In The Levant

Up to the highest quarries the road is steep, and strewn with broken marble, and after that there is an hour’s scramble through bushes and over a rocky path. We rested in a large grotto near the principal of the ancient quarries; it was the sleeping-place of the workmen, subsequently a Christian church, and then, and not long ago, a haunt and home of brigands. Here we found a party of four fellows, half clad in sheep-skins, playing cards, who seemed to be waiting our arrival; but they were entirely civil, and I presume were only shepherds, whatever they may have been formerly. From these quarries was hewn the marble for the Temple of Theseus, the Parthenon, the Propylæa, the theatres, and other public buildings, to which age has now given a soft and creamy tone; the Pentelic marble must have been too brilliant for the eye, and its dazzling lustre was no doubt softened by the judicious use of color. Fragments which we broke off had the sparkle and crystalline grain of loaf-sugar, and if they were placed upon the table one would unhesitatingly take them to sweeten his tea. The whole mountain-side is overgrown with laurel, and we found wild-flowers all the way to the summit. Amid the rocks of the higher slopes, little shepherd-boys, carrying the traditional crooks, were guarding flocks of black and white goats, and, invariably as we passed, these animals scampered off and perched themselves upon sharp rocks in a photographic pose.

Early as we were, the wind had risen before us, and when we reached the bare back of the summit it blew so strongly that we could with difficulty keep our feet, and gladly took refuge in a sort of stone corral, which had been a camp and lookout of brigands. From this commanding point they spied both their victims and pursuers. Our guide went into the details of the capture of the party of Englishmen who spent a night here, and pointed out to us the several hiding-places in the surrounding country to which they were successively dragged. But my attention was not upon this exploit. We looked almost directly down upon Marathon. There is the bay and the curving sandy shore where the Persian galleys landed; here upon a spur, jutting out from the hill, the Athenians formed before, they encountered the host in the plain, and there—alas! it was hidden by a hill—is the mound where the one hundred and ninety-two Athenian dead are buried. It is only a small field, perhaps six miles along the shore and a mile and a half deep, and there is a considerable marsh on the north and a small one at the south end. The victory at so little cost, of ten thousand over a hundred thousand, is partially explained by the nature of the ground; the Persians had not room enough to manouvre, and must have been thrown into confusion on the skirts of the northern swamp, and if over six thousand of them were slain, they must have been killed on the shore in the panic of their embarkation. But still the shore is broad, level, and firm, and the Greeks must have been convinced that the gods themselves terrified the hearts of the barbarians, and enabled them to discomfit a host which had chosen this plain as the most feasible in all Attica for the action of cavalry.

A sea-haze lay upon the strait of Euripus and upon Euboea, and nearly hid from our sight the forms of the Cyclades; but away in the northwest were snow peaks, which the guide said were the heights of Parnassus above Delphi. In the world there can be few prospects so magnificent as this, and none more inspiring to the imagination. No one can properly appreciate the Greek literature or art who has not looked upon the Greek nature which seems to have inspired both.

Nothing now remains of the monuments and temples which the pride and piety of the Athenians erected upon the field of Marathon. The visitor at the Arsenal of Venice remembers the clumsy lion which is said to have stood on this plain, and in the Temple of Theseus, at Athens, he may see a slab which was found in this meadow; on it is cut in very low relief the figure of a soldier, but if the work is Greek the style of treatment is Assyrian.

The Temple of Theseus, which occupies an elevation above the city and west of the Areopagus, is the best-preserved monument of Grecian antiquity, and if it were the only one, Athens would still be worthy of a pilgrimage from the ends of the earth. Behind it is a level esplanade, used as a drill-ground, upon one side of which have been gathered some relics of ancient buildings and sculptures; seated there in an ancient marble chair, we never wearied of studying the beautiful proportions of this temple, which scarcely suffers by comparison with the Parthenon or that at Pæstum. In its construction the same subtle secret of curved lines and inclined verticals was known, a secret which increases its apparent size and satisfies the eye with harmony.

