Rambles and Studies in Greece. Third edition ... enlarged

Front matter

L- RAMBLES & STUDIES IN GREECE roMB IN tiie cerameicvs i iTHENSj Frontispiece. RAMBLES & STUDIES IN GREECE BY J. P. MAHAFFY^. KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR J AUTHOROF ( PROLEGOMENA TO ANCIENT HISTORY j' ' KANT'S PHILOSOPHY FOR ENGLISH READERS-,' ' SOCIAL LIFE IN GREECE;' *A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE,' ETC. THIRD EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED HonOon MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1887 All rights reserved HUNC LIBRUM lEbmunbo TTClsatt Ebaell OB INSIGNEM INTER CASTRA ITINERA OTIA NEGOTIA LITTERARUM AMOR-EM OLIM DEDICATUM NUNC CARISSIMI AMICI MEMORIAE CONSECRAT AUCTOR

Preface

Few men there are who having once visited Greece do not contrive to visit it again. And yet when the returned traveller meets the ordinary friend who asks him where he has been, the next remark is generally, " Dear me ! have you not been there before ? how is it you are so fond of going to Greece?" There are even people who imagine a trip to America far more interesting, and who at all events look upon a trip to Spain as the same kind of thing — southern climate, bad food, dirty inns, and general discomfort, odious to bear, though pleasant to describe afterwards in a comfortable English home. This is a very ignorant way of looking at the matter, for, excepting Southern Italy, there is no country which can compare with Greece in beauty and interest to the intelligent traveller. It is not

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a land for creature comforts, though the climate is splendid, and though the hotels in Athens are as good as those in most European towns. It is not a land for society, though the society at Athens is excellent, and far easier of access than that of most European capitals. But if a man is fond of the large effects of natural scenery, he will find in the Southern Alps and fiords of Greece a variety and a richness of colour which no other part of Europe affords. If he is fond of the details of natural scenery, flowers, shrubs, and trees, he will find the wild-flowers and flowering trees of Greece more splendid than anything he has yet seen. If he desires to study national character, and peculiar manners and customs, he will find in the hardy mountaineers of Greece one of the most unreformed societies, hardly yet affected by the great tide of sameness which is invading all Europe in dress, fabrics, and usages.

And yet, in spite of the folly still talked in England about brigands, he will find that without troops, or police, or patrols, or any of those melancholy safeguards which are now so obtrusive in England and Ireland, life and property are as safe as they ever were in our most civilised homes. Let him not know a word of history, or

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IX of art, and he will yet be rewarded by all this natural enjoyment ; perhaps also, if he be a politician, he may study the unsatisfactory results of a constitution made to order, and of a system of free education planted in a nation of no political training, but of high intelligence. Need I add that as to Cicero the whole land was one vast shrine of hallowed memories — quo cunque incedis, historia est — so to the man of culture this splendour of associations has only increased with the lapse of time and the greater appreciation of human perfection. Even were such a land dead to all further change, and a complete record in its ruins of the past, I know not that any man of reflection could satisfy himself in contemplating it. Were he to revisit the Parthenon, as it stands, every year of his life, it would always be fresh, it would always be astonishing, whenever he beheld it.

But Greece is a growing country, both in its youth and in its age. The rapid development of the nation is altering the face of the country, establishing new roads and better communications, improving knowledge among the people, and making many places accessible which were before beyond the reach of brief

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X holiday visits. The insecurity which haunted the Turkish frontier has been pushed back to tlie north ; new Alps and new monasteries are brought within the range of Greece. And this is nothing to what has been done in recovering the past. Every year there are new excavations made, new treasures found, new problems in archæology raised, old ones solved ; and so at every visit there is a whole mass of new matter for the student who feels he had not yet grasped what was already there. The traveller who revisits the country now after a. lapse of four or five years will find at Athens the Schliemann museum set up and in order, where the unmatched treasures of Mycenæ are now dis played before his astonished eyes. He will find an Egyptian museum of extraordinary merit — the gift of a patriotic merchant of Alexandria — in which there are two figures — that of a queen, in bronze and silver, and that of a slave kneading bread, in wood — which alone would make the reputatiqn of any collection throughout Europe.

