The Land of Greece, described ... With 44 Illustrations and three maps

Front matter

GATE OF LIONS AT MYCENÆ. Page 2s6- THE LAND OF GREECE DESCRIBED AND ILLUSTRATED. DORIC TEMPLE, CORINTH. Page 245. THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK. THE Land of Greece Described anb 3llustrateb. By CHARLES HENRY HANSON. With 44 Illustrations and Three T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. 1886. preface. The complaint has often been made that most young Englishmen of education are better informed about the history and geography of Greece than about those of the United States. The statement is probably not so applicable now as it was formerly, the curriculum of higher school and university education having been, fortunately, much widened during the last twenty years. It cannot be doubted, how ever, that familiarity with Hellenic story has never been a widespread or popular possession in this country.

It is with the hope of helping to make it so — perhaps an ambitious hope — that the present work has been compiled. Of books about Greece, its history and its antiquities, there are enough and to spare in our literature. Most of them, however, are too formidable in their dimensions for general circulation ; and of those of a more popular kind there are none, so far as the writer is aware, which cover precisely the same ground that is occupied in this work. It is an endeavour to combine with a description of the country and of its principal sites and ancient remains a sketch of the events wdiich made those places memorable — to localize, as it were, something of the vast mass of traditions and historic records associated with Hellas from a period long anterior to the birth of Christ down to the present day.

There is no chapter in the world's history more rich, varied, or instructive than that embodied in the annals of Greece ; and this picturesque story becomes far more inter-

Preface

. VIII estins* as well as more intelligible when the reader is informed respecting the character of the stage on which it was enacted. The nature of his subject afforded the writer no scope, even if he had had the opportunity or the ability, for original research ; nor is it necessary for him to cumber these pages with a list of authorities which are familiar and accessible to every student. A few facts as to the results of recent explorations at Olympia and Mycenæ have been gleaned from the new edition, prepared by Mr. Tozer, of Bishop Wordsworth's excellent " Greece : Pictorial, Descriptive, and Histori cal ; " but the compiler has very seldom consulted this work, because its avowed object is very similar to that he has himself had in view, though his method of treatment will, he ventures to think, be found to be essentially different.

The statements of historical fact are based chiefly on Grote, though Thirlwall has also been consulted. (Ysontcnts. I. INTRODUCTORY: GENERAL ASPECTS OF GREECE 13 II. THE THESSALIAN PLAIN AND THE VALE OF TEMPE, ... 41 III. ÆTOLIA AND ACARNANIA, 60 IV. THE IONIAN ISLANDS, 7*1 V. MALIS— THERMOPYLÆ-PHOCIS AND DELPHI, 103 VI. BŒOTIA AND EUBŒA, in VII. ATTICA AND ATHENS, 187 VIII. ATTICA AND ATHENS {Continued), 232 IX. ÆGINA— MEGARA— CORINTH— SICYON, 277 X. THE ARGOLID— MYCENÆ-ARGOS— TIRYNS-NAUPLI A, ... 305 XI. LACONIA— SPARTA— MESSENIA, 332 XII. ARCADIA— ELIS-OLYMPIA— ACHAIA, JESist of illustrations. Gate of Lions at Mycenæ, ... ... ... ... ... ... Frontispiece Doric Temple, Corinth, ... ... ... ... ... ...

LIST OF LLLUSTRATLONS. Plain of Argos, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 317 View of Argos and the Frank Castle of Larissa, ... ... ... ... 323 Nauplia and the Fortress of Palamedi, ... ... ... ... ... 329 View of the Taygetus Mountains from Sparta, ... ... ... ... 335 L, Valley of Sparta, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 339 Tomb of Leonidas at Sparta, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 055 Mistra, or Mizithra, Tatgetus Mountains, ... ... ... ... ... 359 Sparta and the Taygetus Mountains, ... ... ... ... ... ... 363 Gorge of the River Magoula, Taygetus Mountains, ... ... ... ... 367 Walls of Messene, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 371 Entrance of the Roadstead of Navarino, ... ... ... ... ... 375 Temple at Bassæ, Arcadia, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 335 Ruins of Olympia, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 393 Statue of Hermes, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... MTOB1X? aiRESCE THE LAND OF GREECE.

