Greece and the Greeks

Preface

HE Author takes this opportunity to acknow-

-■- ledge the kind courtesy of the Director of the British School at Athens, who allowed him to use the school library during his stay. For much information concerning Folk-lore he is indebted to Sir Rennell Rodd's Customs and Lore of Modern Greece, to Dr. Bernhard Schmidt's Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, and indirectly to the sidelights thrown on the subject by the collections of Greek Folk-songs of Fauriel, Passow, and G. F. Abbott. The account of Naxos and Santorin was written before he had seen Mr. W. Miller's Latins of the Levant, otherwise he would have been able to make a better use of his opportunities. That work, the outcome of laborious research in a rather obscure but fascinating field, has revealed much that he longed to know on a subject that has had a special attraction for him since his first visit to the Cyclades many years ago.

Z. D. F.

MlNETY, MALMESBURY, f

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Greek Mainland i

II. The Isles 55

CHAPTER I THE GREEK MAINLAND ERE an aeroplanist to take an eagle flight

V V over Greece, the features that would strike him most would be the great preponderance of mountain compared with level ground, and the enormous coast-line. The sea reaches into the heart of the land from east and west and south, and the great fiord, the Gulf of Corinth, nearly cuts it in two, making the Peloponnesus all but an island, so that a country with an area rather smaller than that of Scotland has a coast-line far longer than that of England. 1 The northern half of Greece is bisected by Pindus, an irregular chain throwing off ranges right and left, so that from any lofty point of view the prospect is a confused jumble of mountains and deep blue inlets — a mingling of Switzerland and Norway. The plains are few — alluvial strips on portions of the

1 Greece has seven times as much coast as England in proportion to its area, and nearly twelve times as much as France.

E coast, alluvial patches round the heads of gulfs, at the mouths of rivers. The broad basin of Thessaly and the Boeotian level are the most considerable in Northern Greece; and in the Peloponnesus, which is for the most part a mountain mass with the elevated hollow of Arcadia in its centre, the undulating plain of Elis opening on the west, the plain of Argos, the valley of Sparta, and the rich lowlands of Messenia on the south, with the narrow strip on the Achaian shore. All these fertile regions are cut off from the rest of the land by mountain barriers, but all, except Arcadia, are easy of access from the sea. Hence it is that in a country where communication by land is difficult and slow, there is considerable coasting traffic and a large maritime population. More than half the land is unproductive mountain, and only 21 per cent under cultivation, so pastoral pursuits largely claim the attention of the rural folk. The man who builds boats and the man who sails them, and the man who rears and tends flocks and herds are important factors in Greece. Nevertheless the husbandmen far outnumber the shepherds owing to the more exacting nature of the work — 40 per cent of the nation is agricultural, and 10 per cent pastoral. Only 8 per cent of the land is pasture in the strict sense of the word, though this does not include the domain of the nomad Vlachs who wander with their flocks on the mountains. More than half of the agricultural population is of Albanian origin. 1 This people forms the backbone of rural Greece, for your true Greek will not till the land if he can earn a living in any other way. He is instinctively a townsman and a trader. The Albanian is a farmer, and considering that 70 per cent of the exports of Greece consists of land produce, it must be allowed that he is a very valuable asset to the kingdom.

By far the largest grain -growing district in Greece is the Thessalian plain, which was a lake until the defile of Tempe was cloven between Ossa and Olympus by a seismic cataclysm which let the water out. The ancient myth attributed the cleft to the trident of Neptune, but it was Vulcan who accomplished the task. Geologists say that it occurred at no distant period, if reckoned in terms of geologic time ; but in any case the plain is a lake bottom of exuberant

1 The Albanian population of Greece is completely Hellenised. It is of Toskh origin. The Toskhs are the Southern Albanians, whose northern limit may be assigned to the neighbourhood of the River Skumbi. They differ materially from the Ghegs or Northern Albanians. The latter are divided into tribes, the Toskhs are not. When the Gheg is a Christian, he is a Roman Catholic, whilst the Toskh is Orthodox. Greek influence has moulded the Toskhs for centuries, and a Toskh, even in Turkish territory, resembles a Greek more than he does his Gheg compatriot, whose chief occupation is fighting. When not thus engaged his condition is that of armed idleness. The difference extends even to the dress ; the Albanian costume adopted by the Greeks, whose distinguishing feature is the fustanella^ the manypleated white kilt, is Toskh. The fustanella is unknown among the Ghegs. It is difficult to draw a line of demarcation between Greeks and Toskhs in North-Western Greece. But the division between Toskhs and Ghegs farther north is as sharp as between two different nations.

