the cover of this book. F. G. A. A. C. E. A. Providence, October, 1909. CONTENTS I. The Widespread Land of Hellas i II. PiRiEUSj the Harbour Town 32 III. Athens: From Solon to Salamis 57 IV. The Acropolis of Athens 74 V. Athens: From Salamis to Menander 91 VI. Old Greece in New Athens 126 VII. Attica 144 VIII. Eleusis 171 IX. iCGINA 186 X. Megara and Corinth : The Gulf of Corinth 192 XI. Delphi 218 XII. From Delphi to Thebes 250 XIII. Thebes and Bceotia 266 XIV. Bceotia, continued 296 XV. THERMOPYLiE 316 XVI. Argolis 323 XVII. Arcadia 358 XVIII. Olympia 388 XIX. Messenia 425 XX. Sparta 431 Appendix 453 Index * 463 ILLUSTRATIONS The Propyl/EA Frontispiece From within looking toward Salatnis From a painting by H. R. Cross Map of Greece and the iEcEAN i Map of PiRiEus 32 Renan on the Acropolis 74 From a French painting S. Colonnade of the Parthenon 88 From a photograph by R, A. Rice Areopagus 104 Street of the Tombs 114 Monument of Hegeso After Polygnotus 134 The PANATHENiEA CONTINUED 134 Map of Attica I44 Menander 152 From bust in Boston Museum of Fine Arts SUNIUM 162 Temple of Poseidon. From a photograph by S. C. A. xvi ILLUSTRATIONS Olive Trees on the way to Eleusis 178 From a photograph by E. G. Radeke iEciNA 188 Temple of Aphaea Corinth 202 Temple of Apollo and Acrocorinth Delphi and the Road to Arachova 250 Map of Bceotia 266 A Gallery of the Acropolis of Tiryns 324 Calauria 356 Temple of Poseidon. Scene of the death of Demosthenes Olympia 388 Kronos Hill. The ruins of the Altis Taygetus 432 Nike of Samothrace, reproduced on the front cover, is from a coin in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS GREECE AND THE AEGEAN SEA Scale of Miles 20 ^^^ 25 Greenwich 2G GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS CHAPTER I introductory: the widespread land of HELLAS " Greek literature is read by almost all nations." Cicero, I'ro Arckia. CICERO, at one time studying Greek oratory in Rhodes, at another speaking Greek as the language best adapted to a Sicilian audience, suggests with sufficient definiteness the eastern and western boundaries of ancient Hellas. Leaving out of consideration more remote colonies, we may content ourselves with including in the Greater Greece of an- tiquity all the Mediterranean lands and waters from Sicily and Lower Italy, in the west, to Cyprus and the coast of Asia Minor, in the east. The Riviera, or sea- board of the eastern side of the ^gean, is sharply dif- ferentiated from the continuous highlands of the inte- rior, which suggest, a short distance inland, a boundary line between Europe and Asia. For a maritime people like the Greeks this was a barrier more effectual than the highway of the Bosphorus. In the early historic times, when the sun rose over these mountains of Asia Minor he left behind him the Oriental and looked down 2 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS at once upon the Cis-montane Greeks, and it was upon Greeks that he was still shining when his setting splen- dour lit up the Bay of Naples the "New-town" of that day or the ancient Cumae and the heights of Anacapri or the islands of the Sirens and the golden brown columns of Poseidon's temple at Paestum. The seaboard, too, of Macedonia and Thrace be- longed to Greece by reason of their water-front on the iEgean. And to the south, the encroachments of the Greeks upon the preserves of the Nile-god were so ex- tensive for centuries before the time of Alexander that we need not wonder either at Egyptian reminiscences in Greek art or at the increasing evidences of Hellenic life in Egypt. The Greeks, compared with the hoary antiquity of the Egyptians, are late comers. The essential differ- ence, however, is not a matter of centuries or millennia. The Egyptians, perhaps because the details are fore- shortened by the vast distance, seem to possess a chro- nology, but no real history. There were revolutions, rather than evolution. The Greeks were young, too, individually as well as chronologically. From Homer down through the classic period we hear " the everlast- ing wonder-song of youth." Plato makes an Egyptian priest say to the Athenian law-giver : " O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever children ; no Hellene is ever old ! " We find the Greeks of the historic period on the intel- lectual watershed between antiquity and the modern world. From data now well established we may push INTRODUCTORY 3 back their life far beyond recorded chronology, and, if we anticipate even by a little the nucleus of the Homeric poems, we possess a practically unbroken continuity of their history and language for three thousand years down to the present day. Greek history is often con- fined within perfectly arbitrary dates. In reality, the death of Alexander in 323 b. c, the closing of the schools . of philosophy in 529 A. d., and the fall of Constantino- f pie in 1453 ^' ^' o^ly break its course into convenient chapters. The Greek language is itself one of the greatest crea- . tions of Greek art. Discarding some superfluities, re- | tained or over-emphasized by others of our common; Indo-European family, the Greeks developed an instru- ment for the expression of thought unsurpassed, if not unequalled, among any other people. " The whole Ian- 1 ^ guage resembles the body of an artistically trained ath- | A,^ lete, in which every muscle is called into full play, where Jl^^ there is no trace of flaccid tumidity, and all is power I ' , tvJ^ and life." The "common dialect" akeady dominated' \3 the eastern Mediterranean before the Romans took physical possession. Its direct legatee is the modem Greek, that had sprung up in lusty independence some three centuries before the Turks put an end to senile Byzantium and its crabbed ecclesiastical speech. Of creative literature the same unbroken continuity cannot be predicated. The early literature, beginning with Homer, extends through the first quarter of the fifth century b. c. It includes the great epic poetry, the 4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS elegiac and iambic, the beginnings of philosophy, and seven of the ten greatest lyric poets. No fact in Greek literature is more conspicuous than the shortness and the richness of the next period, which may be conven- iently called the "Attic," although some of the greatest writers came from outside of Attica from Boeotia, from the islands, from beyond the ^Egean, or from Sicily. Within this brief period of only 183 years, if we close it with the death of Menander in 292 b. c, all the additional types of the literature either culminated or originated. The next period of 150 years, commonly known as the Alexandrian period, has within its early limits the name of Theocritus, whose quality entitles him to rank with the writers of the Classic period, as does that of his two legatees, Bion and Moschus, and also Herodas, whose writings, recovered in the fortunate year 1891, have now made him a part of the Greek Classics. But in the Alexandrian period, and in the Graeco-Roman period from 146 B. c. to 529 A. D., the great names are, as a rule, not so great, and they are spread over a long time. Few of them, except Lucian in the second cen- tury of our era, and Plutarch immediately preceding him, successfully compete for a prominent place as writers of pure literature. With a few exceptions, the great original work in Greek literature had been done before the death of Me- nander. The Greek anthology, however, must not be ignored. It ranges over more than one thousand years INTRODUCTORY 5 and leaves no century in all that time without at least some minor representative of great beauty. Like a cord twisted of dull strands and golden, it binds to- gether the Attic age with the whole of the subsequent time down to the year 550 of our era, the golden strand reappearing sufficiently often to assure us of its con- tinuity. The next nine centuries of Byzantine Greek, ecclesiastical and profane, are little known to most classical scholars. The contributions of the modern Greek, before and since the days of Byron, are signifi- cant, and the friends of the new kingdom await with cordial expectation the rise of new writers to give to the lore of the peasant and the struggles of the patriot a worthy literary fomi. Of the lacunae in the literature, in spite of the continuity of the language. Professor Hat- zidakis of Athens has well said : " The Greek language is as little to be blamed for this as could be the marble quarries of Mount Pentelicus, because in those times no one fashioned from them a Hermes of Praxiteles or a Venus of Melos." A glance at the map will show how accessible was the mainland of Greece, upon the east and south, to seafaring visitors from across the ^gean, who would naturally find here their first landing-places. Except for the great gash of the Corinthian Gulf, the western coast is indented only with smaller, though good, har- bours, while the whole southern and eastern seaboard from Messenia in the southwest to Thrace is a ragged fringe of promontories, large and small, welcoming into 6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the interior the waters that suggested sea-business of war and commerce. But this interlacing of land and water, that brought the insinuating "call of the sea," was not the only factor that predetermined the character of the Greek cantons. The Greeks were mountaineers as well as mariners. One is, indeed, almost tempted to speak of Greece as consisting of only mountains and marina. There are of course some relatively large plains, nota- bly the fertile granary of Thessaly, but the general impression of the land from any bird's-eye view is a succession of lofty ridges, peaks, and spurs. Only by many shiftings of the place of outlook do these par- tially resolve themselves into ranges continuous in cer- tain general directions, though with many sharp angles and curves and buttressed by uncompromising cross ridges. These mountain barriers make clear the history of the Greek peoples, both how they combined tempo- rarily to resist foreign invasion and, above all, why they developed and cherished in tiny cantons their charac- teristic individualism, which has been by turns a bane and a blessing. Thessaly and Mount Olympus to the north belong geographically to the Kingdom of Greece. On either side of Thessaly irregular mountain chains run south- ward and preserve a general connection through Central Greece and Attica, and, despite the submerg- ing water, may be identified as reappearing in the islands far out in the ^gean. Olympus on the north- INTRODUCTORY 7 east hardly interrupted by the river Peneius, which has rent its way through the precipitous canon known as the "Vale" of Tempe is continued along the east coast by Mount Ossa and Mount Pelion. Then across the narrow entrance to the Pagasaean and MaHan gulfs the system is continued by the sharp dorsal fins of the island of Euboea, that stretches like a sea-monster along the shores of Locris, Bceotia, and Attica, to reappear at in- tervals far to the southeast in the islands Andros, Tenos, Myconos, Delos, Naxos, Amorgos, and Astypalaea. On the west of Thessaly the great Pindus ridge, descend- ing through the centre of northern Greece, details on the rugged system of peaks and ranges which fill cen- tral Greece southward to the Gulf of Corinth and which in general run from west to east. One of these ranges, called the Othrys Mountains, bounds the Thes- salian countries on the south and ends at the Gulf of Pagasae. Another, Mount (Eta, is continued by the high mountains that shut off Thermopylae to the north and runs on as the boundary between Locris and Bceotia. Still another range, running out of the central complex, has its culmination in Parnassus, 8070 feet high, and is continued, though more interrupted and with a more irregular course, by Mount Helicon in Bceotia and the frontier hills of Attica, from Helicon to Parnes, and bends around into the massive ridge of Mount Pentelicus, from whose summit the spectator can see the prolongation in the islands of Ceos, Cyth- nos, Seriphos, and others beyond. 8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS The narrow neck that divides the Corinthian from the Saronic Gulf and connects Attica and Boeotia with the Peloponnesus, lifts up among its rugged hills in Megara the picturesque twin peaks of the Kerata. South of the isthmus itself, with its narrow plain and the deep cutting necessary for the canal, rises the splen- did acropolis of Acrocorinth, keeping guard at the en- trance to the " Island of Pelops." The Peloponnesus, or Morea, is a rugged complex of mountains that by turns shut out and admit the sea. Of its four irregular peninsulas, jutting out southward in the Argolis and in Laconia and Messenia, each has its mountain system; the more broken hills in the Ar- golid plain ; the ridge of Parnon to the east of the plain of Lacedaemon; the imposing barrier of Taygetus between Sparta and Messenia. In Messenia itself are fertile plains. One is in the midland, as the name Messenia originally implied, among offshoots of the Arcadian Lycaeus; while the great mountain fortress of Ithome, 2600 feet high, where crops could be reared and an army supported, towering above the hills and plains of central Messenia, looks down on another larger plain, almost tropical in its products, that stretches southward to the gulf. The centre and west of the Peloponnesus is a mass of peaks and mountain ridges tangled up at abrupt angles but bounded on the north by a formidable chain, gene- rally parallel with the Gulf of Corinth and dominated by Erymanthus and Cyllene to the west and east re- INTRODUCTORY 9 spectively. Around and against this chain great moun- tains are piled up like petrified billows. In this part of Greece plains few but important are interspersed, as at Megalopolis or Olympia. Along the northwest coast there is the wider sea-margin of "Hollow" Elis, while along the Corinthian Gulf yEgialus, the "coast-land," seems often little more than a grudging marina sub- jacent to the foothills of Erymanthus and Cyllene. From north to south, from east to west the Greek landscape lends itself to panoramic views. Lucian in his " Charon" makes Hermes seat himself on one of the twin peaks of Parnassus and Charon upon the other. With eyes anointed with Homeric eye-salve, the Ferry^ man, on his furlough from the under-world, is able to see not only the Greater Greece outspread around him, from Asia Minor to Sicily, from the Danube to "f Crete, but to look off beyond to the Orient and to . Egypt. These wide outlooks are enhanced by the ^ distinctness of the sky-line, everywhere an impor- tant factor. "The hard limestone of which the moun- tains are composed is apt to break away, and thus produces those sharply-cut oudines which stand out so clearly against the transparent sky of Greece." So large a troupe of actors played their parts in Greek history that the imagination demands a roomy stage. But the country is small. Were it not for the mountain barriers, the scale of distances would seem trivial. It is, for example, only some thirty miles in an air line from Thermopylae to the Gulf of Corinth. Even lo GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS on the leisurely and winding Piraeus, Athens, and Pelo- ponnesus Railway, it is only one day's ride from Athens via the Isthmus down to Kalamata on the Bay of Mes- senia. The degrees of latitude that include the main- land of Central and Southern Greece span in the west only the Lipari Islands and Sicily; the thirty-eighth parallel that passes south of Palermo and the straits of Messina runs a little north of Athens ; while the thir- ty-seventh parallel, running just south of Syracuse, passes still farther south of Kalamata and Sparta. Not only is the mainland of Greece contained in narrow geographical limits, but the iEgean itself is almost an inland lake enclosed within neighbouring coasts. In clear weather the sailor, without adventur- ing upon open sea, might pass from mainland to main- land as he watched from his advancing prow another island lift above the horizon before losing sight of the harbour left astern. In Greek literature there is no more striking reminder of the contiguity of the Asian coast to Greece proper than the well-known passage in the "Agamenmon" of ^schylus describing the swift tele- graphy of the beacon signals that brought to Argos the news of the capture of Troy. The ten years' absence of Agamemnon's host tends to an instinctive extension of the distance, if the imagination is not checked by the actual scale of miles. Troy seems farther from Argos than the Holy Land from the homes of the Crusaders. Beacon telegraphy is a time-honored device. Many bright beacons doubtless blazed before Agamemnon, INTRODUCTORY n as well as since his time. Commentators have been at pains to justify by modern experiments with beacon fires on lofty heights the severest strain upon our optic nerves which iEschylus makes in the case of the light that leaped from Mount Athos to the high ridges of Euboea. The distance is more than loo miles, but, bearing in mind that the Euboean mountain is some 4000 feet high and Athos more than 6000, we need not apply for any special license for our poet's imagination. The devious course of the fire signals from Euboea to Argos is one of the best illustrations of the jagged sur- face that Greece lifts skywards. As one stands on Mount Pentelicus and looks across to Euboea, the inter- vening arm of the sea is hemmed in for the eye into narrow inland lakes. And ^Eschylus, sufficiently, though not officiously, realistic, makes the firelight zigzag ir- regularly to dodge the interfering ridges till it falls upon the palace roof at Argos, not at Mycenae, as is the not infrequent misrepresentation of the ^schylean story. Clytemnestra, to the chorus asking who could have brought the news so quickly, replies: 'Hephaestus, on from Ida sending brilliant gleam, And hither beacon beacon sped with courier flame. First Ida to the Hermasan crag of Lemnos sent, Then from the island was received the mighty flame By Athos, Zeus's mount, as third : this over-passed So that it skimmed the sea's broad back, the torch's might, A joyous traveller, the pine's gold gleam, sun-like. To watching Mount Macistus brought its flashing news. 12 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Macistus then, delaying not, nor foolishly Foredone with sleep, as messenger pass'd on his share. The beacon's gleam unto Euripus flowing far Then came and signal to Messapium's pickets made. They too gave back a flame and ever onward sent The news by lighting up a heap of heather gray. The Torch then, strong to run, nor dimm'd as yet, leap'd on Like radiant moon across Asopus and his plain And came unto Cithaeron's crags, awaking there A new relay of courier flame: nor did the guard Disown the far-escorted light, but escort flame In turn made soar aloft into the ether high. Then over Lake Gorgopis smote the gleam and came Unto Mount ^Egiplanctus urging that the flame Ordain'd should fail not. Lighting with ungrudging strength They send a mighty beard of fire. O'er the height That overlooks the Saronic Gulf it onward flared, Until, when it had reach'd the Arachnaean steep. It lighted on the outposts neighbour to our town; Then on this roof of the Atreidae falls this light, The long-descended grandchild of the Idaean flame ! " From the very smallness of Greece results the over- crowding of associations that almost oppress the spec- tator standing at one or another place of vantage. But if his historic horizon is as clearly defined as the physical he will come back to the sea-level with a clearer understanding of the interdependence between the scene and the action of the great dramas here en- acted. The country is not only a background but a cause for the literature. Neither can be fully under- stood without the other. It must not be assumed from the smallness of , the land that the spurs to the imagination of the Greeks were few. On the contrary, within their narrow bor- INTRODUCTORY 13 ders, nature was prodigal of her inspiration. In the few miles from Thessaly to the Messenian Gulf are offered a variety of climate and an alternation of products well-nigh unparalleled for such a limited area. The warm air of the sea penetrating into sheltered valleys favours an almost tropical vegetation, while the lofty mountain ridges offer almost an Alpine climate. In Attica, in early spring, snow may occasionally be seen sprinkled on Hymettus and glistening white on Mount Pentelicus, while oranges hang on the trees in Athens. Taygetus in the south maybe a snow-covered mountain even as late as May while in the Messenian plain be- low grows the palm and, more rarely, the edible date. In the Argolis are groves of lemons and oranges, and in Naxos, in the same latitude as Sparta, the tender lime ripens in the gardens. The gray-green olive is familiar throughout Central and Southern Greece. If we extend the survey farther north, the beeches of the Pindus range, west of Thessaly, are surrounded by the vegetation rather of northern Europe; in the interior of Thessaly the olive tree does not flourish; the northern shores of the ^gean have the climate of Central Germany, while Mount Athos, whose marble walls jut far out into the ^Egean and rise 6400 feet above the sea, offers on its slopes nearly all species of European trees in succession. The different parts of Greece offer a varying devel- opment in literature. In this particular some districts, like Acamania, ^Etolia, and Achaea, though possessed 14 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS of great natural beauty, are negligible. Arcadia, though itself unproductive, inspired poetry; others, also, like Phocis, Locris, and Messenia, are inevitably drawn into the associations of literature and history. In Epirus we find at Dodona the first known sanctuary of Zeus, the supreme god of the Greeks. In Thessaly the earliest Greeks, or Achaeans, may have first forged in the fire of their young imagination the tempered steel of the hexameter. Here was the home of Achilles, and here, perhaps, we must look for the kernel of the Iliad. Here most fitly, close to Olympus where dwelt the im- mortals, could the sons of men be "near-gods." From the north and northwest successive waves of population descended into lower Greece to conquer, merge with, or become subject to the previous comers. But prehistoric peoples, whether alien or Greek, Uke the Eteo- Cretans, the Pelasgi, the Minyae, the Leleges, the Hellenes, the Achaeans, and even great movements like the Dorian and Ionian migrations, are all fore- shortened on a scenic background, as equidistant to the Greeks of the classic periods as is the vault of heaven to the eyes of children. One star, indeed, differed from another. The Dorian, for example, was of the first magnitude. But the relations of apparent magnitude and real distance were ignored or naively confused in the fanciful constellations of myth and saga, distant yet ever present, bending around them to their explored horizon. Heroic figures impalpable but real as the gods themselves intervened continually, controlling INTRODUCTORY 15 decisions, shaping policies, or determining disputed boundaries among even the most intellectual of the Greeks. Royalty, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny alike must reckon with personified tradition. When we emerge into the light of more authentic records it is well, in the confusing maze of inter-cantonal contentions, to focus the mind, for the purpose of ap- preciating the literature, upon certain broader relations and more clearly defined epochs in Greek history, like the so-called ''Age of the Despots" within the seventh and sixth centuries, the Persian wars, and the conflicts between Attica as a pivot and the Peloponnese, Thebes, and Macedon. It might be expected from the variety of natural charm offered by Hellenic lands, from Ilium to Sicily, from Mount Olympus to Crete, that the Greeks would show in their literature a pervasive love of nature. This was, in fact, the case. The modem eye has not been the first to discover the beauty of form and colour in the Greek flowers and birds, mountains, sky and sea. Modern critics, ignoring all historical perspective and assuming as a procrustean standard the one-sided and sophisticated attitude that has played a leading role in modern literature, announced as axiomatic that ancient Greek poets had no feeling for nature and found no pleasure in looking at the beauties of a landscape. This superficial idea still keeps cropping up, although thoughtful readers of Greek literature have long since pointed out the necessity both of a chronological analy- i6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS sis of the literature and of a more inclusive statement of the various forms in which a sentiment for the natural world is evinced.* It is a far cry from Homer to Theo- critus, and, as might well be expected in a range of six centuries and more, new elements appear from time to time, due both to changing conditions of life and civil- ization and also to the personal equation. A naive feeling for nature is uppermost in the de- scriptive comparisons and similes of Homer and, gen- erally speaking, in the myth-making of the Greeks. The concrete embodiment of natural phenomena and objects in some Nature-divinity often obviated the necessity for elaborate description and summarized their conceptions as if by an algebraic formula. The mystical element was not lacking, but by this myth- making process it became objective and real. The sympathetic feeling for nature becomes more aiid more apparent in lyric poetry and the drama until in Euripi- des there emerges, almost suddenly, the "modern" romanticism. In the Hellenistic and imperial times, finally, the sentimental element is natural to men who turn to the country for relief from the stress of life in a city. One generalization for the classic periods may be safely made. Although the Greeks from Homer to Euripides thought of the world as the environment of man, yet they stopped short of a sentimental self-analy- sis. Charles Eliot Norton, more than thirty years ago, * Cf. Fairclough, The Attitude of the Greek Tragedians toward Nature. INTRODUCTORY 17 pointed out that the expression of a sentiment like Wordsworth's "To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears" is foreign to the clear-eyed Hellene, reared amongst the distinct outlines of his mountains and from the cradle to the grave at home upon the blue and wind- swept ^gean. Certainly this is true until the spec- ulative questionings of the Ionic philosophers had time to react upon literature. As the Greeks ac- cepted their pedigrees from the gods and heroes, so they accepted their environment of beauty. They were not unlike the child, content to betray by a stray word or caress his unanalyzed admiration for his mother's face. Emphasis has often been laid, and rightly, upon the keen sensitiveness of the Greeks to beauty of form in sculpture, architecture, and literature. It is urged that they made this sense of form and proportion so para- mount that they were blind to the beauty of colouring and indifferent to the prodigal variety of Nature's compositions. It may be readily admitted that this is a vital distinction between the ancient and modern atti- tudes. Both the craving for perfection of form and the preference given to man before nature come out in the preeminent development of sculpture by the Greeks. Their admiration of the beauty of the human form, un- like the sensitive shrinking of modems, was extended even to the lifeless body. iEschylus speaks of the war- i8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS riors who have found graves before Troy as still " fair of form." But a prevailing tendency does not necessarily ex- clude other elements. However meagre the vocabulary of the Greeks in sharp distinction of shades of colour, their love for a bright colour-scheme is shown not only by the brilliancy of their clothing and their use of col- ouring in statuary and architecture, for even in these mere form was not enough, but in unnum- bered expressions like Alcman's *' sea-purple bird of the springtime." A few of the more obvious passages, illustrating the Greek attitude toward nature, are here given in gen- eral historic sequence. Others will be found in the subsequent chapters in connection with particular land- scapes. Very often such references are casual and subor- dinate to some controlling idea, but they none the less reflect habitual observation. Even when we speak of Homeric "tags," like the "saffron-robed" or "rosy-fin- gered," or of Sappho's "golden-sandalled" Dawn, as "standing epithets," we are implying that these epi- thets made a general appeal. The naive insertions in Homer of comparisons drawn from birds and beasts, from night and storm and other familiar elements of nature, would seem like an intrusive delay of the story did they not carry with them the conviction that both poet and hearers alike were well content to linger by the way and observe the objects of daily life indoors and out. Thus in the Odyssey : INTRODUCTORY 19 " The lion mountain-bred, with eyes agleam, fares on- ward in the rain and wind to fall upon the oxen or the sheep or wilding deer." Or, again : "Hermes sped along the waves like sea-mew hunting fish in awesome hollows of the sea unharvested and wet- ting his thick plumage in the brine." One of the longer and best known comparisons is the description in the Iliad of the Trojan encampment by night : " Now they with hearts exultant through the livelong night sat by the space that bridged the moat of war, their watch-fires multitudinous alight. And just as in the sky the stars around the radiant moon shine clear; when wind- less is the air; when all the peaks stand out, the lofty fore- lands and the glades; when breaketh open from the sky the ether infinite and all the stars are seen and make the shepherds glad at heart so manifold appeared the watch- fires kindled by the Trojan men in front of Ilios betwixt the streams of Xanthus and the ships. So then a thousand fires burned upon the plain and fifty warriors by the side of each were seated in the blazing fire's gleam the while the horses by the chariots stood and champed white bar- ley and the spelt and waited for the throned Dawn." Sappho's fragments are redolent of flowers; her woven verse, a "rich-red chlamys" in the sunshine, has a silver sheen in the moonlight. We hear the full- throated passion of "the herald of the spring, the nightingale " ; the breeze moves the apple boughs, the wind shakes the oak trees. Her allusions to "the 20 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS hyacinths, darkening the ground, when trampled under foot of shepherds"; the " fine, soft bloom of grass, trodden by the tender feet of Cretan women as they dance"; or the ''golden pulse growing on the shore," all these seem inevitable to one who has seen the acres of bright flowers that carpet the islands or the nearby littoral of the Asian coast. Her comparison of a bridegroom to "a supple sapling" recalls how Nausi- caa, vigorous, tall, and straight as the modem ath- letic maiden, is likened by Odysseus to the '' young shaft of a palm tree" that he had once seen "spring- ing up in Delos by Apollo's altar." In her Lesbian orchards the sweet quince-apple is still left hanging "solitary on the topmost bough, upon its very end"; and there is heard "cool murmuring through apple boughs while slumber floateth down from quivering leaves." Nor need we attribute Sappho's love of natu- ral beauty wholly to her passionate woman's nature. All the gentler emotions springing from an habitual observation of nature recur in poets of the sterner sex. "The Graces," she says, "turn their faces from those who wear no garlands." And at banquets wreaths were an essential also for masculine full-dress. Pindar, in describing Elysian happiness, leads up to the climax of the companionship with the great and noble dead by telling how "round the islands of the Blest the ocean breezes blow and flowers of gold are blooming : some from the land on trees of splendour and some the water feedeth; with wreaths whereof they twine INTRODUCTORY 21 their heads and hands." * Against the green back- ground passes Evadne with her silver pitcher and her girdle of rich crimson woof, and her child is seen "hid- den in the rushes of the thicket unexplored, his tender flesh all steeped in golden and deep purple light from pansy flowers/' To follow through the poetry of the Greeks the un- failing delight in the radiance of the moon would be to follow her diurnal course as she passes over Greek lands from east to west. The full moon looked down on all the Olympian festivals and Pindar's pages are illuminated with her glittering argentry. The Lesbian nights inspire Sappho as did all things beautiful. "The clustering stars about the radiant moon avert their faces bright and hide, what time her orb is rounded to the full and touches earth with silver." Wordsworth could take this thought from Sappho: "The moon doth with delight look round her when the heavens are bare," but the Lesbian certainly did not finish the fragment by lamenting that " there has passed away a glory from the earth." The night and the day alike claimed the attention of the poets and the interchange of dusk and dawn ap- pealed to the sculptor also. In the east gable of the Parthenon the horses of the Sun and of the Moon were at either end. Nature's sleep is a favourite topic. Ale- man's description is unusual only for its detail : * Translation (modified) by E. Myers. 22 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS "Sleep the peaks and mountain clefts; Forelands and the torrents' rifts; All the creeping things are sleeping, Cherished in the black earth's keeping; Mountain -ranging beast and bee; Fish in depths of the purple sea; Wide-winged birds their pinions droop Sleep now all the feathered troop." Goethe, in his well-known paraphrase, " Ueber alien Gipfeln 1st Ruh," cannot refrain from adding the subjective conclusion of the whole matter : "Die Vogelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch." The great dramatists display an observation of the beauty of the external world not always sufficiently emphasized. In ^Eschylus an intense feeling is evi- dent ; none the less because it is subordinated to his theme or used to point, by way of contrast, some awe-inspiring or pathetic situation or some scene of blood. Clytemnestra describes how she murdered her husband. His spattering blood, she says, "Keeps striking me with dusky drops of murd'rous dew, Aye, me rejoicing none the less than God's sweet rain Makes glad the corn-land at the birth-pangs of the buds." Comparisons, similes, and epithets drawn from the sea reappear continually in the warp and woof of Greek, and especially of Athenian, literature. vEschylus, like the rest, knew the sea in all its moods, terrible in storm, INTRODUCTORY 23 deceitful in calm, beautiful at all times and the path- way for commerce and for war. The returning herald in the "Agamemnon" rehearses the soldiers' hard bivouac in summer and in winter : " And should one tell of winter, dealing death to birds, What storms unbearable swept down from Ida's snow, Or summer's heat when, ruffled by no rippling breeze. Ocean slept waveless, on his midday couch laid prone." With the first lines of "Prometheus Bound" we are carried far from the haunts of men : "Unto this far horizon of earth's plain we've come. This Scythian tract, this desert by man's foot untrod." Hephaestus reluctant, compelled by Zeus's order, rivets his kin-god, the Fire-bringer, to the desolate North Sea crag and withdraws leaving Prometheus in fetters to "wrestle down the myriad years of time." The night shuts off the warmth and Kght, drawing over him her "star-embroidered robe," and the fierce sun- god returns with blazing rays to "deflower his fair skin" bared of the white counterpane of "frost of early dawn." Not until the emissaries of Zeus have departed does Prometheus deign to speak. Then he "communes with Nature." He has no hope of help from God, none from the "helpless creatures of a day" whom he has helped. Alone with the forces of nature he utters that outcry unsurpassed in sublimity and in pathos : "O upper air divine and winds on swift wings borne; Ye river-springs; innumerous laughter of the waves Of Ocean; thou, Earth, the mother of us all; 24 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS And thou, all-seeing orb of the Sun to you I cry : Behold me what I 'm suffering, a god from gods 1 " Sophocles, too, lets Philoctetes, in his misery and loneliness on the rocky island of Lemnos, call out to the wild beasts and the landscape : "Harbours and headlands; and ye mountain-ranging beasts, Companions mine; ye gnawed and hanging cliffs! Of this To you I cry aloud, for I have none save you You ever present here to whom to make my cry. " In his famous ode on the Attic Colonus he describes the natural beauty of his home with particularizing exactness. He has also a wealth of glittering epithet used for local colouring, for symbolism and personifi- cation. The contrast of day and night offers to him a welcome mise-en-schne. The sun's rays are Apollo's golden shafts and the moon's light seems to filter through the trees as Artemis roams the uplands : "O God of the light, from the woven gold Of the strings of thy bow, I am fain to behold Thy arrows invincible, showered around, As champions smiting our foes to the ground. And Artemis, too, with her torches flaring, Gleams onward through Lycian uplands faring. " Bacchus, also, the "god of the golden snood," "lifts !his pine-knot's sparkle" and, roaming with his Mae- nads, seems to visualize for men the soul of Nature. Aristophanes with his common-sense objectivity was averse to the sentimental and romantic in Euripides, which seemed to him effeminate. His love for nature was clear-eyed and Hellenic. His lyrics shine like a INTRODUCTORY 25 bird's white wing in the sunlight. The self-invocation of the Clouds is alive with the radiance of the Attic atmosphere. A translation can only serve to illustrate the elements used in the description : CHORUS OF CLOUDS "Come ever floating, O Clouds, anew, Let us rise with the radiant dew Of our nature undefiled From father Ocean's billows wild. The tree-fringed peak Of hill upon lofty hill let us seek That we may look on the cliffs far-seen, And the sacred land's water that lends its green To the fruits, and the whispering rush of the rivers divine And the clamorous roar of the dashing brine. For Ether's eye is flashing his light Untired by glare as of marble bright." The "meteor eyes" of the sun gaze "sanguine" and unblinking upon the cloud-palisades, glaring bright as the marble of Mount Pentelicus. Readers of the Greek will recognize here and there how an Aristophanic epithet or thought has been precipitated and recom- bined by Shelley into new and radiant shapes that drift through his own cloud-land, "I change but I cannot die!" Aristophanes's observation of nature is varied and exact. He had nothing but ridicule for the pale student within doors, and only a man who kept up an intimacy with "the open road" could have made the natural- istic painting in the "Peace" of the serenity of country life: 26 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " We miss the life of days gone by, the pressed fruit- cakes, the figs, the myrtles and the sweet new wine, the olive trees, the violet bed beside the well." Euripides in his attitude toward nature has all the qualities of the other tragedians except sublimity, to which he more rarely attains. Many qualities are much more conspicuous. His range of colour is wider. His allusions to rivers and to the plant and animal world are more detailed. Picturesque scenes and setting delight him. Beyond all this the reflection in nature of human emotion, occasional in his predecessors, plays in his verse almost a leading part. Modern romanticism, in short, is no longer exceptional. Hippolytus, the acolyte of Artemis, and his attendants address the virgin goddess who ranges the woods and mountains and who, as ^schylus says, is " kindly unto all the young things suckled at the breast of wild-wood roaming beasts." The "modem" element in the origi- nal loses nothing in this paraphrase by Mallock : "Hail, O most pure, most perfect, loveliest one! Lo, in my hand I bear. Woven for the circling of thy long gold hair. Culled leaves and flowers, from places which the sun The Spring long shines upon, Where never shepherd hath driven flock to graze, Nor any grass is mown ; But there sound throughout the sunny, sweet warm days, 'Mid the green holy place The wild bee's wings alone." In one of the despairing chorals of the "Trojan Women " the personification of nature blends with the INTRODUCTORY 27 spirit of mythology. The name of Tithonus, easily supplied by a Greek hearer, is inserted for English readers in Gilbert Murray's beautiful paraphrase : " For Zeus O leave it unspoken : But alas for the love of the Mom; Morn of the milk-white wing The gentle, the earth-loving, That shineth on battlements broken In Troy, and a people forlorn! And, lo, in her bowers Tithonus, Our brother, yet sleeps as of old : O, she too hath loved us and known us, And the Steeds of her star, flashing gold, Stooped hither and bore him above us; Then blessed we the Gods in our joy. But all that made them to love us Hath perished from Troy." When Dionysus addresses his Bacchantes, Euripides, in lines reminiscent of Alcman, imposes upon outward nature the solemn expectancy of the inward mind : "Hushed was the ether; in hushed silence whispered not Leaves in the coppice nor the blades of meadow grass; No cry at all of any wild things had you heard." The formal banns of the open wedlock of man and nature were declared in Euripides. Thereafter the treatment became more and more a matter of personal equation. In Plato's dialogues, for example, the ethical element inevitably appears. In the famous scene beside the Ilissus, Socrates and young Phaedrus talk through the heated hours beneath the shade of the wide-spread- ing plane tree, where the agnus castus is in full bloom, where water cool to the unsandalled feet flows by, and 28 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS in the branches the cicadae, "prophets of the Muses," contribute of their wisdom. The Anthology, stretched through the centuries of Greek literature, links the old and the newer, the an- tique reserve and the fainness of modem romanticism. One of the epigrams attributed to Plato will serve to indicate the emergence of the latter : "On the stars thou art gazing, my Star; Would that the sky I might be, For then from afar With my manifold eyes I would gaze upon thee." Another seems like an artist's preUminary sketch for the picture by the Ilissus, the deeper motive not yet painted in : "Sit thee down by this pine tree whose twigs without number Whisper aloft in the west wind aquiver. Lo! here by my stream as it chattereth ever The Panpipe enchanteth thy eyelids to slumber." From this we pass without break to the piping shep- herds and the country charms with which Theocritus filled his Idyls for city- jaded men : . . . "There we lay Half buried in a couch of fragrant reed And fresh-cut vine leaves, who so glad as we? A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead; Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on From the Nymphs' grot, and in the sombre boughs The sweet cicada chirped laboriously. Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away The treefrog's note was heard; the crested lark Sang with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan, And o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee." * * Translated by C. S. Calverly. INTRODUCTORY 29 Notwithstanding the variety in landscape and the lack of unified nationality in the long centuries of Greek history, there is a unity in the impression of ancient life left upon the mind by a visit to Greece. This is in part due to the comparative meagreness of remains from periods subsequent to classic times. The long obliteration of mediaeval and modem constructive civ- ilization leaves more clear the outlines of antiquity. This is true even though the sum total of the re- mains of Byzantine and mediaeval life, on islands and on mainland, is large and clainis the attention from time to time. In Athens the traveller will come upon the small Metropolis church with its ancient Greek calen- dar of festivals, let in as a frieze above the entrance and metamorphosed into Byzantine sanctity by the in- scribing of Christian crosses. As he journeys to and fro in Greece he may see the venerable "hundred-gated" church on the island of Paros, recalling in certain de- tails the proscenium of an ancient theatre; Monemvasia with its vast ruins, the home of Byzantine ecclesiasticism and a splendour of court life that vied with the pomp and magnificence of western Europe; or the ivy-clad ruins of Mistra, an epitome of Graeco- Byzantine art from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century; the frown- ing hill and castle of Karytaena that guards the ap- proach to the mountain fastnesses of Arcadia; or the ancient acropolis of Lindus on the island of Rhodes with the impregnable fortress of the Knights of St. John. 30 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Nor will the visitor ignore the reminders of the War of Independence and the renascence of life in modern Greece. Mesolonghi, Nauplia, and Arachova have contributed fresh chapters to human history. Aligned with ancient names are those of modern heroes in the nomenclature of the streets and of public squares, like the Karaiskakis Place that welcomes the traveller as he disembarks at Piraeus. But all of these, whether mediaeval or modern, fail to blur the understanding of antiquity. They do not obtrude themselves. Often they even illustrate ancient life. The same wisdom that transferred allegiance from the Saturnalia to the Christmas festival has here also been careful to use for Byzantine churches the site of ancient shrines or temples : St. Elias is a familiar name on high mountains where once stood altars of the Olympians; the cult of Dionysus has been skilfully transformed, in vine-rearing Naxos, into that of St. Dionysius; SS. Cosmo and Damiano, patrons of medi- cine, and known as the "feeless" saints, have estab- lished their free dispensary in place of an Asklepieion ; the twelve Apostles have replaced the "Twelve Gods"; and churches dedicated to St. Demetrius have been substituted for shrines of Demeter. The thoughtful student of the literature of the Greeks, no matter how enthusiastic he may be, will not fail to draw warnings as well as inspiration from their history. But no defects of the Greeks nor achievements of posterity can dispossess Hellas of her peculiar lustre. INTRODUCTORY 31 "No other nation,'^ as Mr. Ernest Myers has said with particular reference to the age of Pindar, ''has ever before or since known what it was to stand alone im- measurably advanced at the head of the civilization of the world." CHAPTER n PIRiEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN "Returning from Asia Minor and voyaging from ^gina toward Megara I began to look on the places round about me. Behind me was ^gina; before me Megara; on the right Piraeus; on the left Corinth cities once flourishing, now prostrate and in ruins." Servius Sulpicius to Cicero. THE sail in bright sunshine up the Gulf of ^gina, the ancient Saronic Gulf, will have fulfilled the traveller's anticipations of the beauty of Greece and will have quickened the historic imagination. History and antiquity, however, will give place to the insistent claims of modem Greek life, as the steamer enters the busy port and passes through the narrow opening between the welcoming arms of the ancient moles which still protect the harbour and serve at night to hold up the green and red signal lights for mariners. In this harbour meet the Orient and the Occident. One may see here craft of all kinds from all parts of the Mediterranean and from beyond the Straits; modern steamers, big and little ; gunboats, native or foreign ; sailing vessels from the Greek islands or Turkish pos- sessions, laden with bright cargoes of yellow lemons and Cretan oranges, great grapes purple and white, or "!!,Va^wA\v ^\\a>s^-C<-s<-^ / PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 33 "tunnies steeped in brine"; here a steamer packed with pilgrims for a religious festival on Tenos; here, perhaps, another vessel crowded with American tourists to Jerusalem. Upon landing, most visitors go immediately to Athens, but no one should fail to return once and again to Piraeus in order to see the extant remains of the ship- houses; of the gateways and walls to the northwest of the Great Harbour; of the walls that skirt the whole peninsula ; of the theatres and other scanty traces of the old life within the city. Even to a traveller innocent of the facts of Greek history, the drive at sunset along the rim of the peninsula and the indenting harbours will be one of the best remembered experiences in the neigh- bourhood of Athens, by reason of the sheer physical beauty of land and sea, islands and distant mountains. The terminus of the electric railroad from Athens to Piraeus is in the northwest corner of the modern town between the lines now assumed for the "The- mistocles Wall" and the "Wall of Conon," dating, respectively, from the two most significant epochs in the history of Piraeus. Although the tyrant Hippias had begun to fortify the Munychia hill in the sixth century b. c, his undertaking was interrupted, and it was left for Themistocles, in the early part of the fifth century, to begin, and finally to carry well on the way to completion, the transformation into a sea-fortress of this natural vantage-ground. Later, he was for remov- ing Athens itself to Piraeus. Failing in this, he shifted 34 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the habitat for the new fleet from the open roadstead of Phalerum, which was nearer Athens, to the land- locked harbours of Piraeus. But the return of the Persians, ten years after Marathon, surprised the Athenians with their preparations incomplete, and Athens was transferred, not indeed to Piraeus, but to the "wooden walls" of the triremes themselves. When, under Pericles, Athens reached the acme of her intellectual, artistic, and material power, around the harbours at Piraeus had been built a well-planned city, with stately avenues and dwellings for wealthy men and wealthier gods. The port had been completely fortified either by the restoration and carrying out of the interrupted building or by the extension of the plans of Themistocles. A massive wall inclosed the three harbours within its circuit, and strong moles, lasting on into modern times, guarded their entrances. Ship- houses had also been built, and doubtless an arsenal, though a less pretentious one than the great structure afterwards erected. In short, all the paraphernalia existed for offensive and defensive naval operations. The " Long Walls," actually built soon after the ban- ishment of Themistocles in 472 b. c, had united Athens and its port into a dual city. No greater proof of the vital union of the two cities could be cited than the rage and grief felt by the citizens when, at the end of the Peloponnesian War, in 404 b. c, the Spartans razed the Long Walls. It was amputating the very feet of the imperial Queen of the ^Egean. PULSUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 35 Some ten years later, the Long Walls were rebuilt and the restoration of the Piraeus fortifications was taken in hand. Of the remains now visible, the major part belongs to t^is rebuilding at the beginning of the fourth century. A little less than a century had elapsed since Marathon, and we now find Athens allied with her old enemy, Persia, against another Greek state. Conon the Athenian, victorious over the Spartans in the naval battle of Cnidus, sent back Persian gold to fortify the Piraeus anew, and the circuit wall, of which such ex- tensive remains are extant, was called by his name. On issuing from the electric railroad station, the visitor sees before him, a few yards distant, the Great Harbour's smaller, inner fold, known in antiquity as "The Marsh" (Port d'Halae) or, perhaps, as the *' Blind" Harbour. This inner harbour, roughly a third of a mile by a sixth in size, now furnishes ample accommodation for smaller craft and a convenient landing-place, although in Conon's day it was probably more of a marshy barrier than a navigable sheet of water. If the whole contour of the two harbours to- gether suggested the designation of '' Cantharus," it may have been from either the meaning "Beetle," or that of "Two-handled Cup." Until recently, the name was identified with the southernmost portion only of the Great Harbour. The locus classicus is the " Peace" of Aristophanes. Daedalus and Icarus with their flying- machines had long since anticipated the modern aero- plane, and in this comedy Trygaeus in search of Peace OF THE University Of 36 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS starts out to navigate Zeus's ether on his "beetle. Then, as now, a safe landing-place for the airship was a desideratum, and Trygaeus states that he will have as a safe mooring " the Cantharus harbour in Piraeus." * Skirting now the northern margin of the inner har- bour, the route will follow in part the probable line of the demolished wall of Themistocles, which extended on and reached the water outside both the peninsula of Eetioneia and the outer bay of Krommydaru, where traces of the more ancient fortifications are still extant. Close by the modem station of the Larisa railway, however, will be found the very considerable ruins of a gateway identified with the Conon walls. This alone is an ample reward for the long detour around the har- bour. If time and energy permit, it is well worth while, instead of crossing by boat to Akte, to return to the starting-point and to saunter along the whole margin of the Great Harbour. Particularly picturesque are the great sloops, laden with lemons and oranges, moored in behind the Karaiskakis square, which only the pe- destrian would be likely to discover. As one lingers along the quays, however, modem warships and all the craft for commerce and travel will give place to the memories evoked from the greater past. This harbour * The Cantharus, or beetle, of Trygaeus is likened in the comedy to a Naxian boat, a resemblance easily recognized in the drinking-cup tailed "Cantharus," with its two projecting handles for bow and stem. PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 37 of commerce will, in imagination, be once more crowded with triremes, brought around from the two war- harbours on the other side, to be inspected one after the other by the Council of the Five Hundred. As offi- cial inspectors of the triremes, when made ready to set out for conquest or defeat, this Council held its sittings on the Choma, probably a little promontory that juts southward from the Karaiskakis Place. One may recall, with the help of Thucydides, the setting out of the ill- starred Sicilian expedition. No such vast array had ever left the harbour for so distant and protracted a warfare. All the citizens of Athens as well as of Piraeus are here to witness the departure of sons and friends. High hopes of imperial expansion feed the imagination of the multitude. Some rest their confidence on divine favour sure to accompany the pious, though reluctant, Nicias ; others put faith in the warrior Lamachus ; more in the brilliant Alcibiades, still idolized though accused of sharing in the mutilation of the Hermae. The great fleet of swift triremes is ready, together with the trans- ports for heavy-armed soldiers, equipments, and sup- plies. Now the men are all on board and a hush falls upon the throng at a sudden blast of the trumpet. The prayers, according to established ritual, are offered by the united squadron. At a concerted sign, the mixing- bowls are crowned throughout the whole host and the men and generals pour libations from gold and silver cups. The throngs upon the land, both citizens and for- eign well-wishers, join in the, service. The hymn of tri- 38 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS umph sung, the libations poured, the ships weigh anchor and put to sea. But before the last trireme has passed through the moles, and while the ear still catches the notes of the flute and the voice of the Keleustce, giving the time to the crews, a revulsion of grim presentiment overmasters many of the watchers on the shore. The expedition now no longer seems what they so lightly voted in the assembly. The ever- recurrent Greek feel- ing that "high things annoy the god" calls up the warning words of ^Eschylus, uttered a generation be- fore, in the year of the unlucky Egyptian expedition sent out on a similar venture : "Grown Insolence is wont to breed Young Insolence midst mortals' sorrow, Then, then, when to th' implanted seed There comes the birth-light's destined morrow." Or else his immortal lament "over the unretuming brave" comes unbidden to their lips: "Whom one sent forth to war one knows, but, in the stead of men, come back unto the homes of each but urns and ashes." The mysterious mutilation of the Hermae is fresh in mind and the fear of angered gods reasserts its sway. But no presentiment of ill could anticipate the reality of the disaster in the harbour of Syracuse or the slow tor- tures of living death in its stone quarries. A chance for retaliation in kind was indeed to come. In a Piraeus stone quarry Syracusan captives were in turn impris- oned a few years later, but they, more lucky than the PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 39 Athenians, cut their way to freedom from their rock- bound prison. Despite the imperious insolence of Athens and her unrighteous schemes for aggrandizement, our sym- pathy in the tragedy is ever fresh. By the harbour side we mourn to-day the predestined doom of the gallant squadron and the stricken city. Through the ebb and flow of hope and disaster, the thought sweeps on to the close of the war and the humiliation of Athens at the hands of Sparta; the destruction of the Long Walls, their rebuilding and the refortification of Piraeus under Conon; the aftermath of Athenian power; the brilliant age of Plato and the orators; the struggle with Philip; the fall of Greek liberty; the sway of Macedon; the Roman conquest, with the long, stubborn siege of Piraeus so graphically described by Appian. Sulla, exasperated by the long defence of the Mithridatic army, with whom the Athenians had cast in their lot, burnt the arsenal and docks and razed the fortifications so utterly that the Roman governor, Sulpicius, in writ- ing to his friend Cicero in 45 b. c, could describe Piraeus as the "corpse" of a great city. In the second century of our era it had resumed a semblance of com- mercial prosperity. Lucian, in his dialogue, "When My Ship Comes In," goes down to Piraeus with a friend to admire a great grain transport that has just put into harbour on its way from Egypt to Rome. For a mer- chantman it is large; some 180 feet long, 45 in beam, and over 40 feet in depth to the hold. The prow 40 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS stretches out long, and at the stem is the gilded figure- head of a goose with its graceful curving neck. The two friends wonder at a sailor mounting nimbly by the swaying ropes and running out nonchalantly along the great yardarm, as he holds on by the yardsheets. But the generous cargo of grain, enough, as we are told, to feed Athens for a year, is destined for Rome. Athens was no longer the emporium of the eastern Mediterranean. She had become a way-station. No longer could she enforce the old law, mentioned by Aristotle, which required that two thirds of the cargo of every grain-ship that put into Piraeus must be car- ried up to the metropolis. After Roman times, in the long atrophy of the By- zantine age, Piraeus dwindled to a group of fishermen's huts. It revived somewhat under De la Roche in the fourteenth century, and thereafter at least was 'known as Porto Leone from the seated figure of a marble lion that kept guard among the ruins like the majestic lion that still sentinels the battlefield of Chae- Tonea. In the seventeenth century, the Venetians car- ried off this Piraeus lion, and now, seated by another arsenal in another seaport, careless of the passing tourist, it looks grimly over the Adriatic where steam- ers come and go between the neighbouring Trieste and its native land. Leaving now the Great Harbour and our meditations on the vicissitudes of history, we resume our inspection of the fan-shaped peninsula. Without a special permit PIRiEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 41 the visitor is excluded from the western end and from the Royal Garden which encloses the most probable site of the Tomb of Themistocles, if indeed his bones were ever brought back from burial in exile. His offi- cial tomb was in Magnesia in Caria. A public interment in his native land could not be granted to one exiled as a traitor. Thucydides knows only of a secret burial of his bones in Attica. The remains of the monument in question stand on the point of Akte near the entrance to the outermost harbour. From this tomb the great admi- ral's spirit could still watch over the Athenian sea-power. Skepticism about the site is forgotten when we read the fragment, meagre as it is, of the comic poet Plato: "Fair is the outlook where thy mounded tomb is placed. For it will signal merchantmen from here and yon, It will behold the sailors faring out and in, Will be spectator of the triremes' racing oars." This "contest of the triremes'' may allude to the boat- race in which the course lay from Cantharus harbour around the whole peninsula to Munychia. These races in sacred ships were part of the systematic training of the Attic youths. The public road leads over the shoulder of the hill and, in descending again to the coast, offers a beautiful view to the west and south over the Saronic Gulf. The driveway then runs along the water's edge around the promontory, keeping close inside the ruined "Wall of Conon." Although the remains of this encircling wall rise nowhere more than about eight feet above 42 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS ground, and usually much less, yet the very continuity of the ruins is imposing. Practically in an unbroken line the solid masonry hems the irregular rim of the peninsula from the mouth of the Great Harbour to a point not far distant from the war-harbour of Zea on the opposite side and may be traced again intermittently around to the Bay of Phalerum. Solid tower buttresses are interposed at frequent intervals. On this southern shore of Akte, where the modern town does not intrude, the spectator is free to divide his attention between the beauty of the sea view and thoughts of the past. The picturesque land-locked harbours of Zea and Munychia next claim our interest. The pear-shaped Zea basin, now known by the Turco- Greek name of Pashalimani, makes into the neck of the peninsula between the promontory hill of Akte and the Acropolis of Munychia. Behind it and close to it was erected in the fourth century the great Arsenal, and at vari- ous points beneath its transparent water may still be seen distinct remains of 38 of the ship-ways that ran down from the ancient ship-houses where the triremes were drawn up. Inscriptions tell us that there were originally 372 in all, of which 82 were in Muny- chia, 94 in the Great Harbour, and the remainder in Zea. No other relic of antiquity brings us into closer touch with the naval power of Athens and her empire on the iEgean. The covered sheds themselves can only be reconstructed in imagination. Some broken columns of the ship-houses and portions of the launching piers PIRi^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 43 remain in situ. To accommodate the 196 triremes, 130-165 feet long, assigned to the Zea Harbour, some of the houses must have been constructed so as to dock the boats in at least two tiers. At Syracuse, the for- midable Piraeus of the west, remains of ship-sheds have been found, and at Carthage, the bitter foe of Syracuse, they remained for Appian to describe. Dry- docks may have existed near the harbour entrance. This narrow neck of the pear-shaped harbour was still further guarded at the inner opening by projecting moles, which here also are still extant. The entrance was actually closed, in case of need, by chains extended across at the surface of the water. Of the proud war- ships themselves, those chargers of the sea stabled in Zea, there remains one realistic reminder. Their tim- bers have long since rotted away, the gulfs have washed down all such small objects of durable material as bronze nails and clamps, but some heavy plates of Parian marble have been found in the harbour. These were set into the bows of the warships, and upon them were painted the vessel's eyes that used to keep fierce outlook for the enemy or peer through the gloom of night and storm for the first sight of the shoreward lights of Piraeus. Danaus at Argos, in the " Suppliants" of iEschylus, as he sees the approaching ship, ex- claims : "The bellying sails I see; the ox-hide bulwarks stretched Along the vessel's sides; the prow that with its eyes Peers forward o'er the course." 