Chapter I. Introductory

: GENERAL ASPECTS OF GREECE. With the solitary exception of Palestine, there is no country on the surface of the globe round and about which there are gathered so many and such impressive associations as those that belong to Greece. In this era of great empires, and when the tendency of all men of a common race to constitute a single powerful community seems more than ever destined to be the ruling principle in the solution of inter national problems, it is not at first easy to realize the extent of the influence exercised on the history and progress of mankind by the handful of people who dwelt in that tiny corner of south-eastern Europe. There is reason to doubt whether, in the days of its greatest power, the population of Greece was equal to that which to day is gathered within the metropolitan limits of London.

The utmost extent of the country which was regarded by the ancient Hellenes themselves as belonging to Hellas proper is scarcely so large as the area of Scotland. Even within these narrow limits there was never an approach to political unity during the period when the Greek influence was most immediately active ; and the day when the country was brought under a single rule marked the beginning of a declension from which it has only within living memory begun to recover. Yet from amid the congeries of isolated and, to the modern eye, petty communities that occupied this inconsiderable fraction of the earth's surface there emanated a political influence that for a brief period brought the greater part of the then known world under its sway. Here uprose a civilization far stronger and more lasting — because it was based on surer foundations — than that of Rome.

Here, more than two thousand years ago, some of the most subtle and loftiest minds the world has ever seen were busied in the consideration of social and ethical problems which still engage the attention of mankind, and with regard to many of which the whole course of subsequent investigation and speculation down to the present hour has been guided by the labours of these first inquirers. Here, in the days of the world's youth, poetry attained a splendour of development never since surpassed, and scarcely equalled. Here philosophy, if not born, was nurtured, and found expression in works that are still recognized as the noblest products of the human intel lect. Here, within three or four hundred years, architecture and sculpture were carried to a degree of perfection which, during more than twenty succeeding centuries, mankind have vainly striven to rival.

The domination of Rome was that of arms and political organization ; it has passed away for ever, though its influence is undoubtedly still active in the conditions of our modern civilization : but the empire of Greece was that of intellectual force and fertility; and it still endures in a degree which can scarcely be overstated. The thoughts and achievements of Homer and Hesiod, of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Æschylus and Aristophanes, of Thales, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, of Phidias, Praxiteles, and Apelles, exercise an infinitely deeper as well as wider influence on the world to-day than in the age of their production. The question, " What do we owe to Greece ? " is one to which it is scarcely possible to frame an adequate reply ; for who can tell what the course of the world's history would have been if the Hellenes had never existed ?

This, however, is certain, that the story of this extraordinary people is the record of the most marvellous intellectual and æsthetic developments mankind has yet witnessed. The theory that the qualities, characteristics, and even the civili zation of a people are in great measure determined by the physical and climatic conditions amid which it has its life, has of late been carried to an extreme that has no justification in actual experience. But this extravagance in the application of the doctrine ought not to blind us to the fact that it embodies a substratum of solid truth. Who can doubt that the insular position of Britain, for example, the extent of its coast-line, and the harshness of its climate, have been potent in moulding the national character of its people ? To an adequate comprehension of the history of any nation there is abso lutely necessary a knowledge of the country it inhabits.

This is peculiarly the case with regard to the Greeks, because there can be no question that their geographical position was at once a potent factor in the development of their civilization, and one reason for the rapid spread and wide influence of that civilization. A glance at the map will show how literally Greece was the centre of the ancient world — the natural channel of communication between East and West, the recipient of the civilizing influences of the Orient, and an instru ment shaped, as it were, by the hand of Nature herself for the fruc tification and dissemination of these influences. Her immense extent of coast-line, the harbours and natural roadsteads with which that coast is so richly endowed on its eastern side, the islands scattered in such profusion over the surface of the Ægean, afforded innumerable points of contact and communication even in those early ages of the world when the science of navigation was in its infancy Northward, the path of civilization, from its original seats to the West, was blocked by the wide expanse of the Euxine, by the mighty barrier of the Caucasus, and by the savage nomad races who, under the names of Scythians and Cimmerii, were to the Greeks and southern Asiatics the very embodiment of utter barbarism.