fertility, yielding heavy crops of wheat, barley, and maize, a treeless dull expanse whose monotony is accentuated by the distant prospect of the glittering peaks of Olympus. It might be made to yield a hundredfold more than it does at present. Much of it is left fallow, and the cultivated portion is tilled by antiquated and wasteful methods. The Thessalian peasant is the most backward of the Greek agricultural class, and he lives under the most unfavourable conditions. The land consists of large estates, and the owners are absentees. Some of them are Turks who live at Constantinople, and some are Greeks who live at Athens or elsewhere, but never on their property. It is one of the peculiar features of Greek life that there are no country gentlemen. The life, which we in England prize, has no charms for them. People who possess estates in the midst of 5 the most lovely surroundings tell you that they could not endure to remain a week on them. They care nothing for sport, as a rule, and appear to be insensible to the joy of that intimate contact with nature which is the best part of the life of so many of us. They prefer the asphalt, the gossip of the cafe and the club, and when they quit Athens in the baking days of summer, they go to their country-houses at Kephisia or at Poros, where other people have country-houses. The Greek is essentially gregarious. Even the tillers of the soil crowd together in big villages, often far from the scene of their labours ; you do not find the solitary homestead.

But this is largely due to want of security. In the Peloponnesus, where brigandage has not been heard of since 1847, and where a peaceful population dwells in full assurance of immunity from attack, one does come across isolated households, not infrequently. The urban proclivities of Greek landed proprietors have resulted in the division of estates into small holdings. But this is not yet the case in Thessaly, though the Government is alive to the need of it, and is considering schemes of expropriation, and the creation of homesteads with plots for the cultivation of vegetables and fruit. Both are almost unknown at present, to the prejudice of the public health. (Thessaly can never become so pleasant a habitat as Southern Greece, owing to climatic conditions. The summers are parching and rainless, and there is a scarcity of water. The winters are severe. The tempering influence of the sea breeze is shut out by the girdle of mountains surrounding the plain. Malarial fever is prevalent, and its effects are seen in the sallow complexions, hollow cheeks, and listless movements of the people, whose poor and monotonous dietary does not afford them sufficient vitality to combat the scourge. * Political and economic conditions, moreover, have contributed to sap their energy. Spoliation , and insecurity have been their lot for centuries. They were under Turkish rule until 1881, ground between the upper and nether millstones of Turkish Agha and Christian Klepht. The latter descended from the mountains and helped himself to what the former had left. The frontier is still the haunt of outlaws, and notoriously the most insecure region in the kingdom. It is not surprising, therefore, that a certain air of savagery lingers on the Thessalian plain, nor that the discontent of the population bursts out into occasional acts of violence. The interest of ownership is the most obvious remedy, and the peasant is sensible of this. He contrasts his position with that of his more fortunate compatriot in other portions of the kingdom, although he is incapable of comprehending the difference in the physical conditions which would make the small holding a failure in Thessaly, whilst it is a success in the Morea. Scientific agriculture and the use of perfected machinery are needed in Thessaly in order to develop its potentialities. At present the region which ought to be the greatest source of wealth in Greece is the most melancholy in aspect of any, whilst its people live under the hardest conditions. The tiller of the soil should at least be allowed to lead a more human existence, and this could be accomplished by providing him with a plot on which he could raise garden produce, and a dwelling better fitted for habitation than his mud hovel. Above all, he should have this on a secure tenure.

Differing entirely from the rest of Thessaly, the

Magnesian peninsula is a wooded spur of Pelion, the seaward rampart of the Gulf of Volo, which by an inward curve it turns almost into a lake. Volo is a clean, cheerful, modern town with very ancient associations, for hard by is the site of Iolcos where the Argo was built, her timbers coming from the mountain-side, still clothed with oak and fir. A railway leads from Volo to Milceas, past villages embowered in orchards of apple, pear, quince, and apricot. Milceas itself is set in the midst of plantations of mulberry trees, for silk is the staple product. It is a place of bounding rills and springs bubbling from ferntapestried rocks, of marvellous vignettes of sea and mount, seen through over-arching foliage, of gay gardens roofed with trellised vines — the finest clusters I ever saw were at Milceas. It has troops of rosy-cheeked, sturdy children, well clad and well mannered. Farther west it would become a i i beauty spot" and a health resort, with big hotels and a Kursaal and a funicular to the top of Pelion ; but its remoteness has saved it from this, and under the giant plane trees by the public fountain the elders inhale the fragrant tumbaki in peace.