44 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS On the marble plates actually recovered the iris is painted bright red or blue, and a vacant hole in the middle suggests the head of a burnished bronze nail that served at once as the pupil of the eye and to rivet on the plate. These eyes are common in representations of ancient vessels, and only in recent years are they disappearing from use among Sicilian and Italian boat- men. The most casual survey of this protected haven will justify the sagacity of Themistocles in concentrating his energy upon Piraeus. His proposition to transfer Athens altogether to the seaport was strategically wise. The extent of the Long Walls, uniting the two into a double city, was a source of weakness, as it drained the defenders away from both towns. But it was a true instinct of the Athenians, which posterity endorses, to cling to the sentiments evoked by their ancient city and in it to develop to the full their intellectual empire. It is probable that the extant traces of the ship- sheds in the two war-harbours date back only as far as the fourth century b. c, but the number and size fairly represent the older Periclean constructions. The Thirty Tyrants destroyed the former ship-sheds, as Isocrates tells us, and sold for three talents (about $3100) the material of these buildings upon which the city had spent more than one thousand talents. The ruins of the "Wall of Conon" can still be traced for some distance to the east after leaving the harbour of Zea, and at the southeastern promontory the ruins PIRi^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 45 of ancient fortifications are again to be seen. The har- bour of Munychia (modem Phanari) is smaller than that of Zea. Its contour is so perfect an oval as to seem artificial. It had space to accommodate only eighty- two triremes in ship-houses, scanty remains of which are here visible under the water. At the east side the ruined wall may again be traced to the Bay of Phalerum or (Greek) PhMeron, and beyond, curving around the Munychia acropoUs to com- plete the circuit to the north of the town. Further east, on the open bay of Phaleron, is New Phaleron, a bathing resort as frankly modern as the Lido at Venice. The exact site of Old Phaleron is open to dispute, but the walk between it and Athens was a favourite constitutional in Plato's time. Many a classic conversation was held here on the way. In the " Sym- posium" of Plato, Glaucon asks Apollodorus: "Isn't the road to Athens just made for conversation?" Now the banality and the bareness of the city's outskirts intrude sadly upon the pedestrian's philosophic equi- poise, both here and on the other road between Athens and Piraeus where Lucian and his friend, in the second century of our era, could still find shelter from the hot sun under some olive trees by the wayside and "sit down to rest upon an overturned stel^." The focus of the inner city life was the splendid Agora laid out by the famous architect Hippodamus. Here ended the road from Athens. This square was probably west of Munychia north of the Zea harbour, 46 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS perhaps about where the present Athena street inter- sects Munychia avenue. Near it were probably grouped various sanctuaries. Xenophon tells how in the civil war the patriotic party, "the men from Phyle," unable to exclude "the City party" from the whole of Pirsus, fell back on the Munychia hill, and the men from Athens blocked up the avenue that leads to the temple of Bendis and to the sanctuary of Munychian Artemis. By this Market-place, too, houses of rich residents were probably built. The Piraeus was essentially a democratic strong- hold. It was the rendezvous for the patriotic anti- Spar- tan party; and Plato, with all his aristocratic leanings, chose to lay at Piraeus the opening scene and setting for his greatest dialogue, the " Republic." It was the fitting propylaea for his ideal city as well as for the real Athens. "I went down yesterday," Socrates begins, "to Piraeus with Glaucon, both to make a prayer to the goddess and to take a look at the festival to see how they would carry it off, inasmuch as they are now celebrating it for the first time." The Thracian residents, it seems, had just introduced a celebration in honour of their goddess Bendis, and the natives had united with them. The whole port was en fete with processions conducted both by the hospitable native citizens and the Thra- cians themselves. In the evening there was to be a torch-race followed by an all-night festival. Socrates, who was on the point of returning to Athens after wit- nessing the daylight processions, was easily persuaded PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 47 by Polemarchus to stay over for the torch-race, dining first at the house of his father, the rich and hospitable old metic, Cephalus. At the house Socrates finds an- other son, Lysias, who was soon to become famous as an orator. For the Thirty were to plunder the pro- perty bequeathed by Cephalus to his sons, all the ready money, the shield factory, and the slaves; were to put summarily to death young Polemarchus; and were to force Lysias, reduced to sudden poverty, to betake himself to speech-writing for a living. His crowning effort was an arraignment of his brother's murderers. Most skilful of narrators, he tells of the fate of Polemarchus; how his house was plundered; how his wife was robbed of the very ear-rings from her ears ; and how after his execution, notwithstanding the just title of the family to large holdings of real estate, he was buried from a hired shed, one friend providing a robe, another a pillow, for the corpse. He tells, too, of his own arrest at his home by the emissaries of the Thirty: how he bargained for his life with a sum of ready money; how one of his captors followed him into the inner room, looked over his shoulder into the money- chest, and took not only the price agreed upon but all the contents of the strong box; how he was taken to another house of a Piraeus acquaintance; and how, while his captors were keeping guard at the peristyle door in front, he had escaped by a back door to the house of a friend, the shipmaster, with the appropriate name of Archenaus. So, while his less fortunate bro- 48 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS ther, Polemarchus, is led off to Athens, thrown into prison, and " bidden by the Thirty their usual bidding to drink hemlock," Lysias, by the aid of his nauti- cal friend, is embarked for Megara under cover of night. We should like to have fuller details of that es- cape of the young Lysias, yesterday a wealthy manu- facturer, to-day a plundered fugitive but destined to become one of the greatest of the "ten" orators and a master architect of Attic style. Perhaps a small boat put off from some lonely spot on Akte, perhaps from the Great Harbour itself, shooting through the moles in the darkness and, wind and weather permitting, kept to starboard of the Psyttaleia reef, passed up through the strait of Salamis, on through the beautiful Bay of Eleusis, and landed the fugitive at Megara. Plato's account of the visit of Socrates to the Piraeus homestead carries us back to the days of security be- fore the reign of the Thirty. We see old Cephalus welcoming Socrates cordially, delivering a monologue on his own gracious old age, telling a story about Sopho- cles in his later years, and finally withdrawing to super- vise a sacrifice to the gods. The introduction of a foreign divinity like Bendis of the Thracians was not unusual. The celebration, described at the opening of the Republic, was at least no more exotic than a St. Patrick's day in America. Foreigners and natives united in it as they did in the celebration of the Mother of the Gods. The customs inspection of foreign deities was lenient. The Greeks PIRiEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 49 were free traders both in art and religion, though the finished product imported was likely enough to be used as new material. Into the smelting furnace of the classic period was cast the old, the new, the foreign, and the domestic, to reappear in fairer form, stamped with the Hellenic hall-mark. Among the various im- ported deities, Cybele is well vouched for at Piraeus where a number of marble votive shrines of the Great Mother have been found. One of these archaic Cybele reliefs, brought from Piraeus to the National Museum in Athens, shows the goddess with her lion in her lap, her cymbals in her hand. The "new theology," fos- tered by Euripides and domiciled in daily life by the "New Comedy," could treat these cymbals as typical of "a creed out-worn." One of Menander's characters exclaims : " No god, my wife, saves one man through another's help, For if a human being can by cymbals' clash Deflect the god to whatsoever is desired, Then greater than the god is he that doeth this." Among various resident colonists who may have occupied distinct sections of the city, like a mediaeval Ghetto or a modem Italian quarter, the worship of home divinities was kept alive. It is known, for ex- ample, that the Egyptian resident merchants, perhaps as early as the end of the fifth century, had received a special license to erect an Isis sanctuary and the Cyp- rians instituted a similar cult of Adonis and Aphrodite. Remains of the old gateway in the northern circuit- 50 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS wall, just where the north Long Wall joined on, are still extant. Within a century, the traces of the Long Walls themselves have been disappearing. Enough is left, however, to mark their course at various points, and the remains are particularly plain of the "South" Long Wall, where it nears the Munychia acropolis. Ascend- ing Munychia, we may imagine the Long Walls still reaching up to Athens. We may picture them either in time of war, with defenders within and foes without, or in time of peace, with the stream of pedestrians bent upon pleasure or business. Outside the North Wall was one of the places of execution. Plato illustrates the contest between the brute in man and his higher reason by the story of a certain Leontius who one day was walking up from Piraeus and saw some dead bodies fallen prostrate by the side of the executioner. He loathes the sight but is fain to look. Vulgar curiosity gains the mastery; he runs up to the dead bodies and, holding his eyelids wide open, exclaims: "There wretches ! Take your fill of the fine spectacle ! " Turning from the course of the Long Walls, the eye surveys the whole panorama of the harbours and the city. Just within the old wall, on the west slope of the Munychia hill, is the old Theatre in a ruined con- (dition. But we can think of the harbour folk in days of peace enjoying on these same rising seats the plays of a Menander or Euripides or see convened there in the times of grim civil strife a hurried assembly of the patriotic party. PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 51 Somewhere close by the north side of Zea was the famous arsenal which, though not built till near the end of the fourth century, has entirely disappeared. Luckily, however, in 1882 there was discovered near the Zea harbour a slab of Hymettus marble containing the directions given to the contractors for its construc- tion. It was built to contain the rigging, tackle, sails, cables for undergirding the ships, etc., while the masts, spars, oars, rudders, and other wooden gear seem to have been kept in the ship-sheds themselves alongside of the ships. This arsenal of Philo replaced an older and less elaborate one. It was a large building, four hun- dred by five hundred feet within, and provided for a roomy arcade where the populace, screened from the burning heat without, could promenade and gaze at the suggestive evidences of their sea power. Of the many private and public buildings, temples and colonnades mentioned by classic authors, but few can be positively located. In the Colonnade of the Exchange the Deigma Theophrastus, Menander's friend and the successor of Aristotle, represents his "Boastful Man," a shipping-merchant, as bragging about his great ventures and cargoes at sea. Mean- while his balance at the banker 's actually amounts to about twenty cents. That this Deigma, where gossip was coined and bargains struck around the money-changers' tables, must have been close to the edge of the Great Harbour is evident from Xenophon, who says that one day twelve Lacedaemonian ships 52 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS swept into the harbour suddenly, landed a party and carried off from the Exchange a group of sea-captains and merchants. The site of the Asklepieion, partly church, partly sanatorium, has been identified in the remains west of Zea. Aphrodite, born of the foam, is a popular god- dess with sailor-folk. To her were dedicated, it would seem, no less than three sanctuaries at Piraeus. Lastly, there was the famous Hieron or Sanctuary of Zeus and Athena. Even its site cannot now be iden- tified, but it must have been one of the most frequented centres of Piraeus life in the fifth century. An inscrip- tion records that into the treasury of this sanctuary went the tax of a drachma on every vessel that put into the port. Incidentally many a further contribution was levied on the newly landed sailor, who was as much a fish out of water among the land-sharks as is the mod- em Jack Tar on ship's leave. The comic poet Diphilus tells how one of these harbour caterers used to select his victims: "For example there's the skipper who grudgingly pays off a vow made under stress of wea- ther when the mast went by the board or when he had snapped the rudder-sweeps of the ship or else was forced by water rising in the hold to hurl his cargo overboard. A wide berth I give to a fellow like him. Such a man will not be free-handed ; my best chance is with the captain who has made a quick, safe voyage from Byzantium, who, all excitement over his gain of ten or twelve per cent for three days' risk, is loud in PIRiEUS, THE HARBOUR TOWN 53 his chatter about freights and usuries." He's the man for the purposes of this shark, and no sooner is he landed than our keeper of the Sailors' Snug Retreat goes up to him, takes his hand, and reminds him that a sacrifice at the temple of Zeus Preserver would be in order. He thoughtfully relieves the skipper of any care, making the purchases, superintending the offering, and sharing the commission with the priests of the Hieron. And human nature was much the same five hun- dred years later, when we again meet a skipper whose performance, once he is safe at Piraeus, falls far short of the vows made in storm and peril. Lucian, in his **Zeus the Tragedian," gives details. The Olympian Father, alarmed at the signs of increasing irreligious- ness and the consequent stringency in the sacrificial market, calls an assembly of the gods. After some diffic\ilt points of precedence as to order of seating have been temporarily waived and half-naturalized divinities like Mithras and our Thracian Bendis have been admitted, Zeus makes a speech. He begins fluently enough with a mosaic of oratorical phrases which he has memorized from Demosthenes. Pre- sently, however, he exclaims: ''But my Demosthenes is giving out. I must tell you in plain Greek what has troubled me." He reminds them of the dinner in which some of them "as many as had been invited" had participated the day before, when "Mnesitheus, the ship-owner, had given them a Thanksgiving banquet at Piraeus on account of the preservation of 5|4 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS his vessel that had come within an ace of being wrecked off Euboea." ''That evening," he continues, "while taking a constitutional, I kept thinking over the stingi- ness of Mnesitheus who undertook to entertain sixteen gods by sacrificing a single cock and that, too, a wheezy old rooster ! with four little lumps of frank- incense so mouldy that they went out forthwith on the coals, without giving even the tip of my nose a whiff of the smoke. That's what he did, though he was for promising whole hecatombs when his boat was driving on the cliff and was already encircled by reefs." Sometimes the fisher-folk preferred to go up to Athens and dedicate votive offerings in the Parthe- non. Lucian, in "The Fisher," when angUng over the edge of the Acropolis for the scaly philosophers of the second century, borrows of the Priestess of the Parthenon a rod, hook, and line that "the fisherman from Piraeus had dedicated" as a thank-offering. Of the many epigrams in the Greek Anthology on shipwrecked mariners, the most appropriate to our harbour town is perhaps the one written by Antipater of Sidon for the tomb of a certain Aristagoras who was drowned after reaching harbour at Scarphe. We are reminded of the Piraeus temple to Aphrodite of the Fair Voyage by the bitterness with which the poet uses the epithet : "Ever the sea is the sea. It is idle to blame Cyclades' waves or the Needles or Narrows of Helle; Them I escaped to be drowned in the harbour of Scarphe. Vain is their fame. PIR^US, THE HARBOUR TOWN 55 Pray, if you will, for a fair voyaging homeward, but say: Here in his tomb Aristagoras knows of the sea and its way Ever the same." It requires no great stretch of the imagination to re- produce the thrill of pride and delight with which the Attic demesman, whether sailor or soldier, fisherman or merchant, returning from abroad sighted the heights of Akte and the Munychia acropolis and sailed up to the beautiful, dignified city built around its strong, fortified harbours. Even after independent Athens had been incorporated in the Macedonian empire, Menan- der could record this patriotic delight. In a fragment from his "Fishers" a sailor, returning perhaps to Pi- raeus, falls down and kisses the earth, exclaiming : "Greeting, O dear my country, long the time gone by Till now I see and kiss thee. Not to every land Would I do this, but only when I see my own, The land that bred me is a goddess in my eyes." We think of Menander himself as a frequent visitor to the harbour town. Tradition says that he was drowned while bathing at the harbour and his countrymen gave him a tomb and an epitaph on the road from Piraeus to Athens by the Long Walls. There, too, was the ceno- taph of Euripides, who had sailed away to the court of the Macedonian king, never again to enter through the harbour's arms that welcomed so many returning voyagers. And the Athenian of the third century, returning as we do now, from a visit to Piraeus, would see these tombs as he left the harbour walls and perhaps find 56 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS compensation for the loss of external liberty in realizing that the great sea-fortress and the maritime empire of Themistocles, of Pericles, and of Conon had buttressed well a Greater Athens; that neither Spartan jealousy and civil discord, nor even the foreign rule of Macedon itself could destroy the real povi^er of this Mother city and obliterate her sway over the human mind. But it required the perspective of longer time and the ideal- ism of a Shelley boldly to interpret disaster in terms of victory and to proclaim Athens as mistress of a sea wider than the ^gean : "Greece and her foundations are Laid below the tides of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity." The launching- ways of the ancient triremes, still seen beneath the clear water, symbolize that continued hegemony. CHAPTER III ATHENS: FROM SOLON TO THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS "Here, stranger, seek no tyrant. This our state is ruled Not of one man. 'T is free. The people year by year As kings succeed each other, never yield they most To Wealth, but even he that's poor has equal share." Euripides, Supplices. MANY a visitor, led to Athens by interest in its associations and its art, has been sur- prised by its great physical beauty. The drive from Piraeus, through the banal outskirts of the growing city, is, indeed, a disenchanting approach, but one has only to walk to the Corinthian columns of the Olympieum to obtain a satisfying view of the Acropo- lis, embedded like a crystal in its proper matrix of encompassing air and plain and sea and mountains. Future journeys in Greece will but reenforce the con- viction of the noble loveliness of the Attic plain. The atmosphere is singularly clear and vibrant, and within it colour and form are sharply defined. The iEgean at its shores adds movement and space. And here more than anywhere else Sir Richard Jebb's description of the Greek hills seems inevitable. Their forms "are at once so bold and so chastened, the onward sweep of their ranges is at once so elastic and so calm, each 58 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS member of every group is at once so individual and so finely helpful to the ethereal expressiveness of the rest, that the harmony of their undulations and the cadences in which they fall combine the charm of sculpture with the life and variety of a sunlit sea." In making such a study of this city as is demanded for turning the quick appreciation of its external charm into the more permanent possession of its underlying qualities, we must submit to some analysis of the great moments in its history and its literature. When Athenian literature begins with Solon, in the sixth century, b. c, the Greeks have emerged from a dim antiquity. In the two preceding centuries, the mother cities of Achaean and Dorian Greece had been sending out colonists east and west, not merely in a spirit of Phoenician commercialism, but also with adventuresome, intellectual curiosity. The heroes of their earliest traditional literature sailed with them. Associations half slumbering in the popular conscious- ness thrilled them as they steered again over the course of the Argo or as they followed once more the later track of Odysseus to the west, and in lower Italy and Sicily reestablished Great Hellas as an integral part of Hellen,ic civilization. In this earlier colonization Athens participated only vicariously, but it was into this larger Hellas that Solon the lawgiver and poet was bom. Fire, brought from the mother cities, was blazing on the hearths of Greek colonies from the Crimea to Sicily. The lonians of Asia UNlVERSn T OF ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS S9 Minor had long since joined in the movement of expan- sion ; they were presently to colonize the site of modem Marseilles ; they were already converting to their own use the distant outposts of the " Tyrian trader." Athens meanwhile was slowly developing. Later she would herself be mistress of the sea. The Athenians, more than most Greeks, could boast that they were autochthonous, earth-born children of their own soil. Isocrates in his '' Panegyricus " makes proudly the claim: "We dwell in the land not after expelling others, nor even finding it a desert, nor even coming as a mixed breed collected from many nations, but . . . sprung from the soil and able to address our city by the same names as we give to the closest relations." The prehistoric Greek invaders of Attica had fused with rather than driven out the former occu- pants, the Pelasgians or whoever they may have been. Erichthonius, Erechtheus, or Poseidon, "one form for many names," was born of Earth but mothered on Athena, and it would have been as futile as it was impious to challenge the pedigree of the Erechtheidae. Erechtheus-Poseidon might coil forever undisturbed beneath the sheltering shield of the Virgin-goddess. Cecrops, too, the mythical king and Attic hero, owned a perpetual ground-rent on the Acropolis and the Athenians were Cecropidae. They were also the " Sons of Hephaestus," who was often associated with Athena, a partnership of the heavenly wisdom with the arts and crafts. An ancient festival of the whole city, held 6o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS in honour of Athena, became afterwards specialized among the artisans, under the name of Chalkeia, in honour of Hephaestus ; and the god may yet win back as his own "Hephaesteum" the so-called "Theseum" on the hill above the classic market-place. The age of the heroes merges with that of the Kings. Theseus moves, a grandiose figure, through art and literature. Thus when the "Hill party" of Pisistratus became preeminent, Theseus, the aristocrat, came into prominence in vase painting. He appears in all the forms of didactic sculpture, and the " City of Theseus," the older Athens, is recalled again in the Roman re- naissance by the Arch of Hadrian. This still offers to the modem pilgrim, on the west side facing the Acropolis, the inscription: "This is the Athens of The- seus, the old city," and on the other, facing the Olym- pieum of Hadrian: "This is the City of Hadrian and not the City of Theseus." Thus meet the old and the new, with classic Athens ignored. To understand the literature of the sixth century, we must remember that the ancient citadel town of the prehistoric kings had long since overflowed into the district at its immediate base, absorbing, as time went on, various original townships adjacent to the Acrop- olis. Although the name of king and some relics of royal authority survived in the person of the King Archon, yet, unhke the relation of Sparta to Laconia or Thebes to Bceotia, Athens was not a mere royal centre for the Attic demesmen. All Attica was Athens. ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 6i All its free inhabitants, class by class, became included in the citizenship, albeit the republic was an aristocracy, first of birth, then of wealth. Solon's readjustment of the laws for rich and poor determined the trend towards government by the people, and even the in- evitable tyranny, postponed by Solon, only served, when it came, to retard the current and to dam up a reservoir of irresistible democratic consciousness which was to sweep away the tyrants and to render the Attica of Marathon inaccessible to the returning despot. The picture of the old city of Theseus is vague to our imagination, but the Athens of Solon's administra- tion emerges somewhat more clearly as we take away, one after another, some of the prominent features of the later Athens that we know best. The Acropolis lacked the Propylaea, the Parthenon, and the Erech- theum, its barrenness being relieved by little save the " old " temple of Athena Polias. Not only the Dionysiac theatre, but even its earliest forerunner were things of the future. The drama was yet unborn. The Mar- ket-place of later centuries, adorned with statues and stoas, was represented by a simpler centre of civic life at the west end of the Acropolis, where were the public buildings of administration, the communal winepress of the Lenaeum and the old Callirrhoe spring. Yet Solon calls Athens a great city, and he was to make it still greater. Into that early Market-place he came and, if we accept the picturesque details handed down by tradition, feigning madness in order to vio- 62 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS late with impunity the law forbidding citizens to re- open the question of conquering Salamis, he cried : "Forward to Salamis, forward, to fight for the isle that we yearn for. Thrusting dishonour aside, casting off grievous disgrace." The Athenians were aroused. They went with him across the narrow strait, and Salamis, the "lovely island," thenceforward was their own, destined to serve them as refuge in their hour of greatest need. Solon used his popularity, thus acquired, in no self-seeking way. Chosen archon and virtual dictator he moulded proletariat and noble to his own noble will. Again and again his verse reenforces his pedestrian arguments. "The black earth is enslaved," he says, and presently the mortgage stones, dotted over the farms, are mere cancelled records. Many such, of a later date, have been found. The " Penurious Man" in Theophrastus " inspects his boundary stones daily to make sure that they are in place." Solon proudly appeals to the con- stituency of the future to justify his laws : " Be witness unto this before the bar of time, Thou greatest Mother of the gods Olympian Aye witness best black Earth, whose mortgage border-stones Fixed here and there on every side, I took away. And she who erst was slave is set at liberty." Again, even more proudly, he says: "I set myself as border stone inscribed betwixt Contending factions." The citizens, he says, by their folly and their greed would themselves destroy the city, but Athena, the Watcher, is there upon the hill: ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 63 "Never by Zeus's decree nor by will of the blessed immortals Ruin shall come to our town, causing our city to fall. Never, while yonder that great-hearted Guardian, sired majestic, Pallas Athena above stretches her sheltering hands." In the Athenian memory as well as in these vigorous elegiacs he embedded the epithet of "Guardian" (cVt- o-KOTTos) that would in after days lend significance to the great bronze statue, overlooking the city and sea, and would remain after Macedon had come and gone as a semi-official title of the goddess. Legend tells us that Solon in his old age, when the tyranny had now come, piled his armour in front of his house door probably near the Market-place of Pisistratus and turned from politics to a serene en- joyment of the pleasures of ear and eye and intellect to which he had, indeed, never been a stranger. His life had always been consistent with his own epigram : "And still as I age, learning many a lesson." Like many of his countrymen subsequently, he com- bined active participation in public affairs with the character of poet and writer. In literature, as in politi- cal life, he had his preferences. Perhaps nothing more distinctly places him in the old Athens than his disap- probation of the Tragedy that was born in his later years. He is said to have taken Thespis to task for the falsehood of the drama. On the other hand the direct sincerity of lyric poetry accorded with his manner of thought. From ^Elian's variegated patch-work the story drifts down to us that to Solon, seated one day 64 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS over his wine, his nephew sang one of Sappho's songs. Solon at once commanded the boy to teach him the song, and when a bystander asked why he was so eager, he replied : " When I have learned it, then that I may die!" To subsequent generations he seemed the embodi- ment of wisdom over against excess, and readers of Herodotus who were not troubled by the chronological difficulties must have especially enjoyed the story of his interview with Croesus and his reproof of the rich king for his exultation in his wealth. The famous apo- thegm, " One must wait for the end before praising," was repeated in one form or another by Simonides, iEschylus, and Sophocles. Of Solon's own end a dra- matic story is mentioned by Plutarch, although he re- fuses to lend it his credence : "That his ashes, after his body was burned, were scattered about the island of Salamis is a story absolutely mythical and incredible by reason of its outlandishness. It stands recorded, how- ever, both by other noteworthy men and by Aristotle the philosopher." After years of varying fortune Pisistratus finally (540 or 539 B. c.) established himself as Tyrant of Athens. But tyranny at Athens was never more than an episode. The inbred spirit of freedom must be reckoned with. Pisistratus respected popular rights, and after the accession of his sons the suspicion of a tendency to introduce such measures as were acqui- esced in, for example, at Corinth, brought death to ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 65 the one and subsequent banishment to the other. But the result of the tyranny of Pisistratus was beneficent. Under him and his sons the city began to take on both externally and intellectually more of the characteris- tics which are in mind when we think of Athens. Architect, sculptor, and painter began to contribute enriching details to the Acropolis, including the first Propylaea. Engineers skilfully brought water from near and far into the old Market-place, and in front of the town spring of Callirrhoe Pisistratus built the spacious "Nine Spouts" the Enneakrounos where women filled their water-jars and stayed to gossip. The newer market-place, to the north of the Areopagus, was developed. A great Olympieum was begun on the site of the present columns, which date from Hadrian's time. Gymnasium life became impor- tant and the Academy was made ready as if in anticipa- tion of its great future. Doubtless within this lovely grove many a youth of the period might have served as a model for Aristophanes's fifth-century picture of palaestra life in the good old times : "But you will go enter as Academe sprinter and under the olives con- tend With your chaplet of reed, in a contest of speed with some excel- lent rival and friend: All fragrant with yew and leisure time too, and the leaf which the white poplars fling When the plane whispers love to the elm in the grove in the beauti- ful season of spring." * * Clouds, 992, translation (modified) by Rogers. 66 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS A distinctive part of Pisistratus's policy was the encouragement of country life and of agriculture. All over the Attic plain the oUve orchards were culti- vated, to become an important source of revenue to the Athenian state and immeasurably to enhance the charm of its environment. Herodotus recounts that a tall, handsome woman named Phye, from the hill country, had impersonated Athena come down in mortal guise and, riding in a chariot with Pisistratus, had lent divine sanction to his original coup d^itat. The Attic demesmen might still more easily accept this new measure as a command transmitted from Athena who had herself first created the olive tree and taught its culture on the Acropolis : "A heaven-sent grey -gleaming crown for her Athens, Her city of light." Aristotle, in his " Constitution of Athens," lays great stress on the effort of Pisistratus to develop the pros- perity of the farmers. He tells how Pisistratus, walking in the country and seeing one digging among the rocks, asked what sort of a crop grew there, and the man, unaware that it was the Tyrant, replied : " Such a crop of evils and pain that it were right that Pisistratus should have his tithe of them." Pisistratus, pleased 'both with his industry and his free speech, relieved the farmer of his burdens. And so, Aristotle continues, he was not troubled during his reign but could secure peace and quiet and " the word was often on the lips of many that the tyranny of Pisistratus was a regular life under Kronos." or Golden Age. ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 67 Pisistratus did much toward securing for Athens the intellectual hegemony of Greece, Whatever the Panathenaea, inherited from Theseus (or even from Erichthonius) , may have been previously, the Greater Panathenaic festival was now solenmized every four years with more magnificence and became at Athens the necessary and dignified offset to the quadrennial games at Olympia and Delphi. Games, sacrifices, and amusements of varied character were added from time to time. Horse, chariot, torch, and foot races were in- cluded. Visitors came from abroad. But neither local nor intercantonal athletics gave the keynote. Rhap- sodists recited Homer, and flute, cithara, and song were heard. Everything tended to focus itself upon the worship of Athena, who was the Athenian conscious- ness glorified and made objective. Under Pisistratus or his sons (or, less probably, under Solon) Homer was recalled from Ionia and domi- ciled on the mainland. Whatever may be the details about a formal recension and publication at this time, recitations from Homer were made an integral part of the public festivals, and Athens became the clearing- house for an intellectual currency good throughout all Hellas. The name "Pan- Athenian," passing even beyond Pan-Ionian, was to be equated with a culture that was Pan-Hellenic. This befitted the epic breadth transcending mere local traditions. "The Iliad was not composed for any king or tyrant. If it is aristocratic, its appeal is not to any given set of noble families, but 68 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS to all brave men of Greek legend." And the spirit in which this epic trust was administered tallies well with the restraint of Pisistratus in respecting, as far as possible, the laws of Solon. If there were Attic inter- polations in the poems, they do not glorify his house. In the "Catalogue of the Ships" the Athenians re- ceived honourable but not excessive mention. The brief reference to the ships from Salamis, as ranged under the command of the Athenians, would seem to suggest the recent conquest of the island under Solon or even the suspicion that Solon had himself interpo- lated it beforehand as proof of the ancient suzerainty of Athens : "Twelve ships from Salamis Aias commanded. He brought them and placed them there where Athenian squadrons were marshalled." But perhaps the easiest solution of all questions in re- gard to interpolations in the Homeric poems is to pin our uncritical faith to the authenticity of Lucian's in- terview with Homer in Elysium : " I went up to Homer the poet, when we were both at leisure, and after mak- ing other inquiries ... I asked him further about the rejected verses, whether they were written by him. And he declared that he wrote them all ! " The greatest and most characteristically Attic con- tribution of the sixth century was the fostering of the drama, in connection with the worship of Dionysus. This Thracian divinity, on his journey southwards, ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 69 had been welcomed in the villages of Attica, where vineyard and winepress awaited his blessing. The Pisistratidae, who have been called "the providential defenders of the faith of Dionysus" against the aristo- cratic disdain felt for a peasant's god, invited him to a new temple in the Lenaea the Marshes below the Acropolis, where, at the time of the winter solstice, the Feast of the Winepress once more identified the capital with the country it had outgrown. But Pisis- tratus went further in establishing the City Dionysia, a spring festival destined to a long life and splendid renown. Instead of private performances at rural feasts, the drama now became part of the official admin- istration of the city. The first dated performance of a play by Thespis was in 534 b. c. This may have been on the occasion of the opening of the " orchestra, '* north of the Areopagus, near the new Market-place, where the spectators henceforth found seats on wooden scaffolding until the more permanent theatre was erected south of the Acropolis. Athens was now ready for the great dramatists. The wine-god looms up as a rival to Athena, as may be seen by his ubiquity on the vase paintings and his dominant presence in the Attic calendar. "In the actual religious ritual Dionysus became of more importance at Athens than Zeus, Apollo, or even Athena." Thus in diverse ways does Pisistratus present a fair claim for having made Athens greater, in steady pro- gression from the wise policies of Solon. Solon him- 70 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS self must often have feared an excess of luxury and splendour. No one of his generation could have dreamed of a regretful modern desire to have seen, because of its charming simplicity, "the little earlier Athens of Pisistratus." But many a Periclean Greek may have forestalled it. Aristophanes was forever seek- ing for a revival of "the precepts which taught The heroes of old to be hardy and bold, and the men who at Mara- thon fought!"* These were the precepts which taught ^Eschylus. We are apt to think of him only in his maturity, a fighter at Marathon, a seasoned warrior at Salamis, a poet of the post-Persian epoch. But his childhood fell in the time of the Pisistratidae, and it is by no means idle to speculate on the influences which then encompassed him. The memory of Solon's ethics and vocabulary he carried with him through life. Foreign poets also, attracted to Athens by the sons of Pisistratus, must have seemed to him important personages. Two of the " ten " lyric poets were at this time identified with the city. Anacreon, when Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, had no longer a home to offer him, was brought in triumph to Athens in a fifty-oared galley sent by Hipparchus. And Simonides of Ceos, who was to be the chief mouth- piece of liberated Greece, was well content to enjoy the patronage of the despot. yEschylus was fifteen when Hippias was expelled. Hipparchus had been assassinated earlier, at one of * Clouds, 973, translated by Rogers. ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 71 the celebrations of the Panathenaea, by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, but their failure to dispose of both tyrants at one blow had caused them to be igno- miniously put to death and their memory ignored. Now, in the new enthusiasm for freedom, they were hailed as liberators of their city. Their memory be- came a cult. Their statues were set up by the Agora, and the boy iEschylus, as each anniversary of their deed came around and the Panathenaic procession wound up to the Acropolis, must have been fired by the thought of them. At twenty-five he may have lustily joined in the new drinking song which, commemorating their deed, took the town by storm. It continued to be sung for centuries. To Aristophanes it was a hackneyed classic and part of his comic stock in trade. "In a wreath of myrtle I'll wear my glaive, Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave, When the twain on Athena's day Did the tyrant Hipparchus slay. *' For aye shall your fame in the land be told, Harmodius and Aristogeiton bold, Who, striking the tyrant down. Made Athens a freeman's town." * With the victory at Marathon Athens came of age. The struggle between Orientalism and Hellenism was just begun. Salamis and Plataea and Eurymedon were yet to be. But the Greeks with a divine improvidence discounted their ultimate success. Their twenty years * Callistratus, translated by Conington. For the complete song ee Symonds, " Greek Poets," chap. x. 72 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS of democratic education made impossible any com- promise with despotism. Whatever necessary vague- ness may still have existed at Athens in the attempted fusion of polytheistic tradition with the awakening con- ception of monotheism, there now stands forth in a law-abiding conscience the barrier of Law, clear and bold as the outline of Pentelicus above Marathon. The contemporary Athenian feeling is reflected by iEschylus in the answer of the old Persian men to Darius's widowed queen, who has asked about the Greeks : ATOSSA " 'And who's their herdsman? Who the people's overlord?' CHORUS * There 's no man's name they bear as slaves and underlings.* " At this time another country god was naturaHzed at Athens, a friend and comrade of Dionysus in secret mountain places, but not intruding upon him in the formalities of city worship. Pan had helped the Athe- nians at Marathon and had stopped the swift courier Pheidippides, sent to hurry reinforcements from Sparta, and bidden him ask his people "why they made no account of him, although he had been useful to them many times already and would be again." The Athe- nians at once "dedicated a sanctuary to Pan under the brow of the Acropolis and in consequence of this mes- sage they propitiated him by yearly sacrifices and a torch race." His cave at the northwest end of the Acropolis still exists to convince the sceptic. He lived on here, overlooking the Areopagus and Agora, to ATHENS, TO BATTLE OF SALAMIS 73 come forth, "horned, panpipe in hand, with his shaggy legs," and greet the lady Justice sent by Zeus to in- vestigate the charlatan philosophers of Athens in Lu- cian's day. Pan gives Justice a fluent account of their frailties and is about to add certain details, when her sense of propriety cuts him short. "If I must," says he, "tell the truth in full, without holding anything back for I live, as you see, where I can take a bird's-eye view many 's the time I 've seen scores of them, well along towards evening " {Justice) "Stop there. Pan!" While Pan was accumulating details of the "Private Life of the Athenians," as they passed and repassed before his grotto, the public energy of the city was trans- muted into enduring memorials above him on the calm heights of the Acropolis. CHAPTER IV THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS "All this pursuit of the arts has this function, even a recall of the noblest in the soul to a vision of the most excellent in the ideal." Plato, Republic. TO speak of the Acropolis of Athens with due Hellenic restraint is difficult for any one who has Hved long under its habitual sway. At the first visit three sets of impressions break down the most obdurate impassiveness. The associations ac- quired by a study of history engender a vicarious but active sympathy with the Greeks themselves. There is an immediate impact of beauty from marble gate- way and temples and sculpture which the proces- sion of years has only incorporated more intimately with the beauty of sea and land and circumambient air. And, finally, there is the involuntary sense of coming back to one's own to an intellectual birthright. Even the Turkish conquerors did not fail to recognize that all western civilizations consider the Acropolis an integral part of their joint heritage. Dr. Howe quotes from an intercepted letter of Kiutahi Pashaw, the op- ponent of the Greek patriot, Karaiskakis, in 1826: "The citadel of Athens, as is known to you, was built of old on a high and inaccessible rock; not to be injured RENAN Fn ROPOLIS ting THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 75 by a mine nor accessible to assault. . . . From it went out of yore many famous philosophers; it has many works of art very old, which make the learned men of Europe wonder; and for this reason all the Europeans and the other nations of unbelievers regard the citadel as their own house." The attitude of the ancient Greeks toward the Acro- polis is only casually expressed in their extant litera- ture. No Greek Victor Hugo has given to men distant in place and time as vivid a picture of the Parthenon as we possess of Notre Dame. In trying to imagine what the Greeks saw, as they came up to their citadel, we must first ^differentiate between 'the main historical epochs. Of the Acropolis in the earliest age we can form a partial conception. The impressive remains of poly- gonal masonry still extant, in the massive citadel walls; the traces of the old "Kings' City" around the Erech- theum, and even within the groundplan of the old Athena temple; the remains of the ancient stairway, northeast of the Erechtheum, leading to the postern gate all fit in with and fill out a reconstruction based on our conception of other ancient strongholds, like Mycenae or Tiryns. When we think of the citadel in the age of Pisistratus and the time previous to the Persian Wars we are fairly sure of the main characteristics. We can picture the old Athena temple, simple yet dignified, in the middle of the plateau, adorned with coloured sculptures (some of which may be seen in the Museum to-day), sacred 76 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS shrines, precincts and altars with a wealth of dedi- catory offerings, and also the older Propylaea let in be- tween the massive "Pelasgic" walls and approached by a way that wound down through a complex of out- works to meet the old Agora. This Acropolis, far simpler than the Periclean citadel but beautiful and adorned, was devastated by the Per- sians. Then for more than a quarter of a century after Salamis we must imagine it as scarred and patched, with perhaps only one temple, half restored, to house the sacred image within its blackened walls. In general, when we speak of the Acropolis, it is of the citadel as it appeared towards the close of the fifth century to Sophocles and Euripides and Aristophanes, to Thucydides and Xenophon, to Isocrates and Lysias, to Socrates and Plato. This citadel we can restore to our imagination from the descriptions of Pausanias (controlled by information from other sources) who, in spite of erratic omissions, fortunately describes many things with a fulness of detail quite foreign to the writ- ers of the classical period. When Socrates, too robust at seventy to know the fatigue of the ascent, climbed the approach to the hill he must often have been inspired by the beauty of art, as he had been by the beauty of nature on the banks of the Ilissus, to renew the prayer : *' Dear Pan, and ye other gods, make me beautiful in the inward man." Born into a generation and among a people where ex- ternal and physical beauty was assumed as corollary THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 77 to the beauty of the ideal, there escapes him, thus in- cidentally, the echo of his self-conquest over his own Silenus-like exterior, so out of keeping with the charm of his environment. Perhaps he went up the hill the evening before his trial to take a last look at what he had loved long and well. He knew in advance that his "apology" to the court was to be a reassertion of indi- vidual liberty of conscience that would most probably result for him in the hemlock draught. The majestic columns of the great gateways rose before him on either side, the wings extended like welcoming arms. He would turn to the left and stand in the picture gallery. Perhaps he would pause longest before Alcibiades, his pernicious disciple, pictured in arrogant beauty as victor at the Nemean games. Turning to the other side of the gateway, he would stand on the bastion before the Nike temple and would look out over the familiar city, the Attic plain and harbour- town. As he passed on now to enter the gateway, and his eye fell upon the sculptured Hermes and the Graces, little would he dream of the perplexed debate of modern critics as to a possible connection of this group with the handiwork of a young sculptor or stone-cutter, ''Socrates the son of Sophroniscus." Under or just within the Propylaea he would note various familiar objects, and when he had passed through he would see before him to the right and left the Parthenon and the Erechtheum. The intervening space would not be as it is now a floe of marble blocks. 