Southward lay Egypt, strong in her own wonderful political and social development, but pursuing for many centuries a policy of determined isolation — receiving nothing from the East, and imparting but little, and that at long intervals, to the West. The Phœnicians, indeed, most persevering and boldest of early navigators, had explored the farthest recesses of the Mediterranean when Athens and Sparta were little more than villages ; but all the operations of the Phœnicians were prompted by purely commercial considerations. Their intercourse with the countries they visited was restricted to the mere transactions of barter ; and where they did establish a settlement, it was not so much a colony in the proper sense of the word — a planting of Phœnician social and political institutions among the surrounding aboriginals — as a mere trading factory, like those set up by Holland, Portugal, and England in the East Indies two centuries ago.

To this remark there is one striking exception in the case of Carthage ; yet that great city, which rose to be the ruling* power in the western Mediterranean, till her star paled and sank before the grandeur of Rome, never exercised, or sought to exercise, a civilizing mission. Her expeditions and con quests were not undertaken to force her religious or political institu tions on the peoples she subdued, but simply to add to her material resources. Thus it was upon the Greeks that the task devolved of receiving the old civilization of the Orient, of assimilating and revivi fying its essential principles, giving them a new development, and carrying them forward into the darkness and barbarism of the West ; and for this task both the genius of the people and the position and physical features of their country were peculiarly adapted.

The two most prominent features in the geography of Greece — of the true Hellas, as distinguished from the northern regions, which in time became partly Hellenized, and in virtue of their sheer superiority in population established a political supremacy over the Hellenic race itself — are its mountains and the pervading presence of the sea. With the exception, perhaps, of little Montenegro, there is no country in Europe, not even Switzerland, which more literally deserves the name of a land of mountains ; and there is no other country in the world which, for the same area, has an equal extent of coast-line. Accepting the northern limit ordinarily assigned to ancient Greece by the geographers, — the fortieth degree of north latitude, a limit which, by the way, has been roughly adopted in the recent readjustment of the frontier, — it may be said that in the whole region there is not a level plain equal in extent to a medium-sized English or Scottish county.

The largest of all, the plain of Thessaly, is not more than forty miles long and thirty wide ; and even this is by no means a flat in the sense in which the word can be applied to the American prairies, but is broken up into sections by low ranges of hills. South of Thessaly the country is nothing but a mass of lofty mountain ranges with deep valleys between : there is no level area exceeding a few square miles in extent, and these — such as the plains of Bœotia, Argolis, Attica, and Messenia — are few and far between. And if the mind of the old Hellene was always under the influence of the gran deur of mountain scenery, not less was he affected, and his character and habits moulded, by the perpetual presence of the sea. The whole country is a peninsula, striking far out into the eastern basin of the Mediterranean ; and it is so pierced and broken by deep bays and gulfs, that of the numerous small states into which in ancient times it was divided there was scarcely one that did not possess some extent of coast-line.

From these two geographical conditions, together with the south erly latitude of the country, there followed consequences of the highest moment, bearing directly on the character and destinies of the Hellenic race. Their land was at once a region of snow and of fire. In their valleys they beheld the rich vegetation and prodigal natural beauty of southern climes ; the hot semi-tropical sun warmed their blood ; the brightness of their skies and the clearness of their atmosphere were reflected, as it were, in the genius of the race ; their mountains and their sea infused a bracing element of harshness into their climate. The comparatively limited area of fruitful soil they possessed compelled them to a constant warfare with the forces of nature. It would be hard, indeed, to find another country more favourably situated at once for the development of artistic culture and of social and political activity.