The deltaic wedge at the mouth of the Spercheios, with Lamia as its centre, separated from the Thessalian plain by the chain of Othrys, is one of the regions in which tobacco is grown, and it contains good cattle pastures. South of it, and cut off by the lofty range of GEta, is the Livadian country and Lake Copais, once a hotbed of fever which carried off three out of every four children born in the district. Since Copais has been drained, thanks to English enterprise, the area has become one of the most productive in the country. Cotton and maize are the staple crops of Livadia. The golden heaps of grain and the paler heaps of husks used for stuffing mattresses are conspicuous at harvest time. When the cotton is being gathered the pyramidal mounds look like the white tents of a military camp, and the brightly garbed women and children moving between the rows of plants as they pluck the cotton from the pods and drop it into linen bags suspended from their necks, make a pretty picture.

A low range of hills divides this from the Boeotian plain, a fat land with a mixed population in which the Albanian element is prominent — a land of laborious peasants, much richer than the starved soil of Attica, though the inhabitants of Athens look down on the Boeotians. Their predecessors in the classical age likewise affected to despise the country of Hesiod and Pindar, Plutarch and Epaminondas.

Attica owes its importance to Athens and the Piraeus. The commerce and industry of the latter make it the busiest centre in the kingdom. The tall chimneys of its factories recall the aspect of our manufacturing towns, as the blast furnaces of Lavrion on the east coast of the Attic peninsula remind us of the Black Country. 1 The capital with its port and the lead mines form the chief economic assets of Attica, which is agriculturally insignificant. The ungrateful soil supports only a sparse population almost wholly Albanian.

There is a point in Central Greece where its spine, the steep chain of Pindus, sinks to a low pass. But immediately south of it there is a sudden rise, and a mountain knot sends forth ranges east and west and south, CEta to the Boeotian shores, the tangle of intersecting ridges in CEtolia, and the lofty summits Corax, Parnassus, Helicon, Cithasron, which stand as sentinels over the Corinthian Gulf. South-eastward through lower Attica extend lower ranges to its extreme point, " Sunium's marbled steep." The system does not end with the mainland, but reappears in the ^Egean isles, Zea, Kythnos, Seriphos, Siphnos, which are but the tops of submerged mountains of the same formation. This region, unproductive, thinly peopled by wandering shepherds and rare villages of hardy mountaineers, is as rich in natural beauty as in the myth of the world's youth. Cithasron is still gloomy and savage, as it was to the poets of old. Helicon, at

1 The Lavrion mines were probably discovered and worked by the Phoenicians. It is almost sure that they furnished a revenue to JEg'ma, before they became the property of the Athenians. They are mentioned by ^Eschylus and Xenophon. The present company exploits the refuse thrown away by the miners of antiquity. It was imperfectly smelted, and yields a good percentage of lead and a certain quantity of silver. The supply seems inexhaustible, and gives an idea of the magnitude of the ancient workings.

whose foot Hesiod tilled his farm, still laughs with innumerable rills. Parnassus in his mantle of snow rises in austere grandeur above Delphi and the rent whence issues the Castalian spring. The track from Livadia to Delphi by the village of Arachova takes the traveller through scenery of a stupendous character. At one point he has a glimpse of the sea on either hand, mere strips like tarns, buried deep in crumpled mountains. If he cared to climb the 8070 feet of Parnassus — he can do most of it on a mule — Greece lies like a map beneath him. East and west is an expanse of ocean — the JEgean on one hand, the Ionian Sea on the other — his vision extends north to the snows of Olympus, south to those of Taygetus, and ranges over all that lies between.