In the Parthe non museum he will find the famous statuette, copied from Phidias' Athene, and the recent wonder, archaic statues on which the brightness of the

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XI colours is not more astonishing than the fine moulding of the figures. And these are only the most salient novelties. It is indeed plain that were not the new city covering the site of the old, discoveries at Athens might be made perhaps every year, which would reform and enlarge our knowledge of Greek life and history. But Athens is rapidly becoming a great and rich city. It already numbers 100,000, without counting the Peiræus ; accordingly, except in digging foundations for new houses, it is not possible to find room for any serious excavations. House rent is enormously high, and building is so urgent that the ordinary mason receives eight to ten francs per day. This rapid increase ought to be followed by an equal increase in the wealth of the surrounding country, where all the little proprietors ought to turn their land into market-gardens.

I found that either they could not, or (as I was told) they would not, keep pace with the increased wants of the city. They are content with a little, and allow the city to be supplied — badly and at great cost — from Salonica, Syra, Constantinople, and the islands, while meat comes in tons from America. How different is the country round Paris and London ! TREFACE XII But this is a digression into vulgar matters, when I had merely intended to inform the reader what intellectual novelties he would find in revisiting Athens. For nothing is more slavish in modern travel than the inability the student feels, for want of time in long journeys, or want of control over his conveyance, to stop and examine something which strikes him beside his path. And that is the main reason why Oriental — and as yet Greek — travelling is the best and mosfl instructive of all travelling.

You can stop your r^ly or mule, you can turn aside from the track which is called your road, you are not compelled to catch a train or a steamer at a fixed moment. When roads and rails have been brought into Greece, hundreds ot people will go to see its beauty and its monuments, and will congratulate themselves that the country is at last accessible. But the real charm will be gone. There will be no more riding at dawn through orchards of oranges and lemons, with the rich fruit lying on the ground, and the nightingales, that will not end their long hours of song, still outsinging from the deep-green gloom the sounds of opening day. There will be no more watching the glowing east across the silver-grey glitter of dewy meadows ;

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XIII no more wandering along grassy slopes, where the scarlet anemones, all drenched with the draughts of night, are striving to raise their drooping heads, and open their splendid eyes to meet the sun. There will be no more watching the serpent and the tortoise, the eagle and the vulture, and all the living things whose ways and habits animate the sunny solitudes of the south. The Greek people now talk of going to Europe, and coming from Europe, justly toA for Greece is still, as it always was, part of t^e East. But the day is coming when enlightened politicians, like Mr. Tricoupi, will insist on introducing, through all the remotest glens, the civilisation of Europe, with all its benefits forsootri? but with all its shocking ugliness, its stupid hurry, and its slavish uniformity. I will conclude with a warning to the archæ ologist, and one which applies to all amateurs who go to visit these excavations, and cannot see what has been reported by the actual excavators.

As no one is able to see what the evidences of digging are, except the trained man, who knows not only archæology, but architecture, and who has studied the accumulation of soil in various places and forms, so the observer who comes to the spot after

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XIV some years, and expects to find all the evidences unchanged, commits a blunder of the gravest kind. As Dr. Dorpfeld, now one of the highest living authorities on such matters, observed to me, if you went to Hissarlik expecting to find there clearly marked the various strata of successive occupations, you would show that you were ignorant of the first elements of practical knowledge. For in any climate, but especially in these southern lands, Nature covers up promptly what has been exposed by man ; all sorts of plants spring up along and across the lines which the cutting when freshly made showed clear and precise. In a few years the whole place turns back again into a brake, or a grassy slope, and the report of the actual diggers remains the only evidence till the soil is cut open again in the same way.