While we were in Athens the antiquarians were excited by the daily discoveries in the excavations at the Keramicus (the field where the Athenian potters worked). Through the portion of this district outside the gate Dipylum ran two streets, which were lined with tombs; one ran to the Academe, the other was the sacred way to Eleusis. The excavations have disclosed many tombs and lovely groups of funereal sculpture, some of which are in situ, but many have been removed to the new Museum. The favorite device is the seated figure of the one about to die, who in this position of dignity takes leave of those most loved; perhaps it is a wife, a husband, a lovely daughter, a handsome boy, who calmly awaits the inevitable moment, while the relatives fondly look or half avert their sorrowful faces. In all sculpture I know nothing so touching as these family farewells. I obtained from them a new impression of the Greek dignity and tenderness, of the simplicity and nobility of their domestic life.

The Museum, which was unarranged, is chiefly one of fragments, but what I saw there and elsewhere scattered about the town gave me a finer conception of the spirit of the ancient art than all the more perfect remains in Europe put together; and it seems to me that nowhere except in Athens is it possible to attain a comprehension of its depth and loveliness. Something, I know, is due to the genius loci, but you come to the knowledge that the entire life, even the commonest, was pervaded by something that has gone from modern art. In the Museum we saw a lovely statue of Isis, a noble one of Patroclus, fine ones of athletes, and also, showing the intercourse with Egypt, several figures holding the sacred sistrum, and one of Rameses II. But it is the humbler and funereal art that gives one a new conception of the Greek grace, tenderness, and sensibility. I have spoken of the sweet dignity, the high-born grace, that accepted death with lofty resignation, and yet not with stoical indifference, of some of the sepulchral groups. There was even more poetry in some that are simpler. Upon one slab was carved a figure, pensive, alone, wrapping his drapery about him and stepping into the silent land, on that awful journey that admits of no companion. On another, which was also without inscription, a solitary figure sat in one corner; he had removed helmet and shield, and placed them on the ground behind him; a line upon the stone indicated the boundary of the invisible world, and, with a sad contemplation, the eyes of the soldier were fixed upon that unknown region into which he was about to descend.

Scarcely a day passed that we did not ascend the Acropolis; and again and again we traversed the Areopagus, the Pnyx, the Museum hills. From the valley of the Agora stone steps lead up the Areopagus to a bench cut in the rock. Upon this open summit the Areopagite Council held, in the open air, its solemn sessions; here it sat, it is said, at night and in the dark, that no face of witness or criminal, or gesture of advocate, should influence the justice of its decisions. Dedicated to divine justice, it was the most sacred and awful place in Athens; in a cavern underneath it was the sanctuary of the dread Erinnyes, the avenging Euries, whom a later superstition represented with snakes twisted in their hair; whatever the gay frivolity of the city, this spot was silent, and respected as the dread seat of judicature of the highest causes of religion or of politics. To us Mars Hill is chiefly associated with the name of St. Paul; and I do not suppose it matters much whether he spoke to the men of Athens in this sacred place or, as is more probable, from a point farther down the hill, now occupied by a little chapel, where he would be nearer to the multitude of the market-place. It does not matter; it was on the Areopagus, and in the centre of temples and a thousand statues that bespoke the highest civilization of the pagan world, that Paul proclaimed the truth, which man’s egotism continually forgets, that in temples made with hands the Deity does not dwell.

From this height, on the side of the Museum Hill, we see the grotto that has been dignified with the title of the “prison of Socrates,” but upon slight grounds. When the philosopher was condemned, the annual sacred ship which was sent with thank-offerings to Delos was still absent, and until its return no execution was permitted in Athens. Every day the soldiers who guarded Socrates ascended this hill, and went round the point to see if the expected vessel was in sight; and it is for their convenience that some antiquarian designated this grotto as the prison. The delay of the ship gave us his last immortal discourse.