Greece, west of Parnassus and Pindus, presents a singular contrast to Greece east of the central range. The western half is a wilderness of crests, a land of glen and torrent and forest, a clime of rainy skies, of mist, of vague pearly lights and rolling clouds — a landscape that Salvator Rosa would have loved — black Acheron 1 and the gnarled and twisted oaks of Dodona. Far otherwise is Eastern Greece. There the keynote is one of serene beauty. The contour of the naked mountains is so harmonious that they

1 Dodona and Acheron are beyond the political frontier, but they are physically a part of Greece. The water of Acheron is not black. Like that of the Acheloiis, it is opaque and light coloured. But the gorge through which it flows is intensely gloomy.

are always noble in form when not imposing in size. There is a happy accord of line and colour which brings with it a sense of contentment like that inspired by the simple perfection of a Doric temple. There is no awe in it, but there is intense gladness — the gladness of a limpid atmosphere, of brilliant colour, ever changing with the changing light — hues of sapphire, of amethyst, of ruby, or of molten gold. But it is idle to attempt to translate those infinite gradations into the coarser tints of gem or metal, as it would be to try to reproduce them through the medium of any pigment yet devised by the art of man. There is no foreground in Attic and JEgean scenery. The elements of rock and water that compose it are rudimentary in their simplicity. There are no details to distract the eye. We gaze afar at the divine loveliness of land and sea and feel that it is good to have been born. Such an aspect of nature has some analogy with Greek art at its best, and it may be that such an environment inspired it.

The contrast is not one of physical features alone. The Greece that gave to Europe the first notions of letters, art, science, and politics — Greece in her glory — was Eastern Greece. The Greece that matters to us finished at Delphi. The rude peoples of Acarnania, CEtolia, and Epirus remained strangers to Hellenic influences. And when at a later stage of history they emerged from obscurity, it was in arms, not in arts, that they shone, from the days of Pyrrhus onwards, with intervals of darkness, illumined in our own times by the heroism and the tragedy of Parga, of Suli, of Mesolonghi.

The physical structure of Western Greece forbids social and economic development. The high relief, mountains holding no soil, a coast falling steep to the sea, harbourless, affording no foothold for man save in one or two malarious patches, and the swampy character of the valleys impose on the country a thin population. In the hollow that holds the lakes of Agrinion are grown fruit and tobacco — the latter of the finest quality and the most important product in that region. In the lagoons round Mesolonghi the rice-fields afford employment to one section of the inhabitants and the fishery to another. The fish of the Gulf of Lepanto are larger and of better quality than those of Pirseus, and a speciality of Mesolonghi is botargOy a preparation of fish-roe and a high-priced luxury. These are the only two centres of any account. Turning to Eastern Greece, we find the fertile plains of Thessaly, Lamia, and Bceotia, the mines of Lavrion and Euboea, the latter practically a part of the mainland. A swing-bridge spans the narrow Euripos, with its alternating current, which so sorely puzzled Aristotle and still awaits a satisfactory explanation. After crossing it we scarcely realise that we have left the continent or that these land-locked tranquil waters are a part of the sea. They afford a secure anchorage for many a mile, and taken together with the spacious harbours of Piraeus, the round lake-like Gulf of Volo, and the narrow channel between the mainland and Salamis, offer a series of havens perhaps unequalled anywhere within so small an area. Busy Piraeus with its varied industries is the point of contact with the outside world. It is in almost daily communication with Western Europe and with Constantinople and the Black Sea by means of mail-steamers under divers flags, and twice or thrice a week with Egypt. Its own steamers serve the islands and the Asiatic ports, and two lines, one Greek, the other Austrian, keep it in constant touch with America. Four miles inland is Athens, the seat of government, and a great centre of education for Greeks from all lands. Here, on this eastern side of the kingdom, are concentrated its activities, political, commercial, social, and intellectual. Greece, as of old, has her face to Asia and her back to Europe.