78 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Two orderly avenues of votive offerings traversed the plateau before him. Against a column of the Propylaea still stands an inscribed basis of a statue dedicated to Athena, the Giver of Health, set up by Pericles in grati- tude for the recovery of one of his injured workmen, one perhaps whose skill he could ill spare in the com- pletion of his large designs. Close by, a marble boy, made by a son or disciple of the great Myron, held out a bowl of holy water as at the entrance of a cathedral. Socrates, whose reverence exceeded that of all his ac- cusers, would not scorn this symbol of purification, least of all when about to journey away, as he ex- pressed it, from Athens to another life. Before him tow- ered up the bronze Athena, the warrior goddess, whose gleaming helmet could be seen by homeward voyagers as soon as they had passed the intercepting shoulder and foot-hills of Hymettus. Near by was the Lemnian Athena, goddess of the arts of peace, held by the Greeks themselves as more beautiful even than the great gold- ivory statue within the Parthenon. The three em- bodied the conceptions of Phidias, as in a trilogy. Near by was a portrait- herm of Pericles himself. There, too, was the "wooden horse," a colossal bronze, with the Greeks (not forgetting the sons of Theseus) peeping out from its side. And when, passing along this Pan- athenaic road, lined with statues and votive offerings, he had threaded his way around to the east front of the Parthenon, he would enter between the columns, and in the cool twilight, lit by the gleam of gold and THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 79 ivory, he would look up to the Victory on the extended hand of Athena. Perhaps for a moment the goddess may have lifted the veil of the future to reveal that the defeat of the morrow would be a victory of far greater import than even that of Marathon or Salamis. To-day the visitor, as he goes up to the Acropolis, carries with him the accumulated associations of cen- turies. On the bastion of the Temple of Victory, un- surpassed in its miniature charm, he watches with iEgeus for Theseus returning in triumph from slaying the Minotaur. At the sight of the black sail, left un- furled by inadvertence, the old king plunged from the rock to his death. iEgeus and the other kings passed away and other men from this rock watched fleets hostile and friendly come and go in yonder bay and enemies scour the surrounding plain of Attica. Byron, finally, brooded here over a renascent Hellas. If any work of man's hands can purge the mind of the commonplace, it is the Propylaea, imposing in its grand proportions, yet enticing by its beauty. Through this the pilgrim now passes and is alone with Greek life. Although the plateau is deserted, the temple in ruins, there is no sense of death. There is rather a sud- den sense of Beauty set free from the trammels of daily life. The fortunate isolation of the hilltop contributes to this effect. Byzantine makeshifts, Turkish hovels and minarets, have all been swept away even the intruding Roman is left outside with the disfiguring pedestal of Agrippa's statue. The foreground of the 8o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS modern city is sunk out of sight behind the rim of the plateau. There is to be seen on all sides only the same Attic plain, the same ^gean sea, and the same hori- zon of mountains, which the eyes of kings and demo- crats, artists, orators and philosophers have looked upon in days gone by. In this harmony of surroundings, the eye and thought rest undisturbed upon the Parthenon. The tributes of the centuries have probably left the visitor unprepared for his own emotion. Like a wind on the mountain, felling the strong oak trees, the heavenly Eros, Plato's Love of Beauty, descends upon him. Bayard Tay- lor's first impressions, in spite of an enthusiasm per- missible fifty years ago but now well-nigh out of print, are worth recalling for the sake of a figure evoked by the appalling ruin of beauty. Beyond a sea "of hewn and sculptured marble, drums of pillars, pedestals, capitals, cornices, friezes, triglyphs and sunken panel- work," he saw the Parthenon against the sky, and it seemed to him as if it lay " broken down to the earth in the middle like a ship which has struck and parted, with the roof, cornices and friezes mostly gone and not a single column unmutilated, and yet with the tawny gold of two thousand years staining its once spotless marble, sparkling with snow-white marks of shot and shell, and with its soaring pillars embedded in the dark blue ether." But since Morosini's sacrilegious bomb did its work the generations have refused to accept as the ultimate THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 8i fact the shipwreck of this temple in which culminated the plastic arts of ancient Greece and in which were typified her loftiest ideas. Poet and philosopher have sat before it in fruitful meditation, and commoners have paced its great colonnades, unregardful of the ways and marts of men amid the austere majesty and royal repose of the Doric pillars. From the imperious beauty of the Parthenon the eye turns gratefully to the lovely Erechtheum. Al- though this is but a torso of the architect's design and its complex structure defies preconceived conven- tions, its Ionic charm satisfies in each detail. The eastern columns, the Porch of the Maidens, the ex- quisite tracery of the doorway set within the perfectly proportioned northern porch present a series rather than a unity of graceful designs. The other remnants fragmentary and broken of the vanished life upon this hill must be identified with pious care. Then the thought turns to such refer- ences in literature as have been transmitted to us. These also are fragmentary, seeming sometimes like the patches of blue and red and gold not yet wholly effaced from the marbles. The Iliad, as we know it, preserves an Athenian tradition of the prehistoric kingly Acropolis. Among the warriors bound for Troy are listed: " They that had Athens, the citadel goodly, the holding of great-heart Erechtheus to whom on a time, as foster- ing nurse, was Zeus's daughter, Athena (though the seed- 82 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS land, giver of grain, was the mother who bore him), and at Athens she made him to dwell, in her own habitation of plenty. There the Athenian youths with bulls atid with rams do him honour, year after year in the seasons re- turning." And here under the Greek heaven, on this hill left lonely by men but easily accessible to gods, it would hardly seem incredible if Athena herself were suddenly to appear once more. In the Odyssey, when she had ventured to leave Odysseus to his own cunning among the Phaeacians, she returned by a course, strangely devious for an air line, by way of Marathon to Athens : " Then with these words the bright-eyed Athena departed over the harvestless seas and behind her left Scheria lovely. She came unto Marathon then and the wide-wayed Athe- nian city, and entered the massive-built house of Erech- theus." As we look upon the meagre traces of the prehis- toric city, we should like to see the princess maidens appear in the simplicity of the kingly times. Like the women described by Pherecrates, the comic poet, they had no slaves: " No one then possessed a Sambo, no one had a maid-slave then, Every bit of household labour must the girls themselves perform." Herodotus tells us how they used to go down and out from the protecting gateways, to draw water at Callir- rhoe beyond the Agora, and how the rough Pelasgians, banished from this their ancient home, would now and again rush down from Hymettus to carry them off. THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS S3 The old Erechtheus worship, the snake, the ancient image of Athena, and the alUed precincts, lost none of their sanctity as time went on. From Herodotus we learn that Themis tocles was materially aided before Salamis, in persuading the Athenians to abandon the city, by the sudden disappearance of the sacred snake. " The Athenians," he gravely reports, *'say that a large snake dwells in the sacred precinct as guardian of the Acropolis. And they not only say this but they make offerings to him month by month, setting them out for him as actually there. These consist of a honey-cake. Now this honey-cake, although heretofore it had al- ways been consumed, remained at this time untasted, so the Athenians, when the priestess reported the fact, made the more eager haste to leave the city, on the ground that the goddess had abandoned her citadel." The sacred olive tree, however, which Xerxes had burned with the rest of the precinct, put forth the very next day a new shoot one cubit long. By the time of Pausanias the guide said "two" cubits. But the es- sential point is the continued care of the goddess, and as for the snake, he soon resumed his dwelling on the AcropoHs. In the "Lysistrata" of Aristophanes, the women who have seized and barricaded the Acropolis make excuses for leaving, complaining that they can- not sleep, one on account of the hooting of Athena's owls, another by reason of her terror : " Since I clapped eyes upon the snake that dwelleth there." When in the "Eumenides" of .Eschylus the scene 84 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS shifts from Delphi to the Acropolis, we find Orestes seated as suppliant before Athena's most ancient image. This we may think of, in default of any other temple then existing, as placed in the old Hecatompedon, whose foundations are seen adjoining the Erechtheum on the south. This temple, burned by the Persians, but par- tially restored, may have been in use even after the Parthenon was dedicated in 438 b. c, twenty years after this play was brought out, and perhaps until the com- pletion many years later of the Athena Polias chamber in the Erechtheum. An Athenian could not well con- ceive of his city as safe without this ancient statue ; even the birds in their new Cloud-cuckoo-town must needs debate whether they shall not keep Athena Polias as their protector. No Roman Catholic ever accepted more loyally the es- tablished glory of St. Peter's and the Vatican than the Athenians accepted their citadel. The new gateways were spoken of with undisguised pride. A comic poet, Phoenicides of neighbouring Megara, when ridi- culing Athens, incidentally admits that the Athenians cared as much for their Propylaea as their palates. He says: " Of myrtle berries and their honey, too, they talk. And praise their Propylaea. Last, not least, dried figs. I sailed and forthwith had a taste of all of these, Including Propylaea! Not one single thing Upon this bill of fare could ever match our grouse ! " In one of the anonymous fragments, those riderless Pegasi of Greek literature, another comic poet com- THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 85 bines the Piraeus and the Parthenon in an outburst of civic pride. Nor does he forget the olive groves and radiant air : " Mistress of all, Queen City of Athenians, How fair thy docks, how fair to view thy Parthenon! And thy Piraeus, too, is fair. And then again What other city ever yet had groves like thine? And, as they say, the very sky, thy sky, is fair." And Demosthenes, not deterred by any shrinking from hackneyed allusion, refers expressly to the Pro- pylaea and the Parthenon, when he speaks of ''those things upon which we all naturally pride ourselves." Aristophanes, seeking to recall his fellow-citizens to the ideals of Marathon days, shows us in his " Knights " the Propylaea and the freshly boiled-over and rejuve- nated Demos, the avatar of true Democracy, seated within the unclosing doors of the gateway, dressed in the brilliant garb of a gentleman of the good old Marathon type : " Just such as he used to be when he messed with Aristides and Miltiades," his hair caught up with the golden cicada pin, emblem of Attic autochthony. In the '' Lysistrata" the Athenian men, ignorant that at a future day their Parliament was to be controlled by suffragettes, feel that the limit of the legitimate boycott is over- passed when the women seize and bar- ricade their Acropolis. The old chorus leader says : "In life's long stretch of time, are many things unlooked for Woe is me ! For who had ever thought to hear that 86 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS women whom we keep (a mischief manifest) should get Athena's sacred image in their hands; should seize my citadel; the Propylaea barricade with bolts and bars?" In this play, too, we catch a glimpse of the more inti- mate interweaving of an Athenian maiden's life with the Acropolis ritual. One of this same sans-culotte gar- rison looks about her and reviews her girlhood; how she had been selected among the best-born girls to carry the mysterious burden in the Arrephoria, had ground the meal for the sacred cakes for Athena Arche- getis ; had impersonated a bear in the worship of Arte- mis; and, finally, had gained the coveted privilege of being basket-bearer in the Panathenaic procession. Explaining her personal gratitude to the city, the woman says : " When seven years old an Arrephoros I; And when I was ten I ground the meal for our Lady-on-High ; In my next role then I figured as Bear in Brauronian show, And the saffron wore; Then as full-grown maid quite pretty you know The Basket I bore." The barren precinct of Artemis Brauronia adjoins the south corner of the Propylaea, and a small dedica- tory bear, found somewhere near, now sits in the Acro- polis Museum, brooding in stony silence over by-gone glories at the Brauronia. But the maiden with the saffron robe and all her girl companions have long since disappeared "down the back entry of time." THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 87 If it could be granted us to have restored one portion of the Parthenon or its appurtenances, our choice would probably fall, not upon the famous gold-ivory statue of x\thena, but first upon the pediment sculptures; next, it may be, upon the great continuous frieze. If its shat- tered fragments could be restored, and the slabs now in Paris and London could be recalled from exile and united to those still in place, it would be an easier task for the imagination to reconstruct from these than from the piecemeal references in the literature an abridged idealization of the glory of the actual Panathenaic pro- cession. As it is, from what is left still in place there emerges something far more significant than the details of any cult or festival. The dismounted youth adjust- ing his sandal ; the horse with leisurely nose bent to his fore-leg; the mounted horsemen; the rams and oxen led to the sacrifice, remain, like Keats^s " heifer lowing at the skies," to tell the hurrying generations that once, at least, there has existed, and may exist again, wherever men are strong to feel and know, the harmony between the temporal and the eternal. The Parthenon remained practically intact for cen- turies, lending its inspiration both to the creative Greeks and to the imagination of the Romans, the executors of the Hellenic realty. Even the chryselephantine Athena seems to have held undisturbed possession of her temple for more than eight centuries, from the dedication in 438 b. c. to about 430 A. D., when it dis- appears from Athenian records. 88 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Plutarch, a Greek gentleman of the first Christian century, speaks with enthusiasm of the creations of Pericles. "There blooms upon them a certain fresh- ness untouched by time, as if there dwelt within them an ever-animating spirit, a Hfe that never grows old." In the next century, under the successors of Hadrian, who had inaugurated a new era for Athens, Pausanias, a foreigner, came and saw and was conquered by the wealth of detail on the Acropolis. At the same time, that generous citizen from Marathon, Herodes Atticus, was building against the side of the Acropolis his gorgeous Italian opera-house, while Lucian, the Syrian Atticist, with a higher, if impossible, ideal, was striving to revive the old Platonic grace by quarrying from the Pentelicus of classic literature. When, in the role of a " Truthful James," he is acquitted of blasphemy against true philosophy, he enters the east door of the Parthenon to make thanksgiving to the goddess, or, more specifi- cally, to the winged Victory, six feet high, upon her hand. His devotion takes the form of the prayer ap- pended to three of Euripides's dramas : " O majestical Victory, shelter my life Neath thy covert of wings. Aye, cease not to grant me thy crowning." Thus, like many another later foreigner, he pays the time-honoured tribute to the outward embodiment of the ideal. The charm of the Acropolis changes with the chang- ing light. See it, if you will, at dawn from the opposite S. COLONNADE OF THE PARTHENON THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS 89 hillside, near the "Prison of Socrates," as the sun rises over Hymettus and the Pentelic columns of the Parthenon change from the gray of unsympathetic sil- houettes to the luminous chromes of the irradiated marbles. See it at a later hour and wonder that it does not fade into the light of common day. Or visit it when the sunset light turns to burnished copper the un- adorned hills in the west, beyond Salamis, and on the choir of the encircling mountains the supramundane charm of the violet atmosphere falls like a robe with empurpling shadows in its folds. Go when the night has fallen, and sit in the mysterious darkness, lit only by the marble columns white against the dark outlines of Hymettus, until the full moon looks over the moun- tain's rim, tipping architrave and capital with silver, and then, as it swings free from Hymettus, merging the wreck of the Parthenon in the beauty of the land- scape to which the scarred and yawning sides of the temple seem to open with intent. Presently the whole hill-top with its moraine of prostrate columns and marble fragments is lit up and the pillars of the Propy- laea flower into whiteness. Or finally, bizarre as it may sound, see it when artificially illuminated after the Olympic Games the ruined temple and the serrated contour of the plateau are etched in mid-air by the white light against a gulf of darkness, a veritable city of the skies. The Acropolis, crowned with perfect art, crowded with the loftier phantoms of our elder kin, is a light- 90 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS house for all time. Liberty and Law are its keepers. "Knowledge comes but Wisdom lingers," and this citadel is to every thoughtful man in some sense a sym- bol of his goal. Its stately Propylaea welcomes all. No sincere pilgrim of Truth is an alien in the long Pan- cosmic procession of statesman and scientist, inventor and poet, artisan and artist that winds up the steep ascent to lay an ever freshly woven peplus at the feet of Wisdom. CHAPTER V ATHENS: FROM THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS TO MENANDER "Know that our city has the greatest name amongst all men because she never yields to her misfortunes. And even should we ever be compelled to yield a little for it is nature's way that all things bloom to suffer loss there will abide a memory that we made our dwelling-place to be a city dowered with all things, and the mightiest of all." Thucydides, Oration of Pericles in the Assembly. AFTER the battles of Salamis and Plataea the Athenians brought back their families to Attica. Athens was a scene of desolation : the walls destroyed, the dwelling-houses ruined heaps, the sanctuaries burnt, the statues and other dedicatory offerings broken or carried off by the Persians. But the invaders had not carried off Athena Nike, ^schy- lus puts his own triumphant feeling into the mouth of the Persian messenger who brings the news of the de- feat of Xerxes to Qiieen Atossa : (messenger) " The city of the goddess Pallas gods preserve. (queen) What say'st ? The city ? Athens ? Is it still unsacked ? (messenger) Yes, in its living men its bulwark stands secure." Euripides, also, reechoes this word of ^schylus and denies the sack of Athens. As a matter of fact little 92 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS remained save a few houses used as Persian head- quarters. But the blackened walls of the old temple on the Acropolis still stood in grim protest against the vio- lation of the Virgin's home and as an appeal to the citi- zens to provide her with a fairer abode. The appeal was not disregarded. In the fifth century the city was extended and the Acropolis was adorned with monu- ments of sculpture and architecture. The gods and the public needs came first. Private dwellings in the fifth century were not imposing. The old Marathon fight- ers and their immediate descendants were content with private simplicity. In the fourth century, however, private luxury came uppermost. Demosthenes con- trasts the unequalled splendour of the temples, statues and public buildings of the old time with the modera- tion in private life, which, he says, was so marked "that if any of you perchance knows what sort of a house was the dwelling of Aristides or Miltiades or any of those then eminent, he sees that it was no whit more stately than those next door while to-day upstarts have built themselves private houses more stately than the public buildings." Systematically to discuss the fifth and fourth century references to specific sites buildings public and pri- vate, stoas, temples, theatres, gymnasia, music-halls, courtrooms, sanctuaries and statues, walls and gates, the place of the Assembly, the market-place and the markets, fountains, streets, and wards, would require several volumes. And although it is possible to present ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 93 by inference a reasonably clear picture of the environ- ment and daily life of the citizens, yet the exact identi- fication of the majority of the sites in the remains exist- ing to-day is either impossible or a matter of conjecture. Apart from the Acropolis buildings but few conspicu- ous ruins or memorials of these two great centuries are left for actual inspection. The continuous occupa- tion of Athens by successive generations of changing masters has obliterated or buried (perhaps for future identification) the greater part of the 'city that lay around the base of the Acropolis. It is only surprising that so much remains. It is not meagre except in com- parison with what has disappeared. Around or over all that is left of Classic, Hellenistic, or Roman Athens is the modern city, effacing itself in patches at the behest of the archaeologist, or developing slowly in accordance with its own needs. In this chapter, however, we have to do directly only with the Athens of the fifth or fourth centuries. If the physical remains from this period are fragmentary, the literature, although itself but fragments of the whole, is the great bulk of existing classic Greek literature outside of the epic, the earlier philosophers, and the lyric. And this corpus of literature was in large part native Attic. At the same time the talent from with- out gravitated also to Athens. Herodotus from the Do- rian Halicarnassus not only wrote in Ionic, but adopted the Athenian attitude so largely as to vitiate in part his value as an independent historian. Hippocrates, 94 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the great Ionian physician, visited Athens. The Soph- ists, though coming from the North, the West, or the islands, found in Athens the appropriate environment for a "circuit" faculty of an unarticulated federal uni- versity. Prose, seasoned and adorned, became hence- forth an asset of the Athenian intellect and was made ready for the use of historian, orator, and philosopher. Athens, mistress of the seas, and herself producer of art and literature, needed no protective tariff against intellectual imports. This very wealth of fifth and fourth century litera- ture imposes limitations, more rigid than our uncer- tainty about this, that, or the other site, upon the effort to interpret the external Athens from the more endur- ing monuments of her thinkers. Nor is it true that the nexus between Athens and her literature may be made clear only by definite localization. We do not wish the conditions reversed. Although, for example, the court- rooms and the Lyceum have disappeared, we may, as we wander about Athens to-day, come much nearer the Greeks of the classic age than if, while the buildings had remained intact, the words of the orators and of the great Peripatetic could no longer reach our ears. The so-called "Theseum," largely perfect as it is and invaluable for architectural and artistic suggestion, leaves us cold in the lack of literary association as com- pared with the Propylaea where many an old-time Athenian rubs elbows with us as we pass in and out between its stately columns. But in a wider sense we ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 95 may "localize," here on this Attic plain around the Acropolis and here under this Attic sky, the poetry and prose of the fifth and fourth centuries. A brief summary of this poetry and prose will per- haps suggest more clearly the larger pattern from which, almost arbitrarily, selections may be made. In the fifth century, lyric was brought to its perfec- tion by singers not of Athens. But Ceos, the birthplace of two of them, was moored close to Attica. Simonides, the poet-laureate of the Persian wars, was much in Athens, and his nephew Bacchylides took the Attic Theseus for the theme of two of his extant poems, wrote one of his epinician odes in honour of an Athen- ian victor, arid composed another poem expressly in laudation of Athens. Pindar himself studied in Athens, and afterwards, to his own townspeople's disgust, praised her in no grudging terms. The Athenian drama itself, in the chorals of tragedy and of Aristophanes, contributed much of the greatest lyric extant in Greek literature. Tragedy in the fifth century grew from infancy to maturity at Athens. When ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had completed their work it had received its final form for the Greeks, and was so transmitted to the great actors and the lesser playwrights of the fourth century. Comedy likewise culminated with Aristophanes in the fifth century. More flexible than tragedy, however, it could humour successfully the changing moods of 96 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the body politic and retain its vigour through the whole of the fourth century. Even under Macedon, Menan- der in the New Comedy could recast much that Euripi- des had tried, with varying success, to embody within the canonized limits of orthodox tragedy. History was the gift of the fifth century. Herodotus after the Persian wars bridged with his epic prose the iEgean, and we reach terra firma in Thucydides's his- tory in the latter part of the century. In the first part of the fourth century we have Xenophon, the historian, biographer, essay- writer, and historical novelist. These were precursors of a line of historians appearing spo- radically even down through Byzantine times. Oratory, an inalienable inheritance of the Hellene even before Athena coached the crafty Odysseus, re- ceived at Athens a certain finality of form, or forms, that has imposed its influence upon the occidental, whether Roman or Englishman, lawyer or epideictic speaker. The unwritten word of statesmen Uke Peri- cles, fusing the persuasion of the politician with the keener rationalism of Anaxagoras and the raucous, but not wholly unpatriotic, opportunism of dema- gogues like Cleon or Hyperbolus, was paired with the more decently draped pragmatism of the Sophists, and resulted in the selected group of the "ten" orators, of the fifth and fourth centuries. There was the some- what archaic Antiphon, the dignified criminal lawyer; Andocides, who brought his rough and ready style to bear upon burning questions of contemporary politics; ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 97 Lysias, the son of an alien, but truly Attic, the younger friend of Socrates, the lucid narrator, the relentless prosecutor; Isaeus, the capable testamentary barrister; Isocrates, who both saw the building of the Erechtheum and outlived the batde of Chaeronea, and whose over- finished oratory transmitted the florid adornment of Gorgias to the schools in which Cicero was trained; Demosthenes, greatest of all, whether in private suits or in his arraignment of public foes, whose terrorizing cleverness was quick to strike or counter like the flash- ing arms of the athlete impeded with no ounce of florid superfluity; ^schines, his great antagonist; Lycurgus; Hyperides; and Dinarchus. Philosophy as a native Attic product matured last of all. Ionia had produced the great "physical" philo- sophers, and Pythagoras had gone in the sixth century to Italy ; but in the first half of the fifth century the so- called "colonial" philosophers, like the foreign Soph- ists, influenced Athenian thought some of them by personal visits. They came from the East and from the West. Parmenides came from Italy, and his influence was felt by Socrates and transmitted to Plato and Aristotle. The aristocratic Empedocles came on a visit from Sicily. Anaxagoras from Ionia settled at Athens in his youth. His "chaos-controlling mind" the primal force of reason impregnated the statesman- ship of Pericles and engendered the rationalism of Euripides. The Athenians might banish the philoso- pher, but his ^' primal force of reason " was already busy 98 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS in rearranging the chaos of traditional beliefs. It emerges clearly in Plato as intelligent Mind. Socrates, though not himself a writer, is the central figure of philosophic literature. Pre-Socratic thought focussed in him as in a burning-glass. From him shoot out the divergent rays of the Academics and Peripatetics, the Cynics and the precursors of the Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics. No one of his disciples reproduced his views with any exactness, but he stimulated self-exami- nation and independent thought. Each took from him what he could or would, and developed differing or mutually exclusive schools. Like the rivers of Greece, coursing for a time through the underground "kata- vothras," pre-Socratic speculative thought on physics and metaphysics flowed on beneath the open devotion of Socrates to ethical questions, and reappears in his successors. Plato in the fourth century constituted himself the ethical and philosophic executor of Socrates. Loyalty and a wide vision alike combined to perpetuate his master's name in the intellectual output of the great Platonic dialogues. It has been the work of centuries to disentangle the real views of this sleeping partner from those of Plato's own constructive intellect, which built, pulled down, and reared anew the dwelling-places for the minds of many men in many generations. Aristotle, like Anaxagoras, came as an alien and settled in Athens in his youth. After the death of his master, Plato, he left Athens, travelled, and became the ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 99 tutor of Alexander. After the accession of his royal pupil to the throne, he established at Athens in the Lyceum a rival school to the Academy. Antisthenes, half Athenian, half Thracian, the faith- ful follower of Socrates, had before this established the Cynic school in another gymnasium, the Cynosarges, where the victors fresh from Marathon had encamped. Socrates, the barefoot friar, the new avatar of Heracles, was his patron saint. Later in the century Zeno the Stoic set up his eclectic school in the Painted Porch of the Agora, and Epicurus, of an Attic father though born at Samos, established his school in his own Gar- dens near the Dipylon. Theophrastus, the friend of Epicurus and of Menan- der, gives us in his " Characters, '^ at the close of this period, vivid portraits of Athenian life which supple- ment the fragments of Menander and the other writ- ers of the New Comedy, and also, as pupil and succes- sor of Aristotle, carried on his master's teachings in the Lyceum. Thus one pupil busied himself in transmit- ting through his intellectual heirs the esoteric thought of his master, while Alexander, another pupil, had con- structed on lines that paralleled the intellectual imperi- alism of his teacher a material organon of Empire (ut- terly at variance with his master's conception of the ideal state) that no successor could wield alone until Rome reached forth and grasped it in her iron hand. But to understand at all the meaning of the litera- ture, it is also necessary to remind ourselves of some of loo GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the more striking features of the history of these two centuries. They are crowded with conspicuous figures and with events significant to the philosophic student of political institutions. In general the fifth century exhibits the rise and downfall of the imperialistic policy, the fourth century the rehabilitation of a chastened democracy, with spo- radic echoes of a federalizing ideal. But no one policy can be predicated of the fifth century. It varied with the great leaders, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, and others the old in conflict with the new ; conservative, aristocratic democracy against imperialism; democracy against oligarchy; ochlocracy against democracy. When the Persian peril was thrust back, the irrepressi- ble conflict between Sparta and Athens emerged. The struggle for the hegemony between them, or between varying combinations of the Greek states, was to con- tinue at intervals until the time when all the old powers of Greece were to succumb to Macedon. Themistocles, the hero of Salamis, was ostracized from Athens within eight years of the great sea-fight, but his spirit still animated his countrymen, and his policies were afterwards revived or expanded. His rival Aristides guided affairs at home, and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, sailed with the conquering Athenian navy. His victory at Eurymedon in 468 b. c. made it possible to fortify Athens and Piraeus and to merge the Confederacy of Delos in the Athenian Empire. In seven years more Cimon in turn was ostracized, but at ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS loi the end of another seven years the rich treasure of Delos could be transferred to Athens and the empire formally established. It was to last until the disaster at ^gospotami, in 405 b. C. Pericles, after successfully competing with the reactionary patriotism of statesmen like Thucydides, obtained, at the ostracism of the latter in 442 B. c, the controlling power at Athens, which he guided by his regal persuasion for the next fifteen years. The imperialism of Pericles realized the policy of Themistocles on the seas, reaped the harvest of the great Cimon's victories, and transmuted the treasure of Delos into the sinews of war and the monuments of the glorified Acropolis. He reshaped the civic life, even curtailing the sacred powers of the Areopagus, and by popular changes in the complexion of Council, Assembly, and Law Courts, prepared the way for the uneven rule of demagogues after his own strong hand should be withdrawn. He had great odds to contend with. After the renewal of the Peloponnesian wars in 431 B. c, with the succession of victories and reverses, the Great Plague came to assert an unlooked-for he- gemony. On the suffering and disasters of the city fol- lowed the trial and condemnation of Pericles himself. He was indeed reinstated as indispensable, but his death in the following year left Athens at the mercy of the demagogues with Alcibiades to follow. The Sicilian expedition, the crowning venture of imperialism, issued as was to be expected with no real successor of Peri- cles to direct it in the disaster of 413 b. c, when the 102 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS brave Syracusans, with the willing help of Sparta, dis- sipated the Athenian dream of vast colonial expansion. The next ten years was for Athens a losing struggle at home and abroad. The short-lived oligarchy of the Four Hundred in 411 b. c, the strenuous but vain ef- forts of Theramenes to reconcile oligarchy and democ- racy, the civic strife and war with the powerful Lysan- der, the crushing defeat at iEgospotami, the interven- tion of Sparta, the brief but terrible regime of the Thirty Tyrants, completed, in 404 b. c, the final overthrow of imperial Athens. But Sparta, with politic generosity, while doing away with the empire, left Athens free to establish a more stable democracy that was to last through the greater part of the fourth century. Oli- garchy could no more find a hearing, and, although Hellenic federations were eloquently advocated by the orators and actually formed, despotic empire was no longer feasible for the Athenians. Their new leader, Conon, however, the foe of Sparta, could succeed after Lysander's death in making Athens independent and strong. We come upon his work now and again in Athens and in Piraeus, and in the renascent civic life the intellectual life went on with new vigour. The im- perial dream finally came true, but from the outside. The Macedonian, though sneered at as barbarian by De- mosthenes, confirmed at the Olympic games the validity of his Hellenic claim that he had asserted at Chaeronea. The fitful struggle against the sway of Macedon only resulted, under a successor less philhellenic than PhiHp, ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 103 in the forced suicide of the great Demosthenes and the execution of Hypereides, whose funeral oration, pro- nounced over the dead heroes of the "lost cause," car- ries us beyond the great speech of Pericles pro- nounced on a similar but less hopeless occasion back to the heroes of Marathon and Salamis. Speaking of the dead leader Leosthenes, he says: "In the dark under-world suffer us to ask who are they that will stretch forth a right hand to the captain of our dead ? . . . There, I deem, will be Miltiades and Themisto- cles, and those others who made Hellas free, to the credit of their city, to the glory of their names." * We sit to-day beneath a Greek sky on the rising tiers of the modem centuries, and the drama of Athenian life is reproduced before our eyes. The greater pro- tagonists of literature and Ufe play out their r61es. Many another actor plays his less prominent but es- sential part. The "mutes" contribute. The chorus of democracy is seldom absent from the scene. The binoculars of modern historians penetrate behind paint and mask and robe, and the squalor of the real actor is at times laid bare. We may choose, however, to ignore minutiae and to give ourselves up to the more satisfying perspective of the literature, and to let sweep before us the bright procession of form and colour, the song and saga, the Dionysiac revel and tragic mimicry that fill out the real drama of life. * Translated by Jebb, Attic Orators. 104 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS iEschylus connects the old and the new Athens. Be- fore Marathon he produced his first play; in the inter- val before Salamis he gained a first prize; and he brought out his greatest dramas in the time of the Renascence, of which he was a great part. The bare hill of the Areopagus claims attention as we descend from the Propylaea. It rises as a physical barrier between the deserted site of the old city of The- seus and that of Classic or of Modern Athens. With the sanctity attaching to the time-honoured prerogatives of its venerable court it was also a moral barrier between the old and the new in the days when Pericles was reshaping the civic life. And ^schylus in his *' Eumeni- des/' the third play of his great trilogy, strove as best he could to reconcile old traditions with the inevitable readjustment to the life of imperial Athens. He spoke with the authority of a Hebrew prophet. Whatever else was changed, blood- guiltiness must be judged. Only within the mysterious gloom of the cleft beneath the Areopagus could the dread and ancient Furies, spawn of Night, be transformed into willing coadjutors of the goddess of Wisdom. The Furies in hot haste have pursued from Delphi Orestes, the mother-murderer. Confidently anticipat- ing the verdict, they cry : " Over the victim thus we chaunt, A frenzy and madness his mind to daunt, A hymn of the Furies to fetter the mind, A withering blight to human kind." ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 105 The god Apollo himself appears for the defendant, and when the decision goes against the Furies by Athena's casting vote in the Areopagus Court, their bitterness against the "new" gods shoots forth like the serpents uncoiHng in their hair : " Ah upstart gods and parvenu ! My ancient laws your hoof-beats spurn. Ye wrested them from out my hand, Alas for you ! I, though dishonoured and distressed, Upon this land The grievous weight of my wrath shall turn And from my breast Shoot venom on venom, woe for woe. Drop upon drop of a poison flow For Earth unbearable, unblest." Athena pacifies the Furies by promising them a local sanctuary and the reverence of the citizens for all time. The old order is reconciled with the new, and the Furies, now the Eumenides the Propitious Ones are escorted to their dwelling in the cleft of the Are- opagus by Athena's own attendants, boys, maidens, and matrons, with ceremonious honour equal to the Panathenaic procession : " Fare ye on to your home in your emulous might With our loyal attendance, ye children of Night. (O my countrymen, bless them and praise them!) " In the caverns of eld, in the womb of the Earth With the offerings of honour befitting your worth. (O my demesmen, now bless them and praise them!) " Nay, then, righteous and gracious in mind to our land, Come, come, O ye Dread Ones, take joy in our band. (Cry aloud now ! Exult in your singing !) io6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " As the torches attend, let libations be poured, Thus the all-seeing Zeus and the Moirae as ward To the people of Pallas their presence afford. (Cry aloud now ! Exult in your singing !) " The great mass broken off from the east end of the Areopagus rock has partially blocked the cleft into which the chorus conducts home the Dread Goddesses. As the procession, chanting its hymn, sweeps around the shoulder of the hill, the faded picture of ancient Athens regains its outlines as if under some powerful reagent. Wine-press and fountain, precincts and tem- ples, rise again from their ruins; the throbbing life of the eager citizens reappears. But the gaily-dressed people have hushed jest and carping under the sense of awe evoked by ^schylus. The Athenians were then, as St. Paul on this same Areopagus called them long afterwards, "very scrupulous," and it was no unworthy superstition that made it imperative to harmonize the cruder conceptions of the immutable laws of Retribu- tion with the new and expansive wisdom of Athena. Swinburne, with keen insight into the universal appli- cation of the great drama, brings the "shadows of our deeds" under wisdom's searching but not unkindly light: " Light whose law bids home those childless children of eternal night, Soothed and reconciled and mastered and transmuted in men's sight Who behold their own souls, clothed with darkness once, now clothed with light." The visitor who takes his stand to-day immediately in front of the south side of the Areopagus is com- ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 107 pletely sequestered from the modern city. Here the Acropolis and the Areopagus rock make practically a continuous barrier to the close-built streets that on the northern side come crowding up their slopes. He is encircled with hills, and this ancient quarter of the city of Theseus lies waste and silent around him. The ground is harrowed and scarred by the spade of the archaeologist. Only the foundations of sanctuaries and fountains, houses and cisterns, may be distinguished. The rock-chambers opposite, called by courtesy the "Prison of Socrates," will, however, recall us to classic Athens. While waiting for the return of the mission-ship from Delos to bring the day of execution, Crito and the rest listened to Socrates's demonstrations of immortality. Plato sent his reason out as far into the invisible as reason can go. In the " Phaedo," after his half-playful periegesis of the underworld, Socrates is made to say: "Whosoever seem to have excelled in holy living, these are they who are set free and released^ from these earthly places as from prisons and fare upward to that pure habitation and make their dwell- ing-place in yonder land. . . . Therefore we must do our utmost to gain in life a share in virtue and wisdom. For the prize is noble and the hope is great!" or, as he adds presently, "The risk is fair." And Socrates, like Pindar before him, finds the crowning joy of a blessed immortality neither in the unlaborious sunlit life by night and day, nor in the ocean breezes, nor in the flowers of gold blooming on trees of splendour, but in io8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the company of the great and noble dead with whom to Hve "'twere more of happiness than tongue can tell." On the Pnyx hill we may recall the Athenian As- sembly, and may turn in fancy the voluminous pages of Congressional Records filled with patriotism and jealousy; we listen to Pericles and his persuasive schemes for imperial expansion; or to Socrates, presi- dent for the day, refusing, amidst the clamours of demos and demagogues, to put to vote the illegal pro- position to condemn in a body the ten generals ; or to Demosthenes pleading, denouncing, planning for the welfare of the city. Or in the half-light before dawn we may see the suffragettes of Aristophanes's " Eccle- siazusae" filing up the hill. More wily than their mod- ern sisters, they have disguised themselves with beards and have dressed in the shoes and cloaks distrained from their husbands, imprisoned at home by naked necessity. With no man to oppose, the women quickly l;ransfer the whole control of the State to themselves, and institute reforms that would put to shame the most radical of modern socialists. A slave, in the *' Wasps" of Aristophanes, once had a dream by no means respectful to the Athenian legislature. Some sheep, with cloaks and staves, sat huddled together like just so many Athenians on the seats of the Pnyx, hold- ing an Assembly. To-day the hill is left lonely, and the wandering goats, with their solemn faces and long beards, might renew the sittings unmolested. ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 109 In the face of the hill fronting towards the Acro- polis, the rock-chamber of the Callirrhoe spring, with its sloping entrance and the parapet within, has been suggested as the original of the famous cave in Plato's "Republic." The Vari Cave, on the south side of Hymettus, might have made less of a strain, as has been urged, upon Plato's imagination. However faint the resemblance of the Callirrhoe cave to Plato's complex setting, it is enough to emphasize the vitality of this realistic figure, which has become typical, in mod- ern poetry and prose, of the denizens of earth watching and naming the shadows thrown by the fire-light upon the cave's wall, unable by reason of fetters to look around at the objects moving behind them, much less to rise and climb the long ascent to the brighter light above. The innocent-looking ravine west of the Hill of the Nymphs is identified with the Barathrum. In antiquity its fame had penetrated to the underworld, where the innkeeper's maid threatened to pitch the Pseudo- Heracles "into the Barathrum." And Herodotus's apocryphal story is at least hen trovato. He relates that, when the ambassadors of Darius came asking tokens of submission from the Greeks: "Some [the Athenians] took the messengers and threw them into the Barathrum, others [the Spartans] into a well, and bade them take earth and water from there to their King." Miltiades, the hero of Marathon, if we are to believe the allusion in the " Gorgias," barely no GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS escaped with a fine and banishment instead of the criminal's end in this same pit. If even the skeleton of the Athenian Market-place could be resurrected, like that of the Roman Forum, many scores of allusions would take on a local habi- tation. The Agora was the centre of life. In classic times it probably lay in the depression west of the **Theseum" hill, and extended, from the slopes of the Areopagus, northward about to the modern Hadrian street. Pindar, with no idle flattery, spoke of the '' fair- famed Agora, in sacred Athens, inlaid with cunning workmanship." Sculptor, painter, and architect gave of their best. The Prytaneum, close to, or in the Agora, was the city's fireside. Distinguished foreigners and citizens here and in the Tholus enjoyed, temporarily or for life, the public hospitality. Socrates ironically suggests to his judges that the sentence really fitting his case would be: ** Maintenance in the Prytaneum, much more so indeed than if any one of you has come off victor at Olympia with a race horse, a pair, or a four- horse team." Plutarch relates that Aristides, far from enriching himself from the public purse, left not even enough for his funeral expenses, and that the Athenians ''married off his daughters from the Pry- taneum at the public cost voting a dowry of three thousand drachmas to each." In the stoas that faced upon the Agora the citizens heard and discussed many a new thing, from the days when the great painting of the battle of Marathon was fresh in the Painted Porch, ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS in to the time when the Stoics appropriated this colon- nade. In time of war a man would look fearfully at the bulletin board near by, to see if his name was posted for military duty ; or in time of truce would feel that yonder beautiful group of Peace with the child Wealth best reproduced to the eyes the blessings so often ab- sent during the wearisome Peloponnesian wars, blessings which Bacchylides, the admiring neighbour of Athens, had celebrated : " And now for mortals Peace, the mighty mother, giveth birth To Wealth and bears culled flowers of honey'd minstrelsy. She makes on sculptured altars of the gods to blaze Thigh pieces, in the yellow flame, of bullocks and of thick-fleeced lambs. And lets the youths give thought to athletes' toil and flutes and revelry. Now in the steel-bound hand-loops of the shield Are stretched the dusk -red spiders' woven tapestries; The barbed spears, the two-edged swords are cankered o'er; The trumpet's brazen blare is still." To be near the Agora was a desideratum. The crip- ple, in Lysias's oration, asking the Senate to continue his pension, refers to the fact that every one in Athens has his favourite lounging place : " One frequents the perfume-seller's, another the barber's, another the cobbler's ; and as a rule the most of them lounge into the shops set up nearest the Agora, and the very fewest resort to those most remote from it." Socrates, too, seeking his audience where the crowds gravitated, was often heard talking *'in the Market-place near the bankers' tables." Aristophanes, together with the other 112 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS comic writers, and Lysias and Theophrastus tell not only of other resorts like the fuller's shop, the shield- and-spear-maker's but of many special sub-markets. Thus there were by the Agora the "Pottery" and the "Vegetable" Market, and, somewhere near, the "Green-cheese," the "Garlic," the "Wine," the "Oil," the "Fish" markets. Of the Bird-market we hear in some detail in Aristophanes, the live pigeons in cages, strings of ortolans, thrushes abnormally inflated, and blackbirds with " feathers shamefully inserted in their nostrils"! In time of war the country folk thronged into town to escape the armies that were devastat- ing Attica. In times of peace, too, they came trooping in on the first of the month, and to the oft-recurring festivals. Menander, with his blended Stoicism and Epicureanism, looks around in the crowded Agora and compares human life to a festival or market- fair : "That man, O Parmeno, I count most fortunate Who quickly whence he came returns, when he, unvexed, Has looked on these majestic sights the common sun, Water and clouds, the stars and fire. If thou shalt live An hundred years, or if a very few, thou 'It always see These same sights present, grander ones thou 'It ne'er behold. So reckon thou this time I'm speaking of as though Some market-fair or trip to town, where one may see The crowd, the market, dice and loungers' haunts; Then, if thou'rt first unto thy lodgings, with more gold Thou 'It go upon thy travels and shalt pick no brawl; While he that tarries longer, worn, his money gone, Grows old and wretched, and forever knows some lack, A wandering vagrant finding enemies and plots. And gains no death that's easy, staying out his time." ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 113 A broad avenue, flanked with porticoes, ran from the Market-place northwest to the Dipylon gate. This double gateway, impressive even from the remains of its foundations, quickens the memory to recall the generations of citizens and foreigners that have passed this way. Along the roads from Colonus and the Acad- emy and the Sacred Way from Eleusis, converging out- side the gates, will come a motley throng of Athenian ghosts, gay or scurrilous, militant or philosophic, to blot out the consciousness of the modern city. Outside the Dipylon, in the " Outer Cerameicus," is "the Street of the Tombs." Some of the beautiful monuments are still in situ to stimulate a detailed study of the rich material in the National Museum. It was here that the Athenians usually buried their dead. The roll-call of great names stirs the imagination here as in West- minster Abbey. This is no exclusive privilege of one place or people. But there is often an appropriate ge- nius loci. As one lingers along the Appian Way, for ex- ample, deciphering inscriptions and pausing before the weather-beaten faces on the monuments, there is a lurk- ing pessimism and an insidious melancholy that flow in from the beauty of the Roman Campagna. Here, however, in this proasHon of Athens, this Suburb of the Dead, the memorials still in place, with their un- pretentious sincerity, give rather a sensation of beauty and hope in perpetuating scenes from actual Ufe. Even a scene of parting has less of hopeless finality. The warrior on his horse, the woman with her jewel- 114 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS box, suggests life and love, not death and lamentation. Along yonder road from Eleusis came many an initiate fresh from the Mysteries, and some may well have been ready to listen with hope to Pindar's " trumpet-blast for immortality": " For them the night all through, In that broad realm below, The splendour of the sun spreads endless light; 'Mid rosy meadows bright, Their city of the tombs with incense-trees. And golden chalices Of flowers, and fruitage fair, Scenting the breezy air. Is laden. There with horses and with play. With games and lyres, they while the hours away." * Whether or no we choose to identify with Charon the old man in the boat, represented on one of the stelae still standing, Death and Life here confront each other. iEschylus, in his early allusion to Charon's boat, draws the contrast by an antithesis of the black sails of the ship of Theseus to the god of Light, and speaks of the '* rowing" of the mourners' arms causing "that dark-sailed mission-ship, upon whose deck Apollo treads not and the sunlight falls not, through Acheron to pass unto that shore unseen where all must lodging find." And Euripides prepares his audience for the pathetic departure of Alcestis to the underworld by a sharp dia- logue between Apollo and Death, who is at once as old and as lusty as Death in the Morality plays. * Translated by J. A. Symonds. STREET OF THE TOMBS Monument of Hegeso ATHENS AFTER SALAMIS 115 After the battle of Chaeronea Philip sent back the ashes of the dead Athenians, and Demosthenes counted it the highest honour to deliver their funeral oration. But the noblest association with this spot is the great oration of Pericles, who was chosen in the course of the Peloponnesian War to pronounce the public eulogy over the dead warriors. These were borne along in cypress chests, with one empty litter to represent those whose bodies had not been recovered. The long speech is the incarnation of the Athenian spirit and of Peri- cles's own undaunted policy. Thucydides represents him as saying : "They received praise that grows not old and a most illustrious tomb ; not that in which they here are laid but wherever, as occasion arises, there remaineth the ever-living glory of their word and work. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men, and not only in their own land does an inscription upon columns tell of it, but in other lands an unwritten memory dwells within the mind of all." The "Cerameicus" was soon to receive Pericles. The great plague carried off the orator's sons, and, overcome by grief and the shipwreck of his plans, he died himself in the next year. Thucydides describes the plague with appalling vig- our. The misery and danger were aggravated by the congestion of the country folk crowding in to escape the Peloponnesian invaders. Bivouacked in stifling "shacks" during the hot summer, they died uncared- ii6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS for and lay where they fell, dying upon one another, at home, in the streets, or by the fountains where they had tried in vain to quench their fever. In the "(Edipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles the plague at Thebes is pictured in terms certainly reminiscent, at least here and there, of what must have been the most awful memory of the poet's life. The blight that has fallen alike on the land and on its inhabitants is described by the Chorus : "Nay, for no longer the glorious Earth Yieldeth her young; nor by ever a birth Of a child do our women change sorrow to mirth. You may see how they're flocking like birds of unrest Or swifter than fire's unquenchable quest, Afar to the shore of the God in the West. " They are unnumbered, dead and dying. The city's children, unpitied they're lying, With no one to mourn them, outstretched on the ground, Death and pestilence spreading around." Thucydides relates, too, that the Athenians discussed an ancient oracle which told how a " Dorian war will befall and a pestilence come as companion"; and that in the midst of their despair they could debate whether the oracle said "pestilence" (Xqi/aos) or "famine" (Ax/Aos), either word being appropriate enough. History repeats itself. At Athens in 1906, during a virulent outbreak of smallpox, with the pest-houses overflowing, the newspapers calmly turned to the really vital ques- tion of the proper Greek word for the disease whether it should be evloyia (cvAoyta), or effloyi^ (u guessing the riddle of the Sphinx and thus destroying her. He had been acclaimed as king in place of Laius, slain by an unknown hand, and had married locasta, Laius's queen. Now he promises to save his people from the pestilence by obeying the Delphic command that the slayer of Laius shall be found and exiled. He discovers that he is the murderer, and, in a crescendo of horror, that he is the son both of the man he murdered and of his own wife. In spite of their effort to kill him in his infancy, he has reappeared, the innocent agent of their destruction, as the irrefutable god of prophecy had foretold. locasta hangs herself. CEdipus's chil- dren face a world that will remember against them the sin of their father. He puts out his eyes, and goes into THEBES AND BOEOTIA 283 voluntary exile, defeated by fate, a broken-hearted fugitive, not yet conscious that in the surrender of his will to God he may atone and be at peace. Borne from afar upon the quiet air of to-day we may hear ghostly echoes of the songs of the people that watched him. He was an example of the emptiness of life : " O generations of mankind, How all your life I ever find "With Naught and Nothingness aligned! For who, what man the wide world o'er, Of happiness e'er gaineth more Than only this to have his own He dreams, and as he dreams 't is gone. Thy fate, thine, CEdipus, beholding, O luckless one, thy wretched fate. And from it my opinion moulding Naught mortal I congratulate." And he also exemplified the truth of Solon's aphorism that no one should be congratulated before the end : " Ye who dwell in Thebes our city, look, behold this CEdipus, He who solved the fam'd enigma, and did prove himself the best. Now he's come to what an ocean of calamity and dread! Well it were then, being mortal, to that last and awful day That we onward turn our vision and count no one fortunate Till the race course he has finished and has reached life's goal unscathed." In spite of the repentance of (Edipus, the ancient curse fell upon his children, and their dooms also be- came the subjects of dramas. ^Eschylus, in the " Seven against Thebes," deals with the story of Eteocles and Polyneices, whose own folly was the immediate cause of their ruin. They had agreed to rule Thebes alter- nately, but Eteocles once in possession refused to ab- 284 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS dicate. Polyneices raises in Argos an army led by Adrastus, with which he advances against his country. Civil war follows, and the brothers kill each other. This story gave ^schylus two dramatic opportunities peculiarly suited to his genius. One was the handling of the theme of Nemesis, not with grave calm like Sophocles, but with gigantic vigour, with rough-hewn figures of triple-crested waves of evil, harvests of blood, chilling frosts of fear, with a penetrating insistence upon the "black and full-grown curse" which shadows city and citizens. Within its gloom Eteocles fights only with the ardour of despair : " Since eagerly God urgeth this affair, draw lot, Cocytus draw and, wind as'tern, sail down his wave! Apollo hateth all the race of Labdacus." To relieve this gloom ^Eschylus uses his other dramatic opportunity, that of describing with Homeric eloquence the seven Argive warriors stationed at the seven gates and the Theban defenders sent to meet them. In the full-mouthed trimeters of the messenger who has seen the enemy, and of Eteocles who is undaunted by his report, echo stirringly the epic clash of arms, neigh- ing of steeds, and war-cries of men. Shields of many devices and crested helmets bedeck the heroes. Cour- age adorns them all, from Amphiaraus, who foresees disaster, to Parthenopaeus, the Arcadian metic, repay- ing to Argos the cost of his nurture : " Now by his spear he swears which he is confident To reverence above the god or his own eyes THEBES AND BCEOTIA 285 The town of the Cadmeans he will surely sack In spite of Zeus. Thus cries aloud this fair-faced shoot Of mother mountain-bred, a man though boy in years. His downy beard is just appearing on his cheeks, As youth's prime makes it grow, the thick hair cropping out, But he with spirit fierce, no maiden's namesake this, And terrible bright eye, comes up to take his post. Nor yet without a vaunt stands he beside the gate. For on his bronze-wrought shield, his body's circled screen. Our city's shame he wields, the raw flesh rav'ning Sphinx, Fast riveted with bolts, her body burnish'd-bright Repousse work, and under in her grasp she bears A man Cadmean, that upon this warrior Most thickly fly the bolts. 'T is likely, now he's come. He'll not be retail-dealer in the trade of war, Nor will he bring discredit on his long road's track." Euripides used the same story in his *'Tyrian Wo- men," but openly scorned the Homeric note of ^Eschy- lus. With the enemy at the gates there is no time to describe the warriors, and the emphasis is shifted from the horror of the curse to the burden on locasta's heart. Still living, she seeks to reconcile her sons, and at last kills herself on their dead bodies. Polyneices is not only his country's enemy but a homesick man whose eyes grow wet when he sees the familiar altars and Dirce and the old gymnasium, and who begs his mo- ther just before he dies to bury him in Thebes. Anti- gone is brave enough to support her mother, comfort her father, and promise to bury her brother, but so tenderly yoimg that an old servant helps her up a cedam stairway to the palace roof that she may see the Argive army in the plain. Another vision of brave 286 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS youth is given in the character of Menceceus, last virgin descendant of the Sown Men. Informed by Tiresias that by a voluntary death he can save Thebes, he evades his father and makes one of the patriotic speeches that never failed to thrill an Athenian audience in the Diony- siac theatre : " Now I will go and, standing on the rampart's heights Over the deep dark dragon-pen, the very spot The seer described minutely, I myself will slay And liberate my country." The fame of Antigone was secured by Sophocles. Thebes seems to have been always noted for the beauty of its women, from Semele, the bride 6f Zeus, to the tall yellow-haired ladies admired by Dicaearchus, and iEschylus suggests the loveliness of Antigone as Euripi- des suggests her youthfulness. But through Sophocles we know her unadorned as the embodiment of loyalty and courage. On the sunny morning that followed the defeat of the Argives, when the eye of golden day had at last arisen over Directs stream, she buried her brother and defied Creon's edict, which forbade burial to an enemy of the country, in a noble speech of justifi- cation : " Not Zeus hath published this decree, not Zeus for me, Neither hath Justice, house-mate with the gods below. Laws like to this defined for men. Nor did I think Within these edicts, these of thine, such strength inhered That, being a mere mortal, thou could'st override Th' unwritten and unfailing statutes of the gods. For not of yesterday nor of to-day their life, But ever from all time. None knows their origin." THEBES AND B(EOTIA 287 The Athenian reverence for Law made natural an even more magnificent reiteration of this idea in the " CEdipus Tyrannus :" "Be mine the lot to win pure reverence in every word and work for which the Laws are set on high, in Heaven's ether bom as children of Olympus, him alone; no mortal nature among men gave birth to them nor ever shall oblivion luir them to slumber. Great is God within them and he grows not old." Beneath a neighbouring hill Antigone was walled up in one of the rock-cut caverns that abound in Greece. Her lover Haemon, Creon's son, kills himself within the door. His mother takes her life, and Creon is left to a late and impotent knowledge of the truth. Before the end the chorus of Theban girls think of Antigone's betrothal and in a famous hymn to Love flash brief fire upon the lonely moral heights of the play. But sud- denly the song dissolves into a lamentation which still haunts the ear in Thebes : '* But already I tcx) past all bounds of the law Am swept onward myself as I look on this sight, And the fount of my tears I no longer can check, When Antigone here I behold as she fares To that chamber where all shall be resting." In historic Thebes heroism had lost its lustre. When Greece was tested, the result in this city is revealed in the laconic words of Herodotus, that among the Greeks who sent earth and water to Xerxes were the Thebans and the other Boeotians, except the Plataeans and the 288 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Thespians. " The grace of the olden time is fallen upon sleep," Pindar complained after recounting the "noble deeds" of the heroic age. His own sympathy with the national cause is clearly seen in another ode written after the expulsion of the Persians: "Some god has turned aside the stone of Tantalus from overhead, a load that Hellas might not brook." Later, when it was regarded as a political asset to have opposed the Persians, the Thebans defended their failure on the ground that they had had neither con- ^ stitutional government nor popular freedom. A cabal of selfish nobles had forced them into an action abhor- rent to themselves. Certainly it is true that Thebes was always aristocratic rather than democratic. And it is worth noting that Pindar in his art was the true son of such a city. The great festivals of Greece were the immediate inspiration of his extant odes, while his life in Athens and his journeys to Sicily and to the eastern islands furnished him with much poetic material. But as far as. the "soaring eagle" is to be identified with a birthplace, we may ascribe to his aristocratic origin and early environment his persistent selection of the things that were distinguished and splendid. At the time of the Peloponnesian War Thebes ap- pears as the bitter opponent of Athens. But later the shifting politics of the time brought about an alliance between these two ancient enemies and set Thebes against Sparta. Her position, however, was one of difficulty and humiliation, buffeted about as she was THEBES AND B(EOTIA 289 between the greater powers. Finally, in the first quarter of the fourth century, under the influence of one man, Thebes entered upon a period of power and distinction. Brief as it was, it served to awaken the sleeping glory of the old days and to make men once more mindful of Thebes of the golden shield. Epaminondas inspired a young Boeotian party, roused the Theban people, opposed Sparta and defeated her by new strategic skill at Leuctra in 371 b. c, renewed the ancient confeder- acy of Boeotian towns, won the support of neighbouring states and the sympathy of Delphi, and finally marched into the Peloponnesus to oppose the unrighteous de- signs of Sparta. At the battle of Mantinea in Arcadia he lost his life, before his work for Thebes and Hellas was finished. It is greatly to be regretted that a career so admirable and a personality so original should not have been interpreted by some adequate historian or poet. He lived too late for the enthusiasm of Herodotus or the justice of Thucydides. That Xenophon, through his hatred of Thebes, failed to talk much of the Theban general is no great loss to our imaginative understand- ing of a great man. Pausanias in his sincere admiration contributes something: "Of the famous captains of Greece Epaminondas may well rank as the first or at least as second to none. For whereas the Lacedaemo- nian and Athenian generals were seconded by the ancient glories of their countries as well as by soldiers of a temper to match, Epaminondas found his country disheartened and submissive to foreign dictation, yet 290 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS he soon raised them to the highest place." Plutarch's ''Life of Epaminondas" has not been preserved, but this loss is partially repaired by his " Life of Pelopidas," the companion in arms and the passionate imitator of the hero, and by his return now and again in other writings to a contemplation of the character of Epami- nondas. Out of slight sketches like these and out of the second-rate histories we must fashion our portrait. Epaminondas was a great soldier and a leader of men. These facts need not be obscured by the other fact that he did not, probably could not, establish a national unity strong enough to live on after him. With him died the hopes of Thebes. His fear of this must have been his heaviest burden. Patriotism with him not only excluded satisfaction in his own power, but included patience under attack. To us, familiarized with mag- nanimous patriotism in many nations, this seems more admirable than strange. But against the background of Greek history the statesmen are conspicuous who could have entirely understood the obedient spirit in which Socrates accepted condemnation from the city he had tried to serve. In Epaminondas also appear some of those qualities which his contemporary Plato thought essential to a wise king. He loved philosophy more than power, and his early training had been in- tellectual and moral rather than martial. Like Pindar, he belonged to the oldest nobility of Thebes, tracing his pedigree to Cadmus, but his family had long lived modestly, dissociated from the more vulgar aristocracy, THEBES AND B(EOTIA 291 and devoted to the intellectual life. Philosophers ex- iled from Southern Italy came to Thebes as well as Athens, and among them Lysis of Tarentum exer- cised a great influence upon the young Epaminondas. The boy's gentle nature and hardy will furnished an ideal soil for the seeds of the Pythagorean doctrine, which, before the days of St. Francis of Assisi, taught the beauty of poverty, of temperance, and of humility, and insisted upon a moral earnestness and devotion to duty. Epaminondas, the conqueror and liberator, was at all times a "practical" follower of the religion in which he had been nurtured. And with something of his own fervour he inflamed the Sacred Band, that com- pany of ''friends" like Epaminondas and Pelopidas, who inspired each other to valour and to virtue and were united in the cause of patriotism. In this appeal to the chivalric gallantry of youth Epaminondas was thor- oughly Greek. In the unmarred consistency of his own life he was unapproached even by his closest followers. As Pindar in his generation was '"heavy at heart" over Thebes, so the martial leader must often have brooded in lonely impotence over the same city. To travellers he may appear, as dusk comes on, in the guise in which men found him on an ancient holiday, walking aloof, ungarlanded and thoughtful. "I am keeping guard," he said, "that all of you may be drunk and revel securely." The visible remains of ancient Thebes are at present very few, and although archaeological research may 292 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS reveal sites and fragments of great interest, we shall never see here ruins still clothed upon with beauty. Nor is the situation of the town impressive enough to attract travellers who are indifferent to memories of the past. The chief charm of the place is its view of an horizon broken by Cithseron, Helicon, and distant Par- nassus; by Mount Ptoon, where men Hstened to Apollo, and the Mountain of the Sphinx. Fragments of walls are all that remain of the city's fortifications. Of the gates no traces have been found. Pausanias speaks of seeing all seven gates, but he de- scribes only three of them, and some scholars have argued that the other four were invented by the lost epic writers who first gave literary form to the Theban legends. Certainly the poets themselves, ^schylus, Euripides, and the later Alexandrians, differ in their lists. The only important ruins of a building are those recently reported to have been discovered by the Greek archaeologists near the Agora. They represent a palace of the "Mycenaean" period which met its destruction by fire and which has been identified, under the name of "The House of Cadmus," with the ruins of "the bridal chambers of Harmonia and Semele" seen by Pausanias. From the historic period nothing remains, although with the help of broken pieces of marble and stone we may try to imagine the Temple of Ismenian Apollo, second only to Delphi as the seat of this oracu- lar god, in the place of the present church of St. Luke on the hill that rises by the river St. John. THEBES AND BCEOTIA 293 Dismantled as Thebes was in the time of Pausanias, his guides showed him many places which were asso- ciated with Pindar or with the legends embodied in the Attic drama. There was the Observatory of Tiresias, where the blind prophet had listened intently to the sharp cries and whirring wings of the prescient birds. As if ageless in sorrow, he pervades each drama on the curse of Cadmus with his futile vision of the truth, " His robe drawn over His old, sightless head, Revolving inly The doom of Thebes." There was also the tomb of Menoeceus, and near by a pillar marking the scene of the duel between Eteocles and Polyneices. The immediate neighbourhood was still called the " Dragging of Antigone," because over it Antigone had to drag her brother's heavy body. In addition to the great Temple of Apollo, with its statues by Phidias and Scopas, Pausanias saw the Temple of Artemis, with a statue by Scopas; the Temple of Heracles, the Champion, the gables of which held the representations by Praxiteles of the demi-god's twelve labours; the Temple of Dionysus; and the Temple of Cybele and Pan erected by Pindar so near to his own house that he often heard the music of the vesper services. Pindar's house is as unknown now as if it had not been twice saved when Thebes was sacked, once by the Athenians, who remembered his praises of their city, and once by Alexander, who rever- enced his genius. 294 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS While these things are irretrievably lost or await the spade, streams of living water seem to link the present to the past. The little river of Hagios Johannis has but changed its ancient name of Ismenus, and the Plakio- tissa, made by several streams which rise south of Thebes, is easily transformed into the *'Dircaean streams." Some old masonry and tablets bearing in- scriptions mark the tanks which irrigate the neighbour- ing gardens. Thebes still boasts in trees and flowers a reminiscence of its ancient fame for bloom and bright- ness. Dirce was the queen of Thebes who cruelly treated her husband's niece, Antiope. Antiope's sons, Amphion and Zethus, ordered to execute their mother's sentence, bound Dirce instead to the violent bull. Only a brief fragment of the play by Euripides, called "Antiope," has been preserved, but the sculptured group known as the Famese Bull has made the story tritely familiar. Amphion also raised the walls of Thebes by the music of his lyre, a story seized upon by the poets from Homer to Tennyson. A lively stream now called Paraporti flows into the Plakiotissa on the southwest, and Theban women use it for their washing, unconcerned with its ancient name of " Spring of Ares." The cave near it was the Dragon's Lair, and from the part of the acropolis that rose above it Menoeceus plunged to his death. To the northeast, in the tiny suburb of Hagii Theodori, bubbles the spring of St. Theodore, anciently called the Spring THEBES AND BCEOTIA 295 of (Edipus because in it the king washed his guilty hands. The events of the heroic age, if they are baldly cata- logued in prose, lose for us their charm and their signifi- cance. Their ineffaceable reality to the historic Greeks may be illustrated by a story current in antiquity. At a conference in Arcadia an Athenian envoy taunted the Thebans and the Argives with having begotten the patricide (Edipus and the matricide Orestes. "Yes," answered Epaminondas, "but Thebes and Argos exiled them and Athens received them." And yet he would have rejoiced could he have known that the genius of Athens, in receiving the wandering Theban legends, had given them an immortal life. CHAPTER XIV BCEOTIA, CONTINUED " Helicon maidens, the Muses ! Their name be my prelude in singing ! They in their keeping have Helicon's mountain, majestical, sacred. There they go threading the dances by violet pools of the fountain, Soft are their feet as they circle the altar of mighty Cronion." Hesiod, Theogony. EPAMiNONDAS told the Boeotians that their coun- try was the stage of Ares, and several battles fought on their soil were of national signif- icance. At Leuctra Epaminondas defeated Sparta. At Tanagra Athenians and Spartans first tried their strength against each other. At Delium the Athenians were defeated by the Boeotians in a struggle in which Alcibiades and Socrates took part. Alcibiades, who saved his master's life, afterwards told their friends that in the retreat Socrates behaved exactly as he did in the streets of Athens, " turning his eyes observantly from side to side, though drenched with rain, and calmly looking about on friend and foe." Above all, at Chae- ronea and Plataea occurred momentous events. Late in September of the year 479 b. c, one hundred and forty-one years before Greek liberty was surren- dered at Chaeronea, there was fought near Plataea, in the plain between Cithaeron and the Asopus, the last B(EOTIA 297 of the battles " wherein the Medes of the crooked bows were overthrown." The work begun at Marathon was here completed. '* The rest of the army died in Bceotia " was an iEschylean line calculated to arouse an Athenian audience. And an exquisite Herodotean story was fostered if not created by the desire of the Greeks to beheve that the Persians had a foreboding of their dis- aster. Herodotus had the story from Thersander of Orchomenus. A Theban gave a dinner to Mardonius and fifty Persian nobles. The Persian who shared Thersander's couch said to him : " ' Since here at table thou hast shared my food and my libation, I would leave with thee a memorial of my judgment that thou too, informed beforehand, mayest know how to plan for thy advantage. Dost see these Persians feasting here, and that host which we left encamping by the river ? Of all these within brief space of time thou wilt behold a few survivors only.' And as the Persian spoke these words he let fall many tears. Whereat Thersander, struck with wonder at his speech, replied: 'Well, then, 't were fitting to say this to Mar- donius and to those next after him in honour.' To that the other said: 'My friend, what needs must happen by the will of God it is not possible for man to turn aside, and then, too, none is wont to yield to warnings, however credible, and many of us Persians, although our eyes are opened, follow on, constrained by neces- sity. This pang is bitterest of all, for men to know much and to have power over naught.' " 298 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS The battle of Plataea occurred because Mardonius, the general of Xerxes, undertook to oppose the Spartan Pausanias, commander of the Greek allies, as he was making his way from the south, over the passes of Cithaeron, to attack disloyal Thebes. The Plataeans, true to the patriotism they had displayed at Marathon and Artemisium, joined the Greeks. The battle lasted for some days and was, as usual, retarded and com- plicated by the inability of the Greeks to cooperate ; but it ended in the defeat and death of Mardonius, the capture of the luxurious Persian camp, and the final discouragement of the Orient. Herodotus's ac- count of the battle not only contains strategic details but is full of episodes which, even if they are but traditional or the creations of his own audacious vivacity, illus- trate the truth that the conflict was one of civilizations and of ideals. The Persian cavalry leader, Macistius, glows in scarlet and gold, and when he is killed his men fill all Boeotia with the clamour of their grief. The Greek officers show his naked body to their soldiers because it is " worth seeing for its stature and beauty." Mardonius gallops in on his snow-white charger where the fight is hottest and leads to death the picked guard of one thousand men, the flower of the Persian army. A Spartan kills him, but Pausanias refuses to maltreat his dead body even though the Persians had crucified the body of the Spartan Leonidas at Thermopylae. In the camp of Mardonius are found a silver throne, a brass manger for the horses, and countless utensils of BGEOTIA 299 Oriental luxury. Pausanias orders served on the same spot a Spartan supper. Modem historians have complained that Herodotus perpetuated and '' consecrated " the illusion of the Athe- nians that they played a worthy part in the battle, while in reality they were but half-hearted and the battle was won by the "discipHne and prowess of the Spartan hoplites." Herodotus did, however, admit that though the Athenians fought well the Lacedae- monians fought better, and when, with characteristic Greek emphasis on individuals, he discussed which single men were most courageous, he assigned the first four places to Spartans. In any case the Spartans did not fail to receive full credit for the victory from their contemporaries. Pin- dar called Plataea the glory of the Lacedaemonians as Salamis was the glory of the Athenians. And ^schylus, even within the Dionysiac theatre, attributed the Per- sian defeat to the "Dorian spear." Perhaps no one regretted that both the Athenian and Spartan dead who were buried on the battlefield were honoured in epi- taphs by Simonides. For the Athenians he wrote with dignity : " If valour's best apportionment Be noble death, To us, elect, hath Fortune lent This victor wreath. For Hellas Freedom's crown to gain We made the quest, And ageless glory we attain Here laid to rest." 300 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS But the Spartans inspired his finer eloquence: " Glory unquenchable their country Hath on her brow, But death's pale cloud the men who crowned her Enfoldeth now. Yet, dead, they die not. Glory's herald Descends the dome And from the halls of Death, triumphant, Now leads them home." When Platsea next appears in a great passage of lit- erature she is shorn of her glory, the helpless prey of a foreign enemy and a hostile neighbour. During the Peloponnesian War, in 431 B. c, the Spartans con- quered the city and, to please the Thebans, razed it to the ground. Thucydides's account of the tragic oc- currence includes the speeches made to the Spartans by the Plataeans, who prayed for their lives, and by the Thebans, who urged their murder. That no speeches in Thucydides are more dramatic has been generally conceded from the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. They have made it bitter even now to remember that the selfish opportunism and merciless rancour of the Thebans prevailed against the memories of "the great days of old," invoked by the Plataeans: "Look yon- der to the sepulchres of your fathers slain by the Medes and buried in this land. Them we have honoured year by year with public offerings of raiment and such other things as usage calls for. . . . Pausanias gave them burial here because he felt that he was placing them with friends and in a friendly land. But you, if you BCEOTIA 301 shall slay us and shall make Plataea Theban land, what do you else in this than leave your fathers and your kins- men, bereft of honours that are theirs, among murderers and in a hostile land ? Nay more, you will actually en- slave a country in which the Hellenes won their liberty and bring to desolation sanctuaries of the gods in which they prayed before they gained mastery over the Medes." The desolation fell. Later the httle town was rebuilt, destroyed once more, and finally restored, though somewhat meanly, in the time of Alexander. Now not even a modern village brings life to the ancient site. Only ruins of the Alexandrian walls remain. Boeotia had several important religious centres out- side of Thebes. More penetrating than the trumpet of war were the voices that called the Greeks of north and south, and even the barbarians of the east, to the sanctuary of oracular Apollo on the slopes of Mount Ptoon, or to the oracle of Trophonius (a local deity probably to be identified with Zeus) at Lebadeia, which is beautifully situated on the western side of the Copaic plain looking toward Helicon and Parnassus. The Ptoon precinct was already abandoned in Plutarch's time, and even more deserted than it is to-day when archaeologists outnumber the occasional shepherds in search of mountain pasture. But the oracle of Lebadeia retained its sanctity into Roman times and was consulted by both Plutarch and Pausanias. In our day the same river in which the suppliants used to bathe, in preparation for the difiScult sacred rites, 302 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS turns the mills and factories of one of the busiest in- dustrial centres of northern Greece. Religion in Boeotia, as everywhere in Greece, fur- nished an artistic impulse. Contests of poetry and music were held at almost every centre. Architecture, sculpture, and painting were represented by the most famous masters. A temple renowned for its beauty was that of the Graces at Orchomenus. Within it, on a happy day in the fifth century, a chorus of boys lustily sang an ode written by Pindar for one of their fellows who had won a foot-race in Pisa's famous valley. The young champion had doubtless illustrated the influ- ence of his native divinities whom the poet celebrates : " O ye who have your dwelling in the land of goodly steeds that shares the waters of Cephisus, Queens of radiant Orchomenus, O Graces famed in song, ye Guardians of the Minyans in ages gone, give ear! To you I pray! For by your gift come all things sweet and pleasant unto man his wisdom, beauty, and the sheen of victory. Nay, not the gods themselves can lord it over dance or festival with- out the Graces pure, for as comptrollers of all heaven's deeds they have their thrones beside Apollo, Python-slayer with the golden bow, and reverence th' Olympian Father's majesty eterne.'' To modems the most familiar of all the shrines of Boeotia is that of the Muses on Mount Helicon. So familiar, indeed, has it become through tradition and poetry that its geographical position is as unimportant as that of Raphael's Parnassus. It almost perplexes us BCEOTIA 303 to localize Helicon as the eastern peak, now called Zagora., of the southern portion of the group of moun- tains that lie between the Copaic plain and the Gulf of Corinth ; and to know that at the northern foot of this peak still nestles the valley, green and shady and tra- versed by a mountain stream, where once foregathered the iris-haired, golden-snooded Muses. Hippocrene even, struck out by the hoof of Pegasus as he flew toward heaven, is identified with the modern Kryo- pegadi, a very cold and clear perennial spring high up on the eastern side of the mountain within a little green glade encircled by fir trees. Helicon is still the home of fir-woods, oak groves and strawberry shrubs. Pau- sanias said that nowhere else could the goats find sweeter berries, and nowhere else could be found so many healing herbs. Hellebore, the ancient cure for madness, grew here in abundance. In spite of the almost incalculable importance of the worship of the Muses and their pervasive presence in poetry, Greek literature scarcely concerns itself with their localized abode. Sophocles breaks the strain of the "(Edipus Tyrannus" by a fleeting vision of the nymphs sporting with Dionysus on the far-off heights of Helicon. And Hesiod was inspired to write his " The- ogony" by a vision of the Muses that came to him as he slept on the mountain "majestical, sacred:" ** High on the summit of Helicon chorals they sing to their dancing, Lovely, desire-enchaining, yet strong and with supple feet glanc- ing- 304 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Thence in tumultuous riot, with veils of the darkness enringing, Onward they fare in the night, and lovely the voice of their singing." For the most part it is only in Alexandrian poetry, from which Roman poetry derived a large part of the material which it passed on to modem poetry, that we find Helicon and Hippocrene figuratively used as sources of inspiration. Certain Boeotian towns illustrate other traditions of culture. Thespiae, in the territory of Plataea, was used by Cicero to illustrate what was so little understood and so greatly scorned by the Romans the Greek love of art. Nothing could so embitter the conquered people of Greece as to take from them or pretend to buy from them their works of art. "Believe me," Cicero urges, "no community in the whole of Greece or Asia ever sold of its own accord to anybody any statue or picture or civic ornament. For the Greeks take mar- vellous delight in things which we despise. What would the Thespians take for their Eros, the only thing that attracts visitors to their town ? " This was the Praxitelean statue which the sculptor himself ranked with his Faun as his best work and which Phryne obtained from him and presented to her native city. Eros was the tutelar divinity of the place, originally worshipped in the form of an unwrought stone. The statue, called forth by the aesthetic taste of a later age and passionately appreciated by the people, was taken to Rome by Caligula, returned by Claudius, stolen again by Nero. Pausanias saw only a copy when he was at Thespiae. Now no copy like the BOEOTIA 305 familiar Capitoline copy of the Faun supplies us with half knowledge. But a visible symbol of Thespiae's other claim to remembrance has been left to us, to enrich the fragmentary wall and the few foundations that alone at present mark the ancient site. Not only did the city share in the victory of Plataea, but more daringly in earlier years, when the struggle with Persia was on the "razor's edge" of uncertainty, she had sent her strong-* est men to die with Leonidas at Thermopylae. The fragments of a stone lion similar to the Hon of Chaeronea are thought to mark the grave of these sons of Thespiae who were inspired by " An ardour not of Eros' lips." In the eastern valley of the Asopus, or Vourieni, lie the not inconsiderable remains of ancient Tanagra, a city more popularly known to-day for its artistic taste than any other Greek city, except Athens. As early as 1874 excavations of its necropolis began to yield in extraordinary abundance the small terra-cotta figures which now adorn many museums, and in copies, more or less successful, have become a staple article of mod- em trade. These figurines, rough in finish but scrupu- lously lovely in shape, were objects of familiar use to the Tanagrians, being thrown into graves at burials. Other things in the city implied more civic pride. Pausanias mentions approvingly the unusually good taste of the inhabitants in separating their religious buildings from the business and residence portions 3o6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS of the city. And Dicaearchus is enthusiastic over their fine houses, adorned with porticoes and encaustic paintings. Literature also had its place, for here lived Corinna, a woman of no mean poetic talent. Pausanias saw her tomb in an honoured place in the city and a picture of her in the Gymnasium binding on her head a fillet to celebrate a victory over Pindar at Thebes. With unexpected acumen he remarks that she prob- ably owed her victory partly to the fact that she wrote in a dialect intelligible to the Boeotians, and partly to her beauty. Modems know her through the story that she advised Pindar to use mythological allusions, and after his first experiment told him that she had meant him to sow with the hand, not with a sack ; and through her own haunting fragment of song: "Among the white-armed women of Tanagra, a city made famous by sweet soprano voices." Such evidences of culture are the more surprising when we learn from Dicaearchus that Tanagra was a town of farmers. Their bluff straightforwardness, their kindliness and their simple living greatly impressed him in comparison with the insolence and dissipation of the Thebans. Dicaearchus describes also with a few graphic words the inhabitants of Anthedon, a fishing town on the Gulf of Euboea : " They are almost all fishermen, earn- ing their livelihood by their hooks, by the purple shell, and by sponges. They grow old on the beach, among the seaweed and in their huts. They are all men of ruddy countenance and spare figure; their nails are BCEOTIA 307 worn away by reason of working constantly in the sea." * This town, still lovely, it is said, when the sunset illu- mines the lilac hills of Euboea and rose-colour clouds float above the little fishing- boats in the bay, furnished to literature an important character in Glaucus, a jBsherman who, by eating a certain grass, became a sea- god with the gift of prophecy. Many tales were told of him from time to time, especially by seafaring men. iEschylus wrote two plays, not now extant, with him as the central figure, and thence the subject passed into the poetic storehouse of the Alexandrian playwrights. Plato made use of the legend in one of his noblest presentations of idealism. The soul marred by its association with the body and with the evils of human life is like the old sea-god, overgrown with shellfish and seaweed, wounded and broken by the action of the waves. But if the soul would always love wisdom and pursue the divine, it would be lifted out of the sea in which it now is and be forever disencumbered of its rocky covering. South of Anthedon, on the strait of Euripus, lies AuHs, of stately memory. To us as to Odysseus it is, as it were, but "yesterday or the day before" that the Achaean ships were gathering in Aulis freighted with trouble for Priam and the Trojans, and hecatombs were being offered on the altars beneath a beautiful plane tree by a stream of bright water. Here too Iphi- geneia was sacrificed at the altar of Artemis. The story * Translated by Frazer. 3o8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS is told by Euripides, in the " Iphigeneia in Aulis," in a way to bring out the latent heroism of the young. Iphigeneia grieves to leave the sunlight and clings to her mother, but in the end with splendid daring offers her- self a willing sacrifice: "Mother, hear my words," she cries, " Not for thyself alone, but for the Hellenes all Thou barest me." In the lyric recital of iEschylus she is pathetically the victim : " Father, father ! thus she prayed them, But nor tears nor girl's youth stayed them, Umpire captains keen for war. To his helpers showed her sire How, like kid, above the altar Fainting in her robes, still higher They should hold her, should not falter. And, lest curse his house should blight. Ward the fair lips, guard aright, With the mouth-gag's muzzling might. " Her saffron robe letting sweep to the ground. She smote in turn her slayers round With bolt from her eyes, as in picture plain, Asking for grace. And to speak she was fain, For aforetimes oft at the tables laden In her father's halls she would sing as maiden. And with virginal voice in his fortune rejoice When the happy triple libation was poured. With her loving father in loving accord. ** What came thereafter I nor saw nor do I say, But arts of Calchas knew nor let nor stay. Justice freights the scale with woe And taught by suffering we know." BCEOTIA 309 Pausanias saw the temple of Artemis, and within it as a revered relic a piece of the wood from the Homeric plane tree. The spring was also pointed out to him, and on a neighbouring hill the threshold of Agamemnon's hut. Those were happy days for sight-seers. To-day a traveller can find only a few remains of the temple, near the ruined chapel of St. Nicholas, a little dis- tance up the valley which stretches inland from the shore. But he may stand on the beach and watch tides as strange and irregular as they were when iEschylus described the Achaean host, troubled and held fast "where tide 'gainst tide comes surging back near by the shores of Aulis opposite to Chalkis." The heart of Boeotia's literature lies in the Hesiodic poetry. Hesiod has a dual personality. As a half mythi- cal "titulary president" of a school of poetry localized near Mount Helicon and rivalling the epic school, in Asia Minor and the islands, whose eponymous hero was Homer; as traditional author of the "Theogony," which was the manual of mythology for the Greeks, ranking in educational value almost with the Iliad and Odyssey, and of the "Works and Days," which was a collection of widely accepted ethical maxims, he seems to lose his home in Bceotia and to belong like Homer to the whole of Greece. But unlike Homer he is universally believed to have existed, and to have written a definite body of poetry which only later came to include many additions by unknown hands. We 3IO GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS may, then, for our purposes, justly consider him as an individual with local habitation and a name. His fam- ily, either before his birth or while he was a child, immi- grated from an iEolian colony in Asia Minor to ^olian Boeotia. They were farmers and lived in the little town of Ascra, which was perched on a conical hill opposite the larger mass of Helicon, to the north of the entrance to the valley of the Muses. It was destroyed by Thes- piae, and was deserted in Pausanias's time. But " the tower" was standing which is still a conspicuous landmark and gives to the entire hill the name of Pyrgaki. Modem travellers are attracted by the wide and beautiful view which the hill commands. Ascra itself, in Hesiod's peevish opinion, was a miser- able village, bad in winter, abominable in summer, good at no time. He could, however, when a boy, tend his sheep on the slopes of Helicon and see the Muses in his dreams. At some time he had a lawsuit with his brother about his inheritance, and became embittered by dis- appointment. This and the difficulties of his life as a husbandman led him to see the world in the hard colours of uncorrected realism. Only a few enthusiasts pretend to find in his ''Works and Days" the beauty of the '' Georgics," in which Virgil was his avowed imitator. The Roman poet combined with a delicate temperament the education of his age, and tried to show to his coun- trymen, the already weary masters of the world, the victims of an over-luxurious civilization, that in farming lay a potent charm and a remedial grace. But Hesiod BGEOTIA 311 lived in the eighth century b. c. and farmed for his living. To us, grown more democratic than the later Greeks and Romans, his chief appeal is that of the "mouthpiece of obscure handworkers in the earliest centuries of Greek history, the poet of their daily labours, sufferings and wrongs, the singer of their doubts and infantine reflections on the world in which they had to toil." As agricultural life is concerned with certain per- manent factors in human experience and is also pro- verbially conservative, Hesiod's picture of it is prob- ably true, in its broad outlines, of after centuries and of many another place than Boeotia. Later Greek writers were not attracted by the homely subject, and the "Works and Days" is the sole specimen in Greece of a kind of literature which is practically bom out of the soil and out of nature's varied processes. In this didactic poem we are introduced to a commu- nity whose work and pleasures were governed by the seasons. The white blossoms of the spring, the swal- low lifting her wing at dawn, the song of the cuckoo, the tender green of the fig tree, the early rains, all meant the planting and nursing of the seeds. The summer heat that brought the cicada's shrill cry brought, too, a little leisure for picnicking in the shade of a rock by a stream, off creamy cake and goat's milk und wine. But in the cooler hours the corn had to be threshed on the stone floors, and the hay stored in the bams. In the autumn the falling leaves and the crane's migratory call showed that wood must 312 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS be cut, ploughshares made, the proper servants and steers procured, and the grapes gathered and pressed. In the winter the industrious man had to look after his household store, much as he was tempted to linger by the forge and saunter in the warm porticoes. For in January the whirlwind of the north often swept down from Thrace, the Earth howled and long and loud the forests roared. The oaks and pines were hurled from hilltops. The beasts of the wild wood crept low to escape the drifting snow, the oxen and goats cowered in their stalls. Only the young daughter in her pretty chamber under her mother's roof was safe. The farmer had to put on thicker underclothing and a woollen coat and oxhide shoes lined with thick socks, and pull his cap down over his ears as he hurried home at night- fall. Thus intertwined in Hesiod's Boeotian mind were poetry and prudence. And prudence predominated in his catalogue of the lucky and unlucky days which next to the seasons regulated the farmer's life. From sheep-shearing to marriage everything must have its proper day. This was true also of seafaring life, for which Hesiod gives rather grudging directions. Sailors and fishermen, potters and smiths mingled in friendly intercourse with the husbandmen. Beggars and va- grants came and went. And news of the distant world and a kindling of dull fancy came with the wandering minstrels. Standards in such a world were simple. Men ate asphodel and mallows and had a creed as pleasing and as natural : to work hard and save a little B(EOTIA 313 every year, to be hospitable and neighbourly, to be good to one's parents and faithful to one's wife, never to abuse a trust and to sacrifice to the gods with clean hands and a pure heart. Hesiod has little to say of hoUdays, but as Bceotia grew older celebrations of all kinds seem to have flour- ished conspicuously, even for Greece, which took so kindly to the bright colours, lively crowds, and stately processions of feast days. Many of these, occurring quadrennially, attracted delegates and visitors from other states, even from contemptuous Athens. Such were the Musaea, the great national contests in poetry and music on Mount Helicon in the valley of the Muses; the games and literary competitions at Apollo's sanctuary on Mount Ptoon; and the Eleu- theria, the Games of Freedom, at Plataea. More local festivals, also, like the athletic and musical contests at Thespiae known as the Games of Love, and the Royal Games at Lebadeia in honour of King Zeus, often drew crowds of visitors. But many of us, could we have known ancient Bceotia, would have chosen homelier occasions for our visits. We would have sought out Tanagra on the feast day of Hermes, the Ram-bearer, when the handsomest boy of the town, in memory of a similar service rendered by Hermes at the time of a plague, bore a lamb on his shoulders about the city walls. And in the autumn at Plataea we would have attended the annual memorial service for those who died in the great battle. At daybreak 314 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS myrrh and garlands were carried to the tombs, young boys chosen for their free birth bore jars of oil and precious ointment and of wine and milk, and the chief magistrate put on a purple robe and poured out a liba- tion, saying, " I drink to those who lost their lives for the liberty of Greece." Or at the sanctuary of Demeter at Mycalessus we would have watched the people from the surrounding farms lay at the feet of her image all kinds of autunin fruits, which they knew would keep fresh the whole year through. This festival of Thanksgiving was doubtless of very ancient origin, as was also the spring festival of the Little Daedala, celebrated every few years in many Boeotian communities. The peasants and townspeople poured into the woods and chose, from certain signs, an oak tree out of which they made an image; and this image they set up and worshipped to the accompani- ment of festal merriment. The custom originated in Plataea, if we may judge from the story believed by the common people. Hera, in a not unwonted fit of temper, had withdrawn to Euboea, and Zeus could not persuade her to come back. But old Cithaeron, lord of Plataea, advised him to play on her jealousy by dressing up a wooden image and telling her that he was going to marry Plataea, the wife of Asopus. Hera flew back, and in memory of the divine reunion the "Little Daedala" was instituted. Every sixty years all Boeotia, its big and little cities, its farmsteads and fishing towns, united in the Great B(EOTIA 315 Daedala. The crowds gathered at Plataea. Long pro- cessions, representing each town, bore their own wooden images to the summit of Cithaeron, seeking a narrow plateau where the snows had melted. Here altars were built and victims burned. And at night the great flames rose into the sky and were seen from afar, so that the young men in Attica and beyond the Gulfs doubtless said to each other, "Boeotia is celebrating as our fathers said," and the old men shook their heads and remembered brighter fires. Zeus and Hera have been long forgotten, nor are the feet of Dionysus heard upon the mountain, but still winter gives way to spring and the heart of man is glad. The hard-working people of modem Boeotia keep holiday when spring blooms anew, and Mount Cithaeron gives them as of old the soft green of its bud- ding oak leaves, the vivacious laughter of its loosened waters. CHAPTER XV THERMOPYLAE " Die, hospes, Spartae nos te hie vidisse iaeentes Dum Sanctis patriae legibus obsequimur." Cicero, translation of a Greek Epitaph.* THERMOPYLAE lies due north from Delphi, less than twenty-five miles distant in an air line, but between them lie "many o'er- shadowing mountains," as Achilles might say, or, to be more exact, the great Parnassus cluster and the continuation of the CEta range, the watershed between the Boeotian Cephisus and the Malian Spercheius. Just where Doris and Phocis on the south meet Tra- chian Malis and Epicnemidian Locris on the north Mount Kallidromos is set like a boundary stone. The ridge that unites it with Mount (Eta proper is now pierced by the Larissa rail way- tunnel, opened in the summer of 1908, through which the northern express * Cieero, in this translation of the famous epigram (see below) attributed to Simonides, apparently follows a version slightly dififer- ent from that transmitted by Herodotus. A eharming old German translation is preserved in a Heidelberg manuseript : " Sag, frembder gast, dem Spartenn land, Wir liegen fast hie inn dem sannd, Dass wir so schon inn dem gefeeht Gehalten hon satzung unnd recht." THERMOPYL^ . 