I saw myself, at Olympia, important lines disappearing in this way. Dr. Purgold showed me where the line marking the embankment of the stadium — it was never sur rounded with any stone seats — was rapidly becoming effaced, and where the plan of the foundations was being covered with shrubs and grass. The day for visiting and verifying the Trojan excavations is almost gone by. That of all the excavations

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XV will pass away, if they are not carefully kept clear by some permanent superintendence ; and to expect this of the Greek nation, who know they have endless more treasures to find in new places, is more than could reasonably be expected. The proper safeguard is to do what Dr. Schliemann does, to have with him not only the Greek ephoros or superintendent — -generally a very competent scholar, and sometimes not a very friendly witness of foreign triumphs — but also a first-rate architect, whose joint observation will correct any hastiness or misprision, and so in the mouth of two or more witnesses every word will be confirmed. In passing on I cannot but remark how strange it is that among the many rich men in the world who profess an interest in archæology, not one can be found to take up the work as Dr. Schliemann does, to enrich science with splendid fields of new evidence, and art, not only with the nai've efforts of its infancy, but with forgotten models of perfect and peerless form.

This New Edition is framed with a view of still satisfying the demand for the book as a traveller's handbook, somewhat less didactic than the official

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XVI guidebooks, somewhat also, I hope, more pic turesque. For that purpose I have added a new chapter (XIV.) and many paragraphs with new in formation. I have corrected many statements which are now antiquated by recent discoveries, and I have obliterated the traces of controversy borne by the Second Edition. For the criticisms on the book are dead, while the book survives. To me it is very pleasant to know that many visitors to Greece have found it an agreeable companion. Trinity College, Dublin, January 1887. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE i. Introduction — First Impressions of the Coast . i ii. General Impressions of Athens and Attica . . 24 in. Athens — The Museums — The Tombs .... 46 iv. The Acropolis of Athens ....... 75 v. Athens — The Theatre of Dionysus — The Areopagus 104 Excursions in Attica — Colonus — The Harbours — VI.

Laurium — Sunium 131 Excursions in Attica — Pentelicus — Marathon — vii. Daphne — Eleusis 159 From Athens to Thebes — The Passes of Mount Cithæron, Eleutheræ, Platæa . . . .187 VIII, ix. The Plain of Orchomenus, Livadia, Chæronea . 213 x. Arachova— Delphi— The Bay of Cirrha . . . 236 Elis— Olympia and its Games— The Valley of the Alpheus — Mount Erymanthus — Patras . . 258 XI. Arcadia — Andritzena — Bassæ — Megalopolis — Tri- XII politza 303 b CONTENTS PAGE xiii. Corinth — Tiryns — Argos — Nauplia — Hydra — Ægina — Epidaurus 336 xiv. Kynuria— Sparta — Messene 376 xv. Mycenæ and Tiryns 394 xvi. Greek Music and Painting 423 Index 46, ILLUSTRATIONS I. Tomb in THE Cerameicus (Athens) . . Frontispiece II. The Temple of Theseus (Athens) . . . Page 30 hi. The Marathonian Theseus 56 iv. The Stele of Aristion (Athens) 58 v. Archaistic Artemis (Naples) 60 vi.

Archaic Statue (Athens) 62 vii. Tomb in the Cerameicus (Athens) . . . 70 viii. The Parthenon ( West Front) 80 ix. The Parthenon, a Block from the Cella Frieze . 90 x. The Temple of Poseidon at Corinth . . . 340 Map of Greece to face page

Introduction

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE COAST

A voyage to Greece does not at first sight seem a great undertaking. We all go to and fro to Italy as we used to go to France. A trip to Rome, or even to Naples, is now an Easter holiday affair. And is not Greece very close to Italy on the map ? What signifies the narrow sea that divides them? This is what a man might say who only considered geography, and did not regard the teaching of history. For the student of history cannot look upon these two peninsulas without being struck with the fact that they are, historically speaking, turned back to back ; that while the face of Italy is turned westward, and looks towards France and Spain, and across to us, the face of Greece looks eastward, towards Asia Minor and towards Egypt. Every great city in Italy, except Venice, approaches or borders the Western Sea— Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Naples.