While, however, it would be absurd to ignore these natural conditions as potent factors in shaping the history and achievements of the Hellenes, it would be equally a mistake to exaggerate their influence, and to leave out of sight the original race-characteristics of this gifted people. In this connection the acute observation of Mr. Grote should be remembered, that " the contrast between the population of Greece itself, for the seven centu ries preceding the Christian era, and the Greeks of more modern times is alone enough to inculcate reserve in such speculations." But lest undue weight should be attached to this contrast, it must be observed, first, that the modern Hellenes have been subjected to the degenerating influences of nearly two thousand years of brutal oppression at the hands of hopelessly stronger races — stronger, that is, in mere physical force ; secondly, that there has been among them a large infusion of Slavonic blood ; and thirdly, that even since Mr. Grote wrote they have furnished proof of a recovery from their long enduring subjection and degradation.

The noteworthy signs of re newed energy and vitality in the Hellenes of to-day may, on the whole, be considered as evidences that the favourable influences of climate and nature are triumphing over the hostile agencies from without which for twenty centuries have counteracted them and deadened the national life of Greece. The first essential to an understanding* of the physical aspects of Hellas is a knowledge of the general configuration of the mountain system which overspreads the country. The backbone of this system is the great range which strikes down from the Balkans and the lofty table-land of Turkey (the ancient Thracia), dividing the continental part of the peninsula into two nearly equal parts, and, as it sweeps southward, throwing out spurs and sub-ranges in all directions, till, in the Morea or Peloponnesus, it spreads out in a mass of lofty peaks and lower elevations.

In its northern division this mighty range was known to the old Greeks as Scardus and Pindus. Its first im portant offshoot is the Cambunian range, constituting at once the north-eastern frontier of Hellas proper and the dividing-line between Macedonia and Thessaly. This line of mountains extends nearly to the coast of the Thermaic Gulf, and ends in the most renowned and loftiest of all the elevations in Greece — Mount Olympus, which attains a height of nearly ten thousand feet. Along the Thessalian coast there stretches another range, divided from Olympus by the Vale of Tempe, and constituting a gigantic barrier between the plain of Larissa and the sea. In this mountain wall the principal elevations are Pelion and Ossa, bocti of them scarcely less famed in classic story than Olympus itself : the former rises to a height of over five thousand, and Ossa to upwards of six thousand feet.

Thessaly is not less completely enclosed by mountains on the west and south than on the north and east. Its western barrier, as already implied, consists of the range of Pindus. The southern extremity of this line is the lofty peak of Tymphrestus, soaring upward to a height of between seven thousand and eight thousand feet. It constitutes the centre and climax, as it were, of a highland region, from which subordinate spurs and chains branch off east, west, and south. The whole country between Pindus and the Adriatic Sea, known still, as in ancient days, by the name of Epirus, is indeed one confused mass of high hills and deep valleys. Eastward and southward the confor mation is more regular. From Tymphrestus there runs due east (forming the southern barrier of the Thessalian plain) the range of Othrys, or "the Brow," which rises in frowning majesty over the Gulf of Malis.

Parallel with it, a few miles further south, but on the other side of the gulf, is the bulkier and loftier mountain mass of Œta, which, at its western extremity, ramifies into the Ætolian highlands. Any one following our description on the map will perceive that the arm of the sea known to the old Hellenes as the Maliac Gulf is shut in on either side by a wall of mountains, which continues westward right across the peninsula to the Adriatic, and forms what may be termed the second natural fortification of Greece — the first being constituted by the Cambunian range and the moun tains of Epirus. The only practicable passage for a large army in ancient times through this fortification was round the coast of the Maliac Gulf, on the southern shore of which, between Œta and the sea, was the famous pass of Thermopylæ.