317 carries the traveller into the gorge and along the steep clififs of the Asopus, the river that flowed down between Xerxes and Leonidas. To the east of the river's outlet into the Malian gulf was the narrow gangway between diffs and water, called "Hot- Gates" from the local ** Thermal," or hot springs, and the " Pylai," or fortified gateways. It is not unnatural that the story of Thermopylae should have found in the imagination of men a place more secure than have even the victories at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. The very tragedy of defeat stands out more conspicuously against the background of the moral victory. The physical surroundings, too, are more picturesque. At the narrow entrance between cliffs and sea individual daring emerges, as in the defence of a mediaeval portcullis, and in the memory remain the de- tails of the by-path over Mount Kallidromos; the leaves under foot rustling in the darkness and betraying the ascent of the Persians to the Phocian rear-guard ; the dawn breaking over the blue sea at the foot of the cliffs; and the Persian Immortals descending swiftly upon the rear of the few resolute men below. Then the long struggle in the narrow pass comes to an end and Leoni- das and his men move out into the wider part before the pass. The "strength of the hills" was rendered futile by the traitor guide; the water, faithful ally during the preceding days, would now vainly strive to engulf the invaders. The Sun, god of both armies, beat down indiscriminately upon the Oriental worship- 3i8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS pers of his heavenly fire and on the heaps of dead Greeks. Somewhere amongst them lay the unaffrighted soldier Dieneces, who had welcomed with Laconic hu- mour the sun-obscuring Persian arrows as a grateful shade in the heat of battle. It is disappointing, indeed, that now on the spot the actual scene requires certain stage directions. The modem coast line has been pushed far out into the bay by earthquakes and the detritus of the streams. The Spercheius now flows through a plain some two miles wide between the precipices and the sea. But the configuration of the land was still essentially un- changed when, under Brennus and his Gauls, in the third century b. c, there was another invasion hardly less formidable than that of the Persians. Before the Gauls reached Delphi there was here at Thermopylae a repetition of the more famous struggle. The coast line still lay close to the cliffs. The Athenian fleet stood in near enough, despite the rapidly shoaling water, to harass the flank of the enemy, while the other Greeks in the narrow pass repeated the stubborn resistance of the Spartans and their aUies just two hundred years before. Other details, too, were duplicated. The Gauls, un- able to force the pass, resorted, as had the Persians, to the mountain path. Again it was the Phocians who strove to stop them, but the invaders, pushing by, descended on the rear of the Greeks, who were saved from the fate of Leonidas only by the presence of the Athenian fleet. THERMOPYL^ 319 The exact topography of Thermopylae is still a matter of controversy, and a liberal discount has long since been made from the fabulous total, given by Herodotus, of Xerxes' s host. Just who and how many of the allies remained and died after Leonidas sent the others away is also uncertain. Among those remaining with the Spartans of their own free will Pausanias mentions only the seven hundred Thespians and the eighty men from Mycenae. The inscription written avowedly for all the Peloponnesian soldiers exaggerates the number of the Persians and fails to state definitely that all of the four thousand fought to the finish: * Here on a time four thousand of men from the Peloponnesus, Meeting three millions of men, struggled in battle and fought." But all restrictions, made in the interest of historic truth, only serve to eliminate the miraculous element. They leave undisturbed the picture of a heroism combined with military skill which, if properly supple- mented, might well have kept Xerxes shut out from lower Greece indefinitely, or as long as the Greek fleet, aided by the elements, could have restrained him from moving south by the sea. The allies of Sparta, both those who fell in the four days before the betrayal of the pathway and those who fell at the end, were duly praised, but Leonidas and his three hundred have always received, and justly, the lion's share of honour. They represented the Lacedae- monians at their best. The moral prestige that the 320 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Spartans had temporarily forfeited by their absence from Marathon was now regained, to be still further emphasized at Plataea. Over the Spartans buried at Thermopylae was inscribed : ' Stranger, go unto Sparta, aye go and announce to our people Here we their orders obeyed, here we are lying in death." In Lacedaemon also the names of the three hundred were inscribed upon a pillar, still existing in the time of Pausanias. On the hill at Thermopylae, where the Spartans made their last stand, was set up a marble lion to honour the name of Leonidas. In an epigram, said to have been written for the monument by Simonides, the lion is represented as sapng to the passers-by : " I am the strongest of beasts of the wild, but the strongest of mortals He it is over whose tomb I as a sentinel stand. Were he not Leo in courage, as even my name he possesses, Never had I set foot here on the marble above." From the longer "encomium" by Simonides on the dead at Thermopylae is handed down a fragment worthily translated by Sterling: " Of those who at Thermopylae were slain, Glorious the doom and beautiful the lot; Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain To honour them and praise but mourn them not. Such sepulchre nor drear decay Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they. Within their graves the home-bred glory Of Greece was laid: this witness gives Leonidas the Spartan in whose story A wreath of famous virtue ever lives." THERMOPYL^ 321 In addition to Leonidas there was also singled out for individual honour and remembrance the seer Megis- tias of Acamania, who claimed descent, proud as that of the Levitical priesthood, from the Homeric seer Melampus. From sacrifices made before sunrise on that last day, the priest gave out in advance the cer- tainty of their impending doom. Presently deserters and scouts came in saying that the Persians had forced the heights. Leonidas, recognizing that when they were attacked in the rear also death was a foregone conclu- sion, commanded Megistias and the greater part of the allies to withdraw while there was still time. But the priest, refusing to depart, remained to die with Leoni- das and set the seal of religious sanction on the struggle for liberty, as the modern priesthood of Greece, in the war with the Turks, by their words and blood inspired and sanctioned the patriotism of the people. The epitaph for the priest was written by Simonides, not by public commission as poet laureate, but, as Herodotus states, by reason of guest-friendship. Even this special inscription, however, on the tomb of the Acarnanian seer, closes with a complimentary reference to Sparta. It was Sparta's day. " Famous Megistias here is recorded as one whom the Persians, Crossing Spercheius's stream, slew on a day that is gone. He was the seer, who, though knowing as certain the Fates that were on them. Could not endure to desert leaders of Sparta in war." A dramatic story is selected by Herodotus to embel- lish his account of the battle. Two Spartan soldiers, 322 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Eurytus and Aristodemus, lay at the headquarters at Alpeni, suffering with severe ophthalmia. When the news came in of the final crisis, Eurytus, putting on his armour with the help of his helot squire, was led on his blind way into the thick of the battle and fell fighting with the rest, while the helot made good his escape. Aristodemus, as might indeed seem natural in the case of a man thus incapacitated for service, remained behind and returned home. But his fellow citizens at Sparta, incensed at the contrast between the two, refused him light to kindle fire and nicknamed him the "Trembler." Nor did any subsequent bravery wipe out his disgrace. Even when, in the closing scene of the great drama at Plataea, he surpassed all others in the reckless daring with which he fought and died, he was still excluded from his country's roll of honour. Thus imperative did it seem that Spartan courage and love of liberty should be proclaimed to all as the rule that knew no exception. CHAPTER XVI ARGOLIS " Few for our eyes are the homes of the heroes, Lowly these few, they scarce lift from the plain; So once I marked thee, O luckless Mycenae, Then, as I passed thee, a desert's domain. Never goat-pasture more lonely, thou 'rt merely Something they point at, while driving a-fold. Said an old herd to me: 'Here stood the city Built by Cyclopes, the city of gold.' " Alpheus of Mitylene, Greek Anthology. IN the Argolid it seems reasonable to turn aside from history, in its narrower definition, to recall the tales of heroes and the " grandeur of the dooms imagined for the mighty dead." The turbulent and uneven course of events in which Argolis of historic times ap- pears now as an ally, now as an enemy of other power- ful states, is of less moment than the legends handed down and crystallized in great literature. Even if the sagas which may have formed the nucleus of the Iliad sprang from the older Thessalian "Argos," the Ho- meric poems, as known to the classic Greeks and to us, concern themselves with the mighty fortresses of the Argolid. The Attic drama reenforced the epic tradi- tion, and the interchanging use in Homer of Achaeans, Danai, and Argives to designate the Greeks, suggests 324 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the elements which gave the later poets opportunity for varied interpretation. Argolis was the outpost of the Peloponnesus, and even of the whole Greek mainland, for the prehistoric invaders and traders from Crete, the southern Mgesm or Phoenicia. The rugged eastern peninsula of Laconia, indeed, extends southward nearly a whole degree of latitude further than Argolis, but the dangerous pro- montory, Malea, did not so often entice mariners to double it as it served for a beacon to direct their course northward into the deep shelter of the beautiful Gulf of Argos. It is easy to understand how naturally the early captains of commerce or conquest would be guided up the long coast until they beached their boats under the impregnable rock of Nauplia and the low hill of Tiryns levelled, as it seemed, by the footprint of some god at whose bidding the "Cyclopes" reared its prehistoric and superhuman walls. But the southward- facing gulf was not the only ap- proach to Argolis. The earth's crust, pushed up into a ridged peninsula between the Saronic and ArgoHc gulfs, falls away also at the north to the Corinthian Gulf and the Isthmus. From this direction migrating bands of Achaeans came overland to mingle with the more numerous "Pelasgians" and to dominate them by their intellectual power and by their rich and conquering Greek speech. When, after the lapse of long years, Achaean imagination, combined with the highly devel- oped "Pelasgian" skill in building, had reared or A GALLERY OF THE ACROPOLIS OF TIRYNS ARGOLIS 325 developed a fortress on the acropolis of Mycenae, robber barons could control the mountain gateway. And with the probably earlier Larisa, the acropolis of Argos, and with the fortresses of Tiryns and of Midea, they could take their toll of all who would enter the Argive plain from the north or the south. The masters of these palace castles, as their wealth and their wants increased, could afford to be hospitable to Cretan art or to the con- tributions from the ^Egean or Asia. They may, per- haps, as time went on, have visualized the spoken word in the new characters of the alphabet, whatever its pro- venance, whether brought over seas to Nauplia by some ^ Palamedes, who might pose as its inventor, or by the Phoenician traders, middlemen between the Greeks and the men of Crete and the ^gean who, centuries before, had developed writing from their picture script. The blended prehistoric civilization, with its epochs checked off in centuries or millennia, and, thanks to the archaeologists, to-day rapidly emerging through- out the Greek world in Attica, Boeotia, Asia Minor, the islands and the Peloponnesus, has received not unnatu- rally, if prematurely, the general name " Mycenaean " from the great royal tombs and smaller graves and the strong walls of Mycenae and from the rich and amazing treasure recovered from the graves excavated within the Gateway of the Lions. Accumulating evidence has indicated the insufficiency of the term to include both the art and the architecture. Successive periods and various origins must yet be disentangled. But Mycenae 326 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS and Tiryns, as being the most impressive in their entirety, continue to represent this prehistoric civiUza- tion to the majority of visitors, and the term "Myce- naean" may serve until some happier names are sug- gested to distinguish at once between the home-bred and the imported. On the borderland between mere shadowy tradition and an approximately exact chronology two events seemed to the Greeks themselves of preeminent im- portance and were referred by them to the twelfth century b. c. the Fall of Troy, and the Return of the Heracleidae, or the Dorian conquest, as we should now describe this movement. Although Thucydides states that "in the eightieth year after the Trojan War the Dorians, led by the Heracleidae, conquered the Pelo- ponnesus, " it may be found necessary to assume a much longer interval, especially if we allow for a series of Dorian conquests. The Dorians were one of the Greek clans pushed down from further north into central Greece in pre- historic times. They have left, as the memorial of this period, their name attached to little Doris wedged in between Parnassus and Mount (Eta. When they were impelled to move still further south, whether by external pressure or the desire to send out colonies, the Achaeans already held the tand approach to the Peloponnesus and also the littoral of Achaea on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf. They were thus forced to take to the sea, and the Dorian setdements in Crete, Thera, Melos, ARGOLIS 327 and Asia Minor seem to have been followed by Dorian invasions of the Peloponnesus from the south and east, especially in Laconia and Argolis. In Laconia the in- vaders established themselves as conquerors and re- tained their own character almost unchanged, while in Argolis they amalgamated with the people already in possession. In readjusting pedigrees it was more agreeable to native pride to assume that these invaders were themselves of good old Peloponnesian stock, rather than foreign Dorians, and incidentally to localize the spreading fame of Heracles. Both of these objects were provided for in Argolis when Heracles proved to be of the Perseid line, the original and most distinguished Argive dynasty. Under his grandchildren the invaders merely came back to their own. Thus the Dorian in- vasions came to be described by the senseless and con- fusing name of the Return of the Heracleidae. With this event is perhaps to be associated the sudden destruc- tion of Mycenae and Tiryns by fire and the reinstate- ment of Argos and the Larisa citadel as supreme. By way of acquiring the chief poet as well as the chief hero of Greece, Argos claimed, with other cities, to be the birthplace of Homer an echo, doubtless, of the dimly remembered sagas of Achaean Argos in Thessaly. In reality, Argolis, like other Dorian cantons, contrib- uted more subject matter for poets than poetry itself. Yet it was not wholly parasitical. It partially balanced the Dorian debt by sending to Athens two poet-musi- 328 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS dans whose activity cannot be justly appraised from the meagre fragments that have come down to us. The Dorian contributions to music must be kept in mind. The Argives, we are told, furnished many of the famous musicians of Greece. From Hermione on the southern shore of the peninsula came Lasus, who, as a theoretical and practical musi- cian, did much to develop the dithyramb. He was the teacher of Pindar and, under the cultivated tyrant Hip- parchus, was a rival of Simonides in Athens. The other poet, Pratinas, came from Phlius, geographically within the northwestern comer of Argolis, although the in- dependent Phliasians long maintained their autonomy. The city lay in green meadowlands high among the mountains on the grassy banks of the Sicyonian Asopus which, according to local belief, was generated by the Carian Meander coming under the sea to link the two sides of the iEgean together, as the Alpheus, on the other side, united Sicily to the mother land. Although Pratinas was inevitably drawn by the lure of the intel- lectual to live at Athens, he stands out as a Dorian poet. He is known as the first writer of the satyr dramas, one of which it was for a while the custom to add to the trilogy of tragedies, and he competed even with iEschylus. The literature of Ionian Athens lacked one element which developed among the iEolians and Dorians. The more independent Hfe of Dorian women called forth two poetesses in the Peloponnesus. One of ARGOLIS 329 these lived at Sicyon. This city, lying on the Asopus, which comes tumbling .down through the deep ravine from Phlius, early became Dorian. Once included in the widespread kingdom of the Agamemnon of tradi- tion, it was now independent, now dependent on Argos or on Sparta. With the mountains of the Peloponnesus around it and the Corinthian Gulf and Parnassus in front, it is beautiful for situation. Its rich treasure- houses were among the notable sights at Delphi and Olympia, and it was famous for its schools of painting and of sculpture. Here Praxilla, the Dorian poetess par excellence^ lived in the fifth century b. c. The fame of her dithyrambs, a few fragments of which have reached us, survived her, and she was deemed worthy of a bronze statue by Lysippus, a later compatriot. In aristocratic Argos itself another woman, Telesilla, was honoured both as a writer of choral hymns for maidens and as a heroine in war. Pausanias adds to the Herodotean account of the Argive men massacred by the Spartans in Hera's grove the story of how Telesilla manned the walls with old men, boys, and slaves, and then drew up the Argive women for actual conflict with the Spartans and repulsed them, partly by stout fight- ing, partly by the shame inspired in them by the thought of contending with women. Pausanias saw, further- more, a carved relief representing the warrior poetess, her scrolls scattered at her feet as she gazes at a helmet which she is about to put on. Kydias, also from Hermione the home of Lasus, 330 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS wrote, in the first half of the fifth century, love songs highly esteemed by Plato. The Argolid contains more than a dozen places prom- inent in Greek literature and in history. Among the northern mountains were Phlius, Cleonae, and Nemea; overlooking or on the Argive Gulf were Mycenae, the Heraeum, Argos and the Larisa acropolis, Midea, Tiryns, Nauplia, and Lema; on the eastern coast of Akte, the old name for the promontory that with other parts merged its name in that of Argos, were Epidaurus, Troezen, and Calauria, with Hermione on the south coast; and on the west side of the gulf was the narrow strip of land, Cynuria, bone of contention between Sparta and the Wolf of Argos. Of all these places the famous group on the Argive Gulf, together with Epi- daurus, is most easily accessible from Athens, and trav- ellers who cannot go farther afield may gain from this brief excursion in the Argolid an adequate impres- sion both of its prehistoric interest and of its natural beauties. Herodotus, in leading up to his account of the Per- sian War, selects as the origin of the rivalry between the Orient and Greece the rape by Phoenicians of lo, daughter of Inachus, the personified Argive river. This was doubtless a typical scene on the shores of the Medi- terranean. The seamen landed and " undid their corded bales;" the native women crowded about the bargain counter at the vessel's stem; it was easy for the sailors ARGOLIS 331 to seize the handsomest and, launching their vessel, to bear them away. The Phoenicians, however, were merely an episode, and the early "Outlanders" came into the Argolid over the northern mountains. If one were entering Argolis neither by the modern railway nor in company with one of these instalments of prehistoric Achaeans that descended from the north, but were faring along the good highroad from Corinth in the days of Mycenae's glory, he would follow up the Longopotamo River, which flows down west of Acro- corinth into the Corinthian Gulf. Before crossing the watershed that slopes to the Argolic plain he would have come to Homer's "well-built" Cleonae in a semi- circle of wooded mountains. Here the ancient roads part, one going east of Mount Treton more directly to Mycenae, the other making a detour to the west to the Argive plain and then to Mycenae, stationed like a huge spider at the centre of its web. When Lucian's Charon, off on a day's furlough from the Ferry, asks Hermes to point out the famous cities of antiquity, the latter shows him Babylon and then adds : " But Mycenae and Cleonae I am ashamed to point out to you, and Ilium above all. For when you go down home again you '11 certainly be throttling Homer for his big boasts. Long ago, to be sure, they were prosperous, but now they are dead and gone. For cities. Ferryman, die out just like people, and, queerest of all, whole rivers. For instance, there's not so much as a ditch left of the Inachus in Argos now-a-days." Lucian forgets his quasi sixth century 332 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS perspective in this pessimistic outlook and descends to things as they were in his own time, when his contem- porary Pausanias explained the "summer-dried" con- dition of the Inachus as due to Poseidon's anger be- cause Hera had been given the preference to himself in the Argive land. But not even the Lynceus vision, temporarily put at the disposal of Charon by an Homeric incantation, could have been expected to reveal, beneath the oblivious Argive soil of the second century of our era, the rich treasures of Mycenae, to which the X-rays of the archaeologists have now pene- trated. Before descending along the bed of the northern tributary of the Inachus into the plain we turn aside to the precinct of Nemea. This Ues in a valley of its own between those of Phlius and Cleonae and, like them, on a stream, the Nemea, which also flows down to the Corinthian Gulf. The deep grass, fed by the overflowing waters, gave the name Nemea, "pasture- land." The biennial Nemean games, celebrated on the high watershed at this entrance to the peninsula, were especially pan-Peloponnesian. They were instituted, according to a charming story, by Adrastus and the rest of the "Seven" on their way to Thebes, as an atonement for the death of the child Opheltes, carelessly left by his nurse on a bed of wild parsley (or celery) and slain by a dragon while she fetched water for the war- riors. The solemn funereal origin of the games was kept before the mind by the dun-colored raiment worn ARGOLIS 333 by the umpires and emphasized by the cypress grove which in antiquity surrounded the temple. Pindar seems to reflect this feeling when he refers to the " sol- emn plains" in connection with Adrastus. Elsewhere he speaks of the "lovely contests of Nemea." Where the little Opheltes died on his bed of wild parsley and the Argive champions passed by to Thebes are the lonely ruins of the Temple of Zeus. Three slender col- umns still stand to watch over their fallen companions, stretched upon the ground by the Earthshaker whose envy has shaken down so many temples of rivals while, by the cunning of Athena in sharing with him her pre- cinct, he has left the great rock in Athens unmoved. Zeus, the virile god of the Achaeans, is lord and master at Nemea, while Hera presides in the Argive plain as she did originally at Olympia. The cave of the Nemean lion slain by Heracles at the bidding of Eurystheus, king of Mycenae or Tiryns, can- not be identified with certainty. Indeed, the king of beasts himself, so far as Argolis is concerned, has been now confined by the excavators within the narrow limits of a Phrygian gem. Heracles, in his search for rare fauna, flora, and other exhibits, completed six of his twelve labours in the Peloponnesus, two of them within the borders of Argolis, before he was compelled to go abroad for the fruit of the Hesperides or the three- headed hound of Hades. He had already killed a lion on Mount Cithaeron and assumed its skin as his con- ventional uniform, and when the spoils of the Nemean 334 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS lion were delivered at Mycenae the king might well, it may be thought, have deemed it suitable to commemo- rate by a " totem" on the Gate of the Acropolis the sub- jugation of this original autochthon of Mount Treton, which dominated the two highways leading to the for- tress. In the Homeric poems it is Mycenae, " rich in gold," and; "well- walled" Tiryns that are predominant in Argolis. The legendary kingdom of the Atreidas ex- tended over a large part of the Peloponnesus, and it was pleasing to Argive pride to reserve Mycenae as headquarters for Agamenmon, king of men, and to parcel off Lacedaemon to Menelaus when he was not represented as also living in Argolis. Mycenae com- manded the mountain roads to the Corinthian Gulf and the Isthmus, and a prehistoric network of road- beds that focus at Mycenae lifts out of the realm of mere legend the controlling influence of the mighty fortress over the territory to the northward. To the south of the mountains it was connected with Tiryns and Argos in a varying sequence of leagues and rivalries. Mycenae is now as familiar to the modern world as the Acropolis of Athens. Its resurrection within our own times has called forth manifold accounts and pictures of the "beehive tombs," the Cyclopean walls, the Gate of the Lions (never, indeed, wholly buried), the circle of shaft graves on the acropolis and the treasure found within them. ARGOLIS 335 The three great dramatists all dealt with scenes from the family history of the Atreidae or Pelopidae, the illus- trious but blood-stained dynasty that for a few genera- tions only (if we allow the Heracleidae their pedigree) broke in upon the continuity of the Perseid line, de- scended through Danaus from Inachus. When Eurys- theus was slain, as Thucydides records, by the Hera- cleidae in Attica, the kingdom passed to his mother^s half-brother Atreus, the son of Pelops. Agamemnon, his son, or his grandson, is described by the historian as "the greatest naval potentate of his time," and he cites the Iliad which speaks of him as "lording it over many ships and over all Argos," that is, over all the Argolid. Although iEschylus, by reason of a contemporary rapprochement between the Athenians and the Argives, explicitly lays the scene of his "Agamemnon" at Argos, the traditional association with Mycenae, handed down from Homer, has usually prevailed. Sophocles re- turned to it, and in his " Electra" assumes Mycenae as the home of the royal pair, while Euripides, in his " Elec- tra," loosely refers to both cities, although in other plays Mycenae is uppermost in his mind. Thus Iphi- geneia at Aulis, about to be sacrificed, exclaims : " O mother mine, Pelasgian land, O virgin's home, Mycenae ! " And amongst the Taurians, overjoyed at her reunion with her brother, her thoughts likewise revert to Mycenae : 336 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " O home and hearth-stone mine, Built by Cyclopia hand, Mycenae, fatherland, Our love is thine! " Pausanias speaks of Agamemnon and others of the family as buried within the walls of Mycenae, and places the tombs of Clytemnestra and her paramour without. The various attempts to identify with literary tradition the beehive tombs below or the shaft graves discovered by Schliemann on the acropolis above involve varying degrees of improbability or of contradiction, and from these ingenious attempts to reconcile facts it is a relief to turn to the realities of pure fiction. The "Agamemnon" of iEschylus, the greatest of extant Greek dramas, opens with a soldier posted on the palace roof at Argos continuing the ten years' watch for the beacon signal* that is to flash across the ^Egean the news of the capture of Troy, in order that the guilty Clytemnestra may not be taken unawares. Presently the beacon flashes out on Mount Arachneum, seen, as the watcher looks eastward across the plain, between the Heraeum and Tiryns. The long chorals contain the kernel of the poet's thought. The Argive elders enter chanting their anapaests : " Now this year is the tenth since 'gainst Priam of Troy, As antagonist great, Menelaus the lord, Agamemnon besides Holding power two-throned and two-sceptred from Zeus, Mighty yoke-pair, two sons they of Atreus their sire, * See extract from Agamemnon in chapter i, p. ii. ARGOLIS 337 Sped forth from this land in a thousand of ships Of our Argives a host As a warrior band bringing succour." The old men even in the hour of victory are filled with strange foreboding of coming ill and with fear of ,a still unadjusted Nemesis. A curse is inbred in the royal house. "The fearsome wrath, recurrent, house-haunt- ing, guileful, unforgetting, exacting vengeance for the children" more than hints at the grim story of Thyestes fed by Atreus on the flesh of his children. Iphigeneia's sacrifice at Aulis by Agamemnon* is skilfully introduced to complicate the ethical situation by giving Clytem- nestra a plausible justification for her unfaithfulness and for the secret plottings of which the chorus is not unaware. Clytemnestra, intoxicated with the thought that Agamemnon is about to fall into her snare, tells the chorus how the beacons, her "racers with the torch," have brought the news, and then breaks forth with a recital, swift and vivid, reminding them how, even while she speaks, the Argive warriors are stalking tri- umphant through the streets of Troy : "Troy the Achaeans have and hold this very day! Methinks I hear commingling outcries in the town." The captive Trojan women "from throats no longer free" bewail their dead, while the Argives plunder as they shout or seat themselves at an impromptu break- fast: * See extract from Agamemnon, chapter xiv, p. 308. 338 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " In captured Trojan homes they make their dwelling now, Set free from roofless bivouac in frost and dew. How they, the happy men, will sleep the livelong night Unpicketed ! " Agamemnon enters in his chariot, with Cassandra, the captive princess of Troy, in his retinue, driving up from Nauplia. He addresses Argos and the gods. He boasts of the capture of Ilium. The interval necessary for the iEgean voyage is minimized Troy's ruins still smoul- der sulkily : " From smoke still rising even now conspicuous Is seen the captured city; blasts of ruin live; From out the smould'ring ashes there keep jetting forth Fat puflfs of plunder ! " From the ruined wealth of Troy the thought is turned to the traditional costly splendour of the Argive palaces. Clytemnestra cunningly avails herself of Agamemnon's only half- concealed vanity to cover her own murderous intent and, if possible, to transfer to his account, in the eyes of the gods, a certain debit to Neme- sis. She would persuade him to enter the palace tread- ing presumptuously upon royal purple tapestries, and with grim ambiguity she says : " And now to pleasure me, dear heart, down from thy oar! Set not upon the ground, my lord, that foot of thine That hath sack'd Ilium. Maid servants! Why delay To strew the foot-path of his road with tapestries? Forthwith be purple-paved his way! Let Justice lead On to a dwelling where he scarce had hoped to come." Agamemnon, flattered, makes a show of resistance, and finally, to ward off the evil consequences of presump- ARGOLIS 339 tion, compromises by bidding the slaves unloose his shoes : " Lest bolt of envy from the gods* eyes from afar Shall strike me as the costly purple I tread down." As he yields there surges before the vision of the exult- ant Clytemnestra another sea : " There is a sea and who shall ever drain it dry ? It guards the drops of bounteous purple, ever fresh, As silver precious, raiment's dye. Our house, my lord. With God's help hath sufl&cient store of these. Our halls Are far from understanding ways of poverty." As she turns to follow her victim she prays : " O Zeus! O Zeus FulfiUer! these my prayers fulfil." The captive Cassandra is left without. Before her searching but futile insight pass by-gone scenes in the bloodguilty palace to which she has just come as a stranger. She points to the murdered infants of Thy- estes and their " roasted flesh upon which their father banqueted." Then her prophetic vision forecasts the details presently to be enacted: Agamemnon's death and her own, the welcoming bath, the ensnaring robe, " hand after hand outstretching blow on blow." As she goes in to her death she utters lines unsurpassed in Greek tragedy, if anywhere, for the pathos of self- abnegating contrast between the littleness of the in- dividual and the wider aspects of the universal : " O life of mortal men ! If that it fareth well, 'T is like a painting sketch'd, but, comes adversity, The wet sponge, blurring, touches and the picture 's gone 1 And this than that I count more piteous by far." 340 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Two solitary outcries from Agamemnon, struck down within the palace, float out on the waiting silence as the chorus ceases its chant. To the elders in their con- sternation appears Clytemnestra, exultant, glorified by success, standing over the dead Agamemnon and Cassandra. One might reconstruct the scene from the palace bathroom uncovered at Tiryns. She speaks : " Here stand I where I struck him, o'er the finished work, And so I managed no denial will I make That there was no escape nor warding off of fate. A netlike wrap without an outlet, as for fish, I stake around, the evil bounty of a robe. And thereupon I strike him twice and with two groans He straight relaxed his limbs and, for him lying thus, I add a third blow, thereunto, as votive thanks To Hades underground, the corpses' saviour god." A lyrical dialogue between the Queen and the chorus follows: exultation and execration; justification and lamentation. Clytemnestra, to the indignant question of the chorus, "Who is to bury him?" repUes that he is her dead and adroitly takes refuge once and again in the necessity of avenging Iphigeneia. The climax of bitterness is reached when she flings forth the taunting suggestion that the murdered child will most appro- priately welcome her dear father as he disembarks at Charon^s ferry. The chorus, bemoaning him " laid low in the bath, on his pallet bedding of silver," asks again: " Praises and requiem who shall be singing, Loyal heart to the labour bringing, And shower the godlike man with tears ? " ARGOLIS 341 And Clytemnestra replies : " It becomes not you for this duty to care. At my hands he fell down and he lies down there ! And 't is I that shall bury him down below ! And 't is not with laments of his house he shall go, But his Iphigeneia with welcoming grace, As 't is just to require, the daughter her sire By the swift-flowing Ferry of Groans shall face And with locked arms kiss and embrace him!" The plays by the three dramatists dealing with the slaying of Clytemnestra by her son and the meeting and recognition of Orestes and his older sister Electra fill out many a detail of the Argive land and cities as they were seen or imagined in the fifth century. Although Sophocles lays the scene of his "Electra" at "opulent Mycenae," his allusions to the "renowned temple of Hera," to the "Lycaean agora of the wolf-slaying god,'^ and to the " grove of the frenzied daughters of Inachus" all as part of the immediate environment seem to imply stage-setting which brought before the spectator the Heraeum and Argos itself as well as Mycenae. In all three plays the tomb of Agamemnon, around which the action goes on, seems to be outside of the city. The scene of the "Electra" of Euripides is laid on the mountain frontier, by which way the exiled Orestes would naturally arrive from Phocis. Not only does this play give a feeling for the Argive landscape, changing little while Mycenae rose and fell, but the simple and dignified peasant farmer, Electra's husband in name only, is one of the dramatist's noblest creations. The 342 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS suggestion of his high-bom though remote ancestry only emphasizes the chivalry, far removed from ser- vility, with which he reverences his nominal wife as a princess of the land. When Electra, in the shadow of the "Night, dark foster mother of the golden stars," goes to fetch water, Uke any peasant girl, with the water-jar poised on her head, he remonstrates with her, but divin- ing her mood, withdraws his objection : " Nay, go thy way, an so thou wilt, not distant far The fountains from our dwelling. I, when breaks the dawn. Must with my oxen turn the furrows for the seed." In this play the horror of the mother-murder in the peasant home is sensibly heightened by the back- ground of simple hospitality. The deed seems more inevitable in the "Choephoroi" of ^Eschylus, in which Orestes goes in to slay his mother just where she had slain his father, and the knocking, knocking at the pal- ace doors seems more like the hand of fate, or like the two outcries of the king in the " Agamemnon." The play closes, as it should, just as the " wrathful hounds " of his mother have appeared to the matricide.* No assur- ance of the chorus that they are unreal fancies of his confused brain can help him. He must away over the mountains and the Isthmus by the long pathway to Delphi to seek the restoring purification of Apollo : " You cannot see them, see them there, but I can see. I 'm driven onward nay, no longer might I stay." * For extracts from the Eumenides, the sequel of the Choephoroi, see chapter v, p. 104, and p. 105; also see chapter xi, p. 246. ARGOLIS 343 Homer lets Hera, wrangling with Zeus, in regard to Troy, exclaim: ''Verily three are the dearest to me among cities: wide-wayed Mycenae and Sparta and Argos." The Heraeum, the ancient sanctuary of the goddess, once belonged to Mycenae, and traces of the Cyclopean road that connected them are still visible. Here the "kings" took the oath of allegiance before sailing to Troy with Agamemnon and Menelaus. Here on their return the Argives dedicated the Trojan spoils to Hera. The herald in the "Agamemnon" says: " While speeding over land and sea, to yonder light, The sun's light, it is fitting that we make this vaunt: ' Once, sacking Troy, an Argive host to gods of Greece Nailed up these spoils, a glorious heirloom in their halls.* " Among the spoils was the shield of the Trojan hero Euphorbus, slain by Menelaus. In the sixth century, Pythagoras, to prove that in a previous round of exist- ence he had been Euphorbus, entered the Heraeum and instantly identified the shield as his own. From Argos to the Heraeum it was a distance of more than five miles. Herodotus relates how a woman of Argos, wishing to be present at Hera's festival, was unable to start because the oxen were not forthcoming in season to draw her car. Her two athlete sons put on the yoke and drew the heavy car quickly across the plain and up the hill. When the Argive women con- gratulatecj her on being mother of such sons, she, " ex- ultant over their deed and fame, stood before the statue of Hera and prayed that to her sons, Cleobis and Biton, 344 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS who had honoured her greatly, the goddess would give whatever gift is best for man to have. And the youths, after sacrifice and banquet, lay down to sleep in the sacred precinct itself and rose up no more." This answer of the goddess so impressed the Argives that they set up the statues of the young men at Delphi. It pleases the imagination to identify with these the two archaic statues there excavated by the French; and a beautiful Parian marble head of Hera, found by the American excavators of the Heraeum, has preserved to us the gracious presentation of the goddess by some great sculptor of the fifth century. The dramatis personce of the *' Suppliants " of ^Eschy- lus vaguely suggest a chapter in the early history of Argolis. Danaus with his fifty daughters comes from the south, fleeing over the sea from his brother ^gyptus and his fifty sons. The early Pelasgian inhabitants of Argos are represented by the king, Pelasgus, who re- ceives the suppliant fugitives into the safe refuge of his Cyclopean walls, which we may identify with the pre- historic Larisa citadel above Argos : " Go get ye to my city fenced with goodly walls, fast locked within the lofty ramparts, subtly wrought." Henceforward, as in Homer, the Argives and Danai are convertible names. All objection to the newcomers as foreigners is neutral- ized by realizing that they have only returned to their original home. Inachus, the river god, was the father of lo, who, half transformed into a heifer by the jealousy of Hera, had been made to wander frenzied over land ARGOLIS 345 and water until in Egypt she brought forth a son, the great-grandfather of this same Danaus. In the sequel to the " Suppliants" ^Eschylus gave his interpretation of the story of the Danaides and their trial for the forty-nine murders of that Saint Bartholo- mew wedding night. Only fragments of this play re- main, and the romance of Hypermnestra is familiar to the modern world chiefly from Horace's incomparable ode. In the "Prometheus," however, iEschylus both tells the lo story at length and briefly sketches the story of Hypermnestra, which, with the "lovely tale" of Danae and the infant Perseus, sheds around the Perseid dynasty of Argos a fragrant aroma of romance in strik- ing contrast to the gruesome annals of the Pelopid family, which waft now and again to our nostrils the scent of human blood and the breath of the charnel vault. Prometheus prophesies to lo that, in the fifth generation from her Egyptian-bom son, fifty maidens, daughters of Danaus, " Shall come, not willing it, to Argos back again. Wedlock with kinsmen cousins they are fain to shun, But these with hearts a-flutter, falcons after doves, Not distanced far, shall come to hunt their quarry down, Seeking a wedlock that should not be sought. But God Shall grudge their mating. In her soil Pelasgia Shall give them lodging, slain, laid low by women's hands, Ares-emboldened, waking sentinels of night. For wife each husband of his life shall rob, and dye Her two-edged sword in murder. May God grant, with love Like this, that Cypris come upon my enemies! One maiden only shall love soften and forbid To slay her love-mate. Nay, her purpose she shall blunt 346 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS And of twain choices offered she shall rather choose To bear the name of coward than of murderess. From her in Argos shall be bred a royal line." Lynceus is saved, under cover of night, by Hypermnes- tra, and escaping, as Pausanias tells us, by the Diras gate, he signals back to her his safety by means of a beacon light on Mount Lyrcea, and she replies by an- other from Larisa. On this Larisa mountain, rising above the plain, there is lavished as a setting for the picturesque ancient and mediaeval ruins a colour scheme of green, rich reds and brown that delights the artistes eye. Argos itself, continuously inhabited through the cen- turies, offers few reminders of antiquity except the steep seats of the theatre. The beautiful wolf head on the extant Argive drachmas reminds us of the Wolf Agora of Sophocles and of the Wolf Apollo dedicated by Danaus when he had ungratefully snapped away the kingdom from his Pelasgian host. We are glad to leave to Pausanias the description of the sights of historic Argos and to follow Amymone, one of the Danaids, as she goes down the plain of " thirsty Argos," water-jar on head, to fetch water at Lema. She went to the fountain once too often, if we may trust the legend. Lucian describes how Poseidon, inflamed by Triton's account of her beauty, too impetuous to wait for his royal team, had thrown himself hastily on the fastest dolphin available and had come riding up the bay. Amymone, as she is carried off, cries out : " Fellow, where are you ARGOLIS 347 carrying me off to? You're a kidnapper sent after us, I suppose, by uncle iEgyptus. I'll call my father!" (Triton) "Hush, Amymone, it's Poseidon." (Amy- mone) "What Poseidon are you talking of? Fellow, why do you drag me and force me into the sea ? I '11 choke, poor me, as I go down !" Poseidon comforts her by telling her that she shall escape, as his bride, not only her daily five- mile walk as a water-carrier in Argos but her sisters' futile task in Hades of carrying water in a sieve. He promises her also a fountain, called by her name. This promise was kept; by leaving the railroad at Myli, the second station below Argos, we can still see the fountain. Here Heracles, her sister's descendant, slew the Lemaean hydra. If we coast down the west side of the bay we come to Cynuria, whose autochthonous inhabitants would seem to have belonged, like their Arcadian neighbours, to the pre- Dorian "Pelasgic" stock. Herodotus gives a dramatic account of one of the contests for the pos- session of this territory between Spartans and Argives, in the sixth century, which might serve as a pendant for the Roman story of the Horatii and the Curiatii. Three hundred Spartans and three hundred Argives, chosen as champions, engaged while the main armies with- drew. Two Argives only survived, and they, thinking the Spartans all dead, ran off home to announce the victory. One half-dead Spartan, however, Othryades, was able to write with his blood his name upon a trophy which he erected of Argive armour. Each side claimed 348 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the victory, with the result that the full armies engaged and the Spartans conquered. Othryades, however, ashamed to survive his comrades, killed himself on the field. Nauplia, across the bay from Lema, is full of sugges- tion for the prehistoric settlement of Argolis, and of asso- ciations with modem history. It has fewer direct points of contact with classic literature. Nauplius, the founder, according to tradition, was the son of Amymone and of Poseidon, who was here able to assert himself against the predominance of Hera further inland. Hera, in- deed, had the Achaean Zeus to curb on the north and may have been glad to compromise with Poseidon for a safe- conduct permitting her to make her necessary annual visit to the baths of Kanathos, east of Nauplia. By way of Nauplia, as we have seen, the alphabet may have entered Greece, and here the less valuable but costly cargoes of Trojan spoils were landed, bringing one and another hint and pattern of trans-^gean art. Here Menelaus, detained by storm long after his bro- ther, finally landed : " Back to the land has Menelaus come from Troy, At Nauplia in harbour moored, while near the beach The oar-blades fall, returned from his long wandering." No more beautiful mooring-place for home- coming war- riors could be found than the water-front of Nauplia, lying beneath the majestic rock of Palamidi, guard of the sea-entrance to the Argolid. On the low acropoUs of Tiryns recent excavations ARGOLIS 349 have uncovered the "Lower Castle" to the north of the Middle and Upper fortresses already known. Pausa- nias attributed the founding of Tiryns to members of the Danaus family, Acrisius remaining in Argos and Proetus taking as his share the Heraeum, Midea, Tiryns, and the coast of Argolis. Acrisius, to forestall an oracle, according to which he was to be slain by a grandson, shut up Danae, his daughter, in a tower of bronze. Zeus descended to her in a shower of gold, and when Perseus was bom Acrisius committed to the sea mother and child in a chest. The translation by John Adding- ton Symonds of a fragment from Simonides describing this event fully preserves the pathos for which Simon- ides was famous : ^ " When in the carven chest, The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet, Her arms of love round Perseus set, And said: 'O child, what grief is mine! But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast Is sunk in rest, Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark, Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark. Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine Of waves that wash above, thy curls so deep. Nor the shrill winds that sweep, Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace, Fair little face! But if this dread were dreadful too to thee, Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me; Therefore I cry, Sleep babe, and sea be still, And slumber our unmeasured ill ! * " The Nereids, charmed with the beauty of the child. 350 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS guided the chest safely into the net of the fishermen of the little island of Seriphos. Perseus, on his return to Argos, went up to Larisa, to which Acrisius had retired, and while displaying his skill with the quoit acciden- tally killed his grandfather. Thus was fulfilled the doom to avoid which Acrisius had shut up Danae in the bronze tower at Argos. Perseus, ashamed at this homi- cide, and perhaps disliking Argos by reason of his mother's ill-treatment, persuaded the son of Proetus to change kingdoms with him, and so he came to live at Tiryns, and from there went up the plain and founded Mycenae where a mushroom (mykes) that he pulled up when thirsty gave him a draught of water. The greater antiquity of Tiryns implied in this legend is not incon- sistent with archaeological evidence, and the fable that Proetus, the first king of Tiryns, imported from Lycia seven Cyclopes as builders is a vague record of the foreign contribution made to this ancient centre. The Cyclopean walls in Argolis, often alluded to in the fifth century, were at least 3^ conspicuous at Tiryns as else- where, and this acropoHs near the sea would fit the situation in the "Trojan Women" of Euripides where the captive, lamenting her dead husband deprived of burial rites, anticipates with dread the landing at Nauplia : " BelovM, O my husband dear, Thou 'rt wandering, a spectral fear, Unburied and unlaved. But me the hull that cleaves the sea ARGOLIS 351 Shall bear with spread wings far from thee To Argos, nurse of steeds, Where Cyclopean walls rear high Their giant stones to flaunt the sky." To-day, in the spring, the hill of Tiryns is covered with slender stalks of asphodel, while amidst flowers delicate and shadowy as these, along the pathways of the "as- phodel meadows" below, steal the ghosts of the ancient masters of these Cyclopean walls and galleries. Mycenae and Tiryns, linked in tradition with the name of Perseus, both sent men to Plataea to fight against the Persians. In a little more than a decade thereafter they were both captured and destroyed by Argos, jealous of their proximity and of their place on the national roll of honour from which she had excluded herself. At the end of another decade ^schylus chose to flatter the Argives, just then the allies of Athens, by transferring from Mycenae to their town the scene of the "Agamemnon." In addition to the plain of Argolis the "Akte," or peninsula proper, has its own history and associations. Leaving Tiryns and Nauplia behind, the road to the inland Epidaurus sanctuary is overlooked from the north by the naked ridge of Mount Arachneum, from which flashed to the palace roof at Argos the last relay of flame in the chain of beacons. The Epidaurian Asclepieum claimed the honour of the birth of the god of healing, the foundling son of Apollo, who was suckled by a goat. From this parent sanatorium others 352 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS were established throughout Greece. The Athenians even called "Epidauria" one of the days used for the worship of Asclepius. In a fragmentary hymn to the god, found at Athens, reference is made to the oracle quoted by Pausanias as beginning: "Great joy for mortals all thy birth, Asclepius! Thou, love-child of Koronis and my own, wast bom in rugged Epidaurus !" In the precinct of this famous health-resort was found a tablet inscribed with a hymn by Isyllus, an Epidaurian poet, containing the genealogy of the god's mother and telling how Apollo named the child and called him "Destroyer of disease, Health-giver, mighty Gift to men." Homer's epithet for Epidaurus is "abounding in vines, " and in later days Dionysus was not neglected. The auditorium, with the circle of the orchestra still completely marked by a sunken rim of stone, is the most beautiful and the best preserved of the theatres in Greece, and one may here better than at Athens imagine the mise-en-schne of the great dramas for which the Argolid furnished so largely the subject matter. The opening scene of the "Ion" of Plato brings before us the star rhapsodist of his day, relating how he is just back from the Asclepius festival at Epidaurus where the Epidaurians held a contest, not only in his own specialty of reciting Homer but in lyric poetry besides. In Epidaurus were celebrated the usual games, as the well-preserved Stadium testifies and as we know from more than one passage of Pindar. In the Abaton, now more fully excavated, have been found some of the ARGOLIS 353 tablets dedicated by grateful patients who had been cured by sleeping in the precinct. Cures of blindness, palsy, ulcers, dropsy, internal maladies and external wounds are recorded in this medical literature, which Strabo tells us was here displayed in great abundance, as in the great Sanatorium of Hippocrates on the island of Cos. Troezen, far down the eastern side of the peninsula, both geographically and by its associations, historical and mythological, turns our thoughts away from Dorian Argos and across the Saronic Gulf to Athens. It was here that some of the Athenian women and children found a place of refuge during the Persian invasion. In a colonnade of the market-place Pausanias saw por- trait statues of those refugees whose rank and wealth permitted this expression of their gratitude. Here in the harbour the Greek fleet assembled before sailing to take its position in the Straits of Salamis. The ruined remains of the acropolis are insignificant, but our vision, like that of the refugees, may range over the wonderful landscape Parnassus beyond the Isthmus and gulf, mountains and headlands, and the ^gean set with island jewels back to the fertile plain below, which in modem times has welcomed the beauty of the orange and the lemon to replace the vanished glory of the kings and heroes of antiquity. Plutarch, in his "Life of Theseus," relates the well- known story that the young prince in the dawning vigour of manhood is taken by his mother to test his OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 354 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS strength on the great rock beneath which lie concealed the tokens left by his father to guarantee his royal birth. He lifts the rock and takes the sword and the sandals. Emulous of the fame of Heracles, he rejects the sug- gestion of the easy voyage across the Saronic Gulf, and by the dangerous land route, where wild beasts and giants must be met and slain, he makes his way past the ill-famed Scironian rocks to Athens, and claims the paternity of ^geus and becomes the national hero of his father's land. In the "Hippolytus" of Euripides we find Theseus, self-exiled from Athens for a year, again in Troezen, the realm of Pittheus, his maternal grandfather, who has had the rearing of his son, Hippolytus. The handsome youth has been seen at Eleusis by Phaedra, his young stepmother, who then and there falls in love with him. He is, however, a somewhat intractable compound of a Jehu and a Joseph, wholly absorbed in colourless de- votion to Artemis and inaccessible to the blandishments of Aphrodite, who uses the unlucky Phaedra as a cat's- paw to punish the intrusion of the divine huntress into the sphere of influence rightfully belonging to the god- dess of love. Phaedra, despairing and mortified at her rejection by Hippolytus, very properly hangs herself, but by way of securing her posthumous justification leaves a note for her husband, accusing the innocent Hippolytus. Theseus, in his rage, banishes his son and invokes a curse by Poseidon. Faring forth in his chariot Hippolytus, though an excellent whip, is unable to cope ARGOLIS 355 with the great bull sent up from the sea. This so ter- rifies the horses that their driver is thrown upon the rocks and dies, after Artemis, a somewhat tardy dea ex machina, has appeared to the now remorseful Theseus and has exonerated his son. This favourite drama, in addition to the admirable drawing of Phaedra's char- acter, combines the grandeur of the sea as it roars up in a tidal wave, envisaging the terrible sea- bull, and the loveliness of the Troezenian meadows where Hippoly- tus, a replica of the young Ion in Apollo's temple, pre- sented the vision of human beauty, so dear to Greek eyes, in its appropriate setting of nature's lonely charm.* In addition to these more superficial attractions there was at Troezen one of the most popular entrances to the lower world. Here Heracles fetched up Cerberus, and by this route Dionysus brought back his mother Semele. It is also reasonable to suppose that Theseus, from a sense of local pride, must have passed down this way when he assisted his friend Pirithous in car- rying off Persephone. Troezen, however, had a rival in this underground traffic. Hermione, the home of the poets Lasus and Kydias, on the south coast of the peninsula, claimed the rather dubious advantage of the closest proximity to Hades. Strabo, the geographer, records the boast of the people of Hermione that on their short line Charon's obol is not exacted of the passengers, "and * See chapter i, p. 26, for hymn to Artemis from the Hippolytus. 