All the older history of Rome, its development, its glories, lie on the west of the Apennines. When you cross them you come to what is called the back of Italy ; and you feel that in that flat country, and that straight coast- B line, you are separated from its true beauty and charm.1 Contrariwise, in Greece, the whole weight and dignity of its history gravitate towards the eastern coast. All its great cities — Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos, Sparta — are on that side. Their nearest neighbours were the coast cities of Asia Minor and of the Cyclades, but the western coasts were to them harbourless and strange. If you pass Cape Malea, they said, then forget your home. So it happens that the coasts of Italy and Greece, which look so near, are outlying and out-of-the-way parts of the countries to which they belong ; and if you want to go straight from real Italy to real Greece, the longest way is that from Brindisi to Corfu, for you must still journey across Italy to Brindisi, and from Corfu to Athens.

The shortest way is to take ship at Naples, and to be carried round Italy and round Greece, from the centres of culture on the west of Italy to the centres of culture (such as they are) on the east of Greece. But this is no trifling passage. When the ship has left the coasts of Calabria, and steers into the open sea, you feel that you have at last left the west of Europe, and are setting sail for the Eastern Seas. You are, moreover, in an open sea — the furious Adriatic — in which I have seen storms which would be creditable to the Atlantic Ocean, and which at times forbid even steam navigation. 1 Though this statement is broadly true, it requires some modifica tion. I should be sorry to be thought insensible to the beauties, not only of Ravenna, with its mosaics and its pines, but of Ancona, of the splendid Monte Gargano, of Trani and Bari, and of the rich gardens and vineyards of Apulia.

I 3 I may anticipate for a moment here, and say that even now the face of Athens is turned, as of old, to the East. Her trade and her communications are through the Levant. Her intercourse is with Constantinople, and Smyrna, and Syra, and Alexandria, to which a man may sail almost any day in the week. You can only sail to Italy — I had almost said to Europe — on Saturdays, and upon an occa sional Thursday. This curious parallel between ancient and modern geographical attitudes in Greece is, no doubt, greatly due to the now bygone Turkish rule. In addition to other contrasts, Mohammedan rule and Eastern jealousy — long unknown in Western Europe — first jarred upon the traveller when he touched the coasts of Greece ; and this de pendency was once really part of a great Asiatic Empire, where all the interests and communications gravitated east ward, and away from the Christian and better civilised West.

The revolution which expelled the Turks was unable to root out the ideas which their subjects had learned ; and so, in spite of Greek hatred of the Turk, his influence still lives through Greece in a thousand ways. For many hours after the coasts of Calabria had faded into the night, and even after the snowy dome of Etna was lost to view, our ship steamed through the open sea, with no land in sight ; but we were told that early in the morning, at the very break of dawn, the coasts of Greece would be visible. So, while others slept, I started up at half-past three in the morning, eager to get the earliest possible sight of the land which still occupies so large a place in our thoughts. It was a soft grey morning; the sky was covered with light, broken clouds, the deck was wet with a passing shower, of which the last drops were still flying in the air ; and before us, some ten miles away, the coasts and promontories of the Peloponnesus were reaching southward into the quiet sea.

These long serrated ridges did not look lofty, in spite of their snow clad peaks, nor did they look inhospitable, in spite of their rough outline, but were all toned in harmonious colour — a deep purple blue, with here and there, on the far Arcadian peaks, and on the ridge of Mount Taygetus, patches of pure snow. In contrast to the large sweeps of the Italian coast, its open seas, its long waves of mountain, all was here broken, and rugged, and varied. The sea was studded with rocky islands, and the land indented with deep, narrow bays. I can never forget the strong and peculiar im pression of that first sight of Greece ; nor can I cease to wonder at the strange likeness which rose in my mind, and which made me think of the bays and rocky coasts of the west and south-west of Ireland. There was the same cloudy, showery sky, which is so common there ; there was the same serrated outline of hills, the same richness in promontories, and rocky islands, and land-locked bays.