South of Ætolia the peninsula of Hellas trends south-east. From the westward intrudes the long arm of the Ionian Sea, known in classic days as the Crissæan or Corinthian Gulf, and now denominated ■20 the Gulf of Lepanto ; while on the east the long, narrow, and moun tainous island of Eubœa covers the coasts of Locris, Bœotia, and Attica, and divides them from the Ægean Sea. From the south-east the Saronic Gulf, now known as the Gulf of Ægina, thrusts itself into the land, leaving only the narrow Isthmus of Corinth to connect Peloponnesus with the continent. The confined area between Ætolia and the farthest promontory of Attica — barely a hundred miles long, and nowhere more than thirty wide — has been the scene of some of the most memorable episodes in ancient and modern Greek history. It is, like the rest of the country, hilly, but has no very lofty elevations except Parnassus, in Phocis, which attains to a height of between seven and eight thousand feet.

Mount Helicon in Bœotia, Cithæron and Parnes on the frontier between that state and Attica, Pentelicus and Hymettus overlooking Athens, derive their celebrity from the associations which cling about them more than from their altitude. But across the Isthmus of Corinth lies the huge bulk of Mount Geraneia, the outer wall of that which has been well called, ever since Strabo's day, the Acropolis or citadel of Greece. Peloponnesus itself is one mass of mountains and highlands. On its northern and north western coasts there is a narrow strip of comparatively, though by no means actually, level land, divided, in the old days of Hellas, into the two states of Aehaia and Elis. But behind Aehaia runs a great chain which constitutes the northern frontier of the inland region of Arcadia ; and the whole of this country is lofty and rugged — so im penetrable, indeed, that even to the present hour it is very little known.

From this central mountain mass, diversified by several summits which tower above the lesser elevations, distinct spurs radiate east and south. In Argolis, and round the Gulf of Nauplia, these are of no great height ; but the range of Taygetus, dividing Sparta from Messenia, is one of the loftiest and wildest in all Greece, and the chain of Parnon, running parallel with Taygetus, and forming the eastern wall of the valley of the Eurotas, though much lower, is still upwards of five thousand feet high. Such is the general outline of the mountain system of Greece. It should be carefully studied with the assistance of the map, for in that way only can the " ground plan " of the country be understood, and a thorough comprehension of its history be attained. It may seem an extravagant assertion, but it is nevertheless strictly true, that their mountains gave to the political and social institutions, and to the whole civilization of the Greeks, their distinctive characteristics.

As by an ordinance of Nature, the people occupying* this land of high hills, deep valleys, and difficult passes were divided into separate and self-dependent communities. A common origin and a common reli gion, or rather ritual, could unite them at times ; but the physical character of the land operated with an irresistible force in the opposite direction. By the very difficulties which it offered to attacks from without it diminished the necessity for extensive political com binations, while, in the words of Grote, it " fostered that powerful principle of repulsion which disposed even the smallest township to constitute itself a political unit apart from the rest, and to resist all idea of coalescence with others, either amicable or compulsory." The omnipresent sea, indeed, afforded great facilities for intercommunica tion, but it was of a kind which tended rather to encourage than to repress the independence of the separate states.

As the more im portant civic communities increased in wealth and population the intense activity of the national temperament impelled them to seek scope for their energies outside their own limits. But even in the day of their greatest power, Spartans and Athenians alike carried with them the spirit of their local politics, and jealously maintained their peculiar civic organization and institutions. It was the hegemony of Greece for which they contended, not the establishment of an Hellenic empire. The pride of race was strong in all the com munities of Hellas ; so strong as to lead them to denominate all who were not Hellenes by the common name — not at first employed in an invidious or contemptuous sense — of barbarians. But the spirit of separatism and civic independence was stronger still ; and it was first engendered and subsequently fostered by the presence of the natural lines of demarcation that existed between the different communities.

A country so small as Greece, and so ribbed and seamed with mountains, could not also be remarkable for the size of its rivers. As a matter of fact there is not within the limits of Hellas proper a single navigable stream. This is partly owing to the multiplicity of the water-sheds, which literally do not leave room for the formation of a river of considerable length anywhere south of Epirus, and partly to the geological composition and shape of the mountains, — they are of limestone, and for the most part very steep and rocky. Where there is any surface soil at all on the hills, it is generally very thin. They are but lightly wooded, and in consequence retain very little of the moisture supplied by the abundant rains of the autumn and winter months ; the water runs off as rapidly as it falls, so that the rivers, swelled to furious torrents in the rainy season, sink in the hot summer into mere brooks, while many of them are altogether dried up.