356 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS therefore," he adds, ''they do not here put in a fare for the corpse." The cost of travel to Hermione would have overbalanced for people at a distance the Ferry- man's very moderate fee, or perhaps the route may have been open for local traffic only. At all events this exception was not known in Greece generally. We find in Lucian's dialogues that the Cynic Menippus, with never an obol to his mouth, takes his chance as a stowaway or offers to Charon to work his passage, while the corpse of the poor cobbler Micyllus, also unpro- vided with the necessary fee, heedless, since he is dead already, of the risk of drowning, starts in to swim. Close to the Troezen shore is the island of Calauria, the modem Poros, where ''outrageous Fortune" shot home one of her most virulent arrows. On a high plateau near the middle of the island are the remains of the ancient precinct and temple of Poseidon. Here, where he could look over to Sunium, the "headland of Athens," Demosthenes, a fugitive from the wrath of Macedon, waited for his pursuers. Plutarch relates that, discrediting the promises of safety made to lure him from sanctuary, he withdrew within the temple and, after taking the poison which he had secreted, tottered forth to die outside in order to avoid defiling the sacred precinct. The Athenians later set up his statue in bronze, and on it was inscribed : "Had but thy power, Demosthenes, Equalled thy will, Macedon ne'er had ruled Hellas, Free were she still." ARGOLIS 357 The great orator whose powerful will had first, as it was said, won control over his unruly tongue and weak voice amidst the roar of the sea, and who by his words had controlled the still more turbulent populace, died here with unbroken will under the gray shadow of Poseidon's sanctuary. This was one of the oldest stone temples in Greece, probably contemporary with the sixth century temple of the sea-god at Posidonia, the modern Paes- tum. Already dignified by time its columns looked down on the fleet that put forth for Salamis from the neighbouring Troezen, relying now for the sea-fight on the help of Poseidon rather than upon the goddess of the Heraeum who had presided over the start for Troy, at the time of the preliminary clash, still unforgotten, of Asia with Greece. CHAPTER XVII ARCADIA "The winding valleys deep-withdrawn and ridgfed crests of Arcady." Pindar. OF the temples that once adorned the mainland and the islands of Greece only a brave few now rear colunms from the ground. Among these the Temple of Apollo at Bassae constrains the traveller to penetrate to the heart of Arcadia. The re- wards of the difficult journey are many, and are en- hanced by a general knowledge of the whole Arcadian territory, into which the detached impressions of a brief stay may be sympathetically fitted. Homer says that the Arcadians went to Troy in ves- sels borrowed from Agamemnon, because they had none of their own. The most potent fact in the history and development of Arcadia is its isolated position as the one inland country (save little Doris) of Greece. Only from the heights of the encircling mountains could her people catch sight of distant seas. Those whom the sea-spell lured with irresistible magic left their hills to seek foreign coasts and enlist in foreign navies. The Arcadians have rightly been called the mercena- ries of Greece. Those who stayed at home lived the ARCADIA 359 restricted life of a population cut off from intercourse with the larger world. The entire territory is composed of high land, its lowest elevation from the sea being more than two thousand feet. In the east are great plains of swampy ground, and lakes drained by under- ground channels. Towards the west the land becomes an irregular, hilly plateau intersected by rivers. In antiquity superb forests of oaks and pines, coverts for many a wild beast, contributed to that general physical wildness which prevented a people untouched by for- eign ideas from uniting in a progressive political life. Even against the background of Greek individualism their history is conspicuously one of separate towns. And of these towns few attained to any eminence. Arcadia contained the oldest and the youngest of all Greek cities. The latter, Megalopolis, is still in civic existence, and is the terminus of the modem railroad ride from Athens for those who are on their way to Bas- sae. It was the last town founded in free Greece, and its establishment originated in the ardent hope of Epaminondas to unite the scattered Arcadians under one government. In the same southwestern portion of Arcadia, near the young Megalopolis and easily reached from it on horses, lie the ruins of old Lycosura, be- lieved by the Greeks to be the most ancient of all their cities and to have served as a model for later founda- tions. But the chief r61es in the political life of Arcadia were played by Mantinea and Tegea, cities lying in the wide 36o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS eastern plains. Near them lay Pallantium, and within the territories of these three cities flourishes the modem Tripolis, in its origin an important Turkish stronghold and now one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation. The sanguinary history of Tripolis in the War of Independence was worthy of the ancient character of Mantinea and Tegea. Although Homer called Mantinea "lovely," her life was one of military activity. Mantineans fought at Thermopylae, but it is in the pages of the historians of later periods, of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Polybius, that they chiefly figure, fighting on their own territory against Sparta or with Sparta against Thebes. This evil, coahtion resulted in the famous battle of 362 b. c, in which Epaminondas fought for the last time. The description of the battle forms the close of Xenophon's treatise on Greek History, and the chaotic results of the long-anticipated struggle, whereby "neither party, though each claimed to have conquered, was seen to gain any more in land or cities or authority than it pos- sessed before the battle was fought," are set forth by him with considerable vividness. But the momentous fact that in this battle the great Theban commander lost his life he disposes of in a subordinate clause. This petty injustice is the more singular because the fatal blow was generally believed to have been struck by Xenophon's son, Grylus, who received a public burial and monument at Mantinea. It is Pausanias who admits us to the last scene of a noble life, enacted among ARCADIA 361 the alien, windswept oaks of Arcadia, on the hill now known as Mytika. ''When Epaminondas received his wound, they carried him out of the line of battle. He was still in life. He suffered much, but with his hand pressed on his wound he kept looking hard at the fight, and the place from which he watched it was after- wards named 'Scope' (the Lookout). But when the combat ended indecisively he took his hand from the wound and breathed his last, and they buried him f on the battlefield." The memory of Epaminondas inspired a later hero who not only fought at another battle of Mantinea but was himself a son of the Arcadian soil. In the period of the Achaean League, Philopoemen, bom in Megalo- polis, was eight times chosen to be the general of the united forces, and in 206 b. c. he met and conquered at Mantinea the recalcitrant Spartans who had refused to join the league. The description of this battle is given to us by Polybius, his younger fellow townsman, who at the hero's death was the youth selected to bear his ashes to the tomb. Because all such victories in the cause of freedom were but fitful gleams of the fire whose flame had been quenched at Chaeronea, it is the more necessary to give heed to a character like Philo- poemen, from the day of whose death, Pausanias sadly remarks, Greece ceased to be the mother of the brave. He closes the long line of Greeks who led their peoples to liberty. At one of the Olympic festivals the whole audience in the theatre rose to greet Themistocles, who 362 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS had saved Greece from Persia. And centuries later a similar tribute was paid to Philopoemen. Not long after his victory over the Spartans it chanced that he was present at the competition of the minstrels at the Ne- mean Games. "Py lades, a native of Megalopolis, and the most famous minstrel of his time, who had gained a Pythian victory, was singing an air of Timotheus, the Milesian, called ' The Persians.' Scarcely had he struck up the song, ' The glorious crown of freedom who giveth to Greece, ' when all the people turned and looked at Philopoemen, and with clapping of hands signified that the song referred to him." Few men in history are more interesting than Phi- lopoemen. From youth to a hale old age he lived the Ufe of his choice, combining rugged and fearless sin- cerity with keen military knowledge, and uniting in an unusual degree the reckless impulsiveness of a free- booter with the patient power of a skilful general. When one term of his generalship had expired, he hur- ried over to Crete to help in a war which in no way con- cerned him; but his countrymen, accustomed to depend upon his ability, summoned him back, and he arrived on the mainland just in time to find that the Romans had fitted out a fleet against Sparta, and to plunge into the fray. Being no sailor, however, he unwittingly em- barked in a leaky galley, which reminded the Romans and their allies (in those days every man had read his classics at school) of the verses in the Catalogue in which Homer speaks of the Arcadians as ignorant of ARCADIA 363 the sea. After eight successful generalships and many brilliant exploits, when he was more than seventy years old, Philopoemen was captured and poisoned by the Messenians. In him Arcadia lost her greatest son, in whom had lived her own wildness and her own patience, her own flaming spirit and her own honourable aus- terity. According to Pdlybius, he had harboured no illusions about the future of his country and of Hellas, but had chosen to offer his life, while it lasted, as a bulwark against the inevitable. " I know full well," he said in answer to Aristaenus's criticism of his policy of resisting all unjust encroachments from Rome, ''that there will hereafter come a time when the Greeks will have to yield obedience under compulsion to every order issued to them. But would one wish to see this time come as quickly as possible or, on the contrary, postponed as late as possible? Methinks as late as possible! In this, then, the policy of Aristaenus differs from my own. He is eager to see the inevitable come as quickly as possible and he helps it on to the best of his ability, whereas I to the best of my power resist and thrust it back." One false hope, according to Pausanias, he did treasure: "He would fain have modelled his life on the pattern set by the character and deeds of Epaminondas, but could not equal him in all things, for while the temper of Epaminondas was very gentle, that of the Arcadian was passionate." Although Arcadia's part in the Persian wars was not heroic, Tegea, like Mantinea, proved her bravery at 364 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Thermopylae, and at Plataea, according to Herodotus, her citizens struggled with the Athenians for the fore- most post in the battle. Later wars, civil and foreign, kept her busy through several centuries. But the arts of peace also flourished within her walls, and Tegea must be honoured for having erected one of the most distinguished temples not only of the Peloponnesus but of all Greece. This was the Temple of Athena Alea, built by Scopas early in the fourth century. Only a few traces are left of its mingled Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns. More important are the frag- ments preserved in the National Museum at Athens of sculptures from the hand of Scopas himself, por- traying the Calydonian boar-hunt, the heroine of which was the Arcadian maiden Atalanta. The same Museum contains marble reliefs from Mantinea, coming prob- ably from the time, if not the workshop, of Praxiteles, and very interesting sculptures of disputed date from old Lycosura. The Arcadians, whose native gift was music, did not lag behind the rest of the Greeks in their appreciation of the plastic arts. Pallantium was not important in Arcadian history, but was reverenced by the Romans as the home of Evander, whose enterprizing colonization of the Pal- atine Hill was immortalized by Virgil. In filial remem- brance of the adventurer the town was rebuilt by An- toninus Pius. To the north of the great plain of Mantinea and Tegea lay another marshy plain containing three other ARCADIA 365 important cities, Orchomenus, Pheneus, and Stym- phalus. But the train from Athens sweeps far toward the south, and ruined cities slip out of mind among the "winding valleys deep-withdrawn and ridged crests of Arcady." The real significance of Arcadia lay in its landscape rather than in its towns. If the country con- tributed few large centres and few splendid deeds to Greek history, it offered its mountains and streams to be peopled by the divine progeny of Greek imagi- nation. Pan himself was bom amid the "wind- tossed mountain trees of steep Cyllene," and from many an- other Arcadian hillside thereafter his pipes reached the ears of shepherds tending their flocks in upland pas- tures. Artemis, making her pastime the chase of boars and swift deer, fairer than. the fair wild wood-nymphs attending her, took especial pleasure in the ridges of Erymanthus and became the reverently worshipped Maiden of the Arcadian country. Later literature in more than one language created a visionary Arcadia of uninterrupted pastoral charm and ease, a refuge for the weary, an earthly dream of "un- laborious life." The fashion began in Greek itself in the artificial period of Alexandrian civilization when men were sated with city life and began to write cham- ber poetry about the beauties of nature. Arcadia, with its still unspoiled hills and woods and rivers, became a convenient setting for the delicate and charming fancies of litterateurs. But in the real Arcadia "nature" was a serious force to be reckoned with. The frowning 366 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS mountains, wild ravines, and stretches of barren soil; the gusty storms of winter and the close heat of summer; the difficulties of communication between village and village, and the remoteness from the great highway of the sea, all combined to make Arcadian life rude and elemental. Often the inhabitants were forced to a hand to hand struggle with poverty. Sometimes they gave way, as Herodotus indicates when he says that "some men from Arcadia who were in need of a liveli- hood and wanted employment" deserted to the Per- sians. But oftener the Arcadians fought it out at home, tilling what soil they could, and patiently tending herds and flocks. Such a people, busy with the primitive needs of life, found in Pan and Artemis saviours and graciously intimate friends rather than fanciful presences with which to adorn pastoral poetry. Arcadia was, indeed, a very religious country, teeming both in its cities and on its lonelier hillsides with sanctuaries to many of the Olympian hierarchy, and especially to a strange, elusive divinity, known as the "Mistress." But the divinities of life in the open most appealed to them. It is indica- tive of an important and not always recognized element in Greek character that some of the most lovely fancies . of Greek mythology should have taken root where life was hard. The austerity of work and poverty was never denied by the clear-eyed Greeks. But instead of seek- ing, like the Celts, to escape from it into dreams of unreal and fairer worlds, they balanced against it the ARCADIA 367 palpable beauty of this world and found much room for joy and laughter. Pan's birth in Arcadia was third in an interesting series of events. The first was the birth of Zeus himself on Mount Lycaeus, the isolated mountain peak which rises northwest of Megalopolis. It is, however, no wide- spread Hellenic tradition which gave to the king of the gods an Arcadian birthplace. Of all the places that claimed that honour, perhaps Crete most impressed her- self upon the Greek world at large. But the legend of Arcadia at least resulted in bestowing upon the ruler of Olympus the well-known epithet "Lycaean," and in establishing on the summit of the mountain a sanctuary involving sacrifices and festivals. Human sacrifices continued here astonishingly long, and the savagery of the early Arcadians left traces also in tales of were- wolves roaming among the desert places of the moun- tain. A much more engaging story, especially when it is clothed in Ionic mirth and grace, brought Zeus as a lover to another mountain peak in Arcadia and pictured the second divine birth in the country. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes, whether it is read in the original or in Shelley's inimitable translation, is alive with that witty and audacious fancy which furnished to naughty mor- tals delightful brothers among the gods. On Mount Cyllene, towering above the other mountains of Arcadia and bulwarking the northeastern portion of the country, dwelt Maia, a fair- tressed nymph. Zeus loved her and 368 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " She gave to light a babe all babes excelling, A schemer subtle beyond all belief, A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing, A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief." The precocity of the divine infant is the theme of the story. He is not four days old when he starts for Thes- saly to steal the cattle of Apollo. But as he crosses the threshold of his mother's cave he meets a tortoise creeping along and feeding on the rich grass, a sight which moves him to laughter and gives him a fresh idea. This is no less than the fashioning of the lyre out of the tortoise's shell: " And through the tortoise's hard stony skin At proper distances small holes he made, And fastened the cut stems of reeds within, And with a piece of leather overlaid The open space and fixed the cubits in, Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er all Symphonious chords of sheep-gut rhythmical. "When he had wrought the lovely instrument. He tried the chords, and made division meet Preluding with the plectrum, and there went Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent A strain of unpremeditated wit, Joyous and wild and wanton such you may Hear among revellers on a holiday." When he has sung enough and is '* seized with a sud- den fancy for fresh meat," he hurries off to the shad- owed hills of Pieria and steals fifty of the lowing kine which are feeding there on flowering, unmown mead- ows. Cunningly reversing their tracks, and making ARCADIA 369 for himself sandals of twigs and leaves that will not betray him, he drives the cattle to the river Alpheus in Arcadia, by whose banks they munch lotus and marsh-marigold. He kills and cooks with lusty appe- tite, in the serene moonshine, and then at dawn, through a silence broken by no step of god or man nor bark of dog, he goes back to the crests of Cyllene and enters the cave, through the hole of the bolt, " Like a thin mist or an autumnal blast." Meantime Apollo, the Far-darter, has been tracking him from the Thessalian meadows. To the fragrant Cyllenian hill he comes where sheep are peacefully grazing, and finds the little thief wrapped once more in swaddling bands, feet, head and hands curled into a small space, tortoise shell clasped under his baby arm. " Latona's oflfspring, after having sought His herds in every comer, thus did greet Great Hermes: 'Little cradled rogue, declare, Of my illustrious heifers, where they are ! ' "To whom thus Hermes slyly answered: 'Son Of great Latona, what speech is this! Why come you here to ask me what is done With the wild oxen which it seems you miss? I have not seen them, nor from any one Have heard a word of the whole business; If you should promise an immense reward, I could not tell more than you now have heard. "An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong, And I am but a little new-born thing, Who yet, at least, can think of nothing wrong. My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling 370 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS The cradle-clothes about me all day long, Or, half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing, And to be washed in water clean and warm, And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.' " Apollo is not deceived, but is forced to laughter. Finally they agree to put the case before Zeus on Olympus. There, after Apollo's attack, Hermes makes a lying and witty defence, at which his immoral and omnipotent father laughs aloud. Both sons are sent off to fiad the kine, and on the way the Cyllenian shows the Far-darter his tortoise-lyre and entrances him with its music: " unconquerable Up from beneath his hand in circling flight The gathering music rose and sweet as Love The penetrating notes did live and move "Within the heart of great Apollo. He Listened with all his soul and laughed for pleasure." Hermes suggests an exchange, promising the tortoiss shell to Apollo, if he may have in return the glittering lash and drive the herd. Thus the lyre, invented in Arcadia, passed to the rightful lord of music and to an universal sovereignty. The two brothers became fast friends and sealed their affection on snowy Olympus by mutual promises. The older brother reserves for himself the awful gift of prophecy, but in return for the lyre gives to the younger lordship over the twisted-homed cattle and horses and toiling mules, over the burning eyes of lions, and white-tusked boars and dogs and sheep, and, ARCADIA 371 most important of all, makes him herald to lead the dead to Hades. Almost imperceptibly, toward the close of the hymn, the two gods take on something of the stateliness which clothes them in more serious poetry. But the rollicking infant and his half-angry, half-amused victim must be remembered to complete the idea of a religion which left a definite place for humour. While the gravely beautiful Hermes which adorned the temple of Hera at Olympia revealed, in perfect marble, a serious and noble conception of divinity, it may well be that among the many wooden or stone statues of the god which stood in orchard closes, by cool wayside springs, and in crossways near the gray seashore, more than one recalled his lovable and mischievous boyhood. Cer- tainly it is tempting to imagine the infant trickster in the Hermes of the Anthology who guarded pleasant play- grounds and to whom boys offered marjoram and hya- cinth and fresh garlands of violets. Hermes would seem to have frequently returned to his early Arcadian home, and during one of these visits he fell in love with the daughter of Dryops, and for her sweet sake became thrall of a mortal man and shep- herded the fleecy sheep. The fruit of his union with the shepherd's daughter was Pan, and another Homeric hymn describes his birth: " and she in the palace Brought forth a son that was dear unto Hermes but strange to her seeing, Goat-footed, two-hombd, noise-loving, taking his pleasure in laughter. 372 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Fleeing she darted away and her man-child the mother abandoned For that she feared at the sight of his visage unlovely, full-bearded. Forthwith, however, the luck-bringer, Hermes, accepted the infant. Took him and held in his hand and the god had delight without measure. Lightly he went with the boy to the homes of the gods ever-living, Wrapping him well in the skins of the wild hare that runs on the mountains, ^ There took his seat near to Zeus and the others, the gods ever-living, Showed them the boy as his own and they in their hearts were de- lighted, All the immortals, but chiefly the revelling god, Dionysus. Pan then they called him because to the Pantheon all he gave joy- Such was the pleasant d^but of the god who was to make glad the hearts of men also, bringing laughter into a world of tears, and inspiring amid the difficulties and the ennui of civilization a wholesome passion for life in the open air. Lord was he of every snowy crest and mountain peak and rocky path. Soft meadows where crocuses and fragrant hyacinths nestled in the grass knew his presence. By still pools within the green woods he would sit contentedly, or lofty ciags would tempt his lively feet to adventurous climbing. Over the high white hills he would range in the pursuit of wild beasts. And in the evening he would sit on some jutting rock or by the dusky water of a wayside spring and play on his reeds such melodies of honeyed sweetness as even the nightingale's spring song could not surpass. With him the mountain nymphs, the shrill singers, went wandering with light feet, and Echo moaned along the mountain crest. Many a lonely shepherd among ARCADIA 373 the hills or tired husbandman in the meadows must have desii'ed to keep the god within his hearing. A broken fragment in the Greek Anthology, embedded among frigid Byzantine conceits, but springing one knows not out of what fresher age, seems instinct with such prayers as theirs : " With lips along thy reed pipe straying, Dear Pan, abide, For in the sunny uplands playing Doth Echo hide." Although Pan dwelt all over Hellas, his Arcadian birth was not disputed, and more than one Arcadian mountain was especially distinguished by his presence. Among the Nomian hills, to the south of Lycaeus, he invented the music of his pipes. Mount Maenalus, near Tripplis, he often visited, and on Mount Parthenius he requested recognition at Athens. Over this moun- tain, named for virginal Artemis, ran one of the regular passes from the Argolis into Arcadia, a route followed to-day by the train from Athens to Tripolis. The swift Athenian courier was passing this way when he was delayed by the god. In the northwestern comer of Arcadia, skirting Achaea and Elis, rises another well-known mountain, Erymanthus, the favourite hunting ground of Artemis, who as Leader, Saviour, and Fairest received countless shrines from the Arcadians. The southern and lower continuation of Mount Erymanthus was known as Mount Pholoe, to which, as we know from the "Ana- 374 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS basis," Xenophon and his sons and their guests used to come from Elis for the pleasures of the chase. Its beautiful woodlands were fabled to be one of the homes of the Centaurs, whose strange dual nature Unked the world of men to the world of beasts. Heracles was entertained by them when, as one of his labours, he came to hunt the wild boar in the Erymanthian thickets. The forests which spread over the plains and dark- ened the hills of Arcadia were filled with wild boars and bears and deer. The bear especially gave rise to many legends. The Great Bear in the heavens was once an Arcadian maiden, Callisto, whom jealous Hera turned into a bear and whom Artemis, as a favour to her, shot down. But Zeus retransformed the maiden into shining stars, the guides of mariners before and since the night when Odysseus *'kept looking ever at the Pleiades and at Bootes setting slow and at the Bear, by surname called the Wain." Callisto's son was Areas, or Bear, and he first taught the forest dwellers, in the country that was to inherit his name, how to raise corn and bake bread. The great oak woods of Arcadia were responsible for the epithet "acorn-eating," which the riddle-loving priestess of Delphi often applied to the inhabitants. In the time of Pausanias the Arcadian forests were still conspicuous in all parts of the country. Driven gradually from the plain to the mountains they are even there at last yielding to decay. But the waters of Arcadia are as unchanged as the ARCADIA 375 hills. Both the Alpheus and the Eurotas rise within its borders, the former turning westward, as of old, to its haunts at Olympia, the latter winding to the south to delight a new Sparta with its gleaming water and ripple- washed reeds. And the Ladon, the northern branch of the Alpheus, flows on with the impetuous charm and beautiful colour which gave it the reputation of being the loveliest river in Greece. From out of the range of the Erymanthian hills springs the river Erymanthus, which was especially sacred to Pan, as if its reeds above all others could be shaped into tuneful pipes. In the river Gortys the nymphs washed the new- bom Zeus. And by the banks of the Aroanius, which flows down a northern valley to join the Ladon, Pausanias, in envi- able leisure, awaited Arcadian music. "Amongst the fish in the Aroanius," he tells us, "are the so-called spotted fish. They say that these spotted fish sing like a thrush. I saw them after they had been caught, but I did not hear them utter a sound, though I tarried by the river till sunset, when they were said to sing most." A group of renowned Arcadian waters may be reached in one northward excursion of three days from Tripolis. The first of these is the Lake of Pheneus, as famous for its strangeness as for its loveliness. It is so surrounded by hills that no stream can escape from it above ground, and the water issues only by two kata- vothras. The condition of these subterranean channels determines whether the great mountain basin of the Pheneus is a fertile plain or a broad lake. In ancient 376 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS times and in our own the changes have succeeded each other with the fascination of mystery. Pausanias found a plain, and knew the lake only by tradition. From his day until the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no records. But with the ensuing careful descrip- tions of geographers and travellers come baffling alter- nations of a "swampy plain covered with fields of wheat or barley" and a ''wide expanse of still water deep among the hills, reflecting black pine woods, gray crags, and sky now crimson with sunset." To the east of Pheneus and separated from it only by a mountain ridge the Lake of Stymphalus is sunk in placid beauty within towering hills. It was the scene of the fifth labour of Heracles, who killed the mon- strous man-eating birds that haunted it. They typified, probably, the pestilence which would arise whenever the underground channel that served as an outlet for the lake became stopped. Heracles was the master- engineer of mythological times. Later engineers also experimented with the water which flows into the Stym- phalian Lake from the surrounding mountains and especially from Cyllene. Its purity and abundance led Hadrian to have a supply of it carried by an aqueduct to Corinth. And to-day the Athenians are contemplat- ing importing it into their arid city. From the prosperous village of Solos vigorous and patient pedestrians may reach the most famous of all the waters of Arcadia, and the most characteristic also of a country in which gentle charms, however real, are ARCADIA 377 always subsidiary to a primitive wildness. These waters are the Falls of the Styx, as familiar in English as in Greek literature. They descend over a perpen- dicular cliff amid scenery which some consider grander and more imposing than that at Delphi. The surround- ings so impressed themselves on the sensitive Greek imagination that from the time of Homer the Styx was one of the dread rivers of death and the lower world, fit companion-piece to nether darkness and the monstrous hound of hell, fit invocation even for gods when on their oath. '* Let earth be witness unto this and heaven broad and yon down-flowing water of the Styx, which is the oath the greatest and most terrible among the blessed gods," the immortals, from Zeus to Calypso, are ever exclaiming. Hesiod contributed the fancy that Iris, in a: vessel of gold, brought water from the Styx to Olympus, so that the gods might swear by its material presence. The spray of the falls is said to take on at midday the lovely colors of the rainbow, which had its divine personification in the fair messenger of the gods. And it has also been pointed out that Hesiod, in addi- tion to describing accurately the Styx as trickling down from a high and steep rock, by a fine figure suggests a view in winter when huge icicles form over the cliff and the clouds settle down so closely upon its summit that the water looks as if it were descending straight from the sky. The Styx, he says, dwelt in "glorious chambers, vaulted with long rocks, and round about a colonnade of silver pillars reared against the sky." To 378 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS him also as to Homer the dweller in this icicled palace was "terrible, hated by all the immortals." The traveller who must sacrifice the lakes and rivers of Arcadia to seeing the temple of Apollo comes directly by train from Athens to Megalopolis in the great south- western plain. Here he is detained only by a fourth century theatre and other more fragmentary remains of the ancient city before turning northward by car- riage or horse. If he is obliged to ride for several hours and meet a carriage at Karytaena, the grim guardian of the moun- tainous road to Andritsena, where he is to spend the night, he will have cause to be thankful for an experi- ence that has put him on more familiar terms with rude Arcadia, and has made him more sensitive to the change from monotonous lowland to vast, solitary mountains and deep ravines. The town of Karytaena lies on the slopes of one of the low hills that form the northern boundary of the plain of Megalopolis. Above it, on the hill's summit, loom the ruins of an old Frankish castle, once the seat of a barony which contributed many a romantic story to the history of the Peloponnesus in the Middle Ages. Rarely in Greece is the harmony of his- torical impression interrupted. But here, like highway- men to challenge intellectual security, feudalism and the mediaeval world stalk out upon the unwary. The spec- tacle is unique. Karytaena stands at the point where the flat plain startlingly breaks into almost terrifying mountains. Mount Lycaeus towers on the left, and all ARCADIA 379 around serrated heights rise grandly above the castle, without detracting from its own defiant dignity. Past the foot of the hill flows, on its way to Elis, the Alpheus, here spanned by a striking bridge of six arches, bearing a Frankish inscription. The ruins of the old barony of Geoffrey de Villehardouin equal any feudal remains in Europe in their reminiscent siiggestiveness of the romantic and violent life of the Middle Ages. But even while the traveller fears that he will become confused among memories of the Frankish dukes and princes of the Peloponnesus, of donjons and keeps, of chivalry and knighthood, of all the insignia and the emotions and the ideals which make the thirteenth century a. d. seem more remote from us than the fifth century b. c, he finds himself restrained and pacified. Whatever Greece lays her hands upon seems to lose its ephemeral or unrelated character and to take its place, individual, to be sure, but tributary in an harmonious whole. The ruined mediaeval castle fits into the surrounding land- scape as no disturbing factor, but rather as an integral part of what had helped also to shape the ancient life of Arcadia into its distinguishing forms. The age when the autochthonous Arcadians were resisting the inroads of Sparta and the age when the Slavic inhabitants were yielding to the attacks of the irresistible Franks seem to have had a common parentage in physical condi- tions. And the brawling stream of the Alpheus below seems to make the jousts and the romances of Geoffrey de Karytena's court as much their own as were the sSo GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS festivals of Zeus and the love affairs of Pan and the nymphs. The mountains into which the carriage turns from the six-arched bridge are threaded by a long road which, despite its smoothness and safety, runs near enough to the tops of precipices and to the sight of noisy torrents in the gloomy ravines below to engender a mood of Arcadian wildness. If this mountain region is reached in time, travellers will become spectators of the charming scenes which are enacted each evening over the hills of Greece when the bleating flocks of sheep and goats come home to their folds. Sappho saw them in hilly Lesbos : " Hesperus, all things thou bringest that brightness of morning had scattered, Bringest the lamb and the kid, and the child bringest home to his mother." Arcadia is still "rich in flocks" and the "mother of sheep, " and to meet and greet her shepherds as they turn home from the mountain pastures restores the world of Greek poetry. But if Karytaena is scarcely rounded before "the sun sets and all the ways are darkened," then pastoral idylls make way for Arcadia's magnificent soHtariness. The mediaeval castle bravely lifts its head above the lonely country, while red clouds stretch like tongues of flame over the mountains and the setting sun turns into molten gold. Suddenly, per- haps, amid the awful silence of purple crags and burn- ing sky, one sign of life asserts itself. A little kid is ARCADIA 381 stumbling, lost and dreary, in a patch of green wheat which had enticed it from its mother. Doubtless before the night is over one tired shepherd who has safely enfolded his ninety and nine will climb the steeps again to find the prodigal. But travellers must pass on in the effort to reach Andritsena before midnight. The sky pales and cools into night, and stars of singular bril- liance emerge, using the absence of the fair moon to "show their bright faces to men." As one drives hour after hour through the starUt solitude, while "from heaven breaketh open the ether infinite," all geograph- ical and temporal limitations seem done away with, and modernity and antiquity meet within the heart of nature. But finally, as the road from time to time curves outward, the lights of human habitations begin to twinkle. Andritsena lifts her little evening beacons on a mountain-side to offer shelter and food to pil- grims of the night. The village rivals Arachova in the charm of its situation, with its outlook over the verdant hills of the Alpheus valley to the distant pale blue heights of Erymanthus in the north. Vineyards and mountain streams and trees add their quota. Those who have stayed several days in the town in bright weather, or who have been snowed in, as travellers may easily be as late as April, report many attractions out of doors, and many hospitable entertainments within the peasant houses. Even those whose impressions are gained from one night's lodging may forget physical hardships in the discovery of a Greek inheritance. A girl, reproved 382 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS for stroking the embroidered collar of a guest, says ex- planatorily, " but it is so pretty," even as the old men on the wall at Troy said of Helen. Beds of unyielding boards are exchanged before dawn for hard wooden saddles. The temple of Bassae lies two hours away, and those who wish to see it without undue haste and yet return to Megalopolis before night- fall must begin their ride while the stars are still alight. Bassae, or The Glens, should be thought of in connec- tion with Phigalia, although probably only those who take the long horseback ride to or from Olympia will see the remains of this ancient city, which, measuring by the time involved, lies as far beyond Bassae as Bas- sae is beyond Andritsena. The surrounding country fell within its territory, but the city itself stood on " high and mostly precipitous ground," bounded on the south by the deep gorge of the winding Neda, and partially encircled on the other sides by high mountains. Here where the air was invigorating and all healthful con- ditions prevailed it was natural that Apollo should be worshipped as the Succourer (Epikourios) . In the fifth century the Phigalians were so impressed by reports of the new Parthenon in Athens that they determined to erect by popular subscriptions a new temple to their chief divinity and to ask Ictinus, the Parthenon's archi- tect, to build it for them. Bassae, where already a more primitive shrine existed, was the place chosen, and thither from Andritsena in the cool dawn modem pil- grims are taken by their peasant guides. In spite of the ARCADIA 383 promise of the stars, perhaps the day breaks slowly, dark masses of clouds impeding the progress of the sun. For an hour and a half the horses make their way along moderate heights, scrambling up small hills and clat- tering noisily down very rocky defiles. The waysides, in March, are bright with irises, violets, hyacinths, and white and purple crocuses. Then the wildness of the country begins to increase, and culminates in the stony slope of a forbidding hill. In half an hour this is scaled by the horses, and becomes a mount of vision. In un- usual panoramic grandeur, mountains lift their nearer or more distant peaks. On the east are the barren hills that form the western spurs of Mount Lycaeus. Farther to the south, beyond the valley of the Neda, are the more thickly wooded slopes of the Nomian hills, and beyond them are seen the snowy summits of the range of Tay- getus. To the north Erymanthus and Cyllene show their crests. And directly in front, far to the south, Mount Ithome, rising out of the Messenian plain, proudly breaks the horizon line. Nor is the sea wholly wanting, for along the southwestern horizon, as if flow- ing into the sky itself, stretches a shining length of the Ionian waters. Perhaps from this hill Ictinus looked down upon the place assigned to him by the Phigalians. Even then the situation must have seemed impressively secluded. Now, certainly, on descending the easy slope, a mod- em is almost overwhelmed, as if by the appearance of a god laying claim to nature's secrets, by the sudden 384 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS sight of a majestic Doric peristyle. The temple is built on a narrow plateau on the southern side of a hill called Cotilius by the ancients. Ictinus's first approach must have been from Phigalia (where he would have talked with the municipal authorities) up the valley of the Neda, over picturesque and well- wooded hills and dales. But he must have studied the situation from all possible points of vantage. Perhaps for him, too, some special revelation came when out of dark and threatening clouds the sun, at last divinely swift, cleft the darkness, and he saw how effectively massive columns of gray limestone would be illumined by Apollo's radiant shafts. Probably the architect's taste and the Phigalians' desire united to choose as the material of the temple the native rock that could be quarried in the neighbour- hood. Marble was imported for the capitals of the inner pillars, for the ceilings of the north and south porticoes, for the roof tiles and for the sculptured frieze which now honours the British Museum. The columns of the peristyle and the architrave, barren of adorn- ment, are singularly noble. They look as if they had sprung from the rocks about them and belonged more to the mountains overshadowing them than to men. Indeed, for many centuries, men forgot the existence of the temple. Pausanias, in his day, six hundred years after its building, could still describe it as surpassing all the temples in the Peloponnesus, save the one at Tegea built a hundred years later, for the beauty of its stone and the symmetry of its proportions. But in ARCADIA 385 time earthquakes and iconoclasm wrought their deadly work, and through the Middle Ages and the Renais- sance the remaining ruins were known only to shep- herds. The temple was rediscovered in the eighteenth century, but not until the present time were any efforts made to reerect some of the interior portions from the fragments lying on the ground. In the wake of the archaeologist follows the tourist, and now any one who will may intrude upon Apollo's long solitude. Unlike other temples erected to the gods, whom iEschylus describes as "facing the dawn" and flashing back to the worshippers from their "gleaming eyes" the sun's early rays, the temple at Bassae lay from north to south instead of from east to west. But this was due only to the character of the situation and the exigencies of the soil. Long before Ictinus's day a primitive shrine had existed facing the east in the usual manner. And the new temple seems to have had a special door built in its cella in order that the main statue of Apollo, facing the rising sun, might still be approached from the side of dawn. The old statue, like the old shrine, was sup- planted by a finer one. Later the great bronze Apollo was sent to adorn Megalopolis. But when Ictinus lived it may well have formed the centre of his noble archi- tectural design, an incarnation of the ideal of physical and of spiritual wholeness realized through beauty. One further fact about the Temple in the Glens has been emphasized by the great topographer Leake: "That which forms, on reflection, the most striking 386 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS circumstance of all is the nature of the surrounding country, capable of producing little else than pasture for cattle and offering no conveniences for the display of commercial industry either by sea or land. If it excites our astonishment that the inhabitants of such a district should have had the refinement to delight in works of this kind, it is still more wonderful that they should have had the means to execute them. This can only be accounted for by what Horace says of the early Romans : * Privatus illis census erat brevis, Commune magnum.' This is the true secret of national power, which cannot be equally effective in an age of selfish luxury." But it must also be pointed out that although the Phigalians had taste and patriotism, no architect or artist rose among them to shape their stone. Ictinus and his fellow artists must come from Athens worthily to incarnate their desires. So a generation earlier they had been obliged to persuade Onatas, the master of the iEginetan school of sculpture, to carve for them a statue of Demeter. Nor were the Phigalians less skilled than other Arcadians. Scopas had to come from Paros to build the temple to Athena at Tegea. And it was foreign poets who turned the legends of Cyllenian Hermes and Pan into literature, and later enshrined in pastoral verse the tossing mountain forests and the cool rivers of Arcady. This was Arcadia's destiny, to offer the raw material ARCADIA 387 of her domain to the shaping hand of more gifted races. Her greatest son was a soldier. Her own deeds were deeds of blood and strife, her own life was one of work and poverty. But because poets and artists of other blood wrought for her, her name and her inherent beauty have become forever domiciled in our own liter- ature, even in our daily speech and commoner afifec- tions. CHAPTER XVni OLYMPIA " What time the mid-month moon in golden car flamed back her light and lit the eye of Evening full, pure judgment of Great Games did Heracles ordain and fifth year's festival beside Alpheus and his holy banks." Pindar. WHATEVER may be the final decision of archae- ologists, it was natural for Pausanias to identify the reclining figures in the east gable of the Zeus temple at Olympia as the Alpheus and Cladeus. The right angle made by the junction of these rivers is in a fertile plain where the Altis, the sacred enclosure of Olympia, lies at the foot of the Kronos hill. The Alpheus river is inseparably con- nected in Greek literature with the Great Games. For more than one thousand summers successively the full moon looked down upon the myriads of visitors who came from inland or from island homes, from Tenedos in the East, or from Sicily in the West. By the Alpheus they encamped and sank into dreamless sleep after their joumeyings or, it may be, one or another, himself a competitor or an anxious relative, would be roused up by nightmares and outriders of grim Taraxippus, the Horse Frightener, whose ghost long held in mort- main the critical turning point in the Hippodrome. o M OLYMPIA 389 When the contests were ended, the same moon would silver the weather-beaten columns of the old Heraeum or light up with its benignant splendour the new and stately shafts of the Zeus temple, the gray-green sacred olive tree, the great wings of the hovering Victory, the Parian marbles and the burnished bronzes, or still more beautiful, the naked ivory of the athletes' limbs. And then, crowning all, the epinician hynrn, newborn from Pindar's brain, rose up on the wings of victorious music to the very summit of the Kronos hill. The athletes had not far to journey from their last training place in Elis. The spectators had come from various directions, some from the sea-coast, some, as do the majority of modern visitors, from Patras on the coast of Achaea. But then, as now, the direct artery from the heart of Greece was the green valley of the Alpheus. The river clamps Arcadia and Elis together. Down this valley year by year in antiquity pilgrims journeyed to see the games and to attend the great Fair; here in modern times bands of tourists still pick their way up and down over smooth roads and rocky torrent- beds and cross the ford of the swollen stream; and a projected railroad, connecting (on paper) Megalopolis and Olympia, also follows the general course of the Alpheus. The river has two main sources. Its northern branch, the Ladon, draws its water from the rugged mountains of northern Arcadia. The other branch comes flowing down from the northwest end of Taygetus, curves through the plain of Megalopolis, plunges 390 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS through the ravine of Karytaena and joins the Ladon near the western border of Arcadia, and the two united make their way through Elis to the Ionian sea. Nor even there is its end. In pursuit of the fountain nymph, Arethusa, Alpheus must needs reach Sicily. To the Greeks the Mediterranean was their highway, not the "salt, estranging sea." According to Lucian, as Alpheus enters the sea, Poseidon, brimming over with curiosity. Stops him and enquires: "What's this, Al- pheus ? You alone of all rivers don't go in for dissipa- tion, and you keep your waters fresh and free from brine as you hurry on?" (Alpheus) "It's a love affair, Poseidon, so don't cross-question me. You've been in love yourself and often too!" The sea- god on learning of the object of Alpheus's passion expresses much approval. But Alpheus cuts him short: " I am pressed with engagements. You de- tain me, Poseidon, by your superfluous questions!" (Poseidon) "You're right. Be off to your Beloved. Rise up from the water, mingle with the fountain and be ye twain one stream." Lucian's contemporary Pausanias is troubled with no doubts, and solenmly reaffirms the wedlock of Alpheus and Arethusa, although the more sceptical Strabo in the preceding century had naively argued against the credibility of the popular belief that a cup thrown into the Alpheus reappears in the fountain at Syracuse. Antigonus Carystus had stoutly maintained that "when OLYMPIA 391 the entrails of the victims are thrown into the Alpheus the waters of Arethusa in Sicily grow turbid." Be all that as it may, Alpheus mingling his waters with the Sicilian fountain is typical of the stream of competitors who were constantly returning from the Olympic games to Magna Graecia. Of Pindar's four- teen Olympic odes nine were written for Sicilian or Italian victors. In general one of the most noteworthy facts in the history of the games is the widespread dis- tribution of the cUentele. The competitors and visitors converging from Greece ; the innumerable votive offer- ings here dedicated; the common motives of religion here illustrated in art and literature generated a centri- petal national spirit that could retard though not de- stroy the centrifugal individualism of the Greeks. The only fact more conspicuous than the wide terri- tory represented is the longevity of the Olympic cele- brations. The Great Games were continued both under Macedonian rule and even for long years after the Hellenic world, east and west, subjugated, dismem- bered, and rearranged like parti-colored bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, had fallen into place in the imperial pattern of the great Roman mosaic. The splendid Phi- lippeum at Olympia was witness to the eagerness with which Philip and Alexander made good their legiti- mate claim to Hellenic blood. Roman emperors, like Tiberius and Nero, by their very presence, however arrogant, gave one more sign of the Greeks' intellectual suzerainty over their captors. 392 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Although EHs, even in October after the long hot summer, presents a contrast to the burnt plains and hills about Athens, yet the traveller will be best re- warded if he comes to Olympia by the end of Feb- ruary or early in March. If he comes from Patras and will penetrate a little inland from the railroad near the river Stimana, the ancient Larisos, he will find him- self in the midst of beautiful woodland scenery. The whole country, with its fine oak trees, reminded the traveller Mure of "the wilder parts of Windsor Park." Even at the Httle stations are seen shepherds in their shaggy coats, with conversation-beads and staffs and flocks of sheep. At Olympia itself the new green of the trees and grass, the pink of the almond blossoms on the banks of the Alpheus, and all the awakening of the early spring help to dissipate the melancholy that is wont to invade the mind in a lonely site amidst ruins which record some by-gone efflorescence of human activity. This Olympian plain, through which the Alpheus sweeps down to the sea between fields and vineyards, offered ample room for the vast throngs of visitors. There was no city accommodation. They must encamp in the open as they do to-day at many a modem festival. But the smiling valley was a fit place to worship Zeus, the god of the open sky. Xenophon, who Uved on his estate just beyond the hills which bound the plain to the south, tells in the "Anabasis" how the returning Greeks, when they sighted the Eux- ine sea from the mountain ridge, held impromptu games OLYMPIA 393 and races on an impossible slope where men and horses tumbled amidst the jeers of the spectators. The plain of the Alpheus was perfectly adapted both for the games and all that the festival implied. It is easy to see how contests would become popular here before they were instituted on the narrow ledges of Parnassus at Delphi. For the Greeks of the classical period the mythical founding of the games in prehistoric times threw back the first contests into a conveniently dim perspective. In this penumbra of Greek mythology like-named replicas of gods, heroes, or mortals now blend together, now assert their independence. The Cretan Heracles is said to have brought the infant Zeus from Mount Ida to the Kronos hill in the Golden Age and to have first instituted the games. Then again it is the national hero Heracles, himself Zeus-descended, who cleanses the stables of King Augeas in Elis with the help of the Alpheus and the Cladeus river-gods, and thereupon founds the games. To the reverent Greek his mythology was not an entertaining treasury of mere fairy tales. The stories of two contests were selected with intent as the theme for the sculptures most prominent of all in the sacred enclosure. In the east gable of the Zeus temple was represented Hippodameia, the daughter of QEnomaus. Her father has already in his swift chariot overtaken and slain many suitors who had failed to outspeed him while contending for his daughter's hand. At the side of Hippodameia stands Pelops just starting to win, by 394 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the favour of Zeus and the treachery of CEnomaus's charioteer, a prehistoric Olympic victory. In the west gable was the contest between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The latter are represented as in- vading the festival at the marriage of another Hippo- dameia to Pirithous, whose friend and ally of old was the hero, Theseus of Athens. The brute Centaurs pre- sumably symbolize the barbaric power of the Persians, whose defeat by Athens and her allies was here fittingly celebrated as another Olympic victory. This may be taken as the official expression, at the supreme moment of Greek history, of one of the wider meanings of the games. The first view of the excavations at Olympia is dis- appointing and bewildering to the amateur visitor, and a mere topographical survey hohelessly confounds his- tory. Even a superficial appreciation of the ruins pre- supposes a more special preparation than is necessary, for example, at Pompeii. At Olympia, although it, too, was overwhelmed, being destroyed by earthquakes and buried in soft earth by the loyal river-gods, the imag- ination must concern itself with various epochs: the prehistoric; the period from the first Olympiad to the Persian wars ; the age of Pericles ; the following century ; the Macedonian period; and, finally, that of the Greek world under Roman sway. All the buildings for the athletes and for the contests the Palaestra, the Gymnasium, the Stadium, and the Hippodrome lay outside of the sacred enclosure, OLYMPIA 395 while the Altis itself was reserved for the real purpose of this consecrated spot, the worship of Zeus, under all his manifold activities, and of the other gods who helped to round out and to satisfy the aspirations, the hopes, and fears of the Greek heart that was "in all things very religious." To cover all possible oversights there was at Olympia, as by the Areopagus of St. Paul's day, or at Phalerum, an altar to Unknown Gods. Just as the drama was a religious spectacle, so the games were conducted by the real Greek in the same spirit. The athletes went forth from the Altis to the contest, the victors reentered it to receive the olive crown, and within it their statues and ofiferings were set up in the immediate presence of the gods. In the Altis the ancient Heraeum, with its indications of an earlier wooden structure, carries back the thought far beyond the first Olympiad in the eighth century B. c. The new god Zeus was just emerging from the tutelage of his predecessor on the Kronos hill above. In this early age he seems hardly more than a Prince Consort by the side of Hera who, in Pindar's sixth Olympian, is invoked as the "Maiden" or ever Zeus had led her to the bridal chamber. One of the least obtrusive ruins in the Altis marks the site near the Heraeum of the great altar of Zeus or, possibly, the com- mon shrine of Zeus and Hera. Annually the priests kneaded with water from the Alpheus the ashes of the thighs of victims offered, as in the Iliad, to the god, and plastered a layer upon this primitive altar. Only the 396 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS water of the Alpheus was acceptable to the god in pre- paring this clay, and thus year by year was cemented the union between the visible and the unseen, the benefi- cent river-god of the land and the Olympian god whose dome overarched the widespread land of Hellas. Approaching historic records we read that Iphitus in 793 B. c. or, by the usual reckoning, in 776 b. c, four hundred and eight years after the traditional capture of Troy, renewed the games which had been discontinued for twenty-eight Olympiads after the time of Pelops and Heracles. The Heraeum, until recently known as the most ancient temple in Greece, certainly existed at this time, although differing in material and in contents from the temple that Pausanias describes. Both the ground structure and enough of the lower part of the v/alls re- main to enable the expert to reconstruct in imagination the whole building up to the gable upon which rested the terra-cotta acroterion now preserved in the Mu- seum. At the west end of the cella we see the base of the great statues of Hera and Zeus. Suitably enough, while Zeus has disappeared the archaic head of Hera was found and is now in the Museum. And, prostrate before one of the side niches, just where Pausanias de- scribes it, was found the Hermes of Praxiteles with the infant Dionysus on his arm. This beautiful statue alone would have repaid the cost of the whole excavation. It unites the beauty of the athlete's body with the Greek conception of divinity in frank, idealizing anthropo- morphism. OLYMPIA 397 The catholicity of Greek polytheism may be illus- trated by the rest of the company within the Heraeum as described by Pausanias. It was not that every god " had his day," like the rotation in office of the Athenian prytanes, but there was a precinct and a function for each and every manifestation of pulsating life, from the humblest Nereid to Olympian Hera. "Known to each other are all the immortal gods," as Homer says. They were all entered in their Almanach de Gotha and could upon occasion live in harmony, except when some Ens threw her apple of discord in their midst or "golden" Aphrodite struggled in the Council of the Gods for precedence over the mere bigness of the Colossus of Rhodes. At any rate, in Hera's temple were placed statues of the Seasons and of Themis, their mother, per- sonifying orderly and unchanging Law; the five Hes- perides, stimulating the eager Hellenic mind to reach out after the unknown; Athena, goddess in peace and war; the Maid and Demeter, embodying the fruitful beneficence of nature and the mysteries of the unseen ; Apollo and Artemis, welcomed or feared by turns for their arrows of light or shafts of destruction; Latona, their mother, whose Delian refuge was firmly moored to every other sacred shrine in Greece. Here too was Fortune, who had a not insignificant r61e in Greek as in Roman life, and Dionysus, god of Tragedy and of Comedy, was represented as accompanied by a winged Victory. The Prytaneum of the Eleans, trustees of the land 398 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS and of the games, was enclosed within the Altis at the northwest corner of the Heraeum. It was built over in Roman times, but the Greek structure beneath seems to have been of very early date. Here were sung ancient songs in the Doric dialect, and here, in the banquet- hall, the Olympic victors were feasted. Next in historic order come the remains of a row of twelve treasuries, ranged along close to the Kronos hill from the Heraeum to the Stadium entrance. They are ascribed to the sixth century b. c. or, in the case of part of the most easterly one, to the beginning of the fifth century. These little buildings are of great architectonic and historic import. Half of them were dedicated by communities from over the seas; five by Italian and Sicilian