There are only two ways of reaching Greece. One is by Piraeus, which is disappointing, for the traveller arrives in the midst of the din and dust of a somewhat sordid seaport and makes his way to Athens by a dull road, punctuated by factory chimneys, through a shabby suburb. The other is from Brindisi to Corfu and Patras, whence he steams between the castles of Rhion and Anti-Rhion from the Gulf of Lepanto to the Gulf of Corinth, through the heart of Greece, between ramparts of crests and peaks, whose memory will remain with him throughout his life. That magnificent array of mountains would excite emotion by its grandeur, but every summit is fraught with legends of gods and men. A closer inspection, however, will reveal a marked difference between the two sides of the gulf. The northern coast is one of stern solitude. Beetling crags fall sheer to the water. For mile after mile there is not a sign of habitation. Then, at rare intervals, there comes a hamlet. Galaxidi, a tiny town on a low cliff, lives entirely on the sea, peopled by mariners and those who minister to them, the builders of ships and the makers of masts and rigging. Within an inlet is a narrow strip of cultivated plain, on which stands Itea, backed by the ravine of Delphi and the snows of Parnassus. But it is a coast which repels rather than invites. Men who live on it are thrust out to sea for their livelihood by the sterile spurs which strike their roots deep beneath the waters. Turn to the opposite shore, where the stone pines on the low red cliffs almost dip into the waves.

Villages, as far as the eye can reach, gleam on the champaign. For this is the littoral of Achaia, the most densely peopled district in Greece, the home of the currant vine, where land costs twelve times as much as elsewhere. It is the northern fringe of the Peloponnesus, a region separated from the rest of the kingdom in other ways than by the breadth of the gulf. Almost an island — the Corinthian isthmus is barely three miles wide — the Peloponnesus is deeply indented by spacious inlets. Thus open to the tempering influence of the sea, it escapes the baking summers and harsh winters of Northern Greece. When Thessaly is sweltering under a pitiless sun, the Peloponnesus is comparatively cool. When Thessaly is draped with snow, the oranges are ripening in Sparta and Messenia. If we climb to the top of the lofty barrier which rises behind the low coast strip, we behold a country that looks little else than a mountain mass. Fan-like, ranges run south-eastward through Argolis and Laconia to the stormy Cape Malea, south and west through Elis and Messenia to Cape Gallo, and due south, the central chain, the longest and loftiest, rises into the sharp snowy needles of Taygetus, and sinks into the Mediterranean at rugged Matapan. There are lateral ramifications, so that the land looks like a billowy sea of crest and ridge and peak which gives little promise of fertility. But the valleys between are hidden from us ; the plain of Argos, the rolling expanse of Elis, the broad green vale of Sparta east of Taygetus, and the rich Messenian level west of it.

The garden of Greece this last, for it is open to the winds from Africa and sheltered from the north by mountains. In the heart of the land is a hollow, itself from two thousand to three thousand feet above sea-level, in part an undulating plain, in part wooded valleys. This is Arcadia, where the winters are cold and the summers cool and rainy, a region of pasture and grain. The summer showers of the Peloponnesus are a feature which make it distinct from the generally rainless summers of Northern Greece. The mountains are high enough to catch and condense the watery vapours from the sea, and also to hold their snows until the dog days, when they descend to the valleys as fertilising streams. Thus there is no dry fallow time as in the north. With such physical environment the produce of the soil is naturally more varied than in the rest of Greece. The fastidious currant vine thrives only in the Peloponnesus and the neighbouring island of Zante. The 3700 acres of Greek soil devoted to the cultivation of the orange are likewise in the Peloponnesus. The connoisseur of the orange may like to know that the Messenian fruit is noted for its luscious and juicy qualities, whilst that of Sparta claims priority for its fragrance and delicious flavour. There are 490 square miles of vineyards in Greece, a large proportion of which are in the islands and the Peloponnesus, but the finest vines the country grows are indisputably those of Achaia, where alone the viticulturists .have succeeded in producing a champagne. 1 Greece is pre-eminently the habitat of the olive. The groves cover an area of 675 square miles, much of which is on islands, but the greater portion in the Peloponnesus. The olives of the Messenian plain known as Kalamata