This character of the drainage system of the country is faith fully reflected in the classic literature of Greece : there is constant mention of the rivers ; their fury in time of flood furnishes material for some of the most beautiful figures in Homer and the later poets. In the same way the value of the springs and streams for refreshing and fertilizing the soil finds frequent recognition ; but they are never referred to as water-ways or means of communication. In the continental portion of the peninsula the principal rivers are the Achelous, which drains the Ætolian highlands and the south west flank of the Pindus range ; the Peneus, which traverses the Thessalian plain, and cuts its way to the sea through the renowned Vale of Tempe ; and the Spercheus, which gathers the waters from Mount Tymphrestus, Othrys, and Œta, and discharges them into the Gulf of Malis.

Neither in Phocis, Bœotia, nor Attica is there a stream which rises above the dimensions of a mere brook, though the fame of the Asopus, the Cephissus, and the Ilissus in song and story is far greater than that of rivers in other lands a hundred times their bulk. In Peloponnesus there are the Alpheus and the Eurotas, both taking their rise in the Arcadian highlands : the one pursues a north-westerly course, and flows into the sea through the VALLEY OF THE ALPHEUS. tiny but world-renowned plain of Olympia ; the other, turning south, traverses the long and narrow valley between the Taygetus and Parnon ranges, and owes its chief celebrity to the fact that on its banks stood the city of Sparta. The only other Peloponnesian stream of the smallest importance is the Pamisus, which drains the plain of Messenia.

Many of the rivers of Greece have the characteristic of disappear ing under ground during a portion of their course, finding their way through the cavernous recesses common in all limestone formations ; and some of them never reach the sea at all, but are gradually ab sorbed by the thirsty soil of the valleys. Springs and fountains are numerous all over the country. They were, as is natural, eagerly appreciated by the old Hellenes, and their proximity often determined the site of some city or majestic temple. With regard to the origin of the Hellenic people, we have no certain knowledge beyond the fact, established by modern ethnologi cal and philological research, that they were a branch of the great Indo-Germanic race. In dealing with this subject the most eminent authorities are unable to draw the exact dividing-line between myth and historic certainty.

The Hellenes themselves believed, and in Herodotus' time there was some evidence to show, that the aboriginal occupants of the country were a race named the Pelasgi, whose lan guage, creed, and customs were not greatly dissimilar from their own. Tradition assigned to the Hellenes an origin in Phthiotis, a district of Thessaly, where their mythical ancestor or " eponymus " was Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the only survivors of the deluge by which the gods punished the iniquity of the existing race of men. Hellen was said to have had two sons, Æolus and Dorus, and from them and two of their descendants, Achæus and Ion, sprang the four great tribes which in historic times peopled Hellas — the Æolians, Dorians, Achæans, and lonians. The movements of these tribes, and the circumstances under which they acquired their different seats, belong wholly to the region of tradition, and need not be discussed or described here.

It will be sufficient to describe the political and ethnological divisions and conditions of the people of Hellas at the beginning of the historic period. The most northerly and the largest state in Greece proper was Thessaly, which, as already mentioned, was separated on the north from Macedonia by the Cambunian Mountains, on the west from Epirus by the Pindus range, and on the south from Locris, Phocis, and Ætolia by the Maliac Gulf and Mount Œta. The earliest inhabi tants of whom history makes mention were Æolians, but they were driven out or subjugated at a very remote period by invaders from Thresprotia in Epirus, who took the name of Thessalians, and gave it to the land they had subdued. They were of Pelasgic race, but became thoroughly Hellenized. They were divided into four main tribes and numerous smaller clans ; and though their numbers, their superiority in cavalry, and the wealth of their country made them formidable when united, such union was very seldom attained, and in the history of Greece Thessaly rarely played a prominent part.