Greeks. The fragments from the treasury of Selinus recall at once the archaic temples and sculpture on the shore of Sicily that faces Carthage. The Syra- cusan Treasury was re-named ** Carthaginian" by rea- son of spoils, taken by the Syracusans from their Punic enemies in the battle of Himera and placed here to unite at this common shrine the victors of Salamis with their brothers in the west. In the fifth century b. c. the flush of victory at Salamis not only lit up the Acropolis at Athens but spread to this green valley in Elis. The great Zeus temple was built. Its pediments, as we have already seen, were adorned with sculptured myths appealing at once to local pride and to wider Hellenic patriotism. In the eastern gable Zeus stood upright as arbiter in the OLYMPIA 399 chariot contest of Pelops; in the western gable the archaic yet majestic Apollo appeared as the defender against the Centaurs, the barbarian invaders. To em- phasize the honour due to Athens there was painted on the throne within the temple a representation of Pirithous, the bridegroom of Hippodameia, and his friend, the Athenian Theseus. The victories over the Persians were again symbolized by the contest between Theseus and the Amazons wrought upon the footstool of the seated god, and, as if to put the meaning beyond all doubt, here too were Greece and Salamis personi- fied, the latter holding in her hand the figurehead of a ship. The metope sculptures represented the labours of Heracles who, as founder of the games, typified to patriot and athlete bodily powers and indomitable will. The cella of the temple was reserved for the great gold- ivory statue of Zeus, who was seated while others stood. Phidias established his workshop by the sacred enclo- sure and wrought. And the result of his handiwork was a world's wonder for long centuries. Into his creation were breathed Homeric dignity, Attic beauty, and Hel- lenic pride. Dio Chrysostom in the first century of the Christian era could say of it: "Methinks that if any one who is heavy-laden in mind, who has drained the cup of misfortunes and sorrows in life, and whom sweet sleep visits no more, were to stand before this image, he would forget all the griefs and troubles that are inci- dental to the life of man." Time and earthquakes and plunderers have worked 400 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS almost utter ruin. But the ground plan of the temple remains to tell a detailed story, and some of the great shafts lie prostrate where they fell. In the Museum is preserved, more or less complete, the major part of the gable sculptures, fortunately including the very noble figure of Apollo, and the mutilated but beautiful me- topes. The gold-ivory statue has disappeared long since; It is possible that it may have been destroyed when the temple was burnt in the reign of Theodosius II, but a Byzantine historian claims that the statue was still standing in a palace at Constantinople when it was con- sumed by fire in 475 A. d. In front of the Zeus temple are still to be seen some blocks of the lofty triangular column over which Paeonius caused his winged Nike to hover. The statue itself, in large part intact, is set up in the Museum and belongs to the more beautiful of our inheritances from antiquity. If now we add, in imagination, the great council hall, possibly lying southeast from the temple, and the older colonnade bounding the east side of the Altis, and if we add the pentagonal Pelopion and the minor sanc- tuaries, and fill in the forest of statues of athletes and of gods, we shall have the more salient features of the sacred enclosure down through the great period imme- diately following the Persian wars. To the beginning of the fourth century is attributed the little temple of the Mother of the Gods east of the Heraeum. Running in a line from this up to the very entrance of the Sta- dium is a long row of pedestals. Upon these stood the OLYMPIA 401 Zanes, or bronze statues of Zeus, which were erected from fines imposed upon offenders against the rules of the games. They stood where the contestants must see them just as they passed from the Altis into the Stadium. It is significant that the first recorded serious violation of athletic honour did not occur until 388 b. c, only a half century before free Greece was crushed at Chaeronea, and that the next occasion was in the 112th Olympiad, six years after Macedonian rule was estab- lished. This second time it was an Athenian who had bribed his competitors, and the Athenians, like some modem sympathizers with athletic criminals, were shameless enough to press the Eleans to remit the fine. But the god at Delphi compelled the Athenians to sub- mit. Standing before the Opisthodomus, the rear porch of the Zeus temple, from which poet, historian, and philosopher were wont to utter high words on noble themes, the crowd may have looked up at the great Apollo with his hand outstretched and imagined him dictating the inscription placed, on a similar occasion, upon the base of one of the Zanes: "An Olympic vic- tory is to be gained not by money but by fleetness of foot and strength of body." Macedon also left its records. When Philip had de- feated the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338 b. c, his first care was to prove that he was Hellene and not the barba- rian that Demosthenes considered him. The Philip- peum was dedicated, and in it were erected gold-ivory statues of Philip's father Amyntas, of Philip, of the 402 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS mother and grandmother of Alexander, and of Alexan- der himself. Alexander's right to contend at the games was vindicated. In this period also was added on the eastern side of the Altis the beautiful Echo colonnade with its sevenfold echo. When Greece came under Roman rule, no longer could free-bom Greeks boast of exclusive right to par- ticipate at Olympia. Champions from all parts of the empire, Tiberius and Nero among them, took part in the games. Pausanias speaks of a statue of Augus- tus, made of amber, and a statue of Trajan, dedicated by the Greek nation, and also of one of Hadrian set up by the Achaean confederacy. Nero, who contended both in the Olympic and Pythian games, dedicated four crowns in the Zeus temple. Under the Antonines the external splendour of the Altis and the comfort of the visiting throngs were enhanced by the public-spirited Herodes Atticus, a Greek from Marathon and the pre- ceptor of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Lucian, who was repeatedly at the Games, gives in his "Life's End of Peregrinus" a vivid picture of one of the quadrennial ^celebrations in the time of the Antonines. In place of ithe deserted ruins of to-day we can see the temples, istatues, marble exedra, the echo colonnade, the athletes, :and the thronging crowds gossiping, wrangling, gaping .after novelty. As the Cynic partisan harangues the peo- ple from the pulpit of the Opisthodomus we realize how for centuries Greek life had focused in these gatherings. The festival had become a Greek Exchange. Here, if OLYMPIA 403 we are to believe Lucian, Herodotus first gave to the public his history, the great epinician epic that recounted the triumphs of the Greek over the barbarian. Among his audience would be some whose brothers or fathers had fought at Thermopylae, and all would hear with pride how Xerxes asked : " What are the Greeks do- ing?" and how he was answered: "They are holding the Olympic games, seeing the athletic sports and the chariot races;" and then, when Xerxes was told that the prize was a mere olive wreath, how a Persian exclaimed : "What manner of men are these who contend with one another not for money but for honour!" Brain and brawn were alike praised at Olympia. The sophist Hippias was Elis-bom, and the statue of Gorgias from Sicily was erected among those of the athletes. And here rhetoricians from Gorgias to Lucian delivered their epideictic speeches; artists, painters, and musi- cians appealed to the eye or the ear; philosophies new or old were hotly debated. But no Roman patronage could galvanize into real life the dying spirit of freedom. Professionalism grew apace. Christianity, established in the eastern empire, extinguished the fire on the ancient altar of Zeus. The fitful return to polytheism under Julian the Apostate only served to show its decadence, and in 393 A. d. the emperor Theodosius finally suppressed the Olympic games. When the "truce" of the Olympic god no longer interposed a defence, the Altis itself became a Byzantine fortress and the monuments were partially 404 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS destroyed to build its walls. Amongst the ruins of the Palaestra and the Workshop of Phidias can be seen the remains of a Byzantine church. Earthquakes in the sixth century threw down the Zeus temple, and in this and the following century the Cladeus and the Alpheus, the only gods who still retained their power, united in preserving under deep layers of earth the mutilated monuments for a kindlier age to uncover and to honour. After this destruction and burial, for more than one thousand years the summer moons waxed and waned above the desolated valley disturbed only by the hoof- beats of the horses ridden by the vassal bands of the Dukes of the Morea. Here, as elsewhere in Greece, temples robbed of their acolytes and statues, no longer symbols of a living religion, forgot the incense of a happy past and could look forward to no festal renas- cence. Sterling, in his " Daedalus, " pictures these or- phaned children of Olympus in a loneliness only less pathetic than their irksome imprisonment within un- sympathetic Museum walls : " Statues, bend your heads in sorrow, Ye that glance *mid ruins old, That know not a past nor expect a morrow, On many a moonlit Grecian wold." In 1875 the German government subsidized the sys- tematic excavations that restored to the modern world some of its most valued treasures and laid bare the greater part of the ruined Altis, the adjacent buildings and the entrance to the Stadium. OLYMPIA 405 The remains excavated outside the Altis bring us to the contests themselves. Close to the western wall of the Altis were the elaborate Palaestra and Gymna- sium, where the athletes could keep themselves in form for the contests. From the northeastern corner of the sacred enclosure leads the covered way into the Stadium, which has been only partially excavated at the two ends. To the south, or possibly east, of the Sta- dium lay the Hippodrome by the bank of the Alpheus. Frazer, contrary to the usual belief, thinks it possible that it may still be intact north of the new bed of the river. From Pausanias, who fortunately described the Hippodrome minutely, we can in imagination recon- struct the scene: the rising tiers of spectators; the bronze turning-posts, on which respectively stood stat- ues of Pelops and of Hippodameia, at each end of the course around which the chariots drove twelve times; the umpires at the goal ; the chariots waiting ready for the signal given at the hoisting of the bronze eagle and the dropping of the dolphin. For a typical chariot race of the best period we may turn to the ^'Electra" of Sophocles, although the scene of the race is laid at Delphi, not at Olympia. Sophocles, who himself em- bodied the Greek perfection of manly beauty, knew how to give essential details to critical hearers. The danger involved and the skill required on the race track made the owner of the victorious team, provided he was his own charioteer, a worthy recipient of Olym- pic honours. There are ten contestants in all, two of 4o6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS them Libyan Greeks. They draw lots for the assign- ment of inner and outer tracks and take their stations at command of the judges, and then "At the bronze trumpet's signal forth they shot: the men Urged on their horses and with both hands loosed the reins. Now on a sudden all the race course filled with din Of rattling chariots. Up aloft the dust cloud flew, Enwrapping all together. Spared they not the goad That one might pass the others' horses snorting foam For horses, breathing neck and neck, now smote with flecks. Blown backwards, rivals' flanks and fellies of the wheels. But he, just grazing past the post each time, would urge The trace-horse on the right and curb the left inside. Now thus far all the chariots had fared upright, But here the ^nianian's colts the curb refused. Ran off with violence and, swerving from the course, ('T was now the sixth round ended or the seventh now) Full on the frontlets of the Libyan's team they crashed. From this mischancing first another and then one Fouled with his neighbour, crushing him, till all the course Crisaean filled with wreckage of the chariot teams. This noticing, the skilled Athenian charioteer Held in and swerved to safer ofl&ng to pass by The surge of chariot billows wallowing in the midst. Last came Orestes driving, holding back his colts, Placing his confidence upon the final heat. But when he sees the man from Athens left alone He stings his swift colts' ears and whistled shrill the whip Pursuing. Now abreast the chariots twain drove on, First one team, then the other leading by a neck. Now he through all the other laps unscathed had come, 111 fated, upright on the upright chariot board. But as the horses doubled now the final turn He loosed the left rein, recked not of the column's edge And struck upon it full the shivering axle-nave. Over the chariot rim he lurched. The severing straps Coiled round him. As he fell to earth the colts ran wild OLYMPIA 407 Along the race course wide. The people, seeing him Thus fallen from the team, raise outcries loud and high At what the youth had done and then this evil hap. Now borne along the ground, now high again upflung His legs gleam white, until the charioteers the colts Had checked, no easy task, and disentangled him So covered o'er with blood that never had a friend, Seeing that ruined form, have known him as his own." Both the Olympic and Pythian games were held every four years. The Nemean and Isthmian came every two years. In all four the prize was similar : the wreath of wild olive at Olympia ; of mountain bay at Delphi ; of parsley or of native pine at Nemea; of parsley at Corinth. We are, indeed, justified in emphasizing, until the period of decadence, the absence of professionaUsm. The athlete, after undergoing the severest training, con- tested, with no degradation of gate-money, merely to win the honour of a simple wreath. But we need not shut our eyes to the fact that the honour did not fade with the wreath. It belonged to the athlete's native place and to all his fellow-citizens. Thinking of the evanes- cent glory of the Isthmian parsley and with the long race in the stadium of Eternity in mind, the apostle Paul might indeed point the contrast for his hearers between a "corruptible crown" and "one that fadeth not away;" yet for the shorter race-course of life the emoluments of honour and preferment were secure. And, in addition to all these honours, an Olympian victor had a post-mortem value. He might be wor- shipped as a divinity and his statue might heal diseases, 4o8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS like the bones of a mediaeval saint. Thus Lucian's Momus, the god of critics, reminds Zeus that their own prestige is endangered by these new faith-cures: "Ac- tually," he says, "the statues of the athlete Polydamas at Olympia and of Theagenes at Thasus are curing fever-stricken patients." The athlete's ambition might issue in a selfish "op- portunism," or it might be of the nobler kind to which Pindar, thinking perhaps of the altar dedicated in the Altis to the god "Opportunity" (/catpos), would lift the contestant's ideal in his second Olympian: "Winning the contest setteth free the essayer from its care and pain, and wealth embroidered o'er with virtues bringeth opportunity for this and that, inspiring mood that broodeth deeply upon earnest themes." There was a sacred truce from hostilities amongst all Greeks for a month, to allow time for distant com- petitors and visitors to go and come in safety. The games were held in summer at the time of a full moon, whether in July or August is uncertain. The Septem- ber full moon, in fact, has been suggested as the date in the even Olympiads. At this later moon the heat might be almost as great as at the summer solstice, but it may be that the earlier date, with the longer day, was in vogue as long as the contests were all held upon one day. At any rate, the longest midsummer day was too short for the increasing number of events, and after 472 B. c. we hear of five days. The order of the contests is uncertain. At first, it would appear, the foot-races OLYMPIA 409 had been the only event. Later it seems probable that the foot-races, the long race, the short race, and the double course, came upon one day; on a second day, the wrestling, boxing, and pancratium. The chariot- races and the pentathlum came on one and the same day. The pentathlum was justly popular as calculated to secure an all-round development of the human form. It included leaping, the foot-race, discus-throwing, javelin-throwing, and wrestling. The Spartans, who were never charged with being effeminate, were said to favour it while discountenancing the more brutal pancratium. We certainly are not much attracted by the license of the latter, evidently considered legiti- mate, as we read of two athletes habitually winning this event by bending back their antagonists' fingers. One of them, Sostratus, was sumamed *' Finger-bender." But the judges presided with absolute authority and en- forced severe penalties against violations of the rules. Women were prohibited under pain of death from even crossing the river and entering the sacred precinct during the time of the games. Pausanias records one violation. Kallipateira, or Pherenike ("Victoria"), the daughter of Diagoras, the Rhodian victor immor- talized by Pindar, anxious to see her son compete, dis- guised herself as a trainer. In her exultation at her son's success she betrayed her sex. The penalty attached was to be hurled from the Typaeum rock on a mountain south of the Alpheus. In deference to the victories won by her father, her brothers, and her son, she was par- 41 o GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS doned, but thereafter the trainers were compelled to enter naked like the athletes themselves. The priestess of Demeter, however, was present tx officio, and Pausanias expressly states that virgins also were admitted as spectators. This statement is usually rejected, but it may have been true for certain times under the influence of Sparta, whose customs threw the sanction of pubHc sentiment around the athletic con- tests of their maidens, the future mothers of their fight- ing men. Although the modem reader is apt to think of the chariot-races in connection with Sicilian tyrants, they were, as we have seen from Sophocles, an integral part of Greek Ufe. Herodotus, in the midst of his account of the battle of Marathon, calmly suspends hostilities while he tells how Cimon, father of Miltiades, won three successive Olympic victories with the same mares and, as fitting climax, adds that the mares were buried on the stately avenue of Athenian tombs, facing the grave of Cimon himself. If Herodotus really read this at Olympia the incident would not have seemed to his audience an intrusive digression. In addition to the four-horse and two-horse chariot- races there was the race with mules no mean animals in Greece and the Orient. Pindar repeatedly celebrates them in his Olympian odes. There was also the single race-horse ridden by a jockey. One horse from Syra- cuse, Pherenicus (''Victor"), was celebrated in song both by Pindar and BacchyUdes. Pindar tells how he OLYMPIA 411 "ran the course, his body by the goad unurged" and brought victory to Hieron. BacchyHdes, reminding us that the horse-races opened the events of the day, ex- claims: " The Dawn, who touches earth with gold, saw Phere- nicus, wind-swift sorrel steed, victorious beside AJpheus eddying wide, and saw him, too, victorious at Pytho the divine. And I lay hand on earth and swear: Not yet has dust-cloud raised by horses in the lead e'er touched him in the race-course as he hastened to the goal. " Now sing of Zeus, the Kronos son, Olympian ruler of the gods and of unwearied Alpheus. Sing of mighty Pe- lops and of Pisa too, where famed Pherenicus won with hurrying feet the victory and came back to the ramparts firm of Syracuse and brought to Hieron the (olive) leaf of fortune fair." Pausanias tells of a Corinthian race-horse, Aura ("Breeze"), perhaps one of the famous "Koppa"* breed, sired by Pegasus. The jockey was thrown at the beginning of the race, but the mare continued without breaking form, rounded the turning stake, quickened her pace at the sound of the trumpet, reached the um- * The old letters Koppa ( f) and Sampi ( <^) were used to brand the haunches of blooded horses. The letter f, used as an abbreviation for Korinthos, when obsolete in many parts of Greece, was retained in the Corinthian alphabet. It had been carried to Italy by the early Greek colonists and so passed into our alphabet as the letter Q. Young Phidippides in the Clouds of Aristophanes had plunged his father into debt by his race-track operations and had in his stables a racer of this Koppa breed bought with money borrowed from the usurer Pasias. 412 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS pires first, knew that she had won, and stopped. The owner of the riderless horse was proclaimed victor. It would be very unsafe to assert that the eager Greeks, if called back to our own age of ingenious mechanisms, would turn uninterested from the vicari- ous competition by motor-cars, or feel nothing but dis- gust at human forms crooked into the semblance of brutes over a flying bicycle, but it is safe to emphasize that all their contests, whether exhibiting the develop- ment of the perfect human body or the beauty of the horse, ministered to that sure sense of form and pro- portion which they demanded and obtained from poet, painter, and musician, sculptor, architect, and athlete. But horse and chariot-racing involved certain special temptations. As time went on, the "anything to win" spirit was sure, now and then, to assert itself. The legend of the lynch-pin withdrawn from the chariot of (Enomaus by the bribery of Pelops must have called for strenuous casuistry from the priests of Zeus when it was necessary to punish offenders for shady practices towards rivals. Pindar magnificently ignores the thought of treachery. With him it is a god that "glorified him with the gift of golden chariot and winged untiring steeds: mighty (Enomaus he overtook and won the maiden for his bride." Although in later times the peripatetic professional developed and could claim as precedent the victories repeatedly won at various centres by the athletes of old, OLYMPIA 413 yet, at least for their own times, Pindar and Bacchylides were justified in assuming, alike for their Sicilian princes or for their boyish winners in the foot-race, the genuine amateur spirit of athletic rivalry. In the fourth century b. c. a Cretan, victor in the long race, was bribed to transfer his citizenship to Ephesus. The Olympian athlete had not then become, like the modern base-ball pitcher, a legitimate commodity of interstate commerce, and the Cretans with justifiable indignation pronounced the sentence of perpetual exile against Sotades the offender. For Pindar, indeed, it was necessary that every song should rise above the sordid, either in belief or practice. He was at once a supreme artist and a herald of the ideal. He even expurgates canonical mythology to in- fuse into his odes some deeper, nobler lesson suggested by the external and physical victory. And this, although several of his odes were addressed to rich tyrants like Hieron of Syracuse, at whose court were welcomed and honoured ^schylus, Simonides, Pindar, Bacchylides and many more. "He was to them in some measure what Augustus was to Virgil and Horace, what Lorenzo de' Medici was to the members of the Florentine Acad- emy." * Pindar honestly regarded him as the patron of letters and as a bulwark against the barbarians. He had fought under Gelon against the Carthaginians, and, soon after the battles of Himera and Salamis, the Etrus- cans, who were also threatening Greek supremacy, were, * Compare Jebb's BacchylideSy p. 200. 414 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS in 474 B. c, defeated by him. Early in the nineteenth century, from a partial excavation at Olympia, a bronze helmet of Etruscan make found its way to the British Museum. On it is the inscription : " Hieron, son of Deinomenes, and the Syracusans (dedicated) to Zeus these Tyrrhene spoils from Cumse." It tantalizes with the sequence of historic associations. From lips within this helmet came words of war in the dead Etruscan tongue that still baffles Hnguistic classification; on it were inscribed Greek words in the dialect of the proud Greek colonists in Sicily; mingled Greek dialects greeted it when dedicated in the sacred centre of the motherland; and now it is again held as spoils by another and mightier island folk. Pindar could not prophesy the fatal conflict between the tyrants of the west and the greedy imperialism of Athenian demagogues. He could not peer into the stone quarries at Syracuse and see the legatees of Sala- mis scorched under the lidless eye of a Sicilian sun. He could not foresee a Macedonian ruUng over Hellas nor forecast the Greek world under Roman sway. He could not have understood how even Plato, with the addi- tional perspective of another half century, crowded with disturbing shifts of value both in literature and govern- ment, would seek relief from the spectre of tyranny not in democracy but by converting the baser metal of the despot into the pure gold of the philosophic King. Yet Pindar is not without his misgivings. In words none too vague he warns the ruler, whose gold called forth OLYMPIA 415 his songs, of the dangers inherent in power. In the first Olympian he tells Hieron: "A man erreth if he thinketh that in doing aught he shall escape God's eyes. . . . Man's greatness is of many kinds ; the highest is to be achieved by Kings. Crane not thy neck for more. And be it thine to walk life's path with lofty tread." With better right and greater force iEschylus, him- self warrior of Marathon and Salamis, in the "Aga- memnon" covertly warns his Athenian contemporaries, then engaged in imperial schemes of expansion in Egypt and elsewhere, against the haughty spirit that goeth before a fall. His words easily connect themselves with this Pindaric ode because the return of the Greek host from Troy brings out on Clytemnestra's lips the metaphor drawn from the double racecourse the 8iavA.os. Ilium is but the turning-post at the farther end ; Argos is both the starting-point and the goal ; the stadium is the iEgean sea : "But beware lest some desire May fall upon our men, succumbing to their greed, To ravage what they should not : they for safe return Unto their homes must bend them back again, adown The double race-track's other leg." To make selections from Pindar is to pry out jewels from an antique setting. But his Olympic odes give the best interpretation of the best meaning of the games. Some were impromptu odes crystallized under the stress of the victory and sung in the Altis while the full 41 6 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS moon shone upon the hero of the day. Some were longer and written at leisure for the supplementary celebra- tion at the victor's home. But in any case the thought was not impromptu. The Theban eagle soared habit- ually and paused for a moment only at Olympia, sent by " the Hours, circling in the dance to music of the lyre's changing notes, to be a witness to the greatest of all games." Yet with all his soaring Pindar never forgot the gracious beauty of human life. The Graces are ever near. Victory, he tells us, by the Graces' aid is won, and the charioteers " Charis transfigures with the beauty of their fame, as they drive foremost in the twelfth round of the race." Pindar calls his song "a writing tally of the Muses." Not he that runs may read, but whoever will be at pains to wrap the Greek scroll around the tally-stick can read the cypher and can find the clue to lead him safely through "the sounding labyrinths of song."* Pindar could presuppose an acquaintance with mythology at least as familiar as was to every child of a generation ago the knowledge of the Old Testament. Conflicting myths lived side by side in the popular consciousness. The sculptor and the poet could choose or reject at will. However recondite may seem at times the application of the myth to the Olympic victor in question, the * Olympian Odes, i, translated by E. Myers. OLYMPIA 417 pages of Pindar are constantly illuminated by some flash-light that photographs upon the particular a glimpse of the universal. From Olympia in Elis we are transported to Olympus. Heracles brought from Olym- pus the charter for the games; there, too, is both the starting-line and finish of the poet's courser: "Pegasus is stabled in Olympus." Pindar does not beUttle the mysteries of the unseen. When the fame of Theron of Acragas (Girgenti) is said to over-pass Sicily and to touch the pillars of Heracles, the thought of the path- less ocean suggests a wider and uncharted Cosmos. His search-light projects for a moment its stare into infinity, but it is forthwith checked with characteristic restraint : " What lies beyond nor foot of wise man nor unwise has ever trod. I will not follow on. My quest were vain." Pindar's description of the ancient consecration of the Altis may serve to justify the Labours of Heracles carved upon the Zeus temple : " Heracles there measured off a sacred grove unto the sovereign father and he ordained the plain around for rest and feasting. He honoured the Alpheus stream together with the twelve lord gods and he gave utterance to the name of Kronos hill, till then unnamed." His praise of the discus victor comes to mind when we see a copy of Myron's Discobolus or the graceful throw of a contemporary Greek in the Stadium of modem Athens : 4i8 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS " In distance passing all, Enikeus hurled the stone with circling hand and from his warrior mates a mighty cheer swept by." And we seem ourselves to share in the evening cele- bration in the Altis when " the lovely shining of the fair-faced moon illumined it and all the precinct rang with song and festal mirth." We can share too in the undertone of pathos in Pin- dar's reference to the dead father of a young athlete. Asopichus is winner in the boys' footrace, and the hews of his victory is sent to his father in Hades. The Arcadian nymph Echo is the messenger : " Fly, Echo, to the dark-walled palace of Persephone and to his father bear the tidings glorious. Seek Cleodamus, tell him how for him his son hath crowned his boyish hair with wreaths of th' ennobling games in famous Pisa's vale." Perhaps the most radiant picture of "festal mirth" is called up by Pindar's seventh Olympian, written for Diagoras of Rhodes. Diagoras's two sons and his grandson were also Olympic victors. This acted, on at least two occasions, as a family prophylactic. His daughter, as we have seen, was pardoned by reason of this for her intrusion in disguise at the Olympic games, and Dorieus, his son, when captured by the Athenians in a sea-fight, escaped the only alternatives usual in the case of a prisoner of war. He was neither put to death nor forced to pay a ransom, but set free, just as OLYMPIA 419 Balaustion, the Rhodian girl, was set free by the Syra- cusans because she delighted her captors by repeating a new drama of Euripides. And the Rhodians wrote up Pindar's ode in letters of gold in the Athena temple on the acropolis of Lindus. The modern visitor to this enchanting island climbs up the lofty headland that rises abruptly between the shining water of the two indenting bays, and, before he passes through the ruins of the ancient propylaea and the still imposing por- tals of the fortress of the Knights of St. John, he sees upon the solid rock the after part of a huge trireme with the steering-oar and the rippling water carved in stone. He can imagine a trireme of a former day entering the harbour below with triumphal sweep of bars, bringing Diagoras and his victory back to his townsfolk in this far-off comer of the Greek world. He can picture the procession of Lmdians to Athena's temple; the bril- liant colouring of robes and chitons ; the choral music ; the exultation in their townsman's physical prowess and their intoxication of delight because the greatest of lyric poets is reaching out to them, as to the bridegroom at a wedding- feast, a chalice of pure gold resplendent, brimming with the "distilled nectar" of his song. But Pindar soars beyond the pride of life even as he universalizes the individual experience. It was not only St. Paul's ideaUsm that perceived the great contest in which humanity is forever engaged. In Pindar's second Olympian the athlete's triumph suggests the victory over Death, and the Kronos hill becomes the ''tower 420 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS of Kronos" to which the victor travels over "the high- way of Olympian Zeus." So the arch-idealist Plato, in closing his great constructive vision of the Ideal State, can find no more fitting comparison for him that over- cometh than by likening him to the victors in the Games : " If we take my advice, believing that the soul is immortal, we shall ever hold to that upward path- way and at every turn shall practice justice joined to intelligence that we may be at once friends of ourselves and of the gods and may fare well . . . both while we abide here and when, like the prize-winners, we come to gather in the prizes of the games." But aside from lofty thoughts like these, native to the greater interpretative intelligences of Greece, the recently discovered poems of Bacchylides tell us much of the actual spirit of the games. Bacchylides was nephew of Simonides, the poet-laureate of the nation from Thermopylae to Plataea, and he was also the grand- son and namesake of a famous athlete. He was quali- fied to sing both the Games and the Graces. And the native of the little island of Ceos did not hesitate to enter the contest with the splendidly arrogant Theban who could compare his inferior rivals to "crows that chatter against the divine bird of Zeus." * Of the twelve epinician odes of Bacchylides three were addressed to Hieron, at whose court he enjoyed especial favour. Two Olympic odes were written for Lachon, a young athlete from the poet's native island. * Pindar, Olympian Odes, ii, translated by E. Myers. OLYMPIA 421 One of these is a short serenade sung before the victor's own house by his fellow-citizens. Nothing could better illustrate the intensity of local pride and enthusiasm. Now the victorious athlete is praised, now his very identity is merged in the personification of his native land. It is Ceos herself that has won the boxing and the foot-race. Lachon, as the ode reminds us, has already been greeted by the impromptu choral sung at Olympia on the evening of his triumph. Now he is welcomed at home by another choral for which there has been ample time to make ready. Bacchylides may well have written this little serenade not as a paid commission but as a spontaneous outburst of patriotic pride and affection for his country and his fellow coun- trymen. We should prefer to have it so. In any case we feel a human interest in the young athlete whose strong body and swift feet have won the prize: "Lachon has lot of such renown From Zeus most-high as yet had none, Enhancing fame with feet that run Beside Alpheus flowing down. For which e'er this with hair wreath-bound Olympic youths sang songs around How Ceos, with her vineyards crowned, The boxing and the foot-race won. " Thee now song-queen Urania's hymn Ennobles O thou wind-fleet one, Of Aristomenes the son Thy praise as victor homeward bringing And here before thy lintel singing How thou, thy course through stade-race winging, Brought Ceos fame no time shall dim." 422 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS From little Ceos, the second in order of those bright stepping-stones that dot the ^gean from Attica to Rhodes, we may quickly cross to the mainland and find our way to Marathon. From there to Athens we trace that greatest of all ancient race-courses over which the Greek runner ran in full armour to give with his dying breath the warning and the news of victory, and to win a memorial beside which the olive-wreath might well turn pale.* When the modem Athenians revived the Olympic Games the chariot-races were beyond their resources. Contests of personal, physical strength and skill con- stitute the fitting nucleus of the games held in the old Stadium, now newly covered with marble from the *' mountain that looks on Marathon." And it was a happy and natural thought to add as the closing event the great Marathon race. While perpetuating the glory of the Athenians it reenforces the loyalty of all the Greeks to their national capital. In this race centres the chief ambition of the Greeks. The other events are of secondary importance. If fanciful critics demand any further excuse for the change of venue from Olympia to Athens, it may be enough to re- mind them that Heracles (according to one tradition) brought in the first place from the banks of the Ilissus the original graft of the sacred olive-tree from which, at Olympia, the victor's crown was cut with the golden sickle. With graceful sentiment, however, the olive * For this story see chapter vii, p. 159, and note. OLYMPIA 423 sprigs are now in turn brought to Athens from Olym- pia. Despite all the modem barnacles that encrust the ancient torso, the student of old Greek life can find much to stimulate him in the revival of contests in- herited, or directly developed, from ancient times such as the foot-race, short and long distance; javelin- throwing; leaping; and, chief of all, the discus-throw in the ancient style. The interest of the Greeks to- day in this latter event is second only to that in the Marathon race. A modem, seated in the Stadium at Athens, has cause for meditation. Behind the gaudy hats and parasols of women, the more sombre clothing of men, or the brilliant uniforms of officials gleams Pentelic marble. Over many tens of thousands of spectators, gathered from all Greece and Europe and from beyond the Atlantic, float the flags of powerful nations: of Turkey; of the lands that look upon the northern seas; of the mighty spawn of the Anglo- Roman; and of the New Atlantis. None of these nations had emerged from barbarism when this same choir of encircling hills sang together the triumph song of Salamis. Prometheus, the incarnation of human self-assertion, rebel to the rule of Zeus, pinioned on a crag overlooking those same northern seas, is made by the Greek prophet to utter the pessimistic cry: "New gods rule Olympus." Now, as a modern Greek remarked to an American visitor, " the old gods have migrated to a new Olympus." 424 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS But although the gold-ivory statue of Zeus cannot reappear from the ruins of Olympia, yet "the godhead of supernal song" remains in the literature of the Greeks, interpreting and interpreted by the contribu- tions of the archaeologists. Swinburne's words are not mere poetic license : "Dead the great chryselephantine god, as dew last evening shed; Dust of earth and foam of ocean is the symbol of his head : Earth and ocean shall be shadows when Prometheus shall be dead." CHAPTER XIX MESSENIA "A land where fruit trees blossom, myriad fountains flow And flocks and herds are grazing in the meadows fair. Nor wintry are the winds of winter, nor too near The flaming Sun comes driving in his four-horse car." Euripides, Fragment of the Cresphontes. TELEMACHUS, in scarch of his father, sailed down the western coast of the Peloponnesus, landed at " sandy Pylos," the home of Nestor, and by this old friend was sent across country to Mene- laus at Lacedaemon. The long drive was broken by a night at Pherae. According to a tradition that still has its supporters the modem site of Pylos is Navarino, in the centre of the western coast of Messenia, while Pherae is represented by Kalamata, on the northeastern shore of the Messenian Gulf. A growing tendency to push Nestor's realm further up the coast, out of Messenia, and to place Pherae in Arcadia is due, in part, to the dis- crepancy between the lot of modern travellers on their way from Kalamata to Sparta and that of the two young princes of the Homeric story. Telemachus and the son of Nestor mounted an inlaid chariot at early dawn, their two horses, touched lightly by the whip, flew eagerly onward, and at sunset, as all the ways were 426 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS darkening, the wheat-bearing plain of Lacedaemon opened before their eyes. Moderns, whether merchants or sightseers, must spend an equally long or longer day in riding on mules or plodding horses over the difficult paths of Mount Taygetus, whose massive bulk forms an almost impenetrable barrier between Messenia and Laconia. The narrow bridle paths of the Gorge of the Nedon, which is the trade route, and the savage beauty of the Langada Gorge exclude highways for royal cars and on- rushing steeds. Whether or no Kalamata was once an insignificant way-station between two princely domains, it is now one of the most prosperous towns of the new nation, separated from Athens only by a day's ride in an ex- press train, and the natural starting point for excur- sions in Messenia. From this rich southern plain it is easy to reach the confines of the more northern plain, which was the country's heart. Here was the capital of its prehistoric kings, and here about the mountain fortresses of Ithome and Eira occurred the chief events of its pitiable his- toric life. Ithome is one of the highest fortified moun- tains in Greece, but can be ascended by roadways which only below the fortress peaks change to rocky paths, insecure even for mountain horses. From this summit, by the favour of Zeus of the open sky whose sanctuary it once was, all Messenia can be overlooked. It is in- deed a lovely country. The mountain ranges to the north and east have reserved their sterner influences MESSENIA 427 for other peoples, while the open sea along the western and southern coasts bestows the largess of a perfect climate. The country between Kalamata and Ithome is one of great fertility and beauty. Orchards of gray- green olives are broken by dark cypresses, while lemon and orange groves, unknown to Euripides, add their peculiar radiance to the landscape. In the spring, almond trees delicately lift their pink blossoms above long hedges of glistening green cactus, and the green grass of the wayside fields nurses buttercups and scarlet anemones, purple and yellow irises, and thick clusters of deep blue flowers. The loveliness of Messenia decided her history, which was one of passionate and futile resistance to foreign greed. The Spartan poet Tyrtaeus said that the soil of Messenia was "good to plough and good to plant." Long before his day the Spartans had stretched out their hands for it, and from the eighth century to the fourth they never relinquished their grasp. During the more important epochs of Greek history Messenia was but a province of Laconia. But it was a province capable at any time of revolt. The two early *' Messenian Wars," of the eighth and seventh centuries, were the stepping stones by which Sparta rose to a place of power in the Peloponnesus. Beset by agrarian difficulties, she needed more land, and the most fertile land of Greece was to be had for a little blood. Of the second war we have a few fragmen- tary memorials in the contemporaneous martial verses 428 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS of Tyrtaeus. But in general both wars would be almost obliterated from history were it not for the fact that Pausanias, having access to some late prose and poetry which repeated the native legends, in an unwonted mood of imaginative sympathy gave himself up to recounting the pathetic efforts of Messenia toward free- dom. There is the usual material : heroes and fortresses, Aristodemus and Ithome in the first war, Aristomenes and Eira in the second; oracles and portents; fair maidens and faithless wives ; kings and cowherd lovers ; storms and marvellous escapes; courage and despair. Aristomenes, as Pausanias says, shines out like Achilles in the lUad, " the first and greatest glory of the Mes- senian name." But in spite of his heroic and pro- longed defence of Eira, the Messenians by the sixth century were serfs of the Spartans, paying to their masters a half of all the produce raised by their own hands from their own farms, asses, Tyrtaeus called them, worn by intolerable loads. In the fifth century they took advantage of an earth- quake and an insurrection of slaves at Sparta to rise once more and encamp on Ithome. They were de- feated and obliged to choose between serfdom and exile. But by this time their petty rebellions had be- come important in the affairs of the greater powers of Greece. Ithome was the rock on which the political life of Cimon of Athens suffered shipwreck. During the next ninety years the nationalism of Messenia was a homeless and restless force, seeking, MESSENIA 429 wherever it might, to harm Sparta and to glorify itself. During the Peloponnesian War the Messenians by their knowledge of the country materially aided the Athe- nians in the dramatic battle of Sphacteria off the Mes- senian Pylos, and the surrender of the Spartans, Thu- cydides says, amazed all Hellas. At last, about 370 b. c, the "Poland of Greece" found a friend in the man whose practical idealism was dominating the period. Epaminondas, in pursuance of his policy of weakening Sparta by reviving other Peloponnesian states, determined to found a new cap- ital of Messenia, Messene by name, on the slopes of Ithome. Ruins of this city still exist, and the most im- posing of them, the fortification known as the Arcadian Gateway, is famous as an example of skilful Greek engineering. Lying toward Megalopolis, also a bene- ficiary of Epaminondas, it seemed to reunite in a new hope the old Arcadia and the old Messenia whose friendship had been so futile. To-day, still a strangely impressive monument, it may serve as a symbol of Messenia's share in the spirit of Greece. Impotent in literature and art and unsuccessful even in war, the men of this country conserved through many genera- tions and vicissitudes that intense national feeling which existed at the core of every Greek state, shaping Greek history and penetrating Greek literature. Wher- ever history became large and literature became uni- versal the force of national consciousness was likely to become diffused, but in a state like Messenia it was 430 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS obscured neither by other national gifts nor by its own success. The Messenians, Pausanias tells us, "wandered for nearly three hundred years far from Peloponnese, and in all that time they are known to have dropped none of their native customs, nor did they unlearn their Doric tongue." After the victory at Leuctra "the Thebans sent messengers to Italy, Sicily and the Eues- peritae inviting all Messenians in any part of the world whither they had strayed to return to Peloponnese. They assembled faster than could have been expected, for they yearned towards the land of their fathers and hatred of Sparta still rankled in their breasts." And for them Epaminondas made a new city, sending " men who were skilled in laying out streets, building houses and sanctuaries and erecting city walls." The Arcadi- ans sent victims for the sacrifices. The exiles, home at last, prayed to their ancient gods and called upon their ancient heroes to come and dwell among them. " But loudest of all was the cry for Aristomenes, and the whole people joined in it." This call from his own people has been, we may hope, full compensation to his dead ears for the dumb or sneering lips of history. CHAPTER XX SPARTA " Lacedaemon's hollowed vale by mountain-gorges pent.' ' Homer, Odyssey. IN the Spartans* theory of life adventures abroad or the welcome of strangers into their own territory- had no place. Perhaps nothing more sharply dif- ferentiated them from the Athenians, whose love of roving was equalled only by their delight in seeing the rest of the world drawn to their city. The instinctive and reasoned reserve of the Spartans was reenforced by the physical conditions of their country. Laconia is bulwarked on three sides by mountains, through which, in antiquity, all entrances but one were difficult, and its southern boundary is the open and stormy sea. The Laconian Gulf splits the country into two peninsulas, ending in the famous promontories of Tae- narum and Malea, in rounding which so many sailors, from the days of Menelaus and Agamemnon and Odysseus, have looked for violent winds. Far inland, within the rifts of the northern hills, lies the plain of Sparta. By those to whom the sea is not an essential element in Greek landscape this city is held to be more beautifully situated than any other in 432 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Greece. The brilliant luxuriousness of a southern low- land is combined with the austere grandeur of moun- tain scenery. Some twenty miles in length, the plain is only j&ve miles broad between the ranges of Taygetus and of Pamon, whose bases show extraordinary caverns and fissures. Taygetus stretches along the whole western side of Laconia, but rears the highest of its long line of summits just over Sparta. These magnificent summits, covered with snow for two thirds of the year, ennoble many a landscape outside of Laconia. Below them extend the wide tracts of forest where Artemis once took her pleasure, and Spartan hunters tracked the wild boar with dogs that shared their ** bravery" and ''love of toil " and won a guerdon of praise from Pindar and Sophocles. In front of these woodlands rise the five peaks which have given to the mountain the modem name of Pentedactylon. It is characteristic of the Greek attitude toward nature that the mountain is not praised in poetry as much as is the beautiful plain, richly fertilized by the river Eurotas on its way from Arcadia to the sea. Tele- machus, in spite of his greater affection for the rough goat-pastures of his native Ithaca, appreciated the wide courses and the meadowland of Sparta where " abound- eth the clover, the marsh grass, the wheat and the rye and the broad white ears of the barley." Euripides knew that the reedy bed of the Eurotas, the trees and meadow flowers of its banks, its hungry foam in the season of heavy rain and the lovely gleam of its calmer SPARTA 433 waters would haunt the homesick hearts of Helen and the Spartan maidens who shared Iphigeneia's exile among the Taurians. Modern Sparta, founded after the War of Indepen- dence, lies in the southern district of the Sparta of an- tiquity. Mediaeval Sparta, called Mistra, lay some dis- tance west of the old site, very near the entrance to the Langada Pass. Homeric Sparta lay to the southeast, across the Eurotas, at Therapne, later a suburb of the Doric city. Here flourished that noble court which amazed the young Ithacan and the tale of which is still to us "a fountain of immortal drink." Telemachus arrived just as Menelaus was marrying his son to a native princess, and his daughter, the inheritor of her mother's loveliness, to Thessalian Neoptolemus, Achil- les's son. Never could the great vaulted hall of the palace have displayed a gayer splendour. The son of Odysseus has grown up in no mean castle, but this gleam of gold and silver, like sun and moon, this flash- ing bronze and shining ivory and glowing amber make him feel as if he were on Olympus at the court of Zeus. Tumblers perform wonderful tricks. A divine minstrel sings. Silver basins and golden ewers are passed around. Supper is served on a polished table in dishes of gold. Menelaus, noticing the boy's charming admiration, tells him how he has gathered his wealth in Cyprus and Phoenicia and Egypt, but how it means little to him over against the loss of his old comrades and friends. And as they talk Helen comes in, like Artemis of the golden 434 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS arrows, and her willing servants bring her a carved chair and cover it with a rug of soft wool. And sitting there, her white hands busied with the deep blue wool wound about her golden distaff and with the dressed yarn heaped in her silver basket that runs on little wheels and is rimmed with gold, she talks with them of what happened once in Troy and of Odysseus of the hardy heart and, quite easily, of how she had wanted to come home again to her own country and her child and to her lord "who was lacking in naught, nor wis- dom, nor beauty of manhood." And into their drinking cups she put a drug and "they drank of it, quenching all anger and pain and all of their sorrows forgetting." The memory of the royal pair never died in Sparta. Therapne contained a sanctuary called the "Mene- laeion," where prayers were offered for the physical beauty which was keenly desired by an athletic people. Helen sometimes walked abroad to bestow in turn the gift she had received from Aphrodite. At least, Hero- dotus tells a story of a nurse taking a very ugly girl baby to the temple and meeting a strange woman who in- sisted upon seeing the child and who then gently stroked its head and said, " One day this child shall be the fairest lady in Sparta." And from that very day her looks began to change and the ugly baby became the beauty of the town and married the king. It is not difficult to prolong the associations with Homeric Laconia by following Helen on her guilty flight southward; lingering to see Amyclae, a rich city SPARTA 435 in Homeric times, and the beehive tomb of Vaphio, which in 1889 yielded up two incomparable vessels of gold now in the Museum at Athens; and going on to the busy seaport town of Gytheion, from whose docks Paris took his stolen bride to the little island of Cranae, now Marathonisi, before spreading his defiant sails for the longer voyage. But sooner or later the fact of the Dorian invasion must be reckoned with, and the resultant birth at Sparta of a civiUzation totally at odds with that which it displaced. In Laconia the invasion was one of conquest and subjection, and the victors prided themselves on keep- ing their blood pure, much as the Laconian Maniotes of modem times have clung fiercely to their Spartan descent. Sparta became the Dorian city par excellence, the protagonist of Dorian ideals, the natural leader of the forces which both in war and peace were in oppo- sition to the Ionic elements in Greek life. The historical events in this development are so interwoven with the history of the other states of Greece, especially with that of Athens, that they will already have become familiar to travellers who visit Sparta last. The con- quest of Messenia first increased her resources. By the middle of the sixth century she won signal victories over Tegea and Argos and became the head of the Peloponnesian Confederacy, which included every state in the Peloponnesus except Achaea and Argos. Before the end of the century she was the leading state of Greece, for Thessaly was losing ground and Athens 436 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS had not yet risen. In the first part of the fifth century Sparta was the natural leader of the Greek allies against Persia, and in the autumn of 481 b. c. was the head of the congress at the Isthmus. To her generals was given the command of both the army and the navy. But her conduct of the wars at best did not increase her prestige, nor did she afterwards exhibit any skill in using new conditions. This was the opportunity of Ionic Athens to create the greatest period of Greek his- tory. But Sparta was also strong and possessed in Brasidas a general unparalleled among the Laconians for eager enterprise, trustworthiness and personal popu- larity. A final struggle was inevitable. The Dorians won, and, at the end of the fifth century, once more for a generation held the balance of power in Greece. But Sparta's despotism within the Peloponnesus and her de- sire for foreign aggrandizement created new hostilities. Early in the fourth century Persia undermined her maritime power, and Greek friendships as strange as the ^schylean truce between fire and water were formed to her detriment. Athens and Thebes, Corinth and Argos forgot old enmities in hatred of Sparta, but she maintained her supremacy and forced upon Greece the arbitration of the Persian king. For fifteen years Greek politics veered hither and thither, and then at Leuctra Epaminondas conquered Sparta and won the leadership of Greece for Thebes. His death gave one more opportunity to Athens, but before she could use it Macedon arose and at Chaeronea united her with SPARTA 437 Sparta in a common humiliation. Never again did either Dorian or Ionian state have power to alarm the other. Thucydides described Sparta as a straggling village like the ancient towns of Hellas. Polybius added that it was roughly circular in shape and level, although it inclosed certain uneven and hilly places. It had no real acropolis, but the highest of its several hills re- ceived this conventional name; and it was not forti- fied by walls until long after the greatest days of its history. Four districts or wards, Pitane, apparentiy the aristocratic quarter, Limnae, Cynosura, and Mesoa, perhaps represented an early group of villages which later were united in one city. This city was extraordinarily barren of artistic adorn- ment. The citizens of no other leading state in the whole of Greece were so indifferent to the value of archi- tecture and sculpture, nor is it likely that they were per- turbed by the prophecy of Thucydides: "If the com- munity of Lacedaemon should become a desert with only the temples and ground foundations remaining, I think that, after the lapse of much time, men of the future would be very slow to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was equal to their fame. And yet they possess two of the five divisions of the Pelo- ponnesus and hold the hegemony of the whole and of many outside allies. But this community is not a city regularly built with costly temples and edifices and would seem rather insignificant." 