Nowhere have I seen a like purple colour, except in the wilds of Kerry and Connemara ; and though the general height of the Greek mountains, as the snow in May testi fied, was far greater than that of the Irish hills, yet \>n that morning, and in that light, they looked low and homely, S not displaying their grandeur, or commanding awe and won der, but rather attracting the sight by their wonderful grace, and by their variety and richness of outline and colour. I stood there, I know not how long — without guide or map — telling myself the name of each mountain and promontory, and so filling out the idle names and outlines of many books with the fresh reality itself. There was the west coast of Elis, as far north as the eye could reach, the least interesting part of the view, as it was of the history, of Greece ; then the richer and more varied outline of Messene, with its bay, thrice famous at great intervals, and yet for long ages feeding idly on that fame ; Pylos, Sphacteria, Navarino — each a foremost name in Hellenic history.

Above the bay could be seen those rich slopes which the Spartans coveted of old, and which, as I saw them, were covered with golden corn. The three head lands which give to the Peloponnesus its plane-leaf form, as Strabo observed,1 were as yet lying parallel before us, and their outline confused ; but the great crowd of heights and intersecting chains, which told at once the Alpine character of the peninsula, called to mind the other remark of the geographer, in which he calls it the Acropolis of Greece. The words of old Herodotus, too, rise in the mind with new reality, when he talks of the poor and stony soil of the country as a ' rugged nurse of liberty.' For the nearer the ship approaches, the more this feature comes out; increased, no doubt, greatly in later 1 viii. c. 2, <f<m toIvvv ij JleXoirbvvijo~os iosKvia tpbXXtp irXaTdvov Tb axma. days by depopulation and general decay, when many arable tracts have lain desolate, but still at all times necessary, when a large proportion of the country consists of rocky peaks and precipices, where a goat may graze, but where the eagle builds secure from the hand of man.

The coast, once teeming with traffic, is now lonely and deserted. A single sail in the large gulf of Koron, and a few miserable huts, discernible with a telescope, only added to the feeling of solitude. It was, indeed, ' Greece, but living Greece no more.' Even the pirates, who sheltered in these creeks and mountains, have abandoned this region, in which there is nothing now to plunder.1 But as we crossed the mouth of the gulf, the eye fastened with delight on distant white houses along the high ground of the eastern side — in other words, along the mountain slopes which run out into the promontory of Tainaron ; and a telescope soon brought them into distinctness, and gave us the first opportunity of discussing modern Greek life. We stood off the coast of Maina — the home of those Mainotes whom Byron has made so famous as pirates, as heroes, as lovers, as murderers ; and even now, when the stirring days of war and of piracy have passed away, the whole district retains the aspect of a country in a state of siege or of perpetual danger.

Instead of villages sur- 1 On a later occasion, our ship was obliged to run into this bay for shelter from a storm, when we found some cultivation along the coasts, and a village (Koron), with extensive fortifications above it, said to be Venetian. The aspect was by no means so desolate as appeared from a passing view outside the headlands. A coasting steamer calls here (at Kalamata) every fortnight. I FIRST IMPRESSIONS 7 rounded by peaceful homesteads, each Mainote house, though standing alone, was walled in, and in the centre was a high square tower, in which, according to trustworthy travellers, the Mainote men used to spend their day watching their enemies, while only the women and children ventured out to till the fields. For these fierce mountaineers were not only perpetually defying the Turkish power, which was never able to subdue them thoroughly, but they were all engaged at home with internecine feuds, of which the origin was often forgotten, but of which the consequences remained in the form of vengeance due for the life of a kinsman.

AVhen this was exacted on one side, the obliga tion changed to the other ; and so for generation after generation they spent their lives in either seeking or avoiding vengeance. This more than Corsican vendetta was, by a sort of mediæval chivalry, prohibited to the women and children, who were thus in perfect safety, while their husbands and fathers were in daily and deadly danger. They are considered the purest in blood of all the Greeks, though it does not appear that their dialect approaches old Greek nearer than those of their neighbours ; but for beauty of person, and independence of spirit, they rank first among the inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, and most certainly they must have among them a good deal of the old Messenian blood. Most of the country is barren, but there are orange woods, which yield the most delicious fruit — a fruit so large and rich that it makes all other oranges appear small and tasteless.