We went one evening by the Temple of Jupiter, along the Ilissus, to the old Stadium. This classic stream, the Ilissus, is a gully, with steep banks and a stony bottom, and apparently never wet except immediately after a rain. You would think by the flattery it received from the ancient Athenians that it was larger than the Mississippi. The Panathenaic Stadium, as it is called, because its chief use was in the celebration of the games of the great quadrennial festival, was by nature and art exceedingly well adapted to chariot races and other contests. Open at the end, where a bridge crossed the Ilissus, it extended a hundred feet broad six hundred and fifty feet into the hill, upon the three sloping sides of which, in seats of marble, could be accommodated fifty thousand spectators. Here the Greek youth contended for the prizes in the chariot race, and the more barbarous Roman emperors amused a degenerate people with the sight of a thousand wild beasts hunted and slain in a single celebration.

The Stadium has been lately re-excavated, and at the time of our visit the citizens were erecting some cheap benches at one end, and preparing, in a feeble way, for what it pleases them to call the Olympic Games, which were to be inaugurated the following Sunday. The place must inevitably dwarf the performance, and comparison render it ridiculous. The committee-men may seem to themselves Olympic heroes, and they had the earnest air of trying to make themselves believe that they were really reviving the ancient glory of Greece, or that they could bring it back by calling a horse-race and the wrestling of some awkward peasants an “Olympiad.” The revival could be, as we afterwards learned it was, only a sickly and laughable affair. The life of a nation is only preserved in progress, not in attempts to make dead forms live again. It is difficult to have chariot races or dramatic contests without chariots or poets, and I suppose the modern imitation would scarcely be saved from ludicrousness, even if the herald should proclaim that now a Patroclus and now an Aristophanes was about to enter the arena. The modern occupants of Athens seem to be deceiving themselves a little with names and shadows. In the genuine effort to revive in its purity the Greek language, and to inspire a love of art and literature, the Western traveller will wholly sympathize. In the growth of a liberal commercial spirit he will see still more hope of a new and enduring Greek state. But a puerile imitation of a society and a religion which cannot possibly have a resurrection excites only a sad smile. There is no more pitiful sight than a man who has lost his ideals, unless it be a nation which has lost its ideals. So long as the body of the American people hold fast to the simple and primitive conception of a republican society,—to the ideals of a century ago,—the nation can survive, as England did, a period of political corruption. There never was, not under Themistocles nor under Scanderbeg, a more glorious struggle for independence than that which the battle of Navarino virtually terminated. The world had a right to expect from the victors a new and vigorous national life, not a pale and sentimental copy of a splendid original, which is now as impossible of revival as the Roman Empire. To do the practical and money-getting Greeks justice, I could not learn that they took a deep interest in the “Olympiad”; nor that the inhabitants of ancient Sparta were jealous of the re-institution of the national games in Athens, since, they say, there are no longer any Athenians to be jealous of.

The ancient Athenians were an early people; they liked the dewy freshness of the morning; they gave the first hours of the day to the market and to public affairs, and the rising sun often greeted the orators on the bema, and an audience on the terrace below. We had seen the Acropolis in almost every aspect, but I thought that one might perhaps catch more of its ancient spirit at sunrise than at any other hour.

It is four o’clock when my companion and I descend into the silent street and take our way to the ancient citadel by the shortest and steepest path. Dawn is just breaking in pink, and the half-moon is in the sky. The sleepy guard unbolts the gate and admits us, but does not care to follow; and we pass the Propylæa and have the whole field to ourselves. There is a great hush as we come into the silent presence of the gray Parthenon; the shades of night are still in its columns. We take our station on a broken pillar, so that we can enjoy a three-quarters view of the east front. As the light strengthens we have a pink sky for background to the temple, and the smooth bay of Phalerum is like a piece of the sky dropped down. Very gradually the light breaks on the Parthenon, and in its glowing awakening it is like a sentient thing, throwing shadows from its columns and kindling more and more; the lion gargoyles on the corners of the pediment have a life which we had not noticed before. There is now a pink tint on the fragments of columns lying at the side; there is a reddish hue on the plain about Piræus; the strait of Salamis is green, but growing blue; Phalerum is taking an iridescent sheen; I can see, beyond the Gulf of Ægina, the distant height of Acro-Corinth. .