438 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS Temples and edifices of course there were for the busi- ness of life and of religion, but the need for them was not, as in Athens, or even in certain cities of rude Arcadia, identified with the larger need of inspiring or importing the genius of architect, sculptor, and painter. Sparta had an early school of sculpture, influenced by Cretan teachers, specimens of whose work may be seen in the Museum. But the impulse shrivelled and died in an uncongenial atmosphere. Nor do we find the Spartans in the great artistic centuries clamouring for the work of foreign artists as did the towns of " stupid " Boeotia. The British School of Archaeology is success- fully engaged in the exploration of Sparta, but we can- not anticipate the discovery of statues like the Hermes of Olympia or the restoration of buildings like the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi. With this chastening of his imagination the traveller may turn his attention to the few discoveries which up to this time have been made. By far the most signifi- cant of these are fragmentary remains of the temple of Athena Chalkicekos and of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. Athena's Brazen House, existing in some form from a very early epoch, was so associated with the public life of the city that it became known to foreign- ers as an object of peculiar national sentiment. Euripi- des makes the Trojan women attribute to Helen a desire to see it once more when, praying to die at sea before the consummation of their captivity, they seek to involve her in their own fate : SPARTA 439 '*And, God, may Helen be there, With mirrors of gold, Decking her face so fair. Girl-like; and hear and stare And turn death cold, Never, ah, never more The hearth of her home to see, Nor sand of the Spartan shore, Nor tombs vi^here her fathers be Nor Athena's Brazen Dwelling Nor the towers of Pitane " * The discovery of the Temple of Artemis is of great importance, not only because it was the pivot of the religious life of Sparta but because its eighth century foundations, excavated beneath the traces of a sixth century structure, may belong to the earliest temple in Greece. The image, called Orthia because it had been found "upright" in a thicket of willows, was beHeved by the Spartans to be the ancient wooden one brought by Orestes and Iphigeneia from the land of the Tauri- ans, where Iphigeneia, rescued by Artemis from the sacrificial altar at Aulis, had been its priestess and guardian. Euripides naturally preserves the Athenian tradition that the image was brought to Brauron. But Pausanias presses the Spartan claim and explains the hoary custom of annually scourging the boys in front of the image by the "reUsh for blood'' that it had ac- quired in the days when human sacrifices were offered to it in a barbarian land. The brutality in the training of Spartan youth has * Translated by Gilbert Murray. 440 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS bulked so large in tradition that local associations with it perhaps impress the traveller more sharply than any others. In the southwestern region of the town, near the large ruins of a Roman bath, lay, it is thought, the Dromos or race course, and the Platanistas or Plane- tree Grove, surrounded by a moat and entered by two bridges, where the boys, as a part of their education, fought very savage battles. This grove is an excellent illustration of the danger of claiming too much for the influence on the mind of external forms. Plato held that even the shapes of trees might influence the spirit of those who walked among them, and Walter Pater, in his study of Lacedaemon, compresses the idea into a definite application by describing the plane tree, the characteristic tree of Sparta, as "a very tranquil and tranquillizing object, regally spreading its level or gravely curved masses on the air." Yet within a circle of these tranquillizing objects Cicero, and later Lucian and Pausanias, saw the Spartan boys fighting with incredible fury, kicking, scratching, biting, and dying rather than confess themselves beaten. In literature as well as in the plastic arts the Spartans failed to express themselves. Only four poets of any widespread fame had their homes in Sparta, and no one of these was a native bom. Significantly, too, they all lived at least as early as the seventh century, at the only period when Spartan life showed any pliability. Individual freedom was not wholly repressed, and an acknowledgment of the graces of life was at times per- SPARTA 441 mitted. Only under these conditions could art live at all, and poetry outran sculpture in permanent achieve- ment. This was, perhaps, due to its immediate con- nection with music (including dancing), the only art which the later Spartans, although they did not give it a place in their educational curriculum, seem to have appreciated. According to tradition, Sparta's poets all came to her in response to a call for foreign aid in her domestic broils. Terpander of Lesbos and Thaletas of Crete successively founded two musical epochs in a city that was intent upon controlling its serfs and developing its soil. Terpander's service was almost incalculable, for he modified the existing lyre into an instrument which was universally used until the fifth century and which gave the first great impulse to vocal music. But "the strings he fingered are all gone, " and of the verses that he wrote we have only a few fragments to recall his life in Sparta, his invocations at public festivals of Apollo, the chief god of the city, and of Castor and Polydeuces, the city's heroes, and his praise of the city herself : " Bursts into bloom there the warrior's ardour, Clear lifts the note of the shrill-voicM Muse. Justice walks down the wide highways as Warder, Ever their Helper glory to choose." Thaletas, coming from an island where the dance had been important from prehistoric times, and finding in Sparta the same friendly atmosphere of open Dorian 442 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS life, introduced the festival of the Gymnopaedia, in which boys displayed the perfected beauty of their naked bodies in athletic dances and, by means of formal songs in unison, began the "choral lyric." This poetic form, passing far beyond its birthplace, became every- where in Greece the chief expression of public worship of gods and heroes and stimulated the powers of such poets as Simonides and Pindar and Bacchylides. Tha- letas was lost sight of in his greater successor Alcman, who not only was credited with the creation as well as with the cultivation of the choral lyric, but also was adjudged so successful in all his work that Alexandrian scholars included him in their canon of the melic poets, with Pindar and Sappho. Terpander and Thaletas are little more than names, familiar only to those who study origins. Alcman and Tyrtaeus, the poet of the Messenian War, are represen- tatives of the vital poetry which Sparta cherished in her supple youth before her ideals had matured and her life had irreparably settled into its narrow grooves. Tyrtaeus was probably an Athenian, even if it is mere legend that he was a lame schoolmaster sent by Athens in derision when Sparta appealed for help in the second Messenian War. Alcman was bom in Sardis, though probably of Hellenic blood. If our traditional dates are correct, some years at least of their lives must have coincided. Their poetry in general represented differ- ent modes, Tyrtaeus being the earliest master, outside of Ionia, of the flute-accompanied elegiac distich, the SPARTA 443 lusty heir of the Homeric hexameter, while Alcman established many of the more delicate measures per- mitted by the versatile lyre. Their poetic purposes, however, were influenced in common by the Dorian atmosphere in which they lived. In Tyrtaeus this showed itself in the creation of mar- tial verse, which seems to have been powerfully influ- ential in arousing into active service, at a time of need, the courage and the perseverance ingrained in the Doric character. But his own racial gift made it im- possible that his poetry should be confined to one country. In all parts of Greece, through many centu- ries, it expressed the ideal of courage. One of his ana- paestic songs, intended to be sung by Spartan soldiers as they marched to battle, has been called the Mar- seillaise of Greece. A fragment of it still stirs the blood : " Up ! youths of the Spartan nobles, Ye citizen sons of the elders! With the left hold out your targes, And fling your spears with boldness. Spare not your lives. To spare them Was never known in Sparta." The Dorian element that appealed to Alcman was the publicity of the daily life. Men lived in common, ate at large public tables, trained their children in groups, and beHeved always in the sacrifice of the individual to the necessities of the state. Hence they took kindly to public festivals where choruses of men and women, boys and girls could sing hymns that gave 444 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS expression to common and national sentiments. These hymns Alcman wrote in great numbers. Especially famous and never displaced by later poets were his par- theneia, written for the choruses of Spartan maidens whose share in the athletic training of their brothers made them the most beautiful in Greece. Travellers in Sparta who look at the lifeless ruins of the Temple of Artemis will rejoice that among the broken fragments of Alcman's poetry exist seven complete strophes of a partheneion which probably was sung before the temple at one of the festivals of the goddess. Helen as a child had danced at such a festival, and doubtless many a girl in Alcman's chorus was pointed out by the sur- rounding crowd as her fit successor. In his vigour the poet must often himself have led the dances of these tall, straight maidens. In his old age, too stiff to keep pace with their lithe movements, he added to a song he wrote for them "des images aimables" of gallant regret : " Nay, now no longer, ye sweet-voicM maidens, lovely in singing, Can my limbs bear me. Would God, would to God, that a hal- cyon were I Who with his married mates over the flowering meadows of Ocean Fluttereth, heart -free of trouble, the sea-purple bird of the spring- time." Verses like these betray an un- Dorian element in Alc- man's genius which came from his ^Eolian ancestry. It crept into his choral lyrics and claimed its own in his lighter verses. Love and feasting and Bacchic joy furnished him with subjects. No other set of lyric frag- SPARTA 445 ments contains so many traces of the consciousness of natural beauties. If all his poetry were preserved, it would not surprise us to find in it a complete and sen- sitive response to the extraordinary loveliness amid which he lived. We know already that by night in the valley of the Eurotas he watched sleep descend upon the crests and crags of Taygetus and the waiting earth,* was aware of the dew of moonlit evenings and the songs of birds, and felt the charms of the alternating seasons, especially the invigorating bloom of spring. After the seventh century Sparta entered the Greek world with an offering that excluded art and the con- sciousness of external beauty. This was her mode of life, dedicated to one austere end. The citizens of Sparta were a small body of men, of pure Dorian blood, freed from the cares of self-support by the serfs or helots who were descendants of the original possessors of the soil they tilled. The whole time of the masters could be devoted to the state, and the pivotal demand of the state was for strong, brave and skilful soldiers. All life was a vast system of education directed toward the end of military efficiency. This explains each one of their customs : the exposure of sickly infants on the slopes of Mount Taygetus ; the savage training of their boys and the severe training of their girls, who were to be the mothers of soldiers; the repression of personal luxury, the equalizing of rich and poor, the detailed elimination of individual pursuits. Conservatism was * For this fragment see chapter i, p. 22. 446 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS the breath of their life. Their institutions were of very ancient origin, although Lycurgus is now regarded as merely a legendary designer, and, once in possession of their imaginations, could not be shaken off or essen- tially modified. At the crucial period following the Peloponnesian War their inabiUty to use new conditions played havoc with their political opportunities. Exclu- siveness and reserve were corollaries of their single purpose. Indifference to the arts of peace was inevitable in a nation consecrated to preparation for war. The spectacle presented by the Spartans never failed to excite the lively interest of the other Greeks. Men as diverse as Xenophon and Aristotle wrote about their institutions, and popular judgments were always in evi- dence. An opinion which was probably held by many just before the Peloponnesian War is contained in Thucydides's rehearsal of a speech made in Sparta by a Corinthian delegate to the conference which the allies had forced upon her. Impatiently he tells the Spartans that they do not know how utterly unlike them the Athenians are : ** They are revolutionary and swift to plan and to execute whatever they conceive, but you are all for con- serving the existing state of things, inventing no new policy and in action not even coming up to what ne- cessity demands. Again, they are daring beyond their strength and run risks contrary to their judgment, and in the midst of terrors they are full of hope. Whereas your way is to act within your strength, to have con- SPARTA 447 fidence not even in your best secured plans and, when terrors threaten, to think that you will never be set free from them. Nay, they are energetic and you are laggards; they go abroad while you cling to home." The Spartan king, Archidamus, justified his nation in a speech made in a private session : "We have ever dwelt in a free and most illustrious state, and this policy of conservative self-control may well be equivalent to sound reason. We have become good warriors and wise in counsel by our careful disci- pline ; good warriors, because self-control best quick- ens the sense of honour, and from this noble sense of shame springs courage; wise in counsel, because we are too unlettered to be superior to the laws, too severely self-controlled to disobey them." A generation earlier Herodotus had paid his tribute to the Spartan loyalty to law in his story of the conver- sation between Xerxes, meditating his attack on Greece, and Demaratus, the ruined Spartan king who had fled to the court of Darius. Want, the exile tells the mon- arch, had always been a fellow-dweller in his land, but courage was an ally they had gained by wisdom and laws. *'The Lacedaemonians even when fighting man for man are inferior to none, but in a body they are the best of all. For although they are free they are not wholly free, for over them there is a master. Law, whom they fear far more than thine fear thee. At any rate, they always do his bidding." And that the Athenians, with their reverence for law, were by no means unwilling 448 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS to attribute to the law-abiding Spartans a love of lib- erty as passionate as their own is seen in another story of Herodotus. Two young nobles volunteered to go to Xerxes and offer their lives in atonement for the murder of his father's heralds. On their way to Persia they were entertained by the governor Hydames, who, call- ing attention to his own prosperity, urged them to make their submission to the king. "Hydarnes," they answered, " thy advice to us is one-sided. Thou hast tried the one side, but art inexperienced in the other. For thou knowest how to be a slave, but liberty thou hast not tried as yet, whether it be sweet or no. Shouldst thou taste it, thou wouldst urge us to fight for it not only with the spear but also with the battle-axe." One base alloy historians and poets alike found in the character of the Spartans. This was their corruptibil- ity, their sordid greed of gain, as Aristophanes called it when angered by their rejection of peace. To the same political period belong savage attacks of Euripides on Spartan treachery and dishonesty. He also takes occasion to question the chastity of the daughters of Sparta : "No Spartan maiden, even wishing it, were chaste! Not they. Their homes deserting, with their chitons slit Along the thigh, with robes loose-girdled, they with youths Share in the foot-race and a thing I can't endure In wrestling bouts." Probably this exactly expressed the sentiment of the average Athenian theatre-goer, accustomed to identify SPARTA 449 the virtue of women with their obedience to conven- tional restrictions, which men in the fifth century in- sisted upon as well as the husband in Menander's play: "You're overstepping, wife, a married woman's bounds, The front door passing; for to ladies of good birth The house door is the limit by convention set. This chasing and this running out into the street. Your billingsgate still snapping, Rhode, is for dogs ! " Men possessed of these ideas could not appreciate that in Sparta, in the great periods, freedom and sobri- ety went hand in hand. Aristotle, in his arraignment of the license and luxury of the Spartan women as one of the defects of the Spartan system, may have been dealing with some special facts of his own day. In the fourth century Sparta had in certain ways dete- riorated. But this deterioration could not do more than blur the outlines of a system of life which for three centuries had stood before the world, a "whole serene creation." Comic writers might show up the boorishness of the unlearned Spartans, and irritable tragic poets might vent their spleen on their country's enemy, but in the end Spartan institutions had to be respected and admired. Indeed, many Athenians affected a special predilection for qualities unlike their own and " lacon- ized" in dress, manner, and speech. Philosophy flour- ished in Sparta, Plato tells us, and with it a rare skill in conversation. The typical Spartan, after pretending 456 GREEK LANDS AND LETTERS that he could not talk, would throw into the discussion, ** like a clever javelin- thrower," a remark '' worth listen- ing .to, brief, compressed." Thinkers as well as Laconomaniacs displayed enthu- siasm for Spartan ideas. Aristotle, to be sure, while praising the love of education among the Lacedaemo- nians, deplored their absorption in one object and also complained that they preferred the good they gained to the virtue by means of which they gained it. But, true as this may be, the nobility of the effort, the flawless harmony of details, the perfect adjustment of the sys- tem to the use for which it was intended, resulted in a product as truly Greek as is a Doric temple or an Attic trilogy. It is not strange that its apotheosis is found in the ideal state of the great visionary of Athens. Plato's ''RepubHc" is Sparta idealized and interpreted by an Athenian. A state combining the character of the Dorians and the genius of the lonians history has failed to produce. Isocrates cherished a hope that Athens and Sparta might divide the headship of a gloriously united Greece. After Chaeronea he was even far-sighted enough to plead for the willing union of Hellas under Philip of Macedon. Hopes like these proved either futile or too mean. But his pride in the spiritual achievements of his own city has been approved by Time, " the Inspector- General of men's deeds." The institutions of Sparta Hke every other product of the Greek mind went into the crucible of Athens. And this city, triumphing SPARTA 451 beyond the orator's boast, "has caused the name of Hellene to seem to be matter no longer of birth but of intellect, and has made them bear it whose claim is that of culture rather than of origins." APPENDIX Usually only the first line of citations is noted. Chapter I. Page 2 (third paragraph) Cf. Curtius, Greek History, i, p. 23 and passim. Plato, Timceus, 22 B. 3 Quotation from Curtius, Greek History, i, p. 32. 5 Hatzidakis, Neugriechische Grammatik, p. 4. 9 Quota- tion from Tozer, Geography of Greece, p. 44. Cf. passim. 10-12 iEschylus, Agamemnon, 281. 17-18 ^schylus, Agamemnon, 454. 19 Homer, Odyssey, vi, 130; v, 51; Iliad, VIII, 553. 20 Homer, Odyssey, vi, 162. Pindar, Olymp., II, 70. 21 Pindar, Olymp., vi, 54. 22 ^schy- lus, Agamemnon, 1390. 23 vEschylus, Agamemnon, 563 ; Prometheus, 1, 88. 24 Sophocles, Philoctetes, 936; (Ec^i- ^M5 Tyrannus, 204. 25 Aristophanes, Clouds, 275. 26 Aristophanes, Peace, 571. ^Eschylus, Agamemnon, 142. Euripides, Hippolytus, 70. 27 Euripides, Trojan Women, 845; Bacchce, 10S4. VXdXo, Phcedr us, 22^, 230. 28 Gree^ Anthology, Pal,, vn, 669. Very probably by Plato; App. Plan., 13, attributed to Plato, but probably of later date. Theocritus, Idyl, vii, 134. Chapter H. Page 37 Thucydides, vi, 30. 38 ^schy- lus, Agamemnon, 763; 433. 39 Lucian, When My Ship Comes In (Navigium), 5. 43 ^schylus. Suppliants, 715. 44 Isocrates, Areopagiticus, 66. 45 Plato, Symposium, 173 B. Lucian, Navigium, 35. 46 Xenophon, Helle- nica, n, 4, 11. 47-48 Lysias, Against Eratosthenes, 4. 49 Menander, Fragments. 50 Plato, Republic, 439, E. 54 Gre^^ Anthology, Pal., vii, 639. 454 APPENDIX Chapter III. Page 57 Euripides: Suppliants, 403- 408. Jebb, Modern Greece, p. 70. 59 Isocrates, Panegy- ricus, 23, 24. 62 iElian, apud Stoh. Serm., xxiv, 53. For Solon's apothegm cf. Herodotus, i, 32; ^schylus, Aga- memnon, 928. 63 "The Guardian," cf. Lucian: The Fisher, 21. 64 Plutarch, Life 0} Solon (end). 66 Euri- pides, Trojan Women, 801. 67 G. Murray, Rise 0} the Greek Epic, p. 173. 68 Homer, Iliad, n, 557-558. Lucian, True History, 11, 20. 69 Dyer, The Gods in Greece, p. 125. See Gardner and Jevons, Greek Antiquities, p. 296. 72 iEschylus, Pemaw5, 241-242. Herodotus, vii, 105. 73 Lucian, Twice Accused, 11. Chapter IV. Page 74 Plato, Republic, 532, C. Howe, Greek Revolution (1828), p. 340. 76 Plato, PhcB- drus, 279 B. 78 Cf. Gardner, Ancient Athens, p. 256. 80 Bayard Taylor, Travels in Greece and Russia (1859), p. 39. 81 Homer, //iflfi, II, 546-551. 82 ^om&r, Odyssey, VII, 78. Herodotus, vi, 137. 83 Herodotus, vm, 41; 55. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 758. 84 Aristophanes, Birds, 828, 85 Demosthenes, 597, 8. Aristophanes, Knights, 132 1. 85-86 Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 256, 641. 88 Plutarch, Life of Pericles, 13. Lucian, The Fisher, 39. Chapter V. Page 91 Thucydides, 11, 64. 92 ^schy- \us, Persians, ^4^. Euripides, ikf^(^a, 826. Demosthenes, Olynthiac, in, 25, 29. 103 Second paragraph, cf. Lucian, Cock, 26. 104 ^schylus, Eumenides, 328. 105 vEschy- lus, Eumenides, 778; and 1032. 106 Cf. J. I. Manatt, The Paulina Areopagus, Andover Rev., 1892. 107. Plato, PhcBdo, 114, C. ff. Pindar, Olymp., n. 108 Plato, Apol- ogy, 41, C. Aristophanes, Wasps, 31 ff. 109 Plato, Re- public, 514. See note on p. 129 of J.Harrison's Primitive Athens, and cf. J. H. Wright, Harv. Stud. Class. Phil., 1906, pp. 131-142. See also below, chap, vii, p. 164. APPENDIX 455 Barathrum. See Aristophanes, Frogs, 574; Herodotus, vn, 133; Plato, Gorgias, 516, E. no Cf. Gardner, An- cient Athens, p. 127; Plato, Apology, 36, D; Plutarch, Aristides, 27. iio-iii Aristophanes, Peac^, 1183; Birds, 450. Ill BdiCchyWd^s, Fragments. Lysias, Or. xxiv, 20. 112 Aristophanes, />a55m, and ^frd/5, 1 080-1 08 1. Menan- der, Fragments. 114 ^Eschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 854. 115 Thucydides, 11, 34. 115-116 Thucydides, n, 52, 54 ; Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr annus, 171. 117 Aristopha- nes, Clouds, 17, 18 & 56; Wasps, 246. 118 Demosthenes, Against Conon,g. 120 Ijucia-n, Icaromenippus, 16. Aris- tophanes, Birds, 142 1 ; Wasps, S^^. 123 Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, 51. Bacchylides, xix, 5. 123-124 Pindar, Fragments. Aristophanes, Acharnians, 636. Euripides, Medea, 824. 125 Plato, Phcedrus, 247, A; Republic, 592, A, B. Chapter VI. Page 127 Pindar, Olymp., vi, i. Aris- tophanes, Wasps, 600. Homer, Odyssey, xv, 459. 128 Aristophanes, Frogs, 171. 129 Homer, Iliad, xi, 558. 130 Euripides, Alcestis, 252, 433, 575. Homer, Odyssey, xm, 221. 1^1 Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. Euripides ( ?), Rhesus, 546. Homer, Iliad, in, 10; viii, 555; in, 198. Homer, Odyssey, xi, 444. Aristophanes, Wasps, 179. 133 Homer, Iliad, xvni, 414. Plato, Republic, iii, 404. 134 Homer, Odyssey, xvn, 205. YLomtr, Iliad, xxii, 147. Homer, Odyssey, vi, 70; vn, 19. Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 105. 135 Euripides, Electra, 54. 136 Aris- tophanes, ThesmophoriazuscB, i. 139 Plato, Laws, 653. 140 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyrannus, 1489. Aristophanes, ThesmophoriazuscB. Menander, Epitrepontes. Plato, Lysis. Chapter VII. Page 144 Aristophanes, Clouds, 300. Aristophanes, /^rf7^5, 1056. 'Plato, Critias, 112. 145 Theo- 4S6 APPENDIX phrastus, De Signis Tempesiatum, i, 20, 24. Aristophanes, Clouds, 299-313; and see chap, i, p. 25. 146-147 Sopho- cles, (Edipus Coloneus, 668-687; 16-18; 694-701. 147 Cf. chap, iii, p. 65. 148 Plato, PhcBdo, 115, C. Antipa- ter, Anth. GroBca, ed. ab De Bosch, Lib. in, Tit. xxxii. 149 Xenophon, Hellenica, n, 4, 2-4. 150 Simmias, Anth. Pal., VII, 22. 151 Aristophanes, Acharnians, 34-36; 179; 257-263; 325-348. 152 Menander. Parts of four come- dies of Menander were found in Egypt 1905, published 1907 (Lefebvre). For translation of this scene see N. Y. Nation, p. 266, Mar. 19, 1908. 154 ^Eschylus, Seven against Thebes, 587. 156 Pkto, Republic, 451, A ; Pindar, Pyth., X, 41-44. Dioscorides, Anth. Pal., vii, 410. 158 Demosthenes, De Corona, 208. 159 Epitaph of iEschylus. See Vita ^Eschyli, Medicean MS. Cynosarges Gymnasium, The site is now put somewhere near the present American and British Schools. Cf. Gardner, Anc. Ath., 528. 160 Herodotus, vi, 120. 161 vEschylus, Persians, 238. Plu- tarch, Lysander, xvi. 162 Lysias, xxi, 5. Aristophanes, Knights, $^o-$6o. 16^ B-omer, Odyssey, 111,2^8. Sopho- cles, Ajax, 1216 ff. Herod., vi, 115. Plato, Crito, 43, and Phcedo, 58, B. 164 Zoster : Herodotus, viii, 107. Vari : cf . Frazer on Paus., 1, xxxii, and see note on chap, v, p. 109. Solon : cf. chap, iii, p. 58. 165 Demosthenes, De Falsa Le- gatione, 251. 166-168 -^schylus, Persians, 44'j-44g; 386 passim to 421; 274-277; 821-822; 923; Agamemnon, 658- 660. 169 Timotheus, Persce, 105. Plutarch, Aristides, x. Chapter VIII. Page 174 Euripides, Suppliants, 30. 175 Euripides, Helena, 1301. 176 Strabo, x, 3, 9. 178 Sophocles, (Edipus Coloneus, 1146. Euripides, Ion, 1078. Herodotus, vm, 65. 179 Aristophanes, jPrt?^^, 341. 180 Aristotle, fragment, quoted by Synesius. 181 Pindar, fragment. Sophocles, fragment. Euripides, Hercules APPENDIX 457 Furens, 613. Isocrates, Panegyricus, 28. Aristophanes, Frogs, 45 5 . 182 Andocides, On the Mysteries, 3 1 . Plato, Phmdrus, 251 A. 183 Alcman (probably). 184 Aris- tophanes, Frogs, 338, 397. 185 Plato, PhcBdo, 69 C. Chapter IX. Page 186 Pindar, Pyth.,vjJi,2i. Plu- tarch, Life of Pericles, 156. 187 Lucian, Navigium, 15. Thucydides, vi, 32. 189 Pindar, Nem., vii, 78. Bac- chylides, Epinician Odes, 13. 190 Pindar, Isth., rv, 23; vn, 16; IV, 49; V, 23. Pindar, Nem., v, 23. 191 Pin- dar, Pyth., VIII, 92. Chapter X. Page 192 Herodotus, i, 5. 193 Pindar, Olymp., xiii, 65. 194 Homer, Iliad, ix, 529. Bacchyli- des, Epinician Odes, 5. Euripides, Meleager (not extant). Lucian, Lifers-end of Peregrinus, 30. 196 ^schylus, Choephoroi, 602. 197 Theognis, 667, 825, 1197. 198 Thucydides, i, 140. Aristophanes, Acharnians, 509. Iso- crates, DePace, 117. 199 Greek Anthology, Pal., vii, 496. 200 Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 9. Euripides, Medea, 1282. 201 Greek Anthology, Pal., vi, 349; vi, 223. Aris- totle, Politics, 1327 a, 1330 b. Bacchylides, Fragment. 202 Homer, Iliad, 11, 570. 203 Pindar, Olymp., xiii, 4. Aristophanes, Frogs, 439. Homer, Odyssey, xi, 593. 204 Homer, Iliad, vi, 144. Pindar, Olymp., xni, 63. 205 Plato, Republic, ix, 579 E. 208 Herodotus, i, 24. 210 Pindar, Olymp., xni, 6. 211 Greek Anthology, Pal, IX, 151. 213 Plutarch, On Garrulity, xiv. Lucian, How to Write History, 3. 215 Euripides, Trojan Women, 205. 216 Thucydides, viii, 7. Chapter XI. Page 218 Euripides, Andromache, 1085. Pindar, Pyth., viii, 61. 219 Homer, Odyssey, viii, 79. iEschylus, Prometheus, 679. Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 70; (Edipus Col., 84. 220 Homer, Odyssey, iv, i. ^schylus, Persians, 568. -^schylus, Prometheus, 680. Herodotus, 4S8 APPENDIX passim. 221 Aristophanes, Knights, 1007. 222 Hero- dotus, VII, 139. Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 711. 224 iEschines, Against Ctesiphon, 115. 227 Homer, Iliad, i, 44. Pindar, Pyth., i, i. 228 Himerius, quoted in Whar- ton's Sappho, p. 165. ^schylus, Eumenides, 13. Plato, Protagoras, 343. 230 ^Eschylus, Eumenides, 23, i. Eu- ripides, Iphigeneia in Tauris, 1234. 232 Homer, Odys- sey, XIX, 392. Euripides, Ion, 82. 234 Strabo, ix, 3. 237 Euripides, Andromache, 1085. Pindar, Pyth., iv, 4. Demosthenes, Philippics, in. 240 Plato, Republic, x, 616. 243 Pindar, Pyth., m, 75. 244 Herodotus, viii, 35. 248 Cf. Myers, Pindar, p. 10. 249 Pindar, Olymp., XII, 5- Chapter XII. Page 250 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 1398. 251 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusce, 1180. 252 Herodotus, vm, 37. 259 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 800. 260 iEschylus, Agamemnon, mi. Homer, Odyssey, xix, 518. 261 Homer, Odyssey, xi, 576. 262 Demosthenes, On the Crown, 218. 265 Greek Anthology, Pal., vn, 245- Chapter XIII. Page 266 Pindar, Isth., vi, i. 267 Plutarch, On the Malice of Herodotus. Homer, Iliad, iv, 384; II, 495. Homeric Hymns to Apollo and Hermes. 268 yEschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 296. Sophocles, Antigone, 1124. Euripides, Bacchce, passim. 271 Pin- dar, Olymp., VI, 89. 275 Pindar, Pyth., iii, 87 ; Isth., i, i; Nem., 1, 2,2,- 276 Sophocles, TrachinicE. Sophocles, Antigone, 11/^^; ^\in^\d.ts,Bacchce, passim. 277 Euripi- des, Bacchce, 233. 278 Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusce, 990. 279 Euripides, Bacchce, 64, 105, 677. 281 Sopho- cles, (Edipus Tyr., 1026. 283 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 1186, 1524. 284 ^schylus. Seven Against Thebes, 524, 686. 286 Euripides, Phoinissce, 1009. Sophocles, An- APPENDIX 459 Hgone, 450. 287 Sophocles, (Edipus Tyr., 867. Sopho- cles, Antigone, 781, 800. 288 Pindar, Isth., vii, 5. 291 Pindar, Isth., vii, 5. Plutarch, Apothegms, 293 Pindar Pyth., m, 79. 295 Plutarch, Apothegms. Chapter XIV. Page 296 Hesiod, T/^e^^^ow);, i. Plato, Symposium, 221 A. 297 Pindar, Pyth., i, 78. ^schylus, Persians, 484. Herodotus, ix, 16. 298 Herodotus, ix, 25. 299 Pindar, Pyth., i, 77. iEschylus, Persians, 813. Simonides, Greek Anthology, Pal, vii, 253, 251. 300 Thucydides, ni, 53. 301 Plutarch, On the decay of ora- cles. On the dcemon of Socrates. A friend of Plutarch, not Plutarch himself, visited the oracle of Trophonius. 302 Pindar, Olymp., xiv, i. 304 Cicero, Against Verres, iv, 2,59. 30*7 l^lsLto, Republic, X, 611. Homer, //ia J, 11, 303. 308 Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis, 1386. ^schylus, Agamemnon, 220. ^og lEschyXus, Agamemnon, id>i. 310 Hesiod, Works and Days, 640. 311 Cf. Symonds' Greek Poets, I, chap. 5. 314 Plutarch, Life of Aristides, 21. Chapter XV. Page 316 Iliad, i, 156. 317-322 Herodotus, vn, 210-233. 318 Cf. Pausanias, i, 4, 1-4; X, xix-xxiii. Chapter XVI. Page 323 Alpheus of Mitylene, Anth. Pal., IX, loi ; sometimes attributed to Antipater of Thes- salonica. 330 Herodotus, i, i. 331 Lucian, Charon, 23. 332 Pausanias, n, 15, with Frazer's notes. 333 Pindar, Nemean, x, 28; vi, 12. 335 Thucydides, i, 9; Iliad, n, 108. Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aul., 1498. Iphi- geneia in T., 845-846. 336-343 ^schylus, Agamemnon, 40-47; 320; 154; 334-337; 818-820; 905-911; 947; 958- 962; passim, 973; 1327-1330; 1379-1387; 1548-1559; 577-579. 341 Cf. Browning's Agamemnon for several phrases. 342 Euripides, /edm, 54; 77. Mschylus, Choeph. 1061. 343 //ifl(i, IV, 52. Pythagoras: Horace, 0(/., I, 28, 46o APPENDIX It. lamblichus, Life of Pythag., 63, and see Lucian, Cock, 16, 17. Herodotus, i, 31. 344 ^schylus, Suppliants, 954-956. 345 yEschylus, Prometheus, 854-869. 346 Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 6. 347 Herodotus, i, 82; Lucian, Charon, 24. 34^ Euripides, Orestes, 53-55. 349-350 Lucian, Marine Dialogues, 12. Euripides, Tro- jan Women, 1081-1088. 352 Isyllus, cf. Smyth, Melic Poe/5, p. 528. 355 Strabo, VIII, cap. 6, 12. 356 Lucian, Cataplus, 18. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes, xxx. Chapter XVII. Page 358 Pindar, Olymp., m, 27. Homer, Iliad, n, 612. 360 Homer, Iliad, 11, 607. 361 Polybius, XXIV, 15. 365 Greek Anthology, App. Plan., 188. 366 Herodotus, viii, 26. 371 Greek Anthology, Pal., ix, 314; App. Plan. 188. 374 Xenophon, ^a&a5w, 5, 3, 10. Homer, Odyssey,\, 2"] 2. S*j*j 'H.esiod,Theogony,'j'j$. 380 Pindar, Olymp., vi, 100. Homeric Hymn to Pan, 30. Homer, Odyssey, ui,4g'j. 381 Sappho ; Homer. See chap, i, 19, 21. 385 vEschylus, Agamemnon, 519. Chapter XVIII. Page 388 Pindar, Olymp., ni, 19 390 Lucian, Marine Dialog., 3. Strabo, vi, cap. 2,4. 391 Antigonus Carystus, Historia Mirah., 140 (155). 392 Xenophon, Anabasis, iv, viii, 26. 397 Odyssey, v, 79; Lucian, Jupiter as Tragedian, 10, 11. 403 Lucian, He- rodotus, I. Herodotus, viii, 26. 408 Lucian, Council of the Gods, 12. Pindar, Olymp., n, 51. 410 Herodotus, VI, 103. 411 Pindar, O/^/w/j., I, 18. Bacchylides, v, 37- 45, and 178-186. 412 Pindar, Olymp., i, 86. 413 Pin- dar, Olymp., I, 28. 415 iEschylus, Agamemnon, 341. 416 Pindar, Olymp., iv, i; vi, 75; vi, 91. 417 Pindar, Olymp., xin, 92; iii, 44; xi (x), 45. 418 Pindar, Olymp., XI (x), 72 ; 73-76; XIV, 20. 419 Pindar, Olymp., vn. 420 Vldiio, Republic, 621, C,T>. 421 Bacchylides, vi. 423 iEschylus, Prometheus, 95. APPENDIX 461 Chapter XIX. Page 425 Homer, Odyssey, in, 491. 429 Thucydides, iv, 40. Chapter XX. Page 431 Homer, Odyssey, iv, i. 432 Pindar, fragment. Sophocles, Ajax, 8. Homer, Odyssey, IV, 603. Euripides, Helen, 348; Iphigeneia in Tauris, 132. 433-434 Homer, Odyssey, rv. Herodotus, vi, 61. 436 ^sctiylus, Agamemnon, 650. 437 Thucydides, i, 10. Polybius, V, 22. 440 Lucian, Anacharsis, 7,2>. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 5, 27. 446 Thucydides, I, 70. 447 Herodotus, vn, 104, 135. 448 Euripides, Andro- mache, 595. 449 Plato, Protagoras, 342. 450 Aristotle, Politics, 127 1 B. Isocrates, Letter to Philip; Panegyricus, SI. Note on pages 154-5 'Euripus.' Strictly speaking, this applies only to the narrower channel between Aulis and Chalkis. Also used of the whole southern channel : see Bury's and Frazer's Maps of Attica. INDEX Acamania, 13, 193, 321. Achaea, 13, 194, 326, 373, 435. Achseans, 14, 324. Acharnae, 148, 150 S. Acrocorinth, 8, 212, 214; view from, 202. Acropolis, see under Athens. iEgaleus, Mt., 149, 164, 173, 177. JEgean, i, 2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 17, 57, 325. 353- iEgina, 144, 162, 186-91. iEgospotami, loi, 102. iEmilius Paulus, 235. iEolians, 328; in Boeotia, 310. iEschines, place in literature, 97; cited, 224. /Eschylus, at Delphi, 237; at Eleusis, 181; at Marathon, 158-9; character of, 125; competition with, 328; influ- ence of, 104, 415; place in liter- ature, 95 ; treatment of nature, 22; youth of, 70 ff.; cited, 10, II, 38, 43, 64, 72, 83-4, 91, 104, 154. i55> i59> 161, 166, 167, 168, 196, 230, 246, 268, 283-s, 292, 297, 299, 308, 309, 336, 342, 344, 385, 415, 436. ^,tolia, 13, 193. Africa, 220, 239. Akte, of Argolis, 330, 351; of Piraeus, 36, 42, 55. Alcibiades, at Delium, 296; in- fluence of, loi ; parody of Mysteries, 176; picture of, 77; Sicilian expedition, 37. Alcman, 442 ff. ; cited, 18, 22, 182, 444-5- Alexander, at Chaeronea, 262; at Isthmus, 217; at Olympia, 391; death of, 3; empire of, 99; statue at Olympia, 402. Alexandrian period, 4. Alpheus, god and river, 231, 328, 369> 375> 379 381, 388-91, 404. Altis, at Marathon, 158; at Olym- pia, 388, 395, 402-5. Amorgos, 7. Amphiaraus, sanctuary of, 153-4. Amphictyony, Delphic, 224, 238. Amphissa, 223. Amyclae, 434. Anacapri, 2. Anacreon, 70. Anaxagoras, 96. Andocides, place in literature, 96; cited, 181. Andritsena, 378, 381-2. Andros, 7. Anthedon, 306-7. Anthesteria, 141. Anthology, Greek, 4-5; cited, 28, 54, 147, 150, 156, 171, 201, 211, 265, 299, 300, 323, 371, 373. Antiphon, 96. Antisthenes, 99. Antoninus Pius, 364. Aphaea, temple of, 188. Aphrodite, 397, 434; at Piraeus, 54; on Mt.Ida, 131 ; of Melos,5. Apollo, at Olympia, 397; at Ptoon, 301; Delphic legends, 230 ff. ; god of prophecy, 2 18 ff. ; Hymn to, 231 ; in AlcesHs, 130; in Eumenides, 105 ff. ; in Hymn to Hermes, 368 ff . ; significance at Delphi, 246 ff.; statue at 464 INDEX Olympia, 399, 400 ; at Sparta, 441; summer festival of, 136; temple at Bassse, 382 F. ; at Corinth, 202, 203, 207, 213; at Delphi, 237-8; on Sacred Way, 178; at Thebes, 282, 292 ; in Vale of Tempe, 245. Appian, 43. Arachneum, Mt., 336. Arachova, 30, 252, 253 F., 381. Arcadia, 14, 29, 131, 220, 239, 358-87, 425, 429- Arcesilas, 239. Archidamus, 240, 447. Areopagus, see under Athens. Arethusa, 390, 391. Argolic Gulf, 324, 330. Argolid, Argolis, 8, 13, 162, 323- 57. Argos, 10, II, 221, 239, 325, 327, 329-30, 346, 435> 436. Arion, 208-9. Aristides, 100, 124. Aristodemus, 428. Aristogeiton, 71. Aristomenes, 428, 430. Aristophanes, place in literature, 95; treatment of nature, 24; cited, 25, 26, 35, 65, 70, 71, 83, 85-6, 108, 112, 117, 120, 127, 128, 131, 132, 136, 144, 145, 150, 151, 161, 162, 179, 184, 221, 251, 448. Aristotle, Lyceum of, 119; philos- ophy,97 ff. ; cited, 66, 180, 201, 212, 446, 449, 450. Aroanius, river, 375. Artemis, 24; at Olympia, 397; Brauronia, 86; hymn to, 223 ; in Arcadia, 365, 373, 374; in Hip- polytus, 26, 355 ; on Taygetus, 432; Orthia, 438-9; temple at Aulis, 309; at Piraeus, 46; at Thebes, 282, 293. Artemisium, 298. Asclepieum, at Athens, 122; at Epidaurus, 352; modem sub- stitute for, 30. Ascra, 310. Asia, I, 220, 325. Asia Minor, i, 9, 239, 325, 327- Asopus, river, in Boeotia, 12, 153, 270, 296, 305; in Malis, 317; in Sicyon, 328, 329. Astypalaea, 7. Athens (ancient), 10, 13, 436, 442, 450 ; after battle of Salamis, 91-125; before Salamis, 57- 73; Academy of, 65, 119, 147; Acropolis of, 60, 73, 74-90, 92, 107, 144, 162, 173, 184, 193, 232; Agora, 72, 99, no ff. ; Areopagus of, 69, 72, 99, 104 ff., no; Asclepieum, 122; Barathrum, 109; Callir- rhoe, 61, 65, 109, 133; Cyno- sarges Gymnasium, 65, 99, 159; Dipylon Gate, 113, 144, 177, 183; Dionysiac Theatre, 120 fif.; Erechtheum, 75, 77, 81, 84, 97; Gymnasia, 65, 118; Lenseum, 61, 69; Lyceum, 94, 99, 119; Lysicrates Monument, 122; Market-place (old), 65; Nike temple, 77, 79; Old Athena temple, 75, 92; olive in, 66; Olympieum, 57, 65, 119 ; Par- thenon, 77, 78, 80-1,85,87-9, 382; Pnyx, 108; Propylaea, 77- 78, 79, 85, 89, 94; , old, 65, 76; Prison of Socrates, 89, 107; Prytaneum, no; Street of Tombs, 113; Theseum, 94; Tholus, no; , Modern, 29, 126-43. Athena, Alea, 364; Archegetis, 86; at Piraeus, 52 ; Chalkioekos, 438 ; importance at Athens, 67 ; old temple of, 75; statues on Acropolis, 78-9; the Watch- er, 62. Athos, Mt., II, 13. Attic age, 5. Attica, 5-8, 13, IS, 144-70, 325. Aulis, 267, 307 ff. INDEX 465 Bacchus, see Dionysus. Bacchyiides, place in literature, 420; cited, III, 123, 189, 243, 411, 421. Bassae, temple at, 358, 382 jBf. Bendis, festival of, 48 ff . Bion, 4. Boeotia, 4, 7, 8, 260, 266-315, 325 438. Brasidas, 436. Brauron, 160. Brennus, 318. Byron, 5, 79, 194; cited, 422. Byzantine, churches, 29, 404; Greek, 5; ruins, 29, 404; age, 40, 212. Cadmus, 200, 272 ff. Caesar, Julius, 211, 215. Calauria, 330, 356. Caligula, 304. Callichorus, 175. Callimachus, cited, 183. Callirrhoe, see Athens. Calydon, 194. Calydonian boar hunt, 194, 364. Carthage, 43, 239 398- Cassotis, 245. Castalia, 226, 252, 253. Cecrops, 59, i44- Cenchreae, 212. Ceos, 7, 95, 420, 421. Cephisus, river, Attic, 146, 148, 152, 177, 184; Boeotian, 260, 265, 269, 316. Chaeronea, 97, 115, 198, 210, 257, 260, 261-5, 401, 436, 450- Chasia, 150. Chryso, 223. Cicero, 97; cited, i, 32, 181, 211, 304, 316, 440. Cimon, loo-ioi ; at Eleusis, 182; in Messenian affairs, 428. Cirphis, Mt., 226, 253, 256, 258. Cithaeron, Mt., 12, 193, 219, 268, 278, 280, 281, 292, 296. Cladeus, river and god, 388, 393, 404. Claudius, 304. Cleft Way, 250, 257 ff. Clement, St., cited, 215. Cleonae, 330, 331. Cnidus, 35, 173. Cnossus, 231. Colonists, 58, 414. Colonus, 24, 146-7. Comedy, 95. Common dialect, 3. Conington, cited, 71. Conon, 35, 56, 102; Wall of, 33, 36, 39, 41, 44. Constantinople, fall of, 3; foun- dation of, 196. Copaic Lake, 269, 271. Corcyra, 206. Corinna, 306. Corinth (New), 201, 202; (Old), 201-17, 220, 436. Corinthian Gulf, 5, 7, 8, 9, 192 ff., 223, 269, 324, 326, 329, 331. Corycian Cave, 229, 252, 255. Cos, 353. Cotilius, Mt., 384. Cranae, 435. Craneum, 213. Cretan, 20; Cretans, 231, 413; Eteo-Cretans, 14. Crete, 9, 15, 221, 239, 324, 325, 326, 362, 441. Crimea, 58. Crisaean plain, 223-4, 238. Cumae, 2. Cybele, at Piraeus, 49. Cyllene, Mt., 8, 9, 365, 367, 369, 376, 383- Cynuna, 330, 347. Cyprus, I, 433- Cypselus, 205; chest of, 207, Cyrene, 239. Cythnus, 7. Danai, 323, 344. Dances, ancient and modem, 137, 139- Danube, 9. Daulis, 258, 259. 466 INDEX Decelea, 148, 150. Delium, 296. Delos, 7, loi, 107, 163, 397; con- federacy of, 100. Delphi, 218-49, 289, 344, 401. Demaratus, 179, 447- Demeter, at Olympia, 397, 410; in Arcadia, 173; in Boeotia, 173, 314; Hymn to, 174-5; patroness of marriage, 140; shrines of, 30; statue of, 173; worship of, 1 73 ff . Demosthenes, at Chaeronea, 262; place in literature, 97; suicide of, 103, 356-7; cited, 85, 92, 118, 158, 165, 237. Dicaearchus, cited, 286, 306. Dinarchus, 97. Dio Chrysostom, 271, 399. Diogenes the Cynic, 213. Dionysia, Greater, 69, 140 ; Lesser, 141. Dionysius of Halicamassus, 300. Dionysus, at Athens, 68 ff., 72; at Delphi, 227 f., at Eleusis (lacchus), 174, 177, 179; at Olympia, 397; at Panopeus, 261 ; brings Semele from Hades, 355; Hymn to, 122,277; infant, 396; in Frogs, 128, 129, 203; in the Marshes, 141 ; old cult, 30 ; on Helicon, 303 ; temple at Thebes, 293. Diphilus, cited, 52, 206. Dirce, 272, 294. Dodona, 14. Donkeys, 128-9. Dorians, 326 ff., 328. Doric, dialect, 398. Doris, 316, 328, 358. Easter, festival of, 132, 137, 142. Echo, 372-3, 418. Egypt, 9, 433. Egyptians, 2. Eira, 426, 428. Eleusinia, 183. Eleusis, bay of, 48, 193; mys- teries, 114, 129, 171-85; town- spring of, 134. Eleutheria, 313. Elis, 9, 373, 389, 392. Elton, cited, 272. Epaminondas, 262, 295, 296; char- acter of, 289 ff., 363 ; death of, 360 ff.; founds Messene, 429- 30- Epicurus, 99. Epidaurus, 330, 351 ff. Epirus, 14, 270. Erechtheum, see under Athens. Erechtheus, 59, 83. Eridanus, river, 144. Eris, apple of, 397. Erymanthus, Mt., 8, 9, 373, 381, 383; river, 375. Etruscan, 414. Eubcea, 7, 11, 153, 206; Gulf of, 269. Eumelus, 208. Euripides, at Piraeus, 50; ceno- taph, 55; place in literature, 95-6; theology of, 49, 97 ; treat- ment of Nature, 16, 26; cited, 26, 27, 57, 91, 114, 124, 132, 135, 138, 160, 169, 175, 178, 200, 210, 215, 218, 228-9, 230-1, 233-4, 268, 274, 276, 277, 279-81, 285-6, 292, 308, 354, 425, 432-3, 438-9, 448. Euripus, II, 153, 154, 307. Eurotas, river, 375, 432-3- Eurymedon, 71. Excavations by, Americans at Corinth, 202, 212 ff.; British at Sparta, 438; French at Delphi, 225, 236 ; Germans at Olympia, 404; Greeks at Thebes, 292. Festivals, ancient and modem, 139-142. Flaminius, 217. Funerals, ancient and modem, 129-130. INDEX 467 Games, Isthmian, 216-17, 4^7 5 Nemean, 333, 407; Olympic, ancient, 388 ff., 407, 408-13; , modem, 422-3; Pythian, 242 ff., 407. Gauls, at Delphi, 235; at Ther- mopylae, 318. Geoffrey de Villehardouin, 379. Geraneia, Mt., 195, 199. GlauCus, of Chios, 244; sea-di- vinity, 307. Goethe, cited, 22, 251. Gorgias, place in literature, 97; statue at Delphi, 240; at Olympia, 403. Gorgopis, Lake, 12. Gortys, river, 375. Goulas (Gha, Gla), 271. Graces, the, 20, 416, 420; temple of, 302. Grseco-Roman period, 4. Grylus, 360. Gytheion, 435. Hadrian, aqueduct, 376; at Ath- ens, 60; at Delphi, 235; at Eleusis, 182; at Olympia, 402; road of, 199. Hagios Vlasis, 260. Harmodius, 71. Hatzidakis, G. N., cited, 5. Helicon, Mt., 7, 193, 292, 301, 302-4, 313. Hephaesteum, 60. Hephaestus, at Athens, 59-60; in Prometheus, 23; street, 133. Hera, at Olympia, 395-6; in Ar- golis, 329, 348; head of, 344. Heraclea, 196. Heracles, at Marathon, 159; at Olympia, 393, 422; birth, 275; Cretan, 393; journey to Hades, 355; labours of, 218-19, 333> 347. 374, 376, 399; temple at Thebes, 293. Heraeum, Argolis, 330, 336, 343- 4, 357 ; at Olympia, 389, 395-8. Hermaea, 140. Hermes, Homeric Hymn to, 367 ff.; Ram Bearer, 313; stat- ues of, 5, 371, 396. Hermione, 328, 329, 330, 355. Herodas (Herondas), 4. Herodes Atticus, 156; gifts of, 88, 241, 402. Herodotus, at Athens, 93; piety of, 222, 248; place in literature, 96; cited, 66, 82, 83, 109, 157, 160, 166, 179, 192, 208, 222, 267, 287, 297, 299, 319, 321, 330, 343-4, 347, 366, 403, 410, 434, 447-8- Hesiod, life and works, 268 ff.; cited, 272, 296, 303, 309 ff., 377-8- Hieron of Syracuse, 243, 413-4. Himera, battle of, 398. Hipparchus, 70, 328. Hippias, 33, 70 ; sophist, 403. Hippocrates, 93, 353. Hippocrene, 303. Hippodamus, 45. History, 3, 14, 15, 96. Homer, connection with Argolis, 323 ff.; with Athens, 67-8; treatment of nature, 18 ff.; cited, 18, 19, 81-2, 163, 202, 204, 227, 267, 343, 358, 360, 374, 377, 397, 43i, 433-4- Homeric Hymns, 267; to Apollo, 231 ; to Artemis, 223 ; to Diony- sus, 122, 277 ; to Hermes, 367 ff. ; to Pan, 371 ff. Horace, cited, 345. Hydarnes, 448. Hymettus, Mt., 13, 109, 145, 163. Hypereides, place in literature, 97; cited, 103. lacchus, see under Dionysus. Ibycus, 213. Ictinus, 182, 382, 383, 385, 386. Ida, Mt., in Asia Minor, 11, 130; in Crete, 393. Ilissus, river, 27, 28, 125, 133, 144, 422. 468 INDEX Inachus, river, 332. Ionia, 97. Ionian, 14; sea, 383. Isaeus, 97. Ismenus, river, 272, 294. Isocrates, place in literature, 97; cited, 59, 181, 198, 450. Isthmus of Corinth, 10, 144, 193, 201, 215, 324, 334, 353, 436. Italy, 58, 220. Itea, 223, 226. Ithaca, 231, 432. Ithome, Mt., 8, 383, 426, 428. Jebb, Sir Richard, cited, 57-8, 103, 413- Julian the Apostate, 235-6, 403. Kalamata, 10, 425-7. Kallidromos, Mt., 317. Kapraena, 261. Karaiskakis, Place, 30, 36. Karytaena, 29, 378-9; GeofiFrey de, 379. Kastri, 224 flf. Kephisia, 148, 152. Kerata, Mt., boundary between Attica and Megara, 8, 173, 195. Kronos Hill, 388 S. Kydias, 329. Lacedaemon, 8, 426, 431. Laconia, 8, 324, 327, 426, 431, 435-. Laconian Gulf, 431. Ladon, river, 375, 389, 390. Langada Gorge, 426. Language, Greek, 3 ; dialects, 414; modem, 5. Larisa of Argos, 325, 327, 330. Lasus, 328. Laurium, 160-1. Leake, cited, 385-6. Lebadeia, 301, 313. Lechaeum, 212, 216. Leonidas, 298,^17-321. Lema, 330, 34O-7. Lesbos, 131, 441. Leuctra, 289, 296, 430. Lindus, 29, 419. Lipari Islands, 10. Literature, Greek, 3-5; 93-100 Locris, 7, i4i 193, 223, 226; Epi- cnemidian, 316. Lucian, 4; cited, 39, 53, 54, 68, 73, 88, 120, 213, 331, 356, 390, 402, 403, 408, 440. Lucius, Mummius, 211. " Lycabettus, Mt., 144. Lycaeus, Mt., 8, 367, 373, 378, 3^3- Lycosura, 359, 364. Lycurgus, lawgiver, 446; orator, 97- Lyric poetry, 95. Lysander, 102. Lysias, place in literature, 97; cited, 47, 76, III, 149. Lysippus, 244, 329. Lysis, disciple of Socrates, 140; of Tarentum, 291. Macedon, 15, 96, 100, 356, 401, 436. Macedonia, 2, 239. Macedonian rule, 39, 102, 210, 391, 394, 401, 436. Maenalus, Mt., 373. Malea, 324, 431. Malis, 316. Malian Gulf, 7. Mantinea, 289, 359 ff., 364. Marathon, 70 ff., 103, 157-60, 298; race, 159, 422. Marathonisi, 435. Markopoulo, 160. Meander, river, 328. Mediterranean, i, 3, 40, 390. Megalopolis, 9, 359, 378, 382, 385* 429. Megara, 8, 48, 164, 1 92-9; Hyblaea, 196. Megarid, 144, 164. Megistias, 321. Melicertes, 200. Melos, 5, 162, 326. INDEX 469 Menander, death, 4 ; friend of Theophrastus, 99 ; place in literature, 96 ; plays of at Piraeus, 50; tomb, 55 ; cited, 49, 55, 112, 121, 152, 449. Menidhi, 137, 150, 151. Mesogia, 160. Mesolonghi, 30, 194. Messene, 429. Messenia, 5, 8, 13, 14, 425-30; Bay of, 10, 13. Messina, Straits of, 10. Midas, 239. Midea, 325. Minoa, in Megarid, 195. Minyae, 14, 302. Mistra, 29, 433. Moluriad Rock, 200. Monemvasia, 29. Morea, 8; dukes of, 404. Moschus, 4. Munychia, 33, 41, 42, 45, 50, 55- Murray, Gilbert, cited, 132, 214, 274 fif., 439. Musaea, 313. Mycalessus, 314. Mycenae, 11, 319, 325, 327, 330, 331. 332, 334 ff., 351- Mycenaean civilization, 182, 292, 325-6 Myconos, 7. Myron, 78. Mysteries, see under Eleusis. Mytika, 361. Nature, Greek treatment of, 15- 28. Nauplia, 30, 324, 325, 330, 348. Navarino, 425. Naxos, 7, 13, 30. Neda, river, 382, 383, 384. Nedon, river, Gorge of, 426. Nemea, 330, 332 fif. Nemesis, 154 ff. Nereid, 255-56, 397. Nero, at Corinth, 213; at Delphi, 235 ; at Isthmus, 215, 217 ; at Olympia, 391, 402; at Thes- piae, 304. Nike, by Paeonius, 400 ; of Samo- thrace, 161; temple of, see un- der Athens. Nisaea, in Megarid, 195. Nomian Mts., 373, 383. Norton, Charles Eliot, cited, 16. (Eta, Mt., 7, 316, 326. Olympia, 9, 243, 382, 388-424. Olympus, Mt., 6, 14, 15, 370, 404, 423. Onatas, 386. Oratory, 96. Orchomenus, in Arcadia, 365 ; in Boeotia, 270, 302. Oropus, 153. Orphic School, 174. Ossa, Mt., 7. Othrys Mts., 7. Paeonius, 400. Paestum, 2, 357. Palermo, 10. Pallantium, 360, 364. Pan, at Athens, 72-3; Homeric Hymn to, 371 ff.; in modem folk-lore, 255; at Delphi, 229; at Psyttaleia, 166; at Thebes, 293- Panathenaea, 67, 71, 135, 137, 140.' Panopeus, 260. Parmenides, 97. Parnassus, Mt., 7, 193, 223, 225, 226, 227, 232, 234, 253, 254, 256, 258, 259, 261, 292, 301, 316, 326, 329, 353, 393. Pames, Mt., 7, i44> 148, IS3- Pamon, Mt., 8, 432. Paros, 29, 386. Parthenius, Mt., 373. Parthenon, see under Athens. Patras, 192, 194-5* 392- Paul, St., 210, 212, 395; cited, 106, 217, 407. Pausanias, general, 298, 299 ; topographer, cited, 76, 88, 145, 47 INDEX .150, 165, 183, 207, 235, 241, 264, 265, 271, 289, 292, 293, 301, 304, 309* 310, 319* 329 336, 346, 352, 353. 360, 361-2, 374, 375' 376, 384, 390 405. 411, 428, 430, 440. Pegasus, 204, 214, 303. Peirene, 204, 207, 214. Pelasgians, 14, 82, 324, 344, 347. Pelion, Mt., 7. Peloponnesian War, 34, loi, 153, 288, 300, 429. Peloponnesus, 8, 15. Pelops, 393, 399, 405, 412. Peneius, river, 7. Pentedactylon, Mt., 432. Pentelicus, Mt., 5, 7 "> I3 25, 132, 144, 148, 152, 153, 159. Periander, 206 flf. Pericles, age of, 394; death, 115; at Eleusis, 182; Megarian de- cree of, 198; oratory of, 96, 108; political influence of, 34, 56, 97, 100, loi, 104. Persephone, 355 ; worship of, 171 ff. Persian Wars, 15, 96, 100, 197, 210, 317, 330. Phaeacia, 134. Phalerum, 45, 125, 132, 395. Pheneus, 365 ; lake of, 375-6. Pherae, 425. Pherecrates, cited, 82, 266. Phidias, 135, 244, 293, 399. Phigalia, 382. Phigalians, 383, 386. Philip, 39, 115, 451; at Chae- ronea, 262; in Delphic Am- phictyony, 224 ; of Hellenic blood, 102, 391; statues of, 240, 401. Philopoemen, 361-3. Philosophy, 97 fif. ; closing of schools of, 3. Phlius, 328, 329, 330. Phocis, 14, 223, 260, 316. Phoenicia, 324, 433. Phoenicians, 127, 273, 330. Phoenicides, cited, 84. Pholoe, Mt., 373-4. Phryne, 240, 304. Pieria, 368. Pindar, age of, 31; art of, 288; in Athens, 95; descent of, 271; house of, 293; place in litera- ture, 268; treatment of nature, 20-1; cited, 20-1, no, 114, 122, 124, 156, 186, 189, 190, 191, 204, 210, 218, 237, 243, 249, 266, 275, 288, 291, 299, 302, 333 358, 388, 408, 410, 411, 412, 415, 420, 432. Pindus, Mt., 7, 13. Piraeus, 30, 32-56, 85, 100, 102, 145, 186, 187. Pisistratus, 64 ff., 174, 182. Plataea, 71, 91, 296-301, 313, 320. Plato, Academy of, 119, 147; age of, 39 ; cave of, 109 ; legend of, 164; opinion of Kydias, 330; place in philosophy, 98; treatment of nature, 28; cited, 28, 46-7, 74, 107, 125, 139, 144, 182, 185, 198, 205, 307, 352, 414, 420, 449, 450. Plistus, river, 226, 234, 242, 252, 253- Plutarch, 4; birthplace,26i ; char- acter of, 268; cited, 64, 88, no, 169, 213, 240, 267, 301, 353, 356. Polybius, cited, 360, 361, 363, 437- Polygnotus, 129, 241. Poros, 356. Poseidon, at Athens, 59; in Ar- golis, 348; in Elis, 390; tem- ple of at Calauria, 356; at Paestum, 2; atSunium, 162. Potidaea, 119. Prasiae, 160. Pratinas, 328. Praxilla, 329. Praxiteles, 5, 244, 293, 304, 364, 396. Propylaea, see under Athens. INDEX 471 Ptoon, Mt., 269, 292, 301, 313. Pylos, 231, 425, 429. Pythagoras, 97, 291. Rhamnus, 154 S. Rhodes, i, 29, 127, 135, 419; Colossus of, 397. Rogers, B. B., cited, 70, 132, 141, 161, 179, 181, 251. Roman rule, 39-40, 172, 211-12, 391, 394, 402, 414. Romans, 204, 362. Salamis, 48, 62, 68, 144, 353, 357> 399; battle of, 71, 91, 103, 165-70, 188, 209, 299, 398. Samos, 70, 99. Sappho, read by Solon, 64; treat- ment of nature, 18 ff., cited, 18, 19, 20, 21, 136, 380. Saronic Gulf, 8, 32, 41, 163, 193, 324, 353> 354- Scamander, 134. Scironian Cliffs, 199 ff., 354. Scopas, 293, 364, 386. Selinus, 398. Seriphos, 7. Servius Sulpicius, cited, 32, 199. Shelley, cited, 25, 56, 148, 368. Sicily, I, 9, 10, 15, 58, 239, 328, 388, 390; Sicilian Greeks, 391, 398, 414 ; expedition, 37, loi, 187. Sicyon, 329. Simmias, cited, 150. Simonides, at Athens, 70, 95 ; poet laureate, 420; rival of Lasus, 328; cited, 64, 136, 157, 158, 200, 299-300, 320, 321, 349. ^ Socrates, on Acropolis, 76 ff. ; in Assembly, 108; at Delium, 296; at Isthmian Games, 217; by Ilissus, 27; in Gymnasia, 119, 140; in Piraeus, 46 ff.; place in philosophy, 98-9. Solon, in Egypt, 2; influence in Athens, 58 ff.; statue at Sala- mis, 165; cited, 62, 63, 283. Solos, 376. Sophists, 94, 96, 97. Sophocles, place in literature, 95 ; tomb of, 150; treatment of na- ture, 24 ff. ; cited, 24, 116, 140, 146, 163, 171, 178, 222, 240, 250, 268, 276, 281-3, 286-7, 303> 335 341, 405-7* 432. Sparta, 8, 10, 13, 100, 102, 153' 239, 288, 425, 429, 431- 451. Spercheius, river, 316, 318. Sphacteria, 429. Sphinx, Mt., 292. Sterling, John, cited, 320, 404. Strabo, cited, 234, 271, 355, 390. Stymphalus, 365 ; lake of, 376. Styx, 377. Suetonius, cited, 215. Sunium, 161 ff.; 356. Swinburne, cited, 106, 424. Symonds, J. A., cited, 114, 136, 349- Syracusans, 38, 102, 414. Syracuse, 10, 38, 43, 206, 414. Taenarum, 208, 431. Tanagra, 296, 305-6, 313. Tatoi, 153. Tauropolia, 140. Taygetus, Mt., 8, 13, 383, 389, 426, 432, 445. Tegea, 359, 363-4, 435. Telesilla, 329. Tempe, Vale of, 7, 245. Tenedos, 388. Tenos, 7. Terpander, cited, 441-2. Thaletas, 441-2. Thebes, 15, 229, 239, 266-95, 436. Themistocles, fortification of Pi- raeus, 33, 34, 36; policy of, 44, 10 1 ; at Olympia, 361; at Salamis, 166; tomb of, 41. Theodosius, 236, 403. Theocritus, 4, 16, 258; treatment of nature, cited, 28. Theognis, 196-7. 472 INDEX Theophrastus, 99; cited, 51, 62, 121, 140. Thera, 326. Theramenes, 102. Therapne, 433- Thermopylae, 7, 9, 298, 316-22, 360. Theseus, in art and literature, 60, 399; Bacchylides on, 95; city of, 104, 107, 146; in Hippo- lytus, 354 ff. ; Isthmian Games, 217; the Panathenaea, 67, 137; return from Crete, 79, 163. Thesmophoria, 140. Thespiae, 304-5. Thespians, 288, 313, 319. Thespis, 63, 156. Thessaly, 6, 7, 13, 14, 135, 270, 368, 435- Thoricus, 160. Thrace, 2, 5, 171, 220. Thrasybulus, 149. Thriasian Plain, 173, 179. Thucydides, historian, at Delphi, 248 ; place in literature, 96 ; cited, 37, 91, 115, 116, 216, 267, 289, 300, 326, 335, 360, 429, 437, 446-7 ; statesman, loi. Tiberius, 391, 402. Timotheus, cited, 168, 362. Tiryns, 324, 325, 327, 330, 336, 348-51. Tragedy, 95. Treton, Mt., 331. Tripolis, 360, 373, 375. Triptolemus, 174. Troezen, 330, 353 fif., 358. Troy, 10, 27, 134, 336, 337, 338, 343> 357. Tyrtaeus, cited, 427, 428, 443. Vaphio, 435. Vari, 163-4. Virgil, 310, 364. Way, cited, 139, 218, 229. Wordsworth, cited, 17, 21. Xenophon, place in literature, 96; treatment of Epaminondas, 289; cited, 46, 51, 149, 267, 289, 360, 374, 392, 446. Xerxes, at Plataea, 298; at Sala- mis, 165; at Thermopylae, 317; invasion of Delphi, 252; of Greece, 447. Zacynthus, 231. Zanes, 401. Zeno, 99. Zeus, 14, 23, 27; birth of, 367, 393 ; at Lebadeia, 301 ; at Nemea, 333; at Olympia, 392, 393> 395. 396, 423; at Piraeus, 52; temple at Olympia, 398- 401. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A I 14 DAY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED . LOAN DEPT. IThis book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the date to which renewed. Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 15/Vpr'60FK REC'D LD APR 1 J960 RECLfV^D FEB? ^^'67 WM niuvssvjs LOAN DEPT. p^.C ^ NOV 2 2 1968 55 \\\^^^'^ 'DECEIVED g '68 'Z m ''tC'D LD L OAN DEPT. ^tF NOV 21 1969 9} 4 1963 nm i-O. 1 967 8 y m 8 7969 REC'D LD 3EC 5 '69 -2PM LD 21A-50w-4,'59 (A1724sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley r Il21 ru ^yxv" ^04089 "-, f'-