The country is now perfectly safe for visitors, and the people extremely hospitable, though their diet is not very palatable to the northern traveller. So with talk and anecdote about the Mainotes — for every one was now up on deck and sight-seeing — we neared the classic headland of Tainaron, almost the southern point of Europe, once the site of a great temple of Poseidon — not preserved to us, like its sister monument on Sunium — and once, too, the entry to the regions of the dead. And, as if to remind us of its most beautiful legend, the dolphins, which had befriended Arion of old, and carried him here to land, rose in the calm summer sea, and came playing round the ship, showing their quaint forms above the water, and keeping with our course, as it were an escort into the homely seas and islands of truer Greece.

Strangely enough, in many other journeys through Greek waters, once again only did we see these dolphins ; and here as elsewhere, the old legend, I suppose, based itself upon the fact that this, of all their wide domain, was the favourite resort of these creatures, with which the poets of old felt so strong a sympathy. But, while the dolphins have been occupying our attention, we have cleared Cape Matapan, and the deep Gulf of Asine and Gythium — in fact, the Gulf of Sparta is open to our view. We strained our eyes to discover the features of 'hollow Lacedæmon,' and to take in all the outline of this famous bay, through which so many Spartans had held their course in the days of their greatness. The site of Sparta is far from the sea, probably twelve or fifteen miles, but the place is marked for every spectator, through- FIRST IMPRESSIONS I 9 out all the Peloponnesus and its coasts, by the jagged top of Mount Taygetus, even in June covered with snow.

Through the forests upon its slopes the young Spartans would hunt all day with their famous Laconian hounds, and after a rude supper beguile the evening with stories of their dangers and their success. But, as might be expected, of the five villages which made up the famous city, few vestiges remain. The old port of Gythium is still a port ; but here, too, the ' wet ways,' and that sea once covered with boats, which a Greek comic poet has called the ' ants of the sea,' have been deserted. We were a motley company on board — Russians, Greeks, Turks, French, English; and it was not hard to find pleasant companions and diverting conversation among them all. I turned to a Turkish gentleman, who spoke French indif ferently. ' Is it not,' said I, ' a great pity to see this fair coast so desolate ? ' 'A great pity, indeed,' said he, ' but what can you expect from these Greeks?

They are all pirates and robbers ; they are all liars and knaves. Had the Turks been allowed to hold possession of the country, they would have improved it, and developed its resources ; but since the Greeks became independent, everything has gone to ruin. Roads are broken up, communications abandoned; the people emigrate and disappear — in fact, nothing prospers.' Presently, I got beside a Greek gentleman, from whom I was anxiously picking up the first necessary phrases and politenesses of modern Greek, and, by way of amusement, put to him the same question. I got the answer I expected. I HAP. 10 ' Ah !' said he, ' the Turks, the Turks ! When I think how these miscreants have ruined our beautiful country ! How could a land thrive or prosper under such odious tyranny?' I ventured to suggest that the Turks were now gone five and forty years, and that it was high time to see the fruits of recovered liberty in the Greeks.

No, it was still too soon. The Turks had cut down all the woods, and so ruined the climate ; they had destroyed the cities, broken up the roads, encouraged the bandits — in fact, they had left the country in such a state that centuries would not cure it. The verdict of Europe is in favour of the Greek gentle man ; but it might have been suggested, had we been so disposed, that the greatest and the most hopeless of all these sorrows — the utter depopulation of the country — is not due to either modern Greeks or Turks, nor even to the Slav hordes of the Middle Ages. It was a calamity which came upon Greece almost suddenly, immediately after the loss of her independence, and which historians and physiologists have as yet been only partially able to explain. Of this very coast upon which we were then gazing, the geographer Strabo, about the time of Christ, says, ' that of old, Lacedæmon had numbered ioo cities; in his day there were but ten remaining.' So, then, the sum of the crimes of both Greeks and Turks may be diminished by one.