The city is still in heavy shadow, even the Temple of Theseus does not relax from its sombreness. But the light mounts; it catches the top of the white columns of the Propylæa, it shines on the cornice of the Erechtheum, and creeps down in blushes upon the faces of the Caryatides, which seem to bow yet in worship of the long-since-departed Pallas Athene. The bugles of the soldiers called to drill on the Thesean esplanade float up to us; they are really bugle-notes summoning the statues and the old Panathenaic cavalcades on the friezes to life and morning action. The day advances, the red sun commanding the hill and flooding it with light, and the buildings glowing more and more in it, but yet casting shadows. A hawk sweeps around from the north and hangs poised on motionless wings over the building just as the sun touches it. We climb to the top of the western pediment for the wide sweep of view. The world has already got wind of day, and is putting off its nightcaps and opening its doors. As we descend we peer about for a bit of marble as a memento of our visit; but Lord Elgin has left little for the kleptomaniac to carry away.

At this hour the Athenians ought to be assembling on the Pnyx to hear Demosthenes, who should be already on the bema; but the bema has no orator, and the terrace is empty. We might perhaps see an early representation at the theatre of Dionysus, into which we can cast a stone from this wall. We pass the gate, scramble along the ragged hillside,—the dumping-ground of the excavators on the Acropolis,—and stand above the highest seats of the Amphitheatre. No one has come. The white marble chairs in the front row—carved with the names of the priests of Bacchus and reserved for them—wait, and even the seats not reserved are empty. There is no white-clad chorus manoeuvring on the paved orchestra about the altar; the stage is broken in, and the crouching figures that supported it are the only sign of life. One would like to have sat upon these benches, that look on the sea, and listened to a chorus from the Antigone this morning. One would like to have witnessed that scene when Aristophanes, on this stage, mimicked and ridiculed Socrates, and the philosopher, rising from his undistinguished seat high up among the people, replied.

XXX.—THROUGH THE GULF OF CORINTH

WITH deep reluctance we tore ourselves from the fascinations of Athens very early one morning. After these things, says the Christian’s guide, Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth. Our departure was in the same direction. We had no choice of time, for the only steamer leaves on Sunday morning, and, besides, our going then removed us from the temptation of the Olympic games. At half past five we were on board the little Greek steamer at the Piraeus.

We sailed along Salamis. It was a morning of clouds; but Ægina (once mistress of these seas, and the hated rival of Athens) and the Peloponnesus were robed in graceful garments that, like the veils of the Circassian girls, did not conceal their forms. In four hours we landed at Kalamaki, which is merely a station for the transfer of passengers across the Isthmus. Six miles south on the coast we had a glimpse of Cenchreæ, which is famous as the place where Paul, still under the bonds of Jewish superstition, having accomplished his vow, shaved his head. The neck of limestone rock, which connects the Peloponnesus with the mainland, is ten miles long, and not more than four miles broad from Kalamaki to Lutraki on the Gulf of Corinth, and as it is not, at its highest elevation, over a hundred feet above the sea, the project of piercing it with a canal, which was often entertained and actually begun by Nero, does not seem preposterous. The traveller over it to-day will see some remains of the line of fortification, the Isthmian Wall, which served in turn Greeks, Macedonians, Saracens, Latin Crusaders, and Slavonic settlers; and fragments of the ancient buildings of the Isthmian Sanctuary, where the Panhellenic festivals were celebrated.

The drive across was exceedingly pleasant. The Isthmus is seamed with ravines and ridges, picturesque with rocks which running vines drape and age has colored, and variegated with corn-fields. We enjoyed on either hand the splendid mountain forms; on the north white Helicon and Parnassus; on the south the nearly two-thousand-feet wall-crowned height of Acro-Corinth and the broken snowy hills of the Morea.

Familiar as we were with the atlas, we had not until now any adequate conception how much indented the Grecian mainland and islands are, nor how broken into peaks, narrow valleys, and long serrated summits are the contours. When we appreciate, by actual sight, the multitude of islands that compose Greece, how subject to tempests its seas are, how difficult is communication between the villages of the mainland, or even those on the same island, we understand the naturalness of the ancient divisions and strifes; and we see the physical obstacles to the creation of a feeling of unity in the present callow kingdom. And one hears with no surprise that Corfu wishes herself back under English protection.