1 Since writing- the above I am informed that Tripolitza also produces a sparkling wine.

olives are incomparably superior to any others. | They are easily distinguished by their slender pointed shape and rich brown-purple hue. There is said to be a secret in their preparation, but the fruit itself is no doubt the essence of the secret. They command a good price as a table delicacy, and indeed there are no others in the world to equal them, so far as the experience of the writer goes. The taste for olives, like that for caviare, is said to be an acquired one, and in so far as concerns the green Spanish variety, known in England as Aceitunas de la Reina, the statement is admissible ; but that harsh and acrid product bears no relation to the delicate texture and suave yet piquant flavour of the fruit of Kalamata. The connoisseur who has not tasted the latter does not know what the olive can be. Messenia, too, is the only region in Greece where the date ripens, a distinction it shares with only one other spot on European soil, Elche, in Southern Spain. Though Sparta cannot boast of the date, she is justly proud of her peaches, which are as excellent as they are abundant. The sojourner on the banks of the Eurotas can indulge in that delicious fruit to his heart's content without remorse for violence done to his purse^ Messenia, on the other hand, scores a triumph in figs, which are larger and more luscious than elsewhere, and as they ripen considerably earlier than in other regions and are the first to come on the market, they secure a handsome return to the growers, c

Kalamata has an advantage over Sparta in that it is in direct railway communication with Athens, although farther away as the crow flies. The Spartan must send his produce to the little port of Gythion to be carried by sea to Pirasus, or to Tripolitza and thence by rail to the capital ; but Tripolitza is a long way off, and in both cases the land transport is slow and expensive. A branch line from Tripolitza is sorely needed.

It is not easy to convey in words a notion of what the Peloponnesus looks like. In an area of such unequal relief the aspect naturally varies greatly, though one is never out of sight of mountains. The country west of the great central range is much more wooded than the region east of it, though Sparta is far from being treeless. The barest regions are the high plateaus of Mantinasa and Megalopolis and the tobacco-growing plain of Argos, though the latter is relieved by frequent orange and lemon orchards ; and whilst the uplands of Arcadia are generally speaking nude, the heaviest, timber grows in the valleys leading to them. The plane, the oak, and the fir are the chief timber trees/)

Conspicuous in the Vale of Sparta are the tall poplars rising above the expanse of mulberry trees. The Eurotas, a clear stream, flows between banks fringed with oleanders. The dominant note of colour is rich green, relieved in winter by the gold of the orange groves, and in spring by their silver blossoms and the wax-like scarlet petals of the pomegranate. There is a profusion of wildflowers, among which narcissi and a delicate pale blue iris hold the chief place/)

One is apt to invest everything Spartan with a stern atmosphere, but, on the contrary, the valley has a smiling, contented aspect. The town is modern. It was planned and built by the Bavarians in 1834. The heavy stone houses and broad streets are more suited to the climate of Germany than to that of Greece. They have plenty of space, however, set in the midst of gardens. A favourite resort of the townsfolk is Platanista, a level plot of ground in the angle formed by the confluence of the Eurotas and the Mangoula. Tradition has it that it was here that the Spartan boys were brought to be whipped. It is the playground of the youth of modern Sparta, frolicsome urchins, unmindful of the discipline to which their predecessors were subjected. And here their elders sip coffee and talk politics beneath the stately poplars, from amid whose trembling leaves comes the soft cooing of doves. Behind rises Taygetus, a mighty mountain-wall with pinnacles of snow clear-cut against the blue. In front the lofty barrier of Parnon shuts in the valley eastward. Parnon is far off, but Taygetus broods over Sparta and sends her his snows in the foaming waters of the Mangoula. He also sends his cold breath, a doubtful benefit, for the valley, exposed only to the south wind, has a very high summer temperature, and the sharp contrast between day and night is trying. The afternoons are very short, for the sun disappears early from a place which has a wall nearly 8000 feet high immediately west of it. Behind modern Sparta, in the foreground of the Taygetus, is the Sparta of the Middle Ages, perched on a precipitous detached rock over 2000 feet high, the Mistra of the Franks, the Misithra of the Byzantine despots. Built by Guillaume Villehardouin in 1247, it is one of the most remarkable relics of that bypath in the history of Greece, the Frankish domination. The Principality of Achaia lasted wellnigh two centuries, and its many vestiges lend to the Peloponnesus that note of Western feudalism, with its glamour of chivalry and romance, which contrasts so sharply with the spirit of antiquity and with that of Orientalism. The abandoned city, crowned by the ivied ruins of the castle of Villehardouin, is a unique historical museum. Its frescoed churches, its monastery and dwellings, with the escutcheons and devices of the knights, are rich in mediaeval French and Greco-Byzantine work, and mingled with these are the baths and fountains of the Turk, ornate with inscriptions in those elegant interlaced letters which make the Arabic characters an unrivalled medium for complex decorative design.