We drove through the cluster of white houses on the bay, which is now called Corinth, and saw at three miles’ distance the site of the old city and the Acropolis beyond it. Earthquakes and malaria have not been more lenient to the ancient town than was Roman vengeance, and of the capital which was to Greece in luxury what Athens was in wit, only a few columns and sinking walls remain. Even the voluptuousness of Corinth is a tale of two thousand years ago, and the name might long ago have sunk with the fortunes of the city, but for the long residence there of a poor tent-maker, in whom no proud citizen of that day, of all those who “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play,” would have recognized the chief creator of its fame.

Our little Greek steamer was crowded excessively, and mainly with Greeks going to Patras and Zante, who noisily talked politics and business in a manner that savored more of New England than of the land of Solon and Plato. For the first time in a travel of many months we met families together, gentlemen with their wives and children, and saw the evidences of a happy home-life. It is everything in favor of the Greeks that they have preserved the idea of home, and cherish, as the centre of all good and strength, domestic purity.

At dinner there was an undisguised rush for seats at the table, and the strongest men got them. We looked down through the skylights and beheld the valiant Greeks flourishing their knives, attacking, while expecting soup, the caviare and pickles, and thrusting the naked blades into their mouths without fear. The knife seems seldom to hurt the Greek, whose display of deadly weapons is mainly for show. There are dozens of stout swarthy fellows on board, in petticoats and quilted leggings, with each a belly full of weapons,—the protruding leathern pouch contains a couple of pistols, a cheese-knife, cartridges, and pipes and tobacco.

The sail through the Gulf of Corinth is one to be enjoyed and remembered, but the reader shall not be wearied with a catalogue of names. What is it to him that we felt the presence of Delphi, that we had Parnassus on our right, and Mt. Panachaicum, lifting itself higher than Mt. Washington, on our left, the Locrian coast on one side, and the range of Arcadia on the other? The strait narrowed as we came at evening near Patras, and between the opposite forts of Rheum and Antirheum it is no broader than the Bosphorus; it was already dusky when we peered into the Bay of Lepanto, which is not, however, the site of the battle of that name in which the natural son of the pretty innkeeper of Ratisbon rendered such a signal service to Christendom. Patras, a thriving new city, which inherits the name but not the site of the ancient, lies open in the narrow strait, subject to the high wind which always blows through the passage, and is usually a dangerous landing. All the time that we lay there in the dark we thought a tempest was prevailing, but the clamor subsided when we moved into the open sea. Of Patras we saw nothing except a circle of lights on the shore a mile long, a procession of colored torches which illumined for an instant the façade of the city hall, and some rockets which went up in honor of a local patriot who had returned on our boat from Athens. And we had not even a glimpse of Missolonghi, which we passed in the night.

At daylight we are at Zante, anchored in its eastward-looking harbor opposite the Peloponnesian coast. The town is most charmingly situated, and gives one an impression of wealth and elegance. Old Zacynthus was renowned for its hospitality before the days of the Athenian and Spartan wars, and—such is the tenacity with which traits are perpetuated amid a thousand changes—its present wealthy and enterprising merchant-farmers, whose villas are scattered about the slopes, enjoy a reputation for the same delightful gift. The gentlemen are distinguished among the Ionians for their fondness of country life and convivial gayety. Early as it was, the town welcomed us with its most gracious offerings of flowers and fruit; for the pedlers who swarmed on board brought nothing less poetical than handfuls of dewy roses, carnations, heliotrope, freshly cut mignonette, baskets of yellow oranges, and bottles of red wine. The wine, of which the Zante passengers had boasted, was very good, and the oranges, solid, juicy, sweet, the best I have ever eaten, except, perhaps, some grown in a fortunate year in Florida. Sharp hills rise behind the town, and, beyond, a most fertile valley broadens out to the sea. Almost all the land is given up to the culture of the currant-vine, the grapes of Corinth, for in the transfer of the chief cultivation of this profitable fruit from Corinth to Zante, the name went with the dwarf vines. On the hillsides, as we sailed away, we observed innumerable terraces, broad, flat, and hard like threshing-floors, and learned that they were the drying-grounds of the ripe currants.